From Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars, explore the world of human spaceflight with NASA each week on the official podcast of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Listen to in-depth conversations with the astronauts, scientists and engineers who make it possible.
On Episode 265, learn how CAPSTONE will help pave the way for Gateway and future exploration around the Moon. The mission is set to reach lunar orbit on Nov. 13. This episode was recorded on August 26, 2022.
Transcript
Gary Jordan (Host): Houston, we have a podcast! Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Episode 265, “CAPSTONE.” I’m Gary Jordan, and I’ll be your host today. On this podcast we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, and astronauts, all to let you know what’s going on in the world of human spaceflight. A few weeks ago, we chatted with Nujoud Merancy about Artemis mission design. In terms of orbits, the first three Artemis missions look pretty different. First, in distant retrograde orbit for Artemis I, then a lunar flyby for Artemis II. By Artemis III humans will enter into an orbit called a near-rectilinear halo orbit, or NRHO, for the first time. There are a lot of perks to this orbit, but probably at the top is its ability to give astronauts access to land on the lunar South Pole, an area of great interest for exploration and discovery for Artemis. After Artemis III, astronauts will regularly enter NRHO to rendezvous with Gateway, NASA’s future lunar orbiting platform. Gateway will be a staging platform, among many other things, for astronauts before they head down to the lunar surface. And though it won’t be continuously inhabited like the International Space Station is in low-Earth orbit, Gateway will be permanently parked in NRHO, something that hasn’t been done before for any spacecraft. Of course, before we put humans into NRHO, we need to test it. Enter CAPSTONE, which is in typical fashion that we find on this podcast, an acronym. Here it is: it is Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment. CAPSTONE successfully launched in June 2022 and is just now getting into its key objective of its mission, testing NRHO. As it gets into this exciting place, we’re bringing in some key people to discuss this important mission. On this episode, we have Brad Cheetham, principal investigator of CAPSTONE and CEO of Advanced Space, and we have Diane Davis, mission design lead for NASA’s Gateway program. NRHO and CAPSTONE: let’s figure out what this is all about. Enjoy.
[Music]
Host: Brad and Diane, thank you so much for coming on Houston We Have a Podcast today.
Bradley Cheetham: Thanks for having me.
Diane Davis: Thanks. I’m glad to be here.
Host: All right, CAPSTONE, right? We’re recording this a couple of months in advance, but really we’re, we’re really, really close to the beginning of probably the, the most critical phase, one of the, one of the, at least one of the top critical phases of the mission, which is NRHO. We’re going to do a deep dive into what that is, talk a little bit about Gateway and a little bit about CAPSTONE. I’m very excited to have this conversation and have these different worlds collide, but I really wanted to start with you guys first. Brad, if I’ll toss to you first, just, you know, you’re the CEO of Advanced Space, you’re the principal investigator of CAPSTONE; I sort of what, wonder what got you to where you are right now?
Bradley Cheetham: Sure, yeah, thanks. So, you know, for me, this story kind of starts just over 11 years ago, along with some co-founders who started a company called Advanced Space. At the time, navigation in cislunar space was actually my, my Ph.D. research, and so I was working on that technically, working on a Ph.D. and, and we kind of left the Ph.D. and, and focused on building a company. And that, that capability became the basis for the company, and then ultimately what got us to, to fly the CAPSTONE mission.
Host: OK. All right. And what was, what, what is Advanced Space? What’s the company’s goals and missions, like, how, how’d you end up in working on CubeSats?
Bradley Cheetham: Sure, sure. Yeah. So Advanced Space, when we started the company, like I said, over 11 years ago, we really, my co-founders and I kind of got excited about space and, and me personally excited about space, through a group called Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, or SEDS. And for us, that was where we, where I really realized and my, one of my other co-founders, that I could personally get involved in, in the space industry. And so from there we kind of evaluated, you know, what do we want to do, how are we going to contribute, and for us our passion was really to enable the sustainable exploration, development and settlement of space. That was our, our motivation. And at the time, there wasn’t a place that we could find that was going to let us do that. And so we set out to, to create our own company. But as grad students we, we didn’t have, you know, billions of dollars like other folks who were starting companies in that time period, so instead of building rockets we decided to build orbits because we could afford to build orbits on our, you know, grad student salaries. So that was really kind what got us into orbits, and then, as it relates to the CAPSTONE mission and, and CubeSats, for us, we are really riding a wave that started many years ago in CubeSats, where for us it was using these existing capabilities for us to go demonstrate the, the critical technologies that we’re demonstrating for CAPSTONE.
Host: Excellent. OK. Yeah, and we’ll do a deeper dive into just sort of how these worlds ended up colliding, but that’s great. Thank you for being here, Bradley. Now, Diane, you have been at NASA for a bit, and now you’re a mission design lead for Gateway. How’d you end up in this role?
Diane Davis: Well, not, you know, like Brad, my background is also in orbit. So I did my Ph.D. in astrodynamics at Purdue [University], where I was studying orbits that depend on like, like cislunar orbits, like CAPSTONE, the gravity of multiple bodies simultaneously, like, like the Earth and the Moon at once. I started working at Johnson here about a decade ago, but in late 2015 I picked up this tricky task of trying to figure out how to keep a spacecraft in this unique orbit, this near-rectilinear halo orbit. It was for the, the future capabilities team at Johnson. So since then I kind of immersed myself in the dynamics of this orbit, and in the meantime the Habitat concept grew into the Gateway program. So in 2018 I took over as a mission design lead for Gateway, and I lead a team, we study the cost to stay in the orbit, how we maintain the correct attitude, how we can safely deploy objects from Gateway and move around within the orbit and get there and back again, and how we track Gateway from Earth, so we know where it is and how fast it’s moving.
Host: All right. So we got two people super-excited about orbits. Now, of course, part of the CAPSTONE mission and, and really what this is testing out, like you’re saying, Diane, is this, you called it, I think you said interesting, was, was the word you said…I might, I might be messing that up…but, but really, it’s this near-rectilinear halo orbit. Can you tell us what’s so unique, what’s so interesting about this particular orbit?
Diane Davis: Yeah, this orbit is really big. It’s a lot bigger than some of the orbits that we’re used to seeing. So, so whereas the Apollo missions were in low lunar orbits, and so, you know, they were about a hundred kilometers from the surface of the Moon in circular orbits that orbit about every two hours, the Gateway’s NRHO takes six and a half days to complete one revolution around the Moon. So it makes a close approach of about 1,600 kilometers from the North Pole and get 70,000 kilometers away from the Moon at its furthest point. So it’s, it’s really big, and so that’s the, the gravity of the Earth pulls on the orbit quite a bit as well as the Moon, and so, yeah, it behaves differently than the, the low orbits that we might be more accustomed to.
Host: OK. And so, so why, you know, why is this a nice orbit then for, for the Gateway? I guess, actually, let me pull back a little bit more: just what is Gateway? Why, why is this a thing that we are pursuing and, and why do we want to put it in NRHO?
