NASA's Giant Leaps: Past and Future

just past a two minute mark on the countdown t-minus one minute 54 seconds and counting our status dashboard indicates that the oxidizer tanks in the second and third stages have now been pressurized we continue to build pressure across all three stages here at the last minute to prepare it for takeoff t-minus one minute 35 seconds into the flight of the Apollo mission to land the first men on the moon all indications coming into the control center at this time indicate that we are launching a minute 25 seconds and counting our status board indicates the second stage 3rd stage fully pressurized charge mark has now been issued and is fully on at month 52 in the countdown guidance system internally on at 17 seconds before the ignition sequence in eight point nine seconds to approach sixty seconds month on the Apollo 11 mission t-minus 15 seconds and counting we have had P men 60 55 seconds and counting Neil Armstrong has just reported that it's been a very quiet con the time we've spent since the 52 month power transfer is complete we're on internal power with the launch vehicle right now 40 seconds from Apollo 11 20 seconds at approximately t-minus 15 seconds guidance is internal 12 11 10 9 start of ignition sequence 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 takeoff we have takeoff 32 minutes past the hour hi I'm Mike Collins 50 years ago Neil Armstrong Buzz Aldrin and I dressed in this very room at that time we were on our way to make history with Apollo 11 the first moon landing and there are the men of Apollo 11 immortalized in bronze a seven foot tall statue outside the Saturn 5 Center in the Center Kennedy Space Center in Florida meanwhile inside the Saturn 5 Center we welcome you to our program on NASA's

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leap past and present hello everyone I'm Darryl nail and I'm Mur ray lewis and we are sitting under the saturn 5 rocket right behind us its the most powerful ever flown the saturn 5 7.6 million pound thrust powered by apollo 11 and a total of 24 us astronauts to the moon and the next

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leap of America to the Moon will take off from right here in Florida and we have broadcast teams astronauts and other guests across the country to help us honor history and see them there they will also help us project the

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we will take you to the Johnson Space Center in Houston , to the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, to Neil Armstrong's hometown of Wapakoneta, Ohio, to the Museum of Flight in Seattle, and to some special guests, hey, who's that Adam Savage?

Yeah from Mythbusters oh I see you there and you're on the National Mall in Washington DC and I'm Karen Fox from NASA just a few minutes we'll be talking live with Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins and I'm Danielle Deleasa and I I am beyond excited to be here at the Kennedy Space Center to celebrate the anniversary of Apollo 11, where we will celebrate and answer your questions and comments on social media, including interviewing people live. at this Center, if we don't respond to your questions or comments about this program, don't worry, we have a team ready to answer you, all you have to do is remember the hashtag Apollo 50, that's okay, thanks Danielle on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 is, of course, the reason we are here today.

We begin with our first look at the remarkable historic achievement that the entire world is celebrating. That giant leap changed history and helped create the world we live in today. and God I'll go undock ok retro go Fido go boys go control go Telkom go Kenzi go peacock go Sergent go Capcom work go disengage. Armstrong Aldrin and Collins made it to the moon on Saturday July 19 when we zoomed in and filmed. down and i saw it for the first time it was was a revelation it was giant it filled our entire window the next day sunday july 20th i was landing there and with much anticipation we finally got to the day the moment this is about to start lan landing at the moon was absolutely the hardest piece of any apollo mission ok think of it as a controlled fall out of lunar orbit the problem is in this controlled fall out of orbit you only have enough fuel for one fry the trajectory it had been wrong. they were directed to this inhospitable place, then they had to fly over this area at a high forward speed, then dash up to slow down, so they killed the forward speed, and then began to descend like a helicopter, so that now we are in critical fuel state and that's why the 60 second call was given and in the 30 second call there were 25 seconds of fuel left in the 20 seconds it's ok to stop the engine API edit beat them ok Pro both reason auto like the command override they shut off and then i'm off 413 is on we copy it he goes down me and flashy baby eagle has landed peace of mind we copy on the ground you got a bunch of dudes about to turn blue we're breathing again thank you on the landing for me it was a great celebration the nation was almost euphoric the United States A Commander of Chicken 11, Neil Armstrong, is forever known as the first man to He passed away in 2012, but his small step on the lunar surface continues to inspire our knowledge of the universe around us has multiplied a thousandfold and more.

This is the new ocean and we must navigate. about that and we need to be a leader in that and that caught people's imaginations and later we'll talk to some Apollo astronauts live and also hear from Neil Armstrong's son Mark Darrell we hope Neil Armstrong's son looks like He too. I love hearing it, great guy, we've got our own astronauts here, two, three, I'm going to talk to Stan Love in a moment, as we celebrate the historic milestone of Apollo 11, we're working hard to come back. humans to the moon in the next five years as we plan an eventual course for Mars we call it the Artemis program a 21st century successor to Apollo Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo and goddess of the moon in Greek mythology we will carry that name with us to the moon re-land astronauts by 2024 and establish sustainable lunar exploration by 2028 to get there we are building a powerful rocket the Space Launch System to send astronauts aboard our new Orion spacecraft to the gateway in lunar orbit from the Gateway we'll be able to land astronauts in places we've never been before, including the lunar South Pole, we'll have a human landing system at the gateway, but before then we'll be back on the moon with robotic commercial Landers that will carry scientific instruments and technological demonstrations. to the moon starting September of next year and we will need a new spacesuit generator as we send the first woman and the next man to the moon as we do this we gain more scientific knowledge about the solar system we live in and the American companies, large and small, are developing advanced technologies to make these dreams of space exploration come true for NASA and, as with Apollo, many of these technologies will later become commonplace. parts of life here on earth and stay tuned at the end of our show we will have a fun reveal about Artemis we will now be joined live by astronaut Stan Love who flew the space shuttle mission STS 122 to the Space Station International and is currently working on the development of the

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human spacecraft Stan twelve astronauts walked on the moon between 1969 and 1972 Neil Armstrong inspired you in some way on any level absolutely I think anyone my age was interested in science or technology or exploration considered the apollo 11 astronauts heroes i remember when i was in grade school i was six years old my little tin lunch box had the astronauts on the apollo spacecraft so i had that in there from the very beginning and i remember coming to work on my first day as an astronaut driving by the door of Johnson Space Center and thinking oh my gosh this is where your caved in this is where we landed people on the moon for the first time, there's kind of a sense of awe and an incredible sense of honor to be able to join that effort, especially as a crew member and then some kind of dread, I really expected to be around up to the task and we actually got video of you launching into the space shuttle with a camera that had like an inside view that didn't Not exciting oh yeah absolutely when they launched our light those solid rocket engines and the shuttle, you know you're going somewhere in a hurry, it's like two strong guys shaking your chair as hard as they can and it's pretty amazing now. you are working on a future human spacecraft tell me a little bit about that involvement so i am working on the cabin of the Orion spacecraft which will be the backbone the main transportation device to get people to the moon to lunar sanity and then bring them back to earth safely and I'm working on the displays and controls that the crew are going to use to see how their systems work to guide that vehicle and fly it so it's up to me and the people I work with to make sure that the team is getting all the information they need and that the commands they send are being sent correctly to the vehicle well it's exciting work and Stan thank you so much for joining us ok I'll We'll put it back, Marie, okay, thanks Daryl and Stan. and thank you, we'll be hearing more from current and former astronauts throughout this show, including Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins of Apollo 11 and other Apollo astronauts, now let's go to Houston and the famous Apollo Mission Control from the historic Center Mission Control NASA carried out some of its most legendary space missions the first U.S. the spacewalk, the Apollo moon landings and even the dawn of the space shuttle exploration era in this room from 1965 to 1992, flight controllers monitored all aspects of the mission, navigation communications and even the health of the astronauts with everything that happened here, it's no wonder this flight control room was designated a National Historic Landmark, but after years of inactivity, a historic room fell into disrepair until a new mission was launched to save it. of the Apollo moon landings, this is the crowning achievement that happened in 1969 and so for us to recreate that and have that feeling and honor that moment and that success that was really important to us to find the original wallpaper and then recreate it find the original carpet and recreate it and then just restore the seats and put them back together and then just all the little details ails knows what was on the consoles what was particular to that flight controller so it's very custom Making it historically highly accurate, the work has brought the room back to life, capturing a moment in time for flight director Gene Kranz, the effort goes beyond switches and monitors. this room has an aura the people have worked here they have lived there they made the decisions there each one of these controllers basically left a legacy here in the restoration i think that acknowledges the work done at Mission Control by the Mission Control teams I'm Gary Jordan at that historic Mission Control and with me is Gene Krantz, one of the flight directors of Apollo 11, who you just heard is on the same console he was on 50 years ago when Eagle landed on the moon.

