On episode 299, hear from new Gateway leaders who give us an update on the lunar outpost for future Artemis missions to the Moon. This episode was recorded on June 27, 2023.

Transcript

Gary Jordan (Host): Houston, we have a podcast! Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Episode 299, “Their Paths to Gateway.” I’m Gary Jordan, and I’ll be your host today. On this podcast, we’re bringing the experts, scientists, engineers, and astronauts all to let you know what’s going on in the world of human spaceflight and more. Episode 299, I can’t believe we’re actually here! This is a significant milestone. Next week, we’re going to be having our 300th episode. Definitely want you to listen to this one, Episode 299, but make sure you tune in next week to Episode 300. We’re going to be doing something special, but on this Episode, 299, we’re talking about Artemis. More specifically, Gateway. This is the small human-intended space station that will orbit the Moon and allow for extensive capabilities during Artemis lunar exploration missions.

We’ve talked about Gateway a few times on the podcast before. Back in 2020, for Episode 157, we chatted with Dan Hartman and Lara Kearney, who at the time, were the Gateway programs manager and deputy manager, respectively, and they talked about getting this new program off the ground as it was really in its early years. Well, Dan Hartman recently announced his retirement from NASA after serving 29 years with the agency. And Lara Kearney is busy heading up EHP or Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program, the one that’s managing spacesuits and rovers, Episode 247, if you want to check that out. So Gateway is under new management, and we’re lucky enough to have both of the new leaders on, not only to talk about what they’re bringing to the table to further Gateway’s development, but to give us an update on where Gateway is today.

Jon Olansen is now the Gateway program manager as of 2023, but he’s been with the program since its inception in 2019, managing the development of HALO, the Habitation and Logistics Outpost module of Gateway. Olansen has a long history at NASA Johnson Space Center, serving in various roles. Starting as a flight controller and making his way through various roles with increasing levels of responsibility in the astronaut office. Safety and mission assurance, space shuttle, and Johnson’s engineering directorate. Fans of the podcast may recognize Olansen from Episode 62, where we discussed the Ascent Abort-2 test mission for the Orion launch abort system, where he served as the AA-2 crew module manager, and test director. Holly Ridings is now the Gateway deputy program manager as of 2022, starting her NASA career at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, she moved to Johnson to become a flight controller, leading various teams supporting International Space Station operations and working up the ranks to eventually become a flight director. In 2018, she became the first female chief of the Flight Director’s Office and remained in that role until her transition to Gateway program. I’m thrilled to speak with these accomplished individuals to see what they have in store for ensuring sustained human lunar presence. Let’s get started.

[Music]

Host: Jon and Holly, thank you so much for coming on Houston We Have a Podcast, a pleasure to have you both.

Jon Olansen: Yeah, it’s great to be here. Thanks for inviting us.

Holly Ridings: Yeah, thanks for inviting us. It’s going to be awesome.

Host: I know. All right, so both of you are the leaders of Gateway. We have a lot to talk about. First, let’s get just sort of get to know you. Who are the managers, who are the folks that are leading Gateway? Jon, we’ll start with you. We had you on the podcast before to talk AA-2, but I know you have a long history at NASA. So, what led you to where you are today?

Jon Olansen: So I’ve actually bounced around through my career in a wide variety of activities here at Johnson Space Center. I started as a flight controller, so I have some operational experience, similar to Holly, but nowhere near the depth that she has. But from that, I moved into a number of other areas. I worked in the crew office as a flight crew engineer for a couple years. I was in SM&A (Safety & Mission Assurance). I worked in the shuttle program, but largely what led me to Gateway is leading a bunch, several in-house projects where we did design, development, and delivery of complex spacecraft level vehicles. And really that’s the experience that brought me to Gateway, where I was working on HALO for a while, and then now, fortunate to be in the position to lead the program.

Host: And last we talked to you, you were working on that Ascent Abort-2 mission, and we talked to you ahead of that mission…

Jon Olansen: Correct.

Host:…but I know, we got to chatting a little bit beforehand and right around that time where that mission was happening, and right where the time we recorded the podcast, that was sort of your introduction to Gateway, and there was a lot of overlap with that too.

Jon Olansen: So, it was for actually both AA-2 and Morpheus before it, again, building those vehicles in-house and dealing with all of the issues that come with design and development and actually producing that hardware all led to the time where, as Gateway was starting, there was an opportunity to actually build out some of the early elements of Gateway. And so that overlap is what led me and several of the folks from the AA-2 team, actually into Gateway to help bring that expertise to the design and development

aspects.

Host: And you were quite successful. You worked with HALO; you received the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal in 2022. That sort of recognition, I think, maybe catapulted you to as one of the lead contendants to eventually become program manager, possibly.

Jon Olansen: I’ve been very fortunate to have the opportunities through my career, right? And a lot of it is really great teams. It’s working with a lot of great people here at JSC and across the agency. Honestly, every project I’ve worked has been multicenter and bringing a lot of expertise across the agency, to bring those to fruition. And I think that’s what Gateway really embodies today. And Dan and Lara actually did a great job of actually creating that culture initially. And we try to just continue that, Holly, and I as we go forward today.

Host: Wonderful. It’s a theme that we hear constantly because we get a lot of guests, especially from the Johnson Space Center here. And it’s a constant theme through all the programs. It’s just, it takes a team. We all have to do this together.

Jon Olansen: That’s a 100% correct.

Host: All right. Holly, you are no stranger to teams, and you’ve spent a lot of time at NASA. Tell us about what led you to where you to as Gateway deputy?

Holly Ridings: All right. Well, what led me to the Gateway deputy? So, you know, backing up a little bit, most of my experience is in human spaceflight operations. So the flight operations directorate here at the Johnson Space Center. Before that, I spent a few years right out of college at the Goddard Space Flight Center. Was able to experience a little bit about the different NASA centers, their different personalities, and cultures. But the bulk of my career has been that flight operation. So, got here in time to launch the first element of the International Space Station, which is pretty exciting. And so, kind of lived through all of that assembly sequence and assembly complete, and then on into really what we’re doing today, which is the science on the International Space Station. So, that was a run through some thermal systems, some guidance navigation systems, you know, all working in mission control. Was lucky enough to be a flight director when we first started doing all of the commercial work that we do today.

