@WakeUpCall – NASA’s Moon Delivery

Let's say good morning now to Associate Administrator for the NASA Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, Niki Fox.

Good morning, Niki, Good morning.

So Nikki, it's not only door Dash and grubhub that does deliveries. NASA does deliveries too, except they just DoD.

Yeah, that's right, that's right actually, to be to.

Be fair, it's our it's our industry partners that are doing the deliveries.

We are we are being delivered by them. So we're very excited.

Okay, so tell us you're saying, so you've got somebody else is actually uh flying there, but it's got NASA gear on the on the payload basically absolutely.

Yeah. Through our Commercial.

Payload Delivery Service basically or clips Commercial Lunar Payloads, we we actually are working very closely with our industry partners enabling them to build the actual landers. They are you know, they're responsible for getting the launch and every thing arranged, and we provide the payloads and also kind of you know, the delivery location that we want to go to and then they are taking us there and taking us right now with the two that are going there to very different locations on the moon.

So it's a very exciting time. Okay.

So Nikki, tell us, first of all, tell us, we've got two deliveries going, and one of them gets there tomorrow, right or no, Sunday, Sunday.

Yep, that's correct. One of them gets there on Sunday.

And that is Firefly, our blue ghost one lander.

So really excited. That is that is.

Heading there on track to do their landing attempt on Sunday morning.

And that is that is actually going to an interesting region.

That is, it's the site of an asteroid impact and so when the you know, an ancient asteroid impact kind of flooded that area with lava and so it's a very different kind.

Of of of solus.

Sorry, you can tell I'm a helif this different kind of lunar sort of surface there. And then the other one, the Intuitive Machines, is going about five degrees off the south pole of the Moon, so very different area, and it's landing on a sort of our high high ridge there. It's about the size of Delaware, about the height of Mount McKinley, and so a very different area.

And that one is going to be looking for water and other volatiles on the moon.

Okay, And so though it sounds like they're going to have two very different missions because the one that's going to be near the south pole is looking for water, and what's the one the Firefly Blue Ghost mission one where what is the goal of that?

Uh, there's several goals, but you know, largely speaking, it's really characterizing what the regless or what the what the lunar surface does during you know, when when you actually land on it, like does it does it kick up?

How is the dust kicked up? What does that look like as you're landing.

Also got instruments that look at kind of how sticky the the regarless.

Is or the you know, the lunar surface, the lunar dust is.

We know from the Apollo missions that you know it's stuck to the spacesuits, et cetera. And you know, we're just going to figure out like how sticky, how tacky it is. And then it also has some technology that's looking at whether or not you can actually clean the dust off the surface.

You know, if you.

Think about sending great scientific equipment, great life support systems, and then as you keep doing landings and you keep kicking up the dust, you want to be able to clean off those surfaces to keep everything pristine, and so sort of.

Doing that that kind of early.

Testing of that, so as we you know, land more and more on the Moon, we can actually protect the environment around the landers. Also great science experiments on there looking at looking at the sun in X rays and doing some very sort of precise location like the sort of navigation precision locations with that lander as well.

Okay, so Nikki, you've got me really interested in the dust because you think about it kicking up and I remember like when when our troops first went over to Operation Desert Storm and they were dealing with the sand. They were literally using nylons to cover some of the weapons to keep the sand out. So I'm wondering it's it's sort of like you're finding out what it does so when there are future missions, you know how to deal with it. Is that accurate?

Yeah, that's actually a really great way of putting it. You know, you want to understand what the what the material or you know, the dust is made of, like you know, is it how and really it is, how sticky is it? How much will it stick to surfaces? And then you want to know how to protect those surfaces, so that that's exactly right, okay.

And so then Nikki, let's look look to the future. We're doing this because what is what's the goal? Is it to put a station on the Moon? Is it to make us stop over, to like have people on the Moon all the time, or just to keep experimenting up there?

Oh, a little bit of everything. I mean set the the ultimate goal is to set up a sort of a sustainable.

Lunar economy for our US companies, so that you know, they they they have a sustainable Your delivery services, as you know, is one thing, but also instruments on the moon, payloads going to the Moon, large cargo delivery, you know, on the intuitive machines. We have a hopper which is a little bit like a helicopter that you know, can actually sort of do mapping out of the terrain for us, so,

As we then turn our attention to.

Sort of further out in the Solar system, we think of the moon kind of lighting our way to Mars as we you know, we are ready to support crude missions eventually to Mars, you know, looking at the technology, looking at the various things that you want to get ready to be able to support those long term, long duration trips to Mars, and then of course exploration on the surface of Mars, which I personally could not be any more excited about.

And do we have any kind of a timeline on when that might come to fruition?

I mean, I think you know, we're certainly ready to support any opportunities that we have to go, either to the Moon or to autun Mars. I think you'd have to talk to the various providers about their timelines for actually getting the equipment there.

But NATA Science is ready to go.

Okay, and Nick, thank you. One last question for you. The first landing is supposed to happen on Sunday, and the next one I believe is on March sixth and greth. Where can people watch this?

Oh yes, you can, thank you so much for asking. You can watch it on Nataplus is our streaming service, and we will be streaming all of the information live. So actually that the landing, but also lots of information about the two missions, and of course if you want to.

Know more about it ahead.

If you can't wait till Sunday for the landing, you can go to NASA dot gov, where you'll find information about all things NATA, or follow us on social media. We are doing updates all the time on these both of these missions. Plus we also have a lunar trail Blazer, which is an orbiter that also launched with with Intuitive machines this week and also upcoming.

We've got some launches from.

The West Coast this week as well, one studying the Sun, one studying the galaxies, and one studying the Aurora.

So lots of exciting stuff happening in NASA sciet.

My goodness, they're keeping you busy, Nikki. Thank you so much for the information. I love talking about space stuff. It's just and you can you can hear your excitement about it, and I love that too. Thank you so much, Nikki Fox at NASA Headquarters. We appreciate it.

Thank you all right, take care