This Week in Space 232 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-free version of the show.

Tariq Malik [00:00:00]:
Coming up on This Week in Space, SpaceX wants to launch 450 Starships a year from South Texas. The first green star may have been discovered. And what is the deal with the Artemis II science that astronauts collected in 2026? We get down to business with Chelsea Goh to Space.com. Tune in and check it out.

Rod Pyle [00:00:26]:
This is This Week in Space, episode number 232. Recorded on October 16th, 2026: The Lunar Dump. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of This Week in Space, the Lunar Dump Edition. And we'll explain that title because we probably need to. I'm Rod Pyle, editor-in-chief at Ad Astra Magazine. I'm here with my pal, the one, the only, the sky under space stuff, Tariq Malik. How are you?

Tariq Malik [00:00:54]:
I'm doing well, Rod. How are you doing? How are you doing today?

Rod Pyle [00:00:57]:
I'm doing okay.

Tariq Malik [00:00:58]:
How's all our space fans out there doing?

Rod Pyle [00:01:00]:
I'm glad to be on dry land for this episode.

Tariq Malik [00:01:02]:
No, that's great. We welcome you back to, to our, our fabulous landlubber paradise here.

Rod Pyle [00:01:09]:
And just so it's said, we're together next— no, next week and the week after I'm on the road. So we'll be having to figure that out. But you'll probably be here with a guest co-host, which we'll talk about. But today we're going to discuss the recent massive data dump of images and other scientific goodies from the Artemis II mission. with Chelsea Gohd, who is a former journalist for NASA JPL and currently back in the warm embrace of Space.com, because Tariq knows a good deal when he sees one, and she is a dynamite journalist.

Tariq Malik [00:01:43]:
Oh yeah, amazing. Former Space.com intern, then a staff writer, then over at JPL, then back to Space.com, science communicator for years upon years before all of that. Very good, very good, very talented.

Rod Pyle [00:01:54]:
Good stuff. But first, It's that time, I'm sorry to say, for a space joke from Jonathan Waltz.

Tariq Malik [00:02:01]:
Jonathan!

Rod Pyle [00:02:02]:
Not sorry that it's his space joke, just sorry that we're, uh, we're putting you through yet another space joke. Hey, Tariq?

Tariq Malik [00:02:08]:
Yes, Rod?

Rod Pyle [00:02:09]:
Why do the Mars colony plans call for window blinds?

Tariq Malik [00:02:13]:
I don't know why.

Rod Pyle [00:02:14]:
Because if not for blinds, it would be curtains for us all! I have a feeling that might have been a repurposed generic joke.

Tariq Malik [00:02:23]:
No, I like it!

Rod Pyle [00:02:24]:
I've heard that some folks want to whack us with Curt and Rodman's joke time on this show, but you can help, just like Jonathan did. Thanks for stepping up, Jonathan, by sending us your best, worst, and most indifferent space joke to twist@twit.tv. We'll be happy to blame it on you on the air, and we'll make you famous beyond compare. And speaking of famous things, let's move on to headline news.

Speaker C [00:02:50]:
Headline news.

Rod Pyle [00:02:56]:
All right. In the crazy/aspirational Elon column, we have SpaceX's recent announcement of wanting to launch at least 450 Starships a year. What's up with that?

Tariq Malik [00:03:08]:
Is it really crazy? Is it? Do you really think that that's crazy?

Rod Pyle [00:03:11]:
I mean, you know, at the scale that he is set to build them in theory, I don't think so. I do question about doing it from Starbase versus Louisiana.

Tariq Malik [00:03:20]:
Now, this is, this is, this is a good point. I'll just point out that someone had to say once that they're going to fly 400 passenger flights a year on airplanes. And someone else must have said, you're crazy. But anyway, I take the point. No, this, this came out this, this, this week from the FAA as well as SpaceX. And that is that SpaceX has requested permission to up the number of their Starship launches from South Texas. That's the Starbase facility and town that they've built there, from 25. So that's what they're allowed to right now, up to 25 a year.

Tariq Malik [00:03:53]:
And they haven't really done that. But they've, you know, they've, they've launched like a cool, like, like higher single digits in the past, up to 456 times a year. So that's like, what, how many more times is that? At least a bunch. 4, 8, 8 more times, right? 10, 10 times more, 10 times more, I think. No, that's more than that. Anyway, it's like 20 times more. So, so it's, it's, it's a substantial jump. Now, of course, they don't have the infrastructure even alone to do that.

