Latest / Boring Science / Science to Fall Asleep To _ Absolutely Everything We Know About the Moon

Transcript

Science to Fall Asleep To _ Absolutely Everything We Know About the Moon · Boring Science

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Boring Science to Sleep, a quiet
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: place where science becomes slow, soft, and easy to drift through. Tonight,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: you're going to gently explore the moon, not to learn
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: everything at once, and not to remember every detail, but
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: simply to notice how humanity slowly learned to reach another world,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: one small step at a time. We'll begin long before
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: the first footprints on the lunar surface. with the early
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: spacecraft that taught people how to leave Earth, how to
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: move through darkness, and how to return safely home. And
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: from there, very slowly, we'll follow the path toward Apollo,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: precision landings, Japan's little moon sniper, the difficult lunar night,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: the mysterious shadows of the lunar south pole, Artemis, and
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: the possibility that one day the moon may become a
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: quiet stepping stone toward Mars. But before we begin, if
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: you truly enjoy these calm journeys through interesting facts about science,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: you're welcome to like this video and subscribe, only if
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: it feels right for you. And when you're ready, let
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: me know in the comments where you're listening from and
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: what time it is right now. It's always a quiet
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: joy to see how many places and moments gather here together. Now,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: dim the lights, maybe let a fan hum softly in
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: the background. settle into whatever position feels comfortable, and remember
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: that there is nothing you need to do. You are safe.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: There is nowhere you need to go. Just listen, breathe slowly,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: and let yourself drift toward the moon. Before you can
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: imagine yourself standing on the moon, it helps to imagine
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: something much smaller. A little spacecraft, resting on top of
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: a tall rocket, waiting quietly beneath the sky. Inside that
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: small spacecraft, there is a human being, Above them is darkness.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Below them is the familiar Earth. And between the two
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: is a question that had never truly been answered before.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Could a human being leave the surface of the Earth,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: travel into space, and come home again? You can let
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: yourself stay with that question for a moment. There is
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: no need to hurry. Because before humanity could cross the
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: great distance to the moon, it first had to learn
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: how to survive the much smaller distance above our own planet.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: In the late 1950s, NASA was still very young. The
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: organisation had been created in response to the growing space race,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: after the Soviet Union had launched Sputnik, the first artificial
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: satellite to orbit Earth. The first great American human spaceflight
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: effort was called Project Mercury. Its goal was simple to say,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: even if it was extraordinarily difficult to accomplish. Put a
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: person into orbit around Earth. and bring that person safely home.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: The spacecraft itself was small, almost like a tiny metal
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: room wrapped around a single human being. The rocket beneath
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: it was not created from nothing. Some of the rockets
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: came from technology originally developed for military purposes, and engineers
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: had to transform powerful machines designed for one purpose into
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: vehicles capable of carrying people. And when you imagine sitting
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: inside one of those early spacecraft, you can begin to
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: understand how strange the experience must have been. The rocket
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: would begin to shake. The sound would become enormous. The
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: body would feel the acceleration. The Earth would begin to
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: fall away. And then, gradually, there would be a moment
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: when the familiar feeling of weight began to disappear. You
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: would be floating. The engineers had to learn about many
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: things at once. They had to understand the powerful forces
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: during launch, the vibrations of the rocket, the ability of
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: a spacecraft to remain controlled in orbit, and perhaps most importantly,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: the difficult journey home. Because returning to Earth is not
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: simply falling downward. A spacecraft coming home from space meets
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere at tremendous speed, and the air around it
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: becomes intensely hot. The heat shield must protect the small
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: cabin and the person inside. Then, after the difficult part
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: has passed, parachutes must open, slowing the spacecraft until it
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: can descend gently toward the ocean. Even this seemingly simple
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: journey had to be tested again and again. Some early
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: tests failed. One Mercury test vehicle barely rose from the
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: ground before dropping back onto the launch area. Other tests
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: involved animals, allowing engineers to learn more about how living
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: bodies might respond to the strange environment of space before
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: asking a human being to make the journey. The process
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: was slow, and that slowness mattered, because every small test
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: was another piece of knowledge. Every vibration, every failure, every
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: successful recovery, every moment spent in orbit, all of it
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: became part of the growing understanding of how humans might
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: someday travel much farther. In April of 1961, Yuri Gagarin
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: became the first human to orbit Earth. Only a month later,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Alan Shepard became the first American to travel into space,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: although his first flight was a short journey above the
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: atmosphere rather than a complete orbit. Mercury eventually completed six
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: crewed missions successfully, but even before those missions had finished,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: another destination was already waiting in the imagination of NASA.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: The moon. And the moon presented a much larger problem.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Mercury had shown that a person could spend time in space,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: but a lunar journey would require much more. The spacecraft
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: would need to travel much farther, the crew would need
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: to remain away from Earth for longer, and, eventually, two
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: spacecraft would need to meet each other in orbit. That
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: last task may sound simple when you say it quietly.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Meet another spacecraft. But imagine trying to do it while
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: both vehicles are moving around the Earth, at several kilometres
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: every second, with no road, no runway, and no solid
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: ground beneath you. Humanity had not yet learned how to
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: do that, so another programme appeared, Gemini. The Gemini spacecraft
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: could carry two people, and it gave astronauts something Mercury
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: had not provided in the same way. More time, more control.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: more freedom to move. The spacecraft could change its orbit
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: and orientation, allowing astronauts to practice the careful movements that
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: would eventually be needed around the moon. Some Gemini crews
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: remained in space for a week. Later missions extended that
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: time to about two weeks, longer than the planned journey
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: to the moon would require. Slowly, the astronauts were learning
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: how to live in space rather than simply visit it.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: They practiced meeting another spacecraft, They practised docking. They practised
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: working outside their spacecraft, stepping into the darkness while connected
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: to their small metal home by a tether. And then
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: there was Gemini 8. Neil Armstrong and David Scott successfully
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: met and docked with another uncrewed vehicle. For a little while,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: everything seemed to be going as planned. Then the spacecraft
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: began to turn. At first it was a rotation, then
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: it became faster. The two astronauts had to understand what
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: was happening while the spacecraft continued to spin, while fuel
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: was being consumed, and while the ability to control their
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: orientation was becoming more important with every passing moment. Armstrong
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: used the spacecraft's control system to counter the rotation. The
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: tumbling gradually stopped. The spacecraft became controllable again, and what
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: had looked like a frightening problem became another lesson in
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: the long process of learning how to survive beyond Earth.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Gemini also taught astronauts how to work outside their spacecraft.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Buzz Aldrin performed a long spacewalk, moving slowly through the darkness,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: using handholds and carefully planned movements. It was not only
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: a demonstration of human endurance, it also taught engineers something
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: wonderfully practical. People needed places to hold on. Small details mattered.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: a handhold here, a restraint there, a little more room,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: a little more time. The future moon missions would depend
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: on thousands of such small discoveries, and that is perhaps
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: the quietest way to understand Mercury and Gemini. They were
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: not the moon missions. They were the lessons that made
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: the moon missions possible. Mercury taught humanity how to leave
