Chapter 1: What unique role does Dr. Kelsey Young play in the Artemis II mission?
Hey, it's Flora, and you are listening to Science Friday. When astronauts are in orbit, most of the messages from Earth come from a person in a role called CAPCOM. They're often an experienced astronaut serving as the capsule communicator. But sometimes during the recent lunar flyby of Artemis II, the conversations for mission control came from another desk, one labeled science.
If you tuned into the live stream during the lunar flyby, like we did, obviously, you probably saw my next guest seated or sometimes excitedly standing at that desk in mission control. Dr. Kelsey Young is the Artemis Science Flight Operations Lead for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, and she headed up the Lunar Science Observations and Photography for the Artemis II mission.
Hey, Kelsey, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. You can't see me, but I'm smiling ear to ear right now. Have you come down to earth yet?
I will be honest. I'm a big post-processor. So I don't think I've quite gotten enough space from the experience to truly process things. But I can tell you that things have not died down. We're working on processing all the data that we got from Artemis 2 while also looking to the future and starting planning for Artemis 3 and 4.
Yeah, give me a sense of the scale of the data. Like, is it just images? And how much do you still have to process?
Oh, my gosh, there is so much data. And I mean that in the best possible way. We do have four different types of data. We do have the crew images, of course, that's by far the largest data set, as you might imagine. We also have a few crew annotations. So they had the ability on their crew tablets to like literally, you know,
with a stylus, like annotate on pictures of the moon to say, I saw this here. And then there were photos and videos taken with the vehicle mounted cameras outside of the, you know, the crew cabin. We also have crew audio files, which is a data set that is just rich with science return. And we're so excited now that we've started to dive into those. We also have- Wait, like voice memos, Kelsey?
Like what are they? Yeah, like literally voice memos.
And that was actually our highest priority data set for the mission for lunar science because of the unique mission profile of having human beings looking at the moon from the vantage point that they did have it and actually giving their, you know, nuanced color observations, albedo observations, lighting observations, and all of those data are contained in those audio files.
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Chapter 2: How did the Artemis II crew prepare for their photo documentation?
So we had 10 objectives, as I said. And so we had kind of a group. We We just have an amazing lunar science team. Oh my gosh, I could talk about them for way more time than you have. But for actual operations, we were kind of divided across two rooms and multiple shifts.
And we did have roles on the team that were staffed by lunar scientists whose job it was to advocate for specific ones of those 10 lunar science objectives. We called them theme leads. And so somebody might be a theme lead for volcanic history and someone else might be a theme lead for photometry or for color. And they had to kind of like...
very respectfully and politely duke it out to make sure that that down select of lunar targets covered the entirety of our science objectives, right? We didn't want to go too heavy into one objective at the expense of a couple others. So it really was about ensuring broad spread and covering all of our bases.
Were people giving you boxes of chocolates, Kelsey?
Well, I was actually out of that process. That was our team that did that because I was on console, of course, in the front room. So I have two deputies on the team and one of them, Jacob Richardson, was the sort of targeting lead. So it was him. And you'll have to ask him if he got any boxes of chocolates.
So during the mission, you are hearing the descriptions of what the astronauts are seeing, but you're not actually seeing the images, right, in real time?
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Chapter 3: What types of data were collected during the Artemis II mission?
We are not seeing the images.
We were seeing what you guys saw watching at home, which was that live feed from the vehicle mounted GoPro cameras. We also created these high resolution visualizations of what the crew would be seeing that is, of course, not reflective of reality. the real moon that they were seeing, but we could at least say, okay, this is where they are in the flyby.
This is kind of the angle of the sun versus the spacecraft to put ourselves a little bit in the minds of what the crew were seeing. And it helped us just kind of like stay in sync on which part of the flyby they were executing when.
Was it like a tease, though? Were you like, I'd like to see it for myself?
I mean, you guys heard it. How amazing are these four people and their ability to communicate what they were seeing?