Diane Davis: Sure. So, so the Gateway will be a crewed outpost in deep space. It’s going to be permanently located around the Moon, and our astronauts are going to visit the Gateway about once a year for a few weeks or a month. And so this, this station around the Moon will serve as a staging location for our human landing missions to the lunar surface and also potentially to destinations beyond Earth orbit. It’s also important as a proving ground for deep space technologies like, like solar electric propulsion for large crewed spacecraft that we may want for future crewed mission to Mars, for example.
Host: OK. All right. So a lot of things going into this. Now, NRHO, Brad, let me go to you for a second because I want to understand just sort of orbits in general. You spent a lot of time, and you were, had a lot of fascination in this. I know as we’re, you know, we’re, we’re in the, we’re talking about the Artemis, Artemis efforts, right, for, for Gateway — that’s under Artemis, this larger idea of a sustainable human presence on and around the Moon, Gateway being the “around the Moon” portion of that. But you know, we’re talking, we are, we’re probably at this point at the back end if not completely finished with the Artemis I mission, which had a direct, distant retrograde orbit; then there’s the, the Artemis II which is the lunar flyby; you got NRHO, which is where, you know, this, this sort of staging ground that’s around the Moon — there’s a lot of different ways, there’s a lot of different ways that we can go around the Moon. Apollo, for example, had it, had its own, had its own orbit that just…you know, when you’re looking at all of these different orbits, what, what exactly are you, kind of, besides, you know, the physics of it, what exactly are you considering when, when you’re looking at all the different ways that we can visit the Moon?
Bradley Cheetham: Really interesting question. Yeah. I think the, the thing that we look at, and I, I defer back to, to Diane to add to this if she wants, but I think the way we think about, you know, these type of orbits is, is really you’re designing a, a program or an architecture, right? You’re not designing the orbit: the orbit is meeting a purpose. And in the case of, of Apollo, right, the, the Apollo program was, was going down, everything was expand, expendable, we were leaving it there, and so they went kind of directly to a low lunar orbit to the surface and, and back home. What we’re really excited about with Gateway and Artemis and, and the, the stuff that’s coming out right now and that we’re, we’re helping to, to inform, is that these are really, you know, infrastructure elements that are going to be reusable. You know, I think in our, in our vision as a company, sustainability is very important, that we don’t want, you know, one-and-done, flag-and-footprints. And what we see in the ability of something like NRHO and having Gateway up there is really use, reusable cape, capabilities and capacity because the idea now is that we’re going to go to stay and, and build a foothold to go further. And so I think as you start thinking about that now, these other orbits that maybe are not the first ones you would start with but are things that when you start thinking about optimizing an overall architecture for space exploration and, and development, that’s where, where we see a lot of excitement. And then for us, and I’m sure we’ll talk about this more later, one of the things is these, these orbits are a little more interesting or a little more challenging to operate in, and that’s where things like CAPSTONE and some of the underlying technologies we see as sort of enabling that infrastructure to, to be efficient and, and to be, you know, be there for a long time.
Host: OK. Yeah. Yeah. Diane, let me sort of go to you to sort of expand on that, right? What Brad is talking about is these, you know, you think about a mission, what are your mission goals, what are your mission objectives, and then to, to meet the needs of whatever goals you want to achieve, you pick the right orbit. So when it comes to Artemis, right, and what exactly we want to do — beyond Gateway, right, Gateway is being, folding into the mix of everything that is Artemis — what exactly is, is, is good and maybe, maybe more challenging, as Brad is alluding to, about specifically NRHO?
Diane Davis: Yeah, Brad is exactly right. So, you know, we want, we’re going to establish Gateway as a long-term presence around the Moon. So one of the primary things we looked at, well, how much does it cost to stay in this orbit for a long time? The NRHO is nice because it’s, it’s naturally balanced between the Earth’s gravity and the Moon’s gravity, so you’re not fighting against the forces out there. So you only need small corrections to correct, to, to the correct, to the trajectory every week, so we can keep the Gateway in orbit for its full lifetime, you know, 15 years or more, for really low cost. So, you know, that was one of the reasons why it was selected. But, but again, the Gateway’s purpose is an, it’s an outpost out there, right? So we’re going to aggregate supplies and consumables and spacesuit, and the lander itself, so that Artemis and Orion can come bring the crew and they can all head down to the lunar surface. Well, that means we have visiting vehicles coming and going frequently, we have logistics modules bringing supplies, we’ve got Orion bringing the crew, we’ve got HLS (Human Landing System) coming and going. And because this orbit is so large, it sits right at the top of the lunar gravity well, which means it’s really inexpensive, relatively — for example, relative to low lunar orbit — to get in and out. So to get to the Earth and back, you know, to and from the Earth, the NRHO is much less expensive than going lower into the lunar gravity well.
Host: OK. All right. Yeah, you guys have thought a lot about this. Now, in terms of, in terms of NRHO, really just kind of bringing it back to the whole idea of it, has there, do we have any models, any spacecraft, that have been in NRHO before, or is this at this point, you know, you’re, you guys are looking at models, you guys are looking at orbits, and NRHO is really just conceptual, right?
Diane Davis: So, the NRHOs they’re not a new discovery. So my Ph.D. advisor, Kathie Howell, wrote about them, she had a 1984 paper called “Almost Rectilinear Halo Orbits.” And, you know, they’re members of the halo orbits, which have been studied since the 60s. In 2010 we had two spacecrafts, they were, part of the THEMIS (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms) mission, and as a follow-on mission from THEMIS they became what we call, all capitals, the original ARTEMIS (Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon’s Interaction with the Sun) mission. And they were sent out to the Earth/Moon L1 and L2 halo orbits, these unstable halos. So they were our first Earth/Moon halo orbiters. Of course we had plenty of other halo orbiters around Sun/Earth Lagrange points, like the James Webb Space Telescope, but so far nobody has flown a near-rectilinear halo orbit. We’ve been studying the dynamics for the last — a lot — for the last six years, pretty in depth, but CAPSTONE will be our first one to fly in the NRHO.
Host: OK. Yeah. And so, so this is a, this is a really key point, right, is, is, this is going to be something that a spacecraft hasn’t flown in yet. What, like, from a, again, before we really dive into, you know, CAPSTONE as a mission and everything, what are just some of the things that, you know, we think we know about NRHO and we think is good, but we would really want to have that sort of, that sort of trust or verification by sending a spacecraft to NRHO first?
Diane Davis: So I think we’re, we’re reasonably confident in what we know about the NRHO so far, and I think we’ll get into this maybe a little bit later. But things like, you know, how much does it really cost to stay in there? We think we know, but are our assumptions correct? You know, how much, how much Deep Space Network tracking do we need to really have a good fix on the position and velocity of the spacecraft around the Moon in this, in this orbit? Are we, do we know for sure? We think we do, but it’s going to be fantastic to have real live data come back to, you know, give us validation of all of our assumptions that we’re making now.