You also have Charlie Duke, the Capcom, the capsule communicator that comes right out of your console when Apollo 11 landed, was the voice between the teams here in the room and the astronauts on the historic mission to and then walked on the moon during the Apollo 16, gentlemen, it's a pleasure to have you both here, thank you, very good, Charlie, your famous words back to Neil. redoing it yeah so this was coming right after neil armstrong confirmed the eagle had landed how did it feel to hear those words from the moon very exciting very close we almost ran out of gas so the engine of Heretic contact stopped, we did it. it was a huge relief the containment was very high so is that gene that conversation went on one of the most tense parts of the entire mission really Eagle's powered descent to the surface of the Moon flight control was here it seems so calm how they stayed so way and so focused during that tense time it's a training room discipline process basically these are consummate professionals from a very early age they learn the discipline necessary to accomplish their difficult question that's right there wasn't much celebration in this room right after that they landed, so Charlie, why not?

Well first we had to make sure the lunar module was sure there was a leak when it landed or the battery went down or a Lots of things could happen you had to be ready to take off so we stayed jean got us all back to be attentive after a few smirks and said we're going 41 sothat we had a set time t1 t2 t3 and i don't remember exactly how long that was but we were focused on making sure this lunar module was safe and ready to take off if we were to take off that's right gen the flight controllers in this room don't they were much older than me, I'm around 27, which I think. is that about the average age of flight controllers tell me about the level of trust that was needed in the team to actually do that mission basically is the trust that exists between me and the team between my team and their stock that we got and with the office program i think trust is t The essential product for a successful manned spaceflight and i think one of the things charlie mentioned here was the t3 stay now stay yes we had to wait two hours to join the celebration but the rest of the world were at the console doing our work two hours after landing, we could celebrate right now, Charlie, when those first steps of Neil Armstrong on the moon and those famous words that he said for all humanity came to celebrate either immediately or when you were really struck by the meaning of achievement. long after we were off duty after T3 and went to a press conference if I remember correctly we went and celebrated over a few beers at the time and then I went home and was with my family watching it on TV when he took a step and then i realized we were over the moon.

Well, I hope we get that feeling once again. We have just a moment here to unite now. She is an astronaut who will be launching to the International Space Station here in just a few short months. She was selected as an astronaut in 2013 and Jessica, you're going through training right now for a long-term stay aboard the International Space Station, almost six months, which is actually longer than all the Apollo missions combined, tell me what you're going to do on the International Space Station, how will that help us for our future missions going back to the moon and then to Mars?

I'll be there for a six month mission as you mentioned and really the space station is a world class laboratory right now it's a US National Laboratory and co Of course we are working with all of our international partners as well as the Russian space agency, European, Japanese and Canadian Space Agency, so we're doing all kinds of sentai science research and technology demonstrations that are really critical on our path to future exploration, just to name a few, for example, of course So we need to understand how spaceflight and the microgravity environment affect us and our human bodies and our physiology, so we now have decades of research from all of this scientific research that we've been doing on the space station. and then the programs before we know a lot about how to maintain our muscle mass and maintain our bone density we have some hot topics right now really vision our vision and the health of our eyes also what is going on with our blood vessels looking at our carotid arteries and some changes that we're actually seeing in astronauts that are very similar to the aging process, so we need to really better understand what's going on here to make sure that we can get astronauts safely to their destination and make sure, of course , that we can get them back there safely and you'll be able to do it first hand as an astronaut now as I know it Charlie Duke here actually inspired you to become an astronaut in the first place yeah he was actually the first astronaut that met, so it's pretty amazing, it's really an amazing experience to stand on this I was in a room with these two people when I was in high school Charlie was talking in the next town over I grew up in a really small town in northern Maine and we didn't have a lot of astronauts coming I had never met anyone who worked at NASA or an astronaut, So I went to listen to him talk and I'm sure he doesn't remember this, but I did talk to him afterwards.

He gave me his card. I told him that my dream was to become an astronaut like him. I wrote him a letter and I thought you knew he was very busy. I'm sure you get a lot of t this but he actually wrote me back and this is the actual letter that I found when I moved in a couple of years ago this is the letter that you wrote me in 1996 when I was a freshman in college university so maybe that jogs your memory but thank you so much for doing that it really was inspiring and makes a difference thank you yes always good things move someone to inspire someone thank you the typed i love it now a gene when we think about our future missions you use the phrase strong and competent thinking about inspiring the next generations do you think those same values ​​will apply to the people who lead us to a pit because we harden trust really addresses team responsibility mission control basically to take the necessary measures to protect the crew and meet the mission difficult meetings that you will always be responsible for what you do and this was done after palawan what we can't do with confidence every time in nev again take everything for granted never stop learning from now teams and mission control will be perfect.

No, Charlie, what can today's astronauts like Jessica do to inspire the next generation? Well I think what he said is just his performance and what he's doing and being able to before the public and just telling his story by writing a letter very well thank you all three for taking the time to be with us here today at the historic Apollo Mission Control in Houston NASA Giant Leaps continue in Wapakoneta Ohio Neil Armstrong's hometown we'll be going there in a bit but first some thoughts on explorers of a different kind of Rocket Man want adventure and I really admire that type of people, they are so brave and intrepid that the pioneers and you know without Christopher Columbus, Magellan, Marco Polo, we would not know, Sir Francis Drake, all those type of people, the world would not be what it is today, welcome to Wapakoneta Ohio , which is proud to be the hometown of Neil Armstrong.

I'm Ty Bateman, a presenter with local stations in Lima, Ohio, and we're located at the Armstrong Air and Space Museum, which is about an hour north of Dayton, Ohio, now that of course is the Home to the Wright Brothers, who invented powered flight more than 115 years ago, Ohio is now also home to NASA's Glenn Research Center, named for another space pioneer, John Glenn, and we're in the middle of the festival. lunar summer, which is an annual celebration of the Apollo moon landing. and right now we have one of our 25 astronauts who hails from Ohio and is also a native of Cleveland and a veteran of four space shuttle missions Don Thomas thank you so much for standing with that sign it's great to be here today good let's go Of course you haven't inspired by so many astronauts, but how did Neil Armstrong and the other Apollo astronauts inspire you? astronaut I watched his launch on a small TV and just said I wanted to do that and all the early astronauts John Glenn ed White who did the first spacewalk and then Neil Armstrong had a huge influence on my career.

Well done, that's awesome. I watched the Apollo 11 launch on TV and I understand he also invited Neil Armstrong to watch one of his launches. I told him he was one of my heroes as a kid and I invited him to come to the launch he said he would be there and I was like wow Neil Armstrong coming to my launch he was so excited and it was the day before launch. I got a call from NASA management at the Kennedy Space Center and they said Mr. Armstrong wanted to meet with me, so my wife and I, Neil Armstrong and his wife Carol, got to spend about an hour together in the cabins. of the crew talking and I show him around and at the end of our hour I had a great time.

He was shaking her hand saying thank you for being here. I really appreciate him coming to the launch and I asked him how long are you staying in town, I mean, how long are you going to be in Florida and he looked me right in the eye. he said how long you'll be in town which means i'm staying here until you launch and we launched right on time the next day and it was the thrill of my life to have him there for the launch awesome don thanks for those memories well let's take a look at Neil Armstrong, The Man Neil Armstrong was born at his grandparents' farmhouse outside Wapakoneta, we sat down with Neil's brother and sister and asked them to share some personal memories of their famous brother, in which he was very good. telling jokes and accent in astronomy accent correct scottish accent and a bit of german sometimes too but depending on what story he was telling but he was good at it because he tells a story and he has this, you know, just a little smile on his face and then everyone laughs and he laughed he laughed because he thought it was funny the legacy has yet to be determined in science the doors are still wide open and i really feel like it helped inspire the technical side of this country that we had many great technical advances with the NASA program and now you can see it continue I think my dad would be very happy with where we are now because we are on the cusp of another era of exploration taking the next steps back to the moon because that is the place where we can learn the things we need when we go further if we can remind everyone how the Apollo program made the world better and for these efforts I think we have a good his chance to do the course and continue that exploration forward being an astronaut was our father's way of life that was dad's job and we were all supportive and excited for astronauts the boys when they were there the last thing they wanted to do was worry about what was going on at home I think wives just tried to make sure family wasn't one of those things on their worry list The Apollo program inspired a generation to want to be better want to work hard, apply themselves and chase your dreams because Apollo made it clear that dreams were possible and I think that made the world a better place now, as you drive through the city or walk the sidewalks, you will see how over the moon everyone is in Wapakoneta, more than one dozens of restaurants offer special moon-themed items, like cinnamon pancakes and a Buckeye on the moon.

On Sunday, it seems that all the stores are selling first on the moon. enirs and memorabilia and history surrounds us is a part of history that I want to be able to say that I helped preserve is not so much knowing what it was like when he lived here for me personally but being able to preserve part of the history and keep it intact for future generations and with me now is Dante Centauri with the Armstrong Museum Dante welcome so let's get right in tell me a little bit about what people can experience if they visit the museum sure as hell the Armstrong Air and Space Museum opened its doors three years after the landing of the Apollo 11 in 1972.