Host: Yeah.

Holly Ridings: You know, now it seems, you know, almost old hat, right? But I was able to be the NASA flight director for the first Dragon mission in 2012. The very first time we flew commercial vehicle to the space station. And then, after that, for five years, I was the chief flight director. And during that period of time, for example, we did, you know, Bob and Doug in the first, you know, crewed Dragon to the space station. So it was an amazing, you know, run through, you know, 20 years of operations. Then a year and a half ago, had some great mentoring here at NASA. You know, one of the things we do is we try to work really hard on development and growing our people. And so, was suggested to me maybe to go learn a little bit more about the different parts of spaceflight, right? So I’d spent 20 years in just the operations execution, so sort of the end right after the hardware’s been designed and developed and, you know, verified. So Gateway was an opportunity to kind of sort of step backwards in the life cycle. When you do the chief flight director job, you work with all of the different programs. So you have this huge breadth. And so, one of the great things about Gateway is it’s very similar, right? It has all these different elements. We’ll talk about it, I’m sure, here in a few minutes.

Host: Oh, yeah.

Holly Ridings: And so, for me, it was a really great fit. You know, I went from running a high powered, you know, motivated team to another high powered, motivated team that has a huge span of control, international partners, different NASA centers, commercial providers. And so, Gateway seemed like a great opportunity, and Dan asked me to come over and be his deputy. And now, it’s been just over a year.

Host: Yeah. And you’ve worked your way up to the ranks. You got that flight director experience and chief of flight director experience, which you definitely highlighted, but just to focus in on that a little bit more, that is quite a job. The flight director position. And in a very critical moment, when things are happening, everyone’s turning towards you, you have to make those decisions. It is truly like a pinnacle of leadership, if you think about it. When you think about your approach to leadership in the flight control room and how those skills that you translate to this leadership role, is it a lot of the same, or have you made some sort of tweaks along the way as to become, you know, a leader in Gateway?

Holly Ridings: So it actually ends up being more similar than maybe I thought it would have been, right? I mean, on the surface, when I said, oh, I’m going to go from operations to programs, everybody kind of went, “ooh,” you know, that seems strange, right? People don’t often do that from the position I was in, in the operations world. So I did get a lot of strange looks, but I will tell you having done it for a year plus now, it’s very, very similar, right? You need to take care of your team first and foremost, right? You’ve got to have a good communication system. You’ve got to do preparation, right? And when they bring you problems, you have to assess the risk, right? Now, in the control center, sometimes that’s a matter of minutes. And in the program where we are right now in terms of development, it’s not minutes, but it’s also not, you know, a long period of time. If it gets to Jon or to I, you know, the team needs help. You need a decision; you need to move forward. The specifics are different, right? You’re deciding to, you know, change a piece of hardware and on orbit, you know, maybe you’re deciding how you operate that hardware or a task that the crew’s doing. Or you’re outside doing an EVA (extravehicular activity), you know, you bring the crew in. So the specifics are different, but the algorithm is very, very similar. In terms of assessing the risk, you know, the pros and cons, whether that’s financial or schedule or on orbit, you know, the safety of the crew member always comes first, and then you make a choice. So, team, communication, risk management, it’s very similar.

Host: Yeah. It sounds it. And so, Jon, kind of bouncing off of these points that Holly is taking, this approach to leadership. You have similar leadership and leading programs. So how do you guys work together as, you’re talking about teams, as a team to lead, like using each of your skills to help Gateway to progress…

Jon Olansen: Actually, you can take what Holly was just talking about, right? It’s all about complementary leadership, right? We work together as a team. We obviously have different backgrounds, right? But the experience still leads to teams, right? And managing risk, right? It’s a– we’ve worked first on establishing the culture within Gateway. And like I mentioned earlier, Dan and Lara did a really good job of setting that bit. And so, Holly and I put a lot of effort into maintaining the culture that’s there, right? A culture that promotes the team working together, the interactions that lead to thoughtful risk management, right? Appropriate decision making, the ability to assess and adjudicate risk. As Holly was talking about, it’s all setting that stage initially to be able to make the decisions that need to be made to move forward. So, we work in tandem to assess all of those items. Holly’s got great operational experience and if you back up a little bit and you think about Gateway as a whole, we are in design and development now, but we’re not far from being operational. So we have to be able to move from building the spacecraft to actually flying the spacecraft. And how do we evolve the program from where we are today to where we are going to be? It requires both perspectives from a design and development and an operational perspective to bring all that together. And so that complimentary leadership is how we work together with the team.

Host: What else has Dan and Lara passed on to you, because you know, the transition has happened within these past couple of short years that you said they established that culture and you guys want to continue that culture, because it sounds like it’s been successful up to this point. What other lessons have they sort of, kind of passed on to you to continue the progress that they set?

Holly Ridings: You know, watching Dan, for me, again, had the opportunity to come over and be his deputy for just under a year. And that was one of the big draws of Gateway was to learn from Dan Hartman, because, you know, anybody who’s met him, he is amazing. So there a long list, but some of the things that stuck out to me in terms of how he ran the team. So Gateway is a small program team, but also then a large team in all of the people that support Gateway, if that makes sense, right?

Host: Yes.

Holly Ridings: So if you have sort of your core leadership team, there’s only about 30 plus of us. But then, you know, with engineering and safety and the multiple NASA centers and commercial partners. And so, he always had this very calm sense about him. And so, when you do, you know, big jobs like that, you can often kind of run around and, you know, try to do everything all the time. And it sort of creates this, you know, energy that’s maybe a little too much. And he was always very just calm. And it was amazing to watch him run this big distributed, you know, system trying to get Gateway built. The other thing is, he would look ahead, and he would always be saying, “OK, well, what are we doing three months? Like, what problem are we trying to solve that’s three months from now?” You know, and that was, he would just say that to me every day. “OK, well, what’s the next three months? You know, where are we trying to get to?” And then on a tactical level, every day would be, OK, well, what problem are we solving today? You know? And so, people think of programs, can think of them as moving slower than operations. You were asking about the comparisons early. But the way Dan did it, you know, again, he had this big calm presence. He had this strategic vision, you know, three months or even farther out. And then he had this, “OK, well what problem are we trying to solve today?” And our job was to take the 5% that got to us and help the team move forward. Get them unstuck. And most of the time they just needed, you know, a decision or some advice or a different way to look at things. And so that was kind of the algorithm, you know, that now I have in my head, stay calm, look three months out, make a decision when you can help your team.

