>> Stephanie Marcus:
Hello, I'm Stephanie Marcus
from the Science, Technology,
and Business Division here
at the Library, and
I want to welcome you
to the thirteenth year of our
collaboration with NASA Goddard.
This is the first of
our lectures for 2019,
and we have seven others
scheduled, so there's a list
out at the table, and you
can always check our website
in case there's something
wild that happens.
I haven't looked
over my remarks,
but the last time
Dr. Petro was here,
he talked about the last
men who walked on the moon,
that was Apollo XVII, and he
also told us what was going
on at that time with the
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter,
which has now been
up almost ten years,
so we have a lot more to learn.
Today we're going to talk about
the first men on the moon,
and as I said, what's
going on with the LRO.
Dr. Petro was interested
in the moon as a child.
He has a family connection which
I'm sure he wants to mention.
Maybe those of you who here,
were here before remember,
and he was also interested
in geology.
So in college, he was
able to combine the two
and become a planetary
geologist,
and he is the Project
Scientist for the LRO.
Last time you were
the Deputy, right?
Yes, he's moving up.
I just wanted to
mention that actually,
it looks like a good number
of you might have watched
the first moon landing on TV.
I thought we'd have a lot
of those kids who missed
out on that, but that's the
one perk of being a senior.
You have all these cool
things that happened.
So please help me welcome, for
the second time, Dr. Noah Petro.
[ Applause ]
>> Noah Petro: Well,
thank you very much
for having me come back.
As I said earlier, it's
very rewarding to be asked
to come back to do something,
because at least this suggests
the first time wasn't so bad.
[Laughter] So hopefully
there'll be a third time.
We'll see how the next
45 minutes or so go.
Now I, in doing my survey of
the room, I'd say about ten
or so people might have been,
you know, one or two years old
at the time of the moon
landing [laughter],
and so just as a
sort of a refresher,
we're going to look back
over not just 50 years,
but a little bit more than that.
What was leading up to Apollo,
what was Apollo XI,
and what came back?
And my goal is to
talk a little bit
about how we used
what Apollo XI did
as a template, moving forward.
As many of you are
probably aware,
we all learned a few weeks ago
that NASA's got the new
objective of landing humans
at the South Pole by 2024, which
is a, a very interesting goal,
and you know a lot of
people, including myself,
are working very
hard to realize that.
Fortunately, we have pretty
much the best example of how
to conduct human exploration
on the moon in the case
of the Apollo missions
to the moon.
And so ultimately,
we all go back
to what was done 50 years
ago as not just inspiration,
but really as the template
of how we move forward.
Just as a sort of a touchstone
for what I'll be talking
about today, and in looking
at the upcoming presentations
that are scheduled in this
series, I was impressed not
at just the quality
of the present--
the speakers and the topics, but
also at how impactful Apollo is
in all of these science
presentations.
There's one in particular
that, that caught my eye,
a colleague of mine,
Dr. Jennifer Eigenbrode
at Goddard will be
talking about the discovery
of organic matter preserved
in three-billion-year-old
mud stones on Mars.
Now that's a, that'll be a great
talk about the search for life,
but one of the things
that caught my eye
on that is this idea that's
three-billion-year-old mud
stones on Mars.
And you ask the question, how
do we know that those rocks
on Mars are three
billion years old?
Because we went to the moon,
and so hopefully what
I can leave you today
with is not just the sense
that we went to the moon
and we accomplished a lot
of things, but by going
to the moon, we opened up
this window into the rest
of the solar system, and as we
find solar systems elsewhere
in our universe, all
of our understanding
for how those solar systems
work, how the planets
in our own solar system
work, comes through the lens
of what we learned
because we sent humans
to the moon 50 years ago.
Apollo XI had a very
simple goal,
and I think we're
all familiar with it.
Nothing more, nothing less, the
objective of the mission was
to land men on the moon, and
return them to the earth.
That was it.
There's no mention of science,
there's no mention
of collecting rocks.
Very early in the mission
development stage for Apollo XI,
there was going to be one
astronaut that got out,
scoop up some sample, plant
the flags, say a few words,
get back in and come home.
As late as 1968, late 1968,
that was what Apollo XI
was going to look like.
And it took the efforts of many
scientists working within NASA
to push harder to get
two astronauts to go out.
Now why two?
Well with two astronauts, they
could do not just twice as much,
but one could set up
science experiments.
They could spend more time
collecting samples and begin
to eke out just a little bit
of science in this first,
this first landing on the moon.
But of course, human safety,
crew safety was the first
and most important objective.
The fact that the crew
came back healthy,
safely was mission accomplished.
Everything else was, was
sort of gravy on top of that.
How did we get to the moon?
I am a geologist by trade, but
I love space history and reading
about it, and you know
Apollo didn't just start
when Kennedy gave his famous
speech to Congress in 1961.
Really the, the seeds of
landing and sending humans
to the moon go back to 1955,
where there were studies
of what would it mean to
have a huge, gigantic rocket?
Not just for purposes
of war, warfare,
but for space exploration.
Of course, everything kicked
into high gear with the launch
of Sputnik in 1957,
and the space race was
of course then on.
In 1958, the US responded
with the Explorer I,
the first US satellite,
and by April at that point,
the Air Force decided
that it was time
to start seriously
mapping the moon.
I think early on it was
recognized the moon is not just
a nearby celestial object,
but a destination, a target.
And so it was time at that
point to, to really turn
into high gear this
idea that eventually,
we're going to be going there.
We don't know when, but we'll
need to know where to go,
and what to do when
we get there.
And of course, we've been
commemorating the 60th
anniversary of NASA as well
recently, and so in October
of 1958, we marked the
official birth of NASA,
and then soon thereafter,
the selection
of the first group
of astronauts.
And I'm sure if you asked
any of the seven of them,
they thought they'd be the
first men to walk on the moon.
The first mission to the moon
comes in September of 1959,
Lunik II, the Soviet
mission which crashed
on the moon 35 hours later,
and finally in October of 1959,
we have the first images of
the far side of the moon.
And I think that's one of
those turning points where,
as much as it's perhaps
Soviet propaganda to,
to image the far
side of the moon,
it also becomes this incredible
scientific accomplishment
to start the study of surfaces
that have never been
viewed by humans.
And so you know as much
as there's military
and nationalistic
events going on in here,
science begins to, to bubble up.
Now in 1960, January of 1960,
the follow onto the
Mercury program before--
this is before Gemini
was even envisioned,
Apollo was envisioned, was
selected as the name of this,
this three-person
program to go to the moon.
Later in the year, there were
guidelines set about in terms
of what this program would look
like, what it would, would,
what it would feel like
for the astronauts.
And finally, in July, just
about nine years prior to the,
actually nine years and a
day before the Apollo XI crew
returned to the earth, Apollo
is named as the, the next,
that version of human
exploration.
Then 1961 comes along,
and things get really
busy, of course.
Yuri Gagarin orbits the earth
which was a wake-up
call throughout the US.
We are not ready at that
point to send humans to space,
and so there's a
very busy month.
JFK responds, and there's
this great NASA document
that outlines this
month essentially
through the memo's,
the material.
JFK contacts his Vice President
and says, "What can we do
that we'll beat the
Russians, where we win?
We have to do something that
will surpass what their,
their capabilities are."
A week later, LBJ writes back
after having contacted
NASA leaders,
particularly Wernher von Braun.
Well looks like exploration
of the moon is probably the
one thing that we can do.
Notice the word "propaganda
value."
At that point, it's,
we've got to do something
to beat it, beat the Russians.
It's going to be big, it's going
to be loud, and you know we,
we have a chance of doing it.
And we could probably
do it by 1966 or 1967.
Now 1967 should be
an important date
in this initial race
to the moon.
As was mentioned earlier,
my father was an engineer
on the Apollo program.
He built parts for
the lunar backpack
and for the lunar module that
sent astronauts to the moon.
His responsibility was keeping
them alive, and so the few times
that he's been fortunate enough
to meet these astronauts
afterwards, he'll say, "Oh,
yeah, I built the parts for the
portable life support system."
And they always, "Oh,
that worked so great!
Thank you so much!"
And he says, "Well,
okay, you know?
Thank you for making
me look good."
His management, his direct
supervisor said that we have
to be ready to send humans to
the moon by November of 1967.
Why November 1967?
That would have been
the 50th anniversary
of the Russian Revolution.
And at the time, there was a
recognition that, you know,
okay, maybe US is in it
for propaganda value,
but certainly the Soviets were
as well, and if they're going
to do something, certainly
Sputnik in 1957 as a celebration
of the 40th anniversary
of the Russian Revolution,
we have to be ready for
the 50th anniversary.
And so they were using
not just the decade,
the end of the decade, as
a goal, but using November
of 1950-- '67 as a target
for having something
ready something big to do.
A day later, Wernher von
Braun writes back to LBJ,
"We certainly can
beat the Soviets,
and we have the opportunity
for the first landing
of a crew on the moon."
And then he also
puts in parenthesis,
"Including crew return
capability, of course."
[Laughter] So he also is
fully aware that we have
to bring them, bring
them back safely.
But that plants that seed, that
eventually comes into the speech
that President Kennedy gives
just about a month later,
after one astronaut spends
15 minutes in space, saying,
"We're going to go to the moon.
Astronauts on the moon, back
by the end of the decade."
