Transcripts

This Week in Space 167 Transcript

Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

00:00 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Hey space fans on this week in space we got human remains launching to space and lost at sea. Axiom 4 finally gets to the space station and we're gonna find out exactly what lunar outpost wants to build for a rover on the moon. Tune in.

00:15 - TWIT.tv (Leo Laporte) (Announcement)
Podcasts you love from people you trust.

00:22 - Rod Pyle (Host)
This is this week in space, episode 167, recorded on June 27th 2025,. An outpost on the moon. Hello and welcome to another episode of this Week in Space, the Outpost on the Moon edition. I'm Rod Pyle, the ailing editor-in-chief of Ad Astra magazine, and I'm joined by my fellow lunatic, Tarek Malik, editor-in-chief of Spacecom. Hello, partner.

00:46 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I miss you, Rod. I miss you. You know, we're like 3,000 miles apart. What am I going to do you? Know you always get to go to your boat, yeah.

00:55 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, I'm on my boat, because I'm quarantining, because my lovely partner is taking her mother to China on July 2nd. She said I love you, but don't come home.

01:05 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Oh, that's right.

01:06 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Because you know her mother's 86. I think her aunt is 95. So we thought yeah, let's just take the safe route.

01:15 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Do we have to tell everyone why you're quarantining?

01:18 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Oh, covid, yeah, so got COVID at the conference. Tarek didn't, because he's young and healthy and handsome.

01:26 - Tariq Malik (Host)
My dad did, but what are we going to do?

01:28 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I hope he's OK.

01:29 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It's like a bajillion people at that conference and three other conferences and a national volleyball championship Like yeah.

01:36 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So I think we had. We finally tallied up about a thousand eighty, which for this kind of space conferences, is remarkable. It's a lot and people seem to have a good time. So if you didn't come, dear listener, next year we will be in Tysons, Virginia, for the International Space Development Conference number 44, and hopefully Tariq will be there. And our plan, after doing our live from ISDC or no, I called it live from the swamps, didn't I?

02:05 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That's right.

02:05 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Addition last Friday is that we'll do the same next year, but we'll do it in a proper setup. So I just have to say upfront apologies. We had some people that traveled down, including the lovely Tanya, and I suspect in hindsight that they may have been expecting to walk into something kind of studio-like like what they do at twit headquarters, but instead they walked into our operations room which had people running around stuffing bags and filling envelopes and talking on their radios. Because to get an internet drop at that hotel costs, are you ready? One thousand dollars just for an ethernet wire for the afternoon? You don't even get to take it home. So, um, so we're forced into that space. But next time everybody, uh, from nss leadership, who saw what we're doing, thought it was fabulous, which we appreciate. So next year we're going to set it up as a regular session yeah, which means like an actual room and not in the corner with the room and seats and lighting.

03:05
That's right. Yeah, the mannequin.

03:06 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Tanya was there.

03:07 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I saw Tanya, right, yeah, and I think at least one or two others, yeah, but my memory is fading along with my fever, so we'll have to cut that Josh right, who heard about ISDC from us on the show and then decided to come on out so that was great from us on the show and then he said to come on out.

03:27
So that was great. So we love it. We have fans. We can count on two hands. It's easier to keep track. All right, in a few minutes we'll join by be joined by aj gamer, who's the chief technology officer, co-founder of lunar outposts, which is working on some really exciting stuff. But we'll let him tell you about that. And, as always, before we start, please don't forget to do us a solid and make sure to like, subscribe and all the other podcast things. Push that button, well, your screen, but push that button and make sure to send us your love. And now A space joke from Bob Dooling. I'm ready. That music is particularly appropriate for this that new.

04:07 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Is that new, that I, yeah, I like new things every now and then, hey, tarik, yes, rod.

04:13 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Why was the alien such a bad musician? Um, I don't know why, because it was an inept tuner in oh, I got it, I took me a while myself an in neptuner inept tuner I know but you know, bob bob did put a hyphen in the right place, so if there's any problem, the delivery is on me.

04:35
Now I've heard that some people may want to hit us with a tuning fork when it's joke time on this show, but you can help. You can help by sending us your worst, best, most indifferent space joke at TwistedTwittv. And now, if we're ready, some headlines.

04:54 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Headline news Headline news. So to my ear. I nailed that.

05:01 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That sounded synced up to me.

05:02 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, I tell you.

05:04 - Rod Pyle (Host)
But it may be that you're going to have to shift yourself a couple of nanoseconds the other way.

05:07 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I don't know that's right, that's right.

05:09 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So we have a burial at sea, but launched from space. It's kind of backwards. What happened here?

05:16 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That's right. Well, a lot of great stuff happened this week, but this one stood out. And? But this one stood out and there was a. Actually there were like three or four rocket launches while we were in Florida. Did you see one, by the way, rod?

05:27 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Did you see any of them? No, because they were all two in the morning.

05:31 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, yeah, there was one at dawn which was the Starlink launch that we were able to see and that worked great, but this was one of the other ones. It was the Transporter 14 launch that SpaceX put out on June 23rd. It had like 70 different payloads on it and one of them was a prototype capsule by the Exploration Company, which I don't think we've actually had on the show yet. But they're building their own kind of dragon-esque or inspired space capsules for re-entry and eventually they'll want to do human exploration. I was on a panel with them with the Economistist Space Summit a few years ago and it's very exciting.

