Hey there, I'm digital anchor Brandi Smith.
For the first time in 50 years,
NASA is heading back to the Moon.
The uncrewed Artemis 1 mission is
scheduled to launch on Monday morning,
beginning a 42 day journey around the moon.
This mission is the first phase of
a new era for NASA called Artemis,
which will pave the way for humans to
go to the moon and eventually Mars.
I'm joined by Sean Fuller.
And I guess my first question is this
historic mission launches next week,
but step me through what we're
going to see on Monday. Yeah.
It's this is great.
This Monday is going to be the
countdown to that first launch
of Artemis one as we call it,
the SLS and Orion rocket.
So 733 here in Houston that time,
that's our targeted liftoff time.
That'll be the the launch of the rocket.
The first time we're going to fly this in
space as an integrated system both at the
rocket and the Orion £8.8 million of thrust.
When we lift off,
that's a behemoth going to launch us up.
Going to put that Orion
for our first Test flight,
it's going to fly out about.
Five or six days later,
go swing by the Moon,
go on an orbit out beyond the moon
as we check out all the systems and
get it ready for the next flight
where we'll put 4 crew members
on it and fly them out around the
moon as our building blocks as we
start off the Artemis program.
That was going to be my question.
So this is a test run. What are you
going to be looking for on this run?
Last flight, we've done a lot of
testing on the ground ahead of time.
You test all the systems,
but it is an integrated vehicle.
This is the first time to fly it,
so we'll get the paces out of it,
the performance of the engines,
the performance of the Rockets,
Orion as a spacecraft,
how it's behaving and operating in orbit.
You have the Iranian crude module,
so we got some, some sensors in there of
how radiation will be for the crew members.
It's also the service module,
the European Service module that provides the
power and propulsion of all those engines,
getting the performance date on them.
How are they?
Operating in orbit,
we'll get a lot of that test data.
Also, the heat shield on Orion.
When Orion comes back in Earth,
it'll be traveling about
25,000 miles an hour.
That's about 7000 miles an hour faster
than a spacecraft coming back from the
International Space Station because
Orion's coming from deep space.
So we're going to test out all of those
systems before we put crew on it.
Got it there. There's been a lot of
focus on space tourism in this past year,
but Artemis is going beyond the point
of Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic,
and even farther than Apollo did, right?
Absolutely. This Orion Artemis,
it's the biggest rocket human
rated that we will have ever flown.
Orion will fly 4 crew members and we fly
it on on Artemis 2 with a 21 day duration.
That's longer than any
of the Apollo missions.
Apollo had a maximum of three
crew members for about 2 weeks.
Again, a Ryan will have 4 crew members for
about 21 days and that's just a Ryan itself.
Artemis is more than than Orion or
one of the key components of it.
But as we look into the future,
you have the Lander, so crews will
go from from there to the lunar.
Surface, but then also gateway.
And that really gives us that longer
duration presence around the moon
will have that capability of small
space station where Orion can go.
Then the life support systems
on Gateway will have crews down
on the surface for a week,
longer than a week doing that research,
collecting the science,
building up technologies as we get ready
to go beyond the Earth's moon onto Mars.
That leads perfectly into my next question.
So Artemis is the first is, in this
entirely new set of missions for NASA,
how is it going to get us ready to
send humans back to the moon and back
to Mars or not back to, I guess, onto?
Yeah, absolutely. It's going to
get us ready to to do all that.
The capabilities in SLS and
Orion have that in mind.
So as we build it, we'll use the SLS
rocket to to launch up components of
our gateway that will build that space
station will have technologies there.
We want to do those close to home.
You know, the moon is about
240,000 miles away,
but it's significantly closer to Mars.
So we'll go there outside the radiation
belts and we will protect us here on Earth,
test out those systems,
use them in any environment.
When a lunar surface use them in the
environment around the moon develop,
those advanced technologies will
probably have spacecraft in the
future that can come to gateway
and do test flights before that.