We have artifacts from Neil Armstrong's early life and career, the plane he learned to fly in right next to the Gemini 8 capsule in which he flew his first spaceflight, as well as the backup suit of Apollo from Apollo 11 the actual suit that was part of his mission and to top it off we also have a moon rock collected from Apollo 11 collected by Neil Armstrong himself in e It's an awesome mission now how it works it feels to you to be entrusted with preserving the legacy of an American hero well it's humbling but the best part here is there's a tremendous team there's a staff there's the board that all Support in the community is a great support for the museum and Neil.

The Armstrong legacy here in Wapakoneta, right, Dante, thank you very much, thank you and now I'd like to welcome Sonny Williams, another astronaut from Ohio, she's a Euclid native and a veteran of two Space Station missions, including seven space walks. here in Wapakoneta yes it's amazing here so how does research aboard the International Space Station help us expand exploration not only on the moon but later on to Mars so I've had the luxury of being in the space station twice and me? I have seen that we are doing all kinds of experiments on propulsion systems, life support systems, even spacesuit systems that will help us in our next efforts back to the moon and even beyond. out of low earth orbit past mars well it's also set to go back into space on one of NASA's next commercial crew missions tell me more about that yes I'm scheduled to be on one of the first flights of Boeing Starliner to go to the The International Space Station together with SpaceX is gret Dragon 2, which will take some of our colleagues to the space station and this contract to allow these other companies to carry people will allow theNASA refocusing on exiting Low Earth Orbit. to the moon and potentially to Mars for the next generation so all the work that's going on on the International Space Station including these commercial companies will help enable us to go further so are you scheduled to do more spacewalks sunny? the space station is about 20 years old it's like an old house and things need to be fixed up and we're doing new things to add to it so it's quite likely and I'd be keen to get it all done Thanks for that and thanks from here in Wapakoneta let's go to DC.

Right here in the mall there are tents highlighting both the Apollo program and today's plans from the Moon to Mars. Lego has an amazing Apollo 11 display that took days to build and Snoopy is here of course, Snoopy was the name of the lunar module on Apollo 10, the dress. rehearsal for the actual moon landing and as you've probably seen people on the National Mall have been wowed this week with a high definition projection of the sad five rocket at the Washington Monument we actually get to see a reenactment of a launch here tonight and tomorrow night really gives you an idea of ​​the scale of that huge rocket.

Apollo 11 was the culmination of an incredible national effort, but it began with President John F. Kennedy's promise to go to the moon within a decade. The direction of the President of the United States is the stated policy of this administration and the United States. United States of America to return American astronauts to the moon within the next five years so now NASA faces another daring challenge and this time the ultimate goal is not just JFK's goal of landing on the moon and returning safe and sound to earth but establishing a sustainable presence on the moon and eventually leaving for Mars, so we'll be doing some interesting science when we're there and that's one of the really exciting things, for example, we'll be able to look at the craters giant these deep craters in the south polar region of the Moon their places down there that never get sunlight and we think there's water there so we're going to go and check that out Now let's go to Adam Savage with astronaut Randy Bresnik inside the Air and Space Museum Randy you've flown the shuttle you've flown the shuttle and spent time on the International Space Station I'm curious when you first open the hatch to get on the ISS given all the training you had already had up to that point what surprised you and what felt exactly as you expected what surprised me the most was the fact that there were some crew members on the space station that I hadn't met yet. trained with you you know they were there doing the long duration mission and I happen to have a callsign coming from the Marine Corps being a fighter pilot he's a comrade and it was interesting that we thought about the space station you know these Russian crew members I had a man who had been you know the adversaries oh my f-18 Marika listen to my critical comrade hey come here I'll be surprised Even when they heard you know someone who is in such a normal home from my crew members but the good thing was even though these were people I didn't know we floated through the hatch and there were big bear hugs like we were long lost family members who haven't seen each other in a few weeks and we're catching up and that really jumped out at me because I only knew two and a half days three days in orbit at that point that here we are now the crew of Atlantis the crew of the station twelve human beings in this magnificent laboratory in orbit 250 miles above the earth going 17,000 miles per hour and we worked that was that was all of humanity in a bit we were there doing the shared mission and how that it made us all a part of this one thing no matter what language we spoke or where we came from here we were just one family all doing the amazing thing.

I know you, we were talking earlier and you said you spent 32 hours in space during spacewalks. What do you get used to and what always surprises you about getting in and out of the spaceship? We'll start with that part first because I don't think it's your first, your fifth, or you know I'm like Mike your bounty on your ninth or 10th when you open that hatch and the space station opens up towards you. you know you open it you're inside a steel metal cocoon the whole time you open the hatch and it's 250 miles or 400 kilometers as the crow flies and so for anyone you know who has a fear of heights you know that it's daunting but for anyone who doesn't have a fear of heights if you look at the edge of a tall building and you stand on the edge and put your toes on your body it tells you to back off lie down you get that intense feeling , very intense, except you write thousand two or fifty miles up, okay, I know.

I'm not going to fall I'm going to float though I mean this huge you're my own personal space suit walking out the door I know if I go out there let me go I'm not going to fall but your brain all your life has said you would, yeah , you go out and, just like we practice in a neutral buoyancy lab pool in Houston, where we have the space station, you train, you reach out, you put your hand on the handrails, you know, you rotate your body. the way you normally do you turn off your waste leash you turn off your tether leash and you go ahead and you know what you trained for is just a view instead of being concrete 40 feet below you at the bottom from the pool now you have the earth passing by at five miles per second and to distract you while you're out there oh my gosh I'm curious about your thoughts on how apollo era technology led to the technology that took you into space, well they were the foundation all i want to say is i'm in awe just like you and everyone else especially today it takes time to remember and commemorate this incredible historic achievement i mean we've never had more than 15 minutes in space when President Kennedy dared us to go to the moon and within a decade we had O'Neill Buzz and Mike Colin Sarah on Apollo 9 aside sorry Apollo 11 is a sound and all What we've done since has been based on these incredible investments in technology and the capabilities to live and work in space, the defense is there and the suit that I was in in space to talk about is the grandson of the suit that was in Apollo. on a lunar surface, well Buzz Aldrin couldn't be here, but we do have a Buzz tribute video we can run. let's run this s and see a little bit about Buzz we have come to the conclusion that this is my pure mouth war deal shows the insatiable curiosity of all humanity to explore the respective unknown talents of looks on the acceptance of this talent was unavoidable today I feel like we're totally capable except for the padded rolls and ready vacuum.

Are you excited about the future of space travel? Absolutely in the 15 years I've been at NASA. There has never been a more exciting time. We have two commercial vehicles. they're getting ready to launch and put people on the space station we've had 19 years of continuous presence on a space station we've got to know Artemis is settling in where we have the Orion space vehicle aboard the world's largest rock on the SLS and then we're going to start launching humans in two years amazing you know around the moon again and there's never been a better time to do it Brandi thank you so much for joining us here today I really appreciate it Listen Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were almost stuck in the surface of the moon when the crew was coming back they had to take off the look of big space suits and they were pretty big and the lunar module is pretty small and in the process of doing that they bumped into the switch on the motor arm, the switch that was critical to turning on the rocket motor that would not allow them to take off from the surface of the Moon, the switch broke and therefore or, when it came time to flip that switch to get ready to take off from the surface of the moon there was no switch through the flip what's it going to do buzz was thinking fast take out a marker and stick it in that spot and you're able to use the pen as a pseudo switch and successfully leave the surface of the Moon and return home my grandfather, President Kennedy, challenged the Americans to send a man to the moon not because it would be easy but because it would be very difficult.

NASA and our entire nation answered your call to action and you made that dream come true today, we salute the men and women of the Apollo generation and look to the future and the new frontiers yet to be discovered and looking now over the water, we approach the launch complex 39 here at Kennedy Space Center the two pads you see in the distance. Pat B is where we are going to launch the first woman to the moon and the next man to the moon. Right there, that's the a platform, which is SpaceX's platform which, of course, is currently launching. their rockets, the heavy and the Falcon, but it's a beautiful shot as we fly over the Banana River and go into that launch complex there 39a where, of course, a lot of historic launches happened here, yes, at the Kennedy Space Center, and we continue celebrating it too yeah absolutely beautiful and the mood here is just euphoric i mean so many people in awe of the incredible achievement of this nation 50 years ago and its a warm day here in florida you can see the clouds bubbling over 39a in crew access.