06:08 - Rod Pyle (Host)
They- Excuse me, was this a full-size simulator?

06:13 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It was a full-size prototype for their experiment payload, so it's not one that can hold people in it.

06:22
So if you could imagine an, an upside down mini Apollo capsule or mini Orion that's what this looks like for folks that are listening online and they mounted it backwards, right with the top of the cone on, like a little hat, on the payload adapter for SpaceX's transporter vehicle. But their primary payload was a bunch of human remains, like cremated human remains, brokered by the company Celestis, known for many, many years as the go-to folks. If you want to launch your ashes into space, james Doohan from Star Trek fame Gene Roddenberry they've all done this to folks. If you want to launch your ashes into space, james uh uh, dewin from star trek, famed gene roddenberry they've all done this. So this was their first orbital mission. They launched this.

07:10
You know all of the previous ones have been suborbital for the, for the most part, um, but this was the first orbital flight for um, uh, for the exploration company to carry uh, the these remains, and it all seemed to go well, like you know.

07:24
You know they launched into space, they separated, they did all their maneuvers to get into orbit, everything worked fine and in fact it reentered the Earth's atmosphere, got through that fiery kind of you know that plasma environment, and then it came out of the blackout, the communications blackout, and something went wrong.

07:42
They don't know what happened. So they were supposed to land this capsule in the Pacific Ocean, go out, recover it with a boat and then you can give the remains to the families and they would be able to you know, I guess have their own memorial for folks that had flown in space. Instead, something happened the parachute didn't open on the way down and the capsule just crashed right into the pacific. Uh, they think it broke up, uh, on on on impact and, of course, now all the the remains are at the bottom of the sea. So you have kind of like a burial at space and then at sea. Uh, uh scenario, uh, here this, if you're watching online uh, that's, that's their next capsule, eventual plan for it, uh, but it did survive that part, which is pretty cool.

08:25 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So is the idea that they're going to use a production version of this to launch remains and bring them back.

08:32 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, in fact, by the way, if you scroll down further in the page, you'll see the capsule itself, how large it is, and then, of course, there it is. You can see the capsule in the background for folks that are watching.

08:43 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I thought you meant he was holding it in his hand. You can see the capsule in the background for folks that are watching.

08:46 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I thought you meant he was holding it in his hand. No, in the hand is like one. Oh, it is large. Yeah, it's a large capsule, and in the hands that these folks are holding are one of the Celestis Palaeus. There were a good number of them on the capsule itself. So the plan for the exploration company is to build a spacecraft, this Nix vehicle, into a sort of secondary access vehicle for human spaceflight, for cargo missions, for experiments, for on-orbit loitering, et cetera. It looks very similar to Dragon eventually, and then they'll be able to use that for other missions themselves. So it is very interesting, though that they made I mean, they almost got there you do need your parachutes to deploy, it'll ruin your day if they don't Exactly.

09:28 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I've thought about trying to have my remains orbited at some point, although they'd probably charge me extra because of my size. But because I'm living on a magazine editor's income, I think I'll probably just have them orbit my heart, but the problem is you'll have to tell them where to find it oh no okay, but I'm saying so you're not, you're not talking about uh about, you're like your whole body, right, like if that, well, but why?

09:59
90 of it at my age is useless anyway. So hey, let's move on. We had a rare, dark daytime fireball. Bright enough to be seen from orbit may have punched a hole in a house in Georgia. This is really funny.

10:10 - Tariq Malik (Host)
And that's the country of.

10:11 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Georgia right.

10:12 - Tariq Malik (Host)
No, the state of Georgia, the state of Georgia.

10:14 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Oh, so this is a domestic terrorism incident From space, I guess if you'd like. Yeah, that's a 50s sci-fi title.

10:21 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, so there was a meteor as folks might know. By the way, today, as we're recording this, this is the peak of the booted meteor shower in June, and there was a daytime fireball that was witnessed by a lot of people across South Carolina, across Georgia, across a lot of the Southeast, and so we got reports from all over. But the key takeaway is that not only was there this super bright fireball so you know it's again it's rare to have a daytime one but that it appears that a meteorite, a piece of it, like, punched through the roof of of a house in georgia, like, uh, like you mentioned, uh, they have a photo of super grainy photos online of of like the house. Yeah, here's here's video for folks watching of the actual, uh, the actual fireball that some dash cams caught, uh, but there's some imagery of like a hole. It's like it's like a your regular kind of, uh, asphalt tile roof, but with just a little hole through it, and then there's some, some rocks on the ground in the living room, you know.

11:24
So, um, you know, no one was hurt. Here we go. Yeah, we've got some images of them there. No one was hurt. I did see in the Twitter posts a lot of responses saying hey, where are you guys located? I would love to make an offer on those meteorites. So I don't know if the person sold them or not, but you know, when it comes to your house I guess you have to figure out what you want to do with it. So you know, luckily no injuries from this one. But maybe dust off your steel umbrellas, everybody.

11:53 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So if it crashes at your house, you have ownership, I assume correct.

11:56 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, it's your land, right? I mean you can do what you want with it. This actually they first saw the meteor uh over um oxford, georgia, that's kind of where it was first detected, 48 miles above, so already already in space. It was careening through the earth's atmosphere like 30 30 000 miles an hour, according to bill cook. Yeah, very, very fast, very fast repeat everything, yeah now, uh, nasa, and nasa thinks that it might.

