WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:11.400 [Music] 00:00:11.400 --> 00:00:17.440 So Globy, I got another brain bender for you. How many people have actually walked on the Moon? Huh 00:00:17.440 --> 00:00:19.023 Give up? The answer is 12. 00:00:19.023 --> 00:00:23.732 But it's been a long time since the last person walked on the Moon. 00:00:23.732 --> 00:00:27.777 NASA hasn't visited the moon since 1972. That's over 35 years. 00:00:27.777 --> 00:00:38.486 NASA has decided we should go back to the Moon and explore it again. NASA is building a new spacecraft called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter or LRO for short. 00:00:38.486 --> 00:00:46.235 That could help make going back to the Moon easier. The LRO is currently being tested at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. 00:00:46.235 --> 00:00:52.600 The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has a suite of instruments which will measure various components various aspects of the 00:00:52.600 --> 00:00:57.280 lunar surface in high definition and a detail that's never been measured before, essentially creating an atlas of 00:00:57.280 --> 00:01:01.920 the Moon that would be used by scientists and by NASA to determine what's at the surface of the Moon, 00:01:01.920 --> 00:01:07.640 where things might be found, also to be used to find safe landing sites for future exploration, 00:01:07.640 --> 00:01:11.800 and to give scientist an idea of how the Moon has changed and evolved over the last 4 and a  half billion years. 00:01:11.800 --> 00:01:17.440 The original NASA missions to the Moon were with the Apollo spacecraft. The New 00:01:17.440 --> 00:01:22.160 Missions will be with the Orion craft. They'll be similar in design to the ones that originally went 00:01:22.160 --> 00:01:28.160 to the Moon but they will be larger and the plan is to stay on the Moon for longer periods of time. 00:01:28.160 --> 00:01:33.680 The LRO will be attached to a rock and launched in the near future. It will take the LRO four days to 00:01:33.680 --> 00:01:39.400 get from Earth to the Moon. Once the LRO arrives it will spend at least one year orbiting the Moon and 00:01:39.400 --> 00:01:45.160 gathering information for engineers and scientists back here on Earth. It will be in a low orbit, only 00:01:45.160 --> 00:01:51.840 about 48 km from the surface of the Moon. That's only about 30 miles above the ground. One of the first 00:01:51.840 --> 00:01:56.280 things the LRO will look for as it orbits the Moon is a safe landing site for the astronauts 00:01:56.280 --> 00:02:00.760 when they eventually make it back to the Moon. After all we don't want them to to land in a giant 00:02:00.760 --> 00:02:06.080 crater or a place that's too rocky. A lot of people think of the Moon as being like a a billiard ball 00:02:06.080 --> 00:02:11.400 being very smooth and and on some level the Moon is is smoother than some places on the Earth. But 00:02:11.400 --> 00:02:16.800 in other other aspects you know craters all over the surface of the Moon provides for a very rocky 00:02:16.800 --> 00:02:21.120 and rough terrain very difficult potentially to explore. So we need to find places where it would 00:02:21.120 --> 00:02:26.120 be safe to send humans in the future. But it's not just about how smooth the surface is that 00:02:26.120 --> 00:02:31.680 determines if it's a good place to land. Scientists also have to think about the surface temperatures. 00:02:31.680 --> 00:02:36.160 On the Moon the polar regions actually receive more sunlight every day than other parts of the 00:02:36.160 --> 00:02:41.320 Moon so the temperature stays pretty much the same all the time. Other parts of the Moon never 00:02:41.320 --> 00:02:47.120 see the Sun they are always in a shadow and are very cold. The LRO has instruments on board that 00:02:47.120 --> 00:02:52.200 will allow scientists to make a temperature map of the Moon. So this large chamber behind us here is 00:02:52.200 --> 00:02:58.560 it's called the Thermal Vac Chamber -Thermal Vacuum Chamber so that we can put a spacecraft inside of 00:02:58.560 --> 00:03:03.760 it and right now LRO is inside of this chamber and essentially mimic the thermal environment 00:03:03.760 --> 00:03:07.360 that the spacecraft will experience at the Moon. But also the vacuum environment so that we can 00:03:07.360 --> 00:03:11.560 test to make sure that the spacecraft Will Survive the extremes in temperature the hots and the colds 00:03:11.560 --> 00:03:17.640 that it'll encounter as it's orbiting the Moon. We uh have heaters in there we surrounded surrounded 00:03:17.640 --> 00:03:23.240 with these heaters. We were heating heating the spacecraft up fairly rapidly and then cooling it 00:03:23.240 --> 00:03:29.240 down with baffles of liquid nitrogen surrounding it in order to simulate that fairly rapid 00:03:29.240 --> 00:03:34.200 transition that occurs when the spacecraft goes from the night side to the day side. You know the 00:03:34.200 --> 00:03:43.240 spacecraft orbits the Moon in uh uh under 2 hours and so uh it it sees those uh thermal transitions 00:03:43.240 --> 00:03:48.200 pretty rapidly. NASA plans to build an outpost on the Moon. Our astronauts will spend a long time 00:03:48.200 --> 00:03:53.400 living in the outpost so they'll need to use the local resources to survive. The polar regions on 00:03:53.400 --> 00:03:57.680 the Moon may contain water ice. This would be an important resource for the astronauts who 00:03:57.680 --> 00:04:02.640 are living there. The LRO will give sign scientists clues to finding natural resources including water 00:04:02.640 --> 00:04:07.840 for the astronauts to use. Engineers and scientists need to test new technologies for the return to 00:04:07.840 --> 00:04:12.680 the Moon. The LRO mission will give them a chance to try out new instruments that may even benefit 00:04:12.680 --> 00:04:18.520 us here on Earth. One of the things that we want to do uh is use the more advanced technology that 00:04:18.520 --> 00:04:28.840 we have today to uh give us uh uh superior maps and knowledge of where these hazards are so that 00:04:28.840 --> 00:04:30.629 they can be avoided. 00:04:30.629 --> 00:04:33.941 Wow Globy! The LRO sounds like a really fascinating spacecraft and the information 00:04:33.941 --> 00:04:40.181 it gathers will be an incredible help to the next generation of astronauts to walk on the Moon. 00:04:40.181 --> 00:04:55.320 [Music]