However, the arm that extends from that pad isn't as hot as the rest of the country because there's a heat wave currently gripping most of the nation, but we're still pretty hot here in Florida and actually Murray we're having the moon festival right now a celebration of course of the 50th anniversary of Apollo where our own employees were able to come out r and go on the porch to eat moon cakes and dress up in 1960s garb yeah I think they're already out of Moon Pies so we didn't know I don't know if anyone saved any for us but they did they did they gave away for free that was a nice gesture yes on this historic day yes absolutely and as we continue to celebrate the historic achievement of 1969 we look forward to traveling back to the moon and then to mars just like in the area era Apollo we need many items to get there from rockets and spacecraft to astronaut life support and more all in support of science and exploration on the surface there is a lot of work already being done to make that happen with our Artemis program , we are preparing to launch our new Space Launch System rocket and Orion which is a completely new space capsule, we are also developing a gateway to the moon that will have new robots and humans.

Landers and new space suits, all of this is happening as advances in science and technology will expand our knowledge and enrich life here on earth and there's that list of items that I was talking about and we'll tell you more about each of them. they. elements that you see there on your screen throughout today's show and it's important that each of those elements come together to form this show of the future Artemis is a very complex show but we want to get back to the moon in a sustainable, printable and permanent. in order to test our technology to go to Mars, everything is very important.

Did you know that one of the most valuable samples brought back from the moon by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin almost never sank? appen neela buzz had a series of containers that they put their lunar samples in and mostly went around and collected rocks, but near the end of their moonwalk when Neil was preparing the boxes they sent back to the lunar module to return down to earth Neil looked inside one of the boxes and realized there wasn't much in there. He thought it wasn't right, we should bring more back, so he took the box, scooping it along the surface and pulling out a bunch. of land from the moon's surface in the box, it turns out that that lunar regolith land was really important in helping us understand the solar wind and other properties of the moon and that was information we didn't get from the rocks so that the collection of Impromptu samples is actually one of the most valuable samples we brought back from the moon at the ball.

I'm Karla's friend and this is the official visitor center for NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center now Marshall has been designing and building the rockets that send astronauts into space since the 1960's actually this machine right here it's an authentic F1 engine that powered the Saturn 5, the vehicle that launched the Apollo missions, the chief architect of the Saturn Fives was Marshall's first director, Wernher von Braun, and throughout the 1950s von Braun promoted travel missions, also helped drive much of the technology that first took Americans into space and now America is ready for the next wave of human exploration NASA's Artemis mission, which will take Americans into spacemoon and will lay the groundwork to put humans on Mars Marshall is working again on the rocket to get them there the Space Launch System or SLS and Marshall we are proud of our heritage of fire and smoke here is a look that comes together to me he is now astronaut rex walheim he has now flown three different space shuttle missions including the last sts-135 hi rex how are you carl It's great to be here now.

You didn't get a chance to ride a Saturn 5, but tell us what it is. as an astronaut to be in a rocket at takeoff probably the most member is your first time and you're loaded into the rocket a couple hours before launch and you're strapped in and it feels like you're sitting on this high rise building solid like a rock about 6 seconds before launch the main engines fire up and even though it's still bolted on the rig shakes like it's falling apart it's really amazing and then if the engines run great for six seconds and the solid rocket boosters ignite and then you feel that jolt and you take off and it's an amazing ride from zero to 17,500 miles per hour and eight and a half minutes which sounds amazing now that we look back on Apollo 11 what are your thoughts as an astronaut about re-establishing a human presence beyond Earth's orbit, well I think it's very important because the Apollo program went to the frontier of the moon more far than any human has traveled in history and we have to go back there so we can learn how to do it again because it's so hard to get there and we haven't done it in decades we want to go there learn how to do it and then go further and go to mars now we have a question on social media one Manesh on twitter asks what is NASA's plan for future astronaut programs well first the future astronaut program is similar to today we will select the best and The brightest, the people from all over the country, the most diverse backgrounds we can get, the people who have shown that they can excel in several different types of roles and we're going to take them all to the Johnson Space Center to try to interview – who's going to work better, it will be very similar to now, except that there will be a different dimension with the autonomy that we are going to need more of the expeditionary behavior in which people go more l far from what we have never gone before and they will be far from Earth, so far from Earth that it will take minutes and minutes for just Communications to come back and for rth then we have to become four operating alone but for the most part it would be very similar to the way we chose astronauts today thanks Rex you know today thousands of NASA employees, contractors and vendors are working in all 50 states to turn our plans into reality the apollo program was also a large scale national effort with so many heroes anonymous behind the famous names of faces and many vets of the Apollo era are here in Huntsville let's hear from some of them about their era most of us just out of college we didn't have a lot of experience but this is the challenge in which we are going to do something. ten months it's never been done before i mean you never went home to a clean desk it was a lot to do we were all head down trying to get ready and you know it didn't matter that i was a coop it didn't matter that i was 19 i didn't care about working 80 dollars 80 hours a week because when you were going to do something different you didn't go home until your work was done that was pretty standard in those days late to bed early to wake up work lik hell and publicity and we vowed to make that happen.

What I found peculiar about the moon was when the Sun was almost up and it was noon below. The moon seemed to be a warm and friendly place near sunrise or sunset. He seemed clearly hostile. What a great tribute to Apollo 11 Command Module Pilot Mike Collins, who joins me now live along with astronaut candidate Zena Cartman. Welcome. Thank you Karen. Thank you, Xena. having you here now Mike people may not know that after your NASA career you were the first director of this very Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in charge while the building was under construction and then being here when the doors opened for first time in 1976 it's been one of the most visited tourist sites in washington ever since so director collins welcomes you thank you it's so nice to be back the smithsonian has always been one of my favorite buildings here anyway in the world and I used to go to the Museum of Natural History and when I was maybe 10 years old I would look at snails now they had these weren't live snails they were snails but they had like 37 of them in a row and I used to for some reason I was totally fascinated with that exhibition.

I used to count them and figure out why they were big and small and what colors they were and all that stuff, so that's my upbringing, Smithsonian and Aaron's base of course came. much later and I had a lot of help with people like Barry Goldwater who was a senator on the right committees who helped me raise money to get the $40 million per mass we needed to dig the hole and put up the building. It's an interesting time, well it's a wonderful place to be now, let's go back in time a little bit, you were orbiting the moon during Apollo 11, you did about 30 laps just for about 24 hours, take us there, tell us what you were feeling and how were you k now I was amazed.

They always asked me if you weren't the loneliest person and the whole lonely universe when you were in that lonely command module just hanging around it we're sure just no I wasn't happy I was home this was my my little place where Columbia was on command module had hot coffee had music if i wanted publicity if i had any problems or questions i just radioed mission control and they were always so helpful they even tried to talk to me when i was alone behind the moon but haha ​​they couldn't reach me on that situation, so on the floor was Neil Armstrong, who is obviously a larger than life historical figure, tell us what people would like. remembering about him as a crewmate and as a commander about the crewmate it wasn't personal Neil was an American person in many ways Neil was very smart had interests in science on both sides of the kind of work NASA does he was he was modest He didn't like the spot light on him, but when he was caught in its glow, he knew exactly what to say after the Apollo 11 flight.

We were very lucky to have a round the world trip and Neil was our spokesman and he did a masterful job. He had done his homework everywhere we went. He knew the background of the country. He knew what to say to the local people. By the time he finished one of his short five ten minute speeches half the audience was ready to get on board the Columbia and go with us he was just masterful so tell us a little bit about your path here my background is actually in microbiology, I studied biology in college, my thesis was in poetry, believe it or not, and then I did research in marine microbiology for my master's degree, but for me, one of the most exciting parts of being in the space program right now is how different are the backgrounds we all come from we're all test pilots we're also microbiologists we're geologists we're subs errs it's a really interesting and diverse group to get down to business and we're still answering questions on social media sorry we can't answer them here and now, but we'll certainly continue to take them throughout the program.

Tina, give us your perspective on Apollo 11, what is the Legacy Impala van actually talking about it to both of you, tell us about your perspective on the legacy of Apollo 11. It sure is a part of the world that I grew up in. I have to ask the people who lived through it what that means to them and can they tell me where they were when they saw it happen, can they tell me the exact chair they were sitting in, it was just this monumental pivotal moment in human history. and to me that's so moving to know that that's part of the world that I'm in right now and it's this hugely inspiring challenge for my generation what would our Apollo be what would this be that people all over the world will feel a part of a little bit about it. legacy.

I don't really like legacies. I'm not sure. I think maybe 50 years isn't long enough to give her a proper space, but I was really taken with something Gina said with the least of her. poetry I love that idea, it's great. I go to MIT from time to time and talk to the students there and of course the big push in this country today and for good reason is science, technology, engineering, math, and I say now that it is not a complete education. you gotta put poetry in there now let's throw back to the mall adam savage who has a message not about poetry but for those people who still don't thank karen amazingly there are still people who choose not to believe that we went to the moon even though perpetrating such a hoax would have required much more energy than simply going to the moon and on Mythbusters early in our tenure, my co-hosts Jamie Kari grant and Tory and I debunked this conspiracy theory in almost every way. that we could possibly have tes We tried it, we built miniature models, we rode the vomit comet, we wore space suits, we tried everything, and indeed our episode is used by moon landing deniers to bolster their argument.