Host: Very exciting. So let’s get into it, right? Obviously, this is something that we, we want to have some, some under, better understanding of that can help us to plan more about Gateway and make that as, as successful as possible. Diane, at what point was, did this idea of sending a CubeSat and working with commercial industry to make this, to, to do a, you know, a mission like a CubeSat, how did this idea come up and then how’d you end up connecting with Advanced Space?
Diane Davis: Well, you know, I’m going to let Brad answer the first part of that question, actually, because he was crucial in the beginnings of CAPSTONE.
Host: Brad, go ahead.
Bradley Cheetham: Yeah. Yeah. Happy to jump in kind of. The, one of the things that, honestly, we’re most proud of with CAPSTONE has really been the speed with which we were able to, to make it happen and, and bring it together. And so the conversations around CAPSTONE – it didn’t even have a name yet — but the conversations that led to CAPSTONE really kind of became serious in sort of the spring of 2019, and then we were under a contract, and starting to, to build the satellite within about six months. So it was pretty aggressive timeline. And that was really pushed, and, and timeline was very important to us and has remained very important to us, because at the time the vice president had declared, pretty bluntly, that the Artemis program needed to move forward as quickly as possible. And he used the words, “by any means necessary.” So that really got people’s attention, and it really got our attention to say, you know, how can we step up, as a company, as an industry partner to NASA, and help and, and really push this forward? We, we’re, we’re big believers, very passionate about the Artemis program, what it stands for, and it really aligns with our, with our purpose as, existing as a company. And so, from that sort of, how can we help, we had had a technology that we’ve been developing called CAPS, the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System, and we’ve been working on this for several years at this point. And we knew that it’d be important infrastructure for future missions because we knew if you’re going, you know, when Artemis happens and when these other things are going on, you’re going to have a lot of spacecraft operating at the Moon and we’re going to need systems that can scale to meet that need. And so we had that as a, as a starting point and, and kind of built around that, the idea of demonstrate technology, demonstrate operations, and really try to quickly — again, time, timing was important — learn and inform future missions. And so with that kind of in mind, we were rapidly moving out on a program, and, and the exciting thing as it relates to the Gateway program, from my perspective at least, is that we were actually, Advanced Space was supporting Diane and her team at, at JSC before CAPSTONE even was, you know, had an acronym. And so, based on that knowledge, we were able to, from, you know, day zero of the CAPSTONE program, really infuse the importance of what, what Diane and her team are doing into how we were going to fly the mission, how we were going to develop the mission, and really ultimately what stuff we were going to learn, as Diane was saying, how that would, that would help the mission. So, so really, you know, Gateway was there in, in our world before, before CAPSTONE was, but then, you know, there’s this really natural give and take between the two programs of, of learning and, and exploration.
Host: Interesting. OK. So, so then how, how’d you take that next step to actually, you know, you had this idea, was it, was it, was it Advanced Space that approached NASA that says, hey, you know, we want, we’re going to do this mission, or we have this idea, or was it the other way around? How did the idea of, you know, how did this all come together?
Bradley Cheetham: Sure. Honestly, it was very collaborative in nature.
Host: Cool.
Bradley Cheetham: And maybe sounds, sounds weird, but it was like, hey, we think we can do this, and, and we were able to sort of iterate with some key, key folks and key stakeholders, to put together what would be, again, a very, we thought a very useful demonstration. You know, we wanted to really bring back some of that muscle memory of operating at the Moon; we wanted to figure out what are the things we’re not modeling. You know, there’s, there’s, you know, a long history at NASA of doing flight experiments to figure out what are the things that, you know, we didn’t know we didn’t know? [Laughter] And so that was really the, the motivation. And it was, it was really from the beginning, and it still remains this way to today, really an integrated team between Advanced Space, our vendors, and our NASA team, where it really has been, I think, quite remarkable how we’ve been able to coordinate across several NASA centers, across several companies, to get, to get this mission pulled together in, in under three years but also — and we’ll talk about this, I think, a little more later — to overcome some challenges along the way.
Host: Yeah. And that’s sort of where I wanted to head next, Brad, was, was, let’s, let’s take a, a look at, you talked about this, this speed of getting CAPSTONE ready for launch and, and working through those challenges to get us where we are today, and then eventually, when we’re going to post this episode. But really wanted to take it back to this idea of whenever you guys were first getting started, and you saw this challenge to do, to do, to, to try to get the Artemis program and its missions moving as quickly as possible, and you guys started designing this, this technology, this CAPSTONE CubeSat and, and started really hitting the ground running. Can you talk about some of those first moments when you’re just like, OK, I got, I got my mission, here’s what we’re going to do — how’d you, how’d you first start approaching the design of the CAPSTONE CubeSat?
Bradley Cheetham: Yeah, and that, and that really started from understanding some of the stuff that we had, had been working with Diane and her team on, which is to say, hey, what, what is, what is the Gateway target orbit, what is the, the near-rectilinear halo orbit, what is the, how can we be useful in that orbit? And then one of the other key pieces for us was really, from the very beginning, understanding that we can get to that orbit using what we refer to as a ballistic lunar transfer, but is effectively a very fuel-efficient transfer to get to these type of three-body orbits at the Moon. And the reason that was so important was because with that knowledge we were able to start designing a mission and, and, and the requirements for a mission, that could fit in a small package. We didn’t need a big, huge propulsion system, we needed a, we could do this in a small CubeSat form factor. And once we realized that that was possible, that really kind of unlocked a lot more here in terms of speed and in terms of leveraging really what the indu, commercial industry with NASA’s support for many years had been developing for CubeSats. And so we were able to really pick up on things that, that had already been built for the most part, and focus on just customizing a few parts of the mission that were going to be unique for flying at the Moon. And that really is what allowed us to be aggressive with schedule. And I, I also, as I mentioned before, we really had kind of an aggressive schedule mindset from the beginning. Not to say that we thought that was going to be easy, and it, and it certainly wasn’t easy, but that was really a laser-focus of, of what we were doing was, how are the things work — you know, designing or trading or what vendors might we work with — how are those decisions going to impact schedule? And, and that was really important for us because as a precursor mission, you know, by definition we need to, to be out there and learning as quickly as we can so that some of these lessons learned can be fed back into to other programs.
Host: Understood. Yeah. You guys had to move really, really quickly. So, so Diane, I mean, thinking about that, NASA’s charged with, with and, and Brad pointed to the fact that it’s a very collaborative approach to figuring this stuff out; that put a lot of pressure on NASA and the Gateway program to define a lot of these things very quickly, right? As, as Brad was mentioning, you were pulling knowledge from NASA to understand exactly what it is that Gateway needed, that put a lot of pressure on you and your team to say, OK, this is, this is sort of the requirements that we’re going for, this is, this is what we need to understand, and you had to move relatively quickly on that.
