Transcript

2.12.26 · Smithsonian Magazine

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and today
0:05
I will be reading a Smithsonian magazine dated January February
0:08
twenty twenty six. As a reminder, RADIOI is a reading
0:13
service intended for people who are blind or have other
0:16
disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material. Please
0:20
join me now for the article titled It's almost all
0:23
systems go for Artemis two to take the next giant
0:27
leap towards stepping on the Moon again. Scheduled to launch
0:31
in early twenty twenty six, NASA's Artemis two is part
0:35
of the Bold twenty first century Vision for returning astronauts
0:39
to the lunar surface by Linda Shiner. One morning this
0:44
past June, inside the Mission Control Building at NASA's Johnson
0:48
Space Center in Houston, twenty or so flight controllers were
0:52
seated at consoles arranged in neat rows. The atmosphere was intense,
0:57
as in a class room when a group of people
0:59
are taking it test, which in a way these people were.
1:03
When I entered at the back of the room, no
1:06
one had glanced up. They were staring at their computer
1:09
monitors and occasionally looking up at three screens, each four
1:13
feet by eight feet mounted on the wall. The left
1:17
screen was filled with numbers. On the middle screen, an
1:20
image of Orion, NASA's new deep space crew capsule, its
1:25
solar panels deployed, appeared to float motionless in space. The
1:30
right screen, which resembled an Excel spreadsheet, listed the caution
1:35
and warning messages generated by a computer reporting all the
1:39
real time data that differed from what was expected if
1:42
the flight had been proceeding as planned. A quiet thrum
1:46
of conversation, the ambient sound of groups of controllers conferring
1:50
about their data, underlaid the frequent commands I heard through
1:54
my headset as one controller after another reported system status
1:59
updates to Randon Lloyd, the flight director known as Flight I,
2:04
had come to Houston to observe preparations for NASA's Artemis
2:09
two mission, scheduled to launch as early as February twenty
2:12
twenty six. The approximately ten day missions, four crew members
2:17
Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Kotch, and Jeremy Hansen, will
2:23
be the first people to venture into space aboard Orion.
2:27
They will also be the first people hurled off the
2:29
planet by the Space Launch system S l S, the
2:33
most powerful rocket NASA has ever launched, generating about a
2:37
million more pounds of thrust than the fabled Apollo era
2:41
Saturn five. Artemis two is frequently compared to Apollo eight,
2:46
the nineteen sixty eight journey that carried the first humans
2:49
into deep space, flying to within seventy miles of the Moon.
2:54
The general purpose of the two flights is the same,
2:57
not to land on the Moon, but to fly around it,
3:00
preparing the way for a future grew to land, but
3:03
their mission profiles are different. Apollo eight when into orbit
3:07
around the Moon, Artemis two will not. It's just a
3:11
lot riskier, said Natasha Peak, a flight dynamics engineer assigned
3:16
to Artemis one and two. This is the first time
3:19
we are flying humans on this vehicle. All of the
3:22
life support systems and many of the other systems are
3:25
brand new. The flight plans of Apollo eight and Artemis
3:29
two differ in other ways. Apollo eight blasted to Earth
3:33
orbit and made two revolutions in about three hours. Near
3:38
the end of the second orbit, the Saturn five third
3:41
stage engine fired and Apollo eight was out of there.
3:45
Artemis two will also orbit Earth twice, but after the
3:49
first orbit, the s l S upper stage will fire
3:52
to push Orion into a gigantic ellipse with its low
3:56
point around one hundred fifteen miles above Earth and its
3:59
high point about forty six thousand miles away. It will
4:03
take approximately twenty three and a half hours to travel
4:06
all the way around. During that time, the crew will
4:10
check the performance of their life support, communications and other
4:14
critical systems, and they will test drive the spacecraft manual navigation,
4:20
manual burns, manual targeting, manual communication. Wiseman, the commander told me,
4:25
and that is really going to be fun as an operator.
