Your questions answered about Artemis II and space travel

0:00Nicole Stott:This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30Nicole Stott:travel dollars work harder.

0:31Steve Swanson:Follow Smart Travel on your favorite podcast app. Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing. Another checkered flag for the books. Time to celebrate with Chumba. Jump in at chumbacasino.com. Let's Chumba. No purchase necessary. BTW Group. Void where prohibited by law. CTNC 21 Plus. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. From the BBC World Service, this is the documentary, the home of original storytelling. I'm Nick Rufferuk and I'm here to tell you about our podcast, What's in the World, which helps you make sense of what's happening in your world. So in this episode, we're putting our young listeners' questions all about the Artemis 2 mission to some proper space experts, former NASA astronauts.

1:16Steve Swanson:Four astronauts have travelled further from Earth than anyone ever before. It's part of the Artemis II mission, which has taken humans back to the moon for the first time in over 50 years. The pictures have been amazing. They've been all over social. I have to say I've definitely shed a tear once or twice looking at them.

1:41Steve Swanson:I'm Ikra. This is What's in the World from the BBC World Service. You've been sending us a bunch of questions on this, and we're going to get you some answers from people who know space better than anyone else.

1:52Nicole Stott:Hello, I'm Steve Swanson, former NASA astronaut, and I'm coming to you from Boise, Idaho, in the United States.

1:58Steve Swanson:And hi, I'm astronaut Nicole Stott, and I am here today at the amazing Orlando Science Center in Florida. A lot going on where you are, Nicole. Thank you so much, both of you guys, for joining us. I want to get straight into the questions. So our first question is for Steve. Hello, my name is Sibira Oxford. of an 18-year-old industrial engineering student from Venezuela, Steve. You co-founded the ISS and currently help students design the next generation of spacesuits interfaces. Perhaps most importantly, you have claimed the title of the first person to post an Instagram photo from space. What's the one piece of composition advice you give the Artemis crew to ensure that lunar photos don't look like blurry holiday snaps?

2:43Nicole Stott:These guys are really good, I should say, at doing photos. They've been trained tremendously for these photos, and they have the best background or foreground, how you want to look at it, that you're ever going to have. I know they don't need any help from me, but if you want to do a quick little one, take as many as you can, because you're going to regret not taking every possible shot that you could have done on that mission they have.

3:05Steve Swanson:I hear that. How stable is the spacecraft when you're traveling? Like, what are you working with here?

3:11Nicole Stott:Oh, it's very stable. Things are floating, but you really don't have much else going on. So you get really good pictures. You can actually do longer exposures, etc., because of that situation. I guess the issue with longer exposures, though, is the facecraft is very stable, but it's moving at a high rate. And so sometimes you'll get a little blurriness if you're taking a picture of something that's far away.

3:32Steve Swanson:Nicole, let's get into some other challenges. I'd imagine there's a few other ones than just taking the selfies. So this one is for you. Hi, my name is Vanessa. I'm 70 years old and I'm from Finland. I'd really love to hear that based on your own missions, which were just so incredible and so inspiring to me, that what do you think will be the most challenging part of a Jeremy's second for the crew? You know, everything floats. So whether you're on a spaceship going to the moon or you're on the International Space Station traveling around the planet, everything floats and so if you weren't a very organized person down here on earth where gravity helps you keep track of your stuff in space where everything floats it can become a challenge because you float your stuff floats and and you just have to be really good at uh using the velcro and keeping track of your stuff it's an amazing part of the adventure too so i always tried to look at it like while everything might be a little different in the environment where things float it's not necessarily more difficult.

4:39Steve Swanson:You just have to think about it a little bit differently as well. And Nicole, just on that, I wondered if you could talk us through a little bit of the training, some of the processes that you go through to get to that level and to adjust. Well, you know, unfortunately, we don't get to float much down here on Earth. There is not, there isn't one of those microgravity rooms or something like that. We have some airplanes that allow us to do kind of this, almost like you're going over the top of a roller coaster to you know, feel that sensation of floating. But as astronauts, we don't spend a whole lot of time doing that.