Diane Davis: Yeah, that’s true. That’s true, though, I mean, we were moving quickly anyway, because at the same time that Brad’s getting CAPSTONE ready, NASA’s starting to build the Power and Propulsion Element, the first — and the HALO (Habitation and Logistics Outpost) — the first two pieces of the Gateway itself. So in order to understand, you know, for example, how much — take it back to the Gateway world — how much, how, how big do the propellant tanks on PPE have to be to keep us up there for a whole lifetime? So we were, we were, we were looking into this stuff anyway, but like Brad mentioned, we have, you know, we share some of the same team members from Advanced Space on the Gateway mission design team, so we have this great back and forth between, you know, the, the two missions, the CAPSTONE folks and the, the Gateway folks. So anything we learn for one of the missions is completely applicable to the other one. It’s also been super-nice to have, you know, because we’re, we’re, we’re developing our simulations for CAPSTONE and Gateway independently, which means we’re flying in this new orbit regime, so we need to be real careful that, you know, we don’t have necessarily intuition to look back on to say, well, this previous mission got this results and my results are, match those, so they must be right. So it, but what, what we do have is two completely independent simulations up and running, written in different, by different people in different software packages, so we each can be used to validate the other. Especially, sometimes we find that our results are coming out a little bit more favorable than we might have expected, and so when you, you know, you want to make sure you’re not being unrealistically optimistic, so it’s super-nice to have both teams independently studying this new orbit regime and supporting each other so that we can be confident in our results.
Host: Oh, that’s fantastic. Brad, I want to, I want to go back to the CubeSat a little bit, and understand some of the, you, you, you know, kind of taking these lessons and sharing and understanding more about what it is Gateway needs and what it is CAPSTONE is able to do and comparing these things, diving a little bit more into the CubeSat design itself: so, so Diane was mentioning these larger scale ideas that are needed for Gateway, like the power and propulsion, like, stuff like that, but what are some of the components of CAPSTONE that are on, like, what, what, what is the propulsion element? How does it navigate? What are some of the systems on board that make CAPSTONE what it is?
Bradley Cheetham: Sure. The, the spacecraft itself, just to give listeners kind of perspective, a 12U CubeSat; you know, it’s sort of like a roller, a roller bag luggage, you know, size thing. Like, you could, you could probably check, check it in the luggage if you wanted to; I, I, we never did, but just to give you an idea, there’s something, you know, if you wanted, you could carry it. You know, it’s very small. I’m, just be clear, clear about this, right, there’s no, there’s no people in there. Very small thing. You know, about the size of a microwave oven, is kind of the way we talk about it.
Host: Yeah.
Bradley Cheetham: And so, what we, one of the first challenges we had was there’s a lot that you have to fit to do something that’s going to go beyond Earth orbit, it’s going to go to the Moon. In fact, you know, we, during the mission went over 1.5 million kilometers, almost a million miles away. So there’s a lot to fit in, into the package there. And so, that was a big challenge. And what we were able to put in there, the key pieces of it, was a propulsion system, that is, it’s a monopropellant hydrazine propulsion system that gives us the, the, the thrust we need. Since we separated from the launch vehicle on, on July 4, we have to do maneuvers all the way to the Moon, little correction maneuvers, little targeting maneuvers. And then ultimately, on November 13 in the afternoon, in a couple days after this will air, we’ll do our critical in, insertion maneuver into the NRHO. And then from there, as Diane had mentioned, the orbit takes about six and a half days, so we say about a week to get around the Moon. And we anticipate doing about one maneuver a week to just sort of stay in that orbit, clean up errors and, and, and, and remain in the region we want be. So a propulsion system, very, very important, and that was developed for us during the program very rapidly by a company called Stellar Exploration. We’re really, really proud of that part of the program. And then to get to what we’re going to be doing when we’re in the, the NRHO, if you’re, you know, listeners see a picture of CAPSTONE it has this almost like a top hat looking thing on the top of it, and that’s our crosslink radio. And so that’s a, a radio that we’ll be using to talk with and to exchange a signal with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is a NASA mission has been there for over a decade. And, and one of the key parts of our mission is to demonstrate that we’ll be able to talk with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and from talking to LRO be able to get a measurement of the distance between the two spacecraft, us in a NRHO, LRO in a low lunar orbit. And from that measurement we’ll be able to feed that into our, our CAPS navigation software onboard the satellite, which will then allow us to determine where both of those satellites are. And so that’s a key thing, right? People think of, you know, GPS (Global Positioning System) chip in your phone tells you where you are, right, relative to the GPS satellites; we don’t have that at the Moon. So we’re looking at how can we build capabilities for satellites like CAPSTONE and, and future missions to know where they are at the Moon. And so, we have the crosslink radio, we also added a chip-scale atomic clock so we’ll be able to do some demonstrations looking at signals that are just sending from the Earth to the spacecraft, and then the spacecraft will determine how far away it is from the Earth based on those signals. And then we also have a, a camera on board, and so we’ll be able to take pictures and be able to do other technology demonstration with the, the payload imager that we have. So that’s kind of all the pieces of the puzzle. Another key part, which is less obvious if you’re looking at the satellite from the outside, but as inside the satellite we have a, a dedicated flight computer for doing these automation demonstrations. So we’ll be able to test software for onboard operations on a computer that’s dedicated just for doing that experiment. So it’s not going to, there’s, there’s no risk of, you know, interfering with the standard operations of the satellite, which means we can take some risks with what we’re demonstrating and testing, and we’re really excited about the potential for that.
Host: Awesome, awesome. Very, very cool. Very cool spacecraft that’s heading into NRHO very, very soon at this point. Now in terms of the construction and, and testing of everything, you also, you mentioned the aggressive schedule, right, you have all these different components; what did you guys do to make sure that everything was going to work properly before you launched it into space?
Bradley Cheetham: Certainly. So yeah, we, our, our vendors, or the, the folks who built the spacecraft and are supporting operations, Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, they, they had a very thorough test campaign that they conducted with all the pieces of hardware for the satellite integrated, and, and tested. And so that, that really helped us to understand as these things were coming together from different sources, different partners were delivering things, you know, we had that all together and integrated and tested in Southern California before we, before we shipped out for launch. The other thing that helps the mission approach is that our transfer to the Moon on this ballistic transfer takes three to four months, and so we’re able to now as we’re, you know, on our way about to do our insert and maneuver in November, to, to test out a lot of those capabilities and really focus on commissioning in space. And so that’s been a big way to help us, you know, once we, once we get to the NRHO we can hit the ground running on a lot of these technology demonstration activities, and that’ll be enabled because we have this transfer to, to really, you know, bring things up to speed in space, make sure things are behaving as we expect in space, and, and as Diane alluded to earlier, in some cases we’re actually seeing things perform better than we expected, which is always, is always a nice, a nice change of pace when things outperform your, your expectations.