They thought our miniature model of the lunar landscape looked so good that it helped convince them. that the moon landing could have been faked by Stanley Kubrick on some secret sound stage in the desert that is total Buncombe and when faced with that kind of willful ignorance, well, I don't have any answers, but apparently Tahira has a question from the crowd. . at the mall to listen oh hi I'm Tahira and I'm here on the National Mall in Washington DC it's a beautiful day here celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing right now I'm following the conversation on social media and Twitter user David says it would have been harder to fake it than to do it regarding the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Adam, you broke it down on Mythbusters, what do you think? Oh sure, one of the great joys of my life so far is that I get to talk to people from NASA and meet astronauts and come to places like the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum the fact is the pride of all the amazing men and women and engineers and scientists who performed this amazing feat and continue to perform it daily that pride is grounded in reality not fantasy and I am honored to be able to meet and speak with these people when NASA's great leap continue, it will be with fire and smoke. from Alabama two-one-zero liftoff with all engines running we have liftoff in 32 minutes welcome back to Wapakoneta and the Armstrong Air and Space Museum I'm Ty Bateman an anchor with the local stations and Lima Ohio and I'm here with a team at the Glenn Research Center that not only developed liquid hydrogen as a rocket fuel, but also developed electric propulsion, and the team is also working on a next-generation electric propulsion system that will power our gateway, a advanced for astronauts in lunar orbit that will give access to the surface and now you're joining me from the Glenn Mike Barrett Research Center hi Mike hi and how does electric propulsion work and how does it differ from chemical rockets well chemical propulsion Traditional burns a fuel and that generates a high-temperature gas that is pushed out of the spacecraft in one direction and propels the ship. go into space in the opposite direction electric propulsion instead of burning a fuel it uses electricity to charge or ionize a gas and then that excel is accelerated out of the spacecraft and that provides that propulsion impulse now where does the energy for solar electric propulsion?

Power comes from the Sun. We use solar panels to convert sunlight into electricity, and then that electricity is used to power both the spacecraft and the electric propulsion system. So, we are all solar. electric propulsion helped NASA get to the moon and eventually Mars just fine, since solar electric propulsion doesn't have to take as long. If it's powered by it and uses sunlight for power, then that spacecraft, instead of having to take all that fuel, it can take things like oxygen, water, communications equipment, science experiments, anything else that astronauts need to complete the mission that makes the construction and design of that. the spacecraft is much easier and the efficiency of electric propulsion helps us make the mission more feasible.

Mike, very exciting, thank you very much, thank you very much, and the giant

leaps

of NASA continue at Space Center Houston, but first, as you can see on our show today, NASA really is everywhere. with technological and economic impacts across the country 4x raishin innovation has aimpact on our daily lives just as it did in the apollo era onward takeoff with all engines running we have an apollo 11 takeoff name extraordinary television this nation should commit to achieving the goal of landing a man on returning him safely to the earth i think landing on the moon changed the sky f from a barrier to a doorway it became something like this the backdrop to all of human history the sky into an invitation i would give anything to remember that moment my mom promises i saw it but i don't remember anything it could be one of the reasons i'm kind of obsessed with the moon landing i have the special edition of the new york times when they were on their way to the moon on july 17th the models of the moon that's where we are that that's that's that's the Sea of ​​Tranquility that's where they landed right there I can take my family with me yes yes I would go to Mars they have water there and everything and methane what else do you want hello we are in the Official Visitor Center of the Johnson Space Center joined by Space Center Houston President and CEO William Harris thank you Brandi welcome to Space Center Houston we are a dynamic learning destination where we share what NASA is doing every day days where we inspire people of all ages through the wonders of space exploration thank you William for hosting this segment for us and we are joined today by Apollo 7 astronaut Walt Cunningham Walter was in the first manned commando mission manned Apollo and gave us the first live views of the astronauts from space as well as running some critical command module checks thanks for joining us Walt it was really nice to be here with you after all these years we appreciate it tell us a little what it was like to live and work in that command module for 11 days in hindsight that those 11 days were probably the best 11 days of my life that we had worked on actually I had worked five years to get to that it was three different scheduled flights and I overcame several obstacles and to this day it remains the first longest most ambitious and successful test flight of any new flying machine so i feel very lucky to have been there we are lucky to have him here with us after having the longest successful test flight of a new spacecraft do you have any tips for the astronauts that you are going to upload in those first missions for Orion and Artemis?

Well, I'd probably have some advice, but I don't think astronauts have that much authority to prepare for these things. today, as we did 50 years ago, that means a lot of things have been perfected at the same time that Society has changed and astronauts don't drive everything like we used to to get our way. the anniversary of Apollo that's what you're hearing in the background, but also here with Walt and I we have Laura Kearney, who is one of the people in charge of some of the new technology that we're developing to send people to the moon.

Laura is the deputy program manager at Gateway so she's a key part of getting astronauts to the moon and they'll be in lunar orbit tell us a little bit about what that is Laura sure Gateway will be an orbiting platform basically the circles the moon it will basically provide an aggregation point where lunar landers can go from earth to the Gateway and they can aggregate there and they will be able to fly missions to and from the moon the best thing about the Gateway is that it will give us access to the entire surface of the Moon how it will be different from the International Space Station it will be different in some ways on the one hand it will be much smaller than the International Space Station the The space station is basically the size of a football field, approximately, the gates link will be much smaller, maybe a tenth of the size, so only a fraction, also where the space station is inhabited 24 hours a day, the 7 days a week 365 days a year the gateway will only have people when Orion is visiting so to begin with it will be about once a year maybe 30 days at a time so our spacecraft will need to be much more autonomous than the current space station and of course the obvious will be much further out and this is a fairly new program for us so where are we in the development of Gateway?

You know we're really making really, really fast progress, the first few elements that make up what we call Gateway phase one should all be in place so that we can make and support that 2024 moonstart mandate that we have, for what our first item is the main propulsion module and it should launch in 2022 we just announced the contractor that will help us build that module max our technologies so they are well on track the second module we will install will be a room module , it will mate with that power and propulsion element and we are very, very close to getting that module in contract and on its way here probably in the next one or two months and then the third element that will be part of that first phase one of 2024 it's our logistics module and we should have it under contract by the end of this calendar year, so it's progressing very quickly, yes, a lot of balls. moving so well now, is there anything you hear about Gateway you wish you had on Apollo 7 or having had 11 days in space on Apollo 7 that you would recommend having on Gateway personally?

I find it very difficult to compare things. today and what they were then 50 years ago is because organizations become more organized a lot of the problems we've had I won't say solved but they are like 98-99 percent compared to 50 percent but I see a difference in attitude as I explore the space today, for one thing, it was 50 years ago when everyone was a fighter pilot test pilot and we basically saw it as an opportunity to take a little bit of a risk to do it and what's amazing to me when I look at that is here we are 50 years old . later and never in my life could I have projected this amount of interest and association with what we were doing back then and also at the same time since it's a civilian operation it wasn't military if we had old military trained fighter pilots Well, what's going on?

Whatever happens a hundred years from now, two hundred and five hundred years from now, there will probably only be one thing that you remember about the 20th century and that is that man went to the moon and Neil Armstrong is going to go down in history to where we are today and we are grateful that that you are celebrating with us well. I feel very lucky. I feel luckier today because what I was taking for granted in Apollo 7, which to this day remains the longest and most ambitious. Most successful first flight In those days it was challenging work, we were committed to it, we had to do whatever it took to make it a success and now, fifty years later, I look back on our overall achievement.

Apollo and frankly I'm proud to have taken a small step in that with Apollo 7, thank you very much, we look forward to some big milestones to celebrate in the years to come as well. The cool part of that and getting people back to the moon is it's going to be a gateway it's going to be state of the art and that's saying something since we had state of the art 50 years ago you probably know that the spacecraft space to get us to the moon was incredibly complicated, but do you realize? that there were 6.1 million parts in the saturn v launch vehicle in the apollo spacecraft that had to be assembled and it all had to work right out of the box for us to get to the moon in july 1969 and take back the saturn 5 center in the kennedy space center in florida a look at the lunar module that was supposed to be for apollo 15 but never actually flew once they decided they were going to take lunar rovers to the moon but they say it works and could have gone to the moon if we needed it. it's yes and it's one thing to see it you know the pictures are great on camera but when you're up close and in person right next door you really see you know all those little details and it's just amazing that we were able to pull it off together as a nation you are absolutely right and here at the Kennedy Space Center if you will join us of course we are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Apollo and looking forward to our plans for the next big leap. to the Moon and then to Mars and a reminder that we are answering your questions online using the hashtag Apollo 50th and that will have a fun reveal a little bit later about our Artemis program at the end of the show a fun reveal yeah tell me now well , no, then it wouldn't be a reveal on the show, you got away alright, I'll wait, well, if you want to follow us, you can join us right now online and explore our subscription right there at

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.gov slash subscribed and what we'll keep you updated with our newsletter weekly as we move to the moon and to mars subscribe again at

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.gov slash subscribe now keep in mind we didn't just develop technology in the years of we are looking at the gantry right now at the complex from launch 39 where people like to gather to watch the launches from the a and b platforms there and we have a special guest live, one of the last two people to walk on the moon and we have someone out there to talk to Amanda Griffin Amanda I don't know if you are if you're out there I'm not sure what level you're at out there I'm at the top it's a day beautiful but it's breezy up here so hope you can make it loud and clear here behind us is pad 39a it is currently being used by commercial entities for missions to the space station and beyond but 50 years ago the first men who walked on the moon launched from there, just a few years later, Apollo 17 was launched. the last men to walk on the moon and one of them was dr.

