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Bonus - Dr. Jim Garvin | NASA's The Invisible Network Podcast

Season 1Jan 23, 2020

There is perhaps no one better than Jim Garvin to outline the unique opportunities for research that the Artemis missions to the Moon could provide scientists on Earth. Jim is chief scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and a tireless champion for crewed exploration of the Moon.

photo of Jim Garvin superimposed over illustration of lunar landscape

photo of Jim Garvin superimposed over illustration of lunar landscape

NARRATOR

There is perhaps no one better than Jim Garvin to outline the unique opportunities for research that the Artemis missions to the Moon could provide scientists on Earth. Jim is chief scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and a tireless champion for crewed exploration of the Moon.

What follows is a talk Jim gave at the most recent American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco. There, he spoke to the importance of network-based communications and navigation services for the Artemis missions and NASA’s journey from the Moon to Mars and beyond.

A couple of times in the presentation, Jim references the slides he presented at the conference. If you’re curious to view them, you can check them out on NASA.gov/invisible.

I’m Danny Baird. This is The Invisible Network.

JIM GARVIN

Hey everyone! I’m Jim Garvin and I’m going to take a different tack to tell you about where we’re going. And we’re going back to the Moon.

And the secret part of the story of going back to the Moon and then on to Mars is the special space communication and navigation network that makes all that possible. I bet many of you don’t realize that that’s what got the guys to the Moon in Apollo, that made the women spacewalkers do their great thing last month and all this stuff. So I’m going to take you on the story of what’s behind the secret internet in space that’s going to give us the chance to send people back to the Moon.

So let’s take a look, first, at what we’re doing now.

Today, we live on Earth. You guys all have an internet — 5g I think is coming. We can get positioned from GPS and GLONASS. We talked to our International Space Station where we have crews of up to six people. We communicate with them every day. We take their pulse. We send data back from instruments like GEDI — like NICER.

And so, we’re going on to the Moon with a Gateway and a landing system that will carry women to the Moon for the first time. And that will be the bridge to Mars.

So what’s missing is all the invisible links that connect the people, the robots, the spacecraft, the telescopes that make that possible. So, let’s talk about that.

Now, several years ago, we all talked about an interplanetary internet. So, you guys have an Earth internet. So, we want an interplanetary one. However, we have to build it. We had to build a pre-internet of the planets when we first went to Mars with Viking — when we first did Apollo.

So today, we want to say, “How do we connect all the stuff we’re going to do — particularly here — to keeping the people alive, to doing new science and to letting all of you join in the ride,” because that’s the whole point. This is exploration for the people, by the people and of the people. So, I’m going to talk about that and start with this critical system — Apollo 17 viewing our Moon — which is what we’re going to be doing.

So, let’s take a look.

The first thing is: 50 years ago, we showed what we could do. Everyone knows what this is? Apollo 12.

IMAGE 01.This unusual photograph, taken during the second Apollo 12 extravehicular activity (EVA), shows two U.S. spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. The Apollo 12 Lunar Module (LM) is in the background. The unmanned Surveyor 3 spacecraft is in the foreground. Credit: NASA

Okay? What was cool about Apollo 12? We landed 100 yards from a robot we put on the Moon. Now just do the math, that’s precision navigation. 100 yards in 400,000 kilometers [250,000 miles] in 1969. Just do the math. Sort of set a precedent for that kind of stuff.

We need to do that, where we could land right on top of this — wouldn’t want to do that — with the crew who are going to be going back to the Moon and all that. But so, this is history. How do we project history forward to do all the stuff we want to do?

So the first thing we do is we build a gateway for the women and men to go to that orbits the Moon in a special orbit. And a critical part of that Gateway is going to be the communications and navigation system that lets us keep those people alive and lets them do the science they’re going to need. This is the place we’re going descend to the lunar surface from as the first people go back to the Moon in 2024.

IMAGE 02.Artist’s rendering of a human lunar lander on the Moon’s surface. Credit: NASA

So, here we are on the human landing system being developed at Marshall Space Flight Center. We have to communicate with that lander, because our intention is to send those women to the south pole of the Moon. This is a new place. You just heard from Kurt [Retherford] talking about what we see there. This is terra incognita, except we know what’s there. So now, we’re going to go and visit that.

We need a communications and navigation network that lets us do incredible things when we go. So when we go, women and men are going to have to communicate with Earth, even when they’re out of direct line of communication. OK, that’s critical. How would you like to go on a field trip and not be able to call home? I mean, how many of you lost internet when you were, you know, at a Broadway show or something? I don’t know. Maybe you haven’t.

But anyway, these people exploring. They’re going to need the comm and nav tools to let them do new science in new ways, because part of going there is changing the bandwidth of how we explore. We want to be situationally aware with them.

