Britain’s First Astronaut on the New Race to the Moon | Helen Sharman

0:00Hi, I'm Neil. And I'm Ken. And we are from the Triviality Podcast, a pub trivia style game show where a lack of seriousness meets a little bit of knowledge. Join us each week for an hour long game of general knowledge trivia featuring special guests from around the world. Plus tons of extra themed episodes. If you want to improve your trivia game, or you just want to scream at us in your car when we get easy questions wrong, then we're the show for you. Find Triviality on all your favorite podcast apps. But you know that because you're already listening to a podcast. A new space race is now properly underway with the successful launch and return of NASA's Artemis II rocket, which took four people around the moon.

0:40So the new era of space travel that we've talked about and waited for for so long is finally kicking off, and that's what we're getting into today on The World, the Universe and Us from New Scientist. I'm Rowan Hooper and I'm delighted to be joined today by Helen Sharman of Imperial College London and Britain's first astronaut. Welcome, Helen. Thank you very much, Rowan. Always lovely to be with a new scientist. Thank you. It was quite emotional, this mission, wasn't it? Let's have a clip of the return and just relive that moment. Houston, Tiggerty, splashdown, sending post landing command now.

1:16Splashdown confirmed.

1:17Helen Sharman:Copy, splashdown, waiting on VLDR. Splashdown confirmed at 7.07pm Central Time, 5.07pm Pacific Time. From the pages of Jules Verne to a modern day mission to the moon, a new chapter of the exploration of our celestial neighbour is complete. Integrity's astronauts, back on Earth. Were you nervous, Helen, watching that? I was a little nervous because not so much the actual splashdown, but it was more the re-entry. You know, there'd been a bit of a problem with the heat shield on the first time. And then in order to get around the problem, rather than properly fix it, there'd been this slightly different trajectory of re-entering rather than doing a big skip off the atmosphere.

2:01They'd done what they called a loft, a tiny little lift back into space again before they re-entered the atmosphere for the second time. So, yes, I was just a tad nervous about how the thermal protection would all hold up for them. But no, it was just fantastic. And yes, when we heard their voices after the radio blackout, it was great. Of course, then the parachutes all opening up. One took a little bit longer, didn't it, than the others? So that was also a bit edge of the seat business. But yeah, splashdown, great relief, lovely. You know, you mentioned the heat shield. And I was also a bit worried because there was some quite big gouges out from the Artemis 1 mission when they'd been testing that.

2:45And NASA had been a little bit untransparent about what was happening, hadn't they? they? Yeah, I mean, to start with, it was all very transparent. So NASA showed us what the problem was. And then they recognised that it had been created because of this skip back into space. So the idea was that when they came back through the atmosphere, the heat shield should have been porous enough so that any gases that were built up would nicely move through, pass through this heat shield into the upper layers of the atmosphere, everything should be fine. But what seemed to happened was that the surface got charred so that it was not porous.

3:24So when they then went back up into space again on this skip, those gases sputtered out, were trying to break out. You can imagine them sort of building up, the pressure building up, and bits of this heat shield were literally blown away. Now Nasser then said, well, if the astronauts had been inside, then the temperatures that they'd recorded would have been okay. But of course, in order to get around this, You don't know that it's going to be, it could be even worse the next time. But to get around it then, this second trajectory, so that they weren't in space for so long after they'd already had a little bit of heating through the upper layers of the atmosphere.

3:59It all seemed to work in theory. And of course, there were tests done in the Arcjet facilities in NASA and other places. So they'd tested it as much as possible. But there's nothing like testing something in real life. And, you know, this is a standard practice that you do all your testing. You do it as including life support systems as much as you possibly can. Then you put astronauts in it. And then you go a long way around the moon. You don't do it all in one go. So, yeah, there was this tad of nervousness. But clearly, I mean, either they were very lucky or just people had just done their jobs absolutely brilliantly.

4:38And what was really phenomenal, I thought, was the calculations that had been made about the orbits. When we think about how far this spacecraft was travelling and how accurate and precise both that they needed to be with their calculations in terms of the burns, the angles of trajectory and everything, absolutely phenomenal calculations. So hats off to all of those teams. Just superb work. Let's talk again about the emotional value of this mission, because, I mean, you have to be of a certain age now to remember the Apollo missions. And so this was really an inspiration for a whole new generation who missed Apollo, isn't it?