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: the ground and return. Gemini taught humanity how to move, work, remain,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: and recover in space. The distance to the moon had
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: not become smaller, but humanity had become a little more
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: capable of crossing it. And somewhere beyond the blue curve
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: of earth, beneath the gentle light of the distant sun,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: the moon was still waiting, not rushing closer, not calling out,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: simply circling quietly, as it had for ages. while the
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: first small machines and the first small groups of people
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: slowly learned how to follow. And when you imagine that
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: quiet distance now, you can almost feel the next question
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: beginning to form, very softly, somewhere beyond the edge of
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: the earth. If humanity could learn to live in space,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: perhaps it could learn to travel to another world. There
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: was still a quiet distance between humanity and the moon.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: You could look up at it on any clear night,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: see its pale surface hanging above the rooftops and trees,
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: and know that it was close enough to appear familiar,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: yet impossibly far away. Mercury had shown that a human
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: could leave Earth. Gemini had shown that people could remain
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: in space. move their spacecraft, meet another vehicle, and work
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: outside their small cabin. But none of that meant that
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: a person could travel to another world. The moon was different.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: To reach it, you would have to leave the comfortable
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: neighbourhood of Earth, cross a great stretch of darkness, enter
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: the moon's gravitational pull, descend toward its surface, and somehow
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: find your way home again. And every part of that
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: journey had to fit together. You could not simply build
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: a larger rocket and point it toward the moon. There
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: were too many things to carry. Fuel, engines, a spacecraft
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: for the astronauts, equipment for landing, equipment for returning, and
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: enough fuel to move all of those things away from Earth,
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: toward the moon, and eventually back again. The more you carried,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: the more fuel you needed. And the more fuel you needed,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: the more mass you had to lift. it became a
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: quiet circle of weight. So NASA engineers began considering different
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: ways of making the journey lighter. One idea was simple
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: in principle. Build one enormous spacecraft, send everything directly to
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: the moon, land, and then return. It was wonderfully straightforward,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: but straightforward did not mean easy. A vehicle carrying everything
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: needed for the entire journey would be extremely heavy. requiring
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: a launch system far larger than anything NASA had previously built.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Another idea was to assemble the spacecraft in orbit around Earth.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Instead of lifting the whole vehicle at once, several rockets
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: could carry different pieces into space, where the pieces would
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: be joined together. This would reduce the burden on each
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: individual launch, but it created another problem. You would have
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: to assemble a large spacecraft in orbit, piece by piece.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: with astronauts and engineers working in weightlessness. It was possible
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: to imagine. It was much harder to make it reliable.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Then came a third idea. Instead of carrying everything down
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: to the moon, why not leave part of the spacecraft
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: waiting above it? This became known as Lunar Orbit Rendezvous.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: You do not need to remember the name. The important
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: idea is simple. A larger spacecraft would travel toward the
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: moon with the astronauts. Then, once they reached lunar orbit,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: a smaller vehicle would separate. That smaller vehicle would carry
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: the astronauts down to the surface. After their work was finished,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: it would rise again. And somewhere above the moon, the
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: small vehicle would meet the larger spacecraft once more. The
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: astronauts would climb back inside. The smaller vehicle would be
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: left behind, and the larger spacecraft would carry the crew
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: toward Earth. It sounds almost like a carefully choreographed dance.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: Two vehicles travelling together through darkness, separating above another world,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: moving apart, and then finding each other again. But there
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: was one small detail that made the entire idea extraordinarily difficult.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: They had to learn how to meet. Not on Earth.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Not on a runway. Not on a road. In orbit.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Both vehicles would be moving extremely quickly. while the ground
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: beneath them was falling away in a continuous curve. The
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: astronauts had to understand where the other spacecraft was, how
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: fast it was moving, and how their own spacecraft should
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: change its path. Gemini had been preparing them for exactly this.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Every rendezvous, every docking attempt, every manoeuvre, every moment spent
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: learning how a spacecraft turns and moves in space had
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: been another quiet rehearsal for the moon. And now, finally,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: those lessons had somewhere to go. Apollo. The program would
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: require rockets much larger and more powerful than the rockets
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: used during Mercury and Gemini. The great launch vehicle would
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: carry the astronauts upward, away from Earth, while stages of
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: the rocket gradually separated as they were no longer needed.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: You can imagine watching from the ground as the rocket rises.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: At first it is enormous, then it becomes smaller. The
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: sound arrives as a deep, distant vibration. The bright flame
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: remains below it, and slowly, almost imperceptibly, the rocket becomes
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: another small object moving toward the sky. Inside, the astronauts
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: are leaving Earth behind. The blue atmosphere becomes thinner, the
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: familiar planet becomes smaller, and eventually there is only darkness
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: around the spacecraft, with the Earth shining quietly below. Before
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: people would walk on the moon, Apollo 8 would make
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: an important journey of its own. It would travel to
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: the moon and enter lunar orbit, carrying humans farther from
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Earth than anyone had ever travelled before. For the astronauts,
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: the moon was no longer something seen from a distance.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: It was beneath them, a landscape of craters and mountains,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: illuminated by sunlight, slowly passing beneath the spacecraft. And then
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: there was Earth. Small, blue, far away. Perhaps one of
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: the strangest things about travelling to another world is that
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: your own world begins to look unfamiliar. The oceans become
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: a single blue surface. The continents become patterns. The atmosphere
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: becomes a thin, delicate edge. Everything you have ever known
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: is suddenly contained within one small sphere. Apollo 8 did
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: not land, but it demonstrated something deeply important. Human beings
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: could travel to the moon and return. The path had
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: begun to work. And soon, another Apollo spacecraft would make
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: the journey. This time, a smaller vehicle would separate above
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: the moon. It would descend, slowly, gently, toward the surface.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: For the first time, human beings would not simply pass
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: around another world. They would fall toward it. And as
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: the lunar surface grew larger beneath them, another problem would
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: quietly become the most important problem of all. Where, exactly,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: could you land? The moon does not offer a smooth runway.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: There are rocks. There are craters. There are slopes. There
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: are shadows. And there is no thick atmosphere to slow
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: a falling spacecraft or soften its final descent. After everything
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: humanity had learned to do, after the rockets and the
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: computers and the years of preparation, the final moments would
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: still depend on something very simple, finding a safe piece
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: of ground. And so, as the little lunar landscape slowly
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: filled the window, the journey toward the moon became a
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: journey toward a single quiet point on its surface, a
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: point where human beings hoped to touch another world, gently, carefully,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: and for the first time. By the time Apollo began
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: its journey toward the moon, Humanity had already learned how
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: to leave Earth. It had learned how to remain in orbit,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: how to move through weightlessness, how to meet another spacecraft,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: and how to find the way home. But there was
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: still one quiet problem waiting below. Landing. From far away,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: a lunar landing can seem almost simple. You travel toward
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: the moon. You slow down. You touch the surface. And
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: you stop. But when you are actually inside the spacecraft,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: moving toward another world, the final part of the journey
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: becomes much more delicate. The moon has almost no atmosphere.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: There is no thick layer of air waiting below you.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: There is no familiar parachute drifting open to carry you
