NASA Revealed New Moon Image from Artemis II Orion! Big Data for Lunar Flyby...

So what tomorrow will look like is a roughly five-hour period where the crew will be observing the illuminated surface of the moon. In response to the question I got yesterday, the two Apollo sites they'll be able to see here at the beginning are the Apollo 12 and 14 landing sites. As they progress through the several-hour period where the moon is illuminated, they'll continue to work through that targeting plan. Again, each target is based on our lunar science objectives and they'll be able to see how the moon is changing throughout their time observing it. They, of course, will have a period that you can find the exact timing on NASA's websites, and we have it here as well, where there's a loss of signal after Earth disappears from view and before it reappears in Earthrise on the other side. They'll continue their science observations during that time. Then, of course, about an hour later, we have this really unique opportunity to observe an eclipse from the vantage point of Orion, where the sun disappears behind the moon from the vantage point of the Integrity crew. They'll be able to observe the solar corona but right around sunset and sunrise. They'll also be able to take pictures of several planets that will be visible in view. That includes Earth, of course, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Saturn. They'll also be able to look for potential Earthshine effects, which is literally the illuminated Earth shedding glow onto the near side of the moon. We've got a jam-packed plan for them tomorrow, and it ultimately all traces to our science objectives. They are Dr. Lori Glaze, who leads NASA's Artemis program, Rick Henfling, flight director for the mission, and Kelsey Young, Artemis II lunar science lead. We'll have some opening remarks from each of our participants, and then we'll go ahead and take questions both here and in the room and on the phone line. As a reminder to those who are joining by phone, you can press star one to enter the question queue. And with that, we'll start with Lori. Great. Thank you so much, Rachel, and thank you to everyone that's joining us today and for your continued interest in Artemis II. Our mission continues to go incredibly well. Our crew is healthy as we prepare and gear up to fly by the moon tomorrow. We're all extremely excited for tomorrow. We got a couple of great images that I want to share with you today, along with all of the great stuff that's available online. But we've got a few things I wanted to share this evening. We have a short video with some of what yesterday included. If we could pull up this video, it's got a lot of cool information in it. Can we see that? This is Artemis mission control. You're getting a live look inside the Orion spacecraft named Integrity by the Artemis II crew. This is a magnificent accomplishment to be up here to see the moon, to see the Earth, and to know that we are between those two celestial bodies. And you can see it when you look out the window. The Earth is almost in full eclipse. The moon is almost in full daylight. And the only way you could get that view is to be halfway between the two entities. It's just it is truly awe-inspiring up here. And Houston, we have some Earth and Moon viewers here who are putting in requests for different motions so that they can see things in the window. We're seeing them in the camera views, and we're enjoying it. Look at those scientists go. And Jackie, we got Jeremy on there just for a minute before his PAO event. He's just got to look at this. As soon as I put my hands on the 400, it's just, you know, I'm not one for hyperbole, but it's the only thing I could come up with. Just seeing Tycho, there's mountains to the north. You can see Copernicus, Rainier Gamma. It's just everything from the training, but in three dimension and absolutely unbelievable. This is incredible. Kathy Moonjoy. And Houston, I can tell you that Christina now has the 400 millimeter, and she also is the queen of hyperbole. It's incredible. Kathy, Christina doing her best read impression at the window. I love that. And I also really love how they talk about being able to see in three dimensions. It just helps remind us all that what we can do with our amazing human eyes is be able to see in stereo vision and get that depth perception. It's just wonderful to hear them talking through what their observations are. And I'm sure you'll hear from Kelsey about how well they've learned all their training being able to tell us exactly the features they're looking at. We also woke up the crew today with a short message from Apollo astronaut Charlie Duke cheering them on. And I think we get to listen to that here. Is that available? Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke. John Young and I landed in 1972 in the lunar module we named Orion. I'm glad to see a different kind of Orion helping return humans to the moon as America charts the course to the lunar surface. Below you on the moon, my family, I pray it reminds you that we in America and all of the world are cheering you on. Thanks to you and the whole team on the ground for building on our Apollo legacy with Artemis. Godspeed and safe travels home. Wonderful. And then I had one last image there I think I saw come up for just a moment. This was another picture of Earth from Orion's window. And it really gives you a sense of just how far away the crew is from Earth. This was taken earlier today by Christina. I just think it's beautiful. So we're really gearing up now for what's going to be an exciting