4:29
During that test drive, the spacecraft will separate from the
4:32
SLS upper stage and perform an automated back flip, re
4:37
orienting itself to face the upper stage, now a target
4:41
for rendezvous. Then Wiseman and Glover, the pilot, will operate
4:45
the spacecraft using hand controllers for a little more than
4:49
an hour, approaching to within about thirty feet of the
4:53
SLS upper stage and evaluating Orion's response as they fire
4:58
a combination of its twenty four thrusters to rotate the
5:01
ship and to move it forward, backward, and side to side.
5:06
Orion is designed to be a self driving spaceship, but
5:09
the astronauts are developing a guide to manual backups in
5:13
case one of the automatic systems fails. Once the maneuvers
5:17
are completed, the spacecraft will resume automatic control and back
5:22
up from the SLS upper stage, which will eventually re
5:26
enter the atmosphere over a remote location in the Pacific Ocean. Then,
5:32
as long as mission control concludes that Orion has passed
5:35
its tests, the spacecraft will be cleared to fire its
5:38
powerful main engine to begin the approximately four day trip
5:42
to the Moon. But back in Houston's flight control room,
5:46
we weren't there yet. The Orion spacecraft is made up
5:50
of three hundred and fifty five thousand, fifty six parts,
5:54
and to anticipate the ways that any one part or
5:57
a combination of them can fail, is impossib To ensure
6:01
against potential failure. Not only does NASA build redundancies into
6:05
the hardware, but it also employs another strategy designed to
6:10
give space missions their greatest chance of success, a month's
6:14
long training program that poses a single question, again and
6:18
again to the crew and the engineers in mission control,
6:21
what if. The what if training consists of hyper realistic
6:26
simulations that run on a very close approximation of the
6:29
flight software that will drive the actual mission with a
6:33
few significant differences. A team of engineers introduces faults into
6:37
the software that must be overcome for a flight to continue,
6:41
or that, in the judgment of simulation participants, can be
6:44
safely ignored. Grace Lauderdale, a simulation manager at the Johnson
6:49
Space Center, told me, we are the mad scientists who
6:52
come up with the things that could go wrong in
6:55
a fun way. The controllers in the simulation I observed
6:59
did not appe to be having fun. They were working
7:02
to solve a handful of potentially counter strophic problems as
7:06
the mission was approaching a go or no go decision point,
7:10
when the flight director would determine whether to continue the
7:13
mission or abort it. The go or no go point
7:17
that morning was the maneuver that would propel Orion to
7:20
the Moon an engine burn known as translunar injection or
7:24
t l I after the decision to launch. It is
7:28
the mission's most critical call, because once that engine fires,
7:32
the crew is committed to a nine day journey around
7:34
the Moon. As the decision yeared, Rick Henfling, another flight
7:39
director who was guiding me through the simulation, leaned toward
7:43
me and whispered, nothing happens in the room without flight's go.
7:48
The Artemis program is named for the twin sister of Apollo,
7:52
a reverent allusion to the historic lunar voyages of the
7:56
nineteen sixties and seventies. The name also reflect one of
8:00
the program's original aims, to land the first woman on
8:04
the Moon. The program's ultimate goal is the creation of
8:08
a sustained, long term lunar presence, a base where astronauts
8:12
will develop the necessary technologies and operations for human exploration
8:17
of Mars. But the path has not always been smooth.
8:22
Artemis Ie, a twenty six day test flight to show
8:25
that Orion and the SLS were ready, flew at the
8:29
end of twenty twenty two, six years after its originally
8:33
planned launch date. The system is performing exactly as we
8:37
intended it, to Mike Sarafin, NASA's Artemis one mission manager
8:42
said afterward. Still even a perfect child misbehaves now and then,
8:48
Artemis one handed its overseers several heart stopping surprises. The
8:53
first came after the SLS third stage fired its engine
8:58
to send the spacecraft moonward. Two hours later, when the
9:01
stage separated, the team received indications that Orion's navigation systems
9:07
had failed. We were in an abort condition. Peak, the
9:11
flight dynamics engineer recalled, we were going to need to
9:15
turn around and come home. Her team conferred with Guidance,
9:19
Navigation and Control G and C engineers and determined that
9:24
little bits of dust and debris from the separation were
9:27
hanging around Orion, confusing the capsule's star trackers, extraordinarily sensitive
9:33
cameras used to capture images of star fields. The navigation
9:38
system compares the trackers photographs with the catalog of stars
9:42
in its database, and the comparison helps determine spacecraft's position
9:47
and orientation. The star trackers mistook the bits of dust
9:51
for stars, which were, of course not in a catalog,
9:55
and the system became disoriented. The controllers literally waited for
9:59
the dust to settle. Then all was good and we
10:02
were able to continue, Peaks said. The other surprise occurred
10:06
during re entry. A principal goal of Artemis I had
10:10
been to show that Orion's heat shield would protect the
10:14
spacecraft during re entry from lunar orbit, when it slams
10:17
into Earth's atmosphere at twenty five thousand miles per hour,
10:21
generating temperatures as high as five thousand degrees fahrenheit, Like
10:26
a flat stone pitched to skip across the lake. Orion
10:30
performed a planned skipped guidance entry, dipping in and out
10:34
of the upper atmosphere to slow down before it descending.