12:23
Or, uh, one of the scientists that we spoke to thinks that it might have been with the daylight beta torrid meteor shower, which peaks as well. So, not the booted, but that was the peak of the booted.

12:33 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, because I used to go out and do a lot of these things there's like a million when there was still darkness around us.

12:38 - AJ Gemer (Host)
Okay.

12:39 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Last story, axiom 4. Let's hear the applause. Xiom 4 finally reaches the space station after three delays 28 hours.

12:50 - Tariq Malik (Host)
28 hours very long.

12:52 - Rod Pyle (Host)
But was it three or four launch delays?

12:55 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, they were supposed to launch. I think actually, as ISDC began on June 19th, was an initial target and I think it had already been pushed back for additional checks on the rocket. And then they detected the leak on the International Space Station in the Russian segment. That really delayed everything. It caused, I think, at least two, if not more, announced delays for this flight as they worked to figure out what they were going to do. But the India's space research organization's first astronaut on the international space station, poland's first astronaut on the uh on the iss, hungary's first astronaut on the on the iss all welcomed aboard this this uh this week, along with peggy whitson, like the consummate iss astronaut, the first female commander of the space station, commander Peggy, as the cosmonauts called her when she was on her first flight. So very great, very great to see her back in space again.

13:55 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That's great. It's good to see Axiom starting to pick up some steam, because we've been waiting for that.

13:59 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, private space station in the works, right, yeah, well one of three or four. Fingers crossed. Maybe Axiom will fly one of us there right. Give us a tour.

14:09 - Rod Pyle (Host)
You know, I appreciate that you keep asking, but oddly we haven't gotten any email or phone calls or anything else. Pursuant to that, I just can't understand it.

14:18 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You just got to keep asking. You missed 100% of the shots. You don't take Rod, you know.

14:21 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Maybe Vast, well, I guess so.

14:23 - Tariq Malik (Host)
If not Axiom, then Vast, if not Vast, then Orbital Reef, if not them, then I don't know. We'll find something else.

14:32 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Given that hundreds of people showed up for our inaugural live podcast, Tonya didn't tell anybody.

14:37 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I heard it was like we maxed the capacity at like 20,000, I think, lined up around the building.

14:42 - Rod Pyle (Host)
We should have invited the volleyball teams. They would have made it quite colorful. All right, we are going to be right back with AJ Gamer, so stay with us. And we are back with AJ Gamer, who is the co-founder of LunarOutpostcom. So, aj, before we get into more detail about you, can you give us kind of the broad look at what Lunar Outpost is and what you do?

15:06 - AJ Gemer (Host)
Absolutely so. Lunar Outpost is an advanced space technology and robotics company headquartered in Golden, Colorado, and we are the leaders in planetary surface mobility. So we build commercial lunar rovers of all sizes to help meet the needs of our commercial, science and nasa customers okay, that's.

15:28 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That's a pretty comprehensive thumbnail. Tarik, you have a question?

15:32 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I always have the same question. You do always like to ride me on it, aj, but thank you so much for for joining us today. We always, always get excited about new moon rovers and driving off the planet and my main question just usually for all of our guests is kind of your path to space. How did you end up at Lunar Outpost? Was space something that captivated you when you were a kid, or was it something you found later on, after university or professional life Like? What was that path like for you?

16:02 - AJ Gemer (Host)
Oh, definitely, since I was a kid. Yeah, you know, I think spaces and space exploration is one of those things that brings people together across. You know all age groups and you know different cultures and societies. I think we all you know, wonder, look about the stars and ask you know well, what's out there and where do we fit into that? And I know that was definitely true for me. So, and you know, I was always interested in machines and cutting edge technology and wanted to be a part of that.

16:29
So I went to the University of Colorado, cu Boulder, and studied aerospace engineering, got involved with the laboratory for atmospheric and space physics there and got to work on some really fascinating space science projects, particularly focused on what we can learn from dust in space. And so that led to my interest in the moon, which, of course, is a very dusty environment, what sort of resources might be there and what we can do with them to advance mankind's future in space. And then you know kind of the practical question of OK, well, you know, how do we make this happen, and make it happen soon? And mobility was the answer to that. We knew that folks would need things moved around on the lunar surface, infrastructure set up and you know, just general exploration, driving around and seeing what we could find. So that's what, what led to the co-founding of Lunar Outpost.

17:24 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Great and you didn't just study aerospace engineering. I was looking at your CV and you've got degrees in aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, another master's of science in aerospace engineering. I mean, that's like some commitment to like solve an engineering question, that it seems like you've got there. By the way, congratulations on passing differential equations again.

17:47 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That's an ongoing sore spot. That's why both of us ended up doing journalism instead. Yeah, we were both defeated by the same class.

17:54 - Tariq Malik (Host)
My sister is a mechanical engineer, so I know that you've done it.