5:18I hope so. I think there's a bit of a, sometimes a bit of a complacency. Well, it's been done, why do it again? I never appreciated, you know, I was very young when Apollo's missions were going, But I do remember studying them at school and didn't appreciate the amount of the complexity of it, really, the technology that was required and how trained the astronauts needed to be. But also then how flying by the seat of the pants they were because they didn't really know what the surface of the moon was like and how it was going to be when they were getting close to it. So all of that, I think, it's only when you start to delve into the details.

6:01When we hear from NASA, they have shared so much, haven't they? And that's been glorious. We've not only had all the press conferences, but we've had a lot of direct feeds from inside the spacecraft. When you think that's traveling a quarter of a million miles away, and we're getting those links live into our rooms, It's just really great the way that we've had that shared information. And of course, that's allowed us to share in, yes, in the complexity of the technology, but also, as you point out, all this emotion. And we've seen there are astronauts in there. They've shown their human size.

6:39They've not acted in this robotic kind of way. I'm going to show how clever a fighter pilot I am or anything. They've shown that they are people enduring this mission as well as enjoying it. and behaving as part of one crew. And that's been a joy, hasn't it? Yeah, it really has. We mentioned that it's a space race again. We had the original US-Soviet Union space race to get to the moon, which kind of ended when the US got there first. This time it's between the US and China. The Americans have effectively said that. We want to get there and beat China. What are the differences this time around that might make us hope that it's not going to fizzle out and this is really going to lead to a sustained presence on the moon?

7:30Yes, interesting, isn't it? I think there's a number of differences now. One, of course, is that China, I have no doubt, they will put people on the moon, they will have operations on the moon, and they will have sustained operations on the moon. And I think America is in no doubt about that as well. This isn't just a kind of a get there, whoever gets there first, then everybody else retreats and forgets about it. This is, China will do it regardless of whether America gets there first. And part of the reason to do this is because we want to get use of some of what's nabbing to this lunar economy.

8:03PwC have estimated this to be billions, hundreds of billions of dollars, 140 billion by the 2040s. I mean, it's huge. Whether or not you think that's a reasonable estimate is another matter, but it's a lot of stuff going up there, a lot of money potentially to be made. But then there's this strategic part of the moon, this South Pole, that is the real race to get hold of. So if you can get to this wonderful part, and it's quite a big part, this crater, it's not tiny. Shackleton crater, is that? Yes, it's this huge crater on the South Pole of the moon, which has got a great big lip on the edge of it where sunlight falls almost all the time.

8:43So you can charge all of your electronics nice and easily. You've got ice inside this crater because it's been shaded from the sun because it's inside the crater. So we've got access to water. Because it's a crater, you've got all of that wonderful, we think science that we can understand about the moon. It's made by some sort of meteor. So what did that meteor leave behind? And what part of the moon, the subsurface? Did it expose? So we've got all of this to learn, really, I think, interesting stuff. But if you can get to the South Pole of the Moon, where you've got this access to water and light, then you have sustainable operations from which you can explore the Moon much further.

9:24So I think it's a great strategic location. Everybody wants to get there. Everybody wants to get to the best bit. We're not really quite sure what the best bit is yet. It's not been very well explored. So yes, there's this big race. And of course, there will be some geopolitical prowess to being the first to establish an operation. Because then the other thing about this is the international regulations of it all. Not that we've really got any regulations, but we do have some sort of, let's say, a first attempt is what I'm hoping they are, the Artemis Accords, which is what a number of countries are signed up to.

10:00America initiated them. What bothers me about them is that really it's about everybody's agreed, everybody who signed up, not Russia, not China notably. But those signees have agreed that once you've established operations on a part of the moon, then no other entity, whether it's a country or a company, but no other entity should interfere. That's the actual word, should interfere with those operations. so you clearly need to have something you guys started to discuss a safety zone around these operations how big should that safety zone be so let's say you get to the this wonderful crater on the south pole of the moon how you know could you make your safety zone all the way around the edge of that crater i don't know but we don't have those regulations um and the i just want us all to play nicely so that we can cooperate.