Host: Beautifully described. Now, we keep talking about Gateway. We keep talking as if, you know, we’ve established sort of what this is and we have on the podcast before, but let’s just sort of get into the high-level, because you guys ultimately go out, and have engagements with, you know, the different stakeholders. Holly, you mentioned commercial partners and things like that. Even the public. So when you go out and try to capture just the very high-level and someone asks you what is Gateway? Jon, what do you usually say?

Jon Olansen: So that’s a great question. And we do get that a lot, right? There’s a lot of different ways to capture what Gateway is. It’s a mini space station that we will put an orbit around the Moon. That’s physically what it is. But really what we’re establishing is a sustained human presence in cislunar space, right? Gateway provides that platform, that access to cislunar space for the exploration that we want to do on the lunar surface, but it also establishes the blueprint for how we want to do exploration in more distant planets, or extraterrestrial bodies in the future, right? Mars, in particular. So it starts that cadence of what do we need to do to actually execute exploration to be able to get us to Mars? It, the Moon to Mars moniker exists for a reason, right? That we are trying to build a capability, so we’ve got that sustained presence. We have the ability to learn how to do execute transportation, how to do habitation, distant from low-Earth orbit. We’re taking the lessons from low-Earth orbit, from ISS, shuttle before it, et cetera. And expanding on those to actually operate more in deep space. But then you build on that as well, and you add science capabilities. You add the ability to actually understand heliophysics and space weather and those types of things out in that environment. All of that adds to what Gateway is bringing to the Artemis program. So, my mind, the way I talk about Gateway, it’s the cornerstone of Artemis, right? It is that foundation that enables Artemis to be completed.

Host: Yeah. Kind of bouncing off of Holly’s point of, you know, Dan’s mentality of thinking, what can we solve today? What can we solve in the future, right? That, I think that sort of translates nice to your description of what Gateway is, because it’s not just a near term solution for access to the Moon. You’re thinking about Mars.

Jon Olansen: Absolutely. It’s all about how do we continue that deep space human exploration.

Host: OK. Now, what is Gateway made of? You talked about, Jon, HALO, something you worked on in the beginning of the program. That was one of your big things. So now, if we’re getting to start getting into the pieces of Gateway, what’s that component of HALO?

Jon Olansen: OK. So, that’s great. So, Gateway, like, as I mentioned, a small, relatively small space station. One bedroom apartment-ish versus a six-bedroom house that you might see as ISS, right? So, scale-wise, that’s what you’re looking at. PPE, the power and propulsion element, is the workhorse, right? It’s providing the solar arrays, the propulsion system for the entire stack, right? So that, PPE, that’s being led out of Glenn Research Center produced by Maxar. And so that’s one of the first elements. HALO is the other, the Habitation and Logistics Outpost. That’s the first habitable module. That’s being produced, led here at JSC, produced by Northrup Grumman. And then, those two elements will actually be integrated on the ground and launched together in the first launch. So, it’ll be launched on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy about three years from now-ish, right? That timeframe is what we’re looking at there.

So you get that activity on its way. That’s what’s called Gateway initial capability. It’s that co-manifested vehicle will launch, and it will take about a year for that vehicle to spiral out into the near rectilinear halo orbit, the NRHO, that the Gateway will be in, in orbit around the Moon. So it takes about a year for that activity to happen. It’s using solar electric propulsion to continue to raise the orbit, right? So that’s actually a big technological advancement that Gateway is demonstrating in doing that. So you have those elements that are the initial capability, and then there’s the Gateway Logistics services that is led out of Kennedy Space Center. And that’s where currently we have SpaceX on contract to provide a logistics capability to the Gateway on a mission requirement basis. So we can actually bring food, and clothing, and maintenance items, and the other things needed to actually execute the missions at Gateway.

Then we have a lot of international partner elements. So Holly mentioned the international partners earlier, right? That’s a big part of what Gateway is. It’s all about the international cooperation and collaboration that we’re doing. So you have the international habitat that ESA (European Space Agency) is providing. Within that international habitat, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) is providing all the environmental control systems that will be a part of that. You have the European Refueling Module, ERM that ESA is also providing. That’s going to enable us to refuel Gateway so we can extend its life as we continue. There will also be an airlock, and Canada, CSA is providing an external robotic system advanced beyond what they’ve been providing for ISS, right? So the next generation arm that will be on Gateway, as well. So those are the pieces that will initially make up Gateway, right? So that’s what the station will look like.

Host: OK. Now bouncing off of that, Holly, this sounds very familiar with the commercial, with the international, sounds a lot like, you know, Jon said a mini space station. Sounds a lot like, there are so many elements pulled from the International Space Station program and the successes of that, which you spent much of your career focusing on from an operations perspective. There sounds to be so many parallels to that, that are in this program.

Holly Ridings: Yeah. So first of all, there are a lot of parallels and we are, you know, very lucky that our Gateway team has a lot of people with International Space Station experience to come and carry that forward. So, probably a month ago, I was over at Space Center Houston doing a panel with some of the Skylab crew members, right?

Host: Wow.