He sets that goal.
It's very clear, very
well said, and very clear
that they're landing
a man on the moon
and returning him safely to
the earth, and that's it.
And that's Apollo in a nutshell.
Again, at no point do
they talk about science.
All of the science, all of
the advances come later,
but if you want to point
to a moment where Apollo,
not just is named and
envisioned, but given wings,
per se, it's of course
that date on May 25.
Now over this intervening eight
years of so, a lot happens.
Of course the Soviets have their
successes and their failures,
as does the US, and
the space race is on.
Now.
I, there's a lot of things
that I could say, but I always
like to use video clips because
other people have said it much
better than I, so I'll allow
President Kennedy the chance
to say, explain why he
wants to go to the moon.
>> Many years ago, the
great British explorer,
George Mallory, who was
to die on Mt. Everest,
was asked why did
he want to climb it.
He said, "Because it is there."
Well, space is there, and
we're going to climb it.
And the moon and the planets
are there, and new hopes
for knowledge and peace
are there, and therefore,
as we set sail, we ask God's
blessings on the most hazardous
and dangerous and
greatest adventure
on which man has ever embarked.
Thank you."
[ Applause ]
Now if you've never watched or
listened to the whole speech,
it's about 18 minutes, I,
like many of you in the room,
I'm a commuter here in D.C., 45
minutes roughly from Alexandria
to Green Belt, and so I'll
listen to my podcasts,
and every once in a
while, say, "I don't want
to listen to any news.
I don't want to listen to-- ."
I'll listen to that speech every
once in a while [laughter].
Just a little insight
into my unique brain.
But what I find so
fascinating about it is he mixes
in not just humor,
but also this,
this vision of what
he wants it to be.
Now there's some discussion of
how serious he was about it,
how much he really
thought it was worth it.
It was going to be expensive.
In his speech, he talks about
how expensive it's going to be.
He also says that it costs the
human, the US taxpayers less
than is spent annually at the
time on cigarettes and cigars.
I'm not sure how that
would translate to today.
But he, so he sees
the value in it,
but again not mentioning
science, but he does talk
about in that speech, we
had just launched a mission
to Venus, and that he viewed
space as being something
that should be used
for peaceful purposes,
and for the science advancement.
So this is a year and a half
later than, than his speech
to Congress, so at that
point, he's beginning to bring
in the idea that science
has something to benefit,
humanity has something to
benefit from these explorations.
So I'm going to talk about the
three stages of exploration,
and how it serves as
a template for today.
First, the preparation,
everything prior
to Apollo XI's launch.
There was of course
the financial
and staffing investment.
It wasn't just my
father that was working
on Apollo for a period of time.
It was about 400,000 Americans.
The planning and
mapping as scientists.
What did we have
to do to prepare
for humans to go to the moon?
And then of course a
bit of the training.
And each of these
three kind of issues
of preparation are
relevant today.
We have to make financial
and personnel investments
in exploration.
We have to prepare and map and,
and plan where we
go on any planet.
And then of course, training
the astronauts for what
to do when we get there.
And then there's the eight
days of participation.
The eight days of the
mission, of Apollo XI,
and of course we have the three
crew and the thousands of people
on the ground supporting them.
And then the payoff, after
July 24, after that splashdown
in the Pacific Ocean,
there's the payoff,
and who benefits from that?
I say all of humanity.
It's when we entered
a completely new era
of not just science, but
of, of human existence,
having sent people to
another celestial body,
returning science samples,
geologic samples, measurements,
and really setting the stage
for I'd say future history.
I mean I think history
will mark not just July 20,
the day of the landing,
but July 24
as a monumental moment
in humans' evolution.
This is a snapshot provided by
the Lunar Planetary Institute
of the missions leading up, well
the full figure goes probably
about 13 feet more that way.
I just snip off what
happens in 1969-- up to 1969.
So we have each of the
orbiting flyby, and impact
or landing missions across time.
And what I am trying
to show here is
that you know it didn't just
start with Apollo XI in 1969.
There was a whole series
of impact experiments called
Ranger, that were sent
to not just hit the moon,
but to show that we could get
to the moon and communicate
with something
as it's going to the moon.
The US also had the
Lunar Orbiter missions
which were a series of
mapping missions all leading
up to Apollo.
In the midst of that
also is Ranger,
which were these soft landers
that were giving
the first insight
into what the lunar surface
actually looked like.
It's hard for, certainly
hard for me to imagine a time
where we thought that the moon
was covered in a, a dust layer,
several miles thick that
wouldn't support an astronaut
or support a lander, that
they would just sink into.
But prior to, and our first
closeup views in 1962,
and our first landings in 1964
of the lunar surface was
an uncertain terrain.
The universe, our understanding
of the moon largely limited
to telescopic observations
of the near side,
and so it was these
precursor missions to Apollo
that set the stage that
made Apollo a success,
so I hope that as we celebrate
the accomplishments of Apollo,
we also have to acknowledge
the robotic missions
that came before.
Just in the same way that the
robotic mission that I work
on Lunar Reconnaissance
Orbiter is paving the way for,
for future exploration.
I also like to think though
that instead of needing
to have five lunar
orbiters and Ranger,
we just need one really capable
spacecraft in the form of LRO.
So, so let's talk about
Lunar Orbiter for a minute.
Lunar Orbiter was this
five-staged mapping program,
and this is from the summary
report published in 1970.
But basically, you know,
Lunar Orbiter was this
required mission to map the moon
in sufficient detail so
that we could identify safe
and interesting landing sites.
And so the figure at the, on
the right shows hemispheres
of the moon, near side
and far side, and the,
the various images
that were taken.
And you can see these small
postage-stamp-sized spots
that are mapping small areas in
detail, meter or so per pixel,
so that you could see hazards,
craters, and boulders as well
as larger-scale images
of the far side.
By the time the first three
Lunar Orbiter missions have been
accomplished and were
successful, the subsequent two,
Lunar Orbiter IV and
V were turned really
over to planetary scientists,
mapping the entire near side
of the moon, and mapping portion
of the far side of the moon,
and other areas in high detail.
It was deemed that the first
three missions had accomplished
the goal of identifying and
mapping safe landing sites,
and so the subsequent
missions could really be turned
over to mapping the rest of the
moon for scientific interest.
At the time, the Apollo landing
sites required basically you
know one meter ground
resolution within areas
of about five degrees
of the equator.
So we're looking at a narrow
band right around the middle
of the moon, between longitudes
45 and 45 east and west,
so really looking
at a small subset
of the lunar near side for,
for potential landing sites
for human exploration.
Of course what's mentioned sort
of by not being included
here is, you know,
they're not considering anywhere
on the far side of the moon,
and certainly not considering
anyplace towards the poles
of the moon.
And so this, this initial
mapping stage of the,
for Apollo which
would set the ground
for the first few
missions really focused
on central near side
areas of the moon.
Fantastic, safe,
interesting landing sites.
The data that was returned was
turned into areas of interest,
and so five potential landing
sites were mapped all along
the equator.
Again, that five-degree area,
all on the central near side,
landing site one, two,
three, four, and five.
And, and it basically became
a question of all five
of those places are totally
interesting, would be great
to send the first crew.
Which one of them is going to be
the safest and most interesting?
This is the set of frames
from the Ranger impact.
Again, you have this impactor
aimed to hitting the moon,
taking pictures every
few seconds.
As it gets closer and
closer, we get higher
and higher resolution
images of the moon,
and so this provides
the first up-close view
of the lunar surface,
and basically validates
that you know there are areas
that have little craters
on them, but there are smooth,
flat areas that we
could land as well.
And I want to step
aside for a second.
You can see little
green circles.
Those green circles, the
green circles are mapping
where Apollo XI would land,
so this is the first
up-close view of,
of the potential
Apollo XI landing site.
Next we have Lunar Orbiter V,
which was that final Apollo
precursor Orbiter mission,
and again, this, you get
to play find-the-green-dot.
There's the green dot
there, and the [inaudible]
and the green dot right there.
So up until Apollo,
these are the best views
of that second landing site.
This is all we had, but at
first blush, yeah, there's lots
of big craters, but you don't
see much in the way of hazards,
and they knew of course they
would have astronauts landing
on the moon.
They'd be able to
navigate around hazards
and find a safe landing
site in there.
This is the, a [inaudible] view,
up looking straight down view
of that Apollo XI landing site.
And there's the circle showing
where they eventually did land,
and again, lots of big
craters, but smooth, flat areas,
enough to sustain a
ten-meter-wide lander,
so this landing sight remained
on the list of, of
possible targets.
Now, let's fast-forward
to January of 1969.
This is the Apollo XI crew, and
at the time it was recognized
that they would have the
opportunity potentially
to be the first landing
on the moon.
However, this is just on
the heels of Apollo VIII,
having successfully shown
that we can orbit the moon
and send humans at
least into deep space.
There would be two more missions
prior to Apollo XI: Apollo IX
and Apollo X. Apollo IX would
be an earth-orbiting mission
to test the lunar module,
and Apollo X would test the
lunar module in lunar orbit.
So those two missions not
only had to be successful,
but demonstrate that the
lunar module would work.
They're standing in
front of a mockup
of the lunar module right
there down in Houston.
And that, if those two
missions were successful,
Apollo XI would be
given the green light
to be given the first
mission to land on the moon.