Harrison Schmitt Dr. Smith, thank you so much for joining us today. It's great to be with you. I kind of miss seeing a Saturn 5, I know, but I hope you soon see an SLS Kennedy Space Center doing an amazing job preparing for that. excited, can you tell us that he was NASA's first scientific astronaut? Why was it so important that he was on that mission on Apollo 17? Well, when Neil Armstrong completed his activities along with Buzz and Mike Holland, it became clear that we had the capability. explore in fact it was clear even before if we were successful on Apollo 11 we would be able to explore so the last few missions and in particular my mission were designed to be exploration missions so we all know that in on apollo 11 they collected maybe 40 pounds of moon rocks, but i understand you exceeded them, how much did you collect?

Well, we set the record at 240 pounds, but the total of six landings brought back 850 pounds of moon rocks, and those rocks are really the Apo. llo mission that continues because lunar scientists and planetary scientists continued to work on it and almost certainly will indefinitely, yes, and I understand earlier this month you and an astronaut candidate, what was her name Jessica Watkins? I had a great time at the Johnson Rock Lab. The Space Center, the old man's Spacecraft Center, and we were narrating a lot of activity there about the samples, yeah, for NASA, yeah, let's take a very quick look at it, so all of these samples are very different and so Of course, we just talked about Neil's sampling strategy.

Armstrong on call 11, but at 17, the sampling strategy was a little different. Can you talk about what happened in his sampling strategy and how he chose which samples to bring back for the entire fund for Apollo 17 Worcester since we knew? was going to be the last Apollo mission was to fill in as many gaps as we could both in the collection of samples and in the types of features so that the There are all kinds of stories that come out of these rocks about the evolution of particular materials particular rocks on the moon Jessica has what I consider to be one of the non-important samples diehl-armstrong collected when she thought about the box Rock worked in theory, so she just filled it in with this stuff: the numbers 1008 for all of us nerds know what that means means, but what it gave us was our first definitive glimpse of what the resources on the surface might be for in motion. either the owner's base or their settlements prevent exploration it's going to need resources radiation shielding this water and you can heat this stuff and make water anywhere on the moon you don't have to call the poles water made of ice you can do it which has heated up to about 6 700 degrees 50 years ago the sample was still giving yeah it's all like the apollo program never ended well because hundreds there have been thousands now people who have worked on the sa samples and continue to work on Samples Advances in analytical technology mean you can go back to a previous sample and get the right sample dr.

Schmidt, I love that the samples we took fifty years ago still benefit us today and in our future efforts, thank you so much foreverything you've done for NASA and the world, and thank you for joining us here today, it's been my Privilege and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you absolutely, we'll take it back inside, hear more about what we still have to learn from the luna ok thank you both this is amazing to hear about this. moon rocks they brought back fifty years ago and they're still teaching us things today the apollo astronaut teaching the up and coming geologist i mean it's a great story yeah it's really amazing and unlocking those scientific mysteries is one of the main reasons we explore, Whether it's on the moon or our home planet or even in the farthest reaches of our solar system, yes, Kelsey Young, a scientist at our Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, has more on what we already know and what to expect. learn about our nearest heavenly neighbor.

The six Apollo lunar surface missions were able to collect an incredible number of samples that continue to produce exciting scientific discoveries even today through analysis of these samples and through missions such as Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and L cross. mission, we may actually discover that there is water on the moon, but we haven't been able to determine how much water is there, we know it's there in large enough quantities that we can start thinking about what to do with it. Using institute resources we will be able to convert this water into usable products such as drinking water or fuel, allowing us to establish a long-term sustainable presence on the lunar surface.

It is absolutely critical that future human and robotic missions to the moon help. quantify how much water there is and continue to answer the really exciting and important science questions we have left about the moon next we want to go to Danielle Russa who has been mingling with here on the view of Daniella meeting some interesting people thanks Marie 11: 00 is personal to many people, whether it's watching the launch reading about it or just being a space enthusiast in general, but for me it's about family, my grandfather was the command module pilot on Apollo 14 and his capsule it's here at the Kennedy Space Center to be in the same place, the capsule is really inspiring and I'm beyond grateful to be here, but today I have a very special guest, Kenan, why don't you come here?

He has 10 years. He is visiting the Kennedy Space Center. So what's the longest car trip you've ever taken? About six hours six hours Wow ok imagine being in a pod with two other people squashed together for nine days how does that sound what are you eating? I'm smashed, overheated, and smashed, and there's probably no white button, okay, what's your favorite planet? like cheese moon because it looks like cheese cool and you're enjoying your day here at kennedy space center yeah okay great well that's all i got right now and we'll be spinning soon ok thank you Danielle it's great to see those little kids be so excited to see how we went to the moon and you know they're dreaming of being the next generation to go there and there's so many of them here inside the saturn five seven you can hear them in the background yeah just filling this place up top which is great well now the command module for Apollo 11 is on tour and right now it's in Seattle that's the one that was flown by the Apollo 11 astronauts and it's with Natalie with Natalie Joseph from NASA in Seattle Natalie hi we re at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, the world's largest independently owned nonprofit air museum, is also the temporary home of the Apollo 11 command module Columbia, the only part of the spacecraft that reg come to earth and more than 55,000 people have already been here to see it in Seattle and the festivities continue as more visitors arrive to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Apollo.

One thing that visitors can't easily see is some interesting graffiti inside Columbia after Command Module Pilot Mike splashed down. Collins a quick tribute inside the bottom team Bay praising Columbia as the best ship to come now nASA has a new ship on the way Orion a new capsule that will send humans farther than ever before Astronaut Randy Bresnik compares Orion to Apollo Oh Ryan is the vehicle that will take and put the next man and woman on the moon by 2024 is the vehicle that has to get us safely out of Earth's atmosphere to the other side the 250,000 mile stretch to the moon that put us in a lunar orbit on the Gateway space station and then we sit there and wait while astronauts go down to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972 and then they are pets going back up on the Gateway go on a ride go back home write again the verse and mr. analyze to be the ones to get us safely back to earth now that the laws of physics still apply the same way they did in the 1960s, we had to come back from Mach 32 lunar return speeds and dissipate all that energy so that's the shape of the capsule you see behind us is more or less the same we have a heat shield underneath that allows us to take a degree out of the atmosphere the most important thing is when you go in it's 30% bigger , Orion can carry four crew for 21 days where Apollo was three crew for 14 days now also taking a lot of advantage of technological developments where we now have the latest cabin, we have digital displays to control all the systems and we can give that just in one digital format our electronic procedures and emergency function also have much better computing power and compared to Apollo 4000 times faster than Apollo computers because the apollo computers had less computing power than we have in our watches these days a lot more security redundancies it also has composite materials we can make it lighter or we can also use 3d printing to do things we couldn't do before so it will really be in the next generation vehicle that will allow us to have that go back to the moon in 2024 and then keep coming back every year after that and have that sustained presence at that South Pole will house it and do everything we need to to be able to be ready to go from the moon to mars shortly thereafter the astronaut from NASA and the doctor dr.

Michael Barrett Hi Mike, how does it feel to be back in your home state? Well it's great to be back in the great state of Washington and here at the Museum of Flight and one special thing for me is that I took off in the Soyuz across the street right here last time I saw her it was smoking for every entry into the desert of Kazakhstan and now it's here so it's great it's awesome so you mentioned you launched in a Soyuz but you also launched in a shuttle So how would you feel about taking a ride on Orion ?

Well I think the Soyuz on the shuttle has been a fabulous spacecraft and they've done their job of getting people into low earth orbit for years and they've done it magnificently but Orion is a very different beast it's designed to take us away from low earth orbit and taking us on missions to explore the moon and beyond we would all love that and there's something else about the fact that we've all had a hand in the astronaut office designing and building the Orion we have a connection of docking please, which we haven't really seen between crew members and their spaceships for a couple of decades, so how would you fly it?