Tariq Malik [00:04:23]:
But it's clear that by putting this request out to the FAA's programmatic environmental, or the FAA. And they're announcing that they're going to do like an environmental impact statement about all this. They're trying to get ahead of the fact that they need to launch a lot more Starships. You know, we've talked about on the show how they've got the new Starbase Louisiana project going on where they're gonna build 10 towers in 5 different launch complexes in order to handle launches and landings of Ship and Starship at scale. And it would not surprise me because they've already— they're already— they've already got 2 pads or 2 towers, I should say, at Starbase, if they're gonna have to try to figure out a way to build more because they're doing like a land trade there to expand the site, to be able to up the rate there because they need just more places. They're gonna— they're already building 2 pads, I believe, at Cape Canaveral and—

Rod Pyle [00:05:14]:
Yeah.

Tariq Malik [00:05:14]:
And KSC. So they've got that infrastructure going up there too, and this will just help them up their rate and really bet on that because they want to eventually retire Falcon 9 and Dragon and all of that. So they're going to need those pads for the upmass that they're going to need for everything else. So big things. We should also point out too that the, the Flight 13 ship, the one that survived reentry and splashdown, has successfully arrived this week at Starbase. So now they physically have that in their hangar to take it apart and understand At that level, exactly what's going on there. So that's pretty cool to see. We've got a photo of that on Line 22, John, of it rolling in down the ship.

Tariq Malik [00:06:00]:
I would have loved to have seen that roll in on its side because in Starship they actually can't— they actually don't roll this stuff out horizontally. They're always out on the towers. And so it'd be interesting to see what it looks like and what they're going to do with it, like if they're going to just display it out there or something for the future. So, There it is being pulled into the hangar. Wow, pretty cool.

Rod Pyle [00:06:20]:
That is amazing.

Tariq Malik [00:06:21]:
Yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:06:22]:
Now in the, the too goofy to be believable department, we have SpaceX using their bespoke thruster engines to make a Tesla Roadster fly.

Tariq Malik [00:06:34]:
Yeah, this happened, this happened last night actually. Then as we're recording this, uh, they announced the new Tesla Roadster. So if people may remember, the original Roadster design. Elon Musk had one and then they launched it into space on the first Falcon Heavy rocket. And it's still out there floating in space out beyond Mars or whatever. But this new one, which is going to start production in 2028, to unveil it, they, they revealed that they've, they've equipped it with what looked like cold gas thrusters on it. We got a photo of it doing a flip over a bunch of Tesla-like trucks and cars right here.

Rod Pyle [00:07:11]:
And so they released video or just a still?

Tariq Malik [00:07:13]:
There was a video. It was a, it was a livestream. It was a live demonstration. where they revealed the design of the car. It looks like a sports kind of McLaren-ish muscle car, like a Ferrari, but with like the spoiler and everything. It's, it's got some angles like a Cybertruck, but, but like the sleek look of like the Tesla, uh, sports cars. And so, uh, their big selling point is that this is their highest performing car ever. It's probably going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, or at least $100,000.

Tariq Malik [00:07:41]:
It has these cold gas thrusters on the bottom Uh, and, and on the rear that allow it to go from 0 to 60 in less than a second, which is— they also showed in real time. And then it has this suction fan on the bottom that hugs the ground. So it, it, it— I guess it helps with handling. Right. And that's what lets it drive upside down on this ramp that you saw. It actually drove slowly up the ramp and hung upside down with this fan holding it there. Just so they could show how it worked. And then they drove it off the ramp and it did like a, like an Iron Man flip in the air, hovered for a little bit on the ground, and then landed.

Tariq Malik [00:08:18]:
And then it did a catapult flip just from the ground as well, like a, uh, like a standing flip, if you will. So I don't know why you put thrusters on a car like that other than—

Rod Pyle [00:08:29]:
Because apparently it's more important than working on your lunar lander.

Tariq Malik [00:08:33]:
I guess so, right? It's a different It's a different company. It's Tesla, right? Tesla is—

Rod Pyle [00:08:39]:
No, no. Aren't they all one now that they've done their big IPO?

Tariq Malik [00:08:43]:
Don't you wonder why they never bid for the rover contract either? Like, don't you think that's weird?

Rod Pyle [00:08:49]:
Yeah.

Tariq Malik [00:08:49]:
Then you could have like one whole big contract. Maybe they did and it just never got off the ground.

Rod Pyle [00:08:53]:
So I'm looking at Where Is Starman?