Of course the downside of having
two missions in front of them is
that they are waiting to
use all of the resources.
You have two other
crews that have to train
on the lunar module simulators
and so what do they do
to keep themselves busy?
Well, they do other
forms of training.
And I'll get to a video in
a little bit that shows some
of the training that they
did in early 1969, waiting,
essentially for those
two precursor missions
to be successful.
So Apollo VIII orbited the
moon and imaged a portion
of the lunar near side with
the goal of finding again,
identifying some of
these safe landing sites.
However, when Apollo
VIII got to the moon,
the second of those landing
sites-- I'll go back a second.
So you know these, these
are going from east to west.
When Apollo VIII
orbited the moon,
this first landing site here
was visible to the crew.
The rest of these landing
sites were in shadow.
It was day-- nighttime
essentially,
at the rest of these
landing sights.
The thought being well, let's
not worry about imaging all
of these five landing
sites from orbit.
Let's just try to get the
first one nailed down.
Now something that
I hadn't appreciated
and only learned last year is
that Apollo VIII, on its return
to the earth, actually
re-entered the earth's
atmosphere and splashed down
into the Pacific at night time.
That was deemed an
acceptable risk; however,
that prevented any kind
of visual inspection
of how the parachutes
performed as it descended
through the earth's atmosphere,
and of course the
crew was then left
in the bobbing command module in
the middle of the Pacific Ocean
for several hours until the
day, until the sun rose.
And of course that was
deemed to be acceptable.
However, for Apollo
X, Jack Schmidt,
who was the scientist/astronaut
working very hard
to prepare the crew for
their trip to the moon,
identified that well, if we wait
one day, if we, we don't launch
when we normally would've
with Apollo X, if we waited,
wait one day, that second
landing site will be visible,
and when they return to
the earth, they'll be able
to re-enter the earth's
atmosphere
and splash down at daytime.
And so unbeknownst to NASA
management, he had asked the,
the basically the navigation
team at Johnson Space Center
to come up with the data pack,
the information about how
that mission would work, the
timeline for that mission
which cost several
thousand dollars.
A lot of money, and he just
said, "Can you just do this
in your spare time, and I'll
make a pitch to headquarters
that they should do this?"
Well, we already have the Apollo
weight data pack, why do we have
to spend the extra money?
And once NASA headquarters
that they would splash
down at daytime,
they said, "Done."
Oh, you already have
the data pack?
You already-- okay, great.
We're going to do it.
So Apollo X was targeted to go
a little bit later and be able
to image that second
landing site, and again,
if you can play the
game, Find the Green Dot,
here, here, here, here.
Five images of the, what would
become the Apollo XI landing
site showed that at this
blush, at this scale,
it was free of hazards, and
that in the lunar module,
the crew could navigate
and know where they were
and follow landmarks to
perform a successful descent.
And so because Apollo
X was successful,
basically because NASA didn't
want to spend extra money.
They said, "Well,
you've just shown
that this landing site is safe.
You've shown that we can splash
down at daytime, that's going
to become the Apollo XI
landing site, and that's it."
And that was it.
There was no grand
science question of oh,
well then what are
we going to do?
Nope, that looks safe, we have
all the necessary information,
we're going to go there.
And so that's really how
the Tranquility Base became
such a you know famous spot.
Not because of any grand
thought of, "Oh, this is going
to be an important
point for humanity."
It was because NASA
wanted to be thrifty.
[Laughter] And so as, as
all good geologists do,
for each of those landing sites,
geologic maps were constructed.
I have a, my own copy
of the geologic map.
Of course, the landing on the
moon that occurred in July
of 1969, the map wasn't
published until 1970,
so government still
works at the same pace.
[Laughter] But it did
mean that they were able
to mark the landing
sight right here.
That's where Tranquility
Base is.
And, and for those
of you that are aware
of the Apollo XI landing story,
they were initially targeted
to land basically right in the
middle of this large crater.
And so Neil Armstrong had
to take over manual control
and land just down range there.
This is the square right
here is the rectangle
of the map that you just saw.
And that ellipse that's in
there is the landing ellipse,
basically what their target was.
Of course initially they were
aiming for the dead center
of that ellipse right there.
However, because
when the lunar module
and the command module
separated, in lunar orbit,
they hadn't purged the tunnel
between the two spacecraft
completely.
Now the gauge said that it was
zero, but the, the fidelity
of the gauge wasn't
quite good enough to show
that there was still a
little bit of pressure
between the two spacecraft.
And so when they
released, [pop!] it popped
like a cork just a little bit,
and added just enough delta V,
enough velocity to the lunar
module where it was pushed to go
about three miles downrange
of the intended landing site.
It was still where
they planned to go.
Neil Armstrong had still, by
studying the images available
to him, knew that he
was on the right path,
wasn't hopelessly lost.
But because there were
no major landmarks near
where they landed, he couldn't
radio up to Michael Collins
or radio back to Houston
saying, "Oh, yeah, you know, no,
we're three miles downrange."
As he was landing the
lunar module, he's looking
out the window, tracking
the landmarks,
and at one point he had to
look inside and went back
and basically lost the,
the visual connection
of where he was.
He knew he was safe,
but he couldn't quite
pinpoint exactly where he was.
And only until the crew came
back with the video taken
of the, the film,
excuse, taken on Ascent,
could they piece
together exactly
where the crew had landed.
Now let's take a step
forward 50 years,
and talk about how we
would do this today.
With the benefit
of data from LRO,
this is a web page called LRO
Quickmap, which allows you
to zoom in on any point on the
moon, and so I'm zooming near
where the Apollo XI mission
landed, and basically integrate
and bring up any data set you
want that's been collected
for the moon.
Not just from LRO, but from
previous missions as well.
So I'm pulling up data
from our Diviner instrument
which is basically our space
thermometer measuring the
temperature of the
moon which we can use
to map things like
rock abundance.
And so we can pull up
layers, and so tell oh,
here's all the rocky areas.
All those little colorful
spots are small-impact craters.
We have the highest
resolution topographic map
of any object in
the solar system.
This is data from the lunar
orbiting laser altimeter
which is our instrument
that we built at Goddard
and have been flying
at the moon on LRO.
And so you know we're doing
the same thing that was done
with lunar orbiter, but now
we can ask questions of okay,
well where are the
colder spots of the moon?
Where are the rockier spots?
We have at our fingertips
much greater detail in terms
of what we can not only
measure at the moon,
but use in selecting
safe landing sites.
And so again, it's the same
approach, the same philosophy.
When we do send humans back
to the moon as early as 2024,
we don't want to be limited
in just near side
equatorial locations.
We want to be able to go
to the poles, for instance.
And so we now have an incredible
data set for the entire moon.
And I, I want to
emphasize "entire moon"
because we also would love to
be able to go to the far side
of the moon, and so I spin the
moon with my cursor and begin
to look at areas on the
far side of the moon.
This is a web page
that's publicly available.
All of the data that
LRO generates is,
is released to the
public every three months.
We've produced over one petabyte
of data, I think 1.2 petabytes
of data, the largest
volume of data
of any NASA planetary
science mission ever.
This is a crater on the far
side of the moon called Jackson.
I'm a big Johnny Cash fan,
so I always like
talking about Jackson.
And again, just an
illustration of what we can do
with our image data as
well as compositional data.
These dark blue areas suggest
that there's a distinct
composition
that reflects what we
think the ancient crust
of the moon was made of.
And so again, we
can bring in all
of these different data sets.
This is this rock abundance map,
these, these red areas have lots
of small rocks in them.
Which as a geologist is
both a wonderful thing.
We want to go collect those
rocks, as engineers would say,
"Stay away from those
rocky areas."
So it's that interplay
of what do we want,
versus what the engineers want.
Engineers tend to win the
game in those discussions.
But as you get closer
and closer to the moon,
our high-resolution images
come through in just sort
of a tantalizing first-glimpse
of what we can actually see
with this wonderful
LRO camera data set.
Anyway, so again, the tools,
the approach is very similar,
but now we have this
incredible wealth of data,
not just from our mission,
but from every mission
from 50 years ago to today.
Let's talk about training,
how we got the crews
ready to go to the moon.
And as I mentioned
before, the Apollo XI crew
in particular had two
missions before in the queue.
So they couldn't get priority
time on the simulators.
They couldn't get time
to do all the things
that they wanted to do.
But they had been training
since they were selected.
Neil Armstrong, part of the
second crew of astronauts,
so they had been training,
you know, since day one
for not only going into
space, but with the idea
of what they would do
on the lunar surface.
The crews, all astronauts
received extensive geology
classroom and field
training, and Aldrin
and Armstrong had the benefit
of having been the backup
crew for Apollo VIII.
Now, now Michael Collins
was originally going to be
on the Apollo VIII crew.
He had some neck
surgery so he got bumped,
and which worked
out to his benefit.
If you're going to
go from Apollo VIII,
the best subsequent crew to
go to is Apollo XI, I think.
And so certainly Armstrong
and Aldrin were familiar
with the systems, had worked
very hard on Apollo VIII.
And again, once they
were selected in January,
kind of got to go full-bore.
They had to wait, as I said,
for Apollo IX and X to prove
that they could land
on the moon.
Everyone was confident that
they could, but they had to wait
for those missions
to actually succeed.
Now, this is, there's this
great archive of videos
and material that, that
NASA produced in the 1960s
for educational propaganda
videos.
