Lost in the fog of a cosmic storm Floating on
whimsical wavelengths is the norm Dancing through
the stars, chasing spectrums of light Riding
the waves that are just out of sight Welcome
back, fellow space cases, to Whimsical Wavelengths,
the show where science is illuminated. Today,
we're heading somewhere that never sees sunlight.
And no, not caves, not the deep ocean, and not
a professor's office during grant season. We're
talking about somewhere truly extreme, somewhere
ancient, quiet, and very, very dark. The moon.
The last time this show talked about the moon
was way, way, way back. Well, in the show's timeline
anyway. All the way back to my first recorded
interview. Wasn't necessarily the one that came
out first, though. All about Lucky Peanuts in
Season 1, Episode 6, with NASA's JPL's wonderful
Dr. Morgan Cable. Feels like a different phase
of the podcast entirely. And it's exciting I
get to mentally retrace that arc from those early
Ranger missions. The tradition of Lucky Peanuts
and the sheer audacity of the race to launch
rockets at another world. To where we are now.
My podcast skills have evolved, and thankfully
so has the audio quality. So let me pose this
like a riddle. What's on the moon but never sees
the sun? Well, there are likely lava tubes on
the moon, but that's not what we're going to
be talking about today. The answer is PSRs. I
mean permanently shadowed regions. Near the lunar
poles, there are deep impact craters. That with
the moon's small axial tilt in reference to the
sun, which is only about one and a half degrees,
those impact craters, the sunlight never reaches
the moon's surface there. Ever. No sunrise, no
sunset, no seasons. For comparison, the Earth's
tilt is a comparatively large 23 .4 -ish degrees.
That's what gives us seasons, solstices, and
those long Arctic nights and days. The moon?
Nope, not in a solar sense anyway. It's almost
locked into the same lighting geometry throughout
its orbit. So near the poles, where the topography
and the geometry line up just right, the shadows
become permanent. And in those shadows, temperatures
can drop to colder than Pluto. One important
wrinkle to mention here is that from Earth's
point of view, the Moon definitely does not look
static in its orbit. We see changing phases,
eclipses, supermoons, blood moons, and all of
that drama. And that's because the Moon's orbit
is tilted about 5 .1 degrees relative to Earth's.
These differences in orbit lead to an 18 .6 year
cycle that over that time changes how the Moon
looks to us here on the ground. but here's the
crucial part from the sun's perspective the moon
is almost boring its tilt is only one and a half
degrees the angle at which the sunlight hits
the moon barely changes over time there is essentially
no seasons no meaningful solar wobble so while
the moon may look dynamic and ever changing from
here on earth looking up in solar terms from
the sun's perspective it's nearly frozen in place
and that's why these permanently shadowed regions
stay permanent for billions of years potentially
parts of those craters near the poles have remained
locked in darkness so today we're going to be
shining a light at least metaphorically into
the places where sunlight never goes because
it turns out some of the most exciting discoveries
happen in the dark Okay, please welcome someone
who completed a PhD in 2020, is currently involved
with lots of science communication and outreach,
a University of Maryland College Park Assistant
Research Scientist at the Goddard Space Flight
Center, and Principal Investigator of a NASA
Lunar Stability Team on investigating decisions
making under deep uncertainty for lunar exploration
purposes, Dr. Katlyn Our errands? Errands, yeah.
Errands. See, I'm terrible at pronunciation.
So yeah, welcome to be here. I'm so glad you
reached out. So I guess a little bit of backstory
is normally I poke people, cold call emails or
through friends of a friend, but you actually
reached out to me and volunteered to be on the
show. Yes, I found you out through colleagues
on Blue Sky that have recommended other STEM
-type podcasts, and I'm like, oh, this sounds
fun. And yeah, we figured it would be a cool
way to talk about maybe some cool moon stuff
today. Yeah, and that's exactly why we have you
on here, is to talk about the moon. We'll get
there, but before the scientific paper at the
center of this episode. there was you. And I
like to do this in every episode, just kind of
got to go back through how we end up in STEM
fields because a lot of people, especially in
high school, they're like, oh my gosh, what do
I do with the rest of my life? And it's hard
to, some of us go straight shot like me. It was
like, I'm going to poke lava with the sticks.
And so I was like, yay, tall. And then other
people come into it late. And I think we need
to understand just how different people end up
in these fields. So did you come into it like
right away? You found it early or? Like I saw
that there was sources like an exploration, like
you were in 10 years before obtaining the BSC.
So I assume you found it quite early like myself
and then just was kind of a straight shot or
was there some meandering there? Oh, I definitely
meandered for sure. So I was definitely interested
in astronomy and rocks as a kid, but I found
it more of a hobby. I joined a local astronomy
club back in West Virginia at an early age and
just sort of grew up with. local astronomy club
and just hanging out with space nerds for a while.
But again, I only had a sense of it being a hobby.