10:38
After the mission, however, when engineers examined the recovered capsule,
10:43
they found that blocks of the heat shield's avcoat, the
10:46
silica and epoxy material designed to partially burn off to
10:50
dissipate extreme heat, had cracked and that pieces had broken away.
10:56
NASA had to postpone Artemis two until it figured out
10:59
that the skip profile hadn't allowed temperatures to remain high
11:03
enough to char the avcoat evenly and make it uniformly permeable,
11:08
which caused gases to build inside the heat shield and
11:11
to crack the AV coat. Artemis two, now programmed with
11:16
a new re entry approach, will add humans to the test,
11:20
and if all goes to plan, Artemis three will land
11:23
astronauts on the Moon's unexplored south Pole as soon as
11:28
twenty twenty seven. Then the Artemis program slips into a
11:32
fog of competing technical decisions and budgetary battles. Some hardware
11:38
is being built for Artemis four and five, but their
11:41
launch vehicles and flight plans are in dispute until this year.
11:46
Those plans envisioned docking in lunar orbit at a new
11:49
mini space station known as the Lunar Gateway. NASA is
11:54
also considering an alternative scheme for Artemis four and five,
11:59
a rendezvous in lunar orbit with a lander like the
12:02
space X Starship, which is already scheduled to transport Artemis
12:06
three astronauts to the lunar surface. Orion, which will carry
12:11
the astronauts from Earth into space, remains essential to each mission.
12:16
Apart from four nearly twenty three foot long solar plant
12:20
panels that extend from the spacecraft's service module like tail feathers,
12:25
Orion looks a lot like the crew module of the
12:27
Apollo program, but the aluminum alloy used in Orion's pressure
12:32
vessel is a lighter, more advanced material than was available
12:36
in the nineteen sixties. In addition, Orion wears a protective
12:40
cover made of thirteen hundred heat resistant tiles, a technology
12:44
inherited from the Space Shuttle. At three hundred thirty cubic feet,
12:49
slightly smaller than a four transit Van's cargo. Space Orion
12:54
is about sixty percent more spacious than the Apollo command
12:57
module in terms of crewe comfort. Orion's greatest advance is
13:02
surely the universal waste management system. It's toilet. Apollo crews
13:07
had to make do with condom topped hoses for urination
13:11
and plastic bags with an adhesive coating that could be
13:14
attached to the skin. Emphasis on the words could be.
13:18
About eighteen hours into the flight of Apollo eight, commander
13:23
Frank Boorman suffered an attack of space sickness that the
13:26
waste management devices couldn't manage, and his two crewmates had
13:31
to help him capture tiny globs of vomit and feces
13:34
with paper towels. Orion's high tech toilet is another legacy
13:39
of the Space Shuttle, which was crewed by both men
13:42
and women, But in Orion, it is situated in a
13:45
tighter space there won't be privacy. Kotch, an electrical engineer
13:50
and one of Artemis two's two mission specialists, told me,
13:54
I'm not worried about that. We do have a closed
13:56
off area which is actually more private than some of
13:59
the capsules that go to and from the space station,
14:03
where there's no curtain, know nothing. You just kind of
14:05
look the other way. Kotch was an adventurer long before
14:10
she joined the Astronaut Corps in twenty thirteen. She has
14:14
been seeking remote places ever since fifth grade, when she
14:17
cut out a map of Antarctica and put it up
14:20
on her bedroom wall, committing to getting there some day,
14:23
somehow Ever, since then, she said, she got there in
14:27
two thousand four, when, as a research associate in the
14:30
United States Antarctic Program, she spent the first of two
14:34
winters at the South Pole, an experience she says prepared
14:37
her for the three hundred and twenty eight days she
14:40
spent on the International Space Station in twenty nineteen and
14:43
twenty twenty, the longest single mission a woman has flown
14:47
in space. Sensory underload is the biggest thing we fight
14:51
in long duration, she said, Not seeing, hearing, or smelling
14:55
you things, really, I think changes how our brain works.