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: gently toward the ground. There is no runway. There is
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: no soft ocean. There is only the surface, rock, dust, crater, slope, shadow,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: and a spacecraft that must use its own engines to
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: slow itself down. You can imagine looking through a small
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: window as the moon slowly grows larger. At first the
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: surface is distant, then the craters become visible, then the mountains,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: then individual patterns of light and shadow begin to appear.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Everything seems still, but the spacecraft is moving quickly, and
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: somewhere inside that quiet landscape is a place where you
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: need to stop not just somewhere on the moon, somewhere safe.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: During the Apollo missions, this was one of the reasons
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: landing sites had to be selected so carefully. The astronauts
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: were generally sent toward areas on the near side of
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: the moon, relatively close to the equator, where the lighting
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: was favourable and the terrain was considered suitable for landing.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: The moon was enormous, but the safe places were much smaller,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: so Apollo was not simply exploring the entire lunar surface.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: It was visiting carefully chosen pieces of it. That limitation
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: was not a failure. It was simply the technology of
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: the time. When you are doing something for the first time,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: you begin with what you can safely manage. And Apollo's
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: engineers had another problem. Even when you know where you
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: want to land, you cannot guarantee that the spacecraft will
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: touch the ground at exactly that point. There is always
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: some uncertainty. A tiny difference in speed. A small change
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: in direction. a little variation in the engines, a slight
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: error in navigation. All of these things can move the
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: final landing point. So engineers imagined an invisible area on
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: the lunar surface, a region where the spacecraft was expected
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: to land. You can think of it as a soft
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: shape drawn over the moon, not something you could see,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: but something the engineers could calculate. The spacecraft might touch
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: down near one edge, or somewhere near the centre. or
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: perhaps a little farther away. This invisible region became known
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: as the landing ellipse. You do not need to remember
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: the name. What matters is the idea. When you send
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: something across hundreds of thousands of kilometres of space, you
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: cannot simply point to one tiny spot and say, that
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: is where we will arrive. You have to allow for uncertainty.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Apollo 11, the first mission to land humans on the moon,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: had a landing target that covered a surprisingly large area
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: by modern standards. The target was roughly 18.5 kilometres long
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: and 4.5 kilometres wide. That may sound precise when you
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: imagine the distance between Earth and the Moon, but when
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: you look at the lunar surface, it is quite different.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: A spacecraft might travel all the way from Earth to
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: the Moon and still have to accept a landing area
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: many kilometres across. This is where the story of lunar
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: exploration begins to change. And, because once you can make
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: the landing area smaller, something wonderful happens. You gain choices.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: You can begin to visit places that were once considered
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: too difficult. You can approach a particular crater. You can
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: choose a particular geological feature. You can land closer to
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: the place where scientists believe something interesting may be hidden.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: And you may no longer need to send a large
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: rover across the surface, simply to travel from the safe
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: landing area to the place you actually wanted to study.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: The spacecraft itself can go there. It is a quiet
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: change in philosophy. At first, the question was, can we
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: land on the moon? Then it became, can we land safely?
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: And eventually, can we land where we want? That final
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: question would take decades to answer. Imagine again the little
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: spacecraft descending. Its engines are working. Its instruments are watching.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Its position is being estimated. The moon is rising toward it.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: And there is very little room for error. Unlike an
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: aircraft on Earth, a lunar lander cannot simply glide through
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: the air. There is almost no air to glide through.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: It cannot spread its wings and let the atmosphere guide it.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: It has to control its descent almost entirely through its
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: own propulsion. and when it finally touches the ground, it
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: must be moving slowly enough that its instruments, its structure,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: and everything inside can survive the landing. The final moments
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: therefore become a strange meeting between speed and stillness. The
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: spacecraft is moving, the surface is approaching, and the goal
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: is to make the movement disappear, to arrive with almost
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: no motion at all. For the astronauts of Apollo, the
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: safest way to accomplish this was to choose relatively forgiving places.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: But the moon contains many places that are not forgiving.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Deep craters, steep slopes, rocky regions, areas hidden in shadow,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: and eventually scientists would want to visit them. The moon
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: was becoming more than a destination. It was becoming a
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: landscape that humanity wanted to explore in detail, and that
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: meant the old idea of simply finding a safe place
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: was no longer enough. The spacecraft would need to become
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: more intelligent. It would need to understand where it was
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: while it was descending. It would need to look at
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: the ground below. It would need to recognise the patterns
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: of craters and rocks. It would need to compare what
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: it saw with maps already made of the moon. And,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: if necessary, it would need to quietly change its path.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: This was a very different way of thinking about landing.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Instead of following one carefully prepared path from beginning to end,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: The spacecraft could observe the world beneath it and respond
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: to what it saw. The moon itself could become part
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: of the navigation system. The craters could become landmarks. The
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: shadows could become clues. The landscape could tell the spacecraft
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: where it was. And somewhere in Japan, many years after Apollo,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: engineers were preparing a small spacecraft designed to demonstrate exactly
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: this kind of precision. It would not need to be enormous.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: It would not need a giant rover. It would simply
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: need to know where it was, and, perhaps most importantly,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: where it was going. The moon had once been a
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: distant destination. Now, slowly, it was becoming a place where
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: humanity could choose its own footsteps. And as the old
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: broad landing zones became smaller … As the invisible circle
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: of uncertainty narrowed toward a single carefully chosen point, another
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: little machine was preparing to descend toward a place of
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: its own, a place where the difference between landing near
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: the target and landing precisely on it would become very clear.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: For a long time, landing on the moon meant finding
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: a reasonably safe place and hoping that the spacecraft would
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: arrive close enough to it. But imagine if you could
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: make that invisible landing area smaller, much smaller. Instead of saying,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: somewhere around here, you could begin to say, perhaps there.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: A particular crater, a particular ridge, a particular patch of
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: ancient rock, a place chosen not simply because it was safe,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: but because there was something there worth seeing. This was
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: the idea behind a small Japanese spacecraft called the Smart
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: Lander for Investigating Moon. or slim. You can simply think
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: of it as the moon sniper. The name is fitting
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: because its purpose was not to travel across the moon
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: with great speed, or to carry a large laboratory, or
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: to build a complicated base. Its purpose was much quieter,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: to demonstrate that a small spacecraft could look at the
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: lunar landscape while descending and determine where it was, allowing
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: it to approach a chosen landing area with remarkable precision.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: The idea may sound simple, look down, recognise what you see,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: work out where you are, adjust your path, but when
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: you are falling toward another world, moving through an environment
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: with almost no atmosphere, this becomes a delicate task. There
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: is nothing below the spacecraft except the landscape, craters, rocks, shadows,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: ancient scars left by impacts that happened long before humans existed.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: and as SLIM descended it continuously captured images of the
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: surface beneath it. Those images could be compared with maps