10:53Because we have some sort of mining operation that would preclude some radio astronomy, for instance, in that part of the moon. And all the collaboration about making best use of the moon's resources, as well as the Earth's resources to get there, generating energy, we could share that energy generation. We could share the water supply, let's say. But none of that seems to be happening at the moment. Well, that's one of the problems with having private space companies involved so closely, because they're spending billions to try and win the contracts from NASA, SpaceX and Blue Origin. That's the other part of this race, isn't it?

11:35It's not just a geopolitical one, it's between two private space companies. The private ones, though, I mean, these two that you mentioned, they're trying to get the lunar landers, aren't they? So that's what they're really racing for in the short term. And then, of course, that's part of this lunar economy later on. But I don't think that, I mean, as I understand it, the regulations about how we cooperate internationally will support a lot of the private companies. Because then they can be assured of longevity of their investments. So I think it is good for them. But yes, there is this other race, you're right, to get this lander, because at the moment the Orion spacecraft itself can't land on the surface of the moon.

12:16So the astronauts are going to have to transfer, like dock onto a lander, transfer into it and then get to the surface. So Artemis 3, that is scheduled for next year. The idea is that they're going to test this, the Orion capsule. That's the one made by NASA. And they're going to test docking this with lunar landers made by SpaceX and by Blue Origin. Yes, exactly. So we test this not on the moon or not as far away as the moon. We test this much closer to the Earth, quite rightly, exactly as it should be. And then the next one will be docking in lunar orbit and getting to the surface of the moon, using it to actually land.

12:58So these spacecraft are also going to be doing some demonstrations, of course, with robotic probes on the surface of the moon. So we'll understand that they can actually do a soft landing. Of course, it's dead easy to hard land on the moon. Everybody's proved that. You can slam your spacecraft into the lunar surface relatively easily. But doing it nice and gently so that you don't damage it or the occupants is something a bit different. I want to talk about the other missions coming up in a minute. But the thing you mentioned about the South Pole and the fact that there are points there where there's continuous sunlight, you know, that's what's made it always so attractive and interesting a place to put a base.

13:38But now there's all this talk of putting nuclear reactors on the moon. Why do that if you're going to have solar, if we've got solar power, but yet now NASA are saying we're actually going to put nuclear reactors up there in 2028? Well, you're not going to get solar power up there immediately, I think. Not enough generation. So I think that's the idea. And then also, you always want to back up, I suppose. That's the other side of it. And if we can't get, if one part of the world can't get, as NASA is saying this about the nuclear stuff, so if they can't get to where they want on the rim of the crater and get the amount of energy they require, then they've got this anyway.

14:19and nuclear power has been proven in space. It's another part, though, of this international cooperation that we need to understand about sustainability, make sure that we don't contaminate the lunar surface. So we need to operate this kind of equipment responsibly. There's so much involved in this, and I think this race, I don't want the race to become so intense that we forget that some of these other things are important to get right. We will only have one chance to get this right. And we need to make sure it is right. Absolutely. This message is sponsored by the UK government. What happens when a self-driving car can't see through the snow?

15:05Or mistakes a flooded road for a clear one? Scientists from the UK and Germany are working together to solve exactly that. Teaching autonomous vehicles to handle extreme weather It's fascinating research and our New Scientist co-lab colleagues have created a short film about it that's well worth your time. Watch it now at newscientist.com slash road view. We'll talk in a minute about some of the science we might get in the future from the Moon's surface, but what about this mission? I mean, it was primarily to test the, was it to test the life support systems of the capsule and how that went? And there were samples they took, even bone marrow samples from the astronauts on this Artemis II mission, wasn't there?

15:47Well, I think primarily it was really to test the spacecraft. But of course, yes, you're right, including the life support system. So it was both of those. They didn't actually take bone marrow samples on the flight, but they took all sorts of sort of biological samples before the flight and blood and, I understand, wet saliva afterwards. Wet saliva, I think, being spit as opposed to dry saliva where you just blocked your tongue on a piece of paper, which is what they actually did in space. But yeah, I think the main experiments during the flight are all about radiation. So not just radiation damage to the electronics and the spacecraft, but of course to the astronauts.