14:59
But ARTI is a short mission. When I think about
15:02
three hundred twenty eight days versus ten, it's going to
15:06
be intense. I think we could rule out a power problem.
15:10
M p O was saying over the loop. M p
15:13
O the mechanical and power officer had reported a temperature
15:17
spike in one of the four lithium ion batteries Orion
15:21
uses to store power from its solar arrays. Even though
15:25
Orion can function with only two of the four batteries
15:29
in good working order, Flight wanted more information and asked
15:33
about the effect of a lost battery on propulsion. Get
15:36
back to your flight, m p O replied. Meanwhile, prop
15:41
the propulsion officer was monitoring a steady loss of pressure
15:45
in the main engine's nitrogen tank, indicating a leak. The
15:49
pressurized nitrogen gas is used to force propellants into Orion's
15:53
engine for combustion. Prop reasoning that because the engine needed
15:58
to fire only once for translunar injection, the move that
16:02
would propel them to the Moon, the nitrogen in the
16:05
accumulator was sufficient for that purpose, But Flight wondered whether
16:09
using up the nitrogen could effect abort scenarios down stream,
16:14
should the crew need to suddenly find a way to
16:16
propel the ship home. Then m PO came back on
16:20
the loop. We can move the battery from degraded to
16:23
not degraded, she said. This apparent success came after the
16:28
controllers masked the sensor and flipped a circuit breaker to
16:31
see if the battery would recharge. It did, meaning the
16:35
temperature reading was a false alarm. The battery fault was
16:39
removed from the list of warnings three left. Glover knows
16:43
about false alarms. Five years ago, he was the pilot
16:47
of another spacecraft, the space X crew Dragon, which provides
16:51
taxi service to and from the International Space Station. On
16:56
the Crew Dragon's second crude flight, he and three other
17:00
astronauts were headed to a six month expedition. It was
17:04
Glover's first spaceflight and the engines had just cut off.
17:08
The crew was still strapped in, but they knew they
17:11
were weightless because their zero gravity indicator, a plushy baby
17:15
Yoda doll, was floating around the cockpit. The spacecraft separated
17:20
from the rocket upper stage and wham, the alert lit up.
17:24
A failure of the thermal control system, and that failure
17:27
had one procedure, Glover said, begin emergency d orbit. There
17:32
was no discussion, there was nothing to assess. It was
17:36
with this failure, You're going back to Earth. I had
17:39
to go through every corner of the emotional envelope, he recalled.
17:43
I was like, WHOA, what's this? Then, oh, I'm the pilot.
17:47
I have to open a procedure. I have to be
17:49
ready for emergency D orbit. Glover pulled up the emergency
17:53
D orbit procedure on his touch screen, but he noticed
17:57
conflicting data numbers on his monitor indicated the cooling was okay,
18:02
so his commander, Michael Hopkins called the ground. While the
18:06
crew waited for word from SpaceX mission control, Glover prepared
18:10
himself for the verdict. I remember thinking, OK, if we're
18:14
going back to Earth, I am emotionally ready. I really
18:17
wanted to go to the space station, but all right,
18:20
this is what has to happen. It was really interesting
18:23
to actually feel that. It turned out that the alert
18:26
was triggered by a trangent reading. The mission proceeded, and
18:30
Glover became the first black person to live aboard the
18:33
space station for an extended stay expedition. Soon he will
18:38
become the first black person to journey to the Moon.
