Recordings from the Far Side of the Moon
NASA Science ·
Lunar scientists Juliane Gross and Aaron Regberg share never-before-heard recordings from the Artemis II crew as they observed the far side of the Moon. Episode 439 The post Recordings from the Far Side of the Moon appeared first on NASA Science .
From Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars, explore the world of human spaceflight with NASA each week on the official podcast of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Listen to in-depth conversations with the astronauts, scientists and engineers who make it possible.
On episode 439, lunar scientists Juliane Gross and Aaron Regberg share never-before-heard recordings from the Artemis II crew as they observed the far side of the Moon. This episode was recorded September 8, 2026.
Transcript
Leah Cheshier
Houston We Have a Podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Episode 439: Recordings from the Far Side of the Moon. I’m Leah Cheshier, and I’ll be your host today. On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, and astronauts, all to let you know what’s going on in the world of human spaceflight and beyond.
The crew of Artemis II were the first people to fly around the far side of the moon in more than 50 years. And because of their launch date and the Moon’s illumination, they were also the first people ever to see certain lunar features on the far side of the Moon. This gave our lunar scientists a unique opportunity to gather data from human eyes… and voices. While the crew was taking over 10,000 photos, they also recorded voice notes of what they were seeing real time. On this episode, we’ll be sharing a few of those recordings with you for the first time.
The full collection of crew audio, annotations, and images from the lunar flyby will be released October 7, alongside the Artemis II preliminary lunar science report.
To give us some context for what we’re hearing today and why it’s significant, lunar scientist Juliane Gross, Artemis Curation Lead, and Aaron Regberg, Artemis II Lunar Science team member, are joining us in the studio to relive Flyby Day in a brand new way.
A quick note before we get started: we will be playing some highlights from the audio the crew recorded. We have done minimal editing to these clips in terms of cleaning up sound quality and noise, but we have combined recordings where the astronauts had a conversation and each side was picked up by a different recorder.
Now let’s get started!
Juliane and Aaron, thank you so much for joining us today on Houston We Have a Podcast.
Juliane Gross
Thanks for having us.
Aaron Regberg
Yeah, thanks.
Leah Cheshier
Tell me a little bit about each of you. What are your current positions at NASA?
Juliane Gross
Who do you want to start with?
Leah Cheshier
You spoke first, so go ahead.
Juliane Gross
Okay, I’m the Artemis sample curation lead, and so that means I help NASA to get ready to revisit the Moon with humans on the surface, and then collect rocks and return them back to Earth. And so that means I help get the facility ready on Earth that will receive the samples here at NASA Johnson Space Center and curation. I’ve developed the curation strategy plan. I work with the flight operations team to develop like concepts of operations for sample collection, execution, storage, stowage, and then do the recovery, take custody of the samples, and then try to bring them back home to NASA JSC.
And then also train the Artemis crew that will be on the surface to how to identify the samples correctly, how to collect them correctly without contamination or contaminating them. And then once the samples are back here safely, I will do a preliminary examination of the samples and then publish basically a catalog that everybody in the world can access, and then all the scientists around the globe can use that catalog to write sample requests to get these samples to do their scientific studies on them.
Leah Cheshier
So you’ll be one of the first people on Earth to see the rocks that they bring back from the Moon. That’s cool. I love it.
Aaron. What about you?
Aaron Regberg
I am the Artemis Integration Portfolio Scientist, which is a role that didn’t exist about a year ago, until about a year ago. But I’m, I’m one of the scientists that’s sort of working with all of the engineers that are designing these missions to make sure that we’re able to do the science that we want to do when we get to the Moon and when we bring these samples back. So it’s kind of a jack of all trades, master of none position where I spend a lot of time listening to the engineers talk about the vehicles and the tools that they want to design, and trying to think about how that might have impacts on the science that we want to do when we eventually get back to the Moon, and trying to like document that and give heads up to the other scientists. Like, hey, these are the decisions that are being made. Is this going to be okay for the idea of the experiment that you have in your head, or do we need to go back to the engineers and say, hey, is there a different way we can do this? Is there is there changes that we can make to allow the experiments that we want to do on the Moon to make sure that the samples that we bring back that Juliane is going to be responsible for are as close to pristine as possible.
Leah Cheshier
Well, it seems like a little bit of a silly question now, knowing all about your roles, but how how are you operating in each of those roles when it comes to these lunar flyby recordings that we’re going to listen to today?
Juliane Gross
Yeah, so we’re both lunar scientists, and we’re both members of the Artemis II Lunar Science Team. I am one of the five science theme leads for the Artemis II mission, and that means I am or was responsible for representing some of the the we had ten Artemis II science objectives, and I was responsible for presenting them throughout the mission. And specifically, I was the theme lead for impact history, for lunar poles, and for past and future landing sites.
And so that means pre-mission, we the science team leads helped to create the lunar targeting plan for several possible launch dates because we didn’t know when we were going to launch, and so we needed to make sure that we were prepared for all eventualities, and then prepare for the lunar flyby scenarios. And so these plans were then used in integrated mission simulations with the flight control team, and also to help train the crew. And then during the mission, we used the actual trajectory once we knew that, and optimized the targeting plan to make sure that all our theme leads or all our themes were covered, and then analyzed the viewing parameters, and that shows which targets we would want the crew to observe and describe, and then rank them against each other, and also against the other theme leads, and then came up with a solution of what we wanted them to see.
And so we planned when the crew would observe each target. We planned in crew choice periods and guided discussions to address all the themes and each objective. Then we drafted crew questions after the flyby and during the flyby, so that on the crew conference for flight day seven, the science officers had all the the questions that they would then discuss with the crew. And then we also supported the science officer during the mission by finding answers to questions that either the flight operations control team had or the crew in real time, so that they could provide an answer in a in a timely manner, basically.
And then post flyby and post mission, like now, we are evaluating and sort of analyzing the the audio recordings and the images that the crew had to assess how well our science objectives were achieved for our specific themes that we were responsible for.
Aaron Regberg
So I was actually asleep when these recordings were made. Juli was in in the in the science back room, sort of listening along and following along with the flyby in real time, but the the recordings that they made were actually not broadcast over the air when they made them. They were broadcast onto tablets and then downloaded after the crew went to sleep. So when the crew were finished with their flyby, they got ready for bed. Juli went home. A whole second team that I was a part of came in, and the data started getting downloaded to Houston, and so we got to look at the pictures that the astronauts had taken and listen to the recordings. We actually got to listen to them before Juli and her and her team got to, and we sort of started packaging that data and organizing it so that when Juli woke up the next day, she could she could have these like nice, neat data packages ready to go, so that she could start putting together those those questions for the crew. So it was sort of this like back and forth the whole mission. Juli and her team would come in and do a whole bunch of work, and then they would leave, and then we would get up in the middle of the night and come to work and and work on what they did. So we were kind of working around the clock to support what the astronauts were doing in the the few hours that they were awake, you know, the normal amount of hours that they were awake, not a few.
Juliane Gross
Yeah, it was awesome. Those data packets were like amazing.