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: that had already been created from earlier observations of the Moon.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: The spacecraft could recognise the shapes of the terrain, use
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: them as landmarks, and estimate its position while it was
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: still moving. JAXA called this vision-based navigation system SmartEyes. You
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: do not need to remember the technical name, The beautiful
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: idea is enough. The spacecraft could look, the moon could
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: show it where it was, and the spacecraft could quietly respond.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: This changed something important. For earlier lunar missions, the landing
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: area had to be generous enough to allow for uncertainty.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Apollo 11, for example, had a planned landing area that
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: was about 18.5km long and 4.5km wide. Decades later, SLIM
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: was designed to aim for an area only about 100
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: metres across. The difference is enormous. It is the difference
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: between searching for a safe field and choosing a particular
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: place within that field. The purpose was not simply to
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: make landing look impressive. Greater precision could change what kinds
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: of places humanity could explore. A spacecraft might be able
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: to approach more difficult terrains. Scientists could study a particular
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: rock formation without sending a rover a long distance from
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: the landing site. Smaller spacecraft could potentially accomplish more focused missions,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: and places once considered too difficult could slowly become reachable.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: In that sense, precision landing is not just about landing.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: It is about freedom, the freedom to choose. And on
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: January 18th, 2024, after its journey from Earth, Slim began
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: its final descent toward the lunar surface. You can imagine
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: those final moments very quietly. The moon fills the spacecraft's view.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: The surface moves beneath it. The navigation system continues comparing
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: what it sees with what it remembers. The spacecraft adjusts itself,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: the distance becomes smaller, the landscape becomes larger, and then,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: only about 50 metres above the surface, something unexpected happened.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: One of Slim's two main engine nozzles became detached. The
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: balance of thrust changed. The spacecraft began to move sideways.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: Its smaller control thrusters tried to correct the motion. but
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: the original landing position was no longer possible. And yet,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: something remarkable happened. The spacecraft recognised that something was wrong.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: Instead of continuing blindly toward the original point, it adjusted
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: its behaviour and found a place where it could still
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: touch down without being destroyed. Slim reached the lunar surface.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: It had landed almost exactly where it had intended to land.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: but it had not landed in the orientation its designers
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: had imagined. The spacecraft tipped forward and came to rest
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: on its nose. Its solar panels were facing away from
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: the sunlight. From one of the small autonomous probes released
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: before touchdown, images showed the little spacecraft sitting there in
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: its unusual position, almost as though it had gently fallen asleep.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: And now the moon offered another quiet challenge. Light. Without
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: enough sunlight reaching the panels, Slim's stored energy would slowly disappear.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: The spacecraft sent back a final set of images using
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: its remaining power. Then, with only a small amount of
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: energy left, the mission team chose to switch it off.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: Not because the mission was over in the usual sense,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: but because there was still a possibility. Perhaps the sun
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: would move across the lunar sky. Perhaps the angle of
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: the light would change. Perhaps the little spacecraft might wake again.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: Ten days later, sunlight reached it differently. Slim responded. For
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: a short time it came back to life. It communicated
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: with Earth. It sent images. And then the lunar night approached.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Slim had not originally been designed to survive such conditions.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: The lunar surface has no thick atmosphere to soften the temperature.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: During the long lunar day, the ground can become extremely hot.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: During the long lunar night, the same surface can become
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: extraordinarily cold. And unlike Earth, where day and night arrive
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: every 24 hours, a lunar day and a lunar night
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: each last roughly two Earth weeks. So the little lander
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: was placed into a kind of sleep. The sun disappeared,
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: the surface grew dark, and for many days nothing seemed
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: to happen. Then the sunlight returned. The team tried to
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: communicate with Slim, and unexpectedly it answered. The moon sniper
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: had survived its first lunar night. It continued gathering images
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: and data. Then came another period of darkness. Again, Slim
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: was placed into hibernation. Again, there was uncertainty about whether
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: its electronics could endure the extreme change in temperature. And again,
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: it responded. It survived a second lunar night, then a third.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: A spacecraft that had not been designed with such long
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: survival in mind continued to send information from the lunar surface,
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: quietly exceeding what its creators had expected. Among the images
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: were photographs of lunar rocks, including a close view of
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: a rock informally called Toy Poodle. The images were not
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: simply beautiful photographs. They could help scientists examine differences in
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: the materials on the lunar surface, offering clues about the
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: moon's composition and its ancient history. And so SLIM left
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: behind something larger than a single successful landing. It demonstrated
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: a new way of approaching another world, not simply reaching it,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: not simply surviving the journey, but looking carefully at the landscape,
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: understanding where you are, and choosing where you want to arrive.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: Apollo had shown humanity how to touch the moon. Slim
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: showed how much more carefully that touch could become. And
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: as you picture that small spacecraft resting quietly among the
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: lunar rocks, its strange position no longer seems quite so important.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: It arrived where it needed to arrive. It looked around.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: It endured the darkness. And for a while longer than
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: anyone expected, it continued listening to the moon. The landscape
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: around it remained almost perfectly still. The sun slowly moved
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: across the sky. Shadows lengthened and disappeared. And beneath all
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: of that quiet light, another question was waiting. How long
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: could anything remain alive on a world where the day
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: itself lasts for weeks, and where night arrives not as
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: a gentle evening, but as a long descent into cold
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: and darkness? The moon is quiet. From earth, That quietness
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: can make it seem gentle. You see its pale surface
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: rising above the horizon, changing slowly from night to night,
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: always familiar, always distant. But beneath that soft appearance is
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: a world of extremes, a world without the thick atmosphere
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: that surrounds Earth, a world where sunlight can fall directly
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: onto the surface, heating the ground intensely. and where the
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: arrival of darkness can leave that same landscape exposed to
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: deep cold. There is no soft evening on the moon,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: no cool breeze arriving after a warm afternoon, no clouds
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: drifting overhead, no atmosphere moving heat from one place to another. Instead,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: the sun slowly crosses the lunar sky, and the surface
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: follows its long rhythm of light and darkness. A lunar
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: day lasts roughly 14 Earth days, and then the lunar
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: night lasts roughly another fourteen. Two weeks of sunlight. Two
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: weeks of darkness. Two very different worlds sharing the same
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: piece of ground. You can imagine yourself standing there, although
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: you would need a spacesuit to survive. The sun would
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: shine against a black sky. The ground beneath your feet
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: would be intensely illuminated. The shadows would appear unusually dark,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: because there is almost no atmosphere to scatter sunlight into them.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: And then, slowly, the sun would move lower. The long
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: shadows would stretch across the ground, the warmth would fade,
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: and eventually, darkness would settle over the landscape for days
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: and days. This is one reason lunar missions are so difficult.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: The spacecraft must not only survive the journey from Earth,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: it must survive the Moon. The little Japanese lander Slim
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: offered an unexpected demonstration of just how difficult and sometimes surprising,
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: that survival can be. After its unusual landing, its solar
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: panels were not positioned as planned. They were facing away
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: from the sun. Without enough sunlight, the spacecraft's remaining energy
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: began to disappear. The mission team used what little power
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: remained to send back information, and then they switched the