They were really good.
They were really good at that. I wish I could just watch a live stream 24-7 of them describing the moon because...
There is a reality TV show possibility for that, I'm sure. You know, one of the things that got a ton of attention, and I remember seeing it on social, were the impact flashes. And I might have been watching you, actually. Were you the one who was talking to the astronauts at this time when they saw them? I sure was. Okay.
So I remember this very specifically because I saw your face light up like a light bulb. Your jaw drops and you're like, like you can just see this huge reaction from you. Why were you excited about that?
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Chapter 4: Why are astronauts' verbal observations valuable for lunar science?
Because otherwise, how are you going to get it? How are you going to access that part of lunar history if it's buried beneath the surface? But impact craters kind of do our work for us, right, of bringing the material to the And so cratering has played such a pivotal role in the evolution of the moon and the evolution of our own planet.
And there's still scientific value in understanding cratering rates and how they have changed over time, what they're like today, and how it sort of touches other active lunar surface processes.
OK, I have to ask, why was the imaging done by a human being squinting through the tiny windows with DSLRs versus mounting some array with a billion cameras that are just programmed to take images all the time?
Oh, it's a great question. And that's a really great way to ask the question. And, you know, I think. LRO, you know, is an example of an orbiting spacecraft that has incredible payloads on it that have returned.
We're already doing that is what I'm hearing. Exactly.
We're already doing that. And it's been super amazing. One of my favorite LRO fun facts is we actually, because of an instrument on LRO called Lola, it's a laser altimeter instrument, we actually know the topography of the moon better than we know the topography of the Earth.
Wow.
Yeah. The Earth has oceans and vegetation and cities and all that. And this laser altimeter has returned enough data that we know the precise topography of lunar surface down to like a staggering resolution. I just think that that is frankly inspiring. Human beings are amazing and what they can create is amazing.
But Artemis is interesting because, again, you have the human, the field scientist, and they're taking pictures for a reason. They choose to image features the way that they do because they understand our science objectives and they're making observations with their eyes. So the pictures tell the story of their field expedition.
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Chapter 5: How was the shot list for lunar photography determined?
And what was their take? I do have two young kids. They're two and four.
So they're a little too young to kind of like really sort of get into it, especially the two year old, of course. But they they did. I was getting sent pictures from home during the mission of them, like watching me on TV. And I that I was very emotional seeing those pictures, especially the two year old now.
Like she'll walk outside and like she'll see the moon at night and she'll just even before I do. And she'll just scream moon and like aggressively point at it. It's the cutest thing. So I think, I don't know, I think they're starting to grasp it. I mean, if just to get, you know, a little deep for a second, you know, I think it's really hard traveling so much.
I mean, I travel just an absolute ton for work and it's hard to be away from kids, especially at that age, as I'm sure many of your listeners can appreciate. But I just really hope and I believe that, you know, when they get a little older and understand the impact, they'll understand, you know, why and that I did so to, you know, prioritize them and also show them, you know,
what I do and show its importance and show, you know, frankly, you know, women in science and engineering fields going out and, you know, pursuing something that I really believe in.
And leading it and being a badass, may I just add.
Yeah, it's hard, but it's definitely worth it. I was way too busy before the mission to even think about just like the day-to-day and how it would reach the public. I mean, one of the main reasons I do this is to inspire the next generation. But I'll be honest, like the reception that we have gotten
like far exceeded even my wildest imaginations like the number of messages that both me and and um you know people across the mission have gotten of not just the astronauts but but having kids at home see people supporting the mission on the ground like engineering flight control science and having kids be excited about that like not just being the person going and doing it but the person supporting the mission that's going to be i think the biggest thing i take out of this experience
Dr. Kelsey Young is the Artemis Science Flight Operations Lead for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, and she's based at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Kelsey, thank you so much for being here. This was great. Thanks for having me. I could talk to you all day. Likewise. This episode was produced by Charles Berquist.
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