5:13Steve Swanson:Our training is really focused on the systems of the spacecraft, on learning how to do spacewalks, which Steve is like an expert at spacewalking, and, you know, how to fly that robotic arm, and all the kind of interface things that we need to be able to do while we're in space. And I think the biggest thing that prepares us overall is the fact that no matter what kind of training we're doing, we're doing it as a team. You know, our crew is a team and you have to learn how to work well with other people, how to identify your strengths and your weaknesses, acknowledge that you might have weaknesses, which is a challenge for some of us and and be able to pull all that together for a successful mission.

5:55Steve Swanson:And then when you get to space and you finally feel that floating sensation, all of that other stuff seems to come a little bit easier. And then you can concentrate on moving gracefully in three dimensions in a place where everything floats. I can only imagine. Steve, Nicole says you're an expert in spacewalking. What do you have to say about that?

6:14Nicole Stott:What about an expert? I did it a few times. So it was it definitely helps to do that. a lot of training at it. It was though a fantastic thing to do. Spacewalking is wonderful. Nicole's done them too. It's great. And so it's just another aspect of all the training we do and all the things that we have to be able to do to live and work on the International Space Station.

6:35Steve Swanson:And so this next question is for you, Steve. This is Chaitanya Kumar Devgar from India. How does this Artemis II mission fit into the long-term vision of sustained human presence beyond earth rather than just the short-term missions?

6:53Nicole Stott:Yeah, it's one of the first steps and I think it's a fantastic step. I love what they're doing right now. But to our long-term vision, I believe, is going back to Mars, going to Mars. And to do that, though, we have to go back to the moon first. Mars is a very, very difficult mission. It's going to be something that's going to take years to do, as in that trip is going to take years, almost three years. And so you have to have every piece of equipment worked out really, really well. You have to have your procedures, your operations, everything dialed in. And so to do that, we have to practice that.

7:25Nicole Stott:And the moon is going to be a great place to do that. So the idea here, this is the first step of getting back to the moon, getting our systems down so we can live and work on the moon and getting that all started. And then from then we got that figured out, we can go on and do Mars.

7:39Steve Swanson:And something I've seen a lot of people talking about is why do they plan to land on the moon in 2028? The Apollo astronauts did it decades ago. So why can't we do it now? You know, sadly, that's as far as I understand, that's a political and a money decision, right? You know, we as human beings, I mean, we're demonstrating it right now with Artemis II. When we decide to do difficult things, we can pull it together and make it happen. I mean, it's what I believe the space program is all about, kind of turning what we think is impossible into possible, you know, working with an approach of here's how we can, not why we can't, believing there's solutions to really challenging problems.

8:15Steve Swanson:And I think we're in a place now where the direction is we are going to do this. Artemis 2 is putting us in a place to make that happen. Next year, we'll have a really cool mission with Artemis 3, where we're looking at how we rendezvous and dock with other spacecraft, getting our landers prepared for Artemis 4 in 2028, when we go back to the moon, have boots on the moon, land on the moon, and then really get going with the infrastructure we need to support what we'll do there. And while we're on the topic of the moon landings, that leads us to our next question.

8:51Nicole Stott:Hi, I'm Benny. I'm from Italy. My question is, now that the Artemis missions are underway, do you think they will help us silence the claims that the Apollo landings were fake?

9:01Steve Swanson:Thank you. I'm going to give this to both of you guys. So Steve, do you want to pick up first?

9:06Nicole Stott:I sure hope so. I'll answer that way. Sometimes it's very difficult to convince people that we've been to the moon already, even though to me there's lots of data and information out there to support it. You can argue all you want, but if they don't believe it, they don't believe it. And so it's very difficult sometimes. But hopefully this will definitely show them that it is true we can go to the moon, and it's been done before. They'll probably take pictures of the current equipment that are on the moon that we left there back in, you know, from 1969 to 1972. too. Hopefully they'll do that to prove it that way.

9:39Steve Swanson:And Nicole, what about you? We had six missions that landed on the moon. We had additional missions that orbited the moon, you know, similar to what we're doing on Artemis 2. We had missions that prepped us by staying in low Earth orbit. This was not something that we were just going off and, you know, trying to fake once and, you know, get everybody to believe it. This was a repetitive activity with people we know that had their feet on the moon. And our final question comes all the way from Kenya. Hi, everyone.