So, look at where we’re going. We’re going to a place near the south pole — the landing sites are being decided now by lots of colleagues across NASA — where, right next to where we land, it may be a place that’s the coldest place in the solar system.

Now, would you like to wander into 20 to 40 kelvin [minus 420 to minus 390 Fahrenheit] cold traps? I would not. I do better at, you know, 300 K [80 F].

So, while those people are exploring with these new systems, critical to that is navigating to the right place and communicating the data they want. When you guys watch the Super Bowl or Beyoncé on TV, you’re using gigabit transfer speeds to be part of that enjoyment. We need to do that when we go back to the Moon, so that we can do really amazing new stuff.

One of the things we want to do on the Moon is science that you can’t do on Earth. You cannot do it. Jack Burns and others have suggested far side [of the Moon] radio frequency observatories would let us look at a side of the universe we have not explored.

What if we had a network communicating with those far side observatories, that the people set up and then we let them go, so the scientists can learn about that side of cosmic beginnings? What if — as you guys are all knowing here on Earth — we set up robotic systems with immersive virtual reality that can wander around with the people — missions that will build on what VIPER is going to do in a couple of years — so that were there even without being there.

Imagine you could dial up every morning your immersive virtual reality experience on the Moon — as part of exploration — as people! Well, when the people go, they can bring this stuff, but we need a communications and navigation network so all that stuff comes back.

When you’re sitting at home trying to download a movie to watch, if it takes four days, you’re not going to watch the movie. So, we can’t have that happen with the women and men going to the Moon.

Now, the other thing is, the Moon — many people don’t realize — connects incredibly importantly to Earth and Earth science — which NASA and NOAA do — and you can see it here. And so, the Moon is our attic. It’s a record book of Earth. We’ve now discovered Earth materials inside Moon rocks. Those left Earth. They’re going to tell us about our earliest history, which we don’t have.

Doing all the work we want to do on the Moon is going to require going to the right places with precision navigation, communicating the data because we can’t bring it all back. It’s like traveling on a trip. You want the souvenirs, but you can’t get them.

IMAGE 03: Diagram showing network interoperability for Artemis missions. Credit: NASA

So this simple chart shows the architecture of the kind of plans we have for space communications and navigation. And it’s everywhere, the deep universe to low-Earth orbit to aircraft and smallsats that are now starting to influence how we study hurricanes. This is the invisible internet of space that we use at NASA to understand the universe.

And it consists of parts you may not even know these exist: a Near Earth Network that we communicate with space station and other satellites, a Space Network that we use to expand that communications and the Deep Space Network — that you’ll hear about later — that we used to communicate with Voyager and New Horizons and all the way out.

This network needed to be built, designed, developed and grown so we can do the work we want to do. And the next waves of development in that network — sorry about that — are going to be new techniques that we’re just pioneering now. In fact, today we announced the landing site selections for OSIRIS-REx on Bennu. We need to precision navigate to get to those small spots to return those priceless samples.

Twenty years ago, we couldn’t have imagined doing this. Today, it’s within our reach to do that. We need to have the kind of networking where you don’t know you’ve had a drop out. Seamless! It’s like when you’re streaming a video. We need that as we explore space with the robots and people that are going to make the difference.

And, of course, we need the kind of communications where we can talk at higher bandwidths, the kind we’ve already demonstrated in lunar orbit, but also that permits ranging at levels that are finer than a centimeter. We can do science in new ways.

This space communication network will give us the Moon. It will give us the ability to build a Gateway, to land on the Moon, to live on the Moon and build a sustainable presence.

About 30 years ago, I was working for Sally Ride after the Challenger disaster and we dreamt of a lunar outpost. And one of the hurdles was the communications and navigation to actually send the people there. We didn’t quite know how we would build that. And that was, you know, the late ’80s. It was the crazy ’80s. Now we have the vision to do that.

So how are we going to do it? We’re going to build a kind of network architecture that’s like the early internet. You’ve all heard from Vint Cerf and other evangelists. We need a network that not only communicates the information, provides the navigation and timing, but also gives us the science. If we build these in, everyone wins. Everyone gets their science, everyone can be there, and we can know where we are.

So that network is going to consist of several services, the same way the invisible internet that you see now is doing that for you. And that network will be extensible so that commercial partners, international partners, new NASA partners we haven’t invented, university partners can all plug in the way you plug in a note on the internet.

So this kind of architecture will have nodes that act like servers, storing and forwarding, sending your information back. So the kind of thing we can’t do with LRO now, we could do at the Moon. Instead of, you know, 10 to 100 megabits a second, we could be at 100 gigabits a second. That changes everything, get ready for your data storage problems, folks, because we’re going back.

So this kind of architecture will give us the ability where early commercial landers — as we start to build it — can communicate with systems that they don’t have to build themselves. They’ll plug into our network. And the SCaN program at NASA is all about providing that. So, as we work with commercial and the human exploration systems, we don’t have to reinvent.

