00:05Hola, soy Ana Cristina Olvera y les doy la bienvenida a este nuevo episodio de Iberoamérica
00:10en órbita, el lugar donde exploramos el fascinante mundo de la ciencia y la tecnología espacial
00:15que está transformando nuestro futuro. Este programa es posible gracias a la colaboración
00:20y las plataformas de nuestros socios de ATEI. Durante décadas, la ciencia ficción imaginó
00:26ciudades, colonias y sociedades enteras viviendo en la Luna. Hoy esas historias parecen estar
00:32un poco más cerca de la realidad. La NASA avanza en sus planes para establecer una presencia
00:38humana sostenida en nuestro satélite, con infraestructura que permita a futuras tripulaciones vivir, trabajar
00:45y explorar durante periodos cada vez más largos. ¿Estamos ante los primeros pasos hacia una
00:52verdadera colonia lunar? Estas en Iberoamérica en órbita.
01:15Hace seis décadas, Robert Heinlein imaginó en The Moon is a Harsh Mistress o La Luna es una
01:23amante dura, una sociedad humana establecida en la Luna. Medio siglo después, Andy Weir
01:29llevó la idea un paso más allá en Artemis, con una auténtica ciudad lunar. Durante años,
01:37vivir en nuestro satélite fue territorio exclusivo de la ciencia ficción, pero los nuevos planes
01:42de la NASA buscan acercar esa fantasía a la realidad, con infraestructura que permita a los seres
01:47humanos permanecer y trabajar en la Luna durante periodos cada vez más largos.
01:55This is drawing on the playbook of success from the 1960s. We're bringing it back. This is how
01:59you do the near impossible. We're learning and building up to doing something extremely hard.
02:05A permanent human presence on the moon may sound like science fiction, but it's already taking
02:11shape. The ideas are becoming hardware. The plans are becoming missions. The future is happening now.
02:18Being able to see moon base elements getting to the finish line. It's just awesome. We're taking you
02:25behind the scenes to show you how. People are looking up again, believing in big things again.
02:33America is returning to the moon to build a moon base. We're going to need to achieve the near impossible.
02:48NASA is building a moon base, a place where astronauts will live, work and conduct science on and around
02:54the moon. Now, building a moon base won't happen all at once. It will take more than 20 lunar landings
03:01during the first phase with each mission delivering the equipment, technology and science needed to build,
03:08learn and improve. We're traveling across the country to meet the companies building lunar landers for
03:14upcoming flights and see how they're preparing for their next missions to the moon.
03:21Just north of Austin, Texas, Firefly Aerospace is preparing for its second mission to the moon.
03:27NASA's Carlos Garcia Galan is taking us inside its headquarters where engineers are preparing the
03:33lunar lander for its upcoming mission.
03:35Love to see the hardware ready for moon base mission Blue Ghost 2. So tell us a little bit about
03:41what
03:41we're looking at.
03:42Yeah, so what we're looking at right here is, like you mentioned, our Blue Ghost Mission 2 lunar lander.
03:47The lander is now stacked. It's starting to really look like a lander and we're getting ready to install our
03:51electronics and all our payloads. Blue Ghost Mission 2, the lander, is going to the far side of the moon.
03:56And that is really driven by one of the payloads that will sit on the top deck of the lander.
04:00It's called Lucy Knight.
04:01So that's a radio astronomy telescope. So they want to sit on the far side of the moon, away from
04:05all the noise from Earth.
04:06So the moon's kind of blocking all of that. And they're looking back at the cosmic dark ages. So that's
04:11a very amazing payload.
04:13Yeah, we will also have another payload that we will have put into orbit. So it'll be in an orbit
04:19around the moon.
04:20So that's Lunar Pathfinder. We have a rover on board. Super exciting.
04:24Yeah, so that'll be our first mobility payload that we have. So all of those are coming along with us.
04:29They're each going to gather science, technology, data, and it can all be used on future missions.