17:58 - AJ Gemer (Host)
Oh yeah, yeah. Well, you know, and I'll say it didn't start off that way. When I first arrived at CU, my plan was, you know, just sort of generally, to get my bachelor's and then get to work in the industry. But along the way I met, you know, so many awesome people at CU and at LASP and you know it inspired me to just kind of stick around and keep exploring and I just kept finding these great opportunities. You know, even things in economics. I worked really closely with the economics department at CU and we were doing a project specifically on the economics of cislunar space, and so you know my path kind of took me all over, you know, always kind of a space and technology thread, but you know, seeing the big picture and you know, I think that's what allowed me to kind of, you know, be a part of the vision for what the next couple of decades or maybe a century looks like in CISL interspace.

18:52 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, well, as the person who, I think, probably barely made it through my master's program, my hat's off to you for doing it. More than once, that's quite an achievement. Um, so could you give us kind of just a thumbnail? I mean, a lot of people start space companies. You know, as part of the the conference that tarik and I were just at the international space development conference, we see a lot of people that do small startups. You know, quote, garage startups or what have you. A lot of them are online startups. A lot of them have great looking websites with really fabulous pictures and all that. And then you start clicking through and it's like, oh, this is like a virtual company. Okay, and I'm being polite here, you know what I'm saying.

19:30
It's the old vaporware argument. But you guys are the real deal. So how did you get started? How did you finance that?

19:37 - AJ Gemer (Host)
Yeah, I can say that myself and my co-founders are very hands-on people, right, like we like to build, we like to test, we like to see things come to life in the real space.

19:47
And so, as you say, back in 2017, you know we saw that there was this opportunity and a customer need for commercial lunar mobility as a service. And there were some other companies at the same time who had, you know, some great animations, renderings, things like that, and we said let's do it a little differently. And so we developed our very first MAP Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform rover, completely in stealth mode, and when we first debuted it, it was with a video of it driving around in a lunar testbed facility. And so, you know, the first time a lot of people had seen what we were doing was by seeing, you know, an actual flight quality rover driving in an accurate lunar environment, and I think that really resonated with our customers early on. That certainly helped them understand who we were, what we were capable of and you know where they fit in, what they could do with us. So that was certainly the springboard to our success. After that got some of our first spaceflight customers on board and things have taken off from there.

20:53 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Just like Nike, right, you just do it and then you come out. So that's really exciting. Now, I'm familiar with MAP. I know that you had, I guess, a version right on Lunar Voyage 1, which I think is like our next question Is that right, rod, we're going to go there, you know? Here you are with this rover and now you've made it, you know, to the moon, just recently, at least you know, for that first flight there. And I'm curious how that plan came together. Now, I think you were, you know, hoping obviously that the lander would stick its landing a bit better to get out. But you had a lot of, I guess, deals with Nokia, with Castro, I think, others to get things together, yeah by the way I, I should tell you, um, aj, I did see the model for the lunar outpost I saw.

21:46
I can't tell anyone anything about it, uh, or talk. I don't even know if I'm allowed to talk about that oh, it's on their website, so okay, good, good, good yeah, because I saw it.

21:55 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I saw it a little late to worry.

21:57 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, I know right, because, because we're live, everyone could forget it. No, they didn't let us take pictures or write anything down. They took my notepad away when they said so I only had like a memory of what it might have looked like and I couldn't tell anybody. So I'm glad it's on the website now. So that's great, yeah. But I'm curious how that process was for you and what you had hoped MAP would be able to do and for folks who didn't know, I believe it was on the Intuitive Machines lander, is that right? And they didn't really stick the landing, but they got a great shot of the moon and the Earth, which is spectacular still. And so, in terms of the differences between that first you know prototype that you unveiled and what you were able to get to the moon, how did that evolve? And the process of getting those partnerships in place with Nokia, with the other folks there to make it happen, yeah, it has certainly been an adventure, you know, building up to all of this.

23:00 - AJ Gemer (Host)
So you know our early map the one that we debuted was our first generation prototype, the one that flew was our third generation, and so we tested, you know, all of the intervening versions of it exhaustively, and built upon those learnings to come up with, you know, the absolute best suited map rover for that Lunar Voyage 1 mission. And at the same time, we were working with our commercial customers to make sure that we were tuning it to meet their exact needs. So you mentioned Nokia. They were testing their 4G LTE comm system on the moon and, of course, they needed two nodes. They needed one aboard the lander, but they needed two nodes. They needed, you know, one aboard the lander, but they needed another one to be transported far away from the lander so that they could characterize their communication system between the two.

23:46
So this is a this is a case where we had detected that there would be the need for lunar mobility as a service available to commercial providers not not necessarily NASA um, to test out something that they wanted to do in space, and so that was just a fantastic partnership with Nokia, you know, became very close with that team and worked closely through all the testing campaigns and mission operations and mission planning, you know, because their Nokia com system was the primary communication system for MAP as it drove across the lunar surface, so very important to us as well.

24:21
Um and uh, yeah, I think, all the preparations for the mission, all the testing, you know, we felt very confident in the map rover. Our team, you know, had done a wide variety of mock missions, including, you know, round the clock, 24, seven operations with four shifts of operators switching in and out and perfecting those handoffs. And yeah, like you said, the IM2 lander landed in an off-nominal configuration but MAP even survived that landing and survived for another 2.7 hours on the lunar surface and returned just a wealth of valuable data in the process. So we have all that great material to build on and look towards the future, towards our next missions.

