What is the Artemis 1 Mission? | Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains...

[Music] chuck got another explainer here except i'm not i'm not going to be the one doing the explaining uh-oh i love it because it's stuff that there's a whole lot of stuff i don't know nothing about right and you know so that's that's not true i love the fact i mean i like it that you try to be humble there's not like a whole lot of stuff that you don't know nothing about which is why which is why i call you black google so so uh there's been high anticipation for the artemis one launch yes for nasa this is the return to the moon oh my gosh we have been there in 50 years oh my god but supposedly to make um preparations for us to be there in the future as well right well well let's find out yeah you gotta go there first to go before you go there a second time so uh we combed the nasa landscape and we found a system engineer at johnson space center in uh in houston texas this is you know this is the center it's the nexus of the crude flight present past present and future of nasa and we found nejued did i pronounce your name right now jude yes you did thank you neil excellent you got 20 years in system engineering at johnson space flight center and this is remarkable that means you've seen a lot of different things happen like the space station uh the planning stages and all of this so uh you're the right person for this for this explainer video so let's just get straight to it okay let's jump in let's do it what is artemis one so artemis is the whole enterprise of nasa's efforts to return to the moon with people again so for the first time in over 50 years so that includes the space launch system the orion spacecraft ground system support mission control all of those things and artemis one is our first uncrewed test flight of the rocket and the spaceship that will return humans to the moon in the future wow wow so first of all let me just pause on that 50-year gap because i think we last we our last toe touched the moon in 1972 if memory serves apollo 17 and that was 50 freaking years ago and i'm thinking what was around 50 years before that date it was 1922 and flying cloth airplanes then so let me just say i'm a little disappointed that we're all getting getting giddy over going back to where we were 50 years ago i just want to put that out there well you know we just wanted to be sure [Laughter] and remind me i forget all my greek mythology artemis is who artemis is the twin sister of apollo so apollo was you know the legacy we're building on um and we're so named artemis because this time when we return to the moon we go with the first women and people of color so a very diverse astronaut core and we get to be named after artemis well that's that's pretty cool okay so they thought this through very very very good so they said they say that that that they that part of this this is of course when you read in the the publications i don't know if people are being a little hyperbolic or they're just trying to gin up some kind of excitement but they're saying that this is the precursor to colonization of the moon so that we can get to mars is that is that kind of what you guys are doing or or is that just kind of a bunch of hype no it is kind of what we're doing right our goal so when apollo happened right nasa was spending five percent of the federal budget huge amount i like the way you said i think you said apollo happened like it just happened 100 billion dollars 10 000 engineers a scientist a dead president's promise effort did you guys see what happened this morning i don't know i don't know if you were around but did you see what happened this morning we landed on the moon it happened they shot a dude up into the sky and he landed on the moon apollo happened that's like engineers like like take their stuff for granted right listen to you i love it okay go on all right so but today we don't get five percent of the federal budget so the idea is that we are very sustainable all the bits and pieces needed to not just explore the moon but continue on to mars by the way the budget is one tenth that now correct yes it's half of one percent of the federal budget for all children one all of us all absolutely all of nasa mars rovers james webb everything oh my god okay let me just say that is disgusting i mean seriously that is really just completely and utterly like awful but go ahead all right well with that money we are able to do all these things to return to the moon and a lot of what we do on the moon are the same types of things we need to be able to build and demonstrate to go to mars so very much artemis is looking to also expand into the future the mars exploration so now what do you say to the people who kind of think that this is um an american move to kind of claim the moon because china and russia are making noises like yo if we get there we're taking it it's going to be ours like the moon is out the moon belongs right hi i'm by the way i'm xi jinping i am the head of china and the moon by the way chuck yeah uh the russians were the first to fly to the far side of the moon and if you look at the names of a lot of the features there it's all russian all right they were the first to lay eyes upon it photograph it they got to name it so yeah there's some of this first come first serve thing so um are you is the engineer class among you in this project are you sort of um folded into the politics of it as well or not so i mean generally speaking we stay clear of the politics we like to just build cool things right excellent and for artemis one right the artemis accords is nasa's initiative to do this internationally um i think there's 13 or 14 countries that have already signed the accords and for example on artemis one the service module on the orion spacecraft is built and provided by the european space agency so artemis is an international endeavor and when