04:34A lot of the people that worked on Mission 1 are still here working on Mission 2. So we have
04:38all that knowledge still in-house.
04:40And then you're implementing all the lessons learned because we have all that great data from Blue Ghost Mission 1.
04:44So it does feel easier. So it feels like the wheel is starting to really turn a lot faster.
04:48And then we've got these other moon-based awards. So it's really about, can you make it repeatable? Can you
04:52produce it?
04:52Yeah, can you be successful several times? Is the excitement building up?
04:56Oh, yeah. I mean, you're getting pretty close.
04:57Yeah, I think any time that you have something in the clean room where it's like you look at it
05:01and you know, like, that's my lander, that's going to the moon.
05:04It's also humbling. It's like, hey, we did it one time, but now we need to do it two, three,
05:08four.
05:08We need to keep doing it and keep upping the bar and getting better each time.
05:17Over on the West Coast, NASA's Ryan Stephan is at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California,
05:23where Voyager Lunar Systems' Griffin 1 lander has arrived for environmental testing.
05:28This larger lander is an infrastructure-class lander. It's not just meant for scientific payloads and instrumentation,
05:35but also it's made to basically take equipment and infrastructure-level capability and deliver that to lunar surface.
05:43It's also landing in the South Pole, where the terrain is a little bit harsher. It's a little bit more
05:49dangerous to land.
05:50It requires precision, navigation, guidance, and control to land in safe locations.
05:56This lander will be taking a total of 10 payloads, the largest of which, the Casher Labs Flip Rover,
06:02is the largest commercial payload to ever be delivered to the lunar South Pole.
06:06So we're thousands of miles away from where you guys assembled the spacecraft. Why did you decide to bring this
06:12out to Southern California?
06:13Jet Propulsion Laboratory has some of the best, most capable environmental testing facilities in the world,
06:19and for a lunar lander this size, really what we want to do is test the spacecraft, put it through
06:25its paces.
06:25Right now, Griffin is fixtured on top of the mass properties fixture, which is the black thing you see in
06:31front of it.
06:31Basically, we are testing to measure the mass of the vehicle, the total mass, the center of gravity, the movement
06:38of inertia,
06:39so that we know the exact configuration of the flight vehicle.
06:43When we get back, we will finish reviewing a lot of the test data that we've done here, correlating to
06:48our models and our pre-test predictions,
06:50modifying those based on the feedback that we've got during this testing,
06:53and potentially addressing any findings on the ground here while we have the chance before we launch later this year.
06:58It will be exciting.
07:02On the East Coast, NASA's Courtney Abeglin is at Blue Origin's testing facility in Cape Canaveral, Florida,
07:08to see the latest on the Blue Moon Mark I lander.
07:12Mark I serial number one is designed to prove out the core technologies for Blue Origin
07:18that we will eventually apply to the human landing missions of Artemis.
07:22So it's our liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen systems, it's our precision landing capabilities,
07:26it's also our ability to offload large amounts of cargo.
07:30I see a lot of people working on this lander.
07:32Can you tell us what is left of this lander in order to make it fly?
07:36We just completed our thermal vacuum testing at Johnson Space Center in January and February of this year.
07:42We then brought the vehicle back. We did a number of tests.
07:45We first tested our RF compatibility with the TDRS satellite system, as well as a deep space network.
07:51We also have tested how our vehicle reacts during stage separation from the New Glenn vehicle.
07:58We've tested the acoustic environment and soon we'll be testing our cryogenic propellant system.
08:03We've just completed our fit checks of our BE7 main engine, the actual engine that will fly to the moon.
08:09That went perfectly. And so we're now closing up these tests and we'll be ready for New Glenn.
08:14As you know, we had the mishap at the pad with New Glenn.
08:17The team there is making phenomenal progress. We are working to have serial number one ready and stored in a
08:24quiescent state for when New Glenn is ready.