I honestly didn't know that I could make a career
out of anything like this until much, much later.
And so when I went to West Virginia University
for my bachelor degrees, I was astrophysics.
I learned radio astronomy. I was a radio astronomer
for a few years. And that's all I really had
in my mind of, oh, this is what astronomy is.
This is what I should do. Until I applied for
an internship that had me do Mars geology. And
my passion for rocks was always still a hobby.
And then I realized, wait a minute, I can combine
space and rocks and make this into a career.
Oh my goodness, sign me up. So at the time, WVU
didn't have space geologists. Now they do. Now
it's starting to become a bit better with faculty.
But at the time, there were no planetary scientists
at WVU. And so how to start connecting with people
outside of my institute was still very new to
me. I'm a first gen college student too. So all
of this was still very... Very new and confusing
kind of deal. But going to my first planetary
conference as an undergrad really helped because
then it's like, oh, I can now just tap into people's
brains and go, where can I go with this? What
can I do with this? Fell in love with it for
that particular internship that was back in 2012.
And then it still took some meandering. I was
doing Mars work, and then my PhD was on Pluto,
much, much further out in the solar system. Now
I'm at the moon, coming back into the solar system.
And I still dabble. I still dabble with other
planetary bodies kind of deal. I'm starting to
get more into civil engineering on the moon and
trying to tie in science and engineering, too.
So so it's certainly been meandering, but that's
the fun part then. And this is the advice I love
to tell early career students out there is just.
Have your own journey with this. There is no
linear path to anything if you want to do space.
We're very interdisciplinary. We have so many
different people with so many different backgrounds
that you pretty much slap space in front of it
and it just sounds cool. Absolutely. And in fair,
I'm... obviously from volcanology and I have
quite a few colleagues that have kind of dabbled
on other planets as opposed to being their normal
they dabble outwards instead of slowly working
their way back in and I think we're going to
have a future episode looking for Mars on Mars
yes I said that M -A -A -R -S which is a type
of volcanic eruption and looking for those on
Mars which tells us something about groundwater
but I don't want to get too sidetracked um so
I guess, time to pivot towards the moon. So listeners
are probably aware of the moon landing. There
isn't much in the way of an atmosphere, but perhaps
that's where we should start. Does the moon have
any sort of atmosphere or can it hold on to anything?
Not particularly. So the moon does not have what
we would perceive as a full, breathable, luscious
atmosphere that the Earth would have. Instead,
it has something... much more transient. It's
there, it's not, it's there, it's not. Called
an exosphere. So think of it as like an exoskeleton
for a bug. You would have an exosphere, a sort
of outer thin shell of dust and plasma and volatiles.
So itty bitty bits of hydrogen and carbon and
oxygen just kind of migrating and bouncing around
just very, very thinly all across the moon. Because
as the sun is smacking up against the lunar surface.
It's just exciting all of those different atoms,
exciting to the point of burying that sunlight
into the soil. And it's exciting all of those
molecules up and then they migrate. That's what
we call it then is just migration of hydrogen
and helium and all these different compounds.
So what little atmosphere is there is actually
being created by the sun, exciting the chemicals
within the soil of the lunar surface yeah that's
most of it the other part is uh the lunar surface
because there's no atmosphere it's going to get
bombarded a lot by itty bitty little uh meteorites
all of that can also help excite and overturn
all that soil as well so there's bits of rock
bits of plasma bits of molecules just bouncing
around is there a way to this is completely out
of left field i'm sorry about this just what
comes to my head sometimes is there a way to
look at the concentration of particles and then
look to see where how much has to be coming from
space versus how much from the soil like how
much volatiles is getting from micrometeorites
and stuff like that So that's still very much
an ongoing study because we're still learning
so much about the lunar environment and also
radiation, too. So it's not just a one sided
problem with what's happening at the moon. but
also the relationship with the sun as well. So
like how much radiation is in this part of the
moon versus this part of the moon. And you notice
then when you look up at the sky, you have the
really darker patches versus lighter patches
of the moon. Each of those areas have their own
mineralogy, their different geology as well.
So topography is going to have a huge role in
how these molecules are moving around and how
much of... it is retained into the soil? How
deep does it go? So all of this is still very
much ongoing investigations, which is quite exciting
because understanding just the chemistry of what's
happening at the moon can really help us out
with resource management. Where do you want to
go? What kind of science do you want to do at
this part of the moon versus this part of the
moon? So this is still very much an ongoing investigation.
Cool. So I guess, just to follow on, because
I can't leave it quite yet, what about being
able to measure these things in real time? We
have weather stations. Oh, yes. Do we have, I
know we've sent probes, but I'm ignorant of what's
on the probes and what still works. So, because
it's also a radioactive environment, I assume
it doesn't last too, too long. The electronics
probably get fried over a certain number of years.
But, like, do we have, quote unquote, moon weather
stations out there? Not necessarily, but we do
have quite a number of orbiting satellites going
around the moon right now. So we have the Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter that's been up since 2009.