we build the gateway uh the japanese space agency the canadians and europeans have already contributed to the gateway that is starting to build elements out for the orbiting habitat in the future so nasa's leading an international coalition and the engineers just get to work with all the more cool people jude i i'm i i think what you said is quite impressive however i did not hear uh the country china mentioned at all did you just say she builds stuff okay it's the politicians we elect someone else exactly all right so so we've been to the moon before but this is sort of new architecture as we say new new um design what are the highest risks of this mission like what could go wrong oh uh well in space flight a lot could go wrong at any time right it's the whole rocket is just a giant fuel tank with engines on the back right it's enormous so obviously there's always things that can go wrong with the rocket but that's why orion especially for crew in the future has a launch abort system on it so we will have full abort capability throughout all of the ascent profile when we get into space of course anything that goes wrong on orion the systems could have problems you know you know solar array issues things like that so we have lots of aborts and contingencies to return orion home sooner if anything happens um that's nasa right we plan for all the contingencies and have uh plans bailouts scenarios all have been run to assume what we can do to recover the vehicle and the biggest safety measure you have on this mission is that there are no people on it right and this is something we can do because of modern software and technology and communications that apollo couldn't right and remote robotics and everything right we can fly a massively complex first mission 42 days critical burns on the far side of the moon without ground control communication all without crew and test the vehicle so obviously our first step in safety is not putting the crew on the first one to verify that everything works wow so when you talk about this being so much more complex but then you have all of this kind of like um computer help do you increase points of failure with all of this complexity or does the kind of i'm sure you're using ai and that kind of stuff does that mitigate it i'll check chuck when i first heard the space shuttle get described as it's the most complex space thing ever launched and i say that can't be good exactly that's what that is you don't want to brag about that right so as an engineer as an engineer what is your balance between the complexity to get stuff done and the simplicity to make sure nothing breaks there's got to be some intersection of those curves where you say that's where i want to put it there's certainly a bathtub curve where you find the right place right you know the more redundancy you put on is really the more opportunity something can fail so generally speaking you try to make things as simple as you can and then provide just enough redundancy so there's a lot of probability analysis risk analysis that goes into it to make sure we're doing what we need to and not more than that awesome so i've always wondered and okay just because this is my sci-fi mind thinking here so like the human brain has a certain plasticity to it that if one part of it is not working another part can kind of compensate do you guys oh wait chuck just because your brain is made of plastic don't assume anybody else let's take that back my brain is made of melted plastic [Laughter] let's be real right but do you do you guys like overlap instead of just fail safe do you have systems that overlap that can compensate so especially in what we do mission planning um that's where we get as much out of it as we can where we share capabilities between vehicles so when we go to the moon orion will dock with the human landing system to take the crew down to the surface so in a lot of times we'll actually look to share redundancy and capability across vehicles so that way if something is happening on one vehicle we can use the other vehicle as a lifeboat for example so mission planning can do that at a bigger scale where we make sure between the gateway the lander and orion we can plan the most contingency and fault tolerance between them not just all on one vehicle okay i got to just reestablish the vocabulary here yeah we've all seen these terms space launch system orion artemis what what is what is the superset and what is the subset of those set of words yeah so artemis is the superset that's the whole program and all of the constituent parts like apollo program like right apologies got it got it okay holo had the saturn v rocket and the apollo spacecraft right together that was apollo in our case artemis is the umbrella and underneath it for especially this first mission we have the space launch system which is the big orange rocket and the orion spacecraft whose job it is to take in the future crew from the earth to the moon and return them back in the atmosphere and land in the safely to the before the decade is out yes okay uh how many uh how many people will it take it will take four crew um and orion on its own could fly for up to 21 days with those four crew with all the food and water and systems they need cool and have you ever thought about strapping a tesla to the front of it i'm not sure that has a big benefit in our mission but she'll take that into under advisement chuck on the next one on the next message so happen to be on the moon we might use it as a rover there you go so uh will anything land or are you gonna go there orbit and then come back for artemis one uh we're going into a distant retrograde orbit so a very big orbit around the moon it retrograde means the opposite direction of the moon's rotation so that's the orbit we're using as the test flight so no landing on this mission um while we're doing this the systems are being built so that we can land