10:09Nicole Stott:My name is Anya from Nairobi. And my question for you today, is the biggest constraint for missions like Artemis II

10:15Steve Swanson:still engineering or is it humans? To both of you guys, start with you, Steve.

10:21Nicole Stott:Well, we have to be able to have humans live in this difficult environment for long periods of time, which is a little bit of a factor. But we're learning that and doing well with that right now. But so engineering, to me, is the biggest issues we have left to do. I say to have equipment that work very, very well in these harsh environments and are reliable, that's all difficult stuff to do. There's so many things to go on with that. And I would say not even engineering, but logistics, too, because it's an amazing amount of pieces that all have to fit together to make a mission like this work out.

10:53Steve Swanson:And Nicole? You know, if you think about it, neither the moon or Mars is this garden spot that's, you know, welcoming us, right? We're essentially having to turn both of those places, you know, and we're starting with the moon into a spaceship, just like we have done with the space station, where we've had to build it in a way that mimics as best we can what Earth does for us naturally. And that's a pretty complex, you know, challenge to overcome. We've done such a wonderful job with the International Space Station in demonstrating, you know, the engineering behind that. But there's so much more to learn if we're going to be establishing a permanent presence on this planetary body like the moon.

11:32Steve Swanson:The human side of it, to me, goes back to the earlier question, which just says having the will. I mean, we have to be willing to politically and financially support doing it. And then if we do that, I mean, I honestly believe that engineering comes because, you know, we want to bring those solutions to life. And Nicole, if there's anyone listening thinking, I really want to do what you've done, what advice would you give them? I think people need to pay attention to what they're curious about, what excites them, what they want to learn more about. I mean, that's what I did. I paid attention to flying and wanting to know how things fly.

12:07Steve Swanson:And it led me to people like Steve and others who were able to encourage me to think about how that curiosity could lead me to even more exciting things like flying in space one day. We need to follow that curiosity. We need to do it without doubting ourselves. We need to be really excited and passionate about it and look for the people and places in our lives that will lift us up to learn more. And Steve, Nicole says we need to follow that curiosity. And there's been a lot of curiosity around Artemis too. It feels like a lot of excitement. What has been, I guess, your favorite moment from the mission so far?

12:43Nicole Stott:I was at the launch, got to see that, and that was fantastic. It was a very, very beautiful launch. and the power in that vehicle was amazing. I mean, you could just feel it. And so that was fantastic. But now I can't wait to see the pictures coming back. I think those pictures are going to be fantastic. They're going to show so much what the moon is really like. They're going to learn so much more about the moon. I just, I think that curiosity to me, I mean, I have it. I can't wait to see those pictures. So I'm looking forward to it.

13:10Steve Swanson:Yeah, definitely. Before we go, I just wanted to ask you both, what were your favorite memories in space? like a memory that will always stay with you. Nothing beats the view out the window, sharing that with other people, you know, being able to talk to your family and be looking out the window that way and thinking about them from that very special vantage point. I mean, it was this reality check of who and where we all are in space together, like, oh my gosh, we live on a planet, you know, in space. And that's a pretty compelling thing to think about. And as a memory, that's what I've carried forward, you know, through all of it is how we can be in a place like that and appreciate our planetary home from a place like that.

13:52Steve Swanson:And then want to come back and behave like crewmates and not passengers, you know, down right down here on Earth as well.

13:58Nicole Stott:Looking back on Earth, it is just a almost like a game changer for how you feel about things. And I wish so many other people could get that same viewpoint so they could see our planet in that way. And maybe they'd have a different aspect on how much we need to take care of the planet, how much that we are just one humanity on this planet. And we have so many divisions in our world. It'd be nice to have those go away. And so seeing it from that viewpoint really kind of brings that home.

14:28Steve Swanson:I could chat to you both all day, but I know you're busy people. Thank you so much for coming on and chatting to us.

14:34Nicole Stott:Thank you all.

14:34Steve Swanson:Thank you. Thank you for taking the time to listen. If you've enjoyed this episode, we cover a whole range of topics on the podcast from the campaign to scrap period tax in Pakistan to how Christian influencers are spreading their faith online. Just search What's in the World wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

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