Holly Ridings: And so, I point that out because it pointed out to me that there’s both parallels and differences with International Space Station, right? So the concept of taking elements, right? And building them and then putting them together, as Jon was describing either on the ground for launch or then on orbit, right? International Space Station, we did that for years, assembly. And so, that is a challenge, in terms of integration, in terms of launch. And we all have experience doing that. We also, then have a lot of experience flying on orbit, right? So to go up and come home is one type of flying, right? And to have to have something on orbit that you are continuously taking care of, right? We use the word sustaining, or continuous operations, is very different than the other elements that are currently in the Artemis enterprise. So in that way, we are much more like the International Space Station, because once we get on orbit, we are there. We have to have people operate it, we have to fix problems, you know, it is continuous. And so, that’s a lot of the work we’re doing inside Gateway to sort of think about that evolution. And much of that comes from our experience in the International Space Station. But what’s interesting about the Skylab discussion, right, is they didn’t have the communication we do today in low-Earth orbit. There weren’t GPS (global positioning system) satellites. You couldn’t talk to the crew almost every minute of every day or get data down from the space station almost every minute of every day. And in that way, the Gateway will be much more like Skylab because we don’t have a communication system yet around the Moon, there will be big periods of time where we’re not necessarily going to get data or talk to the crew members. Or if we do, it’s going to be much less than what we’re used to with low-Earth orbit. So you start thinking about how do we, you know, sort of alter our operational strategy in order to account for that. The other big piece of it, right, is that Gateway will not have people on it all the time. Like the International Space Station has people on it all the time, continuously crewed for, you know, 20 plus years. Now, Gateway and Jon mentioned this was outpost, right? So Skylab was an outpost, there was periods of time where there was no crew, so you had to button it up, leave, you had to come back. And they had to take care of things that break when they’re gone. And so, we have to do that, and we have to be able to do spacewalks. We have automation that’s built in, we’re doing robotics. And so, there are many, many lessons from the International Space Station, but there are also many lessons from, you know, Skylab. And so, we’re really NASA’s next space station, right? The continuation of Skylab to the International Space Station to Gateway. And we’re taking lessons from both.

Host: Yeah. OK. This is the natural evolution, right? Over time, International Space Station didn’t just start with all these spoiled communications capabilities.

Holly Ridings: It did not, this is true. [Laughter]

Host: It was developed. I mean, you said 20 plus years…

Holly Ridings: Yup. Yup.

Host:…that a lot of it just progressed. And I think that’s the idea for Gateway, right? Is just you’re going to continue to build on the capabilities, not only the elements of the Gateway itself, right? You mentioned HALO and PPE were the first ones, and then it just sort of builds on that. But you’re talking about building communications capabilities. Yeah. Artemis continues to expand with the amount of things that the surface operations and all that changes. And that’s just part of the evolution.

Jon Olansen: So Gateway becomes an aggregation point out in cislunar space so that you can continue to build out as the agency evolves its plans moving forward. Absolutely. Again, tie it back to Mars, right? Whether you have a transit habitation capability that you want to add on to Gateway, or the other things that you want to look at adding. Those are all capabilities that once you get out there, you have the opportunity to then expand.

Host: When you think about operations on the Gateway and how they kind of evolve over time, because right now, I’m still thinking about those comparisons to the International Space Station. We’re doing six-month expeditions continuously over and over and over. What can we expect for Gateway missions? What are the astronauts going to be doing? How long are they going to be spending there?

Holly Ridings: Yeah. So the missions are 30 days to start, is what we’re thinking. Now, let me back up. So when you do your first couple of Artemis missions, you know, Artemis IV is the first mission that will include Gateway. Artemis V, Artemis VI, those may be shorter than 30 days, just depending on the other mission objectives. If you remember back to shuttle, not every shuttle mission was, you know, exactly the same timeframe. Some were 14, some were 16, you know, type of thing. But functionally, we can do 30 days, and in order to do 30 days, we need a logistics module to come up. Gateway is not as large as the International Space Station. You can’t store everything that you need. And so, you’re going to take a crew out there and you’re going to do a 30-day Expedition or mission, if you will. You’re going to need a logistics module to come with you to bring the supplies that you need. It is extensible or expandable up to potentially 60 days, if you had more logistics that come up and help you, right? But right now, in the Artemis timeframe, the largest time period, again, for that first set of Artemis missions is a 30-day time period. But from our perspective at Gateway, we’re setting ourselves up so that you can go out to 60 days, you know, potentially even longer if you had these cargo logistics missions, cargo vehicles come out to you. And a lot of it is because of our Mars forward thinking, right? We need to learn how to operate on orbit in deep space, right? So everyone needs to think about it in two pieces, right? If we’re going to get out of low-Earth orbit, we want to go to the surface, right? Everyone wants to go to the surface of the Moon. At the same time, if we want to go to Mars, you have to teach yourself about the on orbit piece of deep space exploration, which is significantly different than the surface piece of deep space exploration. I mean, gravity, walking around, rovers, very different, right, than living and working on the space station. Luckily for us, we have all of the International Space Station experience. It kind of teaches us what it’s going to be like. But in the beginning for Gateway, it’s going to be these 30-day expeditions where you’re kind of, you know, trucking your cargo in, you hang out, and then the crew members that are on orbit will do quite a bit of science. Again, Mars forward. So the science program will end up being defined by a couple of things. One, what our science mission director and our science teams at NASA want to do in the Moon orbit, NRHO, but also what we’re thinking we need to understand to get to Mars.

Host: Right? OK. So building off of that, the Mars forward thinking, if we think about early concepts for Mars missions, and what that would take, a lot of what a Mars mission is, is the travel between Earth and Mars. You know, there’s concepts out there that you can be on the surface of Mars for 30 days, but for months and months and months and months and months, you are in a transit habitat between the two. And so, I guess when you say, Holly, “Mars forward,” that’s what you’re thinking. We’ve got to get a pretty good understanding of what it’s going to take for, you know, even if it’s not necessarily Gateway, something Gateway-like, and make sure we got that down, because that’s what a lot of the Mars mission is going to be.