25:05 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Can I ask? I mean, obviously there was disappointment on the team, but I mean, were there any silver linings? Because I heard, like a heartbreaking story, that, like what you just said is that the rover was alive but it was still in its pen, you know, trying to get out, even though they were tipped over for folks who don't remember IM2, it just tipped over on the Moon so it had two of its legs sprawled up and I think it was lying on the deployer bed. Is that right? Yeah, so they couldn't actuate it out bed. Is that right? Yeah, so they couldn't actuate it out. So it sounds like the fact that it returned some data was a bit of a silver lining. But I mean, what do you tell the team? Just to get them ready for, I guess, hopefully, the next try.

25:49 - AJ Gemer (Host)
Yeah, it was, you know. I think you know the eventual status of the mission was tempered by our pride that, you know, MAP performed flawlessly. I mean, it survived launch, turned on right when and how it was supposed to, returned all of its telemetry, which looked really good, uh, all the way through, you know, transit out to the moon, low lunar orbit and through the descent and then again, you know, even for another couple of hours, uh even being pinned underneath the lander in a cold, dark crater on the moon. So you know, I think we were all very proud of how well MAP did and the team. You know they understand how that data will be used to improve our future missions. It showed excellent validation and you know we reached technology readiness level TRL 9 on all of our key subsystems. So those are now proven out and ready to go.

26:43 - Rod Pyle (Host)
All right. Well, we're going to tip ourselves into a break. See what I did there, Wasn't that clever, and we'll be right back, so stand by. So, aj, at the beginning of our discussion you talked a little bit, or you used the word infrastructure, which is, you know, we could do a whole series of five episodes just on lunar infrastructure. But from what I'm understanding you know, the primary target here is the lunar south pole, which at this juncture is still kind of an object of faith that it's going to work the way we want there. So, with regard to setting up a company and all these contracts you've got and so forth, and I guess kind of linked into Tara's question about motivation, how do you keep the team really focused and going in one direction, and the public and or your investors? I'm not sure how you have that structured in terms of this lunar South Pole agenda and there's a bigger question there about Artemis, but let's just talk about this for now.

27:38 - AJ Gemer (Host)
Well, you know, and as you say, there are many unknowns about the lunar South Pole.

27:41
But the way that we close those unknowns and get ready for bigger and better things in the future is to go there and to explore and do that as quickly as possible, as cost effectively as possible and as frequently as we can.

27:52
So you know, compared to more traditional rover missions of the past, where there might be one very high value rover launched every you know, call it six to eight years, we envision launching several rovers a year or even multiple rovers on a single lander, and that gives us a much greater pace of increasing mankind's understanding of what the environment's like at the lunar South Pole and sets us up for success and allows us to adapt that new data and those new learnings into our designs for bigger and better operations in the future, like NASA's Artemis campaign and returning humans to the moon. So the deployment of multiple map rovers early on was always a key part of the vision. I mean, we test as well as we can here in the Earth environment, but there will always be limitations. I sat around many tables debating how to make our testbeds even more representative, and eventually you get to the point where it's like let's just go there and do it. There's no substitute for that real world experience. So that's what we're getting with the MapRover programs.

28:59 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, you mentioned Artemis there, AJ, and I have to say my colleague, brett Tingley, was extremely excited at Space Symposium this year when you unveiled the LTV. You know, like the mock-up there for the, for the eagle rover itself, and that's like a truck, like you're building a truck to drive on the moon, and not like, not like, uh, like a how am I going to say this? It's not a lame truck, right, it's not. It's not like, uh, like a bunch of, it's not like a box on wheels. It looks very sci-fi, very uh uh, um, uh uh, kind of sleek and whatnot and a little bit beyond just being what Rod was talking about earlier, like the vaporware or whatnot, because you've got the hardware in place. You've got, I believe, like an agreement or an understanding with SpaceX for a Starship delivery method for this truck. And I'm curious if you can let our listeners know where this lunar terrain vehicle, this LTV Eagle, came from, because it really looks like a souped-up rover for Artemis astronauts there.

30:14 - AJ Gemer (Host)
Yeah, absolutely Well, I'll say. As NASA performed their planning for the Artemis missions, they saw how the Apollo era lunar roving vehicle just dramatically increased the crew's capabilities to explore and I mean, really led to many of the key discoveries that were made during the Apollo missions. So they knew they were going to need mobility for the Artemis astronauts as well, and so they asked for proposals to develop the lunar train vehicle services, which is an important distinction, it's a nod to that shift towards a more commercially supported program for NASA. And we responded to that. And I'll say for myself, my inspiration comes a lot from classic science fiction. I'm glad you mentioned that.

31:00
Growing up, my dad had this, you know, excellent sci-fi bookshelf full of all the, all the classics, all the greats.

31:06
And what was really interesting to me, that I that I see now is, you know, a lot of that classic science fiction was written, you know, before space flight and rockets was even a thing right, and so they were imagining the future of space completely unencumbered by the realities of what it's like to operate out there, that's for sure. Yeah, and so for me I have always wanted to bring kind of that imaginative beauty of those early sci-fi craft. You know, they're very sleek and aerodynamic, which of course, doesn't matter at all when you're in a vacuum. But, um, you know, I said, well, I would like our space flight hardware to be as beautiful as it is functional. And, uh, and I think that's what we've achieved with the Eagle LTV. Um, it is, you know, everything you see there, like every other piece of space flight hardware, has a purpose. It's there for a reason, you know, but it doesn't have to be just blocky, black and white. It can be, you know, beautiful as well.

