00:00Hace seis décadas, Robert Heinlein imaginó en The Moon is a Harsh Mistress o La Luna es una amante dura,
00:10una sociedad humana establecida en la luna.
00:12Medio siglo después, Andy Weir llevó la idea un paso más allá en Artemis, con una auténtica ciudad lunar.
00:21Durante años, vivir en nuestro satélite fue territorio exclusivo de la ciencia ficción,
00:26pero los nuevos planes de la NASA buscan acercar esa fantasía a la realidad,
00:30con infraestructura que permita a los seres humanos permanecer y trabajar en la luna durante periodos cada vez más largos.
00:56Las ideas de las ideas se convierte en hardware, las planes se convierte en missions, el futuro se convierte en
01:03ahora.
01:04Estar a poder ver los elementos de la línea de la luna es increíble.
01:09Estamos llevando a la escena de la escena para mostrarles cómo.
01:14La gente está mirando de nuevo, creciendo en grandes cosas de nuevo.
01:18America está volviendo a la luna para construir una base de la luna.
01:22Vamos a tener que lograr el imposible.
01:33NASA is building a moon base, a place where astronauts will live, work, and conduct science on and around the
01:40moon.
01:40Now, building a moon base won't happen all at once.
01:43It will take more than 20 lunar landings during the first phase,
01:47with each mission delivering the equipment, technology, and science needed to build, learn, and improve.
01:55We're traveling across the country to meet the companies building lunar landers for upcoming flights
02:00and see how they're preparing for their next missions to the moon.
02:06Just north of Austin, Texas, Firefly Aerospace is preparing for its second mission to the moon.
02:12NASA's Carlos Garcia Galán is taking us inside its headquarters,
02:16where engineers are preparing the lunar lander for its upcoming mission.
02:21Love to see the hardware ready for moon base mission, Blue Ghost 2.
02:25So tell us a little bit about what we're looking at.
02:27Yeah, so what we're looking at right here is, like you mentioned, our Blue Ghost Mission 2 lunar lander.
02:32The lander's now stacked. It's starting to really look like a lander,
02:34and we're getting ready to install our electronics and all our payloads.
02:38Blue Ghost Mission 2, the lander, is going to the far side of the moon,
02:41and that is really driven by one of the payloads that will sit on the top deck of the lander.
02:45It's called Lucy Knight, so that's a radio astronomy telescope.
02:48So they want to sit on the far side of the moon, away from all the noise from Earth,
02:51so the moon's kind of blocking all of that, and they're looking back at the cosmic dark ages.
02:56So that's a very amazing payload, yeah.
02:59We will also have another payload that we will have put into orbit.
03:03So it'll be in an orbit around the moon, so that's Lunar Pathfinder.
03:06We have a rover on board.
03:08Super exciting.
03:09Yeah, so that'll be our first mobility payload that we have.
03:12So all of those are coming along with us.
03:14They're each going to gather science, technology, data, and it can all be used on future missions.
03:19A lot of the people that worked on Mission 1 are still here working on Mission 2,
03:22so we have all that knowledge still in-house.
03:25And then you're implementing all the lessons learned because we have all that great data from Blue Ghost Mission 1.
03:29So it does feel easier, so it feels like the wheel is starting to really turn a lot faster,
03:33and then we've got these other moon-based awards.
03:35So it's really about, can you make it repeatable? Can you produce it?
03:38Yeah, can you be successful several times?
03:39Is the excitement building up?
03:41Oh, yeah.
03:41I mean, you're getting pretty close.
03:42Yeah, I think any time that you have something in the clean room where it's like you look at it
03:47and you know, like, that's my lander, that's going to the moon, it's also humbling.
03:50It's like, hey, we did it one time, but now we need to do it two, three, four.
03:53We need to keep doing it and keep upping the bar and getting better each time.
04:01Over on the West Coast, NASA's Ryan Steffen is at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California
04:08where Voyager Lunar Systems' Griffin-1 lander has arrived for environmental testing.
04:13This larger lander is an infrastructure-class lander.
04:16It's not just meant for scientific payloads and instrumentation,
04:20but also it's made to basically take equipment and infrastructure-level capability
04:26and deliver that to lunar surface.
04:28It's also landing in the South Pole where the terrain is a little bit harsher.
04:33It's a little bit more dangerous to land.
04:35It requires precision navigation, guidance, and control to land in safe locations.
04:41This lander will be taking a total of 10 payloads,
04:44the largest of which, the Casher Lab Flip Rover,
04:47is the largest commercial payload to ever be delivered to the lunar South Pole.
04:52So we're thousands of miles away from where you guys assembled the spacecraft.
04:55Why did you decide to bring this out to Southern California?
04:58Jet Propulsion Laboratory has some of the best,
05:01most capable environmental testing facilities in the world,
05:04and for a lunar lander this size,
05:06really what we want to do is test the spacecraft, put it through its paces.
05:10Right now, Griffin is fixtured on top of the mass properties fixture,
05:14which is the black thing you see in front of it.
05:16Basically, we are testing to measure the mass of the vehicle, the total mass,
05:22the center of gravity, the movement of inertia,
05:24so that we know the exact configuration of the flight vehicle.