Holly Ridings: Yeah. And at the Moon, I mean, you’re far from home compared to low-Earth orbit. I mean, you get home from the International Space Station in, you know, four to six hours depending on the orbit, right? You can’t get home from the Moon. Best case scenario, you know, you’re in the four-to-five-day timeframe, and that’s if you’re not on the surface, right? If you’re on the surface, you’ve got to wait for your ride to come around and pick you up so you can ascend off the surface, meet up with it, and then head home. And so, from a crew member standpoint, you know, safety, success of the mission, how we design missions, we’ve got to learn that. Spacewalks, right? Spacewalks in a NRHO orbit around the Moon, which puts you close on one side and really far away from the Moon. It’s like a big egg shape, you know, ellipse around the Moon, you know, going to be very different, right? You have a little bit of microgravity around the Earth so that, you know, if you drop something on an EVA, it decays and gets out of your way. That won’t happen in lunar orbit. And so, we’ve got to figure out how to be really careful. Or at least we don’t think it will, right?

The radiation environment is different. We’re going to have dust off the surface. So we need to learn all of those things about being on orbit. And you mentioned the TransHab, you know, we have on Gateway ports available, right? Just like the International Space Station, where the cargo vehicle will come and go, where the new modules will get added. And we’ve made sure we have enough of those so that we can expand Gateway beyond what Jon described, to think about what we might need, you know, for Mars. Do we want to put up additional elements that will help us learn, you know, out in the future? And if you look at the architectural concept reviews that NASA’s doing, you know, rolled out at Space Symposium earlier this year by the deputy administrator, we’re starting to think about those things and Gateway will be a great opportunity for that.

Host: Yeah. We, we actually just talked to Cathy [Koerner] very recently on this podcast, and like, she’s absolutely stunned us by talking about, she was thinking, where, you say three months ahead when you’re talking about the plan. And, of course, you guys are thinking longer than that, but she was thinking way out.

Jon Olansen: Absolutely.

Host: And she was thinking, and she was talking about using Gateway, using lunar surface operations as a practice run for Mars.

Holly Ridings: Absolutely.

Host: Because you said, you know, it’s more challenging than low-Earth orbit, you can be home in a matter of hours. It, you get that days, but it’s still better than the months it would take on a Mars mission. So you can practice all the systems, you can be in Gateway for a long time. You can do the surface operations, basically a dress rehearsal. And that’s, when you talk about Mars Forward, that really excited me. The potential for that.

Jon Olansen: Yeah. There’s another piece of that that we haven’t touched on yet. It’s autonomous operations.

Host: Autonomous.

Jon Olansen: Right? So, within Gateway, we are building what we call the vehicle system manager. It’s the top tier software capability, but we’re building it to bring autonomous capabilities to actually be able to run the station through that software, right? So there’s a lot of technology advancement that’s required to actually be able to run a complex station like that autonomously. And so, we’re building that and we’re creating a base for it, in our first launch even that we can evolve over time to build that autonomous capability. So when you talk about things in the future, like a TransHab or things like that, you’re going to want more and more capability of the vehicle to take care of itself where it can, right? To limit what you need crew to be able to do, right? So, I think all of those advanced capabilities that all feeds into what Holly was talking about and how you move forward from what we’re doing today and lead into your capability to go explore Mars.

Host: Yeah. It’s a little bit different, Holly, from your experience in the International Space Station. It’s almost– can it be considered a fundamental shift in how you do the operations with this autonomous, with it, it’s just sounds different. So, I’m wondering how, you know, with your experience in International Space Station and the lessons you’ve learned over time on how to make space station operations, you kind of have to redesign that in a way to give certain autonomy to the systems, to the crew. And I wonder how you guys are approaching that to get to a comfortable spot?

Holly Ridings: Yeah, it’s interesting. I don’t really think about it as a fundamental shift.

Host: Interesting. OK.

Holly Ridings: So human spaceflight operations in low-Earth orbit is lots of different things, right? We partner with, you know, SpaceX, we partner with Boeing, we partner with Canadians, Japanese, Europeans, and the way you fly a joint mission with all of them, depending on the objectives and the spacecraft is all slightly different, right? And so, I mostly think about it as like, the big soundboard where you can sort of change the levels. And so, you know, Gateway has, more autonomy, versus less. And Gateway has humans only a portion of the time versus all of the time. But if you look back in history, there is, so far an example of all of those things, right? I mean, we flew the International Space Station with no people in the very, very beginning. Right? And there are not a lot of folks around who remember that, but the knowledge has been passed down and there’s a few folks, right? We do have autonomy that’s been built up over time. You know, many of the commercial vehicles — coming in have gone in that direction. So, you take all those examples and then you almost sort of adjust the percentages of time and energy and focus in each of those areas differently than you do a low-Earth orbit space station. So, I don’t feel like it’s a fundamental shift, but I feel like when you add all that together, it will focus or highlight different areas of operations that maybe are, you know, not focused on or highlighted as much in a low-Earth orbit space station.

Host: Yeah. Your soundboard example resonated with me, because, you know, the dials change, but the board is the same.

Holly Ridings: Yes.

Host: Is kind of what you’re…

Holly Ridings: I mean, safety of the crew, safety of the vehicle. Right? A little bit different as Jon described, because it’s autonomous and then success in the mission. So that thing, that is consistent no matter, you know, what we do or where we fly and you kind of, you know, again, change the percentage of skill that you apply in each case. We’ll have new people to fly with, right? So Jon mentioned, you know, Maxar building our power propulsion element, they are a new entrant to human spaceflight. So from an operations perspective, we’ve not partnered with them. And they’ll be really important in the execution of the mission when we fly PPE, you know, the initial checkout, the sustaining engineering, right? They will be new, potentially, we’ll have new international partners, other new commercial partners as we go along with Gateway. So, but again, we’ve done that before low-Earth orbit as we brought on the many people that fly with us today. So we understand the process, but the details would be a little different.

Host: OK. There was one thing you said a little earlier, Holly that sort of resonated with me, and Jon, we’ll go to you to sort of expand on this, because I thought it was very interesting. You casually mentioned it. You said, “everybody wants to go to the Moon.” You said, and when we were talking, we were talking about Mars because everybody wants to go to the Moon, we’re thinking about Mars, but I thought that was something we should, we should focus on for a little bit because the Moon is interesting. We have this whole near-term objective, right? We’re talking about Mars forward, but there is this near-term objective that while we’re on the Moon, there’s a lot that we can learn. And there’s a lot of interesting stuff. So, what are some of the near term things that, you know, Gateway, you said, we’re talking about evolution and how it works with the Artemis missions and folding into surface operations and everything. But what is interesting about the Moon?