Leah Cheshier
I love it. Well, you talked a little bit about these did not go out live. These are recordings that the crew made during lunar flyby day, flight day six. And how how were they creating these recordings? What devices were they using?
Aaron Regberg
So they had they had tablets.
Juliane Gross
They’re called personal computing devices (PCDs)
Aaron Regberg
Yes, thank you. Yeah, but they’re they’re like an iPad. Yeah. And then they had special headsets that kind of look like the headsets that pilots wear. So they had like earphones and a little microphone, and those were plugged into the tablet so that we would get really good audio from them.
Juliane Gross
Yeah, those are the Peltors that they sometimes refer to in their recordings.
Leah Cheshier
Yeah, I hear Christina talk about it in some of the ones that we’ll listen to today. So that’s a good note before we get started. Tell me, how were they trained to take these audio notes?
Juliane Gross
Yeah, I can I can talk to that a little bit. I was on the observation training team for the Artemis II crew and sort of helped develop that immersive lunar science and operations training program that we trained them with. And the training included classroom settings. It included Orion mock-ups. We even hung an inflatable moon from the ceiling so they would have something to look through with their cameras, and then you know in simulations, and they had PCDs like these tablets with a lunar targeting plan on there that we had built for various scenarios, and so they would use them in the simulations and in the classroom, we just explained to them how to use that. And then the class training or the training in general included like lunar geology and exploration, lunar samples because like when you take a picture of the surface, you’re essentially taking pictures of samples, so they need to understand what they’re taking a picture of. It includes lunar geography, so they would know where certain features and impact craters are located and how to find them easily. And then like basically the moon’s diverse region with an emphasis on the far side features and then the scientific importance to that. And so we also provided one-on-one training with them when they go and do the recordings of their observations and do one-on-one tutorials and then give them very detailed feedback about their observations, and that helped the crew to gain basically proficiency in their knowledge about the Moon and the use of the tools that they had with them. And I think most importantly, it built the confidence in their scientific observations and descriptions that they needed. And when you listen to the audience, you can really, really hear that coming out. So we’re very proud and excited.
Leah Cheshier
That’s awesome.
Aaron Regberg
I would just say there there was this package of software that a bunch of people worked on called the Lunar Targeting Plan that you mentioned, Juli, and it was it’s a really neat piece of software. It was set up. It’s it’s like almost like Google Maps, but for the Moon. So it was set up for when we knew they would be flying by to to mimic the lighting conditions, and and we would it would step through with time as they were going around the Moon and say, “hey, this is the thing that we want you to look at right now,” and they could have views of it with the with the correct lighting so that it would look as close to possible as what we expected they would be able to see out the window, and I think that that piece of software really helped them to describe what we wanted them to describe and to and to hone in on those key details.
Juliane Gross
Yeah, we had we had prompts in there as well, and sort of questions so that they they could use it as a guide of like what we were interested in. It was a fantastic piece of software.
Leah Cheshier
I mean, I have to agree. I used this on console, and I think was even able to relay some of it externally. Of this is what the crew is looking for at this time frame. Now they’re moving on to this next target. It is an incredible piece of software, absolutely.
And just another point about their lunar flyby day: they were working in teams, so two people were taking photos, and-
Juliane Gross
One person was taking a photo, and the other person was viewing the moon with unaided, like was just with their eyes, basically.
Leah Cheshier
Right. So, can you describe which person was providing the descriptions at what time?
Juliane Gross
Both of them. Okay. So we had two crew members in the windows, one with a camera. It had a lens on it, so you can think of it as a binocular, basically. And then one crew member that looked at the moon with unaided eyes, they were both recording, so they were both looking at the same target and and recording what they were seeing. The reason why we are doing that is because one person that doesn’t have the camera can see the the full disc of the Moon and can really compare surface features and color hues or variations in brightness and darkness, like immediately over the full disc, versus the person that that has a zoom in lens and where they they’re looking at the surface closer up, can look at more like features of certain targets. And we were interested in how color perception or brightness perception changes whether you see the full lunar disc or just areas of the lunar surface, and so both recorded the same target, but one with a camera, one without. And the other two crew member were keeping the spacecraft safe, and then we’re also helping with making sure that the other two that are observing the moon are staying on track and maybe help with orienteering of where features are.
Leah Cheshier
Right. I remember that too. Or swapping out SD cards or anything like that, or battery packs, kind of the background support. And they would switch every. Was it 15 minutes? They would switch.
Aaron Regberg
Oh, that’s a good question. I think it was a little longer.
Juliane Gross
It was like 30 to 35 to 40 minutes. Okay. Yeah, because each target was about eight minutes of a description,
Leah Cheshier
Right. And then I think they had a 15-minute handover period. Well, let’s dive into it a little bit more. Let’s get into the actual recordings themselves. So, first up, we have Christina Koch, Mission Specialist observing Aristarchus.
Christina Koch
And we’re going back full limb right now. Copernicus, and some mountains relief on the limb. You’ve got to be kidding me! Let’s get this. This is picture of relief on the moon, you can actually see mountains on the limb of the Moon.
I want to talk about the area of color. So Aristarchus Plateau, I could never see the color before that they were talking about, but I completely see it now. It is like a yellow snow-capped mountain where the snow is the Aristarchus, I guess, craters that are on its east, its eastern side, very high albedo, and then a more textured area that’s just kind of hummocky and bumpy that is distinctly yellow. Like I said before, it’s like a jaundiced cheek of the Moon. And that color does resemble the tanner color in the northwest area of the bigger seas of Mare, but it is more yellow than the other brown, and it also almost even has a green tint to it. Almost looks like mold growing on sandwich bread.
Leah Cheshier
Okay, just a moment of appreciation first for Christina’s descriptions of it’s like a jaundiced cheek or mold growing on sandwich bread. I can’t see this obviously because it’s an audio recording, but I know exactly what she’s describing. Yep. So tell me about these colors. She reports seeing yellows, tans. Do you see this in any of the pictures they took, and if you don’t, why is that?
Juliane Gross
So the images are not color calibrated, and so the crew’s verbal description about color hues are really the primary science data set. Human eyeballs attached to human brain can distinguish just very very subtle differences in color hues or brightnesses, and so that’s a very powerful tool that we were relying on. And seeing these colors that they’re describing, describing them so well, is amazing because color differences usually indicates that there are differences in composition of the rocks on the surface that you can see, and so that then becomes like prime targets for future scientific investigations. We could now send orbiters to that region and get reflectance data, so like light that gets reflected off the surface, and then you can chemically map those areas really well where there’s all boundaries or texture differences or color differences. So it’s really amazing, and they did a fantastic job with like bringing us there with them and describing those in words that everybody like can relate to.
Leah Cheshier
Yeah, absolutely. And then she talks also about some of the descriptors there. I was calling it lunar vocab- albedo, hummocky, things like that. What do these terms mean to the science team?
Aaron Regberg
So albedo is a fancy science word for how how much light something reflects. So something that has high albedo is going to look brighter than something that has low albedo. Hummocky is a is a description of the topography, and I think the I’d actually be curious to hear what Juli thinks about this, but the the idea that I have in my head when I hear someone say hummocky is like a field with like a bunch of little hills in it. That’s kind of what hummocky means to me. Is that what it means to you?