05:28When we get back, we will finish reviewing a lot of the test data that we've done here,
05:32correlating to our models and our pre-test predictions,
05:35modifying those based on the feedback that we've got during this testing,
05:38and potentially addressing any findings on the ground here
05:41while we have the chance before we launch later this year.
05:43It will be exciting.
05:47On the East Coast, NASA's Courtney Abeglin is at Blue Origin's testing facility
05:52in Cape Canaveral, Florida, to see the latest on the Blue Moon Mark I lander.
05:57Mark I serial number one is designed to prove out the core technologies for Blue Origin
06:03that we will eventually apply to the human landing missions of Artemis.
06:06So it's our liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen systems.
06:09It's our precision landing capabilities.
06:12It's also our ability to offload large amounts of cargo.
06:15I see a lot of people working on this lander.
06:17Can you tell us what is left of this lander in order to make it fly?
06:21We just completed our thermal vacuum testing at Johnson Space Center
06:25in January and February of this year.
06:27We then brought the vehicle back.
06:29We did a number of tests.
06:30We first tested our RF compatibility with the TDRS satellite system,
06:34as well as a deep space network.
06:36We also have tested how our vehicle reacts during stage separation from the New Glenn vehicle.
06:43We've tested the acoustic environment,
06:45and soon we'll be testing our cryogenic propellant system.
06:48We've just completed our fit checks of our BE7 main engine,
06:52the actual engine that will fly to the moon.
06:54That went perfectly.
06:55And so we're now closing up these tests, and we'll be ready for New Glenn.
06:59As you know, we had the mishap at the pad with New Glenn.
07:03The team there is making phenomenal progress.
07:05We are working to have serial number one ready and stored in a quiescent state
07:10for when New Glenn is ready.
07:12We expect that launch to occur in Q1 of 2027.
07:16And once that's complete, we'll now continue on to serial numbers two, three, and four.
07:19We're also carrying NASA payloads, the SCALPS payload,
07:22which will allow us to visualize what the exhaust from our BE7 engine is doing to the surface of the
07:29moon,
07:30so that that will feed forward to heavier landers in the future.
07:33We also carry a retro reflector from NASA on this mission.
07:36NASA's been a phenomenal partner to us.
07:38They've been working hand-in-hand with us,
07:40and that's what's going to allow these four serial numbers to come off the assembly line as quickly as they
07:45are.
07:48In Houston, NASA's Adam Schlesinger is at Intuitive Machines headquarters
07:53getting an up-close look at how the Nova-Sea lander is being prepared for its third mission to the
07:58moon.
07:59So this spacecraft is our Nova-Sea.
08:01This is our IM-3 vehicle.
08:03As you can see, up on the top is the methane tank.
08:06The oxygen tank is below.
08:07The engine actually sits right here underneath.
08:10This is the engine deck.
08:11You can see that we've just put the top deck onto this spacecraft,
08:13so we're excited.
08:14Within the next month, we're going to be putting the engine in
08:17and we'll be taking it outside for a hot-fire test
08:19to confirm that the engine is ready to go for launch.
08:22Right, and after that test, what's the path look like to get to launch?
08:25We bring it back inside here.
08:27The payloads sit on panels that go on the outside of this spacecraft,
08:31so we bring those panels in.
08:32We do integrated testing, and then we do some vibration testing.
08:36We send it down to the Cape, and we get ready for launch.
08:40This vehicle will have five NASA payloads looking at the magnetic anomaly
08:43that's at Reiner Gamma on the near side of the moon.
08:46So it's a super exciting science mission.
08:48We're also doing other science.
08:50So we have six commercial payloads,
08:53and we have a payload from the Italian Space Agency,
08:57and we have the five NASA payloads doing lots of different types of science.
09:00And this is the third IM eclipse delivery.
09:03Can you talk about some of the lessons learned from the previous two
09:05and how that's being applied to this one?
09:07Yeah, absolutely.
09:07So on IM1, which was in 2024, and IM2, which was in 2025, we learned lessons.
09:12We learned things about this spacecraft.
09:14We learned how it landed and how we could make it better.
09:17And so we're integrating all of those lessons learned into this spacecraft
09:20and our future spacecraft, IM3, 4, 5, and 6,
09:24which are all on schedule to extend the moon base capability.
09:32These lunar landers will soon deliver the science and technology
09:36that will turn the moon base into a reality.
09:39But there's even more ahead.
09:41The lunar South Pole is one of the harshest environments,
09:45with extreme temperatures ranging from minus 334 degrees Fahrenheit
09:49to over 130 degrees.
09:52This huge swing means the power, communications, and landing systems we build
09:57must withstand both intense cold and strong heat.
10:02This is no small task.
10:03So NASA is teaming up with Northrop Grumman on three new technology demonstrations
10:08that will be delivered to the lunar surface beginning in phase one.
10:13The goal is to reuse key power, avionics, and communication systems
10:18originally developed for the Gateway Program's Halo module.
10:22These test missions will give new purpose to existing hardware
10:26to help build the infrastructure that Artemis crews and robotic explorers
10:31will depend on at the moon base.
10:33This is only the beginning.
10:35Continue to follow along as we bring you up close
10:38and share details about what's on the horizon
10:40as we build humanity's moon base together.