lunar flyby tomorrow. Our flight operations team and our science team are ready for the first lunar flyby in more than 50 years. I know you guys have asked questions and we've heard them over and over again. Lots of questions about what's so special about the moon. And just wanted to say a couple words. The moon and the Earth are fundamentally made of the same material. In the way back, the former proto-Earth was hit by a Mars-sized object, a massive collision that left lots of debris out in space that then coalesced into what is now Earth and moon. So our whole Earth-moon system literally is made up of the same materials. And so although Earth has gone through lots of evolution with plate tectonics and weathering, the moon has been there as a witness plate to see everything that's happened over the four and a half billion years that we've been around. So very cool. So we're really excited to fly by and get to take these observations, particularly having humans on board really complements the robotic exploration that goes on from NASA. They're definitely not mutually exclusive. We're working together hand-in-hand to grow our knowledge of what we know about the Earth and moon system. There's a lot of science on this mission, not just the observations that you hear about from Kelsey, but our human health studies such as the Avatar experiment that's being carried on board. All of these human health experiments are informing how we can keep our crews healthy on the longer missions that are coming up in the future. This mission is also the first opportunity we have for our science and engineering teams to work together in real time while our crew is at the moon. And I think this is another key piece of the science that we're doing on this mission is not just the observations but learning how to work together between our flight operations and our science evaluation room and the crew. This is a really good example and a good test case to work through some of those things that we're going to need absolutely critically when we send our crew to the surface of the moon. It will also inform how we operate on the moon's surface during our future Artemis missions and a great example of how everything that we're learning on this mission is going to feed forward to our longer-term presence on the moon. So with that, I'm going to pass it over to Rick. Thank you, Lori. I wanted to open by wishing everyone a happy Easter and on behalf of the flight operations team, thanks again for your continued interest in our mission. Yesterday, the flight crew finished up their day with a manual piloting activity where they took the spacecraft into six degree of freedom, three degree of freedom, and then we purposely deselected a few thrusters to characterize the performance of the spacecraft with some thrusters disabled. We also performed a public affairs event with the Canadian Space Agency. We had a couple of routine medical conferences. The flight crew reviewed the science plan that our science team has put together for them and then we also performed a few activities to help characterize the carbon dioxide removal capability of Orion. When we did a few back-to-back exercise sessions, we wanted to understand just how capable the CO2 removal system was and the results have been very favorable to date. Today, the astronauts started their day with an opportunity to put their orange launch and entry suits back on. You can imagine that when you put your orange launch and entry suit on in 1G back in Florida, it's a lot different when you try to put it on in zero gravity and so we gave the crew a chance to practice that before they have to do it on entry day. And since the crew were wearing their orange suits, we also used this time today to practice a few contingency scenarios where they may, if they had to spend extended time in those orange suits, how would they practice drinking their protein shake or delivering medication and how would you set up the seats in Orion while you're wearing the bulky suits. These are things that they would need to do in a contingency and we wanted to be able to practice these before if we found ourselves in a scenario where we would need to do them. Once we finish the suited operations, we're going to turn our focus towards trajectory correction maneuvers. We're going to perform the outbound trajectory correction maneuver number three. This is actually going to be the first one that we actually do. We found that Orion was on such a pinpoint trajectory that we didn't need to do the first two correction maneuvers. The one today we're going to do later on is 9.9 feet per second. It'll take about 14 seconds and it's going to use the auxiliary thrusters on the Orion service module. We have a few other medical conferences later today. We're going to do a demonstration of in-flight maintenance where we remove one of the panels of Orion to demonstrate that if we needed to get back behind one of the Orion spacecraft panels, we could do so and maybe perform a maintenance activity if we needed to. And then while the crew's asleep, we're going to perform a demonstration on the ground using our optical comm system. We're going to increase the bandwidth to 100 megabits per second using our optical comm system and our ground station in White Sands, New Mexico. The most exciting portion of the overnight hours here on Earth is going to be when Orion enters the lunar sphere of influence at 1240 a.m. Eastern time. That is significant because that's when the moon's gravity has a stronger pull over the Orion spacecraft than Earth's gravity. And so that's a significant milestone