Juliane Gross
Yeah, that’s what it means to me, and I think she did a good job. She said hummocky and then and then said, oh, it’s very bumpy.
Leah Cheshier
Yeah.
Juliane Gross
And so hummocky is like a very bumpy surface.
Aaron Regberg
Yeah, and I guess yeah. In a geologic context, hearing someone describe something as hummocky gives us some clues as to maybe how that surface was formed, or how that surface has eroded or evolved over the over the time that it’s been a been a surface.
Juliane Gross
Or maybe what is underneath.
Aaron Regberg
Yeah, or what that surface is covering.
Juliane Gross
Yeah.
Leah Cheshier
Did that tell you anything new about Aristarchus?
Juliane Gross
Aristarchus has always been of scientific interest because it’s this region that is volcanically speaking really, really diverse. There are different volcanic products that we think, or eruption styles that that are in this area, we think. Including like we think pyroclastic deposits. So that think of them as fire fountain and glass beads that get deposited, and like big lava flows and like potentially collapsed lava tubes. And so hearing them talk about these colors with that variation, we know from like rough orbital images and mapping that there are differences on the surface, like chemically, and so that they could pick that up with like their eyeballs is like really amazing. And they annotated some images with like borders and boundaries of where they were seeing that, and like just describing that very subtle differences, I think gives us a more complete dataset than we had before.
Leah Cheshier 19:42
That’s very cool. Victor and Christina were really interested in the nearside mare, so some things we can see from Earth and some of the textures and colors that they saw. Let’s hear it.
Christina Koch
So, Victor, one of my favorite things to do with let me let me know if it’s a good time.
Victor Glover
Yeah, absolutely.
Christina Koch
The color albedo. I mean, I am just obsessed with the different colors in the Mares on the eastern side.
Victor Glover
Same. Some seriously interesting colors.
Christina Koch
I don’t know about you, but I see like a very distinctive contact in the north. That’s like brownish tan to the middle, which I see is definitely more gray.
Victor Glover
Brown and tan and gray. Yes, I even saw some green in there.
Christina Koch
Yes, I saw a lot of green in the-
Victor Glover
What I thought was gray, but was green and gray. You know, green over the gray or under the gray.
Christina Koch
Absolutely.
Victor Glover
Yes. So they both talked about the Mare off in the east.
Christina Koch
Yes. And then, so I wanted to see if you see the same boundary between the tan and the gray in the northern Mare. I don’t have the camera, but-
Victor Glover
So from the Mare that we see on the near side of the Earth to the North Pole, like five degrees around the North Pole, it’s it becomes very high albedo. becomes much lighter. Yes, it does. That’s almost like that’s that’s where Pythagoras, that crater, is. If you see a distinct one on the horizon, that’s Pythagoras. That’s cool. And if you can see Pythagoras in the center, there’s a white, almost a 10 albedo spot, like Aristarchus in the center. Yeah, you can see it through the 400 zoom lens, easy, and that, so, yeah. When you’re done, I want to describe something that I noticed that, and see if you see this. Okay. About like color and albedo.
Christina Koch
Okay. Well, I’m trying to. I’m going to see if I can describe what impact is. It’s like there’s. I saw it a lot through the lens, but do you see? So of the Mare on its western edge, there’s almost like two higher albedo infills that look like snakes, almost like rivers, and they kind of like parallel each other. Oh yes. So that’s kind of the southern extent of the what I see is the tan, and then going off from that to the northeast, there’s like maybe three little high albedo craters in a row. To me, the contact between the tan and the gray is kind of along that line. Like if you follow the snakes and then go north and east.
Victor Glover
Yeah, I see that.
Christina Koch
And then everything.
Victor Glover
Yeah, they kind of they cross like caduceus.
Christina Koch
And then the snakes at the snakes area is the gray area. That’s north of them.
Victor Glover
The center of the mare. More brown. These two little river-like. I also see brown in the
Christina Koch
southern part of that.
Victor Glover
I see brown in the southern. I definitely. I didn’t in the beginning, and as my eyes suggested, I see brown in the south of that mare. I definitely see brown in the south.
Christina Koch
That contact is more gradual and different, difficult to discern. Yes, but I swear that contact in the north that I tried to just describe is like literally I could draw a picture of it, and I’m gonna actually try to do that right now.
Victor Glover
So check this out. Something that I that stood out to me is that that region we were just describing, even with the variation in color, that kind of just like in on Earth we have continents and oceans. If that was one, that’s like one continent. Yeah. And then between Orientale and Ohm, the wedge that defines Ohm, that whole area in the center is kind of like the middle color.
Christina Koch
My Peltor powered off as well. Let me see if it’s still coming through. Sorry to. It seems like it’s still working.
Victor Glover
That middle color is like the middle texture and color of the Moon.
Christina Koch
The middle color of the mare?
Victor Glover
The middle color and texture. No, so like it see. So the contact. The the it’s just called the Mare One contact. Uh huh. And then the the middle of the moon, kind of the main part of our view right now. Yes. If you connect Orientale and Ohm, that region surrounding there, between them, because the wedge is different. The wedge to cut out the wedge. I’m going to connect that in a second. Yep. But the lighter part of the wedge to the south and east, sorry, south and west, that all is like not just lighter. That’s kind of like five, maybe four albedo on average.
Christina Koch
Uh huh. It
Victor Glover
also appears that everything down there is like loose and maybe more dusty and jagged. Yeah. Go to Hertzsprung. Yes. And around Hertzsprung, two Hertzsprung diameter. Yeah. That looks to be average of three.
Christina Koch
I got a full power off shoot.
Victor Glover
That Mare is three. And it’s also smoother.
Christina Koch
Test, test. It seems like my Peltor is still working, although it did power off. So hopefully, we’ll yours will pick mine up.
Victor Glover
From images, those look like two different. Sorry, one. It looked like one dis one kind of color and texture. But I see smoothness around Hertzsprung. It looks like it almost got shaved or packed, like the beach in Galveston where everybody drives. It’s hard packed. Yeah,
Christina Koch
it’s like the it’s like almost concrete,
Victor Glover
like concrete. Yeah. Yep. And the craters in there even have really distinct rings and edges.
Christina Koch
Absolutely. The whole thing. It’s almost like the craters were made in like a liquid versus like a rugged liquid versus
Victor Glover
and like and so, oh man, that’s good. I like that. And then the wedge, the darker part of the wedge, matches the darkness around Hertz’s front. Yes, that’s the color. They’re very similar. They have the same average color.
Christina Koch
Yeah, there’s like a you know that line, like you said, of the higher albedo. But everything, and actually, if we’re going to talk about the contact of where, like it’s very distinct where it starts. I think like there’s kind of that almost like a white line, and below it it matches the color of the wedge. Yes, and then the rest of the contact to me is almost like an exact north south longitude. It’s not distinct though. It’s more gradual.
Victor Glover
It is gradual. Yes,
Christina Koch
and but it’s there, like you know, a couple longitude lines to the right. It’s it’s that lighter albedo, and to the left, it’s definitely that darker wedge-colored albedo. So I agree, those two match.