Host: Oh, absolutely. Let, let me, let me, take a little detour over to this ballistic transfer to, to better understand this. So, I mean, one of the things you mentioned about this, this way of navigating to the Moon was it’s, it’s significant savings on fuel, which makes a ton of sense. But if I were to, just with my limited knowledge of, of how this works, I think my understanding is the reason you would probably want to use this transfer to, is, is because of its limitations on how much fuel you need to use, because you don’t have people on board: you can, you can play with time a lot more liberally, right? Obviously, with, with people you don’t want to be spending a couple months on the way to the Moon, but is that really the benefit of the ballistic transfer is, is you can focus as, as fuel as one of your primary concerns without having to deal with the pesky humans on board that want to get home?
Bradley Cheetham: Exactly. Yeah. I, I kind of like to, I kind like to think of it almost as the ballistic transfer is sort of the sailboat approach, right?
Host: Ah, yep.
Bradley Cheetham: You know, it takes a little longer you, but you’re, you’re maybe using, you know, you use the Sun’s gravity, you’re taking your time. But you know, the, the more direct transfer is definitely what, what you’d want to use with people, are more of like the speedboat, right? You put the, you put the, the motor in, in full speed ahead, and you get there as quickly as you can. And so certainly, that’s, that’s the tradeoff. Yeah. It’s time for fuel.
Host: Time for fuel, OK. That is the, that’s a wonderful analogy. Now, you, you got the system constructed, you got all the different components on the spacecraft, you tested it out; I want to know how you ended up working with Rocket Lab to, to, to launch from, I believe it was in New Zealand, right?
Bradley Cheetham: Sure, yeah. Yeah, it was, it was very exhilarating night watching that go up in, in the nighttime launch that we had from, from New Zealand. So the, the journey that got us to, to New Zealand, actually, so NASA in this, in for this mission selected the, the ride for us, so they were the ones who, who bought the, the rocket from Rocket Lab. And one of the exciting things about it, which is part of the reason, you know, I think that NASA went with that approach was that CAPSTONE, you know, the small microwave [oven]-sized satellite, was the only payload on the rocket. And so that was something that was pretty novel was to think about taking a small satellite and having it be the only, or the primary payload on a rocket. That’s really not something that’s ever been, been done before. Certainly not into deep space.
Host: Right.
Bradley Cheetham: And so I think that one of the things that was exciting about that is it really demonstrated the potential for future missions with small spacecrafts. You know, there’s a lot of innovation in small spacecraft and small launch vehicles, right? So there’s obviously, Rocket Lab did a great job getting us on our way, but there’s other rockets too. And so I think just that idea of saying, hey, we can take small satellites, put them on small rockets, and go do things in deep space was a pretty exciting precedent to set.
Host: That’s amazing. Now, I understand, shortly after launch, you guys had some communications challenges and, and you mentioned challenges that you had to, got to go along the way. But this one I understand was, you know, it, it was definitely one of the, it, it was def, definitely probably a nerve-wracking moment for you, for you guys and I wanted, wanted to kind of get your, gauge your thoughts on, on exactly what happened and, and what the, how the team sort of was feeling, and then work through the issue to resolve it.
Bradley Cheetham: Yeah, not going to lie, that was a pretty stressful 43 hours. So, you know, for context, just shortly after separating from the, the rocket — 4th of July, you know, we were really excited; what a, what a day to, to be on our way to the Moon — after a few hours of, of being in space a series of, of things happened that meant that we couldn’t talk to the satellite anymore. And, and that was terrifying. And, and, but I will say I was so proud of the team that we had, really across the board. Like I mentioned before, not just Advanced Space, all the vendors, all the partners, NASA even, really came together, worked the problem. You know, one of the things people don’t realize when, when you’re, when you’re talking about these spacecraft anomalies or issues is, is the first thing is you, you don’t even know what, what you, you don’t know, right? Like there, you, you don’t have a, a camera crew up there telling you what’s going on, so you got to shake through a lot of different potential scenarios to figure out what happened. And, and I think that having our team come together, you know, close ranks across the whole project, really helped us very quickly to isolate, OK, what do we think is going on, what are the, what are the, you know, ways we can recover, what’s going to happen, how’s it going to, how’s it going to move forward. And that really, and that really helped a lot. And, and people who, who are interested can go back and see, because we were really trying to be as, you know, transparent and open about this as we could. So we were, we were sharing, you know, the best knowledge we had, you know, publicly as quickly as we could, which was certainly added some risk but we thought it was important, with all the attention we were getting that we weren’t going to just hide behind, you know, a barrier. And so one of the things that really helped us to get to a point where we could recover was that, I mentioned, we separated, we had about, you know, a few hours of, of normal operations before these issues happened, and during that time we were able to get an, a navigation solution, we were able to get an estimate of where the satellite was, that was really, really good. And so I think that’s something that was key: our team really was, was, overdelivered in that respect. And, and the reason that was important is because we can’t talk to the spacecraft, it can’t talk to us, and so we’re trying to troubleshoot the spacecraft. The, the problem would’ve been orders of magnitude harder if we were trying to troubleshoot the spacecraft and we didn’t know where it was, right? And so, the key thing for us was when the spacecraft was recovered it was exactly where we thought it would be. So we didn’t have to spend a whole bunch of time and resources looking for it, it was exactly where, where we predicted it would be. And so that, that, that whole, like, you know, story there, that, we could do an hour-long, probably, on that by itself. But, but just the fact that we were able to come together, recover and, and, and importantly for, for other, for, for the rest of our mission, other missions, we were able to learn from that, right? So there are, there are things that came out of that stressful 43 hours that are going to make the rest of the mission better and lower risk. You know, this, this issue happening on our way to do our insertion maneuver at the NRHO could have been way worse, right? So having this issue come up early, we were able to, to figure it out, we were able to fix the problems, there were some issues with software, there’s a whole bunch of things that came together. We were able to, we’ve already fixed those, right? So that was, was not pleasant, but I would say going forward it, it did actually give us a bit more confidence as we moved into other, other phases of the mission that, that we’re, we’re feeling pretty good about how things are going now.
Host: Very optimistic view. Yeah. I know. The, the drama of that I can, I can absolutely relate to, it’s, it’s, it’s, imagine all that hard work, you know, after, after all these years and the aggressive schedule and then, and then you have an issue like that. But it’s really the, the, it’s stories like these that I think make spaceflight what it is, you know? It’s, it’s working through these issues, unexpected issues, and a very challenging timeframe and, and, and everything coming through together. And a lot of it, a lot of these stories that we hear, especially on this podcast, have to do with exactly what you’re saying, Brad, which is all the teams that are supporting. And I know Diane, I’m sure you had complete insight into everything that was going on. Brad even mentioned that NASA teams were fully integrated into all of this. Can you talk about your perspective of this whole situation, and then, and, and kind of adding onto that is, is really just how, how NASA is working with Advanced Space and some of these other companies that Brad was mentioning to, to, to op, for the operations of this mission?