The Indian Space Agency also has the Chandigarh
Orbiters as well. So each of these orbiters would
have... monitoring sensors as to what's what's
happening in their orbit some level of radiation
but for elements that really does depend upon
what what you're looking into so we have very
broad, very basic hydrogen maps, neutron maps
from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter or from other
orbiter systems as well. We do have beautiful
mineralogy maps from previous and current orbiters
as well. So it's now piecing those together.
What kind of minerals are you looking at? What
kind of hydrogen concentrations might be around?
We have iron concentration maps. But those are...
kinds of maps when in orbit is quite low res
um if you're wanting something a little bit more
finer detail this is where we're needing to send
more landers rovers and humans well that's kind
of what i was getting at so you're describing
remote sensing which is you're remote you're
in orbit you're You can do amazing stuff from
orbit. We do it with the Earth, too. It's amazing.
But there isn't any, I guess, there isn't much
for on -the -ground measurements of that exosphere,
I guess, is where I'm getting at. That's like
an avenue to come. Which I think segues into
the paper, sort of. Sort of. Because today we're
talking about permanent shadowed regions on the
moon. Diverse lunar polar permanently shadowed
regions and environmental metrics for site planning
decision making is the actual paper name. That's
actually really well and easy understandable.
Sometimes when we have papers, I read them and
I'm like, I don't understand anything in that
title. And it's great because we get to break
it down. But that one seems relatively straightforward.
Good. But nevertheless, there's still too many
questions to ask. So I guess these regions make
a moon base near the poles more ideal, at least
based on my reading and the introduction at the
beginning. So this is like how one would... plan
a mine if we were doing it on the earth instead
of like a moon base because we're trying to think
of where the resources are pretty much yeah so
uh so referring back to like how those molecules
migrate right there's certain molecules that
when they I migrate toward the poles. They're
really like dark and cold because then they can
just freeze together and just stay put. So I
permanently shadowed regions, as the name suggests,
is that these are totally in shadow. where the
sun don't shine, kind of deep and dark, mysterious
craters at the polar regions of the moon. And
so as these molecules are happily bouncing around
the surface, la -di -da, if they find any of
those deep, dark craters, they're like, oh, yes,
excellent. And they'll snuggle in the craters
and then freeze there. And so the exciting part
is, is that we have remote sensing to tell us,
oh, there's... there's frozen volatiles here
it's mostly water ice but referring to the paper
title here there's diversity in what kinds of
ice might be in some of these poles so not only
are they dark but because there's no sunlight
they're also very cold we're talking as cold
as pluto in in some of these regions even somewhat
colder than than summertime on pluto uh so negative
400 fahrenheit you can get some really weird
chemistry with some of those molecules bouncing
around and then freezing together so you can
have water you can have methane you can have
carbon dioxide ice and so this is where that
kind of diversity comes in on how did they freeze
how did they get there and then Everywhere is
going to behave differently because topography
is different. The depth and temperature of these
craters are different. So that kind of lends
into their chemistry is going to be different.
So you can have one PSR that's maybe loads worth
of water ice that we can use as a resource. And
maybe the crater next door may only have carbon
dioxide and only a little bit of water. And so
this is where that kind of diversity comes into
play, like which PSRs might be resourceful? How
do we make sure that we know when we get there?
And then how do we make sure we do it safely
as well, especially if we're using it as a resource?
If you're there only for water, you kind of need
to know where the water is. But maybe you want
to know where the carbon dioxide is. really really
cold ones you need to plan it out okay so you
know the chemistries of these just from remote
sensing from orbit we we can have a pretty good
guess i mean we certainly still need robotic
systems to go there i we have you know the upcoming
viper mission should hopefully help us out with
that as well the the changi south polar landers
as well has been super helpful to just have an
idea as to what the environment is we've never
been to this south polar region before at least
with with humans and so sample return we haven't
done this before we haven't done sample return
of what this ice really is how deep is it maybe
even just the physical state of this ice it could
be itty bitty more likely it's itty bitty little
little tiny ice greens uh but Is it like sheets
and layers? Is it the crushed ice out of your
refrigerator? We just simply don't know until
we get there. So right now it's truly just inferring
based on temperature maps and hydrogen maps.
And we can infer the chemistry based on those.
Okay, that brings up two questions. Let's go
with the chemistry question first. Okay. I would
imagine at some point you're going through modeling
to figure out what chemical constituents would
be stable, right? I mean, you have to have some
kind of physical basis to make this guess more
than just the measurements from orbit as well,
right? Correct. So thankfully, there have been
numerous studies from the 40s through the 60s
on what ice can do, how ice behaves at really,
really cold temperatures. done in a lab. And
so from those experiments, from decades ago,
we have pretty good ideas to, okay, if you're
at this pressure, at this temperature, what chemistry
might you be getting? How does it crystallize?