I would fly it like it was going to some amazing place and it would fly. it's like it belongs to all of us that's awesome so one of ryan's jobs is also to sustain the crew so what are some human factors issues that humans in space can face during spaceflights long duration and as we get closer to sending humans to Mars yeah that's a great question we're pretty good at flying for six months in weightless conditions and the human has shown an incredible ability to adapt to that but when you break orbit and you're heading to mars and you might be gone for three years the earth gets smaller and you can't evacuate to earth if something medical happens so you have to be fully autonomous and autonomous Cabell and then we're seeing the cumulative effects of months and years of weightlessness or fractional gravity on Mars and there's a little bit more radiation there's nutritional aspects to all of this now we've shown a tremendous ability of adaptation and we'll see that we just have to approach this I would say methodically and carefully and document as we go along but there's no doubt that we'll meet these challenges that Are great explorers well thank you Mike and happy Apollo 50 thank you and now off to we are joined by some museum visitors, come join me, what's your name?

Tacoma Washington I'm Dan Miller I'm from Federal Way Washington great you guys got a good look at Columbia it's amazing to see it on the ground but remembering seeing it when it landed and when it launched it's an amazing thing to see and what it was like for you Jeremiah it was great , I really loved it, it was the first time that I really liked it, I really got to experience something like this and I really loved it, I would really recommend anyone to come and see it. Thank you so much for joining us here in Seattle back to the Saturn 5 Center thank you so much Natalie all the way from Seattle Washington to here in Florida 3000 miles away you are watching live on pad 39b here in Florida the future of Orion where it will launch from return to space aboard an SLS rocket once you complete the world's most powerful rocket, well we've been looking at Apollo 11, then Apollo 11, now we celebrate Apollo 11 forever.

Just a few hours ago in this gallery, the US Postal Service issued a 50th Anniversary Commemorative Stamp for Stamps Forever—in fact, one stamp features Armstrong's iconic photograph of Aldrin in his spacesuit on the surface. of the moon. The other stamp you see on the right is a photograph of the Moon showing the landing site of the lunar module eagle. in the Sea of ​​Tranquility a beautiful moment right here in the Center of the five of Saturn now it was in that place where 50 years ago today Neil Armstrong took the first steps of any human being towards another world and those moments help paralyzed people in front of televisions all over the world deal with me you're coming down the ladder now we can watch it as it happens we can watch on live tv our man and the fact that 600 million people around the world the world we're watching or listening to it on the radio and television, as it happened, is a measure of the impact this thing had on the world's consciousness.

The surface, as we said, was fine grained with a lot of rocks. It took prints very well. and the footprints remained in place the LEM was in good shape and had no damage from landing or descent it is a picture of the ladder after the Apollo 11 flight Neil Armstrong Buzz Aldrin I had an assignment around the world and everywhere I went those of us who went, i thought in some places they had the attitude of, well you americans finally did this, not an attitude at all, every country regardless of their domestic politics, everyone said we did it, we humans , all before July 20. 1969 humans only had experience on one planetary body from that point on we were at least to some extent a multiplanetary species when Neil and Buzz walked on the moon they did of course without weapons all they brought were cameras it was very it was a peaceful undertaking and one that was applauded around the world of course before we explore the lunar surface we have to get to the surface and for decades NASA has shown how robotic and human exploration can work together to understand this distant world and our plans futures are no different when we look back unmanned robotic observers open our eyes to new frontiers cameras and instruments pave the way for future human explorers robotic satellites test missions and landing craft paved the way for manned missions today NASA and our international partners are watching our lunar neighbor from above, as we prepare for commercial landers for new science missions to the moon, it has been said that we chose to go to the moon as part of it and we have already done it, now we are going to return sustainably and to Mars, the first Landers laid the foundations to put us on the Moon, now NASA's director of human lunar exploration programs explains what's next for Landers of the Artemis generation that I am in front of the lunar power module, although it never flew, is exactly the same size and scale as the one Neil and Buzz used to fly to the surface of the Moon 50 years ago, the Apollo lunar module was actually two vehicles put together as one the crew boarded the orbiting vehicle and landed on the surface of the Moon once they landed and completed their mission, the top of the rover would lift off and return to orbit where they would board the command module forreturning home to earth the artemis human landing system will function much like apollo we will have an asset and a decent stage landing on the surface of the moon however it will be upgraded to 21st century technology we will have a advanced flight In computers we will have lighter components and systems and, most importantly, we will be able to carry up to four astronauts and allow us to land the first woman and the next man on the surface of the Moon.

The gateways, a place where the human landing system and the Orion crew that is delivered by Orion will meet and the crew will actually board the human. The Artemus Human Landing System will go to the surface of the Moon when the mission is complete. That will return to the Portal. The Portal really allows. we are going to go anywhere on the surface of the Moon and we really want to go to the South Pole because we believe there is water there and we can use the water to learn how to live and operate on other planets the systems we are developing to bring us to lunar interaction of the systems we'll use to go to Mars and beyond, take humans farther and farther than we've ever been before and now we're joined by an astronaut who's done two spacewalks on the International Space Station Stan, love, welcome back new thanks you flew in a glider the shuttle when it landed if you ever thought about what it would be like to be in a spaceship landing on the moon or possibly even mars yes so it would be a different kind of landing of course you you know the shuttle landed as a plane but of course it landed as a glider, you had exactly one chance to put it on the concrete instead of in the swamp with the alligators, by which is important to get it right and that will do the trick to land in rockets on another planet too, the Moon and Mars don't have an atmosphere where you can't use wings to land with the thrust of a rocket engine, this makes an interesting difference between landing on the moon and landing on mars on the moon during apollo and going again we'll probably have a 2 part spaceship part with the crew in it and then part with engines and legs to land and you'll burn that little engine in your way down and yet the part you're on as the crew has its own propulsion to get you away from the moon and into orbit, which means if something bad happens on the way down, the engine either dies or you land on a leg collapsing and you're about to tip over you can jump off and get back up into orbit and figure out what you're going to do next but you're already in your own rear module on mars however mars is a planet from which it is difficult to get out of the planets, that is why a gigantic rocket to get us out of the Earth Mars is much bigger than the moon not as big as the earth but bigger than the moon so a vehicle sent is too big for a decent lander to carry and land softly on the surface so it's in its lander and probably lands and walks to its asset module and launches it's time to go home but that means that you don't have that backup spaceship with you when you're making your landing so you absolutely have to get it right the first time you can't hit a rock the engine can't shut off anyway I can't crash so that's it another reason the moon is a great place to practice before we're ready to hit a good proving ground. thanks so much for sticking with us thanks ok as we continue our coverage we want to take you to a video from Lancaster Pennsylvania showing a corn maze there if you look closely on the left side of your screen you can see the outline of an astronaut station is that you're there, yes, and right there is the world's largest mooncake that made an appearance in the visitor center at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama and some of our employees, not the ones here at Kennedy, but about a Marshall they got to try it looks like they enjoyed it there and now we want to send it to Danielle Russa she's at the Apollo Saturn Saturn v Center just upstairs Danielle how are some people here celebrating 50th anniversary while I'm ba? ck here at the Kennedy Space Center and I'm reading some of the social media comments that have been sent to us using the hashtag Apollo 50, one of which is Twitter user Adi notes that 50 years ago NASA's Apollo 11 mission he changed our world and ideas of what is possible successfully landing humans on the surface of the moon and bringing them home safely for the first time in history if you really think about how many things had to have gone right for us to land successfully on the moon it's really mind blowing box on twitter writes that the apollo 11 mission was immense engineering and completely changed our understanding of the solar system couldn't be more true look at the apollo 8 earth rise image the way it that we saw the earth completely transform in that photo everything Well, thank you very much, we look forward to hearing more of your comments on social media.

Submit them with the hashtag Paulo 50. Good, sounds good, thanks Danielle. tracksuitsman I'm so obsessed with space suits. I love seeing all those photos of space suits over the years, of course inside the National Air and Space Museum right now. and it was exhibited this week. The restoration was funded by the public through a Kickstarter campaign and museumgoers can now see it for the first time in 13 years. I'm here with NASA spacesuit Lindsey Aitchison and astronaut Randy Bresnik Lindsey. What are the key differences between the legacy suits that you guys are currently using, the so-called aces, the EMU, and the new generation of suits, one of our biggest changes for the EBA suit is that we're trying to turn them into an evolutionary architecture so that have a single core architecture serving all destinations from low earth orbit and the ISS to the surface of Mars oh really so no separate suits for each stage exactly so if you think about our life supply ort system is kind of like your computer motherboard you get new tech you can just remove the old part and plug in a new part so that's really a great way to go on so I have to make a new suit for each mission and Randy, they're actually testing these new generations of suits for Artemis, that's right, it's clear that we've been testing how we're going to have the suit really fit.

