I grew up with science fiction flash Gordon buck Rogers.
What play thing can you offer me today?
An obscure body in the sc system, your majesty.
The inhabitants refer to it as the planet Earth.
I was a little boy before there was a space program. I mean, I remember watching the V two rockets get launched out in the Western desert, and then I saw spootn It go up. I saw the first astronauts, and you know, like every red blooded American kid, I thought it'd be great to be an astronaut and go in space.
Tomorrow, forming NASA astronaut and Jeffrey Hoffman, we'll be watching the Artemis two shuttle takeoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It's NASA's first journey back to the Moon in almost fifty years. It's a voyage deep into space, but it won't land. The spacecraft will fly past the Moon.
Everybody who comes back from space will tell you that this feeling of weightlessness, the ability to look out the windows at the Earth and see are planet in a completely new perspective, is also one of the unique aspects of space play, and.
Looming over it all is the great Space race. I'm Nicole Johnston and you're listening to seven AM today Jeffrey Hoffman, who flew five Shuttle missions, on why Artemis matters, When will humans land on the Moon again and who will get there first? The US for China. It's Wednesday, April one, Jeff. The last time people went to the Moon was Apollo seventeen, and that was decades ago. We now have the countdown
on Finessa to fly past the Moon this week. How will that mission work and what will we actually see?
Well, I wish we could see what they're going to see, because they're going to be farther away from the Earth, in fact, than any human beings have been before, about twenty five hundred kilometers further out than Apollo thirteen, which had the previous record, and they'll have a beautiful view
back towards the Moon and the Earth. What we'll see, of course, is after the launch, they'll go into Earth orbit for a little while just to check out all their systems, and then translunar injection and they'll be on
their way to the Moon. It's important to recognize they will be on what's called a free return trajectory, which is the way the first few Apollo missions were launched, and this means that they'll be in an orbit such that if their propulsion should fail, the Moon's gravity will swing them around and send them back to the Earth. So they'll swing around the Moon once and then come right back to the Earth and the whole mission will last about ten days.
So, Jeff, if this launch all goes to plan, what is it that it will have actually achieved and what would come next? Where do you go from here?
Well, the original plan was that Artemis IIIE was going to actually land on the Moon. There were many of us who were a little concerned that there wasn't actually nearly the amount of testing of the hardware in space that we had in the Apollo program. And I'm glad to say that NASA has now instituded one more Artemis mission before the attempted lunar landing, and so Artemis three will be in Earth orbit to actually test a lot
of the hardware which is going to be used. Space is a very unforgiving environment, and that's why we just test and we test and we test before the actual mission. And that's what this is. It's it's basically a test flight like the early Apollo missions were. You know, we had Apollo seven, eight nine, you know, all those flights before we got to Apollo eleven and actually landed on the Moon.
Three two one zero, all engine running lipt off. We have a liptop thirty two minutes past the hour lipped off on Apollow eleven.
So when will we see NASA actually in a position where it's ready to land people on the and again.
Up on all the land on a land Well, I wish I could tell you. What I can tell you is they're working as fast as they can to get ready for Artemis three, which, as I said, will be in Earth orbit to test a lot of the hardware which will be used in the future. And the other thing that we're waiting on. And this is another difference
between Apollo and Artemis. In Apollo, the Saturn five rocket was able to with a single launch send not only the Apollo module to the Moon, but the lunar lander and everything that the crew needed to land on the Moon and get back. Artemis cannot do that. It does not have the capability of carrying a lander all the
way to the surface of the Moon. It can't actually send as much mass to the Moon as we were able to do in Apollo, and so the Artemis Lunar landing mission will use the Orion capsule to take people to the vicinity of the Moon. But the current architecture is they will then be picked up either by a SpaceX starship or by a Blue Origin lunar lander, and
that will take the crew to the ground. Artemis has the capability of taking people close to the Moon, but they'll need some help to get them actually down to the surface.
Now, Jeff NASA's budget has been a major political issue for years. It had those two Shuttle disasters. Does the Challenger in Columbia?
You saw it just a few moments ago, about forty five seconds after leftoff, a huge fireball in the sky.
We have a report from the flight dynamics officer that the vehicle has exploded.
Flight director confirms there.
And at one stage we had President Trump proposing to slash its budget by twenty five percent. This mission has also been delayed a number of times. So, more broadly, how much pressure is the space program under in the US?
Well, at the moment I think people well hopefully they will pay some attention to the launch, but the space program certainly does not occupy anything like the fraction of the budget that Apollo did. You know, Apollo was done as part of a Cold war competition with the Soviet Union. You know, who would get first into space, who would be the first to land on the moon. We're not in that kind of a competition anymore.
We choose to go to the Moon and this decay and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win. And the others too.