Is it just going to vaporize as soon as you look
at it? Is it going to take its time? Does it
prefer depth? Does it prefer this temperature
range? Some of those PSRs have some interesting
temperature swings. So some of those volatiles
may not survive. very long um in some of those
dark craters versus others so so again this is
where kind of the where do you want to go and
and what do you want to what do you want to do
what do you want to do about it that's interesting
because that's like the complete polar opposite,
pun intended, to volcanology because we do the
opposite, right? We put under high pressure and
high heat and then look at the chemistry changes
throughout time. And you guys are like, let's
reduce the pressure to essentially zero and the
coldness as far as we can get it. So it's really
interesting that you go literally the opposite
to a volcano in a box. You're like, a PSR in
a box? Yeah, pretty much. That's the fun part
too, is we're still trying to figure out how
do we do this on an experimental level as well.
But this is also where we don't know that much
about the soil mechanics on the moon either.
So like how porous that soil may be. Now think
of it through volcanology, right? If your material
of which lava will... you know mobilize is it
very dense is it porous what kind of crystallinity
are you dealing with so you're having to deal
with like your your type of silica content as
well and in this case it's how much of your carbon
and hydrogen content is that's going to affect
your crystallization what kind of pressure and
temperature regimes are you dealing with to either
enhance or maybe not, of that crystallization
process. So there's some fun physics similarities
here with volcanology. Absolutely. Diffusion
is another good word. Oh, yeah. Okay. And the
other question, because this is more of a physical
question, let's assume we get to the site and
now you want to go sample volatiles that are
in super cold environments. How are you going
to get them back? Because it seems like as soon
as you get them anywhere, they're just going
to vaporize. And now, like, do you have to send
a quote unquote refrigerator truck or something
that can keep them cold in their current status
until you can get them analyzed? What's the process
there? That seems like a huge logistical undertaking.
It is very much a huge logistical undertaking.
And this is exactly what is another fun investigation
happening currently. University of Alabama actually
just got a contract to help with that refrigeration
system for cold sample return from the moon.
They were just awarded. maybe just last month
uh which is exciting because it's giving us that
first step of oh right this is as cold as pluto
we can't just use any normal refrigerator because
as you say exactly the ice may actually sublimate
and there goes your sample so not entirely at
least you get the chemistry but you can't look
at the solids or the chemistry or like you can
only get the gas, which isn't useless. Exactly,
which I mean, it can give you maybe half the
answer. But, you know, how do you bring back
a cold, very ice cold sample from a dark crater?
into the rocket to blast back up into space to
get through the screaming, heated atmosphere
of the Earth to land and then transport it into
a lab. Yeah, so it's totally easy. Yeah, sure.
That's crazy. I can't even. So I guess that's
still in its. Amidst stages? It's quite still
early stages, though, because we're still thinking
about volatile sampling, not until at least Artemis
IV or beyond. So we're not ready, but it's good
that the lunar community is thinking about it.
There's a lot of contract work happening right
now that is at least getting the preparation.
ready and that's where we need to be. Okay and
I guess this research that we're talking to are
talking about today is also in some support of
the Artemis missions right? Yes so this goes
into like site planning and making sure that
we're careful as far as what environment are
we really wanting to study here because they're
so different. Do you want to go easy? and know
we go to a place that we absolutely know that
there's water ice water ice is very easy chemically
it's um it's very forgiving when it comes to
temperatures so do we want easy mode more likely
on the first sampling round or do you want to
go like expert hard mode or gonna get all the
weird chemistry we're gonna go over here kind
of deal so so this is more the latter part of
this paper is just careful decision making what
kind of decisions and we go through a bit of
case scenarios my team on this paper on just
okay if we were to do this let's make sure We
can get there safely. Can we sample it safely?
A lot of these craters are very steep. So maybe
it's more risk, certainly for humans, but maybe
not robotics. So this is where, again, the beautiful
diversity of PSRs, how can we bring that into
the fold of decision -making and site planning?
Okay. Well, one of those diversity, I guess,
jargon words that comes up is double PSRs. What
is that? Like double shadows? How do you double
the shadow? Pretty much. Yeah, that's exactly
what it is. Or I like to call them double troubles.
That's what I call my kids. Exactly. So think
of it this way then is you turn the lights off
to go to bed and it's dark in the bedroom, right?
It's darker under your bed. So you're adding
another topography on top of something that's
already dark and make it more dark. Because I
guess the jargon word more darker is not better.