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: spacecraft into a quiet state, hoping that the changing position
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: of the sun might someday illuminate the panels again. For
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: a while there was nothing to hear. Then the sunlight
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: returned from a different direction, and Slim answered. The little
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: spacecraft woke and began sending information back to Earth. It
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: had survived its first lunar night. This was not something
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: the mission had originally been designed to guarantee. The electronics
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: had not been built specifically with such long lunar nights
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: in mind. Yet the spacecraft endured. After another period of sunlight,
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: the team again prepared it for darkness. Once more, Slim
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: became quiet. And once more, when the sunlight returned, it responded.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Then it happened again. The little lander survived a third
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: lunar night. Its surroundings had remained almost unchanged. The rocks
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: were still there. The craters were still there. The black
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: sky was still above it. But the spacecraft itself had
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: passed through repeated cycles of extreme heat and cold, continuing
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: to communicate with Earth whenever conditions allowed. Among the information
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: it returned were images of lunar rocks. One small rock
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: was given the informal name Toy Poodle. Its image could
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: be examined for differences in the materials across its surface,
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: helping scientists learn more about the composition and history of
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: the moon. and there is something peaceful about imagining this.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: A tiny machine, sitting almost motionless on a distant world,
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: waiting for sunlight, not moving, not rushing, simply enduring. The
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: sun disappears, the lander becomes quiet, the darkness continues, and then,
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: many days later, light returns, the machine wakes, it speaks
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: across the enormous distance, then it rests again. This long
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: rhythm is very different from the rhythm you know on Earth. Here,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: night arrives while you are sleeping, and morning comes again
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: a few hours later. On the Moon, the darkness can
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: remain for roughly half a month. That makes energy one
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: of the most important questions for any future lunar settlement.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: How do you keep a machine warm? How do you
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: keep batteries working? How do you protect delicate electronics? How
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: do you provide power when the sun is below the
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: horizon for so long? And perhaps most importantly, how do
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: you design a place where people could eventually remain? These
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: questions become especially important near the lunar south pole, where
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: future missions are being drawn toward regions of deep shadow.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: But before humanity could explore those places more fully, other
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: missions would have to learn the same difficult lesson. The
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: Moon does not forgive assumptions. In August of 2023, Russia
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: launched Luna 25, its first lunar landing mission in many decades.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: The mission was intended to reach the southern part of
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: the Moon, where the terrain is difficult and where scientists
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: hope to study the lunar surface in detail. Its journey
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: began successfully. The spacecraft reached lunar orbit. It communicated with Earth.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: It photographed the surface, and the landing seemed to be approaching. Then,
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: during preparations for the final descent, communication with Earth was lost.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: The spacecraft had to rely on its own pre-planned sequence.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: A manoeuvre was supposed to change its path from lunar
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: orbit into a trajectory toward the surface. but the spacecraft
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: received incorrect information from its navigation system. Its engines fired
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: for longer than intended. The spacecraft moved onto a path
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: that was too steep, and the opportunity to correct the
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: descent disappeared. Luna 25 eventually struck the lunar surface. Its
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: mission had lasted only a few days rather than the
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: year of surface operations originally envisioned. It is tempting to
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: describe this simply as a failure, but there is something
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: more useful to notice. The moon had once again shown
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: how small the margin for error can be. A spacecraft
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: can travel all the way from Earth. It can enter orbit.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: It can communicate. It can photograph another world. And yet,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: one incorrect piece of information, arriving at the wrong moment,
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: can change the entire path of the mission. That is
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: not unique to Luna 25. It is part of the
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: history of space exploration. Mercury taught through early tests. Gemini
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: taught through unexpected problems. Apollo built upon those lessons. Slim
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: encountered an engine problem and still found a way to land.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: And Luna 25 added another lesson of its own. Every
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: successful mission contains years of preparation. Every unsuccessful mission can
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: contain years of knowledge for the missions that follow. The
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: Moon does not care whether the spacecraft was large or small.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: It does not care which country built it. Gravity acts
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: in the same quiet way. Darkness arrives at the same
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: slow pace. The surface remains beneath the spacecraft, waiting. And
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: perhaps this is why lunar exploration continues. Not because the
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: moon is easy, but because it is close enough to
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: teach us. Close enough for us to send machines there,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: listen to what happens, study the results, and try again.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: and the most interesting places may be the places that
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: are hardest to reach. Far from the bright landing sites
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: of Apollo, toward the bottom of the lunar world, there
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: are enormous craters whose deepest interiors may remain almost permanently
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: hidden from sunlight. There, the darkness is not simply a
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: nighttime darkness. It is a darkness that can persist for
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: extraordinarily long periods, and inside those quiet shadows something precious
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: may remain frozen. Ancient water, protected from sunlight, waiting in
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: the cold. The moon's most difficult regions were beginning to
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: look like some of its most important. And as the
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: sunlight fades across the lunar landscape once again, you can
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: imagine those deep southern craters waiting quietly beneath the stars.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Perhaps the future of lunar exploration will not begin in
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: the brightest places. Perhaps it will begin in the shadows.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: For most of human history, the moon was simply something
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: you looked at. You saw it rising above the horizon,
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: changing shape through the month, sometimes bright and full, sometimes
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: only a thin silver curve. And yet, hidden within that
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: familiar circle of light, there were places that sunlight almost
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: never touched. Far from the relatively gentle landing regions visited
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: during the Apollo missions, The lunar south pole holds a
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: landscape of deep craters, steep slopes, long shadows and strangely
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: low sunlight. It is a place where the sun can
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: remain close to the horizon, sliding around the edges of
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: mountains and crater rims without ever climbing very high into
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: the sky. And inside some of the deepest craters, sunlight
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: may never reach the ground at all. These are called
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: permanently shadowed regions. You do not need to remember the name.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: You can simply imagine a place where the sun has
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: been absent for an extraordinarily long time. A place hidden
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: from direct sunlight, protected by the shape of the landscape itself.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: On Earth, darkness usually means night. It arrives, stays for
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: several hours, and then gives way to morning. But near
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: the lunar poles, some shadows are different. They can remain
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: in darkness for extremely long periods because of the low
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: angle of sunlight and the shape of the surrounding terrain.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: Without an atmosphere to carry warmth into those shadows, the
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: cold can become intense, and this makes the deepest lunar
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: craters strangely interesting. They are not simply dark places. They
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: can act almost like natural freezers. Over immense stretches of time,
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: small amounts of water and other volatile materials can may
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: have become trapped there, protected from direct sunlight. Some of
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: that water may have arrived through ancient impacts. Some may
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: have been carried by the solar wind and later become
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: incorporated into the surface. Some may have come from other
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: processes that scientists are still studying. What matters is that
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: evidence from several lunar missions has shown that water ice exists,
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: or is likely to exist, in the coldest regions near
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: the poles. and suddenly the moon begins to feel different.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: It is no longer only a dry, empty landscape. There
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: may be frozen water waiting in darkness. Water matters for
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: an obvious reason. You need it to live, but it
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: can also be separated into its basic components and potentially