crew hopefully by artemis iii so arteries two is now being conceived but also with no crew artemis ii will be our first crewed flight for sls and orion so it's a demonstration of all the crude systems and life support we have a very different mission profile for that though just to be just to be clear chuck when she says crude she doesn't mean c-r-u-d-e right okay these are these aren't crude uh so we they they they basically degenerize the the vocabulary from manned missions to crude missions you know i kind of like the uh the first version better like which which one the crew just like guys oh crude what are we high school students here well i'm sure there's plenty of potty jokes with the waste management system exactly it was if yeah because if that's up for 20 how many days they're drinking their own urine they're drinking their own urine and sweat aren't they orion is not closed loop um so it's open loop so it's dumping the urine and the humidity overboard when we get to longer duration systems like the gateway which will be an orbiting outpost they'll have closed closed-loop life support and recycle uh water in here wait wait you're telling me they're pee icicles floating in earth moon orbit that's what you just told me uh sure shuttles are the same thing right let me just send that is awesome okay that is that is the best thing i've ever heard about any space mission is that they drop frozen poop and pee that is now in leaving your mark on the universe right there yeah and it'll never go away i mean achieve some stable orbit you'll just be there like forever yeah and it's yeah right right okay and so uh is there any is this mostly an engineering test or is there any science that gets to piggyback this uh it's mostly an engineering test but inside orion are some science payloads in particular radiation payloads to measure the radiation especially for future crude missions right um and a few other payloads there's also uh electricity this would be solar radiation just to be clear yes there's also 11 cubesats being deployed from space launch system which are doing a variety of scientific studies um that can go out to the moon or heliocentric as long as you're going into orbit pack the trunk that's what that sounds like that means you had excess payload you had excess payload capacity that's what that sounds like to me uh yeah so the space launch system we had quite a few launch opportunities with it um it's got room for that mass capability um how many payloads are in the future we actually that's one of the things we look at for between launch opportunities versus mass versus objectives so we look at all of that across all the missions how much of this is reusable so the orion capsule is the only part that will land safely in the water it is a lot of it is reusable the avionics all the interior systems and i think after refurbishment um potentially some of the exterior systems and capsule as well but the rockets are one way the rockets are fully extended we get maximum performance out of them and what kind of what kind of fuel do you use uh hydrogen and oxygen hydrogen oxygen yeah and when it comes together chuck you get water yeah [Laughter] drink your exhaust but wait till it cools down first so um a point you slipped in there uh but i just want to make it clear if you schedule a rocket part to return it means it had fuel as part of the total weight of the system in order to burn that fuel to execute a return trip so you've subtracted from your total payload capacity by building in that ability isn't that correct that is correct so if you plan a rocket and you want to put the biggest payload on it you need to burn all the fuel getting that sped up to get into orbit if you want to recover your stage you can only put smaller payloads on it because you need to save the fuel just as you described to return and land safely and time for just a couple more questions here why are you going into retrograde orbit uh it's just the easiest orbit it lined up well for all these objectives and it is a very stable orbit so if orion did nothing it would never leave that orbit so it makes a great test orbit for this mission okay cool all right using the earth and the moon gravity to maintain that orbit so it's like a lagrange point that it just sits there and is highly stable look at that nice nice that's kind of cool we spent we did some lagrange talks yeah we had a few times that was a great uh explorer yeah yeah we love me some lag points of lagrange so so it's anything you want to add any tidbits that that maybe the press doesn't get or that we because we have a highly space literate audience here so you could get into some nuance if you needed to i just think um maybe one of the things to discuss for artemis one um we have a lot of variability that we were able to plan into it so the launch days we're planning for are 42 days missions so launch to landing and we do all of that so we can line up our landing for a sunlit pacific ocean so that's so we can collect all the test data with the cameras and the high speed entry for the entry the parachutes all those things so we used a lot of mission planning to shape the mission to get the objectives needed now you could wait eight hours and then land in the atlantic ocean couldn't you not really because uh when you come back from the moon with the aerodynamic breaking you will land at the point underneath the sun we need to line it up so if you wait eight hours then it's really just the atlantic is in the same spot so you can't play that game when you're coming back from the moon because then the the atlantic would be in the same spot but the sun wouldn't be aligned for you right in the in the way you need it gotcha gotcha interesting so is it going to be another one of these things where there's like an aircraft carrier and and and a navy helicopter goes out and uh you know and i'll feel like it's 60 years ago uh similar