Leah Cheshier
There is a lot going on in this recording. Okay, we mentioned that the Peltor is powering off. That was Christina’s headset that you described. Obviously, it didn’t. So we’re very fortunate for that. But it was it was neat to hear that happening real time as they’re making these scientific observations. They’re ready to pivot. They’re ready to continue going.
I love hearing the excitement between the two of them. Yeah, as they’re talking about the features and bouncing ideas off of each other, and one of the things they talked about a lot was mare. And so, can you just give a broad description of what that is for our listeners?
Juliane Gross
Yeah. So when you look into the night sky and like you look at the Moon, you see two two major color differences. Like one’s really bright and one’s like black. And so the dark areas of the Moon is what we refer to as Mare. There are former impact basins that got filled with lava, magma, and that cooled to form basalt. And basalt is black, hence the areas are really dark. And then the lighter areas, those are that’s the ancient crust of the Moon, that is made of a rock type that we call anorthosite. It’s made out of a mineral that is white that we call anorthite, hence the word anorthosite. And that is sort of like the first rock that formed on the lunar on the Moon when it formed, and that made that lunar crescent. So that’s the really ancient terrain, and it’s it’s bright versus the mare. The basalts are very dark, and they are much younger, so they they appear smoother.
Leah Cheshier
And they talked a lot about colors in this recording too. So there was brown, tan, green. I think even gray. So are we just too far from the Moon to be able to see these from Earth?
Juliane Gross
Yes.
Aaron Regberg
It’s a good question. Yeah, I think that I think that’s right.
Juliane Gross
Yeah.
Aaron Regberg
And there’s just, yeah we’re too far away and…
Juliane Gross
We have an atmosphere that we have to look through that filters out a lot of the colors and so even if you have a telescope and you can like blow it up a lot there’s I think a lot of the light that gets filtered out that we’re we’re not is not reaching our eyeballs. But when the crew was up there you know there’s nothing between them and the surface except the spacecraft window, and so they were able to like detect these very very subtle changes. And these changes are so subtle that like when you’re really far away, it’s going to be hard to see.
Leah Cheshier
Wow. Well, I know we talked about the importance of having the opportunities for the crew to work together. The crew themselves talked about how valuable that was for them. So, were there any of these recordings where that time where the crew is bouncing ideas and descriptions off of each other was that super valuable to you as scientists? What does that tell you?
Juliane Gross
Yeah, I think it was really valuable to us because they were able to discuss what they were seeing and verifying whether the other person also saw that. So that gives us a clue that when one person seeing is not necessarily like a a trick that was played on their eyes, or it’s a it’s a real feature, and it helped them with their scientific exploration and hypothesis formulating even more. They, like you can hear this in Christina and Victor’s audio, where they’re like sort of like they really almost hyping each other up and like talking about it, and they’re getting so excited. And I think it also helped them as humans to connect better. And I think it was Victor who later told us in person that having two people together to do this was really helpful and really helped connect them on a human level, and that he’s glad that when we are going to the surface of the moon, there are going to be two people on the surface, right, and not just one person, because having that other person to connect with and to talk about what you’re seeing, and that excitement that you can share basically doubles the Moon Joy, and that’s what what we get back from them.
Leah Cheshier
Yeah, I mean, I think like you said in this recording, it’s so obvious too because they’re they’re able to have another person maybe put a term to something that they hadn’t thought of, like Victor says “on the beach in Galveston, where people drive,” and that might not have been something that came to mind immediately for Christina, but she can say yes, exactly that.
Juliane Gross
Yeah,or when Christina said “it looks like it was made in liquid,” yes, and then he was like, oh, I like that. That is exactly what it looks like, right?
Leah Cheshier
I think that’s really valuable too.
Well, I want to talk a little bit about Orientale now. I remember even before the launch, the crew was really excited about Orientale, especially Reid, and he mentioned that this was the feature he was probably most excited to see. So, what makes Orientale itself so interesting?
Juliane Gross
Orientale is just really cool. This is like massive multi-ring basin that’s sort of on the limb of the lunar near side, far as a border from the lunar near side, lunar far side, sort of on the western edge of what we can see from the Moon, and it’s one of the the youngest and most well preserved multi ring basins on the Moon. And on the far side, it’s the most dominant feature, and you can see all these like rings. So if you think about a rock hitting a pond and it makes these ripples, that’s what it looks like on the surface. It’s just really cool.
Aaron Regberg
Yeah, and there’s these there’s these sort of we call them rays, but sort of these lines of little secondary craters that got produced by- so the the the main thing whatever hit that produced Orientale kicked up all of this other material and that spread out and created all of these like like lines of craters extending away from the center of of the Orientale basin. And it’s it’s amazing when you look at that in photos you can just sort of see, it’s like a, it’s you can just you can imagine all of these like chunks of material just falling away in a in a line from that center. It’s just a it’s a visually really really striking feature on the on the far side of the Moon. It’s not something that you ever get to see from Earth.
Juliane Gross
Yeah, yeah. The crew described them as bubbles from divers.
Leah Cheshier
Oh, how cool!
Juliane Gross
That’s how they describe them. That was is really cool. Yeah, very striking feature.
Leah Cheshier
That’s a great description. Well, let’s hear what Reid had to say about it real time.
Reid Wiseman
I do want to say it’s also just very apparent right now that Orientale is the primary feature on the far side of the Moon. I mean, it it has just created chaos across that entire area scratches to the south, boulders to the north, northwest, and it is, it is also interesting to me. I will make this observation there. Why don’t the boulders from Orientale go out the near side as far as they go out the far side, that tells me Orientale is older than the Mares on the near side. The Mares must have come after Orientale, otherwise those boulders would be there because they’re everywhere else. It could be impact angle related, but I don’t think so. I think the Mares on the near side are newer than Orientale. Yeah. So stinking cool! What a privilege to be here and be looking at this.
Leah Cheshier
I love this audio because it gives us-I mean, all of these do-but really, it’s just an inside perspective that we didn’t have in the spacecraft at the time. Because you know, on a broadcast, what the public heard is just what the crew chooses to call down, and so hearing their actual thought process and what he’s pausing and thinking through real time is so fascinating versus just hearing the perspective of here’s what they formulated and are ready to call down. So these are just such golden recordings to me. But again, we’ve talked about the importance of Orientale, and and then we use it to determine the crater age for a lot of other different planetary bodies. We we talked about this on a previous episode with Kelsey . So, did this audio give you any new insight into the relative age of some of the features on the near side of the Moon?
Juliane Gross
No, we did not get entirely new in science to the relative ages, but I think what it really highlights is that we try to train them to be mission scientists or lunar scientists, and that is what they were. Right? Like we didn’t tell them about what is older or younger. So Reid looking at what he’s seeing with Orientale and making these hypotheses of like saying, “Hey, I see the rays are ending here, and I cannot trace them onto the Mare from the near side. And that tells me, you know, they covered up basically those those rays or those ejecta, and therefore it must be younger.” You know, we try to like teach them the concept of superposition, like the older stuff is at the bottom, and the younger sits on top, and so he was able to apply that, and so it highlights the importance of the the science training that they get, and it really highlighted that they did become members of the science team, and they were up there and making hypotheses and thinking about that, and that to me was like just absolutely fantastic.