IMAGE 04.The Shackleton crater on the moon as seen from LRO. Credit: NASA/GSFC/MIT/ASU

So you heard from Kurt about the excitement of this type of feature known as the Shackleton crater at the south pole of the Moon — incredible place, Eratosthenian in age we think, but whatever. It’s the kind of place where we want to go explore.

Now, you don’t want to go in this cold trap, because of course, the surface temperature has been measured as unbelievably cold. But, with a decent communications and navigation architecture, small commercial robots, university systems, international systems, could ride on our network to go to the right place, land in that type of environment and come out. That kind of exploration has never been done.

We’re ready now to build the kind of networks to do that, but it’s going to need to be agile and extensible in a way that the world community is used to.

The problem in space beyond our beautiful planet surrounded by this wonderful geomagnetic field is that it’s influenced by the vagaries and challenges of space weather. Those solar protons and things that Kurt was talking about, they’re bombarding the Moon and deep space every second. So when you’re working on the Moon, you need to be aware and plug into our space weather network that NASA uses with NOAA, Air Force and other nations to be aware of what’s happening.

If you’re conducting an EVA on the Moon and there’s a solar storm, that would not be good — really not good. So, we need to keep our people alive in our robots also alive from such storms.

We had a solar storm on Halloween several years ago that fried instruments in Mars orbit. Literally, they stopped working. So we need to be aware. We need to build that that comm/nav system that provides the early warning, so the people on the Moon can go to safe havens, the robots can be packed up. It’s just like getting ready for a hurricane, only this is a solar storm.

And as we explore the Sun with Solar Probe Plus [renamed Parker Solar Probe] — now making unbelievable measurements — we need to plug into our space weather science network to also be situationally aware.

So what if you’re on the Moon, as one of those early astronauts — here she is with her heads up display, a nice little tablet — and she has her space communication network system giving her space weather warnings, dust levitation warnings, temperature variation warnings if she gets too close to a cold trap? This is the kind of situational awareness that will let exploration happen safely and better and faster.

IMAGE 05.Artist’s rendering of a Martian explorer with robotic support at the edge of a canyon. Credit: NASA.

And so this is our vision, a space communications navigation network that can go anywhere, anytime as we explore the Moon, so that we’re ready — when we’re ready — to do this. And now this is an artist drawing by intention — not because I’m a lousy artist, some better artists and I actually do this so, truth be told — but this woman here with her quadcopter — not terribly unlike the Mars ’20 [Mars 2020 rover, soon to be renamed] helicopter — and this cute little robot — I won’t call it “R2” or anything — is our vision for Mars exploration.

Now would we allow that woman to go so close to the edge of a great canyon? I’m not sure the flight rules in Houston would facilitate that, but we’ll let them decide.

However, what you see here is a system of systems that require communications, navigation data transfer. If she’s going to work properly, she needs this comm path, this comm path, that comm path somewhere else, to basically navigate the system that she’s using. When we do that with drones and robots here on Earth, we can do it because we have all the systems in place. We have to bring those to Mars.

So this is our vision: women, robots, men, machines on Mars someday after we learn from the Moon. We have to build the internet of communications and navigation to make that possible. And today it doesn’t exist, but we know how to build it.

So the hidden part of project Artemis is all of this stuff. It’s going to let you guys all explore the Moon in new ways and enjoy the ride, because that’s important. We see the grainy pictures from Apollo and they’re great. I was a little kid, saw them, “Oh, it’s the greatest thing I ever saw.”

And you know, it looks pretty bad relative to 4K HD or whatever the new 8K is. What if you could have 8K back when those first women get to the Moon in late ’24? I think that would be pretty good. And after all, we’re all paying for it.

So, I just stop here and say, we have an opportunity to build it right from the outset. We’ve learned how to do that on Earth. We’ve built the DSN, SN and NEN. It’s incredible. We’re ready now to do that: back to the Moon and on to Mars and wherever else we want to go.

So thank you, guys.

NARRATOR

This season of “The Invisible Network” debuted in November of 2019. The podcast is produced by the Space Communications and Navigation program, or SCaN, out of Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Episodes were written and recorded by me, Danny Baird, with editorial support from Matthew Peters. Our public affairs officers are Peter Jacobs of Goddard’s Office of Communications, Clare Skelly of the Space Technology Mission Directorate and Kathryn Hambleton of the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.

Special thanks to Barbara Adde, SCaN Policy and Strategic Communications director, Rob Garner, Goddard Web Team lead, Amber Jacobson, communications lead for SCaN at Goddard, and all those who have leant their time, talent and expertise to making “The Invisible Network” a reality. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. For transcripts of the episodes, visit NASA.gov/invisible. To learn more about the vital role that space communications plays in NASA’s mission, visit NASA.gov/SCaN.