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: used to produce breathable oxygen and, in the future, rocket propellant.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: That possibility changes the meaning of a lunar journey. Instead
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: of carrying everything from Earth, future explorers might one day
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: be able to use some of what they find around them.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: The idea is sometimes given a technical name, but you
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: can think of it more simply as learning to live
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: from the landscape, using local materials, making use of what
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: is already there, carrying a little less from home. This
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: is one reason the Lunar South Pole has become such
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: an important destination for modern exploration. It is also why
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: precision landing matters so much. Imagine that scientists know there
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: is something valuable inside a particular shadowed crater, but the
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: crater is surrounded by steep slopes and uneven ground. A
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: spacecraft cannot simply arrive anywhere nearby and hope to find
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: its way there later. Every extra kilometre travelled across the
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: surface requires more energy, more time and more equipment. A
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: precise landing can place the spacecraft much closer to the
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: place that matters. This is where the story of Slim
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: begins to connect with the future. The Moon Sniper did
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: not merely demonstrate that a spacecraft could land accurately. It
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: demonstrated why accuracy could change the kinds of places humanity
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: can reach. The more precisely you can land, the more
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: of the Moon becomes accessible. and one of the most
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: extraordinary regions waiting to be explored lies close to the
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: South Pole. The South Pole-Aitken Basin is enormous. It is
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: one of the oldest and largest impact structures on the Moon,
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: stretching across a vast portion of the far southern lunar surface.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: Its great age means that it may preserve clues about
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: the early history of the Moon. Even more intriguingly, Scientists
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: have suggested that material from deep inside the Moon may
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: once have been brought close to the surface there by
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: the enormous impact that created the basin. That possibility gives
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: the region a special scientific value. If you could examine
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: material that originated deep inside the Moon, you might learn
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: something about what the Moon was like long before there
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: were spacecraft, long before Earth had its modern continents, And
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: long before life had taken its present forms, you would
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: be looking at a kind of geological memory, a record
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: preserved in stone. And yet, the same place that could
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: tell us so much is also difficult to reach. The
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: landscape is uneven. Sunlight is limited. Temperatures can be severe.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: Navigation becomes more complicated. Communication can be difficult when terrain
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: blocks the direction. line between a spacecraft and Earth. Every
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: problem that seemed small during the early lunar missions becomes
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: more important here. Landing. Power. Navigation. Temperature. Communication. And survival.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: The South Pole gathers them all together. It is almost
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: as though the moon has placed its most interesting questions
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: in some of its most inconvenient places. But there is
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: another reason the poles matter. They remind you that the
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: moon is not simply a static object hanging in the sky.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: It is part of a much larger gravitational system. The
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: moon moves around Earth, Earth moves around the sun, and
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: the orientation of the moon's orbit slowly changes over time.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: One of these long rhythms takes about 18 and a
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: half years to complete. Scientists call it the lunar nodal cycle.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: The name sounds complicated, but the basic idea is gentle.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: The moon's orbital path is slightly tilted compared with the
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: path Earth takes around the sun. As the years pass,
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: the orientation of that tilted path slowly turns, like the
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: gradual movement of a large wheel. This cycle can influence
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: the range of tides on Earth. At certain points in
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: the cycle, the geometry of the Moon and Sun can
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: make unusually high tides more likely. When those tides occur
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: alongside storms, rising sea levels, or other coastal conditions, the
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: risk of flooding can become greater. So even when you
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: are thinking about a crater near the lunar south pole,
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: you are still connected to the Moon's quiet influence here
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: on Earth. The same moon that may hold frozen water
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: in permanent darkness also moves the oceans below you. It
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: does so without sound, without visible effort, without anything that
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: resembles a machine. Just gravity, distance and time. And perhaps
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: that is one of the most beautiful things about lunar exploration.
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: The moon is both distant and intimate. You can send
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: a spacecraft hundreds of thousands of kilometres toward it. You
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: can study ancient rocks. You can search for frozen water.
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: You can measure its movements. And yet, every night, you
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: can still look up and see the same pale world
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: above your window. The South Pole may eventually become one
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: of the first places where humans build a lasting presence
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: beyond Earth. Perhaps small robotic vehicles will move through the
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: shadows first. Perhaps instruments will patiently examine the ancient ground.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: Perhaps one day, people will walk there, slowly, carefully, surrounded
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: by black sky and brilliant sunlight. They may look into
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: a crater where sunlight has barely touched the ground for ages.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: They may collect a small amount of frozen water. They
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: may turn local material into something useful. And when they
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: look back toward Earth, the blue planet will be hanging
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: far away beyond the lunar horizon. For a moment, the
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: distance may seem enormous, And yet, compared with everything beyond it,
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: the moon is still close. Close enough to return to.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: Close enough to learn from. Close enough to become a
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: quiet place where humanity can practice living away from Earth.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: The shadows at the South Pole are therefore more than
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: empty darkness. They may hold water. They may hold ancient
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: geological clues. and they may hold one of the first
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: practical pieces of the future beyond our planet. The Moon
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: has always shown us the bright side of its face
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: from here. Now, slowly, we are learning how to look
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: into its shadows. For a long time after Apollo, the
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: Moon became quiet again. The footprints remained. The instruments remained.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: The small pieces of equipment left behind by astronauts remained
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: beneath the sunlight and the long lunar nights. But people
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: stopped going. The rockets became silent. The spacecraft were stored away.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: And for several decades the moon returned mostly to the
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: night sky, where you could see it from Earth without
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: hearing the sound of a launch or the voice of
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: an astronaut. Yet the questions never completely disappeared. What else
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: was there? What remained hidden beneath the lunar soil? Was
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: there water in the deepest shadows? Could people someday stay
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: there for longer than a few days? And could the
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: moon become something more than a destination visited once in
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: a generation? Slowly, the idea of returning began to grow again.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: This time, the goal was different. Apollo had been about
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: proving that human beings could reach another world. The new
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: effort was increasingly about learning how to return, how to
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: stay longer, and how to build the knowledge needed for
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: exploration beyond the Moon. This became the Artemis program, and
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: at the centre of its early testing was a spacecraft
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: called Orion. Orion was designed to carry people on journeys
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: far beyond the comfortable neighbourhood of low Earth orbit. But
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: before astronauts climbed inside for a lunar mission, the spacecraft
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: needed to demonstrate that it could make the journey by itself.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: That journey became Artemis I. You can imagine the spacecraft
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: beginning its flight above Earth, surrounded by the enormous vibration
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: of the launch. The rocket rises. The atmosphere becomes thinner.
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: The blue Earth begins to curve below. And then, gradually,
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: the noise disappears. There is only weightlessness. The spacecraft continues moving,
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: carrying its instruments and its quiet collection of experiments into
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: deep space. One of the most important things Orion had
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: to demonstrate was navigation. Near Earth, spacecraft can receive signals
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: from ground stations and satellites, making it easier to determine
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: where they are. Farther away, things become different. The familiar
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: signals become weaker. The spacecraft must increasingly understand its own position.