16:23There was one particular experiment that NASA's always heralded as the first one called Avatar, which is about taking samples of the human tissue from the astronauts and putting them on this chip. So it's like sort of a tissue on a chip, which is a lovely concept, isn't it? And then, of course, they will be analysed afterwards looking at how the radiation might have affected that particular tissue. And then, of course, comparing it with the astronauts before and after the flight. So there's lots of interest in that, partly learned from International Space Station, of course, about understanding how feeling weightless affects our human bodies.

17:00But, of course, here we've got this interesting addition of the radiation. because, of course, where they were so far away from the Earth that you're outside of the Earth's magnetic fields that normally protects us from a lot of the radiation. And the other thing that I'm particularly interested in, actually, is the immune system. So we know that spaceflight can cause some problems to some astronauts in terms of immune system damage. So sometimes it seems to almost enhance the immune system so we get more allergies, and sometimes it seems to depress it So viruses like shingles can break out again.

17:38So how much of that is just general, maybe lack of sleep or general stress cortisol running through the body? I'm no biologist, but I understand all of these things are very important. But also, of course, then how important is the radiation damage going to be? So just looking at the differences between this particular mission, although it's, of small sample size, four astronauts on very one short mission. But it's at least beginning to get some of that data that we'll be able to work with closely later on. And what about what the astronauts saw? Because we all saw some incredible pictures of the far side of the moon.

18:16But there was a point made that we get something more from human eyes seeing it than we do from cameras, like the hues of colour and how we can look at different objects or features of the moon's surface. Can you tell us about that? As I understand it, certainly when the human eye looks at certain objects, so we're not just looking at what we've been trained to look at, of course, we notice other things. We have our peripheral vision and our brain tunes out what is standard and then we notice the differences. So things that perhaps we might not have expected to see, so unlike certain craters and other features that the astronauts were trained to see that that cameras would normally have been trained on had they not had human eyes behind them and the astronauts were saying you know what there's a bit of a green hue and that that bit over there looks a bit brownish and because they could then see that they could zoom in with their cameras and then get particularly good photographs with all the the new digital stuff that they've got up there all the equipment so yeah so there is an element of that of course we've mapped the far side of the moon we've had satellites going around the moon and they've taken loads of wonderful photographs.

19:30And it's not to discredit that, but it's just this extra bit. I think because you've got humans there, NASA was going to make best use of these human eyes. I don't think you'd send humans to look at the moon just for that, but it's because they were there anyway that they could get these extra bits of information. And of course, one of the things that I thought was quite exciting, when they went into this eclipse. So when the sun was on the other side of the moon, they were able to see impacts, meteor impacts, so bright flashes where the meteors were making fresh craters. I mean, isn't that quite amazing?

20:11In real time, they saw like micrometeorites hitting. And the NASA scientists, the lunar scientists were, I think, whooping with joy when the astronauts said, yes, I've seen one. And then I think there was a few, a handful, literally, but four or five that they actually saw in real time. So yeah, that was quite something to be able to see those. I don't know that they actually got photographs of those because of course that's something that would be quite instantaneous that the human eye would pick up. But it's things like that, that yes, we notice, but the cameras aren't trained on that part. So it's great to be able to get those images and yeah, for the NASA scientists to feel it.

20:48And I say feel, because you mentioned the emotions at the beginning. It's about also, when we talk about human eyes, putting ourselves in that place, isn't it? Imagining us looking with their eyes. And I think that's what brings it all so much closer to us. You mentioned the impact, seeing them in real time. And I mean, NASA will be looking at that thinking, we need to factor that in as a threat to when we're down there, especially if you're down there for a long time, if you're making a settlement. So that's one thing. But I mean, will this mission, Artemis 2, really have helped in selecting a landing site?