Diane Davis: Sure. So, you know, as, as far as the, the comm[unication] loss that the CAPSTONE experienced, you know, the, the team was great at, at keeping everyone, you know, up to date with, with the, the news of what was going on. I think that was probably the moment when I realized how important and interested in this mission I am. Like, I just, I’m very invested in the CAPSTONE mission…
Host: Right.
Diane Davis:…because it’s going to, you know, be testing out this stuff that I’m working on for, you know, five years. And, and so it was, it was, it was definitely a terrifying moment. And, and just the joy when, when the radio came back on was, was palpable. I think everyone was, was celebrating quite a bit. So that was really exciting.
Host: That must feel really good. Now in terms of the, the day-to-day operations, right, so obviously, we’re recording this a little bit ahead of time but we, we, we are continuously mentioning that November is really when we’re getting into, we’re going to start getting into the NRHO. Brad, I’ll go to you for this for, for a second. Just that, that, the journey thus far really, is what I’m looking for: from, from Earth to this ballistic transfer to lunar to, to the Moon, and what you guys have been doing throughout these months to, to set us up for, really, what is the key focus and objectives of this mission is, is the, is the operations in NRHO.
Bradley Cheetham: Absolutely. Yeah. So just maybe to set the stage for, for how we do operations and maybe kind of provide a little insights here, so Advanced Space is the, the, actually, the owner of this satellite, we’re the prime contractor for the contract with NASA. Our partners at Tyvak in, in Irvine, California, they run the mission operations center, or the MOC, and they’re the point for operating the spacecraft in terms of telemetry, day-to-day operations, you know, basically all the stuff that if this 12U CubeSat was in, in any orbit all the stuff you have to do, right? There’s, it’s, there’s other, you know, a lot of things that have to happen. And then we have here at our offices in Westminster, Colorado, just north of Denver, what we call the advanced space operation center, or, or the ASOC, and, and our team here, and the ASOC is doing all of the cislunar and the mission-unique type of operation. So for us that means that, that we should talk about sort of flight dynamics, so navigation, designing maneuvers for the spacecraft, as well as all our payload operations. So the payload operations predominantly are going to be what we’re thinking about in the NRHO itself, and so on the journey to the Moon we’ve been focused a lot on the navigation and maneuver design. And then all of those operations are really critically supported by the NASA team at the Deep Space Network, and so those are the, the ground tracking dishes that we use to, to talk to the satellite and also to, to, to figure out where it is. And so that’s sort of how we do, do operations and, and as it relates to the journey to the Moon, one of the things that, that really came together to highlight for me some of the importance of this which, which I at first hadn’t really anticipated, has been some of the knowledge exchange we’ve had with, with particularly the secondary payloads on the Artemis I mission. Most of those payloads are actually flying the same radio that we’re flying, and they’re also using some of the same ground stations we’re using except some of them are actually using, are more reliant on some of the newer ground stations than even we are. And so we’ve actually, very quickly, you know, from, hey, get into space and, and, and get to the Moon, had to start turning around — and we’re really, really proud to be helping — to create presentations, to share data, to help those missions who are, who are, or, you know, will be on the Artemis I secondaries…presumably when this is aired are, are flying through space. You know, they will have learned things that we, you know, lessons we learned that they’ll be able to go into their mission operations without, without having uncertainties and having, you know, appropriate assumptions on noise, and a lot of the same tools that we’ve configured for our flight operations for CAPSTONE to get to the Moon are things that, you know, should there be any issues or other reasons that we need to come in, you know, we’re available to help. And so that’s something that, you know, the timing of CAPSTONE with respect to the Artemis I flight really, you know, resonated in terms of these are, you know, no kidding, lessons learned that we’re able to hand over to other missions to try to help make them successful. And I think that’s something that, you know, we’ve always thought forward to, to Gateway to, you know, future Artemis missions, certainly we’re, we’re focused on that too; but the immediacy with which these things are happening now with respect to the Moon, I think it’s really, really notable in terms of the value proposition for what we’ve, we’ve been doing.
Host: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s, it’s a very dynamic time, lots of, lots of things to talk about that are in the lunar facility, all, like you’re saying, all seemingly all at the same time. It’s just the activity is just exploding and it’s, it’s, it’s very, very exciting. Very soon, you know, you’re going to be operating in NRHO and, you guys have mission objectives, of course, that you want to accomplish in there; Brad, you already mentioned the communications with LRO, you got, you got some of that, you’re, you’re going to be testing out the propulsion systems. Through, how, what do your operations look like when you’re in NRHO? What’s your mission timeline for how long you’re going to be there doing some data collection? What is, what does that period look like once you’re, once you’re in NRHO?
Bradley Cheetham: Sure. Yeah. So, after we arrive, which again is, is sort of our most critical operation — you know, I, I’ve been telling our team it’s our, it’s our like 30 minutes of terror, if you can think of the sort of Mars landing stuff because a lot of stuff has to happen, most of it’s automated on board. And, and that’s really our most critical event. So, you know, the afternoon of November 13 we’ll really be focused on, on that activity happening. After that, we’ll have some correction, kind of cleanup maneuvers, and then we’ll really start to settle into this, this orbit, this, this NRHO. And in the first, you know, few weeks, will really look like us doing detailed navigation analysis. We’ll start designing these weekly maneuvers, and we’ll really kind of get a sense, as, as Diane was saying earlier, you know, we’re not, we’re not worried that we, you know, we, we have the, the physics pretty well modeled, for us now it’s, it’s, are the assumptions in the operations, you know, as, as well understood as we think. And so that’s really what we’ll be focused on for the first few weeks. And then, you know, given that time frame in, in the holidays, you know, roughly January is when we expect we’ll start doing payload operations with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. And that’s a very exciting interaction between our team, the team at [NASA] Goddard [Space Flight Center] that runs LRO as well as, as others involved. And so that’ll be really the first big part of the, the CAPS demonstration. But one of the things we, you know, talk about with CAPSTONE is, the first four letters are CAPS, that we’re, we’re working on this navigation capability; the last four letters are Technology, Operations and Navigation Experiment, you know, that, the last, the second half of the acronym is really what we have been doing all the way to the Moon, what we’ll be doing for those first few weeks in the orbit, which is to say, you know, understanding operations, quantifying some of these things that, that we have models for but we want to really understand, and, and again, you know, handing off those lessons learned, you know, we, our teams have already been collaborating on some of the modeling performance with, with folks that work with Diane on Gateway and PPE and, and others. And so that, that part of it is sort of, it’s hard maybe for people to pull that out but there are just, there’s a lot of things that we don’t know we don’t know that that we’re going to pull out of this, and that’s what we’re really focused on handing off. Again, as quickly as possible, time is important here, so that that can then inform future development and future activities.