Aaron Regberg
Yeah, I mean that it’s super impressive that these are the the these astronauts are not geologists by training. Like we have given them some geology training, and this is a pretty you know Juliane mentioned super superposition. This is a pretty fundamental concept in geology, but we have we start from this sort of understanding that rocks are laid down in flat layers, yes, and so that the oldest stuff is going to be at the bottom, and the youngest stuff is going to be at the top. And so, if we see, we make an observation like Reid did of of a feature that seems to get covered up by something else, then we’re making, as geologists we’re making the inference that whatever covered up that feature is young. Than what it’s covering up because it couldn’t have covered it up if it was older because it wouldn’t be there to cover up. And it’s really I don’t know it’s exciting to hear someone who’s not a a geologist by training like see something like that and immediately like jump to the interpretation, because that’s that’s not a it’s not a like an intuitive concept, or even like an an easy concept. I mean, I remember back when I was in grad school and I was teaching undergrads. Like it took a long time to get undergrads to understand that that idea. Like it’s kind of a weird, complicated idea, and they were like just on it. It was really cool to hear those kind of descriptions.
Leah Cheshier
That’s amazing. So continuing on with Orientale for a little bit because that is such an important feature. Reid really liked to talk about the ejecta from Orientale. So what is that, and why is it so important?
Juliane Gross
Ejecta is the material that gets excavated when you have an object hitting the surface of any planetary body, really, and so that is the surface material, but also material from depth that is brought up and then distributed onto, in this case, the lunar surface. And so it gives us a glimpse into what lies beneath the surface, and then is brought up, and so any changes in texture or color variations, albedo variations, gives us an an idea of what the subsurface of the Moon really really looks like. And then the pattern can give us an idea of like the size of the impactor or the direction that the impactor like hit the Moon with, and so that’s why that is is really important to us.
Aaron Regberg
Yeah, and it also it goes back to this idea of of how we figure out how old different features are on the moon. So we talked about superposition before, and this idea that the youngest things are going to be on the top, and the oldest things are going to be on the bottom, and if something covers up something else, then we know that it’s younger. So we were just talking about the Mare, the Apollo astronauts. Some of them landed in in those Mare, brought samples back of those rocks, and using a bunch of fancy chemistry and isotopes, we were able to figure out how old some of those dark parts of the Moon are to within a few million years. So when we see that dark stuff cover over the ejecta from Orientale, like like Reid was describing, we can say, okay, we know how old this dark part is, and now we know Orientale must be older even than than the dark stuff that’s covering it up because of that rule of superposition. So seeing where that ejecta is on the Moon like teaches us about how it formed and maybe how big the impactor was, and it also helps us to to date everything, every other feature on the Moon by we have a couple of these anchor points where we made measurements on Earth to figure out how old things were, and then we’re sort of inferring, okay, this feature must be older than this feature, but younger than that feature, and we build up this whole timeline based on where we see the ejecta and where we see the ejecta get covered up, and and where we don’t see it get covered up.
Juliane Gross
It also helps us better understand how these ejecta interact with other features on the surface or topography, and then we can learn how ejecta moves across the surface, and we can take that and extrapolate that to other planetary bodies that are airless, like Mercury, for example, and then learn about impact history there and and and relative ages on those planetary bodies, so the moon is really important.
Leah Cheshier
I agree. Let’s take Reid’s next recording.
Reid Wiseman
Wow, the pillowing, the blanketing of ejecta. I commented on it earlier, and it’s really cool to look down on. It almost looks like windswept desert, but but nothing. Like a dune, just like just just pillowing, just blanketing of of ejecta, and then there is one ejecta south… The ejecta to the south is cool. I think if I was going to do a PhD, that is what I would do my PhD in. Because when I first started studying Orientale, it was the bouldering that I love the most, and now it’s really the south ejecta that I am the most fascinated by.
Leah Cheshier
So Reid describes pillowing. Can you can you tell me what that is? Why he would see a feature that looks like that?
Juliane Gross
Yeah, in geologic terms, pillowing usually describes something that’s like literally pillow-shaped or lobate or or round in appearance, and that is what he used for that ejecta blanket that you know has these like lobe-like rounded pillow-like appearances. So it’s a perfect term that he he chose.
Leah Cheshier
And speaking of the terms, I mean, we hear so many during the flyby. So, were some of these shared with the crew prior to launch, like pillowing, or were some of these? I mean, obviously, some were the things that they came up with real time when they’re seeing something and identifying, you know, what it resembles on Earth.
Juliane Gross
Yeah, we definitely in the in the crew training time were teaching them geologic terms, and we had a glossary. And I think the lunar targeting plan had a glossary as well.
Aaron Regberg
It did, yeah.
Juliane Gross
And so we we try to teach them, but a lot of these terms they they develop themselves, and they a lot of the description that we’re hearing they use objects that they can relate to to like bring us all with them, basically, when they describe the surface and the features that we’re asking them to to look at.
Aaron Regberg
This this one’s really interesting too, because on Earth, when a geologist describes something as as pillowy or pillowing, it almost always means that that rock erupted or came to the surface underneath water in the ocean. And so when I heard that, I I sort of was like had to stop and be like, huh, that’s not the type of structure that I would expect to encounter at a at a crater or an eruption on the Moon where we were pretty sure there was never any liquid water on the surface of the Moon, and so I think you know we have to spend some more time thinking about that and trying to come up with an interpretation of how you might get that sort of smooth, pillowy texture in a in a way that doesn’t involve it erupting underneath an ocean.
Juliane Gross
Yeah, I think one of one of the things we had talked about when Orientale happened and that ejecta happened, there was a lot of melting that happens at the same time, and so you you in that sense have sort of melt mixed with rocks and other things that you distribute onto the surface, and so it appears like to the northern part you have more of that melty ejecta coming out that then could potentially cool and form these like more wet blankets or pillowy things versus it sounds like the South seemed to be different when they observed it, and so that difference alone, I think we as a science team or the lunar science community really needs to deep dive back in and like work more and like observe more and like analyze more.
Leah Cheshier
Well, it’s been very interesting to hear so far. I can’t wait to hear what analysis might come from that in the future. But Orientale wasn’t the only feature that they saw, so we are about to hear Reid talk a bit about Vavilov and Hertzsprung craters. Where are those on the Moon?
Juliane Gross
They are on the far side to the the north.
Aaron Regberg
Pop quiz!
Juliane Gross
Yes, lunar far side So northern hemisphere of the far side of the moon, sort of like semi central towards the the west, maybe a little bit.
Leah Cheshier
Look, I’d believe it if you told me it was on the near side. We could see it.
Aaron Regberg
They’re definitely on the far side. Yes.
Leah Cheshier
Yeah. Well, let’s hear what he has to say.
Reid Wiseman
And now I can zoom in. I’m just gonna take out Orientale for a second. Oh my God! Look at those walls. Oh, it looks so different now.