Jon Olansen: Oh boy, there’s– number one, you start with science, right? You’ve got a lot of things that about the Moon that we don’t know. And really, we need to get the science folks in here to talk a lot of those details, right? Because there are missions all across the lunar surface that would be of interest.

When you follow specifically what Holly was pulling on, that everyone wants to go to the surface. It’s true. There’s a lot of things that you can learn there, like I mentioned from the science perspective. Operationally, there’s also, can you access different materials that you need, right? Are we going to be able to access water ice that provides some capacity for continued exploration on the surface or even beyond, right? Are there other materials that we can garner while we’re there to use to enhance our exploration capabilities, but also, how to learn to operate on that surface, right? What do we need to do to actually live there for a while? If you’re going to go out to Mars, what is it, what can we learn from the lunar surface that’s going to help us there? So, there’s a mixed bag you mentioned, right? Yeah. We, we talk about Mars. It’s all complimentary. We want to learn about the Moon for its own scientific objectives. Again, there’s a suite of those. I think if you look at the decadal survey, there’s a ton of things that we can actually learn about the Moon that feeds our knowledge of Earth and our knowledge of the growth of the universe. And that is probably out of scope for what I could talk about here, right? As far as what we can learn from the Moon, from a science perspective. So we have a ton of those things that we can pursue in their own right. And that’s one of the reasons, right, why we’re going to the South Pole in particular, that’s one of the reasons we chose the orbit, the egg-shaped orbit that Holly referenced, right? The NRHO orbit gives us access to the entire surface of the Moon instead of just the equatorial that we get to from launching from Earth. So, it allows us to go to the South Pole and understand what the capabilities are there, right? What volatiles we can find? We have a number of rover experiments going there. Other, you look at the CLPS (commercial lunar payload services) program and you have the commercial lunar payloads and what they’re going to explore south Pole region as well. What we can learn from them. So there are a number of science objectives we get from the lunar surface in and of itself. There’s exploration of the Moon that we get in and of itself. But, from our perspective, being strategic and trying to make sure that we are outfitting Gateway, such that the lessons we learn not only enable the exploration of the Moon itself but set us up for that pursuit of further destinations. We’re trying to always keep that in mind. So there’s always both sides to that coin that are part of our strategic planning.

Host: Very important.

Holly Ridings: So since I’m the one who threw the comment out and everyone wants to go to the surface, I’ll give you my perspective, right? So, I think it started out as, you know, let’s land on the Moon, right? In our generation, let’s do this amazing positive thing. But I think it’s gone so far beyond that, right? I mean, one of NASA’s core objectives is this sustainability, right? I mean, it’s nice to just go, amazing, but we want to make it sustainable. Well, sustainability is about infrastructure, right? You can’t sustain something about — without infrastructure. And so, you know, International Space Station, low-Earth orbit, we’ve learned how to do that. You have to have spare parts, and you have to have logistics, cargo vehicles coming up, right? And you have to have routine maintenance. And those things maybe are not as flashy, but they are vitally important. And so, for Gateway, we have, and Jon’s been here much longer than I have, thought, start, thought about those things, you know? Spare parts, maintenance, the autonomous capability. For the surface, the good news is that everyone wants to go to the surface. And because now everyone wants to go to the surface, we can start thinking about that infrastructure that will give us sustainability. And there’s sort of something in it for everyone, right? No matter who you are, commercial, international, big, or small, there is probably something that you can contribute, right? We need power systems, we need communication systems, we need habitation, you know? How do you fly something down and move it from point A to point B so that the rover that you landed, you know, doesn’t run out of fuel, and can’t be used again? And so, people are just now starting to think about it. So I actually think it’s great that everyone wants to go to the surface, because there’s a lot of work to do. The same is true for us on orbit, Gateway, I just think because of our space station heritage, where we’ve thought through that a little bit more, you know, than, and the surface is kind of just starting in that area.

Host: Yeah. And you kind of have a general sense of the needs and like the infrastructure that makes the International Space Station successful and low-Earth orbit. And you talked about, expanding on everyone. We mentioned this a couple of times, but just to focus on it, is there’s a lot of people involved. You guys were describing how, like here at the Gateway program, the program itself is small, but then it trickles out into, and we’ve mentioned a number of these folks. Maxar, Northrup Grumman, you guys have to work with the Orion program. We’re working with international partners. This thing starts to build out. So when you talk about sustainability with all these different players involved, right? Everyone’s contributing to those greater goals. The idea here is this is not something that just fades away. It’s, what you’re trying to build, you have this community of all these stakeholders that want to do these things, and you’re working with them continuously.

Jon Olansen: Absolutely. We are, right? And, as Holly mentioned earlier, right, it kind of starts with that core team that we have, that I just want to want to emphasize the importance of the role they play, and the excellence capabilities that they bring to the table, right? That it is all about the team establishing that, we talked culture, but it’s also that leadership. Them displaying the leadership that we need to move forward. But then, you talk all the stakeholders and the partners that we have, you touched on several of them, there’s HLS as well, right? There’s pretty much, if you’re going down to the surface through the Artemis campaign, you are touching Gateway, right? That’s why I used cornerstone as the example. You’re going to aggregate those capabilities at the Gateway. And so, the ability to be able to work with, to collaborate with and integrate with all of those different stakeholders is incredibly important. It’s the core of our jobs, I believe, right? Is to actually enable that collaboration, that integration. And so, you see a lot of the team, that’s what they’re doing. You have a broad, broad team running all across the world. Even those commercial partners you mentioned Maxar and Northrup Grumman. They have suppliers that are all over the world, right, that are producing key parts for Gateway. You have all of our international partners that have their suppliers. All of those are critical to us being able to actually get the station up and running, right? Before we even get to all the operations pieces that we’ve talked about, right? It’s getting to that point that we have a station to operate. It requires all of those partnerships to actually come to fruition. And so that’s really, you go back to your first questions. How do we work together to try to lead this program, is to try to enable all of those connections to work as efficiently and effectively as we can to produce this space station.