Yeah, I almost said that. So I guess there's
a difference between the volatiles and solids
in a double PSR because it's colder, right? Like
that's part of the diversity that we were talking
about. Quite possibly the problem with a lot
of these double, treble, double PSRs is that
they're so small that it's really hard for a
lot of the resolution of the remote sensing.
orbital data to really confine a lot of these
and so now at this point we're just inferring
going well we're pretty sure that this is where
it can it can get darker and so therefore colder
but that's still a question about stability as
well because just because you're colder in this
one part and all around you can get warmer are
you cold trapping are you just uh heating around
it that it stuff is just going to escape anyways
We don't know yet. Yeah, of course. And I guess
just to be even more clear, because the analogy
works so well, where double PSRs are inside a
PSR and it's like there's a little bed nearby
that makes the double PSR, right? Like it's usually
a part of a bigger PSR. Exactly. Yeah. So that's
the criteria is that a double PSR would need
to be. within the original PSR. So we've done
a little bit of talk about concentration, where
the stuff comes from, and how they're so diverse.
So are there like, you've already mentioned that
we're going to pick things based on how easy
or hard the sampling goes and what we expect
to get back. But is there also a difference in
rates of accumulation? How do we start planning
forward for resources? Is this a self -sustaining
resource on the scale of 10 ,000 years, a million
years, a billion years? What are we talking about
rates in this regard? Yes. You were way too excited
for that question because nobody can see. This
is audio only. They also can't see your T -shirt
that says, can I lick it with the periodic table
down below, which is phenomenal. Thank you. Yes,
I'm very excited about this because this is this
is resource management question. This is my cup
of tea. So the thing about, you know, can we
make this sustainable? I still goes into the
we don't know the physical content of this ice
just yet. So, again, like, is it? Is it crushed
ice? Is it thin sheets? Is it itty bitty? You
know, all that stuff. But sampling is certainly
the first step to get an understanding of, okay,
what did we do right? What did we do wrong? How
do we make sure we don't just sublimate it to
death? But then onward, absolutely. How do we
do this sustainably? How, you know, is there
really enough? for resource management? Is there
really enough to make it into fuel, to make it
drinkable water for future habitats? And so currently
it's just like, we don't know yet, but it's some
of those things that we need to start figuring
this out now. And then another... side branch
to this too is if it's not then what and so there's
a lot of fun like risk scenarios that we can
go into my favorite though is okay say if it's
not a viable resource there's certainly maybe
not that that much as we thought there was or
maybe it would take so much processing just to
get a milligram of water yeah sure that's gonna
that's gonna hydrate you know a platoon of 50
astronauts no uh but then can we maybe make our
own moon water you know especially if it's a
natural refrigeration system and just nice and
cold can we essentially make you know bring and
make our own and so that can certainly open up
a whole can of worms in that regard but it does
help save resources too transport mass cost everything
um to transport all those bottles of water to
the moon can we just make and have have our own
almost like a recycling water uh system on the
moon so that that's certainly More ongoing investigations.
But for resource management planning, we love
to go into worst -case scenarios and go like,
okay, the what -ifs. What if we do find water
and it's not enough? What if we do find water
and it's deep? Okay, well, now we need to figure
out how do we build a bigger drill kind of deal
so it can get really fun real fast. okay well
uh then what's the next stage to trying to figure
out how if you can engineer your way out of this
if it is the worst case scenario like i'm aware
of like for instance we have a pretty good idea
of what the atmosphere on mars is so there is
like plans that you could in theory extract carbon
out of the air to create jet fuel I'm not saying
it's easy. I'm not saying it's simple or going
to get you a lot of jet fuel. But there is a
theoretical way to do it. We understand what
that way is, even if we can't put it into practice.
Is there something similar here? Like, do we
have an idea of how much we could get in theory
or that it would work in theory? Or what stage
is that? So it's almost to a near testing stage.
So the Viper rover is going to be really exciting
for us. So Viper is going to have a drill. It's
going to have pressure sensors on it. It's going
to have temperature sensors on it. So we're going
to see just how fluffy or stiff the soil is.
It's going to help us figure out volatile extraction.
as well so as it's doing all this this is going
to give us a an engineering idea of okay this
is how tough the soil may be or how easy and
fragile some of these volatiles may be and so
having just that first step with with the small
viper rover is going to be very, very easy for
us. I shouldn't say easy, but it's a first step
to understanding like, okay, how do we engineer
this better? Because right now, if you were to
just go like, I'm going to take my uncle's backhoe
up to the moon, and we're just going to dig it
out and figure it out later. Man, that's going
to cause such a headache with time and cost.
And you can just have, you know, just have a
complete chaotic mess of completely destabilizing
all your all your ice uh right then and there
so doing it carefully safely with a rover first
get a sense of the environment and then we can
start scaling up to like ah okay this is how
deep this is how fragile how do we do this wow
it amazes me like do we actually know more about
this sort of stuff on mars than we do the moon
In current technology, yes. Wow. That is wild.
Right? Exactly. It's because we've tested certain
technologies. with rovers and landers and you
know what you were talking about with the the
oxygen from bringing in the eye from the atmosphere
that's the moxie instrument that was a a first
test of what we can do on another planet for
oxygen just trapping and so for the moon even
though we're not able to do that because there's
no atmosphere but having more technologies build
up of oh, hey, we're wanting to like stay at
the moon. We're going to need more technologies
here. And so a really big program that NASA is
coming forth with is called the CLPS program.