32:05 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, it's way better looking than Amazon's slate truck, so I got to give it kudos for that. So I was looking at your website specific to this vehicle and see that you very smartly aligned yourselves with a couple of partners who worked on the original lunar roving vehicle. So I assume there's a lot of. I mean, this is obviously a whole different animal, but there are certainly lessons to be learned about tires quote-unquote traction and operation and maybe batteries. Certainly navigation guidance, yeah oh, absolutely.

32:36 - AJ Gemer (Host)
Um, you know we've, we've put together just a world-class team with, you know, outpost as the prime, and then General Motors, goodyear Tire, andrestrial vehicles, off-road capabilities and their latest in, you know, battery technology and vehicle dynamics. Goodyear, of course, you have the spring mesh tires which are ideally suited to operations on the lunar surface. Mda Space, you know they developed the Canada Arm, the robotic arm aboard the space shuttle. So, you know, very high reliability, robotics and very safe around the crew. And then Lido Steinetics also bringing that crew human safety aspect to the team.

33:26
So altogether, you know, I think we've developed the safest, most functional and most advanced answer to NASA's needs for the lunar terrain vehicle. And I mentioned the commercial side of it as well. You know the lunar terrain vehicle is also designed to serve a wide range of commercial customers. They can put their payloads on there, we can swap them out, we can collect samples, deliver them to wherever the customer might want it to go. And so our interactions with our commercial customers and our really unique business model that we built up through the MAP and Lunar Voyage 1 programs puts us in that position to make sure that we're really meeting commercial customer needs and providing great value to NASA at the same time.

34:08 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You know Rod mentioned infrastructure earlier and your note about AJ, the kind of commercial customer world versus like the government contract role, I think is really interesting because it, you know, it kind of brings to light like a use for a rover such as this one that goes beyond like well, the astronauts are there and they need like a way to drive around to go farther. Right, you have a robotic arm on there and I'm curious what you're hoping your users will be able to do. Let's say it's between Artemis missions, but your rover, the LTV, is already there. I mean, is it autonomous in that kind of a way where someone could book some time on it and drive it over to go look at this thing or that thing, or that they contract with you to? You know they've got a cargo that just landed but they need someone to go get it and you can, you know, drive the rover that way. Is that kind of another use for the rover that you hope it'll serve?

35:07 - AJ Gemer (Host)
Yes, exactly. So the crew will actually only be there for a short period of the LTV's overall lifespan. The rest of the time it will be tele-operated or autonomously operated from here on Earth, and that time is split between NASA, science, expeditions and, as you said, all manner of commercial activities. And it's worth mentioning, too, that there's not just one LTV. Our vision is that this is truly the work truck for the moon, and so we will have tens or hundreds of them deployed in the coming decades, able to meet those customer visions and build that infrastructure that's required for humans to maintain a permanent presence on the moon.

35:45 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So how much for this week in space to book like an hour of an LTV. Can it do donuts? Great. How does it handle?

35:52 - AJ Gemer (Host)
It handles fantastic. Yeah, I'm sure we have some footage we can share with you of our testing that we do in the lunar test facilities.

36:01 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Is it testing AJ or is it testing right? More helpful questions from Tarek.

36:07 - AJ Gemer (Host)
Malek ladies and gentlemen, I just want to know. I want to know.

36:11 - Rod Pyle (Host)
We're going to run to a quick break and we'll be right back, so stand by.

36:15 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, I haven't been able to do donuts since I was a kid in high school and I tipped the ATV over, so I'm not going to do anything else Did you get arrested when you did it.

36:29 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I have a question, if I may With all the confusion over Mars sample return and the oh we'll take bids and oh, maybe we won't, and all that, did you consider at any moment putting your name in the hat for the Fetch rover?

36:43 - AJ Gemer (Host)
Well, we absolutely see pathways to Mars for all of our rover technologies. In many ways, the Mars environment is somewhat less harsh and challenging for a rover than the lunar environment. I mean, the moon has those long day-night cycles, very cold, dark nights that are challenging to survive. So, yes, doing operations on Mars is absolutely something that we're interested in.

37:06 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, I guess there are lessons to be learned even as far back as Lunokhod. If you have a battery-powered rover, just stick a bunch of highly unshielded, very energetic nuclear fissile material in there. It'll keep your rover warm overnight. Just don't let people get near it. This is a little tangential what we're talking about, but I spotted you had some involvement with MOXIE and we had Mike Hecht on here almost two years ago, I think. What did you do with the MOXIE experiment on Mars?

37:35 - AJ Gemer (Host)
Oh, absolutely so. One of my co-founders and our chief strategy officer, dr Forrest Mayen, worked very closely on the MOXIE project, you know, all the way through development and operations on the lunar surface. So while he was with us here at Lunar Outpost he got to lead those payload operations making oxygen on Mars from the carbon dioxide atmosphere. So you know, kind of a fun fact that makes us, with the landing of MAP on the moon, one of the only companies to be operating on three planetary bodies.

38:03 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Wow, wow, that's so cool. And I read too that you guys worked on Europa Clipper as well, right, or that you did, right, that's right All over the place. What a resume, huh. As one does Rod as one does? Oh yeah, it happens. When you pass differential equations equation you get to do all the fun stuff well, exactly, okay, so let him answer the question yeah well, you know it's.