All right, let me get in on Hertzsprung a little bit. Oh, the swirls that I thought were swirls are not swirls. The swirls that I thought were swirls are just like terrain. I do see that sperm-looking feature that goes right up the center. Wow, that is fascinating. And then you could definitely tell that Hertzsprung- Look at the ejecta, the pillowing, the pillowing that I was seeing on Hertzsprung is, I think it is from, I think it is from Orientale, man. Oh, dude!
All right, Vavilov, looking straight. I am looking straight down onto Vavilov. Straight down. Oh my God! I can’t freaking take this straight down on Vavilov. So Vavilov, inside of Vavilov, that is just amazing. I gotta shield my eyes from the sunlight coming in the cabin. I’m gonna actually close my right eye completely. But Vavilov, the right half of the inner area is smooth, and then there’s some uplift, and the left half is just really, really dynamic and jagged. Dear God, that is so unbelievably awesome looking. I just cannot get over this picture. There is so much data in this one shot. I know you already have all the LRO data. You don’t care about pictures, but dude, come on. There’s no way we are here looking at all of this.
All right. Here’s Vavilov and Hertzsprung… and then I’m gonna go back over.
Yeah, that’s so good. Thank you.
Man, so many shadows across. There’s still down in the very south area. There’s still that bouldering from Orientale. Like, man, that is just so awesome that the shadows here are so wild.
I just I am having trouble comprehending this right now. I am in full on tourist mode.
Leah Cheshier
I mean, who can blame the man? I love this recording. There’s so much to unpack. Reid’s emotion is palpable. And is there anything that you learn as scientists from hearing somebody get excited like that when they’re seeing these features?
Juliane Gross
Yeah, I think so. During trading, I mean, we all like have looked at the Moon so many times. We have shown them so many images or simulated like lunar flybys, and you know, we hung up the inflated Moon, and like they have seen the far side of from images and pictures so much. But then, when they get there and hearing their excitement, I think, really showcases like the impact the the real 3D Moon has on humans, and to me, that that is just so incredibly powerful and like just yeah, we all got so emotional when we listened to that and and heard and heard that. I didn’t quite expect that that this whole journey that we all, we’re on together basically was that emotional. There were lots lots of happy tears everywhere.
Leah Cheshier
That’s so sweet.
Aaron Regberg
It really it really emphasizes too that they’re they’re seeing something that is different than anything we’ve ever seen before. Because I think at some level, I was like, oh, I don’t know. You know they’re they’re going to the Moon. It’s going to look like it does from here, but but bigger, but closer. And if and if that’s all if that’s all that they were seeing, I don’t think you would have heard that level of emotion. You know, if it was just like, oh well, now I’m closer to this thing that I’ve been looking at since I was a little kid. But hearing all of that emotion, all that excitement, like really drives home. Oh, this like when you get up close on this, this looks really, really different. This is something that that is not looking the way it does from. Yeah,
Juliane Gross
I agree. Like the human depth perception is just so powerful, and I think they really saw that and like brought us with them, and like that. Yeah, it was just amazing to listen to them.
Leah Cheshier
He talks a little bit about, he makes just a quick comment of. I know you guys don’t need the pictures. You have LRO, which is the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, but I don’t think that’s true. I think that the the pictures that they took were really valuable. So how do you view the importance of what they captured?
Juliane Gross
They were extremely important. They basically provided us the context of the verbal descriptions, and so combined images and the crew recording, and also the images that the the saw cam took outside of the spacecraft, these three data sets together, plus the annotations, is an extremely powerful tool. So we do need the images to like understand what they were seeing or. Looking at and and helping us on putting their recordings into context, basically.
Leah Cheshier
Well, when they were on the far side of the moon, the crew was not all business, as we have heard. They were able to take a moment to enjoy a snack together.
Juliane Gross
Yes, that was so fun.
Victor Glover
Do you want to memorialize this moment? I will gladly consume this sugar, I need the fuel. My brain has been going. Before or after? Thank you. All the things. I mean we’re talking about a maple cookie, now this things got structure! Theres color variation and texture, definitely. Thank you.
Alright, finished eating my cookie, sorry for eating in your recording. It was delicious trust me.
Leah Cheshier
Now listen, maple cookies. It is my coming maple cookie season. Yes, I will never look at one the same way again. Agree. I will never count the calories of it again. I just love that the Canadian Space Agency sent that little treat, and that they shared that as a crew. Very sweet moment.
Juliane Gross
It was so fun, especially hearing Victor then describe the texture of the cookie and the maple cream. We were all like, “We want cookies now. Where’re our cookies. That was amazing.
Leah Cheshier
So, as Orion completed its journey around the far side of the moon, the crew got to witness Earth rise, which I know had to be a beautiful moment. Let’s hear their reflections.
Victor Glover
Oh yes, the first corner.
Christina Koch
Whoa!
Victor Glover
The first corner of Earth. Uh, is it? No, I think that’s the horizon. That is the Earth big poking out from behind the moon?
Christina Koch
It is.
Victor Glover
Wow, that’s cool.
Christina Koch
Oh my gosh! I don’t see any lofted dust in that vicinity, but I do. Is that a?
Victor Glover
Oh wow! I can see the. I can see the horizon. Terminator. Clearly see him.
Christina Koch
Oh wow!
Victor Glover
That is the Earth peeking out. Now the bottom’s going out. The bottom of the crescent’s peeking out. That’s the Earth coming out.
Christina Koch
Oh wow! I expected it to be smaller. Oh my gosh! Like I said, the little tips-it looks like little bat ears. Oh my gosh! It looks like Kuromi ears.
Victor Glover
We’re all living through you, man. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Christina Koch
Oh my. Yeah. Oh gosh. Jeremy, do you want to come see this? Oh, you got it. Okay.
Victor Glover
10 seconds.
Christina Koch
Oh, it’s a little hook. It’s a- hi everybody.
Victor Glover
Oh, here it comes.
Christina Koch
That looks cool. There’s some lofted dust. Do you guys think so? Well, but it was like. I think that’s found. But no, it was gray where it was popping out. I mean, it could just be an obstacle. Oh my God! There he is. Terrain of the limb on the earth. Stop it! Oh, Ike! Oh my God!
Victor Glover
It is happening so fast. Crazy!
Christina Koch
Amazing! I guess I
Victor Glover
should be trying to describe it, but I mean, good grief!
Christina Koch
No, I, I tried, but I can only do one thing at a time. They’re about to stop touching. You might be able to fly the spaceship and talk, but if you can see that and talk, you just ain’t right. Oh my word!
Victor Glover
There it is. All right, it is completely risen. Earth rise.
Christina Koch
Really?
Leah Cheshier
Where do we even start with? I don’t know. This is so cool. I don’t know if there’s another moment in the mission that I’m more jealous of than this one. Yeah. Them getting to see this, and obviously the pictures they sent back were so beautiful. I thought it was so funny about Christina yelling that it looks like Kuromi ears, this little Sanrio character, another just great you know example of people identifying with what they know here on Earth.
But she talks about lofted dust briefly, and I know that’s something they were looking for. That’s something that the Apollo astronauts had reported seeing, and Artemis II you know determined that they didn’t. So how is that significant?