You can sort of almost in
your head here, the narrator.
"Here's NASA's brave
astronauts preparing
for their future
exploration of space."
And, and for those of you
that are familiar with,
with the astronauts,
there's Ed White,
who would be the first
astronaut to do an EVA
in space, a spacewalk.
Tom Stafford, and there's Neil
Armstrong before he became Neil
Armstrong, and this is
in 1964 doing what's,
what's sort of informally called
a show-and-tell field trip,
getting the astronauts out
and just used to the idea
of geology, the principles
of geology.
And they all loved the
idea because if got them
out of classroom, they
got them out of Houston,
they got them away from
home, they go them away
from simulators and trainers.
They got to go out
and play and pretend
and learn how to be geologists.
That also included geologists'
favorite sort of pastime
when they're in the field:
sitting around a campfire
at night, having
beverages of their choice,
talking about what they saw.
So this was how these crews
got introduced to geology,
and you know the goal was to
get them at least starting
to get them to think of what
it meant to be a geologist.
In 1965, the next crew
of astronauts did the
same sort of training.
There's Michael Collins, looking
at images of Flagstaff, Arizona.
Dave Scott who would later
go to the moon on Apollo XV,
and there's Buzz
Aldrin, as well.
I'd like to say looking
very interested in,
in the opportunities
[laughter] presented to him.
I should actually point out
that the geologist here who's
pointing out what he's looking,
pointing out what Dick Gordan,
who went to the moon, orbited
the moon on Apollo XII,
ended up being sort of
the deputy lead geologist
for the later Apollo missions.
He was someone who, who
supported a gentleman who we saw
in the first video-- I'll go
back to this in a second here.
Let's see, the, the
lead instructor
in this picture is
Bill Muehlberger
who led the geology
what's called "back rooms"
for Apollo XVI and XVII.
There's Bill Muehlberger, and
so for Apollo XVI and XVII,
Bill Muehlberger and his, his
deputy Ed Jackson who we saw
in Flagstaff here,
sort of ran the show.
But they had five years,
or more than five years
of experience working
with the astronauts.
So it was not so much telling
someone who's going to the moon,
here's what to do, it
was saying, "Okay, Jack,
when you get to the moon,
let's do this and this."
Okay, you know, it was a
very collegial atmosphere.
And so they had decades, almost
a decade of experience working
with these astronauts, and
very much in the same way
that today we do the
same sorts of activities
with the astronaut corps.
A colleague of mine,
Jake Bleacher,
has been working very closely
with the Johnson Space Center
at getting the astronauts out
in the field, working on rocks,
and thinking about what it
means to be a field geologist,
with the idea that
maybe one day one
of these astronauts will
actually get to go to the moon.
This is February of 1969,
so the Apollo XI crew had
been announced and selected.
And now they're doing
their field training.
This is the one geologic
exercise that this crew had
to basically practice in a,
I mean it's not exactly a lunar
environment, but pretty close:
rocky, sort of desolate.
And so this is the one
opportunity that Neil
and Buzz had in shirt sleeves
to practice their
training regimen for,
for going to the moon.
By the time Apollo
XVII got to the moon,
they had done field exercises
comparable to this either
in space suits or in again jeans
and shirt sleeves,
probably 15 times.
So things had certainly enhanced
and built upon what we
started out with Apollo XI.
But, but eventually, when we
have crews that are selected
to go to the moon, they're going
to be doing the same
sorts of things.
We're going to take them to
real geologic environments,
and have them not just
pretend to pick up rocks,
actually sample rocks,
document the rocks, take images,
do the things that they'll
do on the lunar surface.
Not shown in this short clip is
the back-up crew of Jim Lovell
and Fred Haise, who were
the Apollo XI back-up crew.
Of course they would eventually
go to the moon on Apollo XII
or at least attempt to go
to the moon on Apollo XII,
so it's always a
little bittersweet
to see them training
not only for Apollo XI,
but when they were
training for Apollo XIII,
knowing that the probably would
never actually get to practice
at their field site
what they were going to,
what they were practicing.
But you can see here's Neil
practicing taking a scoop.
Now imagine now you
put them inside
of a spacesuit, like
a basketball.
It becomes a little bit
more difficult, but again,
this is their one
opportunity to practice in a,
in a real geologic environment.
There's Fred Haise
and Jim Lovell.
Straight out of Central Casting.
[ Laughter ]
They wanted to do
higher fidelity tests
and so this is Neil
Armstrong in a spacesuit
in the Apollo spacesuit,
and he's got the same scoop.
This is on the KC-135,
the so-called "vomit
comet" [laughter].
And so they were able
to not just replicate
zero G, but 1/6 gravity.
And so here's that, here's
him again just like we saw
in the desert of West
Texas, except now he's
in an airplane probably
flying over West Texas,
practicing picking up
and scooping material,
and you'll see the, the support
crew come and hold them in place
as the plane does
its dive and back up.
And so they were able to do
simulations like this as well
as simulations in a
tank in a deep pool
at the Johnson Space
Center to try
to show what it would
be like, feel like,
and simulate for them.
As I mentioned earlier, my
father had worked on Apollo
and you know in his
reminiscence about it,
he really reiterated the point
that we just didn't know
what it would be like.
We could simulate 1/6 gravity,
we could simulate
all of these things.
We really didn't
know how it would be
like for them to move around.
What would no mobility be like?
And my dad, who became a
physician, was very interested
in sort of the human aspect of
how would their bodies respond
to being in this environment?
And so when you do watch them,
or listen to their voices
when they're walking on
the moon, they spend a lot
of time just describing what
it's like to move, and okay,
how did the training go?
And that reinforces the idea
that this is an engineering
exercise,
not only how the system worked,
but how did the human
system respond
to being in this environment?
Oh, so let, so let's
cut to the chase.
We actually did get to the moon.
July 20, 1969, and all of
that geologic training began
to pay off when you have humans
on the surface of the moon,
practicing what we had
trained them to do.
And so I'm going to use a clip
from a website that's going
to go live in a few months
that basically allows you
to experience the entire
Apollo XI mission in real-time.
You can jump into any moment,
hear what the astronauts
are saying,
see what pictures
they're taking.
If TV was being shot
at that time,
what TV footage is being
displayed, as well as listen
to what's happening
inside mission control.
We're all familiar with the
mission control rooms are set
up like this, but you can hear
what the flight director's
saying, what the
cap com is saying,
what the e-com is saying.
You can jump in and move around
and hear the entire room
describe what's going on.
Let's listen to ultimately
what Buzz Aldrin is saying
as he becomes the first
practicing scientist
on the moon.
>> And [inaudible].
[ Inaudible ]
>> So you heard a few things
happen there that are really-- .
>> Biotite is a brown
mica substance.
>> Thank you, voice of NASA.
>> So what we heard Buzz Aldrin
do is exactly what he had been
trained to do.
I can't stop the video because
why stop like Apollo happening?
I'd feel bad [laughter].
>> He was trained to
describe what he saw.
This rock is smooth, this
rock is flat, this rock-- .
And he said, "This rock
has sparkly, shiny objects
like biotite, but I'll leave
that for the experts to decide."
Now that is what he
was trained to do.
Now biotite is a mineral we find
all over the earth, but it forms
in aqueous or water
environments.
And you heard the
flight controller,
the experiments flight
controller chime up,
said, "What did he say?
Ask him what, what did you say?"
Because they were perplexed.
There's mica on the moon?
They heard them say, "There
is mica here," when in fact,
what he was saying was, "There's
something that looks like mica."
Now what it turned out
to be was impact glass.
All these micrometeorites,
these objects striking the
lunar surface, melting material
which freezes instantaneously,
makes a little piece of glass.
So he saw shiny objects and
said, "It looks like mica."
Exactly what he was trained
to do, and he got crushed.
He got, "You messed up!"
No, I didn't.
And so on the second
crew in Apollo XII,
they, they were quiet.
They stopped.
They said, "Well this
is, this looks like-- ."
I think they called
it Sprite, you know,
green glass, green soda bottle.
They're talking about
olivine which is green glass.
Just say olivine!
But they didn't want
to become embarrassed
as what happened to Buzz.
What also became clear is you
know the flight controller
asked, "Oh, have
him say that again."
Now, that is a huge waste of
an astronaut's time to have
to make them-- ,
"Say that again."
No, no, no, I said it once.
And so by Apollos XIV and
XV and subsequent missions,
actually there was a court
stenographer who was brought
in to type everything in
real time that was said.
And those would then be
published afterwards.
They got most of it
right, but for a court,
so then they could just go
back, "Oh, what did he say?
He said this."
And, and so I think
what this also shows is
that when we do go back to the
moon and we, we're going to have
to rely on technology.
Probably not a court
stenographer.
Our phones are pretty good
voice rec-- pretty good.
I do that a lot on my commute as
well, I start writing like oh,
if I have to think about a memo
I have to write or something,
I'll just recite it to my
phone, and it gets about 90%,
but that's why most
of my emails are full
of gibberish because [laughter].
When I say, "LRO" to
my phone, it takes,
it thinks I say "el oro,"
"the gold," in Spanish.
So all of my emails are
peppered with "el oro,"
which I think is really nice.
[Laughter] Anyway, but you
can see that there's going
to be a need for a consolidating
all of the data that we have,
whether it's TV pictures,
camera footage, everything,
we'll want it immediately.