Spacecraft then has crews
that goes on out to Mars.
So all that is building blocks
with this destination of Mars.
At the end,
we kind of call this moon to Mars and
it's really building that roadway to Mars.
How much of these preparations for Artemis
are happening at Johnson Space Center
in the Houston area versus in Florida?
Yeah, there's, there's a great
buzz around here at the Johnson
Space Center Mission Control.
This is where Mission Control
is for the Artemis missions.
So the processing the,
the rocket in the spacecraft at Kennedy
Space Center doing a great job down there.
All those ground infrastructure elements
that come together when the engines
light and it clears the tower right
here at the Johnson space controller,
that's where flight control is.
So for about the 42 day
mission of this Artemis one,
we will have folks in the Mission
Control Center just like we did in
shuttle or we have 24 hours a day.
The space station controlling
that spacecraft as it goes out,
run through these paces,
a test mission,
and then comes back and lands
off the California coast,
all controlled here in Houston
for so many people. Or Apollo.
Just changed how a generation
looked up at the sky,
at the moon, at the stars. How?
How was Artemis different from Apollo?
Yeah, I think it's great.
We're in a different era now.
So we've had crews living on space
station for 22 years almost.
And I talk about that because
there's been a permanent presence
for a lot of the population.
So now our normal is cruise
in orbit around the earth.
We're expanding that normal.
There was a scouting mission in Apollo.
Now we're permanently exploring beyond that,
building this infrastructure that
allows us to return sustainable manner.
We're really expanding the frontier
of human exploration out to the moon.
And then doing that scouting
mission out to Mars too.
In the future,
will we look to then eventually
expand beyond that as well?
You know, I I wasn't alive when
the Apollo missions launched, but.
I hearing this, it generates this
excitement that I think probably
that generation had as well when
we were talking about going to
the moon for the first time.
Do you think Artemis can do that same thing,
can inspire or generate that,
that lifelong interest in space?
I I think it's great. You know,
one of the things my job takes me around
the world and I'm always inspired the
number of people I see in airports in
and around the world that have T-shirts
that say NASA on them or or space,
it's really something that that's
come here in the last decade or
so I'll say people see this.
We as a human species we've always been
exploring what's over the next hill,
what's over the next mountain,
what's West of the Mississippi River.
All that exploration,
we're just doing that now off of the Earth.
We we've done a lot of exploration on Earth.
We're now going above and beyond that.
I think it really inspires folks
that they can relate to it, right?
We all want to see what's ahead,
what's new to discover out there,
and that's what we're doing.
What are you most excited
for about this mission?
Yeah, it's great. You know,
this is being at first flight,
it really starts the ball rolling on it,
that this flight is going
to get us a lot of data.
Me as an engineer, right,
I want to get that data back.
You do a lot of calculations,
a lot of testing on the ground,
but that performance,
there's nothing like getting out
there and flying it. You know,
I kind of look at it and think about it.
Maybe, for example, here on the ground,
you look at a car and you want to buy
that car and you know all about it.
But until you get in it and
drive it and you experience it,
now you know what it's all about.
That's what we're doing here.
We're going to experience it.
We're going to get that data back.
It's going to help us on all the
future missions as well as we go
from theoretical design into reality.
Has to be really cool to be a part
of all this is is there anything
else that you wanted to add?
Yeah, it's it's been exciting
to be a part of this and really
looking ahead at the future.
You know, I'm looking forward to the
day we look up now we can see space
station fly over not too distant future.
We're going to look up at the moon.
You know, we have a space station
around there cruise on the surface.
We'll see our neighbors and our our
friends here in Houston are the
astronauts that will be doing that.
That's pretty cool.
We live in a pretty unique community.
Yeah, we do. Sean Fuller,
thank you so much for your
time and good luck Monday.
Thank you. Looking forward to it.
If you want to read more about the
Artemis 1 Mission or Artemis overall,
we have so many more resources on khu.com.