08:27We expect that launch to occur in Q1 in 2027.
08:30And once that's complete, we'll now continue on to serial numbers two, three and four.
08:34We're also carrying NASA payloads, the SCALPS payload, which will allow us to visualize what the exhaust from our BE7
08:42engine is doing to the surface of the moon.
08:45So that will feed forward to heavier landers in the future.
08:48We also carry a retro reflector from NASA on this mission.
08:51NASA has been a phenomenal partner to us. They've been working hand in hand with us.
08:55And that's what's going to allow these four serial numbers to come off the assembly line as quickly as they
09:00are.
09:03In Houston, NASA's Adam Schlesinger is at Intuitive Machines headquarters getting an up-close look at how the Nova Sea
09:10lander is being prepared for its third mission to the moon.
09:14So this spacecraft is our Nova Sea. This is our IM-3 vehicle. As you can see, up on the
09:19top is the methane tank. The oxygen tank is below. The engine actually sits right here underneath. This is the
09:25engine deck.
09:26You can see that we've just put the top deck onto this spacecraft. So we're excited. Within the next month,
09:30we're going to be putting the engine in and we'll be taking it outside for a hot fire test to
09:34confirm that the engine is ready to go for launch.
09:37Right. And after that test, what's the path look like to get to launch?
09:40We bring it back inside here. The payloads sit on panels that go on the outside of this spacecraft.
09:46So we bring those panels in. We do integrated testing and then we do some vibration testing. We send it
09:52down to the Cape and we get ready for launch.
09:55This vehicle will have five NASA payloads looking at the magnetic anomaly that's at Reiner Gamma on the near side
10:00of the moon. So it's a super exciting science mission.
10:03We're also doing other science. So we have six commercial payloads and we have a payload from the Italian Space
10:11Agency and we have the five NASA payloads doing lots of different types of science.
10:15And this is the third IM eclipse delivery. Can you talk about some of the lessons learned from the previous
10:20two and how that's being applied to this one?
10:21Yeah, absolutely. So on IM one, which was in 2024 and IM two, which was in 2025, we learned lessons.
10:27We learned things about this spacecraft.
10:29We learned how it landed and how we could make it better. And so we're integrating all of those lessons
10:34learned into this spacecraft and our future spacecraft.
10:37I am three, four, five and six, which are all on schedule to extend the moon base capability.
10:47These lunar landers will soon deliver the science and technology that will turn the moon base into a reality. But
10:54there's even more ahead.
10:56The lunar South Pole is one of the harshest environments with extreme temperatures ranging from minus 334 degrees Fahrenheit to
11:05over 130 degrees.
11:07This huge swing means the power of communications and the landing systems we build must withstand both intense cold and
11:16strong heat.
11:17This is no small task. So NASA is teaming up with Northrop Grumman on three new technology demonstrations that will
11:24be delivered to the lunar surface beginning in phase one.
11:27The goal is to reuse key power, avionics and communication systems originally developed for the Gateway program's Halo module.
11:37These test missions will give new purpose to existing hardware to help build the infrastructure that Artemis crews and robotic
11:45explorers will depend on at the moon base.
11:48This is only the beginning. Continue to follow along as we bring you up close and share details about what's
11:54on the horizon as we build Humanities Moon Base together.
12:01Muchas gracias por ser parte de Iberoamérica en órbita. Este espacio de aprendizaje no sería posible sin la colaboración y
12:09plataformas de los socios de ATEI, en especial el ILSE y las agencias informativas AFP, EFE, Xinhua y la Dochevele.
12:17Para saber más sobre el espacio y otras historias, encuéntranos en la web como noticiasNCC.com y en las redes
12:25sociales nos encuentras como arrobaNCCIberoamérica, en X, Facebook, Instagram y Dailymotion.
12:32Yo soy Ana Cristina Olvera y nos vemos en el siguiente episodio Entre las Estrellas.
12:57Entre las Estrellas.