18:41
Glover has reflected on and wrestled with that distinction. NASA
18:46
sometimes wants me to be a black astronaut, or a
18:49
military astronaut, or a test pilot astronaut, he told me,
18:53
I am an astronaut. At the ceremony, announcing the Artemis
18:57
to Crewe in April twenty twenty three, Glover delivered an
19:01
emotional speech, We need to celebrate this moment in human
19:05
history because Artemis two is more than a mission to
19:08
the Moon and back. He said, human space flight is
19:12
like a relay race, and that baton has been passed
19:15
generation to generation. We understand our role. We're going to
19:20
do our best to run a good race to make
19:23
you proud. I pray that God will bless this mission,
19:26
and I also pray that we can continue to serve
19:29
as a source of inspiration for co operation and peace,
19:33
not just between nations, but in our own nation. In
19:37
my head set, I heard Houston Artemis two. Then came
19:41
the reply from the capsule Communicator or capcom, go ahead,
19:45
Artemis too. The capcom, almost always another astronaut, is the
19:49
only flight controller who speaks directly with the crew. Flight
19:54
passes decisions and information to the capcom to relay to
19:58
the astronauts in space. By tradition and professional discipline more
20:03
than by rule, the relay is crisp, concise, and unemotional.
20:08
During the simulation, I didn't quite catch the question that
20:11
was coming in from the crew. What I did catch
20:14
was that everyone else in the room fell silent after
20:18
the quick exchange. Hen Fling whispered, everyone stops talking when
20:22
the crew is on the loop. The Artemis two crew
20:25
is more like the Apollo crews than they would appear
20:28
at first sight. Three of the four crew members are
20:32
former military pilots. Like the Apollo commanders, Wiseman has a
20:37
military bearing and both space flight and leadership experience. He
20:42
spent one hundred and sixty five days on the space
20:44
station in twenty fourteen and was NASA's Chief of the
20:48
Astronaut Office from twenty twenty through twenty twenty two. He
20:52
told me, being on the International Space Station initially opened
20:56
my eyes to how to live and work in space,
20:59
to how how difficult it is. What the Artemis two
21:03
crew has that the Apollo crews would never have had
21:06
is a Canadian. Hansen's nationality shows that NASA and its
21:11
political masters have traveled some distance philosophically from the Cold
21:16
War rivalry of the Apollo era. The International Space Station,
21:20
for one, has proved how useful global partnerships can be
21:24
when fights over funding for expensive, long term projects demand
21:28
new allies. Not that rivalries have disappeared altogether, NASA still
21:34
finds itself in competition, this time with China. For example,
21:39
NASA is under pressure to meet its twenty twenty seven
21:42
launch date for Artemis three after a Chinese announcement of
21:46
a credible plan to land its own astronauts called Taikonauts,
21:51
on the Moon by twenty thirty. That pressure is growing
21:54
as questions loom about the readiness of the landing craft
21:58
being developed by SpaceX. Still, while the old beat the
22:02
Russian's mentality has reappeared in a new space race with
22:05
the Chinese, NASA clearly embraces other collaborations. Hanson, who has
22:11
flown intercept missions for the North American Aerospace Defense Command
22:17
and holds a master's degree in physics, describes himself as
22:20
a nerd, but Wiseman told me that he is probably
22:24
the funniest human being I have ever met in my life.
22:27
He once joked on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
22:30
that he was chosen for Artemis two. In case something
22:33
goes wrong on this mission, then NASA can blame. Canada,
22:38
in fact, will fly on Artemis two, in part because
22:41
Canada was the first country to accept NASA's invitation to
22:45
join the Gateway project. If and when assembly and lunar
22:49
orbit begins, the Canadian Space Agency will provide the station's
22:53
external robotics. In return, Canada received two tickets to the Moon.
22:59
Hanson is punching one of them. Europe, Japan, and the
23:02
United Arab Immirates have also agreed to contribute various elements
23:07
to the station, and Japan is building a pressurized lunar rover,
23:11
all in exchange for transportation to the Moon and back.
