Dr Katherine Bennell-Pegg

Wow.

They went the fastest humans had ever traveled, ever, ever.

because they were falling from higher, right?

They were the furthest humans had ever traveled as well.

And yeah, the engineering was quite remarkable.

That vehicle had never flied that profile before with that heat shield.

So the first mission, Artemis I, which just had those phantom crash test dummies in it, the heat shield didn't work properly.

So they changed the trajectory to come in hotter and faster rather than skimming off to bleed off speed.

So this was all done by teams of engineers, you know, in test facilities, but you can't fully replicate reentry in a test facility.

You can't get the airflow and the heat and all the kind of the plasma at once and through computers and stuff.

Yeah, really hats off to the team of engineers.

I believe the crew went and hugged the lead heat shield engineer when they landed.

But what a good job that they did, which is enabling humans to go back to the moon again.

You know, we can step out and look at the moon and know that humans are back in the business of sending people out there and returning them safely to do good science.

So for most of the world, it's collaborative.

There's a team of what's called Artemis Nations.

Australia is one of them, working together as a team of nations to go to the moon and have this sustainable presence.

You know, there's a saying that if you want to go fast, you know, go alone.

If you want to go further, go together because you can have a more cohesive program with a lot of people's interests looked after.

China does have its own ambitions to go back to the moon, which is putting some pressure on the timeline.