We've gotten very impatient.
They had to wait months
to get the TV footage,
you know, processed.
The film had to come back.
We'll want it all in real
time, especially their words,
because the astronauts,
when they're on the surface
of the moon, are our eyes
and ears and our mouths.
And they're trained to
describe exactly what they see,
and I think I like to use that
example of what Buzz Aldrin did
because he did exactly
what he was trained to do,
and I think unfairly so
was kind of criticized for,
for making what anyone would
make as a normal observation.
Rant over.
Now, so as I said, Apollo
XI landed successfully.
This is a fly-over view from
our LRO data, "el oro" data.
Ha ha ha. Our camera, an LRO
can image objects as small
as roughly 50 centimeters across
from our 50 kilometer orbit.
Now what we've done is
placed a synthetic version
of the lunar lander,
so that we can fly over
and actually see the topography.
This is that small crater
that I identified earlier,
that boulder-rich crater, that
football-sized-field crater
that Neil Armstrong described
as he was descending
that he had to avoid.
And as he's looking out
his window, he sees okay,
we'll avoid that crater.
I'm going to land along of what
we now call Little West Crater.
West Crater, Little West Crater,
and he lands long from there.
But as he's flying over it, he's
thinking, "Okay, I was trained
to identify impact craters, and
impact craters are important."
You can see the boot tracks,
these are the little scuff
marks it left while they walked
around on the surface.
So this is the little path
that Neil Armstrong takes
over to Little West Crater,
and he took some pictures,
collected some samples, but
didn't tell anybody that.
There's this period of
time towards the end
of their EVA where
there's quiet.
And I think mission control
just assumes let them work,
let them work.
Neil walks over to
Little West Crater,
takes his pictures,
collects a sample.
And nobody doesn't say, "Okay,
I just went over to this
30-meter diameter crater that's,
you know, near the landing
site, and I'm doing this thing."
He just does it, I think one,
because he knew that they'd say,
"Oh, don't leave the area
of the lunar module!"
They're supposed to stay very
close to the lunar module.
He's on the surface of the
moon, he's the commander,
he doesn't have to worry about
going into space ever again,
so he's going to do it.
And it was only until they came
back and developed the pictures
that someone said, "Where did
you take that picture from?"
He said, "Oh, well
this little crater,
and I walked over to it."
Okay, but again, he had
been trained to recognize
that impact craters
were important,
so he had to take
that opportunity.
There's another thing that he
did that was really clever.
As they're packing up
and they're closing the,
the rock box, the
basically the suitcase
that they put all the
samples into to bring home,
he looks at it, and he says,
"This looks like it's empty.
We didn't come all this way
to bring back a half-full
suitcase."
And he starts shoveling
in the regolith,
the soil from around
him, and that sample,
and NASA numbered all of the
samples, and 10084 becomes one
of the most important samples
of the entire Apollo collection
because it's about a
kilogram of just lunar soil.
And the lunar soil, the surface,
the beat-up, topmost layer
of the moon is this rich
record of the entire history
of the moon is preserved there.
I'll point out two other
things: that bright spot
and that other bright
spot are two experiments
that were left behind, a
seismometer and a retroreflector
that we can shoot laser
beams to the earth to
and measure the time it takes
for the laser pulse to get
from the earth, to the moon,
and back so we could determine
very precisely the time.
Incidentally, while the
astronauts are on the surface
of the moon, they're shooting
laser beams to the earth.
I cannot fathom that we
would ever do that today.
The crew would have to be,
you know, on the way home,
you know put your
head behind the pillow
so you can't be blinded
by the laser.
[Inaudible] in the lunar
module, and they're "pew, pew,
pew" shooting laser
beams to the moon
and actually measuring
the distance.
So this is an example of that
sample, that soil sample,
that regolith sample that
Neil Armstrong collected.
This little grids are two
millimeter boxes, squares,
and so what this
represents, what this shows is
that you know there's
a great diversity
in that material
he brought back.
You can look at it, you can
everything doesn't just look
the same.
There's bright objects, shiny
objects, dark fragments.
Each of those things
is a different mineral,
a different rock.
And so these are,
are labeled here.
The thing to pay close attention
to is this white fragment
here, anorthosite.
Anorthosite, we now know,
is the material that makes
up the bright highlands,
the crust of the moon.
When you look at a
brilliant full moon,
and you see the white crust of
the moon, that's anorthosite.
That's the ancient
crust of the moon.
We also see fragments of
basalt, volcanic rock.
Impact melt breccias,
basically small fragments
of many different
rocks fused together,
generated during
an impact event.
You see these little
shiny objects,
these are impact glasses.
The shiny material that
Buzz Aldrin was describing.
So in just one scoop
of material,
you see an incredible diversity
that represents not just the
one location that they landed
at the moon, but indeed,
fragments from all around,
you know within hundreds of
kilometers of where they landed.
And so if we had only been
to the moon with Apollo XI,
we would have learned a lot.
Now it's a good thing that
we didn't stop with Apollo XI
because there was a
lot left to learn,
but with this one mission, it
really, again, opened the doors
to our understanding
of the moon.
So what did those, not just
those first Apollo XI samples
tell us, but what did indeed the
entire Apollo XI suite tell us?
Well, first and foremost,
and perhaps most importantly,
that the moon is old:
4.6 billion years old.
And so that constrain not just
the age of the moon of course,
but the age of the earth, and
the age of the solar system.
We learned that the moon is dry.
The rocks from the moon
has essentially no water.
They're drier than any rocks
that we have on the earth.
We learned, and really
showed conclusively,
that impact cratering
is a fundamental
and very important
geologic process.
Before that, there
was some debate
as to how important
impacts would be
in evolution of planets.
The earth doesn't have
a lot of impact craters,
so how can it be that important?
Well, the impact craters
on the earth get eroded
over time whereas on the moon
they remain fairly pristine.
We learned that the
moon, from the samples,
we learned that the moon is
volcanically active early
in its history, and
really stopped having
at least the samples told
us that the volcanism ended
about three billion years ago.
We learned that there are major
impacts that occurred early
in lunar history, and again,
we don't have those impacts
recorded on the earth,
so that gives us a window into
the ancient history of the moon.
And that, that the
early moon was largely
and likely completely or
nearly completely molten.
Now how did we learn that?
I showed you a moment
ago these anorthosites.
No anorthosites are rocks
that have essentially no iron
in them, that's why
they're bright.
They don't, they have
a lot of aluminum,
they're a very bright
mineral, a bright rock.
And so one way to
make anorthosite is
to have basically a
liquid, completely liquid,
and just allow that liquid
to, to cool over time.
Just like if you form a, you
know, you're making ice cream.
If you have something
that's in that ice cream
that is less dense, as it cools
or yeah, as it cools, you know,
get basically layering
based on density.
And so the anorthosite that we
sampled at Apollo XI suggested
that the crust of the moon was
made up of this anorthosite,
and that one way to make
that anorthosite was
through an early,
completely molten moon.
Something that we later
came to call a magma ocean.
And this hypothesis that the
moon was completely molten is
supported by not just Apollo
XI samples, but by other data,
and indeed observations
of other planets.
So with that one sample
on this paper that came
out just a year after
the mission.
I mean, it takes me gosh,
just a year to like
get my car inspected.
[Laughter] They were able to
come up with a fundamental model
for how planets work based on
those samples from Apollo XI.
And I think that's perhaps one
of the most important
things is not just
that the samples came back,
but that the scientists had
an opportunity immediately
to study them in detail
and publish their results
at conferences and in
peer-reviewed literature.
So it's really remarkable,
and this model now has evolved
in 50 years, but largely
stands the test of time.
And it's not just how we
think the moon formed,
but indeed any solid
object in our solar system,
and indeed we're
looking for evidence
of magma oceans around
other stars.
Something that I'm sure if
you asked would 50 years ago,
he would have said, "No way."
But of course now this
is the dominant model.
So Apollo XI was
just the beginning,
and this is a wonderful
visualization not just
of where the missions went
to, but the time that passed.
And again, this is, you know
each month so by November
of 1969, we have
Apollo XII on the moon.
We have a little bit of a
hiatus as Apollo XIII fails
in April of 1970, right there.
But eventually Apollo
XIV is directed to go
to what would've been the
Apollo XI landing site,
Apollo XIV of course
going in, yeah,
the Apollo XIII landing
site in February 1971.
And then the high gear of
Apollo with Apollo's XV, XVI,
and XVII with their lunar rovers
and their extended duration
exploration of the moon.
But again, all on the lunar
near side, roughly equatorial,
and within a central region
which made it possible
for them to, to return
to the earth safely.
So you know this
is what Apollo did.
Apollo opened up this
new era of exploration,
brought back lunar samples.
It's very easy to say, "Well,
which mission was
better, worse?"
Well, they all built on each
previous mission, you know?
Apollo XI, basically
if you put the traverse
that they experienced that I
showed before, you could plant
that inside of a
baseball diamond.
By the time Apollo
XVII goes along,
they're traveling 35 kilometers
over the course of three days.
You know, you plant
that on top of DC,
they get to experience a whole
suite of DC-area traffic,
not just huddled
around the Mall.
[Laughter] They brought
back more samples,
brought more experiments
to the surface,
spent more time outside the
lunar module, and indeed,
actually, if anybody wants to
do a nice little experience,
and I tried this
yesterday, let's see.