Host: Holly, I’m kind of thinking about what Jon is saying right now and all the different pieces that come together. And going back to your experience, because you said you were involved with the space station program from the first element. And so, you’ve seen over time the International Space Station, how it’s grown into what it is today with international partners. You said you were part of the first Dragon missions, commercial partners, things like that, and how that happened over time. What I’m hearing is that foundation is integrated in the first steps. Everything we’ve done in the International Space Station is, I mean, it seems like we’re just zooming with Gateway. And I wonder if you witnessed that because you’ve experienced it personally in your own career, how the International Space Station evolved, do you see the same things that Gateway is progressing faster because of what the space station, the foundation of the space station has laid out to allow us to move so quickly in Gateway?

Holly Ridings: Yeah. I mean, absolutely, yes. Resounding yes, right? So, I mean, you a couple of times have mentioned Dan Hartman. Right? I mean, he was space station, you know, before he was Gateway. So, you know, sort of as the founder, the first program manager of Gateway, he brought with him all that experience, right? And then the team that he was able to assemble, if you look across that team, tremendous experience, you know, not just from ISS but from across the board. You know, Jon’s got a much deeper background in the hardware design and development, than I do, but a little bit of ops, right? And then I’m sort of the opposite, you know, all ops. And then I got to see a little bit of the design and development just because of my interaction with the commercial teams and the international teams early on in space station. And so, I think not just, you know, if you use us as an example, and then you think about the team that is our, you know, immediate program team. And then you think about all the engineering folks that support us and the other NASA centers, they have all seen, you know, the international partners, right? So, the woman who is building our I-HAB or International Habitation Module, you know, she built a module for space station, you know, type of thing. Same thing for the program manager for, you know, the JAXA component. So Jon’s counterpart at JAXA, same thing, you know, built module for the International Space Station. So, you know, the experience and the depth of experience and the ability to apply it. And I would say, you know, lessons learned, right? So there are things that Gateway is doing, you know, differently on purpose to try to be more efficient and effective, you know, schedule with our schedule, with our resources, you know, it is this, as you’ve just described, this far flung integrated enterprise, right? And that’s what makes it fun and exciting. And again, one of the reasons I, you know, came from ops here and one of the big parallels to my previous job, but it also means we have to be really focused and really efficient. And so, I think that team that’s assembled to do Gateway not only applies the experience and can move faster, but they can move faster because, you know, you sort of know what you need and what you don’t and where some of the pitfalls are.

Host: And it’s coming across when you’re talking about these steps to build Gateway and the capabilities all the way out to that Mars forward thinking. It’s these lessons we have over time that just to me, just what you’ve described is just this clear path and the purpose of Gateway and just, it’s a great understanding of where we’re going to go. Because of the experience.

Jon Olansen: It is all building on what we’ve learned in the past, right? We stand on the shoulders of giants, right? You start from the beginning, and we have learned and you try to take those lessons over time and continue contributing to that evolution. And that’s exactly what we’re trying to do with Gateway.

Host: Focusing on today because I have you here today. We’re recording this at the end of June in 2023. Where is Gateway today? And what are the next steps that we can be looking forward to in the near term?

Jon Olansen: So, Gateway’s making tremendous progress today, right? If you look back, we just started as a program in 2019, and in four years we’ve got significant design work behind us. We have completed the critical design aspects for the most part for HALO. And so had their review actually just not too long ago, we’re heading towards that same point with PPE. They’re on track for looking at getting their primary structures complete in the very near term and integrating those vehicles. And so, we’re looking at launch timeframe, really in less than three years from today, right? So we’re making great progress with HALO and PPE. We’re making great progress with the other modules as well. I-HAB that Holly just talked about. The team out there is doing a tremendous job in their build as well. They’ve already had their preliminary design completed and approved and working through their development activities as well towards their critical design review. so that’s ongoing as we speak. Artemis IV intends to have that I-HAB delivered to the initial capability of Gateway, right? So that we’ll launch initially with the PPE, and HALO, and then Artemis IV brings the I-HAB out with Orion to aggregate at Gateway.

Host: As a crewed mission.

Jon Olansen: As a crewed mission. That’s exactly right. So that’s how we’re getting I-HAB out there, that Artemis V brings the European Refueling Module, right? So, the idea is to quickly build out Gateway to its expected state in those first few crewed missions for Artemis. So, then you have that aggregation point operating there. But where we are today is there’s a lot of hardware and software work being done across the world, making progress. We report regularly on all the different progress that’s going on. You’ve got qualification testing of the solar electric propulsion actually happening at Glenn Research Center as we speak. So there’s a lot of different aspects that are making tremendous progress as we move forward today. So we’re looking forward to that first launch and then getting out there and getting crewed missions started.

Host: And then it should be abundantly clear, but just to focus on it, a little bit more is this is not conceptual, Gateway. This is happening.

Jon Olansen: This is happening.

Host: We’re cutting metals, we’re testing the software. Like, we have the partners, like this is happening.

Jon Olansen: This is absolutely happening.

Holly Ridings: It’s interesting that you say that, right? Because we go out and talk about Gateway a lot, and we get that reaction a lot, right? People think it is conceptual and, you know, there is a tremendous amount of hardware. I mean pressure cells, batteries, you know, various systems that are all over the world and will, you know, start to, already have started to be assembled into the completed spacecraft. You know, here in the not too distant future, right? So you were talking about HALO and it’s over at one of our partners in Europe. You know, being welded and then Northrup Grumman will move it over to the U.S. to a facility that they built. And I mean, that is not very far away that we will have the entire pressure shell, you know, here in the U.S. getting outfitted, you know? In the fall is what’s on the schedule. And so, I mean, you can go, and you can see it. And we actually have a mockup here at the Johnson Space Center, you know, over for crew training. That is, you know, obviously representative of the real hardware, which is exciting because people can kind of see it and experience what it’s going to be like. So it’s interesting, everyone asks us that question. I’ve not really figured out why and we’re always like, there’s actually lots of hardware…

Host: You can touch. [Laughter]

Holly Ridings:…we’re pretty far along and I mean, we are going to be the very first permanent piece of the entire Artemis enterprise, right? So, you know, you said you had Cathy Koerner on and they’re thinking, you know, 40 years in the future. Well, we’re the foothold. We are the very first permanent hook and the hardware’s being built and it’s not very far away.