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: Orion can use the stars as reference points. Its cameras
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: can look outward into space and recognise patterns of stars,
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: comparing what it sees with information stored inside its systems.
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: The idea is wonderfully old-fashioned. Long before computers, sailors looked
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: at the stars to understand where they were. Now, far
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: above Earth, a spacecraft can do something similar. It looks
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: into the darkness and uses the stars as quiet landmarks.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: There is no road ahead. no painted line, no sign
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: saying that the moon is just a little farther away.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: Only mathematics inside the spacecraft, observations from its instruments, and
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: the steady geometry of space. Orion also had to demonstrate
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: how a spacecraft could protect its occupants from one of
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: the invisible hazards of deep space, radiation. Around Earth, our
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: planet's magnetic environment provides some protection from energetic particles arriving
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: from the sun and from farther away in space. Beyond
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: that protection, the environment becomes more challenging. For Artemis I,
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: radiation sensors and specially designed test objects were carried inside
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: Orion to help engineers understand what future crews might experience.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: You do not need to imagine radiation as something dramatic.
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: It is simply part of the space around you, Invisible
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: particles moving through an environment that feels empty. A future
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: lunar spacecraft must quietly protect the people inside from something
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: they cannot see. And while Orion travelled toward the moon,
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: another subtle experiment was taking place inside the spacecraft. Fuel
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: does not remain perfectly still in weightlessness. It can move
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: gently from one side of a tank to another as
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: the spacecraft accelerates, turns... or changes direction. Engineers studied this
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: movement because understanding the behaviour of fuel matters when a
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: spacecraft must perform precise manoeuvres. Even something as ordinary as
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: liquid can behave strangely when gravity is almost absent. You
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: might imagine a small pocket of liquid drifting inside a container,
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: slowly settling, moving again, and responding to the spacecraft's motion.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: Tiny details like this can become important when a spacecraft
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: is millions of kilometres from home. Communication was another part
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: of the journey. Most of the time, Orion could remain
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: connected with Earth. But as it travelled around the Moon,
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: there were periods when the Moon itself stood between the
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: spacecraft and our planet. For a while, the direct path
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: for radio communication disappeared. Earth could not simply call out
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: and receive an immediate response. The spacecraft continued on its own.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: And then, as Orion moved back into a position where
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: communication was possible again, the connection returned. There is something
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: peaceful about imagining those moments. The Earth is still there.
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: The people are still there. But for a little while,
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: the moon stands between you and everyone you know. The
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: spacecraft is alone in the darkness. Then the signal returns.
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: And Earth speaks again. Artemis I also tested the journey home,
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: because leaving Earth is only half of a spacecraft's story. Eventually,
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: Orion had to turn toward our planet and begin the
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: long return. The spacecraft approached Earth at tremendous speed. Ahead
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: was the atmosphere. Below was the ocean, and between them
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: was a thin layer of heat protection designed to absorb
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: the enormous energy of the return. As Orion entered the atmosphere,
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: the air around the spacecraft became intensely hot. The outside
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: of the vehicle glowed. Inside, the spacecraft remained protected. Then,
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: as the speed gradually decreased, parachutes began to open. One
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: after another. The large fabric canopies expanded above the spacecraft,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: slowing it until the final descent became gentle. After the
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: silence of deep space, Orion returned to the ocean. The
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: spacecraft had completed a journey around the moon and come home.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: It had not carried astronauts, that was intentional. Artemis I
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: was a test, a quiet rehearsal for the journeys that
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: would follow. And that is one of the most important
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: differences between the early moon missions and the new era.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: Modern exploration is not simply asking whether a human can
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: survive a single trip. It is asking how many pieces
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: of the system can be tested before people climb aboard. Navigation,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: radiation protection, communication, propulsion, thermal protection, life support systems, the
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: ability to leave Earth. the ability to travel toward the moon,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: and the ability to come home again. Each part must
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: work together, and when you think back to Mercury and Gemini,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: the pattern becomes familiar. The first programs learned how to
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: survive in space. Later missions learned how to manoeuvre. Apollo
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: used those lessons to reach the moon, and now Artemis
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: is taking another careful step, not simply toward one landing,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: but toward a longer relationship with the lunar world. Perhaps
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: there will be instruments that remain there. Perhaps robots will
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: prepare the ground. Perhaps people will eventually stay for weeks
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: or months. Perhaps the deepest shadows near the South Pole
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: will become places where explorers search for ancient ice. And perhaps,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: one day, the moon will become familiar enough that travelling
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: there no longer feels like reaching the edge of the impossible.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: For now, though, you can simply imagine Orion moving quietly
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: through the darkness, the moon behind it, Earth ahead, a
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: small blue world waiting in the distance. The spacecraft turns
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: gently toward home, carrying with it the lessons of a
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: journey that began long before the engines ever ignited. And
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: beyond the moon, beyond even the quiet darkness surrounding it,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: there is another possibility beginning to take shape. Perhaps the
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: moon is not the final destination. Perhaps it is the
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: place where humanity learns how to take the next long step.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: If you look back across the journey for a moment,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: you can see that humanity did not learn to reach
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: the moon in one great movement. It happened slowly. First,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: there was the simple question of whether a person could
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: leave Earth. Mercury began to answer that question. Then came Gemini,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: where astronauts learn to remain in space longer, to move
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: their spacecraft, to meet another vehicle, and to work outside
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: their small cabins. Apollo gathered those lessons together and carried
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: them toward the moon. Then, decades later, missions such as
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: SLIM began asking a more precise question. Not simply can
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: we land, but where can we land? And Luna 25
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: reminded us that even after decades of experience, The moon
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: can still be difficult. Its gravity is quiet, its surface
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: is ancient, its darkness is deep, and the distance between
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: success and failure can sometimes be surprisingly small. Now, with
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: Artemis and other modern lunar missions, the idea of exploration
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: is changing again. The moon is beginning to look less
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: like a destination that you visit once, and more like
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: a place where you can practice living beyond Earth. That
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: distinction matters. A short visit is one thing. Living somewhere
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: is another. If you were going to remain on the
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: moon for weeks or months, you would need much more
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: than a spacecraft. You would need shelter. You would need power.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: You would need water. You would need air. You would
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: need food. You would need ways to protect yourself from
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: radiation and from the tiny particles of rock that constantly
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: move through space. And you would need to maintain all
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: of those things while being hundreds of thousands of kilometres
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: from home. The moon, therefore, becomes a kind of quiet laboratory.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: A place where engineers can test what happens when people
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: and machines have to depend on one another far from Earth.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: A place where habitats can be tested. Where robotic vehicles
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: can move across the surface. Where systems can learn to
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: collect and process local materials. and where astronauts can practice
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: working in an environment that is similar to deep space
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: in some important ways, while still being close enough to
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: Earth that help is comparatively easier to imagine. This is
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: one reason water ice near the lunar poles is so interesting.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: If future explorers can reliably collect frozen water, they may
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: be able to use it for more than drinking. Water