Okay.
Oh, no service, well that's
why it's not going to work.
Okay, well, set a reminder for
yourself to wave at the moon
in two hours and 24 minutes
because that's how long Neil
Armstrong had outside the
lunar module.
Apollo XI's exploration
of the moon took two
hours and 24 minutes.
There's a, the End Game
movie, the Avenger's End Game,
is a three-hour movie
[laughter].
That's longer than the
time they were on the moon.
That's impressive.
That's not a good or a bad
thing, that's just amazing.
And of course by the time
Apollo XVII comes along,
they're outside over three
EVAs for almost 24 hours.
That's remarkable!
In the span of four years,
we go from our first steps
to really living on the
moon for three days.
Eating, driving, on the moon.
It's just remarkable.
And so by the time
Apollo XVII left the moon,
we had also had five
surface experiments packages
that were running
simultaneously,
experiments at Apollo XII,
XIV, XV, XVI, and XVII.
Apollo XI experiments package
was powered by solar power,
and so it failed, it didn't turn
on after the first lunar night.
So you know we, there
was this incredible era
of exploration occurring
throughout the 1970s.
Something that we
hope to replicate
in the not-too-distant future.
After Apollo is recognized
that there were still
many outstanding questions
that needed to be answered at
the moon, and one way to answer
that was by sending
an orbiting mission,
a remote-sensing
mission to the moon.
The priority for future
lunar exploration should be a
polar-orbiting satellite,
equipped with photographic,
compositional, radioactive,
and other remote-sensing
instruments.
Well, you could basically
copy/paste that and put
that into the driving
documents of what LRO has to do
when we're at the moon.
And so fortunately,
now ten years,
well just almost ten years ago
in, in June 18 of this year,
we have the tenth anniversary
of this: the LRO launch
to the moon, and we've been
at the moon ever since,
the longest-lived
lunar orbiting mission.
And I love showing launch
videos because first of all,
it's always really exciting.
I also love watching
this because I think boy,
by the time that we get to do
our next mission to the moon,
we're going to have a
high-definitely camera outside
the lunar, the rocket.
Not just you know what now looks
kind of quaint and old-school.
Might as well be like black
and white if it's this old.
But this was our journey to
the moon started from the Cape,
took us five days to
get to lunar orbit,
and we've been going ever since.
We're the longest-lived orbiting
mission at the moon in history.
Here's LRO: 120 lunar days.
Mars Rovers count Mars days.
We get to count lunar days.
Basically a month, and that
tells us that we've been
at the moon for 120 lunar
days, so that's 120 days
of asking questions
about the composition
of the lunar surface, but
because we've now been
at the moon for so long, we
can detect surface changes.
We can actually see how the moon
is changing beneath our feet.
And so I want to end today by
asking some of the big questions
that we still have
about the moon.
I talked about volatiles,
and how we showed the
moon was bone-dry.
Now in 1969 and 1970,
when someone said
the moon is bone-dry,
that meant there was no water:
capital N, capital O water.
Well, it turns out bone has
water in it, so we were right,
but wrong, because the
moon does have water in it.
The moon is bone-dry, again,
it's drier than any desert
on the earth, but there
is water at the moon.
There's water in the moon.
We see that in the
Apollo samples.
And so we, we know that the
poles of the moon, for example,
are unique environments.
Craters near the South and North
Pole of the moon are deep enough
to never receive direct
solar illumination.
We see volatiles inside
some of these craters,
but not all of them, and
so there's a complex story
about how volatiles get to
the moon, are transmitted,
are transported across
the lunar surface,
and indeed where the
volatiles may come from.
Do they come from
asteroids and comets?
The solar wind?
Do they come from the
interior of the moon?
We don't know the
relative record of that.
That timer tells me
that I am about a minute
or two from wrapping up.
We also are looking
at volcanism.
I talked about how the
samples from Apollo told us
that volcanism on the
moon went from about 4.2
to 3.1 billion years old.
We see evidence in some areas
that there are younger
volcanic regions.
We see evidence for volcanism
that may have occurred
50 million years ago,
and so we're learning that the
moon is a much more active,
and was much more
active much more recently
in geologic history.
We're also evidence,
we're seeing evidence
that tectonic activity's
ongoing at the moon today.
Apollo left seismometers
on the lunar surface,
so we know there
are moon quakes.
We know that the moon
is tectonically active,
but when we look at these
ridges, these wrinkle ridges,
these small mounds on
the moon and see boulders
on their surface, one
process that brings boulders
to the surface and exposes
them is seismic activity.
So we may be seeing the evidence
of ongoing seismic
activity on the moon.
Lastly, we're looking
at the lunar surface.
I talked about regolith.
That's this protective layer
that's at the very boundary
between the moon and space.
We're seeing changes.
This is a ratio image, a
before and after image,
of a 70-meter diameter
impact crater with,
[inaudible] with rays going
80 kilometers away from,
from the point of impact.
So we're learning how the
surface of the moon is changing
over not just geologic time,
but changing as we speak.
It's changing today.
We're also able to look at the
moon not just in black and white
or optically, but through
different wavelengths,
different prisms that
reveal subtle changes
in the lunar surface that,
where we can only measure
with precise photometric and,
and you know
observationally-corrected views
of the moon.
And so with this
incredible data set,
we're able to compile not just
a more robust picture of a moon,
an object that we hope to go
to one day, again, with humans,
but an object that again is out
lens through looking that we,
a lens that we use to look
at everything else
in the solar system.
Just as a final reminder,
Apollo explored this area,
six landing sites all on
the near side of the moon.
The moon is roughly the, the
size of the continent of Africa.
We have a large volume
of area to explore.
The entire lunar far side
is almost undisturbed.
There's a small rover, the Yutu
Rover and Chang'e V landed here
on the far side of the moon,
but there's an incredible wealth
of information to be learned
by exploring lunar far side,
the poles, and other regions
of the lunar near side.
It's my hope that
humans are, can be a part
of that exploration
in conjunction
with robotic explorers, not just
studying those samples in place,
but eventually bringing
them back to earth.
I'm going to end with.
Some people have
seen this before,
which I apologize for, but.
Let me turn the volume
down a bit here.
Of course Clair de Lune, and
so this is a visualization
that was produced by
Ernie Wright at Goddard,
who takes our data and
does magic with it.
I don't know what you all see
when you look at the moon.
When I look at the moon, I see a
beautiful, inspirational object.
I see a piece of art.
I see something that
my dad's name is
on through his work on Apollo.
I see a career [laughter].
But I also see something
that should be an inspiration
to everyone, not just us in the
US, or Russia, but everywhere.
And that the great thing
about the moon is you can be
in downtown Washington, D.C. on
a clear night, and see the moon.
You can be in the
middle of the Serengeti,
you can be in the middle
of the Atlantic Ocean,
the Pacific Ocean, look
up and see the same moon,
maybe oriented a
little differently.
You can see the dark
areas, the bright areas.
You can start to see that it's a
geologically interesting object.
If you have a telescope, you can
see a little bit more clearly,
and if you go to our website,
you can see all of
this amazing data.
The moon is there for all of
us to share and explore, and I,
I'm so fortunate to be
part of that exploration,
and I'm so fortunate to
have been able to share
that with all of you today.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Stephanie Marcus: Well, I'm
sure there are some questions.
I think we're going to have to
have Dr. Petro back every year,
especially after 2024.
But my question is
how long is the LRO,
is there an end date for it?
Or it just keeps going?
>> Noah Petro: So
that's a great question.
I, the check is in the mail.
[Laughter] So yeah,
we were supposed
to be a one- or two-year
mission.
We're now going on ten
years, and just in March,
we submitted a proposal
to NASA headquarters.
Headquarters like to keep
us honest, on our toes.
What new science
do you want to do?
And so we proposed for
a three-year mission
that would start at the end
of a, sort of a continuation
of the mission, but three more
years for LRO that would take us
from the end of this
year through 2022.
And indeed, in a week and a
half, I'm going to be going
up to-- anybody know Green
Tree, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania?
Nobody knows it because there's
no reason to go there except
that we're having a
review of that proposal
to basically justify, okay,
why do we want three more
years of the mission?
I'm very optimistic
that we'll do well.
The questions that we got
from the panel are positive,
so I think we'll be approved
to go on for three more years.
Right now, we have
enough fuel on board
to basically manage
the spacecraft
for about seven more years,
so it's always been my goal,
unstated, and I'll say it
publicly now for the first time
that I want LRO to
be at the moon
and image the first US landing.
Not to be too, you know,
yay, rah, rah, America.
But I think it's really
important that we do this,
so I want LRO to be there
to image the first US lander
on the moon since
December of 1972.
I'd like us to be able to
be there to at least be
around when humans are
potentially landing
on the moon in 2024.
Those are my personal goals.
I mean, it's not, those goals
aren't going to keep us funded.
Doing good science and being of
value not only to NASA, NASA,
but to the world will
also be on our side.
I think when we, you know,
we had ten years of data,
so why do you want
three more years?
Well, I've shown you all
those high-resolution images,
but there are places we
haven't imaged yet, and indeed,
we're finding new ways
to use those data sets.
If we take two images at
slightly different times,
you can create a high-resolution
topographic map of that area.