Tariq Malik [00:08:56]:
I just, I teed you up for that joke. They never got off the ground for like some kind of starship thing.

Rod Pyle [00:09:01]:
Wah wah, sorry. I'm looking at the Where Is Starman? and it looks like Its orbit, which is offset but vaguely the same size as Mars's orbit, just crossed Martian orbit and is slightly beyond Martian orbit at this point.

Tariq Malik [00:09:17]:
Yeah, one step beyond, you could say.

Rod Pyle [00:09:19]:
So the current location is 68,868,428 miles, just changed to 44. 8 point— or no, 0.6 astronomical units. 5.5 light minutes from Earth, moving at a speed of 17,745 miles per hour. Hmm. Well, there you go.

Tariq Malik [00:09:44]:
Yeah. Where is Starman? You Google that, you're going to find that. So.

Rod Pyle [00:09:48]:
Yeah, actually, it's whereisroadster.com. I'm not sure. Maybe there you go. Registered or something. All right. Moving on. Oh, I deleted the headline by accident. We have a scary green zombie star in a headline.

Tariq Malik [00:10:04]:
Astronomers discover the first ever green star, a cosmic zombie, just in time.

Rod Pyle [00:10:09]:
Yeah, and a headline that only you could come up with.

Tariq Malik [00:10:13]:
Hey, I can't claim credit for this. This is my team. My team, they're crack, crack masters. No, look at this. It's the first green star ever discovered. Isn't that amazing? They found— yeah, this is by my colleague Robert Lee. He's our science writer, very, very talented. And What it is, well, they— it's not green yet.

Tariq Malik [00:10:32]:
They think that it's billions of years away. So like just a few years, you know, a little bit in cosmic terms, that it can turn green from eating planets around its system like a zombie star. So like eating the brains of its colleagues, it's going to absorb all of this material, and then it will turn the star green. They think that it has that really kind of higher than normal sodium locally in the atmosphere of the white— it's a white dwarf star, and it's absorbing the orange part of the spectrum, which leaves a ghostly green glow, the scientists say. And it's interesting because they never really had a mechanism. Mm-hmm. They could, because, because colder stars like white dwarfs tend to look orange, whereas like, like mid-range stars like our Sun, they look white. like to observable.

Tariq Malik [00:11:25]:
And the really hot stars glow like blue because of their, their heat and what they're burning and all of that stuff. And, and then of course, like then they get cooler, they turn red and then, and then whatnot. So this, this new study suggests that there are different ranges now for the, the dying stars as they're going through different stages. And so it may not just be green. you could actually potentially get a pink star or a cyan star or a yellow star, you know, or a purple star. Uh, so, so it kind of just opens up the rainbow for what stars can actually look like. Because when you and I were growing up, Rod, there was like the red giant, you got the white dwarf, maybe you get a brown dwarf, right?

Rod Pyle [00:12:07]:
Uh, you get a G star that's kind of yellowish.

Tariq Malik [00:12:10]:
Yeah, exactly. And then that's all. And so, and blues were the hottest, and now you've got this whole spectrum. So to speak.

Rod Pyle [00:12:17]:
Wow. Okay. Speaking of awesome things, NASA's Perseverance Mars rover breaks the interplanetary driving record.

Tariq Malik [00:12:26]:
That's right.

Rod Pyle [00:12:26]:
And it's still running. And I assume this is it rolling further than Opportunity during its 15-year—

Tariq Malik [00:12:33]:
Exactly. As of October 11th, which I believe was just a few days ago, it was after our last episode.

Rod Pyle [00:12:41]:
Well, since it's October 16th, I'd say you're probably correct.

Tariq Malik [00:12:44]:
There you go. There you go. Perseverance has driven 28.1 miles on the Martian surface. That's 45.22 kilometers. Opportunity had the previous record of 28 miles, or 28.06 miles, 45.16 kilometers. But it took 14 years for Opportunity to do that. And Perseverance has done it in just 5 and a half years. So not just a marathon runner, but a a pretty speedy one at that.

Rod Pyle [00:13:13]:
And kudos, partly because it has atomic, atomic, atomic power, power, power.

Tariq Malik [00:13:19]:
And they're using AI to plan the drives so they can, they can plan the drives faster. Um, and, and they're, they're making sure that they started doing that in December of 2025 was the first time they did that. So

Rod Pyle [00:13:29]:
that's cool video. Yeah, that's almost as cool as what the Jammer B put up on the Discord of a Super Supergirl comic book For some reason, looking at the—

Tariq Malik [00:13:41]:
The sun is green! The

Rod Pyle [00:13:42]:
sun is green. Okay.