on our mission. I also wanted to comment a little bit about my console activities. I worked the past three days as the lead of the planning shift on console and mission control, and I just wanted to highlight the exceptional job that those teams are doing a few hundred yards away here in mission control. The planning team is in charge of making sure all of the operational products are ready for the flight crew when they wake up in the morning. They're also in charge of executing some test objectives and activities to gather data on how Orion performs as it heads out to the moon. And I just wanted to highlight just what an exceptional job that team's been doing. And one of the highlights of working the planning shift, we saw the photo that Lori showed a few minutes ago. We gathered around the console when we downlinked that image, and the planning shift is the group of about 10 people who get to see that image for the first time. So before any of the public got to see those images that you saw on social media, my planning team work in the overnight hours while the crew's asleep. We were the first ones on planet Earth to see those images, so it's a pretty special time. I wanted to end my remarks with showing a video of some remarks from our pilot Victor Glover, which I thought were particularly poignant and were worth repeating. And so let's go ahead and play that video. In all of this emptiness, this is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe. You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together. I think as we go into Easter Sunday thinking about all the cultures all around the world, whether you celebrate it or not, whether you believe in God or not, this is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are, and that we are the same thing and that we got to get through this together. All right. And that is the conclusion of my remarks. I'll hand over to our lead science officer, Kelsey Young. Hard act to follow, both Rick and Victor. I will say, you know, I think the coffee moon joy is going to be like my new motto, coffee moon joy. Speaking of which, we are coming up on the flyby tomorrow. We're getting really, really excited to hear the crew observations. We've heard some observations, Lori highlighted them, from when the moon was much smaller out the window than it's going to be tomorrow. And even those observations had a lot of science value that's already got our lunar science team charting in the background. So really excited for several straight hours of those tomorrow. And I'll talk today about what that's going to look like. In the last 24 hours since I was last here, our lunar science team completed the lunar targeting plan, which is essentially the plan, the piece of software that the crew will follow during the several hour flyby. If you could actually bring up the screenshot of that lunar targeting plan. This is what's going to guide the crew's observations during the flyby. It is just a guide. They are the field scientists and they are encouraged to, you know, go off book if what they're seeing in front of them really compels them. We've even built in targets specifically for crew choice, where they can really image what pops out to them. And so what you see here is what the crew will be looking at for the entirety of the flyby tomorrow. You see on the left side, a list of sort of targets that listed vertically in the top left of the screen. Those are the targets in the timelined order we're asking them to image them in. And they're in a specific order because ultimately these targets trace back to our lunar science objectives. We have 10 lunar science objectives for this mission. All of them are covered in the targets in tomorrow's targeting plan. And they're in that order down the left side that you can see. The bottom left has the words that explain the significance of the target as well as the prompts of what we're asking the crew to image and describe. So we have distinct prompts for the person that will be using the camera that's outfitted with an 80 to 400 millimeter zoom lens. And then we also have prompts for the person that's going to be looking at the moon at the time with the unaided eye, just using their eyes to describe what they see. Along the bottom is a cue card as a reminder of what should go into their science descriptions. I would expect they're not going to need to reference the cue card that much because they've had many, many months to practice giving good descriptions. And then, of course, the middle, the moon, the picture of the moon, this is to help guide them into the specific target that they're going to be describing and imaging at the time. You see specific labels called out to help them provide geographic references for their descriptions. And you also see the previous target and the next target highlighted in different colors. So this is the piece of software that the crew will be looking at. And if you go to the next picture, Rick referenced yesterday that one of the activities that the crew did yesterday was to review that plan. And we just totally oohed and aahed in the science evaluation room when we saw them studying in Orion. So there is Victor Glover studying the lunar targeting plan on his tablet, his crew tablet. All four crew had time to study that yesterday. And they'll also have a little bit of time to review it tomorrow morning. Got some questions yesterday on how the crew trained. So I just wanted to show a couple images to highlight that. So the first image is actually when they got the flight light hardware, the two Nikon cameras that will form the basis of