Aaron Regberg
I think it has to do with the orbit they were in, right? So the Apollo orbits were much much closer to the surface of the Moon. They were at a lower elevation, and so they may have been able to see or observe something from that orbit that the Artemis II astronauts weren’t able to observe, and I think that probably teaches us something about how high that dust is making it, how far away from the surface of the Moon that dust is making it.
Juliane Gross
Yeah, what Apollo saw, one of the hypotheses is that like the lunar surface gets charged when when the Sun basically hits it, and that some of these charged electrostatically charged particles basically get lifted up into the very ten, tenuous- Is that the right word? Atmosphere of the Moon basically doesn’t have one, but some of the the dust gets sort of lofted up. And then when we send spacecraft like the LADEE spacecraft, we didn’t observe that, and so it was always kind of like a mystery of like what did Apollo the Apollo Crew really observe? Was it lofted dust or was it just something kind of like a trick that was sort of like you know with the spacecraft viewing geometry or like the windows where they thought they saw something. And so we were hoping that the Artemis II crew could help resolve sort of that mystery, but I agree the difference is that the Apollo crew was much much closer to the surface, and so if the dust doesn’t get lofted up as far, you might not see it from the distance that the crew was there. So we’re gonna try this again with the future mission that will go to the surface.
Leah Cheshier
The verdict is still out.
Juliane Gross
That’s right.
Aaron Regberg
Like every good science experiment, it created more questions than it answered. And that’s the point of any good experiment.
Juliane Gross
That’s the fun about science.
Leah Cheshier
Yeah, that’s very cool. Well, we’re gonna go to one final topic, really, from the recordings is their unique chance to have their own personal solar eclipse that nobody on Earth could see. Yes, only these four crew members. So, can you tell me? Can you tell us why this only happened during this launch window?
Juliane Gross
It has something to do with a trajectory and a specific path that Orion takes that reaches the the Moon and the far side precisely when the Sun and the Moon and the spacecraft are sort of like geometrically lined up to like create this extended solar eclipse. If we had launched earlier or later, we would not be in the spot where we would need to be for all this lining up to happen.
Leah Cheshier
Well, in the recordings, they talk about how grateful that they are that we did launch on April 1, so they got to see this.
Juliane Gross
I mean, those images are just crazy cool.
Leah Cheshier
It’s crazy. It’s almost unfathomable.
Juliane Gross
Yeah.
Aaron Regberg
This is my favorite audio from the mission. Like, this is wild.
Reid Wiseman
Okay, you now have Reid in window three. Ike is a floater. Jeremy is getting into the shroud, and Christina is on the Z9 and just doing targets of opportunity. Earthshine is definitely coming in right now. I’d say probably 20% of the left side of the Moon is lit up in Earthshine. I still, my eyes have not adjusted enough to be able to see any landmarks. Maybe I could convince myself I see either Crisium or perhaps like Tranquillitatis… but I really can’t tell when I’m looking at the Moon.
What I assess to be pole to pole right now, it looks like the corona of the sun, or it looks like the sun is starting to glow on about the 7:30 to 8 o’clock position. We can see all of the planets, the stars. It’s I know Jeremy has commented on. We have as well. It is the most. I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire life, and I never will again. And it is such a unique perspective. It looks completely fake. It looks like there is just a ball in front of us, just a black ball in front of us-it’s the weirdest thing. Ike?
Victor Glover
I don’t even have words for it. It’s like something out of a sci-fi movie. I’m waiting for that thing to like open up and just come and get us or something. It looks so unreal.
Reid Wiseman
I actually, I don’t think the human mind is equipped to look at this. Like, I don’t think, like, as we have evolved, I don’t think this has evolved into our our DNA yet, right?
Victor Glover
We shouldn’t be seeing this.
Reid Wiseman
We should not be seeing this. It is the weirdest feeling. It doesn’t feel evil. It doesn’t feel weird or murky. It just is like it just looks unreal. Like this can’t physically be happening right now.
Victor Glover
Science and Houston, Integrity. I know this observation won’t be of any scientific value, but I’m really glad we launched on April 1 st . [inaudible] probably not evolved to see what we’re seeing. It is truly hard to describe it. It is amazing.
Reid Wiseman
Yes. The uniqueness.
Christina Koch
It looks like a computer generated image of an orb.
Reid Wiseman
It’s just. It looks like. is. It’s indescribable. It no matter how long we look at this, our brains are not processing this image in front of us. It is absolutely spectacular, surreal. There’s I don’t. There’s no adjectives. I’m going to need to invent some new ones to describe what we are looking at out this window.
Kelsey Young
This is just beautiful and inspiring to hear.
Reid Wiseman
Oh! Yes, that’s Mars.
Victor Glover
Can you see the color?
Reid Wiseman
Absolutely.
Victor Glover
Yeah, we can absolutely see the color.
Reid Wiseman
Well, now I see two red ones. One, one is in the in the limb, but I think what you were talking about was about a half Earth diameter to the right.
Victor Glover
That’s what I was.
Reid Wiseman
Yeah, and that is definitely has a reddish glow to it.
Christina Koch
Yeah Mars is the one that’s low and to the right.
Victor Glover
Like how far though? Yeah, a half to three
Leah Cheshier
quarters.
Christina Koch
Yeah. Yeah, man.
Leah Cheshier
I cannot imagine seeing this with my own eyes. I know I already said that I think Earthrise might be the thing I was most jealous that I didn’t get to see, but the solar eclipse might change my mind.
Juliane Gross
Yeah, those were some of our most favorite images, and like they could see planets and like it’s just absolutely mind boggling.
Leah Cheshier
But it’s also a time when the Moon is in darkness, so it was was that a learning experience for you about the Moon or or not?
Aaron Regberg
The amount of detail. So the the if if you haven’t seen these pictures, you need to go look at them. But there is some detail that you can see about the surface of the Moon in those pictures, and it’s it’s light, it’s it’s Earth shine, it’s light that’s being reflected off Earth and illuminating the surface of the Moon, and so I think we are learning something about how intense and how bright that light can be, and what you can and can’t see under those conditions.
I talked about you know sort of working this like weird overnight shift and coming in to like look at all of the data as it was being downloaded. the The first shift after the flyby, I came in and it was like I don’t know like two or three in the morning or something. And this this these images of the eclipse were one of the very first things that got downloaded. And in our in our science back room, we have these these big projectors with these big screens, and someone had put that image of the Moon in in eclipse up on this big screen, and I kind of just remember walking in and looking at it and being like, “Oh, cool! Is that one of the like visualizations that we that we made with the with the computer modeling?” And David, one of the other scientists working that I was working with, was like, “No, no, that’s that’s a real photo.” And it was just I had to like stop and be like, “Wait, what?” Yeah, they’re just they’re they’re totally surreal. It’s just it’s something nobody has ever seen before from that perspective. It’s really really cool.
Juliane Gross
We had a very similar reaction when we came into back into the science evaluation room, and then and then Aaron and his team had put those images up for us on the big video screen.
Aaron Regberg
Oh yeah! We left them up for you when we went home!
Juliane Gross
And we all walk in, and we were like, “Oh my god! Like we super freaked out.