Tariq Malik [00:13:44]:
Well, do you know why that's important in Supergirl?

Rod Pyle [00:13:46]:
Why is that important, Tard?

Tariq Malik [00:13:47]:
Because a green sun is a kryptonite sun, which means that it basically weakens anyone from Krypton. And it is actually something that happens in the Supergirl movie. Spoiler alert, but it's been out for like months, everybody. You've had plenty of time to see it. There's, there's like multiple suns in the star system and she has to wait for the kryptonite sun to set and a yellow sun to rise so she gets her powers back. That's why Superman's so strong. He gets it from our yellow sun.

Rod Pyle [00:14:16]:
You are my kryptonite, my friend.

Tariq Malik [00:14:19]:
Oh no.

Rod Pyle [00:14:21]:
Let's, let's move on to a very special piece here.

Tariq Malik [00:14:24]:
This is one that you picked, so you go ahead and you take the— Bear with me.

Rod Pyle [00:14:27]:
Well, I'm gonna put that story off till next week because we have something we have to do here. So you may remember Many, many moons ago, uh, we read a piece of, uh, I guess I can call it fan mail from, uh, Julie Cole and her husband about the fact that our show was their date night listen.

Tariq Malik [00:14:48]:
That's right. That's right.

Rod Pyle [00:14:49]:
Which I found absolutely charming. And I just got a note from her husband, and we can't do this for everybody, but it was, uh, so cute I just thought we had to. So it's her birthday.

Tariq Malik [00:15:00]:
Oh, Julie.

Rod Pyle [00:15:01]:
As they're sitting down listening to this. So, Tariq, I think you and I and Julie sit down. This will be painful. I think we need to do what, you know, we have to do. Ready?

Tariq Malik [00:15:11]:
Uh-huh. Yes.

Rod Pyle [00:15:14]:
Happy birthday to you.

Tariq Malik [00:15:17]:
Cha-cha-cha.

Rod Pyle [00:15:17]:
Happy birthday to you.

Tariq Malik [00:15:21]:
Cha-cha-cha.

Rod Pyle [00:15:23]:
Happy birthday, dear Julie. Ketchup.

Tariq Malik [00:15:29]:
Happy birthday to you. Feliz cumpleaños, Julie. So

Rod Pyle [00:15:38]:
dogs were howling for miles. There we go.

Tariq Malik [00:15:41]:
You know, in my family, it is a tradition to sing it as badly as possible.

Rod Pyle [00:15:45]:
Like, I think we've— I think we did it in that case.

Tariq Malik [00:15:47]:
We got close. We got close. Yeah, I made the decision.

Rod Pyle [00:15:51]:
So, so happy birthday, Julie.

Tariq Malik [00:15:53]:
Do we gotta pay somebody the copyright for that?

Rod Pyle [00:15:55]:
Thanks for— oh, that's a good point. John, is that public domain yet? Thumbs up. Okay, I guess so. All right. Besides, we've done it before. All right, everybody. Yes. And thanks for putting up with us while we act out here.

Rod Pyle [00:16:10]:
And we'll be right back with Chelsea Gohd. So go nowhere. And we are back with Chelsea Gohd, the one, the only, the goddess of space reporting for Space.com. How are you, Chelsea? Thanks for joining us.

Chelsea Gohd [00:16:24]:
I'm doing great. And I almost said godus. Sorry.

Tariq Malik [00:16:30]:
I see what you did there.

Chelsea Gohd [00:16:31]:
Tariq always gets me in a punny mood. But no, I'm thrilled to be on the pod. Captain Spaces again. Wait a minute.

Tariq Malik [00:16:37]:
Wait, wait. We're supposed to do the jokes, Chelsea. We're supposed to do the jokes.

Rod Pyle [00:16:40]:
I'm sorry. When Tariq's talking to you, he's funny? Is that what you're saying?

Chelsea Gohd [00:16:44]:
I'm so sorry. I hate to break it to you. Occasionally, yes.

Rod Pyle [00:16:47]:
We haven't experienced that here.

Tariq Malik [00:16:48]:
Okay. Well, because Rod is mostly always the funny. Funny looking.

Rod Pyle [00:16:54]:
Uh, wow.

Tariq Malik [00:16:55]:
No, no, John, nothing?