23:15
This is the Artemis generation, diverse, international and mostly seasoned
23:21
by long term space station experience. Their mission patch features
23:26
the symbol A two, which crew members point out stands
23:30
for Artemis two, but also appears to read all collaboration
23:35
needs to be the ultimate goal if eight billion of
23:38
us are going to have a bright future on this planet,
23:40
Hanson said at a September press conference. As we come
23:44
around the far side, just having humanity stop for a
23:47
moment and say, Wow, look at what we can do
23:50
when we work together. Let's just set goals to do
23:53
a better job of that on this planet. Today in
23:57
the flight control room, the spreadsheet screen still listed several cautions,
24:01
all invented by Lauderdale's mad scientists, and each a potential
24:06
no go for the TLI burn, A valve in the
24:09
environmental control and life support system was stuck, impeding the
24:13
evaluation of carbon dioxide removal in the cabin. The nitrogen
24:18
leak in the main engine's tank was still unresolved, and
24:22
there was now an increased chance if the burn were
24:24
to be executed, of a collision between Orion and a
24:28
small unstable object, likely a piece of space junk that
24:32
had been reported by the trajectory Operations and Planning officer.
24:36
If any one of these persisted, the crew would be
24:39
forced to abort the mission and try to return home.
24:43
This seems bad, I whispered to Henfling. He replied, the
24:47
simulations are so intense that it's almost a relief when
24:50
the actual mission flies. Before Artemis two heads to the Moon,
24:55
the flight dynamics officers there called fidos would compute a
24:59
target line that the spacecraft must follow to re enter
25:03
Earth's atmosphere safely. TLI puts us on what we call
25:08
a free return trajectory back to the Earth, which means
25:12
there are no big burns in between to help adjust
25:15
your trajectory peak explained. In other words, Orion can return
25:19
to Earth without using fuel. After the Moon's gravity accelerates
25:24
the spacecraft during the flyby, Earth's gravity pulls it home.
25:28
Because Orion must end up at a precise altitude, latitude,
25:33
and longitude to hit its final destination in the ocean
25:36
off the coast of San Diego, the fidos, using a
25:40
computer program, work backward. Here is the spot we want
25:43
to hit, They instruct it. Now, tell us the most
25:47
efficient path to get there. The variables in the equation
25:51
include Orion's position at the time of the burn and
25:54
the force gravity imparts as the spacecraft swings around the Moon.
25:59
If something serious enough to abort the mission goes wrong
26:02
after t l I, controllers have to decide almost immediately
26:07
how to get the crew home, because by then the
26:10
spacecraft is speeding away from Earth at twenty three thousand,
26:14
six hundred miles per hour. We do have enough propellant
26:18
loaded on the vehicle for what we call a direct abort,
26:21
Peake said, once we get far enough from the Earth,
26:25
you kind of lose that option. Instead, we have fly
26:28
by aborts, where we use the Moon's gravity to help
26:32
us get home faster. Apollo thirteen did just that. Apollo eleven.
26:37
Astronaut Michael Pollins once expressed some regret that as CAPCOM
26:42
for Apollo eight, he did not convey to his colleagues
26:45
the momentousness of that first translunar injection, acknowledging that they
26:49
would be the first to leave the known world within
26:52
low Earth orbit for the unknown territory beyond. In his
26:56
autobiography Carrying the Fire, Collins tried it this way. After
27:01
t L I would be three men in the Solar
27:04
System who would have to be counted apart from all
27:06
the other billions, leaving us stranded behind on this planet,
27:11
awed by the fact that we humans had finally an
27:14
option to stay or to leave, and had chosen to leave.
27:18
When Artemis two flies, what will the capcom say to Wiseman, Glover, Cootch,
27:23
and Hanson in the moments before they begin the push
27:26
away from Earth's hold on them? The CAPCOMs could say,
27:32
Artemis two, you are a go to inspire co operation
27:35
and peace, not just between nations but in our own nation.
27:39
In all probability, though Capcom, guided by a tradition and
27:44
professional discipline, will simply say, Artemis two, you are a
27:49
go for t L I and the crew will respond.
27:52
Roger Houston go for t l I. This concludes readings
27:57
from the Smithsonian Magazine for to day. Your reader has
28:01
been Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening, and have a
28:04
great day.