Leah Cheshier
That’s amazing. Now we have one more recording to play for you and I think this was a pretty big moment for the crew, obviously for everyone watching from home and especially for the science team. Let’s hear it.
Christina Koch
This is freaking insane.
Reid Wiseman
Can I just come share with you for a minute?
Jeremy Hansen
Yeah, let me slide over. Let me.
Reid Wiseman
Dude, no way!
Jeremy Hansen
Hang on, the bungees are pushing me. Okay,
Reid Wiseman
Dude, come on! No, no!
Jeremy Hansen
I’ll let Reid annotate now.
Reid Wiseman
I just saw a meteor! I just saw a flash.
Jeremy Hansen
Really?
Reid Wiseman
100% I just saw Flash. 100% It was on the like. If you go right to the center point, it was at the seven or 8 o’clock.
Jeremy Hansen
Nice.
Christina Koch
So Reid, you were just doing a whole moon and just hammer down.
Reid Wiseman
Whole moon and hammer down. Jeremy, where’s your iPhone?
Jeremy Hansen
It’s in my pocket.
Christina Koch
Is this set for Earthshine, I need an Earth.
Reid Wiseman
That is set for Corona. Okay. So I think we can can move up. iPhone. This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.
Jeremy Hansen
Now it’s the Death Star, Victor.
Reid Wiseman
Dude, it looks like a totally fictitious orb.
Jeremy Hansen
I’m just gonna stare at the blackness now. What what what’s really surprising me is where the sunset is still roughly the same brightness as it’s been for the last most of the observation after it was down. That glow just comes out there all the time. I don’t know if it’s because our eyes are adjusting or or what, but we should be able to see the sun starting to come out of the the other side quite a bit in advance.
Leah Cheshier
So the crew talked about impact flashes, and this was something that I know your team was really hopeful that they would see. But it was also one of those things, sort of like the lofted lunar dust of, they might see it, they might not. You know, the verdict is still out, and I think the launch date and the lighting helped with that. So what was the significance of seeing impact flashes, and not just one, but multiple, and multiple crew members saw them.
Juliane Gross
Yeah, and multiple crew members, it looks like, saw the same one. We did not expect them to see impact flashes. We were hoping, but it was one of these like maybe they see it, maybe not. But it basically highlights the like dynamic environment around the moon-that is something that we want to understand for future exploration and then a sustained presence on the lunar surface. We really want to understand impact flux rates and what basically you know can affect.
Aaron Regberg
The science team is a really diverse group of scientists. My training actually is more towards astrobiology. So I spent a lot of time sort of trying to understand how we should look for life on other planets and how we think life evolved on Earth. And one of the things that the Moon can teach us, and impacts on the Moon can teach us specifically, is how the molecules and the compounds that make up life got delivered to Earth. So we have this hypothesis, this theory that all of all or almost all of the carbon on Earth, all of the molecules that make up you and me and everything else, were delivered by asteroid bombardment, by things hitting Earth. It’s hard to test that theory on Earth because the, there’s all of this life, overprinting everything, and there’s atmosphere and water and all this messy stuff. But on the Moon, smaller things like the like the impact flashes that that the astronauts saw, they get preserved pretty much under the same conditions that they they hit the Moon at. And so one of the things that’s really exciting about Artemis and really exciting about having a Moon Base is that there’s an opportunity for astronauts to go look for those meteorites on the Moon and to find them. And these are a different set of samples that we can study that haven’t been subject to all of the processes that occur on Earth. And we can get a better understanding of maybe how life arose on Earth, or how these prebiotic molecules exist out in in the solar system. The Moon is kind of like a big collector for us of of all of these these meteorites.
Juliane Gross
Yeah, it’s a witness plate.
Aaron Regberg
It’s a big witness plate. Yes.
Leah Cheshier
As Christina likes to say. Yeah. So my one last question for you before we wrap up: What are you most excited about learning from these recordings?
Juliane Gross
I have a million things that I’m really excited about, but maybe the biggest one is that as we venture forward to the Moon together, like we as like the lunar science team, really hope that the inspiration and the Moon Joy of Artemis II keeps going, and that we keep learning about our nearest celestial body, our neighbor, and our place within the broader universe.
Aaron Regberg
I have a much more detailed answer, I guess, or focused answer. I’ve really, I’ve really gotten interested in in the idea that that our eyes can see all of this color in the Moon that is not apparent in photographs or in the in the images that we make with the with the the instruments that we have like on on the on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. We can tease those colors out of the images. You know, we can we can play with settings in in Photoshop just like you would with with your photos on Earth, and we can make the things that the astronauts observed as as brown look more brown in the photos or look more green.
What I am really interested in trying to understand is what is it is it changes in in the physical texture of the rock that they’re seeing as changes in color? Is it changes in chemistry, like like Julia was describing-that they’re able to pick up with their eye? I actually want to try to correlate those color observations that they made with other other more quantitative measurements that we have about the surface of the Moon. Understand, oh, this is what the human eye is capable of detecting, I think that is something that we’re going to be able to really learn from from having these these verbal descriptions where they say, “Oh, here’s a photo, and in this photo, this area looked brown to me, even though it doesn’t look brown in the photo that I took. It looked brown to my eye, and we can go back to this other data that we have, and try to understand what about that region is making it look brown to your eye.
Juliane Gross
Yeah, I agree. I think this whole new data set, the recordings and the images, provide like an immediate opportunity for us in the broader science community to engage with these observations and then refine models of the geologic history or evolution of the Moon and shape future mission architecture. You know, we are we are recommendations of how to train the crew, or or as Aaron said, you know, camera calibration standards, for example, or window design requirements on on Orion and EVA science operations. And so I think there’s a wealth of information and opportunity out there that that we collectively provided with Artemis II, that everybody can dive in and and do fun stuff with.
Leah Cheshier
Well, thank you both so much for joining us today. I think these are so valuable because they bring back the wonder that I think exploration gives us, and these are just such a fantastic way to be able to share that with all of us who were not on the mission, and so I really appreciate the opportunity to listen to some of them with you. I can’t wait to dive into the others, and really just appreciate your time here today. So thank you very much.
Juliane Gross
Thank you for having us.
Aaron Regberg
Yeah, thanks. This was really fun.
Leah Cheshier
Thanks for listening today. I hope you enjoyed hearing these firsthand observations of the Moon.
The full recordings from the crew will be available October 7th on NASA.gov , follow @NASAartemis on social media for updates, and you can find our full collection of episodes and all of the other wonderful NASA podcasts at NASA.gov/podcasts .
On social media we’re on the NASA Johnson Space Center pages of Facebook , X , and Instagram . If you have any questions for us or suggestions for future episodes, email us at nasa-houstonpodcast@mail.nasa.gov .
This interview was recorded on September 8, 2026.
Our producer is Dane Turner. Audio engineers are Will Flato and Daniel Tohill, and our social media is managed by me, Leah Cheshier and Kelcie Howren. Houston Wave, the podcast was created and is supervised by Gary Jordan. Special thanks to Rachel Barry and Victoria Segovia for helping us plan and set up this interview. And of course, thanks again to Juliana Gross and Aaron Regberg for taking the time to come on the show.
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