If listeners out there are unfamiliar with CLPS,
this is a really exciting program. It's called
the Commercial Landing Payload Services. And
this brings about private companies and federal
agencies. coming together, partnering up, and
building just these very small suites of instruments,
just scatter them around the surface. Of course,
in a very managed way, not just willy -nilly,
you're going to land somewhere on the moon, good
luck. But very much in a scheduled way. But each
of them are going to have their own personalities.
They're going to have their own sets of instruments
to kind of get us really on the ball of, hey,
not just going back to the moon, but we want
to stay here. How do we do that? Yeah, I wonder
if there's an analogy here somewhere. We often
say we know more about the moon than we do the
depths of our oceans. I wonder if we can say
we know more about Mars than our neighbor, the
moon. Anyway, kind of going on, you said that
Artemis 4 is the projected when we will attempt
to sample permanently shadowed regions. So when
can we look forward to that? Because Artemis
2... Could have launched this month, but it's
probably going to happen this year. So what's
the timeline look like for 3 and 4? And what
does... I'm ignorant. I didn't look this up beforehand.
I probably should have. So I have no idea what
Artemis 3 is supposed to do either. Yeah, so
Artemis 3 is slated to be no earlier than late
2028 right now. So we'll see how that goes. Obviously,
that's very contingent on what we learned from
Artemis 2. For listeners that may not be familiar
with Artemis II, we're not landing on the moon.
We're just orbiting. It's almost like a dress
rehearsal for Artemis III. Because we've never
been to the polar regions. of the moon with humans
before we want to make sure that we can actually
get there so this is kind of the the travel route
uh planning kind of deal to make sure like okay
we we got there we angled it correctly you know
how does landing gonna work um for the polar
region there so and then obviously how to bring
them back So Artemis 3 boots back on the ground
after more than 50 years. Hooray. We want to
get back to the moon. But still, we're going
to a place we've never been to before, the South
Pole region of the moon. So it's going to be
some very basic testing. We're going to have
pretty similar to Apollo style with sampling,
scooping, core tubes, core materials kind of
deal. We're going to have a few instruments at
the ready. A lot of them are tore. the biology
side we want to make sure that you know how our
human bodies behave on the lunar environment
we only did that a little bit for Apollo and
and now we we need to be better I mean our technology
has certainly been extraordinary since Apollo
era and so now we need to be like oh okay If
humans are going to be staying on the moon for
longer periods, we should probably make sure
that their health is going to be good. So Artemis
3 is going to be exciting. Boots back on the
ground. It's only going to be for a few days.
But again, it's a start. Now, are they going
to be doing anything with volatiles? Probably
not, because our technology may not be exactly
ready just yet. We want to make sure we could
actually just... boots back on the ground first
and make sure we know what we're doing. Come
on, you know, it's not so much that, it's that
we know what we're doing, but we need to test
all the new equipment, right? Exactly. I mean,
we truly got some upgrades. We've really got
a lot of upgrades since the 60s and 70s. So yeah,
absolutely. But again, this is a whole new environment
too. So even though it's like, oh, it's just
the moon. There's no atmosphere. What's so different
about it? It's like, yeah. But there's still
some very big differences in the environment
here, in the topography here. The soil here is
slightly different. So, I mean, there could be
some interesting differences here. But then once
we get that sorted out and we have a game plan,
then Artemis IV, hopefully, supposedly, we're
going to be a little bit bolder. We're going
to go further. into those um to those deep dark
mysterious places on the moon and maybe bring
back a nice sample that'd be great and that's
pegged for what 20 30 something yeah yeah 20
30 something that's fair it's just curious um
so kind of this far we've kind of talked about
like a lot to do with the processes and a little
bit to do with the data to like how we model
it and stuff but what What kind of you've already
mentioned one, the lunar rovers that are going
to go and make that chemical type test you mentioned.
I can't remember the name of it. I'm so slow.
But like, is that when is that going to happen?
And like, what other data are you waiting for
in the lead up to what is going to be in perhaps
in your eyes, the holy grail of getting that
sample back in one piece without it supplementing?
What data? Yeah, exactly. So through our conversation,
we have pretty good ideas to the temperature
regimes that we're dealing with. We're dealing
with concentrations of hydrogen and neutron detectors,
the mineralogy maps. That's all fine and dandy,
but that's all still surface level. Now we're
wanting to get more into... the the plasma environment
what kind of radiation are we dealing with how
does the radiation affect not only that migration
of itty bitty compounds that we talked about
earlier but also the human body could that radiation
also affect machinery as well so a big huge pain
of the moon is dust by all means it's a pain
on mars as well i you know We've lost rovers
to dust before. Thankfully, the moon doesn't
have global dust storms like Mars does, thankfully.
Oh, goodness. That would be such a nightmare.