State, where we need the mobility, can we use things like suit ports? and being able to leave the suit outside and being able to go in through a little hatch in the back of the suit that's my favorite new thing how are you testing that in giant vacuum chambers? We actually have a giant vacuum chamber at the Johnson Space Center and a couple of years ago we took one of the prototype suits called the z1 and had it inside the vacuum chamber, so this is the added value of the chamber in inside. it fits all rigid like it is in the spacewalk and you have to crawl inside the back of the suit get your arms and legs in it they closed the back of the suit and then we closed the hatch and actually separated the suit and vacuumed the They did a lot of mobility translations around the area, what can we achieve?

What do we play? But then the key point for the seaport test was going back to get back in because obviously you need to reconnect to get Bill through the door and so he worked on the different ways to be able to see or be able to feel or do little gaze guides. to guide you back so you can open it again and crawl back right now. Here's a question from a fan at the mall for hero what do we have hello here again from the national mall right now. I just saw some of these amazing exhibits that are here to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Apollo but also show some of our future plans for our Artemis missions to return to the moon and eventually go beyond Mars join us on this Now Carly and some of her friends from Maryland and they have a question for Randy and Lindsey, what does it mean for the US? space program so we can go back to the moon randy the question is what does it mean for the usa space program to go back to the moon well we look to see if it goes to the moon i mean the moon is a stepping stone you know the way that lights the way to Mars, but that's the important part because we need to test all the Rovers, all of these adapt to all the habitats, all the hatches and make sure everything can work because when we go to Mars we're not three days away.

Earth and we can only go back if we have to, we are literally over a year away. I means it's the transit time and the fact that waiting until Mars gets close to Earth before we can go back so we need to make sure everything and all the risk comes down to the hardware the moon is where we test it and that's just one of the many reasons we go back to the moon, there's the science aspect, there's the energy aspect, I mean moons, it's just a great treasure trove of scientific and energy opportunities for us to explore and learn more because the Last time we were there 50 years.

Wow, it was only for a few days at a time. We are going there to stay now. Randy Lindsay, thank you guys so much. Karen Fox is inside the National Air and Space Museum right now with another special guest. I'm here with General Tom Stafford, him. he was commander of apollo 10 that mission was a dress rehearsal for apollo 11 the crew orbited the moon came down near the surface but never landed general stafford tell us a little about the legacy of the apollo program well the legacy of apollo was we started with almost impossible and we did it in such a short period of time so impossible and so successfully the lessons learned yes we believe we can do something new by innovating warfare but i don't think you can do much better as far as administration how we did that program you know , President Kennedy, on May 25, 1961, said that we would go to the moon and we would return safely, which is great, but the question is how do we go to the moon, it was until 12 months later that Washington s decided how we will go to the moon which is a lunar orbit rendezvous and if we had to make a decision and all the top leaders and NASA had different ideas and you float around like you have different ideas h Today what can you do but he approached this senior engineer at Langley John Huebel and his team said that he demonstrated to dr.

Stevens, a large deputy administrator, ex-Aero and Astro at MIT needed the lunar orbit rendezvous to be able to do it in a way that it would be a smaller vehicle, it would be possible to do it faster, at a much lower cost, and it would be more sure and that was so Steven got stuck and hit other people's heads and this is Allegra and then I was lucky enough to write a program with the second group of astronauts two months later thank you very much you were also the commander of the test apollo soyuz. project 1975, when American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts first met in space, we're going to have an example of a real-time international space partnership tomorrow on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, NASA astronaut Jim Morgan and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano launch together with Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov on a Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station I think it is a great honor for both my crew, my Soyuz crew and the entire Expedition 60 crew who is going to join the Apollo program showed that if humans put their ingenuity within reach then really anything is possible we want to explore we want to improve our technology and improve our science and this is going to allow us to go further into the solar system and the moon is a waypoint along the way as we go deeper and head to Mars and look for a program that will get us take to the moon for science for further technological advancement my mission to the ISS is a stepping stone in that direction and I am very, very excited and honored to serve in this way and the current crew members of the station, Nick Hague and Christina Cook, also shared her thoughts on the legacy of Apollo, you know, growing up in a generation like ours. posted apollo we never knew a world where people hadn't walked on the moon when we looked at the moon at night it didn't seem as distant as it might have seemed to the generation before the apollo mission these spacesuits take their heritage from the apollo program and the equipment, the technology that was tested, then we continue to refine it as we prepare to embark on our journey back to the moon, so going back to the moon in many ways will inspire this next generation one of the reasons why it's so What is important at the generational level is to show that as human beings, as a country or as an international association, when we come together to achieve something great, we can succeed, it will take international partners, it will take business partners we will unite with the goal of bringing to the first woman to the moonit means a lot to me it's wonderful to participate in the space program especially as an astronaut than as anyone who participates at a time when we are taking advantage of all the talents, skills, ideas and innovation of everyone who wants to participate, not just to select a few astronauts of Apollo, they are the ones who put everything in motion to help us back to today and it may seem that we have come to the moon a second time or we have returned to the moon, but in reality our space program has been moving forward since day one and The next crew to walk on the moon is just another step in that long line of the show that pushes things forward into the stone age, but I think there's so much we don't know much about, but you have to keep exploring.

I am your. I have to thank you the best. what a human mind can do is explore if it's reading creating painting you know and these guys are pioneering and they're exploring for profit or advantage with the thirst for knowledge it's the most important thing in the world welcome back to kennedy space center Joining us now is Launch Complex 39 Regina Spellman, Senior Project Manager for Platform B, who is overseeing all of the modernization of Platform B as we prepare to go back to the moon, so Regina, these two platforms were built to Apollo 50 years ago, how are they holding up? they're doing very well these these the platforms were built with some of the best engineering in the 60's and have held up now to contain space flight programs and are ready for the third platform has been completely revamped we've modernized and revamped it and is ready for Space Flight, what are some of the things you've been doing to modernize platform B?

So for SLS and Orion, we're going to a clean platform architecture, so one of the first things we did was get rid of some of the old transport infrastructure and go to a clean platform so that we have minimal permanent infrastructure outside of the platform we've been getting into for the last 10 years and modernizing all the systems. I can't think of a single system that we haven't touched. one way or another, everything has been updated and modernized, removing the old Apollo era, a shuttle era and bringing in new technology, taking what was old and useful and really good, and building on that, and I love it, I love that we're taking this. pads pad that was built to go to the moon and now we're going to go to the moon again so I love it it's coming full circle to be really exciting thank you so much for being us Regina we're going back to Danielle hey guys us Right behind the Saturn 5, here we have two very exciting guests from KSC and Akash, so what inspired this trip?

Well, when I was six years old. I remember watching the moon landing on TV and it would be such an awesome event I wanted to bring the family here amazing so this is your first time yeah ok what display are you hoping to see or have you seen it well cant wait to see lift off tomorrow to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary that would be yes take ready, do you want to go to space right now? So you've got your next astronaut right here back to you, thank you very much Danielle, well it's been great being with you at the Saturn 5 Center here where we host our NASA program. a look forward and a look back at apollo 11 yes that's right but first the last word today on apollo 11 is from commander neil armstrong at this point i would like to introduce you to such 11 through astronauts neil Armstrong Michael Collins Admiral, it was the ultimate peaceful competition between the US and the USSR.

I'm not saying that was a distraction that prevented a war; however, it was a distraction; it was intense and allowed both sides to get on the right path with the goals of science and learning and exploration, eventually provided a mechanism to engender cooperation between former adversaries in that regard among others, it was an outstanding national investment for both sides, welcome back to DC. I'm here with NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. It has been very inspiring to be here with all of you. Jim, tell us about the next big leap. the incredible achievements of Apollo, there are now several generations of Americans who have dreamed of returning to the moon and beyond many of us were born long after the Apollo program ended we are now in charge of sending humans to Mars and we will prepare for that trip first to the moon we call this we call this program Artemis and today I am proud to share with you for the first time the Artemis logo appears this is the scanning image that will take us as we once again send humans beyond from Earth orbit, we invite you all to join us and follow the story at nasa.gov slash artemis there is a lot of work to be done and many great stories to tell along the way stories of perseverance exploration and discovery stories of humanity once again moving into the unknown we go and as we go I hope that women and men of all ages and all backgrounds consider themselves part of this is the Artemis generation 50 years ago we went to the moon we called her Apollo well many people don't know is that Apollo had a twin she was a woman named Artemis goddess of the moon we are returning to men as a new generation to explore For this time to stay and prepare to achieve humanity's next great leap of sending the first human missions to Mars, we believe our course will redefine what is possible, that we will discover life-saving Earth-changing science, and that the challenges futures will inspire generations this is our manifesto for everyone who was wondering if we could bring back the girl who dreamed of pulsar VI this is your mate let's go across america let's go let's go like the Artemis generation let's go you you