Humanity's Next Lunar Adventure Begins

As humans return to the Moon, astronauts will experience the lunar far side in ways never before possible—observing the entire Moon from orbit with trained eyes, advanced cameras, and real-time scientific guidance. Combining hands-on astronaut observation with modern spacecraft systems, this mission marks the start of a new era of human-led lunar exploration and discovery beyond Apollo.

Transcript

00:00:00 (music throughout) I cannot wait to hear their voices when they get to the far side of the moon. And I can hear them talk about seeing the moon out their window. I try to imagine it now, and just like tear up thinking about it. Oh, now I got a hold on a second. (laughter) we have human eyeballs connected to wonderfully smart brains, our astronaut friends have, they are going to be able to observe the moon in multiple different ways. They can use their eyes, they'll, look through their camera and snap pictures and just looking out the window, getting that human experience. But during Apollo, the astronauts were so much closer to the lunar surface.

00:00:42 Our astronauts are going to be doing a flyby at a higher altitude, so they're going to be able to see the whole moon as a lunar disc on the lunar far side, that's a brand new, unique perspective that humans haven't been able to look at before. we are doing a lot of lunar geography training with them. They have study sessions and quizzes they can do that are assigned to them. You know, even if you're an astronaut, you still get homework. we actually get in the mockup. in that enclosed physical space, we have to think through the hardware that they have, the cameras,

00:01:13 the computers, their microphones to make these observations. there's four windows up front. through one of those windows, one of our astronauts will be using a Nikon D5 camera. with an 80 to 400 millimeter lens. So something that allows them to zoom in really, far and actually, take more detailed observations of the surface. it's almost like looking through a pair of binoculars as well. it's just like being a geologist out in the field. They're going they're telling us what they're seeing,

00:01:39 looking for colors, textures, different morphologies and comparing the region that we're having them look at to the regions that are around them. we have the science team that is planning the targets that are going to be, observed putting them all on the timeline of how they're going to be observed, and then taking the first look at the data when it comes down. The Apollo astronauts were only on the moon for 300 hours total, and they only went to the equator. That's like going to places that were safer landing sites. And they only saw so little 300 hours total. And so we have so much more to explore and so much more to learn.

00:02:17 And we are the beginning of the next generation that gets to start being a part of these discoveries.