Chelsea Gohd [00:16:58]:
Okay. This is a nice podcast. So

Rod Pyle [00:17:01]:
hey, let's learn a little bit about Chelsea. So Chelsea, if you could kind of give us a rundown on your background. You spent time at JPL, currently at space.com. You've done all kinds of stuff. Enlighten us, please.

Chelsea Gohd [00:17:14]:
Sure, I'll give you the short of it. I've been a science journalist for over a decade, all across science journalism, but I've been in the space world A good chunk of that time since I started way back when with Space.com, I feel like I've held, like Tariq, a lot of different roles at Space.com. I was an intern at one point in time, I freelanced for Space, and then I ended up spending about 4 or 5 years at JPL doing communications for NASA, writing for the astrophysics website. Mm-hmm. So if you're on NASA and you go and you read about what's dark energy, what's dark matter, yada, yada, yada, Probably me, um, and all that stuff. And I did some work for the Natural History Museum in New York. Um, in that time, I, I went to grad school, became a conservation biologist because I love, I love wildlife and the Earth side of things. Um, a lot of my space, uh, comrades don't love that Earth is my favorite planet because there are allegedly cooler planets, but it's my favorite.

Chelsea Gohd [00:18:13]:
Um, and then, uh, after some years at NASA JPL, Um, I got lured back to space.com because I just, I, I love science journalism and I love talking to people about space.

Tariq Malik [00:18:25]:
They all come back, Rod. They all come back.

Rod Pyle [00:18:28]:
Well, it says something about you. I'm just not sure what it is. So, uh, Chelsea, I'm trying to remember— God, I'm ashamed I can't remember his name, but there is an astrophysicist at JPL who died, I think, about the time you were there, or maybe shortly thereafter. Uh, he was Dutch, I think. Do you know what I'm talking about? Or he had a Dutch surname.

Chelsea Gohd [00:18:49]:
No, there was someone at Caltech who passed away, and John Cassani of Voyager passed away while I was there.

Rod Pyle [00:18:55]:
Yeah, no, this was— I remember specifically it was astrophysicist because I, I spent time interviewing him for an article. Doggone it, I can't—

Chelsea Gohd [00:19:02]:
Maybe, maybe he had retired from JPL and we, we never crossed paths.

Rod Pyle [00:19:06]:
No, he was in his 40s or 50s. Yeah.

Chelsea Gohd [00:19:09]:
Wow, we must, we must just have just 2 halves of a Venn diagram with no middle, I guess.

Rod Pyle [00:19:15]:
Yeah, well, I certainly have a big enough middle to make up for that. But anyway, I won't bore people with that. So you were at JPL what years?

Chelsea Gohd [00:19:23]:
Um, from like 2022, um, through just a couple months ago when I, uh, popped back over to space.

Rod Pyle [00:19:30]:
Okay, well then we completely missed each other because I think I was there from 20— I was freelance 2012 or '13 up through like '23. So we may have overlapped a little bit. Yeah, I was just doing that external project.

Tariq Malik [00:19:46]:
Well, very good. Chelsea returned to space.com like the week that Artemis II launched. It

Chelsea Gohd [00:19:51]:
was in the middle of the mission. In the middle.

Tariq Malik [00:19:54]:
Yeah, in the middle of the mission.

Chelsea Gohd [00:19:55]:
Peak chaos. Peak chaos. Easy transition.

Tariq Malik [00:19:59]:
That's right. Your first day was April 8th because we were at the midpoint of the mission. That's right.

Rod Pyle [00:20:04]:
So were you— you survived the couple rounds of big cuts there, right?

Chelsea Gohd [00:20:09]:
The, like, 4 back-to-back mass layoffs? Yes. I mean, and especially communications. I mean, in each round of layoffs, close to 40% or 50% of comms was cut every time. So by the time I left, I mean, I only had, like, a handful of colleagues compared to when I started. It was wild. Very— looks very different. Um, I mean, they're all, they're all doing a great job, but they're all doing, you know, of course, 5, 5 jobs because they, they want to do a good job.

Rod Pyle [00:20:35]:
Wow. It wasn't exactly a fat department to start with.

Chelsea Gohd [00:20:38]:
No, everyone was already pretty strapped from the beginning. So yeah, those, those back-to-back layoffs were pretty, pretty brutal. But yeah, I did, I did survive them. But, um, but you know, Space.com came calling.