We've only done that
for about five percent
of the lunar surface, so there
are definitely things for us
to do in addition to
detecting changes and all
of the science questions
that I outlined.
So I think we don't just
have three more years
of science in us.
I think we've got seven years,
and, and it's my goal again to,
to eke out every last
drop of fuel we have.
The engineers that
support LRO are very clever
at finding new ways
to extend its life,
so maybe next time I'm here
it'll still be seven years,
a year from now.
So like everything else at NASA,
the right hand of the chart,
of the timeline is always pushed
out, and so I'm trying to push
that right-hand side
out as long as possible.
>> Stephanie Marcus: It seems to
make sense that you would work
in conjunction with what
they're trying to do.
>> Noah Petro: It
would make sense.
Doesn't always make sense,
but I think in this case we're
on the right side of sanity.
>> Stephanie Marcus:
Other questions?
And please repeat the question.
>> Noah Petro: Yes, I'll
repeat the question.
Start-- yeah?
>> Hasn't China announced
that it is going
to the far side of the moon?
>> Noah Petro: Yeah, so they,
they've landed on the far side
of the moon already,
so in January, early--
this is, in January,
early January,
they landed on the
far side of the moon.
I was at home on furlough.
[Laughter] That is why
I have my, my furlough,
the remnants of my
furlough beard.
And they, yeah, and they
landed and roved, and you know
that was their incredibly
successful mission.
It required a communications
satellite
to relay the data back.
It's been a really wonderful
opportunity for them,
and they've actually,
compared to where they were
with their first near
side landing and rover,
been much more communicative.
NASA's worked through
the State Department
to talk with, with China.
Now we have to, we can't do
direct communications with them,
but things are improving
in that regard.
They are releasing their data,
and sharing it at conferences,
and so I don't want to paint
it as an us versus them.
You know we do work well
in competitions, you know,
and now there is this sort
of urgency to do that.
They have been very clear about
their goals of sending humans
to the moon, and you know I
think, I think it's good to have
that sort of initiative
for them and for us.
>> So do you think
it will inform
or change what America
plans to do because it seems
to me they have more aggressive,
a more aggressive agenda?
>> Noah Petro: I should
be careful, I'm, but-- .
No, no, no.
You know, it will, it
will, because they've shown
that it's good and
important, and again,
go back to Kennedy's speech.
He talks about US, and again,
I don't want to wave the flag
and say-- but there's a
certain sense of we need
to be doing these things
because they're important.
And you know we should
try to keep up,
because if we can't
keep up in this regard,
what else are we
not keeping up in?
And that's another important
point is we, you know,
we're not sending these
things to the moon just
for the sake of science.
I mean, it is science,
but there's also
technology development.
We now know how to do
things at the moon,
and better than we could do ten
years ago, and that feeds to us.
You know, you saw that
incredible data set.
We're storing, archiving,
but also making available
one petabyte of data,
managing this incredible volume
of data is, is remarkable.
Now I think we'd love to
have the problem that Netflix
of you know Hulu or whoever
else have as serving data.
But we are, you know, developing
new ways to get scientific data
out to the public very rapidly,
and I think that's important,
too, in how we communicate
what we do is, is critical.
I'll go back and I'll
make my way back up here.
Yep?
[ Inaudible Question ]
>> But I was wondering
where in geological footage
of the astronauts that you
showed, where is that available?
>> Noah Petro: Okay, so that,
so let me thank you for, so yes,
[inaudible] commended the
Air and Space Museum movie,
The Man in the Moon
Remembers, is that right?
Farouk El-Baz did that.
And Farouk gave a
presentation at the Air
and Space Museum not
terrifically long ago.
And then the second
was the footage,
so that's a funny story.
So there's this whole network
of archivists who are working
to restore and digitize
all this video.
And so one of them is a guy
by the name of Stephen Slater.
He works with a friend
of mine, Ben Feist.
Ben actually accompanied me
when I gave my first
presentation here a few
years ago.
And Stephen has been finding
this treasure trove of data.
How many people have seen the
IMAX publicly-released video
movie, Apollo XI?
It was over at the
Air and Space.
It's not the Neil
Armstrong bio pic.
This is the kind of
documentary of Apollo XI,
so Stephen helped find a lot
of that archival material
that was used in the film.
And some of that is, is
being slowly made available
through the Apollo
Surface Journal website
at NASA headquarters.
But it's all being turned over
to NASA, digitized and archived,
and some of it's online on
YouTube, but ultimately,
like most archivists, it's
sitting in hard drives
in Stephen Slater's computer,
not that he's hording it.
He's preserving it
and sharing it
with interested scientists,
filmmakers, whomever.
And so I think there's still
some work that needs to be done
to find a forever home
for these materials.
As it turns out, the Johnson
Space Center isn't exactly
equipped to host, you know, a
several terabyte video archive.
You know, 30 minutes of
watching astronauts practice is
fascinating, but doesn't make
for compelling archival
material.
So it's, or you know,
web material.
So there's still some
effort that has to go
into finding a forever
home for it,
but Stephen Slater has been more
than willing to share material,
and I can certainly get
anybody who's interested
in touch with him.
He as an archivist would
just like to be credited.
And so for anybody who's
watching online, the,
the historical footage is
all because of Stephen Slater
and Ben Feist, matching
that material.
There's a story to
be told about,
about finding that
video material.
And again, as someone
who's trying
to help the next generation
of astronauts do this,
seeing what was actually
done is so critical
because we have written
documentation, but they're,
they're stories,
and they're colored
by people's perceptions
and people's egos.
And so to actually
see how it was done,
I can look and say, "Oh, wow!"
There's some great
footage that was taken,
I mentioned the geologic back
room, this is the support room
at the Johnson Space Center.
The geologists who had
trained the astronauts
and who were sort of, "Okay,
we're going to go to this place,
sample this and this."
And those stories have been
passed down, generation to--
, "Oh, here's how it was.
It was-- ."
No, no, no, no.
You watch it, and
it's like watching--
I was never in a fraternity,
but I imagine it's
sort of what it was.
There's a joyousness,
a rambunctiousness.
There's a seriousness,
but it's collegial.
It's not mission control,
roger, check, yes, this.
It's, "Oh!
Look at that rock!
Look at that rock!"
There's a joy in watching
them see it, in that case,
friends of theirs, walking
around on the moon,
doing geology.
And that's so wonderful,
it's so heart-warming to see.
Yeah? Let's go to this side.
I'll, I'll jump around,
I'm sorry.
>> You know, you talk
about using the [inaudible]
to go to Mars.
What's the advantage?
You know, you've still got to
move the same stuff to the moon,
and then you've got to
escape the velocity twice
from the earth and
then from the moon.
But what's the overall
advantage?
Would you be able
to [inaudible]?
>> Noah Petro: So, yeah, the
advantage of using the moon
as a staging ground
for going onto Mars,
and this is again,
I'm a, I like rocks.
Rockets are a little
out of my wheelhouse,
But the argument has been
made, now again, this all comes
with cost, is if we can go
to the moon, and instead of,
alright, we have to bring
everything to the moon
and launch-- yeah, that
doesn't make sense.
Bring everything to the moon,
and then launch it again.
What if we bring
much of what we need,
but build on the moon you
know extract titanium,
extract metals and build there?
Use the resources on the moon
to build parts for that rocket?
Get fuel, you know?
Part of the hard part of getting
off the earth is not just
getting the equipment, but
it's getting enough fuel
to get you away from the earth.
What if we could get enough fuel
out of the water, the volatiles
that are at the moon, turn
that into rocket fuel,
and basically use the
moon as a fueling station?
Then if you can use that fuel
there, you don't have to launch
as much deeper into space.
And so you do benefit
from a lower escape
velocity from the moon.
That's been claimed
as the, you know,
that's, that's in the future.
We have to go find
where the volatiles are,
find out in what form
they are, how easy is it
to extract it and use it?
That's the hope.
Here?
>> You talk about missions
earlier, historically
that the Air Force
did map the moon.
The Air Force and
the Army, early on,
before NASA was formed
were, were sending rockets.
But is there any aspect you
know of from the political-- .
If at some point we
said, "Alright, you know,
you're now going
to do reconnaissance satellites
somewhere instead of science,"
but as you probably know, at the
Kennedy Space Center, there is,
there's a capsule that
says the Air Force on it.
And I'm just curious from
what, [inaudible] you know
about that break
off [inaudible]?
>> I mean, well, one of the
things that my father taught me
about his experience working
with Apollo is he
was also working
on the manned orbiting
laboratory
which would have been basically
a military outpost in space,
staffed by astronauts,
observing, flying over Russia
and China, Soviet
Union and China.
And it was deemed very early
on that having astronauts do
that wasn't really
all that critical
because you could have robotic
reconnaissance satellites
do that.
I would love to have the
budget that the military spends
in space because it's
more than NASA's budget.
I'd love to have
their technology
because the cameras are better.
We get their, you know,
several generation old versions.
I think the split, you know.
Well, I guess I shouldn't, I
don't, I can't comment, quote,
comment with any
form of knowledge
of that particular split.
I think it was best
recognized that NASA needs
to be a civilian agency, and
do things that can be shared
and inspire the public.
And we can't say,
"Well, here's this thing,
but I can't talk about that.
And here's-- ."
That it was best set that
NASA be completely open
and transparent, and that we
let the military do their thing.