the bulk of their flyby tomorrow. And we actually put visualizations of the moon at the right distance away from them in a facility over in building 36 here at the Johnson Space Center. And actually had them practice giving descriptions and taking pictures. We actually did that several times with them. And if you go to the next chart, we also put them in and near the Orion mockup, the medium fidelity mockup we have here at the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility here at the Johnson Space Center. And actually had them get inside of Orion and actually look out the window at a giant inflatable moon globe we hung from the ceiling. So they could practice that physical choreography they needed to inside of Orion before their flyby. And so the last thing that I'll end with is actually showing a video that I showed yesterday. So if you could play that. This is tomorrow's flyby in 60 seconds. All right. We'll now take questions. We'll begin here in the room. We'll also take some from the phone. A reminder, you can press star one to get into the question queue. Please limit your question to one at a time. And let's wait for the mic to come around. We can start here with Jackie. Hi, Jackie Waddell, CNN. Question for Kelsey. I understand during the flyby they're going to be focused on that Oriental Basin. But we've also heard about the importance of these precursor missions to a landing about scouting possible landing locations. And I know that, you know, the overarching premise here is to establish a base on the South Pole. Can you talk a little bit about what the crew will be looking for in terms of gathering data for those long-term goals? Absolutely. So that is one of our science objectives actually is past and future landing sites. And so like I said, they'll be able to see in terms of past landing sites, Apollo 12 and 14. They'll also be able to kind of on their transit from near side to far side be able to see Reiner Gamma. That's a target in their lunar targeting plan. That's a really exciting sort of lunar science unknown. A big question that's actually driving Eclipse landed mission there where we're actually land scientific instruments on the surface to evaluate this really unique feature. And then moving to the far side, of course, we are going to have eyes on the South Polar region because of the illumination that they'll experience tomorrow. They'll only be able to see kind of the edge of the South Polar region in the South Pole-Aitken Basin, but it will be a target for them to observe what they can see along the Terminator. Okay, Tarek, go ahead. Thank you. Tarek Malik with space.com also for Dr. Young. You know, seven hours for a flyby seems like a long time and a lot of training has gone into this and I'm curious what the pace is going to be like both for the crew on the way in and for your team in the operations room and how you make sure that everyone is staying focused and yet kind of in it for the duration for, I guess, all of the different phases. Yeah, what a wonderful question. Thank you. So we actually did work on that kind of choreography and mental loading with the crew. And so we initially, you know, months ago started with targets at a cadence of only five or six minutes. That was pretty fast. And it didn't really allow them time to kind of like settle into the observation. You know, what we've already seen from their observations so far in flight is that the longer they look at the moon, the more their eyes adjust and the more they're able to discern. So we wanted to allow time per target for them to settle into that observation because ultimately that's going to deliver the most science. So the quickest time per target tomorrow will be roughly eight minutes and some of the targets which are kind of crew discussion focused are longer on the order of 20 minutes. They also, how the sort of flyby choreography will work is for that first five hour period they will work in pairs. So Reid and Jeremy will observe first while Victor and Christina are doing other tasks and also helping the pair at the forward windows and then just over an hour later they'll swap. And so in that way they kind of can keep fresh with what they're doing in the middle of each block. So when Reid and Jeremy are at windows two and three observing the moon, they'll actually swap who is doing the imaging and who is doing the unaided eye descriptions. So they're really able in this first big five hour chunk to really mix it up and work through the targets kind of one by one. I will say, you know, our science officer team did practice it as well for that number of hours, you know, with the representative target length. So we really got a sense for kind of what they're going to be experiencing. And then they do have kind of an hour break in the middle where the vehicle actually points back to their bias tail to sun attitude before pivoting back for the eclipse. So it's kind of like a little lunar science mental break. I also want to highlight something Lori said earlier, which is that, you know, we have lunar science objectives we want to tackle with this mission, but this is the first mission, right? And we really want to learn about, you know, the choreography of all this between the ground team supporting all the way up to the crew. And when we think about surface missions with EVAs, with science objectives, you know, we really do need to get used to this sort of mental loading and how we're able to support the crew and not, you know, overburden them while still maximizing science. So I'm really excited about kind of this length of time that is