But the dust on the moon is still very challenging
for our instruments. So even just doing hour
to day long experiments of that radiation and
the dust environment would be really handy, but
also. back to the soil too um so viper i keep
saying viper um it's Glorious acronym because
NASA loves acronyms. This is the Volatiles Investigating
Polar Exploration Rover. So it's about the size
of a small car. So we're not strangers to car
-sized rovers. We've sent plenty of them to Mars
by now. But this one's slated to be about late
2027. But it's through... Blue Origin, I believe.
But it's going to have a drill, which is going
to be exciting. About a meter depth of a drill.
And then this is where we have no idea what's
happening. We need more information on the soil.
How stiff is it? How deep is some of this stuff?
Again, how sensitive some of these volatiles
may be. We do have core materials sampled from
Apollo, but in the South Pole. with volatiles
it's going to be it's going to be completely
different uh environment there but also for sampling
in itself if you have a human with a with a super
duper scooper i i you know you kind of need to
know do you need to like really push it in is
it going to be so fluffy that it's going to be
hard to contain do you need do you need an extra
wide super scooper we don't know It almost harkens
back to the original debate, like, what is the
moon? Are we just going to land into a whole
bunch of dust and sink, or is it hard and rocky?
Like, nobody knew way back in the 60s during
the Ranger missions. It's wild. Exactly. And
chatting with previous astronauts that have been
to the moon, their best analogy is flour. So
how flour, it's very dense, and you set it on
the counter, a bag of flour, and it... you know
initially if you try to even just put a cup into
it it's a bit hard you kind of need to jam like
a measuring cup um into it to get your cup of
flour but then all you have to do is blow on
it and it'll get everywhere and so that's that's
the closest analogy that we have if you're trying
to have a visual of just how hard and yet fluffy
the moon can be Okay. I have in my notes here
something I read, the shadow cam from Korea.
Is this like to pierce into those PSRs? Exactly,
yes. So this was a very, very beautifully fancy
camera that would just zoom by very up close
to a lot of these craters. So it's still an orbiter,
didn't land anywhere. But what it did, though,
was that it had a very specific filter to image
the inside of these craters, because now that
kind of goes into not just a morphology, geology.
Hey, let's see what the craters look like. But
also from a safety standpoint as well, this still
helps with the site planning of like, OK. Which
craters may seem safer to land near and not sink
or fall into and freeze. I never really thought
about slope stability as like landing sites.
I mean, that makes total sense. Don't get me
wrong. It just didn't dawn on me to think like,
yeah, we're going to cause a moonslide. It can
happen. It can happen. There's already some beautiful
landslides all over the moon, so it can happen.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's some fun. Could you,
like, after this, as a total aside, send me,
like, a paper that describes them? I would love
to be able to read them. Or I guess I could go
on Google Scholar and find them myself now that
I know they exist, because I never would have...
we don't see as the average person, like the
moon is a very dynamic place. I mean, everywhere
in the solar system is dynamic. It doesn't matter
if it's Pluto or the moon, but it still seems
stationary to us who don't study it, right? And
so I'm surprised initially, but I'm like, of
course, of course there should be. I'm just not
aware of it. Yeah, no, the moon definitely was.
more energetic um on a tectonic and volcanism
scale yeah you know thousands to millions of
years ago yeah exactly yeah i mean it it it's
covered in really beautiful um volcanic activity
um and and certainly landslides and so on but
absolutely yeah it's it's not something that
we think of as being currently dynamic um in
the anymore especially with like geologists on
earth where it's like we see how active earth
is on a daily basis and then for the moon anything
under a million years is considered young it's
true it's true uh kind of an aside before we
start wrapping towards a close uh what we talked
about psrs but we haven't actually talked about
like lava tubes so is that another avenue of
looking for volatiles in the future Potentially.
So in the south pole of the moon, there's not
particularly lava tubes, but we're not just going
to the south pole of the moon going forward with
Artemis. We are still hoping to go to other locations
around the moon to explore. So yes, absolutely.
Can lava tubes be useful as a means of habitats
or even just safe spaces, even storage? as well
because they might be thermally stable. But it
still goes into we need more data. There's been
a lot of really interesting investigations about
lava tubes using Earth lava tubes and testing
equipment for like field astronauts or what we
would like to call analog astronauts, testing
equipment with Earth lava tubes. And can we get
that kind of equipment ready for astronauts on
the moon? to use that same kind of equipment.