I think NASA's benefit is that
we can go beyond earth orbit,
and as far as I'm aware,
there's no military interest
in the moon anymore,
beyond mapping it or Mars
or anything else and
that once you get
out of lower earth
orbit, the interest from,
or even geostationary
orbit, the interest
from the military
side diminishes.
They're interested
in looking down,
we're interested in looking up.
And that again, from the
astronaut side, robotic assets
in space can, can
be there longer.
You don't need to keep them fed.
Even, even military
astronauts have to eat
and drink every once in a while.
Hopefully that answers
your question.
Yeah?
>> Based on your knowledge,
is there a particular
area of the moon?
I thought I heard you
say the South Pole.
And then I, I've heard
about the scorching areas
from solar or cosmic rays.
So knowing all this,
what would be
in your opinion the safest
areas for humans to go back now?
>> Noah Petro: Okay, the
question was where are the areas
that I'm interested in going?
And where are the safest areas?
And now that was
what LRO was supposed
to do is find those safe
and interesting areas.
Now depends on how
you define "safe".
Anywhere on the moon is
inherently risky because you're
in a spacesuit and
all this stuff.
Certainly near side is
safer than far side.
If you're on the near
side of the moon,
you can talk directly
to the earth.
You know we know the
equator area of the moon
because we've been there
with the Apollo missions,
for instance, but once
you get towards the poles,
you get into more
interesting areas
because of the presence
of volatiles.
The far side of the moon becomes
geologically interesting to me
because not only
is it unexplored,
but just visually you
see how different it is.
Near side of the moon has
all of these broad areas
of volcanic activity
whereas the far side
of the moon is far more limited.
We know that the crust on the
far side of the moon is thicker.
We don't necessarily know why.
So for me, if I, if Jim
Bryden's son walked in here
or Vice President Pence walked
in here and said, "Yes, Noah,
pick the landing site!"
I would say, "Okay, let's
go, let's go in here.
Let's go to that enormous basin
on the far side of the moon,
there's an impact crater.
The largest impact crater in
the, certainly on the moon,
and perhaps in the
entire solar system.
The South Pole Aitken Basin."
I'd love to know how old it is.
Again, geologists want to
know how old things are,
and how they happened.
If we can date that basin,
that gives us a sense
of how old the oldest feature,
recognizable feature
on the moon is.
It also pinpoints
the period of time
of this intense bombardment
on the moon.
I'd say let's go to the
South Pole Aitken Basin.
Either robotically
or with humans.
But I'd be hard-pressed
to say any location
on the moon is uninteresting.
If it were up to me, I would not
send the first, second, third,
fourth astronauts back to
an Apollo landing site.
Although each of the
Apollo landing sites,
experience Apollo
XVII, in my eye, has,
has unresolved questions
that would really
benefit from going back.
So but right now the, the
push for the first return
to the moon landing is going
to be at the South Pole
of the moon, and again, we know
volatiles are present there.
They have a unique environment.
There's areas that are
permanently shaded,
but you know, the danger
from cosmic radiation,
solar radiation exists
anywhere that's illuminated,
and it's hard to find a spot
to be protected from that.
However, there are features
that have been found in images
from LRO, as well as from
the Japanese satellite,
that show if anyone's
familiar with in Hawaii
or Iceland, there
are lava tubes.
We think we see evidence
for lava tubes on the moon.
Those, I mean, those
would be incredibly
challenging environments.
I think anyone who
talks about, "Oh,
we'll just go into a lava tube."
That's going to be hard.
They're, you know, 100
meters below the surface.
We need to get down.
We have no idea what the
interior's going to be like.
But let's think real big here.
If we could use one
of those lava tubes
as a potential shelter, sure,
it would be complicated,
but I mean, if we're
going to go to the moon
and stay there, we
need to be safe.
The other idea is that you
go, and you use that regolith,
that material that
I talked about,
and you basically bury your
habitat under that regolith,
and that could provide
enough shielding
from a dangerous
radioactive, radiation event.
We were, we were very
fortunate in August of 1972.
There was a massive
solar flare that passed
across the surface of the moon.
It was just between
Apollo XVI and Apollo XVII,
but had astronauts been there,
it certainly would have been
a bad, a bad day for them.
>> Are there lava
tubes at the South?
>> Noah Petro: No,
unfortunately.
So where you see the dark
areas, the dark surfaces,
are where we see lava
tubes, and there is, I mean,
the nearest extensive area
of volcanism is several
hundred kilometers away.
And the nearest lava
tube that we found so far
to the South Pole
is, okay, is in here.
So unfortunately,
not close enough.
But again, great
future destinations.
>> I was wondering
about the seismometer.
Is it still operational?
How often do they
have moon quakes?
>> Noah Petro: Okay, so yeah,
so okay, so the seismometer,
seismometers that
were left on the moon.
The first was on Apollo XI.
That lasted for about two
weeks after the mission,
before the first sunset.
Subsequent to that, on
Apollos XII through XVII,
different versions of
seismometers were left
and operated throughout
the course
of lunar, multiple lunar days.
There was a radioactive
power source,
so they could just be
powered indefinitely.
In September of 1977, there
was a cost-saving initiative
to basically reduce the
one million dollars,
one million dollars that was
spent every year maintaining
the, what was called the Apollo
Lunar Surface Experiments
Package, ALSEP.
And they were switched off,
so saved a million dollars.
Hooray! [Laughter] So we have
that baseline of data though
from Apollo XII in December,
November of 1969 through 1977
with the other missions,
and we saw evidence
for moonquakes fairly regularly.
Small ones.
I think the largest moon,
seismic event was probably
a Richter scale four event.
Now of course right now we
have a seismometer on Mars
in the form of the
Insight mission.
Here we had seismometers
working for many years.
We could measure impacts,
meteorite impacts,
and we could tell, based on the
seismic signal that got to each
of the stations, as
well as interior,
deep interior moonquakes.
There is an initiative put
forward by colleagues of mine
to send a seismic network back
to the moon and have it go
for at least seven
years, if not longer,
to follow up on those
observations.
Again, we have a seismic network
that's based on the near side.
The moment we land a seismometer
on the far side of the moon,
with one on the near side, we
double our efforts and benefit
of the, the measurements
that they can make.
We also did really
clever experiments
by crashing things
into the moon.
And so starting with the,
the post-Apollo XI missions,
basically the empty
upper fuel tanks
from the Saturn V rocket
were deliberately impacted
into the moon, as well
as the lunar modules.
And so those served as known
impact points of known energy
to basically calibrate
the seismometers.
So we had these large,
large-scale events
that we could see in the seismic
network whenever we impacted the
Apollo XIII S4B stage.
That was the one successful,
well, that was one experiment
from Apollo XIII that actually
was able to reach the surface
of the moon was the Saturn,
the empty rocket stage impacted
and was measured at the
Apollo XII seismometer.
In the back, yeah?
>> Is the orbiting vessel
around the moon GPS-assisted
when you're taking measurements?
>> Noah Petro: So there's no-- .
Yeah, so there's only, the
way that we know where we are
with LRO is, is kind
of interesting.
You know, we had a requirement
on the mission that we be able
to precisely geolocate
all of our measurements
with an accuracy of a few
meters on the lunar surface.
Now we've gotten near
the Apollo landing sites,
centimeter-scale accuracy.
We do that in a few
different ways.
Initially, we would
take a laser pulse,
just the same way we shot
laser beams at these mirrors
on the surface of the moon.
Instead of shooting
at the Apollo sites,
we would shoot a laser from
the earth to our spacecraft,
so we could pinpoint in
space, in three dimensions,
where that spacecraft was
pointing down at the moon.
We also have two star trackers,
basically telescopes that point
at different known
stars, and we can use
that to precisely
geolocate ourselves.
In addition to that,
after we got to the moon,
a subsequent mission called
GRAIL, Gravity, Recovery,
and Interior Laboratory --
it was actually two
spacecraft, orbited the moon.
And because they were two,
they could track each other.
So when they're over the
far side of the moon,
we knew how they were moving
relative to each other,
and based on our
precise knowledge
of where those spacecraft were
in relationship to the other,
to each other, construct a very
high-resolution gravity map
of the moon which
we can now use.
And so basically with all of
those different parameters,
we know within a few meters
of where the spacecraft
is in space.
We can take our data set, and
when we get it on the ground,
precisely, basically overlay it
with the existing ten
years' worth of data.
So for any location on the
moon, when I show you those,
those high-resolution images,
you know we know for areas
of the far side,
within a few meters
of exactly where they are.
And again, for areas around
the Apollo landing sites,
within a few centimeters
of where things are.
So our accuracy is, is
pretty, pretty great for that.
And again, that's beneficial
because if we want to go
to a place on the far side, we'd
better know exactly where it is.
And for future explorers, you
know, if we're going to send a--
let's say, let's just pretend
we're going to send a lander,
a long-duration rover here.
Well, you know, they could
precisely locate themselves
based on knowledge of where the
earth is, but you know for over
on the far side,
as you alluded to,
you know we don't have
the benefit of having kind
of the earth as a
geolocation point.
But with this incredible
data set now,
we can basically do precise
navigation just knowing
where we are with respect
to the surrounding terrain.
Not quite dead reckoning,
but pretty,
pretty close to that, okay?
>> Stephanie Marcus:
We should close.
>> Noah Petro: Yeah.
Thank you!
[ Applause ]