relevant for hopeful future exploration and what we're able to learn there. And then the last part of your question about the science team, thanks for asking. The lunar science team will be in the science evaluation room. I know that the live broadcast tomorrow will flash to them occasionally throughout the broadcast. You're going to see some very excited scientists. They're going to be absolutely buzzing up there. And what they're going to be doing is monitoring the crew, of course. The crew will be giving several descriptions an hour, roughly three to four lunar descriptions an hour, and the science team will get to work right away kind of synthesizing those. And then we'll actually downlink the rest of the descriptions overnight in advance of a crew conference we'll have the following morning to, again, continue the science discussion. And so the lunar science team is going to be both really excited and then also trying to keep track of the science through those, what we call, science erects. Okay, Gina. Sincerely, CBS News. We know the crew is shooting a film camera. When that film comes back, where is it processed and how soon, how will you be able to turn those images around? The crew-operated cameras, there'll be actually three of them for tomorrow's flyby, two Nikon D5s and one Nikon Z9. The two Nikon D5s will have the 80 to 400 millimeter zoom lens. That's going to be the prime imaging lens for the bulk of the flyby. There's also a 14 to 24 millimeter lens that we're going to be using during the eclipse time frame. And then the Z9 camera will be especially used around the time of sunset and sunrise for the corona. And actually what we will do is downlink as many images as possible overnight and throughout the rest of the mission, of course, as bandwidth and downlink potential allows. And of course, we'll be getting some out to the public as soon as we possibly can. But the rest that we don't downlink in flight, we'll get once they splash down and we'll have a team that brings the cameras and the flashcards back to Houston pretty quickly and gets them in the pipeline to release all of them out to the public. Go ahead. Thank you for your time today, Ed Lavandero with CNN. Two questions. Watching the crew today get into the spacesuits and reconfigure the seats, it seemed very difficult or it takes a long time. Is there ever a situation where is the speed at which they did that today pretty good? Is it something that needs to be done faster in the future? And then the second question is when the crew and the capsule is going around the moon and at least from to someone like me sees it, it's almost like they're hooking back quickly. Are they going to feel like they're turning back? Is that a sensation that they're going to have when they're inside the capsule? I'll take the first one and maybe Kelsey could take the second one. In terms of the suit donning that we did today, the speed is not particularly something we are concerned about because the Orion spacecraft has the capability to feed a cabin leak to buy the crew the time to put the suits on. It's not something where if we had a strike that punctured a hole in the cabin that the crew wouldn't have time to put the suits on. We have oxygen loaded on the spacecraft and that oxygen will be continually providing cabin pressure, maintaining eight psi in the cabin to allow the crew that opportunity to get their suits on safely. And I think we'll have to ask the crew tomorrow what they can and cannot feel, but I can tell you what they're going to see. And we had, you know, a lot of conversations when we started scoping the flyby about how fast are they going to be moving? Are they going to have time to see some of these smaller scale features during the flyby? And so we have an amazing visualization lead for the mission, Ernie Wright from the Goddard Space Flight Center, and he has done just amazing work to really try to reproduce as close as possible the illumination conditions they can expect at the speed that it will be moving. And it actually, from the perspective of the spacecraft, they will be moving slow enough to really be able to make robust observations. So it was quite a relief to our team and definitely to the crew when we started playing these visualizations. I don't know what they're going to feel, but I know what they're going to see and they're going to have time to make observations. Hi, Michael Atkinson, Houston Public Media. I want to ask about public engagement. I think that in the social media age, it's a lot harder to keep people's attention compared to the Apollo era when there was three TV channels. I'm curious what you guys have made of public engagement thus far and what a successful day tomorrow looks like. I understand it's going to be streaming on a lot of different outlets. What would a successful lunar flyby from the public engagement perspective look like? It's a really great question. I can assure you that we are tracking the metrics very closely every day, absolutely, and the public engagement has been spectacular. It has, I think, dropped a little bit since the launch day, but I do anticipate a big bump again tomorrow as we have this really key moment in time where we're flying around, we're breaking the Apollo record, we're going to have an eclipse, we're going to have all of these amazing observations. I really think we're going to get another big spike. I'm really looking forward to that, and then I anticipate another big spike when we splash down on Friday evening. I might add to that, too, that first of all, I might turn the question back around on all of you and say