00:02We choose to go to the moon, we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the
00:10other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
00:15More than 50 years ago, humans accomplished something many thought impossible.
00:21Ignition sequence start, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, all engines running, commit liftoff, we have liftoff, 1122 AM
00:34Eastern Standard Time.
00:37We landed on the moon.
00:39Contact light, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.
00:44That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
00:52NASA led the missions during the Apollo program when the United States was racing to reach the lunar surface.
00:59The flag is a beautiful picture.
01:01Astronauts landed on the moon six times, but the last time humans walked on the moon was in 1972.
01:09NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman says the challenge now is getting back.
01:14The hardest thing right now is returning American astronauts to the surface of the moon.
01:17We obviously haven't done that in more than 53 years.
01:20So here's the question.
01:21If we could do it then, why haven't we returned?
01:24Even as science progressed, going to the moon remained, as Kennedy called it, a hard thing to do.
01:31They make it look easy when it's not easy.
01:33Things are not simple, and that's why it takes time, money, and effort to get it done.
01:38You know, it was popular, but it wasn't popular with everybody.
01:42At its peak, NASA's budget exceeded 4% of federal spending.
01:47Now, it's about 0.4%.
01:50Still, the moon represents something bigger.
01:53A chance to push beyond what we know and expand the limits of human exploration.
01:59Now, NASA's Artemis program is ready to pick up where Apollo left off.
02:05Two, one.
02:05Boosters in ignition.
02:07And liftoff of Artemis 1.
02:11Artemis is our campaign to return astronauts to the moon, and from there, begin to build a more permanent presence
02:19over time.
02:20Jacob Bleacher is the chief exploration scientist at NASA, designing and managing programs critical to the Artemis missions.
02:28The destination we've picked, the south polar region of the moon, it has a very unique situation in which some
02:35of the impact craters or big depressions never see the sunlight.
02:40And so this is a really unique environment for us.
02:44And we think that over the entire history of the moon, billions of years, the moon surface may have collected
02:52volatile materials or water.
02:55These are materials that if they are exposed to the sun in an airless environment, they they volatilize or become
03:00a gas rapidly.
03:02And so if we can find those resources on the moon, it's great because one, they're great for science, but
03:09they could also be a resource for us to use.
03:12Water is very important to life as we know it.
03:15If those shadow craters harbor those water ice deposits, they could support future space missions, astronauts at the base and
03:23even fuel rockets for deeper exploration.
03:25But only if there's enough.
03:27It's not that it's any more difficult to go to the moon now than it was in the past, but
03:32we're going to a different place, a place we've never been.
03:35The south polar region of the moon is very unlike what most people are familiar with.
03:41If they've seen pictures or videos of the Apollo missions, the south pole has really beautiful terrain.
03:47But because the moon does not have an axial tilt, the sun doesn't really rise and set above your head
03:54the way it does everywhere else on the moon.
03:57And so it just moves right around the horizon.
04:00It basically dances in a circle around you if you're at the pole.
04:04And what happens then is you have these sweeping shadows that come across the region.
04:09And it just makes the lighting very, very different than what we experienced in Apollo.
04:14So it's not that it's more difficult. It's just different.
04:17We are building a moon base.
04:19You're going to build a moon base.
04:20You're going to need rovers.
04:21You're going to need lots of rovers on the surface.
04:23You're going to need comms.
04:24You're going to need navigation.
04:25You're going to need power.
04:27This is not lost and this is a high priority.
04:29This is what's so important in the national space policy is don't just go back, go back to stay.
04:34That level of ambition raises the stakes, hearkening back to the Cold War era when a space race against the
04:40Soviet Union fueled America's push to leave blueprints and stars and stripes on the lunar surface.
04:47During the Cold War, the United States wasn't just exploring space.
04:51It was racing the Soviet Union to the moon with global power and prestige on the line.
04:55The mission became a national priority and the money followed.
05:00Between 1960 and 1973, the U.S. poured $25.8 billion into Apollo or more than $200 billion in today's
05:09dollars.
05:10That urgency helped put astronauts on the lunar surface.
05:14Today, the race looks different.
05:16With Artemis, the government's projected to have spent around $93 billion through 2025, but now it's competing with a long
05:24list of other national priorities.
05:27And without the same singular focus, progress can slow and timelines can stretch.
05:32During Apollo, NASA worked with contractors and universities, but the program ran as a tightly controlled system with one clear
05:39path to the moon.
05:41Artemis is more like an ecosystem.
05:43Multiple companies are building different pieces of the mission, from spacecraft to landers, all of which have to come together
05:50in orbit before astronauts can even attempt a landing.
05:54That means more coordination, more complexity, and more opportunities for something to go wrong.
05:59But the idea is to move faster, test more often, and keep the program moving forward.
06:05Our average launch cadence was closer to three months throughout all those programs, not three years.
06:11We need to start getting back to basics and moving in these directions.
06:14Instead of a simple program like Apollo, where everything went on one rocket, we have this very complex architecture.
06:21And that has led to a lot of delays.
06:24Artemis II is already seeing some of those challenges.
06:27The mission was originally set to launch March 6, then pushed back to April 1, as NASA continued testing and
06:34working through technical issues to ensure the spacecraft is ready.
06:39The hydrogen leaks, we learned a tremendous amount in Artemis I.
06:43You know, and again, we refer to these as test flights.
06:45We're still learning how these systems work.
06:47And just like in Artemis I, we observed a few leaks and we worked on how to fix those.
06:53We learned about that.
06:54In our wet dress, we had a few leaks.
06:57But we're learning how to deal with those and move forward.
07:00So I think, you know, we continue to learn, we continue to get better at this, and we're on a
07:06good path.
07:08Despite the difficulty, NASA is once again full throttle.
07:12The moon really is our first foothold in taking steps away from the Earth.
07:17Before we take that jump, we want to kind of learn how to work and operate and live away from
07:23the Earth here at the moon.
07:24That will help us understand how to operate so we can go to a place like Mars in the future.
07:29A former NASA engineer who helped develop systems for human spaceflight, Mark Jernigan says the moon is a testbed for
07:38future missions.
07:38So the moon is a testbed.
07:41If you can learn how to make them work on the moon, then I think it's pretty readily apparent that
07:46you could have them work pretty well on Mars as well.
07:50This is an effort for all of humanity.
07:52Those innovations, those creative ideas, they feed right into everyday life.
07:58In other words, humans are not choosing to do it because it's easy.
08:02Rather, because it's hard.
08:05For Straight Arrow News, I'm Donald Afari.
08:07Step one- hemen.
08:09Step one-
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