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: can potentially be separated into oxygen and hydrogen. Oxygen could
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: help support breathing. And hydrogen and oxygen can also be
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: used together as rocket propellant. The idea is sometimes called
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: using local resources, but you can think of it in
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: a much simpler way. Instead of carrying everything with you,
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: you learn to use part of the landscape. That could
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: make future exploration more sustainable. But there is a quiet
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: uncertainty here. Finding ice is not the same as being
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: able to use it. A deposit may be difficult to reach.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: The material may not be pure. The equipment needed to
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: collect it may require substantial energy. And every machine sent
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: to the moon has to survive the same cold, darkness, radiation,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: dust and distance that the astronauts do. So the future
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: lunar base, if one develops, is unlikely to appear suddenly
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: as a large city beneath the stars. It may begin
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: much more quietly, a small habitat, a few solar panels,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: a rover moving slowly across the surface, scientific instruments placed
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: beside an ancient crater, a communication system connecting the settlement
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: with Earth, perhaps a machine collecting small amounts of material
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: from a shadowed region, perhaps another machine preparing a landing area,
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: and perhaps, inside a small room, an astronaut looking through
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: a window at Earth. The planet would appear very different
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: from there. Blue. Bright. Far away. The same world you
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: once saw from your home, now hanging above another landscape.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: And this distance would change the meaning of many ordinary things.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: A message from home would no longer feel instantaneous in
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: the same way. A replacement part could not simply arrive
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: the following afternoon. A serious technical problem might have to
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: be solved by the people already there. That is one
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: of the most important lessons the moon can teach. Independence.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: Not complete independence from Earth, but the ability to solve
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: more problems locally. To repair. To recycle. To produce. To adapt.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: And these abilities become even more important when you think
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: about Mars. Mars is much farther away. A journey there
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: would take much longer than a journey to the moon.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: Communication would involve significant delays. Resupply would be difficult, and
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: if something broke, there would be no quick return home.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: The moon, by comparison, is close. That does not make
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: it easy, but it makes it useful. You can test
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: a habitat on the moon before trying to depend on
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: a similar habitat around Mars. You can test life support systems.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: You can practice growing food. You can study how people
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: respond to long periods away from Earth. You can develop
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: methods for moving across another world's surface. You can learn
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: how to work with local materials. And when something does
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: not work, you are close enough to learn from it
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: and try again. This is why the moon may become
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: a stepping stone. Not because Mars requires the moon in
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: some absolute sense, and not because the future is already decided,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: but because the moon gives humanity a nearby place to practice,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: a quiet classroom beneath the black sky. And there is
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: another lesson that becomes increasingly important as the moon becomes
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: more accessible. Who gets to use it? Who decides where
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: spacecraft may land? What happens if different nations or companies
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: want the same resources? Should certain locations be protected because
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: they are scientifically important? Should historic Apollo landing sites remain untouched?
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: Can lunar materials be collected and used commercially? These questions
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: are no longer purely imaginary. The rules governing activities in
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: space were created when the idea of large-scale lunar industry
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: was still distant. International agreements provide important principles, but some
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: future situations remain difficult to define. The Moon has no
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: single owner. Its surface does not belong to one country.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: And as more nations and private companies become capable of
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: reaching it, cooperation becomes increasingly important. The story of Luna
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: 25 offers one kind of lesson. The history of Apollo
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: offers another. The future may require both competition and cooperation,
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: but the Moon itself remains indifferent to the distinction. Its
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: gravity does not recognise borders. Its sunlight falls equally on
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: every spacecraft. Its shadows do not ask who built the
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: machine standing inside them. And perhaps that is why international
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: cooperation may become increasingly practical. A spacecraft may be designed
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: in one country, launched from another place, carry instruments built
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: by several teams, and communicate with stations around the world.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: The moon can become not only a destination, but a
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: place where different parts of humanity learn to work together.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: And then, beyond the moon, there is Mars, a small
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: red point in the night sky, farther away, colder in
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: some ways, more distant from help. a world that would
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: demand even greater patience. You do not need to imagine
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: the first human footsteps there tonight. For now, it is
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: enough to imagine the moon, a person walking slowly across
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: its surface, each step creating a small disturbance in the dust,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: the sun shining against a black sky, earth hanging above
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: the horizon, a machine waiting quietly beside an ancient crater,
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: perhaps somewhere nearby. Frozen water lies beneath permanent shadow. Perhaps
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: an instrument is listening to the ground. Perhaps a small
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: habitat is keeping someone warm. And perhaps, inside that habitat,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: someone looks back toward Earth and realises that the distance
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: is no longer quite as frightening as it once seemed.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: Because humanity has already learned how to cross it. It
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: learned slowly. It learned through Mercury. Through Gemini. Through Apollo.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: through successes and failures, through spacecraft that landed perfectly, spacecraft
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: that landed unexpectedly, and spacecraft that never reached the surface.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: It learned that precision matters, that survival matters, that preparation matters,
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: and that even the smallest technical lesson can become part
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: of a much larger journey. First, humanity learned how to
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: leave Earth. Then it learned how to remain in space.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: then it learned how to travel to the moon, then
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: how to land, then how to land more precisely, then
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: how to survive the long lunar darkness, and now perhaps
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: humanity is learning how to stay. Not forever, not yet,
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: just a little longer, long enough to understand what it
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: means to live somewhere other than Earth. And from there,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: one day, perhaps another journey will begin The moon may
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: become a place where the machines are tested, where habitats
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: are practised, where people learn patience, and where the distance
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: between Earth and the rest of the solar system begins
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: to feel a little less enormous. But for now, the
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: moon is simply there, quietly circling Earth, reflecting sunlight, carrying
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: the marks of billions of years, holding shadows that may
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: contain ancient ice. holding rocks that remember the early history
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: of our planetary neighbourhood, and holding the footprints of the
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: people who first stepped onto its surface. You can let
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: the image become smaller now, the moon above you, earth
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: below it, the spacecraft becoming a tiny point between them,
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: the stars continuing quietly beyond. There is nothing you need
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: to solve, nothing you need to remember. The moon will
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: continue its slow journey without you. The Earth will continue
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: turning beneath the night, and somewhere in the future, perhaps
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: another spacecraft will rise from Earth, cross the darkness, and
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: approach that familiar silver world. Perhaps it will land precisely
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: beside an ancient crater. Perhaps it will search quietly for water.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: Perhaps it will carry people. And perhaps, after everything humanity
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: has learned there, someone will look beyond the moon toward Mars.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: Not with urgency, not with certainty, just with a quiet
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: sense of possibility. Because sometimes the largest journeys begin in
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: very small places, a small spacecraft, a small landing site,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: a small footprint in the dust, and above it all,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: the same moon that has watched humanity for thousands of years,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: still moving slowly through the darkness, while you rest here
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: beneath the sky.