Host: All right. Yeah, so very exciting, very exciting time coming up here in the very near future. Now, Diane, you and the Gateway teams, obviously I think are, are going to be very interested in this, you know, not only the 30 minutes of terror, make sure it actually gets into where you want it to go, but very interested in the data collection that’s happening while in NRHO. So how are you going to be working with Advanced Space to, to, to understand the data, to monitor the spacecraft, and then eventually take that information, parse through it, and, and make some changes or updates or, or further your understanding of Gateway operations for the future?
Diane Davis: OK. So we are, we are already receiving great information from the Advanced Space team, and, and a CAPSTONE team. For example, the, the tracking data, the navigation data from the Deep Space Network is already being transferred over to navigators in JSC’s mission operations team, so they can get their ground system going and some extra testing for the lunar transfers that, that they’ll be going as, as, as Brad mentioned. So, as CAPSTONE enters this NRHO and transitions to primary operations, we’re going to see an expanded and formalized back and forth between the CAPSTONE team and the Gateway team. So we operate in analysis cycles on the, on the Gateway side, and so as the, as the designs mature for all the pieces of Gateway, you know, all the, the components and the designs, all the systems, as we start to learn more and more about what we’re building, we update our assumptions. And so the CAPSTONE results are going to go straight into the next round of the mission designs analysis cycle. So as we learn from CAPSTONE, we’ll be able to update our assumptions and mature our designs going forward.
Host: All right. Yeah. Now this is really critical, right, because Gateway obviously has a lot of components to it; you talked about power and propulsion. Now, just at a high level, when, when you’re talking about, you know, you have a pretty good understanding of NRHO and its behaviors, CAPSTONE obviously going to add to some data that, that, as you mentioned, you’re going to be using, but from, from a really a high level are there key differences that, that maybe most folks would overlook, like for example one of the things that really comes to mind for me is CAPSTONE is the size of a microwave oven, where Gateway is the size of, you know, a, a small space station, right? So, huge differences in size; I wonder if something like that has just, you know, very basic changes to just, you know, what, how you would take the data from CAPSTONE to apply it to Gateway. So, so stuff like that. What are just, you know, are there, are there key things that, that are just, you know, just base differences between that, that you have to consider when you’re taking some of these data?
Diane Davis: For sure. There’s, there’s some serious differences between the spacecraft. I mean, one is that Gateway is going to host crew, so we have a lot more perturbations that we’re going to have to deal with that CAPSTONE doesn’t. We have, you know, we’re going to have rendezvous and docking that we’ll have to consider, we’ll have venting from life support system so carbon dioxide will be vented into the air, and every time you do a little puff, you know, you’re out there in space and so it, it tends to torque the spacecraft so you have to correct for those perturbations. And then the crew’s doing things like exercise, and so that’s, you know, on board that provides perturbations as well. And then you mentioned, like you said, the size: Gateway’s a lot bigger than a microwave. So, you know, with this much larger, longer spacecraft, one, one example is as we go over the Moon, you know, as we, as we pass close to the Moon, we get gravity gradient torque on the spacecraft, which is, so our attitude control situation is just a lot different on the, on the big old noisy puffy Gateway with, with crew jumping around and dancing on board, you know, versus the, the, the, the CAPSTONE, the smaller spacecraft that’s quiet without all the perturbation.
Host: OK. And there’s no…
Diane Davis: I mean, another really important thing. Sorry, go on.
Host: No, I was, go ahead. You said another really important thing?
Diane Davis: Yeah. We, we have to always consider with a crewed spacecraft abort opportunities and crew safety. So where a CubeSat may be able to be risk tolerant and experiment and try new things, with a crewed spacecraft the safety has, it is critical, right? So our top priority is always crew safety, always getting them home safely, which, which adds additional complications when you’re designing a crewed spacecraft.
Host: OK. Yeah. Understood. Yeah, no, I, I was going to ask about the, the perturbations. So it sounds like, you know, these are something that you’re going to have to account for, but Brad, it doesn’t, I don’t think it, there’s no, like, simulated perturbations that you guys are doing with the CAPSTONE thing, right? Like you’re not introducing, you know, small thrusts to simulate perturbations that you need to correct for mid-mission, or is that, or is that part of the mission design?
Bradley Cheetham: No, unfortunately, I wasn’t creative enough to think about little simulated astronauts dancing around on, on CAPSTONE, but now I wish I, I wish I had. But for, for us, I think the way to think about it is that as, as Diane mentioned, you know, we’re in many ways quieter in the sense that we don’t have all these other things going on. So, so I, I think of it as it’s good to sort of have that reference of what will the quiet be, and then you can obviously figure out for, for Gateway and, and they have, you know, how to accommodate for all these other things that are going on. And so, for us, to me, I think of it almost sort of like a walk and then run kind of mindset. So, so we won’t have a lot of those perturbations, but I think we’ll be able to lock down the, you know, baseline operations and then we’ll be able to see, you know, as, as you add more, for example, schedule more tracking data, you know, that allows you then to accommodate a navigation solution that are maybe, have a little more perturbation or a little more dynamics going on, like we’ll see on Gateway. So I think to me it’s sort of a natural progression, but like, I wasn’t creative enough to add the, the, simulated dancing astronauts.
Host: [Laughter] No, I think I, that’s makes perfect sense, right? You have the, the, the smooth operations, and then obviously you can sort of tweak with it as you’re understanding more about Gateway. But, you know, you’re going to be doing that for quite some time, right? Brad, how long is the mission, and then at what point do you decide mission success or we have the data that we want, and then how do you dispose of the spacecraft or maybe do you even just leave it there?
Bradley Cheetham: Sure, yeah. So certainly, we don’t, we don’t leave it there.
Host: Yeah.
Bradley Cheetham: So the, the baseline right now is after we get into the, to the orbit is our plan is to operate there for 18 months. One of the things that’s really important we haven’t talked about is that we are in, like, the exact same orbit the Gateway will be in, and, and that’s important because that then allows us to demonstrate not just the orbit operations but also, you know, we avoid eclipses, which is a big thing, and we can always see the Earth. There’s a lot of importance to that. But we’ll be in that orbit right now the plan is for 18 months. The, the system itself, we do not expect will be fuel-limited, so we’re not going to run out of gas. And so our plan will be to continue operating either in an NRHO or, you know, we may need to — and we’re fine with that — to get out of the way if, you know, as things start to arrive, other orbits at the Moon. Really until we start to see systems that, that, on the spacecraft that are, are, you know, reaching their end of life, and, our hope will be continue to operate. But anyways, no matter what we end up doing, our end of life is really important because we, like I said, our, at the beginning, sustainability for, for space operations is, is critical to us, and so we want to have a safe cislunar area, we don’t want, you know, dead satellites flying around. So our, our end-of-life plan will be, right now is a targeted impact on the, the surface of the Moon to dispose of the system, get it out of the way, and importantly that’s, it’ll be targeted so that there are certain areas on the Moon certainly we don’t want to be impacting, and so we’ll be very careful to do that. And then, and something that probably people don’t realize is that there is a lot of work that goes into those type of analyses before we even get to the launchpad. And so we’ve worked these type of analyses and plans with NASA and with others in the government from the very beginning to really make sure that when we’re doing things at the Moon, our goal is to be very safe and transparent. So we don’t want, you know, there to be, you know, secrecy around it, we don’t want there to be zombie satellites flying around. We want to do our best to make sure that we dispose of, of what we’re using at the end, and that people know, know what we’re doing.