38:25 - AJ Gemer (Host)
It's like I said, it's one of the things I got sucked into all the cool, uh cool, explorations and activities that were going on, and so, yeah, uh, while I was, at last, I was working on an instrument that at the time was called hyperdust, which later became the surface dust analyzer, which which, as you said, is aboard Europa Clipper. So it'll take a while to get there, but once it's there, I can't wait to see the data and publications that come back from that.

38:48 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Great.

38:50 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, I wonder if you could talk about some of the other. I mean, there's quite an array of stuff going on in your website and I kept scrolling and scrolling and thinking, geez, these guys are really on it. Can you talk about some of the other programs you have?

39:06 - AJ Gemer (Host)
Yeah, absolutely. So. We've mentioned the MAP rovers, the exploration class robotic rovers, which we have five of those missions fully funded, ranging from the commercial payloads of Lunar Voyage 1. Lunar Voyage 2 is on the other end of the spectrum. That is a fully NASA-funded science mission where we're carrying science instruments that were provided by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, so that one's going to be really interesting because that one's going to the equator of the moon.

39:31
So we had to develop very robust thermal control technologies to make MAP able to survive the entire range of lunar latitudes. And as we look into the future and landers have higher and higher landed mass, we also have a full range of larger and more capable robotic rovers in the works as well. So again, that serves both government or NASA customers and commercial customers who have larger payloads, more complex payloads that need more power and need to get to some more challenging areas, maybe down into a permanently shadowed crater or something like that. So we're ready to address those needs as well, all the way up to LTV and beyond. We're very interested in the in-situ resource utilization area as well, and to do that at scale requires significant infrastructure, a lot of power, a lot of high throughput communications so we can deploy and set those up with our larger robotic solutions, as well as the processing of the regolith itself to extract those resources.

40:32 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You know one of the larger payloads that I saw that are larger rover. You know plans that your comment brought to mind. On your website you have the the hippo rover, which, of course, whenever I see hippo, I get excited because I love hippos. Right, you can see, right over here.

40:49
Oh yeah, okay, okay, move on so no, well, I want to know, like I want to know, what the hippo rover is. There's an it's like it looks like a beefy boy, right that that you've got on the moon, and I'm just curious why you would call it a hippo.

41:06 - AJ Gemer (Host)
Yeah, well, you know, it kind of looks like a hippo, I think, but it's an entire mobile ISRU processing plant, so it's over 1,000 kilograms. It can deploy from a lander, like the video shows here, and as we drive and characterize the lunar surface to our prospecting activities. Once we find a site that looks particularly good for extracting, say, volatiles from the lunar surface, hippo has an entire onboard processing set of technologies that can extract those resources, refine them and compress them, make them ready for storage, transport and utilization. Wow, that is cool.

41:45 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That is very much like the moon right, the sci-fi movie that's so cool.

41:49 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Oh, you loved that movie. So I'm always interested in testing of these things and, as anybody who listens to the show regularly knows, whenever I get a chance to mention that I went to the Arctic for a month with the project that did some of that, I get quite excited. So that was up on Devon Island where a gentleman who we've had on the show a number of times, that Pascal Lee, has a small base. They've done various kinds of rover testing up there. What, what earth analogs do you use for extended testing on these things outside of, you know, a chamber?

42:21 - AJ Gemer (Host)
Sure, oh, man, and that's a. That's a question I could spend a lot of time on because, like I said you know early in the podcast, um, besides, you know, build early and build often. We want to test early and test often so we never miss an opportunity to uh test our rovers, and in as um dynamic and unpredictable environments as possible. So, with my background on the dust side, I'm a stickler for always using very accurate lunar simulants, making sure that the dust properties are properly stressing our systems, testing out our sealing technologies, all of that sort of thing. On the other side we also have a thousand acre Southern Colorado autonomous test facility that's where we saw the LTV driving around where we've built a range of craters, rocks and berms, obstacles like that that are statistically representative of the lunar terrain that we'll actually be driving that vehicle in.

43:13
And I really like doing that testing outdoors as opposed to a laboratory environment, because you get exposed to that unpredictable nature of operating in the real world. Right, it is not a controlled environment and so you have to deal with blowing dust and you know weather, all sorts of things, varying lighting conditions as you test in those environments. So I find that that's really important for testing the technology side, and then of course there's the human side. You know we train heavily, train as we fly to prepare for these missions. So running full mock missions with an engineering model of the rover in a lunar test facility out of our actual mission operations center here in Arvada, colorado, and with the actual teams and roles who will be performing on mission. So all of that testing together, I believe is really critical to having a successful mission.

44:03 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Do we good? Do we need to go to another ad Rod Right, oh, is it time? Yeah.

44:07 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, we could. Okay, we'll go a little early so you can ask your next big question. All right, we'll be right back.

44:12 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You know I'm curious, AJ, about like, the immediate future, because you touched on plans for Lunar Voyage 2, which is exciting because it's out of Johns Hopkins, because I can drive down there if you've got work going on it in the future. So if that's ever a chance to see it, we'd love to do it. But what are the plans? When are you hoping to see that get to the moon? Is there a set schedule for that right now?

44:41 - AJ Gemer (Host)
There is and in fact that rover has already been delivered and tested, so that one's ready to go and is scheduled to launch early next year. So I missed it. So we're actually looking, you know well, past that into the future. Our Lunar Voyage 3 is another fully commercial mission.