A lot of that equipment is really exciting. You
take like 3D scans of lava tubes and then convert
that. You can use it with an Oculus Rift. And
then can we then extend that to almost like astronaut
training exploration into virtual lava tubes
as a sort of training before real life. It's
really exciting of what all is happening right
now. to get us ready for that yeah it's amazing
those lidar units can get down to like millimeter
scale people they are truly impressive and it's
not just being used for space it also allows
us to digitize individual like features inside
the lava tubes and study them separately it's
it's crazy what we can do exactly it's it's wild
and really cool absolutely so uh I've almost
kept you here for an hour. We're getting closer
to that. So it's kind of time to start wrapping
it up. Have we missed anything on polar shadowed
regions that you feel needs a call out before
we move to the less scientific things? Just a
short little call out here is that PSRs are literally
cool, but also that there's still so much to
learn about them on not just a chemical scale,
but also a geotechnical scale as well. Especially
if we are wanting to use this as a resource,
let's make sure that we are able to use it as
a resource. Yeah, for sure. All right, getting
to the wrap -up phase. I wanted to go back to
your bio because I didn't really want to do this
at the front. And I wanted to get into the science
because I was excited to talk about PSRs. But
I think the rest of the curious people that are
listening would also want to know about this.
LEGO First League. I had not heard of this before.
What is it and where can people find it? Because
it sounds amazing. It is such a really fun program.
So it is both a national and a global competition
sponsored by Lego, as the name suggests. So what
First Lego League does is that it takes middle
school and junior high students. You form teams.
So different schools or even communities come
together. You form a team. And you build robotics
with Legos. And every year, you're given a certain
checklist of challenges for your Lego -built
robotic to do. So not just physical challenges,
but also there's a presentation side to it as
well. And this is supposed to teach middle school
and junior high students not just teamwork and
building engineering skills, but also a... cooperative
professionalism? How do you communicate your
STEM to an audience? And so those two different
aspects are really quite interesting, that it's
not just build a robot and then that's it. There's
different levels to this. So I was involved with
this during grad school back in Arkansas. And
I had never heard of this program either until
there was a particular year. Every year is a
different theme, a different theme that revolves
around the challenge and what the student groups
are supposed to be presenting on. And this particular
theme, lo and behold, was on space exploration,
specifically for astronaut health and technology.
And I was contacted by... Wow, they're that specific.
They're that specific. I was contacted by a school
that they were looking for a subject matter expert.
And I'm like, I didn't know this program even
existed. So I did some research in it. So then
I became a subject matter expert for the greater
portion of Northwest Arkansas. I visited nearly
20 schools all around that region, chatting with
different communities, different school groups,
because... these students can reach out to scientists
that if they need a subject matter expert to
essentially help judge, like, are we talking
about this correctly? You know, are we, sometimes
the students need to create almost like a product,
even a concept of a product. In this case for
astronaut health and technology, that theme,
they had to create a product that would benefit
astronaut health and or technology. And this
was quite exciting to see. Like what aspects
were they going for? Are they talking about physical
health or mental health, emotional health of
these astronauts? So me being a subject matter
expert, I just kind of gave them the groundwork
of you could go this way or this way or this
way. talk it through, here's some resources that
you can use for your presentation. Some school
groups would practice their talk in front of
me too, and I would give them feedback. So it
was fun for them to kind of feedback from a scientist
to figure out like how they can improve their
communication skills, get them excited about
presenting it in front of judges, and they get
scores and they can move on into like regionals
and nationals and so on. But yeah, every year
is a different theme. You can certainly find
more about it just by Googling first Lego League
there. But anybody listening in that would be
a subject matter expert for that particular theme,
like more likely there are going to be hundreds
of schools nearby that may. need a subject matter
expert out there to just chat or just to just
poke your brain a little bit. But that was very
fun. I got to meet so many different groups,
very inspiring. And I was awarded a mentor leadership
award through that program as well. Wow. I know
this is blasphemous being from Canada, but I
almost wish I did that instead of hockey. All
right. So we're heading to the last question.
Just before we get to the traditional infamous
last question, any final call -outs of any sort?
That doesn't have to be science. It can be anything.
It could be the next big STEM outreach thing
you're doing. I don't know. Anything. There's
just all sorts of really cool projects coming
up for the moon. And it's not just science. There's
also some cool engineering, lots of fun engineering
tests that we're wanting to do at the moon as
well. And we have... Quite a bit of fun, like
seismometers coming to the moon. So yeah, there's
all sorts of, oh yeah, I see you going there.
Yeah. Well, I am a geophysicist. Oh, there you
go. Yeah. So I spoke your language there. For
those that can't see us because no one else can,
I was doing the whole Dr. Evil finger thing.
Like, yes, bring the seismometers. Exactly. Okay.
So the traditional last question. Tell us your
favorite science joke. I've been ready for this
for weeks. Okay. Where is a favorite place that
a pirate would hide their treasure on the moon?
I know it has to do with the letter R, but I'm
not sure. A PSR. A PSR. You can't even see the
X. Exactly. See, that's the perfect hiding spot.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on
and reaching out through Blue Sky. And yeah,
I'm looking forward to it. And by all means,
the next time you publish a paper, feel free
to hit me up. We're glad to have you back on.
Great. Thank you so much for having me. And that
brings our episode to a close. Thanks again for
showing up and listening on. Remember, if you
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