that our public engagement team has done such an amazing job to package messaging about this mission, and specifically the lunar science engagement team has been working for months and months and months to make sure that the public has access to the information about the moon, but please help us, you know, right? This is a unifying moment for all of us, and we really, you know, we've put our best foot forward into preparing this mission for success, and we know what it's going to mean to connect to the moon in that way tomorrow, and, you know, please, all of you in the room and online, please help us get the word out. Okay, go ahead. Hi, T.G. Mosquero with the Epoch Times. Thanks for taking the time, and happy Easter. Question for Rick and Lori. Without the landing or parking in orbit, what are you considering the official arrival point, like when you arrive at the moon? Is it when Orion enters lunar gravity? Is it when the flyby begins? Is it the closest point? Well, I'm looking at Rick here, but from my perspective, as Rick said earlier, when we enter that point where we cross over from being driven by Earth's gravity to being pulled by the moon more strongly than Earth, to me, that's where we'd start. I was going to give the same answer, so I agree. Which is closest approach. Okay, go ahead. Hi, Alejandro Turnbull for Space Scout. Question for Kelsey. Looking forward to future Artemis missions, how are you expecting the science plans to change from what we're going to see tomorrow? What opportunities are going to be afforded to you by having crew both on the surface and in orbit? Oh my gosh, great question. We're learning a lot about the flyby and orbital observations piece of Artemis missions from Artemis 2, and we're looking forward to learning more with Artemis 3, right? But looking to the future when we do have crew on the surface and crew in orbit, of course those sort of concurrent observations hold a lot of value. Different vantage points tell you something different scientifically, and having that sort of orbital view from Orion, from an orbiting spacecraft, around the time when the crew is on the surface does enable these really important contextual observations, especially that orbiting crew that's going to be farther away is really going to be able to say, you know, these geologic processes influence the landing area, and that's going to help us tell the story of the science of the mission, and ultimately could impact what type of samples we're asking future crews to collect. And for the payloads that we deploy on the surface, let's provide that landing site contextually in where they landed on the moon. A lot of science value to be gained both from surface science and from concurrent observations. Okay, let's take one from Ken, and then we'll go to the phone for a few. Hi, Ken Chang from New York Times. A couple questions for Kelsey following up. So you said they're going very quickly over the far side. Do you know what the maximum speed is relative to the surface? And just sort of following up on what you all will be doing down here, I remember a media tour last fall, you had this wonderful table that you'd be seeing, having interactive. Will you be giving feedback to the astronauts, or follow-up questions, or you don't want to interrupt them, what they're doing? Great question. Do you know the, I don't know. We'd have to check on that and get back to you. Yes, the science evaluation room is a really exciting room. We, you know, we worked with Mission Control to develop this unique flight control room for the mission, specifically with science in mind. It's not a traditional flight control room that has, you know, typically like rows of consoles where disciplines are plugged in with their teams. Scientists like to talk, and they like to talk over airwaves. So we've allowed for that in the science evaluation room. And what you're referencing here is a beautiful smart table where you can actually, and it's a touch table, right, where you can, you know, put up data of the moon and zoom around different areas of the moon to kind of follow along with what the crew are doing. But we will be engaging with them during the flyby, of course, during, with the exception of the time when there is that planned loss of signal. And we do plan to be following up on their observations. So again, these four people are absolutely ready to give scientifically valuable descriptions, but more brains can help, you know, hone in on nuances of the observations that they're making. And so we have allowed time for crew discussion where all four of them at the same time will be discussing some scientific question. For example, I believe the first one tomorrow is the nearside-farside transition and looking at color and albedo across that transition. They'll be discussing with each other and I've heard them in simulations, you know, one crew member will say something and the next crew member will say, oh, actually, I saw it this way. And they're actually able to really have elevated science discussions. But we do plan to have that interaction from the ground as well based on what that the science team in the science evaluation room is seeing and hearing from the crew. We'll be able to have a bit of a science dialogue. We have enough hours in the flyby where we'll be able to have a back and forth, which I'm really anticipating it's going to enhance science return because we have this amazing backroom of lunar scientists and geologists ready to help provide support. Back her up. I've been in there. It's so cool. You'll get to see it, I think, during the feed tomorrow.