44:58
Then, of course, we were selected to provide Australia's first moon rover as well, which they're calling Rover which I just love and yeah, so that's a flagship rover for the Australian Space Agency and we'll be doing some more excellent exploration on the lunar surface. And then you know, past that, when we're getting into late 2020s, that's when we expect to be landing our first of many LTVs.

45:23 - Tariq Malik (Host)
And does the uncertainty of like the Artemis program right now because obviously there's some budget talk going on in DC does that kind of affect your development of LTV right now? Or are you doing your own thing and then like when the ride, when the program is ready for it, at least you'll have it ready to go? Is that kind of like what the goal is?

45:44 - AJ Gemer (Host)
Yes, very much so, and you know, I think uncertainty has always been a part of space exploration, whether it's on the funding side or on. You know the unknowns that you'll run into out there in space. So that's a big part of why the commercialization aspect of what we do is so important. You know, we believe that there is sufficient customer demand to keep a company like Lunar Outpost growing and operating in space, and so when NASA needs our capabilities, they'll be fully developed, deployed and ready for them.

46:10 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, that's all pretty exciting. Now, did we miss anything? Did we cover all the hot topics here?

46:18 - AJ Gemer (Host)
I'm asking you oh, I'm sure I could could talk for hours, but, uh, yeah, I think that's, uh, that's what we're up to here at lunar outpost.

46:27 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You've got, you know, just a really bright future ahead, looking forward to, uh, the next phases of ltv and, of course, uh, expanded commercial operations and exploration I had one last one, real, real fast for for ltv, because obviously the the big announcement at symposium was was of you know the eagle ltv, uh, uh. You know you know design and and how awesome that is. But are you gonna name each individual rover? So will it be like a falcon or a uh uh millennium, I don't know what. What's another one, an enterprise ltv, right, or? Or is it uh um, uh, or, or you know, or are they going to be very much one-off and your customer will help design them or name them?

47:09 - AJ Gemer (Host)
well, we, we can certainly offer naming rights as a commercial product, but uh, because rod and tarik is pretty catchy is all I'm saying. But in general, yeah, we, uh, we do give everything a unique name here in-house and I think it helps kind of give them personalities and bring them to life.

47:28 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Great.

47:28 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So I guess my closing question is what's a major next looming milestone that keeps you up at night, if any?

47:36 - AJ Gemer (Host)
Well keeps me up at night. I'd say I'm kept up at night with excitement for our lunar voyage too, that opportunity to drive around. I'm really hoping to be in the room when we find something new and unusual, unexplained, that science hasn't previously identified. So very much looking forward to that and then just realizing the vision. I think now is the time for this expanded commercial operation in cislunar space and on the moon, and I'm just really happy and excited to be a part of it.

48:06 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, I hope you're in the room when you roll past the first trilobite or possibly an abandoned Coke bottle. I want to thank everybody for joining us today for Episode 167 that we like to call an outpost on the moon, AJ. Is there any place besides lunar outpostcom where we can follow your ongoing adventures?

48:24 - AJ Gemer (Host)
we also have all the socials instagram, etc. So, whatever your preferred platform is, check us out all right tarik.

48:31 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Where can we see you polishing your brand new space pioneer award these days?

48:35 - Tariq Malik (Host)
it's right here. It's right here. Can you see it? It's right right here.

48:39 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Gotta lift it up so the world can know.

48:42 - Tariq Malik (Host)
There, it is Sorry, aj.

48:45 - Rod Pyle (Host)
We're having a moment here. Last Friday or last Sunday we gave him that award at our conference.

48:51 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Thank you, and the Society, the National Space Society. I really appreciate it. You can find me at spacecom, as always on the socials, at Tarek J Malik. If you like video games on YouTube at space Tron place, it'll be very exciting. I got to get caught up after a busy conference and a busy vacation in in in Florida.

49:10 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Uh, got to get back to it so so AJ builds different varieties of spacecraft about other worlds. You play video games. It's good.

49:18 - Tariq Malik (Host)
No judging here. No judgment as one does as one does.

49:23 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Of course. You can find me at pilebookscom or at astromagazinecom, as always, remember. You can also drop us a line at twist twist at twittv see if we can do that again properly. You can drop us a line at twis at twittv. We welcome your comments, comments, suggestions, ideas, critiques or insults for Tarek. Any of those will work. New episodes of this podcast publish every Friday on your favorite podcatcher, so please make sure to subscribe, tell your friends and give us your views. We'll take the bad ones, but we really love the good ones, because we like being as popular as we can. You can also head to our website at twittv slash twits. Don't forget we're counting on you to join Club Twit 2025, not 2026, 2025. Help keep the love coming from us and keeping the network on the air and operating properly. The club has been great for Twit so far and we're just looking forward to having more members. And it's the best $10 a month you can spend anywhere.

50:23 - Tariq Malik (Host)
And you'll get to talk to us, yeah.

50:24 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Except maybe buying naming rights on a lunar outpost Lex mission. All right, you can follow the twit tech podcast network at twit on Twitter and on Facebook and twittv on Instagram. Aj, thank you so much for joining us today. We'd love to have you back. Thank you, thanks for everybody for listening and we'll see you next week. Bye-bye.

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