I will say, despite Trump's original threat to cut NASA's budget, Congress has been very supportive. NASA doesn't have anywhere like the budget that it did back in the Apollo era, and that's been one of the challenges, is to go back to the Moon without an Apollo budget, and that's why you see delays. And I think that NASA has the support in Congress that it will need. So I don't think that it's NASA's budget which is really gonna
be holding us up. If we can get through the next to Hartemis test flights without any major problems, then we should be ready to land on the Moon, I hope.
So coming up who will land on the Moon first?
Again? This launch is yet another step in a growing space race, a battle which could even decide who owns the Moon, Jeff.
Over the last couple of years, the leaders of NASA have been raising concern also about the US China space race, especially the min straight at Jared Isaacman.
This is not the time for delay, but a time for action, because if we fall behind, if we make a mistake, we may never catch up, and the consequences could shift the balance and power here on Earth.
Could you tell us about their competing programs to try and establish the first permanent crude presence by the early twenty thirties.
Yeah, I'm very impressed by what the Chinese have been able to accomplish in space. They've gone through a lot of the stages that the US and the Soviet Union did back in the sixties. But of course they're not doing it for the first time, so it's a little easier to know what they're doing and how to do it. But you know, having said that, I'm very impressed by they're putting a lot of resources into their space program.
They definitely want to go to the Moon, and the critical thing is that there there are some very interesting places on the Moon, like near the South Pole. And it's a real question once somebody lands and establishes a base, how close to that base can anybody else go to land? Because you know, when you land something on the Moon, it kicks up a lot of dust and lunar regolith can do damage to equipment. Whoever gets there first really
has a good position. What that will mean for the people who get their second and third still remains to be seen. So I'd like to see the US get there before the Chinese. I mean, we had a space race with the Russians, who would be the first to get to the moon. It sounds a little bit strange to say, you know, who's going to be the first to get there the second time, But nevertheless, whoever does, they will have a very very imposing position vis a vis whoever is going to come next in terms of
where they can go and where they can land. Possession is nine tenths of the law, as they say, and whoever gets their first possesses that amount of land.
Jeff, I know what you mean about China. I was recently working there for a year and it was incredible the progress that they'd made with satellites and rocket launchers. I think they became the third nation in the world to bring back rocks from space.
Yeah, I mean, it's been incredibly impressive what what they've been able to do. They've put a relay satellite on the far side of the Moon so that they can operate rovers on the far side of the Moon. We haven't done that yet, and.
I know that India has also been expanding its program. Russia is trying to rebuild it. Why is it that they all want to go to the Moon anyway? Is this about prestige or is it still pure science?
Well, I think there are several reasons. There is a certain international prestige, and particularly if the Chinese get there before the Americans, you know, that will definitely resonate in world opinion. But why we want to get to the Moon Over and above the prestige and the international impact.
There may well be useful resources on the Moon. I mean, one of the reasons we're going to the south pole of the Moon is because there is indication that there may be significant deposits of water or water ice in some of the craters there, and that would be extremely useful resource. Also, you know, the Moon has been bombarded
by asteroids for billions of years. We know that a certain percentage of asteroids are metallic and have a lot of rare Earth elements, which are very valuable here on Earth, both economically and geopolitically. I would anticipate that, you know, in another generation or two, the Moon will have become part of the Earth's economy, and in a similar way that Earth orbit is now part of the Earth's economy. Exactly how it will play out depends on what we
find when we go to the Moon. But whoever gets there first and does the surveying, they're going to know where the value is if there are valuable materials to be found on the Moon. So that's another potential economic reason for wanting to explore the Moon.
Jeff, as the Atomist two launches this week, will you be watching feeling a little bit jealous perhaps and wishing that you could be up there too.
Oh, of course I'd love to be up there, but it would be a little bit small minded of me after all the incredible experiences that I've been fortunate enough to have in space. You know, I've done things that are going up and fixing the Hubble Space telescope that other people also may have been jealous about. So no, I don't feel jealous. I wish them well. Obviously, if I had a chance to go back into space, i'd
do it in a moment. But you know, life goes on, and this is the new Artemis generation and I wish them well. It's going to be a great mission.
Jeff, It's been a real pleasure to speak with you. Thank you so much.
Pleasure on my part as well. Nice talking with you.
Also in the news, more planes carrying Australians from the Middle East have arrived in Australia. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says there's been more than one hundred repatriation flights in recent weeks, but says future flights are not guaranteed and could be disrupted by war at any time.
Foreign Minister Pennywong has repeated advice to Australians not to travel to the Middle East, urging those who are there to leave if it's safe to do so, and detention is turning to those who may have assisted Desi Freeman during his time on the run before he was shot dead by police on Monday. Victorian Chief Commissioner Mike Bush says the accused killer of two police officers likely had help in evading police for seven months ahead of the
confrontation on the Victorian New South Wales border. Victorian Police says it plans to speak with anyone suspected of assisting mister Freeman in avoiding arrest. I'm Nicole Johnston. This is seven AM. Thanks for listening.