Host: Awesome. I wanted to sort of end with this for you both, just this whole idea of just sort of where we are in terms of spaceflight and just this whole landscape of, of all the things that we’re doing in space right now. Brad, I’ll start with you, just this, focusing moreso on the idea of, I think the commercial aspect of things and working with, you know, with NASA and like you’re saying with other companies to execute these things, you, you know, you talked about all these activities, you mentioned the secondary payloads in, in, as part of the Artemis I mission, there’s just, there’s so much going on, and I wonder, just your feelings about working in the space industry at this time?
Bradley Cheetham: Absolutely. What, what a great question to end on. So, I, I think my, my, you know, emotional answer to that is that I’m exhilarated to be doing this right now. And, and I think, I’m going to use this “we” here broadly, I think with NASA’s leadership and, and industry support, I think we are just getting started, which I think is really awesome. You know, I, I, you know, we, we’ve, we’ve had a lot of talk about doing these type of things before, but, but now it’s really happening. And the fact that we can play a small role in it is really a dream come true for me, and it’s, it’s something that we, we think is, is just sort of the tip of the iceberg. We see opportunities, you know, certainly NASA has all a lot of great stuff going on, we’re supporting a lot of great projects at the Moon and in other places; I think it’s really, we’re in an era now, I think, in space exploration that is uniquely both exciting– certainly Apollo was exciting — but I think what’s also, what’s maybe more interesting to me now is that it’s robust. It’s not just, you know, one program and one mission, it’s lots of programs, it’s lots of missions. And certainly if we’re going to compare it to Apollo, I wasn’t alive during Apollo so I have a special spot in my heart for this one because I’m alive for it.
Host: [Laughter] Of course. Yeah. You get to experience it. Amazing, amazing answer, Brad. Diane, same question to you: expanding on that too, really just the idea of Artemis, right, and of course, this is, this is really what we’re talking about here, this CAPSTONE mission, is going to be, is going to be really previewing long-term — as you mentioned, you used the word permanent, right, when you, when you were talking about Gateway –we’re talking about, as Brad is mentioning, a sustained, robust future in, in lower, in, in lunar orbit, continued lunar operations, this expansive commercial market that’s working with NASA, it’s just, it’s a very exciting time. I wonder your perspective on this.
Diane Davis: Yeah, it’s so exciting. Yeah, we’re going to the Moon to stay, as, as they say, and it’s just an incredible time. You know, we’ve got, we’ve got KPLO, the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, and CAPSTONE already on their way to the Moon. We’ve got Artemis I imminent, along with it 10 CubeSats that it’s carrying, and some of those are headed to the Moon as well. And then going forward we’ve got the CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) program that’s going to be landing payloads on the surface of the Moon. Plus, you know, Artemis II and III, taking crew out to the Moon for the first time in, in, you know, Brad’s lifetime and my lifetime, and then, you know, starting, starting with the later Artemis missions headed through Gateway with the sustainable presence at the Moon and beyond, it’s, it’s incredibly exciting time to be in space. You know, it’s, you know, as, as they say, space is the final frontier. There’s just so much left out there to learn and understand. And every time, you know, we find a simple question, but then you dive into it and you realize how much there is to discover. There’s just so much to discover out there with every little question you want to answer. They’re never little questions. They always, they go so deep and there’s so much to, so much to explore with all the space questions.
Host: Amazing. Ah, yeah, it’s great. I love, I love talking with folks about, about this sort of thing and, and it just seems like every time I get to talk with folks about their, exactly as you’re saying, Diane, like their unique part of the mission about this exploration, adding, you know, a fingerprint on human exploration and, and adding to, right, you guys are exploring NRHO, right, something that is, is a, is a frontier that we’re going to discover, we’re going to learn more about, and then, and then we’re going to continue operations there. It’s just so exciting and just hearing your passion about it is just, is exhilarating to me as well. So I wanted to end by thanking you both for coming on Houston We Have a Podcast, understanding more about this mission and, and what it’s leading to very exciting times. So Brad and Diane, thank you both for coming on the podcast today.
Bradley Cheetham: Thank you. Real pleasure.
Diane Davis: Thanks a lot. It was a ton of fun.
[Music]
Host: Hey, thanks for sticking around. So fun talking with Brad and Diane today about CAPSTONE; very exciting time coming up very shortly. You heard, November 13th is right now the scheduled time for CAPSTONE to enter into NRHO and the very dramatic 30 minutes of terror that Brad was alluding to. Make sure you follow the CAPSTONE mission and its updates November 13 to see what that’s all about to begin its operations in NRHO. Very exciting time. Of course, this is, this is part of Artemis missions, what we’re going to learn from this is going to inform for, for our operations on Artemis III and IV and beyond for NRHO. So very exciting time; if you want to learn more about Artemis, you can of course check us out at NASA.gov/Artemis. If you’re interested in orbits and mission design, we had a conversation with Nujoud Merancy a couple of weeks ago for Episode 255, we dove into more about NRHO as well as many other orbits, and really an expansive look at Artemis and, and its mission profile, really as a whole looking at many different missions and the logic behind them. It was a really interesting discussion, so if you’re interested particularly in orbits I would definitely check that episode out, Episode 255. But if you want a more expansive look at everything Artemis, then we have a full collection that you can look at of all of our episodes, you can listen to them in no particular order, just really choose the ones that interest you most. It’s at NASA.gov/Johnson/hwhap/Artemis-episodes, or just go to your favorite search engine and type in Houston We Have a Podcast, Artemis episodes; it’ll come up right at the top. We’re one of many NASA podcasts across the whole agency. You can check all of them out at NASA.gov/podcasts. There’s some great shows. A lot of content out there, if you want to binge any of the things that they have going on. But if you want to talk to us specifically at Houston We Have a Podcast, we’re at the NASA Johnson Space Center pages of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Just use the hashtag #AskNASA on your favorite platform to submit an idea for the show or maybe ask a question, just make sure to mention is for us at Houston We Have a Podcast. This episode was recorded on August 26, 2022. Thanks to Will Flato, Pat Ryan, Heidi Lavelle, Belinda Pulido, Jaden Jennings, and Dylan Connell. And of course, thanks again to Brad Cheetham and Diane Davis 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. We’ll be back next week.