so the navy is doing our primary recovery they're using a well-deck ship though that's a well-decked ship so it's actually got a big opening in it and a door that comes down and they can lower the back of the ship and actually tow orion right into the ship and then they close the gate pump the water out and lift it up out of the water so it's uh they don't have to lift orion with a helicopter they literally float it into the ship oh that's a nice advancement okay okay all right we're good all right well this this sounds this is great and one last question are we pretty sure that the moon doesn't have any uh any andromeda strain type bugs that could influence us so that when we send astronauts there next are they going to have to go through quarantine the way the original astronauts did from apollo so i think based on all of the apollo data um they there's the planetary protection requirements change there's no known biological hazards so i don't think they'll have to do nearly as much quarantining as the apollo astronauts did when we go to mars those requirements are still there because we'd have unknown uh biological conditions on mars so they would be very different requirements between the moon and mars right now unknown unknowns yeah yeah and chuck you get that she works for nasa so she gets to say when we go to mars you hear that i heard you thought that you caught that see when we go to mars apollo happened and when we go to mars that's how they speak over and out now jude this has been a delight uh thank you for plugging us in to this uh historic return to the moon it's long overdue of course and i'd like to know that you're in arms reach of us uh maybe to catch up on any new developments uh either during the mission or after the mission or or as we approach artemis two and three certainly i'm always around and i don't have to work operations so i'm available during the mission you're done okay oh wow we did our job they got to go fly our mission you tightened that last nut on the on the on the bolt and you're you're good okay so now okay i'm i'm i hate to ask this but i got to so your part is done if something goes wrong is this is this one of these things where it's easily identified or is it like when you put in a window in your home and it's like yeah that's a manufacturing problem and yeah and the window company's like nah that's an installation problem well i guarantee looking at post flight data there will be some of those arguments okay how do you solve problems this is a flight test you do it to learn okay that that's that's cool so problems are i guess problems are welcome because if this is the time to have them i would rather we find all the problems and shake it out right now before we put the crew on chuck chuck as they say and i don't know if you'd admit to this but as they say as the rocket engineers say if the rocket blows up on the launch pad he said oh that's a tragedy they said no that was an event high in data rich environment oh my god a data rich environment let's talk about gallows humor that's i love it though it's a data risk but you'd want sensors all around so that you actually can obtain the temperature pressures you know all the rest of the normal things you'd get yeah and the rocket and spacecraft are carrying tons of extra data sensors and recording units that they wouldn't carry in the future for that purpose and just to be clear because we have like 30 seconds left um for people who are thinking about this kind of career isn't it true um i know in the sciences you're expected to go for a phd to be a sort of participating member of the scientific community but the engineering community you could be hired right out of college with an engineering degree and maybe you get a master's too okay yeah so so and the phd engineers aren't typically the ones who are getting their hands dirty they return and become like professors right and teach the next generation so uh in engineering the masters or the undergraduate degree can be considered terminal degrees for that profession vast majority of the folks i work with myself included started out of their undergrad engineering degrees that's that's what you do and most of what you do after that is learn on the job i did get a master's but that's like more of the minority share but you're right phd engineers are mostly research and professors they're not there are phd engineers here but that's not like a requirement by any means yeah it's not the thing right wow right that's uh that's pretty exciting yeah yeah it is it means you can get in right up off the bat right off the bat because the delay there's a leaky pipeline in the sciences right where you you get your undergraduate degree and they got your master's in the phd that's six years you know you're not really a whole citizen yet of the practicing community until you're done with that and then a postdoc and by by time that happens if you're 10 years older than you would have otherwise been in a job had you gotten an engineering degree so wow yeah just want to put that out there for those who are thinking about this so we guys we got to end it there but it's been a delight to have you nejued and we look forward to having you back for future developments in the artemis program uh chuck always good to have you man oh it's a pleasure all right this is neil degrasse tyson your personal astrophysicist as always bidding you to keep looking up as nasa [Music] you

Channel: StarTalk

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Keywords: startalk, star talk, startalk radio, neil degrasse tyson, neil tyson, science, space, astrophysics, astronomy, podcast, space podcast, science podcast, astronomy podcast, niel degrasse tyson, physics, Artemis 1, Artemis, Artemis 1 mission, NASA, rocket launch, rocket, launching, spaceship

Id: NUa90WLhpQg

Length: 25min 51sec (1551 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 01 2022