Host: This has been so exciting to talk to the both of you, not because of your leadership capabilities and what you bring to Gateway and how you describe to Gateway, but the energy is contagious of what you’re saying. You’re very excited for Gateway and what it has to bring. But going off of what you were saying Holly on just, you know, you get approached and people are like, “this is not conceptual. This is the real thing.” When you get asked the question, “why Gateway?” What is your, like, how do you describe why Gateway is, and I feel like we’ve covered it intensely. We’re just here, but what’s like your, what’s your selling… what’s your pitch?

Jon Olansen: So, it is a question that has come up fairly often for years, right? Since we started. Why Gateway? I start with the sustained presence. It really starts there. It is not just going back to the Moon, it’s going back to the Moon to stay. And that even that, kind of sells it a little bit short, because it’s the sustained presence that enables our future deep space exploration, right? Because it is about, if you’re going to go beyond, how do you go do that? So, yes, you have a sustained presence in cislunar space, but you learn, as we’ve talked through this entire podcast, you learn about how to operate away from Earth. You learn about how to access the surface and recover. You learn about autonomous operations; you learn about crew interaction. You learn the things that drive, what you’re doing for future deep space exploration. And along the way, you get to do all the science that is of importance just within cislunar space itself, right? So you, whether it’s in orbit or on the surface, you enable all of those things. Even in with it the lunar mission, you enable reusability, right? You enable a variety of other things just by having Gateway there. So, Gateway, going back to my statement earlier, Gateway is really the cornerstone. It is the foothold for the Artemis campaign. And it enables that future deep space exploration.

Holly Ridings: So I would say, first of all, I agree with all of that. And in true NASA fashion some of the members of our team created an acronym, that is SCAMPI. And it goes like this. The S is science, right? So Gateway will do science, the C is Crew, there will be crew living and working learning on Gateway. The A is Access to the surface because you can obviously go down, come back and Jon mentioned, you know, get access to the entire lunar surface. M is Mars, Mars forward. P is the Permanent, right? Permanent presence. Permanent hardware, and we talked about the foothold and the, and we’re going to be the very first piece of the Artemis enterprise and the I is International. So there you go. Science, Crew, Access to the surface, Mars, Permanence and International. You always need an acronym.

Host: There you go. That’s it. Now you have an easy answer. Why Gateway? It’s cornerstone. Foothold. SCAMPI. [Laughter]

Holly Ridings: There you go. There you go. People always want to know, well what does SCAMPI mean? And I’m like, no, no, no. It’s just an acronym to remember the other things, right?Because sometimes acronyms are acronyms of acronyms, but there you go. So that, that’s how I remember. I did not create it, but our team is awesome.

Host: I love it.

Holly Ridings: And we were tossing this around one day, you know, trying to figure out, you know, how do we communicate how amazing and exciting and important this is, you know, to the NASA, and the human spaceflight community, right? But also, to the world. And so, that’s how I remember. They came up with that.

Host: And I can understand the challenges, right, because like, I think everybody who just wants one answer.

Holly Ridings: Yeah.

Host: But the truth is that SCAMPI is giving you a bunch of different answers.

Holly Ridings: Right?

Jon Olansen: Because they’re all important, right?

Host: Because they’re all very important.

Holly Ridings: Aggregation point, like Jon said.

Jon Olansen: Exactly. Leading collaboratively, right?

Host: Right.

Jon Olansen: International is a big part of that.

Host: Exactly. This has been so exciting to talk to the both of you. Your energy is contagious and it just, it gets me really excited about Gateway, and just what it’s going to bring to the future of Artemis missions. Because what’s becoming clear to me through talking to you is not only, yes, this is happening, but Gateway will be around for a while and has to be, because it’s part of the infrastructure of Artemis. It’s that — that “P” in, in SCAMPI, it’s permanent.

Holly Ridings: 15-year lifetime.

Jon Olansen: Absolutely.

Holly Ridings: And then hope and then hopefully more, just like ISS, right?

Host: Hopefully more. Exactly. Yeah, because we keep extending it, rating it, and…

Jon Olansen: Absolutely.

Host: Absolutely. Very good. Well, Jon Holly, this has been a pleasure to talk to both of you. Thanks for coming on the podcast.

Jon Olansen: Been great talking with you.

Holly Ridings: Awesome. Thanks so much for having us.

Host: Thanks guys.

Host: Hey, thanks for sticking around. Man, I feel like the guests recently have just been bringing a ton of energy to the podcast and I just feel so spoiled. It was really contagious when I’m talking with both Jon and Holly today, and I’m very, very excited for the Gateway program and I really hope you are, too. You can go to NASA.gov to look up the Gateway program and see those milestones. Jon alluded to they’re posting regularly the updates that are happening in the Gateway program. So that’s there for you to check out. After this podcast, if you want to see where they are and where they’re going, you can go there for continuous updates. If you like podcasts, we are one of many across the agency and you can check them all out at NASA.gov/podcasts. You can click on us there and listen to any of our episodes. You can see the full collection there. You can listen to any of them in no particular order. If you want to talk to us, we’re on social media on the NASA Johnson Space Center pages of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can use the hashtag #AskNASA on any one of those platforms to submit an idea for the show. Just make sure to mention is for us at Houston We Have a Podcast. This episode was recorded on June 27th, 2023. Thanks to Will Flato, Justin Herring, Dane Turner, Heidi Lavelle, Abby Graf, Belinda Pulido, Jaden Jennings, and Dylan Connell. And of course, thanks again to Jon Olansen and Holly Ridings for taking the time to come on the show. Give us a rating and feedback on whatever platform you’re listening to us on and tell us what you think of our podcast. This is Episode 299. Next week, you can tune in for our 300th episode of the podcast. And spoiler alert, we’re going to do something special. Stay tuned.