21:25Or do you think that's going to be more locked in about stuff, about the crater rim and good places around there? I think NASA's known, obviously, that there's been craters and that these are happening more and more because we pick up photographs of new craters. So we know that that is going on. But yes, it's a risk. And of course, it would have been a risk to Artemis as well, to a point, except because they weren't very close to the moon. But nonetheless, they would have been in the line of fire of some stuff going on up there that would have big stuff would have been tracked. But, you know, smaller stuff we can't.

22:00And when it's around the other side of the moon, of course, we don't know what is actually happening there. But yes, what difference has it made? I think in terms of getting to the South Pole, we've known that that's been the location that we wanted to get to. This particular mission didn't take, you know, didn't fly over that particular part directly. they were able to see it from a distance because they were so far away they could see the whole of the moon so this is again unlike spacecraft like the Apollo spacecraft for instance that flew closer to the moon they could only see big chunks of the moon at a time they couldn't see the whole lunar disk so that was why one of the reasons why the different information came out of this particular mission that they wouldn't have gotten in other missions flying closer but I think it's just given them that surety of the spacecraft, the life support systems, and that, of course, humans are still quite capable.

22:54Not that we should be surprised about that. We did it 50 years ago. Humans are capable of going around the moon, of going to the moon and returning safely. We just need to make sure that the technology holds that up. So we've got Artemis 3 next year, and then the following year, supposedly, we've got Artemis 4, which is the one that will bring people to the lunar surface. But between three and four, I read there's going to be dozens of launches to get cargo and rovers to the moon. That seems like loads. I mean, first of all, is it feasible that we're going to have that many launches on that cadence?

23:31And then why do we need so much cargo on the moon? So I can't really answer to the volume of stuff. I mean, certainly we need a lot of different equipment on the moon and we need to test the landing capability. This isn't something you do just once. So this is something that they will want to do, make sure they can do it with a high degree of confidence that they're not going to crash land on the lunar surface, that the spacecraft can get them back up to the Orion and then back home to Earth. And then, of course, later on, we need to be establishing this base. So it'll be part of some of the equipment will be science, just understanding more and more about the moon, which will enable us to get the lunar base in the right place and the equipment that we need.

24:14Part of it will be establishing some of those equipment that the astronauts will need when they get there and enable them to do more work on the surface of the moon as well. So I think it's all just about building this up. And I like it that it is at least a long-term strategy. This has been apparently well planned out, as undoubtedly the Chinese will have been doing also for a very long time. So it isn't just a kind of a quickly, let's land on the surface and, oh, what are we going to do now? I think this is what will make it sustainable. And this is what actually makes it exciting, because then we are really expanding our presence, if you like, away from the Earth's surface and into space and bringing all of that part in sort of the human sphere of life.

25:08But it will be much more like that rather than, oh, we've just taken a little sojourn out there and returned. So, yeah, that is what makes it exciting. But of course, then for astronauts, we're thinking about always that next place where humans might go. And of course, that is using the moon to get to Mars. Very exciting. Yeah. I mean, if it all goes to plan, I heard people saying going to the moon could become like a long haul flight is today, which would be a bit of a carbon footprint to get there. But if it could feasibly become like that, if the sort of stages we're seeing mapped out, we could get to that kind of routine use of the moon.

25:53It's a nice thought, isn't it? I'm not feeling it's going to be very commonplace, commonplace enough for most people to be able to afford a flight, even a long distance flight that is relatively expensive still on Earth. I'm thinking perhaps it shouldn't be that common as well because of the amount of resource still required to get there. And the moon can't support life on its own. It's not like just popping over to another part of the world where you can step out of an aircraft and breathe the air and find the water. We have to do that. We have to make technology do it on the moon. So that's going to be much more resourceful in all aspects of that word.

26:38So, yeah, I can't see it being hugely common, but I can see certainly many more people traveling to the moon, not just as career astronauts, so being an astronaut for all their lives, most of their lives, but doing perhaps carrying out a piece of work that is useful to be done there rather than be done on Earth. It might even be people a bit like your IT crew that they swan into a room and set everybody's IT up. And then because they're so good at their jobs, they go, there you go, bye bye. Call us if you've got a problem. And by and large, it works really well. So I can see a lot of operations sort of happening like that, that people will go to the moon, set up something that they are specialists in and then depart.