Rod Pyle [00:20:49]:
Well, and, and God bless Space.com for Being one of the few places where one can actually go make a living as a space writer, I can say with some authority, not working for them. Thank you, Tariq.

Tariq Malik [00:21:00]:
Well, you're welcome. You're welcome.

Rod Pyle [00:21:01]:
Despite these many years of knowing you, never having gotten a job offer, but let's move on.

Tariq Malik [00:21:06]:
I got freelance for days, man. You want a job? I'll get you a job.

Rod Pyle [00:21:11]:
Tariq has a burning question for you. Of his many burning things, he has a burning question.

Tariq Malik [00:21:16]:
Chelsea, that was between you and I, and I said that in private, right? I'm sorry. Chelsea, one of the questions that we ask all of the guests, usually the first time that they're on, but sometimes when they come back as well, is what their first experience with space was like. Was it like how they got interested in space overall, if it was something when they were like kids, or if it was like something they discovered more as an adult? And I'm just for our audience, you know, because I know that I've known you for like the better part of 10 years. If you could let people know kind of how you were first— I guess your first inkling that you were going to get interested in space when that was. Was it as a kid or later on?

Chelsea Gohd [00:21:56]:
I mean, I've always kind of loved space. I spent many a camping trip with my family stargazing, which was always really fun. I remember as a little kid going to a couple of the different NASA centers on very long, exhausting family road trips. But I don't know, that was always really cool. And so I always had a love for space. I mean, especially growing up as a kid, I was I was really more into the Earth sciences and wildlife and all of that. I mean, I have a Crocodile Hunter tattoo. Woo-hoo! But I don't know.

Chelsea Gohd [00:22:28]:
Over the years, I think to me, as I started— when I started being a freelance journalist, when I started writing about space here or there or one or two pieces, the more I actually learned about it, as I had to in writing these pieces, the more I loved it. Like, I've always had a general love for space. You know, I grew up watching Star Trek and all of that. But for some reason, writing about it really, really deepened my love for it. And it was like, oh, this is actually really cool. Okay, nice. I'm going to get more into this.

Tariq Malik [00:23:00]:
You have a Star Trek tattoo too, right?

Chelsea Gohd [00:23:02]:
I do have a Star Trek tattoo and a tattoo of Venus. So I think the space tattoos might— no, I think the space tattoos are still outnumbered by the Earth tattoos at this point. We'll see.

Tariq Malik [00:23:11]:
We'll see. Time will tell. Time will tell. The gauntlet has been thrown apparently.

Rod Pyle [00:23:15]:
Are any of these tattoos the kind of things we can see online here or are they—

Chelsea Gohd [00:23:18]:
The Star Trek one I've got online. She's got her Commander Pip still.

Rod Pyle [00:23:22]:
pips.

Chelsea Gohd [00:23:23]:
Oh my God. Next Generation gal, you know, a subtle, a classy Star Trek tattoo.

Rod Pyle [00:23:29]:
But you should have gotten them like on the neck, like an alien.

Chelsea Gohd [00:23:31]:
Yeah, I don't know, neck tattoo didn't super feel like my vibe. But

Tariq Malik [00:23:36]:
I'll get the Star Trek face tattoo to match, Rod, and then we'll be all set.

Rod Pyle [00:23:42]:
Are you gonna get the little Kira what's-her-name?

Chelsea Gohd [00:23:44]:
Oh, that'd be cool. That'd be cool.

Tariq Malik [00:23:48]:
No, if I'm gonna get a face tattoo, I'm gonna go big or go home. So— Oh yeah. You

Rod Pyle [00:23:54]:
could be a Klingon and look like you have dog poop on your forehead.

Tariq Malik [00:23:58]:
They are ridges, they are bony ridges, Rod. We all know this.

Chelsea Gohd [00:24:02]:
You'd need prosthetics. It'd be a difficult tattoo. It wouldn't look right.

Rod Pyle [00:24:06]:
I don't know if you remember, Tariq, but on Trials and Tribulations, which— no, I won't say it.

Tariq Malik [00:24:12]:
Hey, Chelsea, did you know that Rod Pyle worked on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine?

Chelsea Gohd [00:24:17]:
I did not know that. That is brand new information to me and very exciting. Did you work on any of the baseball episodes?

Rod Pyle [00:24:23]:
No. I was there for 2 seasons, 3 seasons, I guess. But I was like always the last guy added for the least money and no screen credit.

Chelsea Gohd [00:24:32]:
But anyway, still cool, still cool, still counts.

Rod Pyle [00:24:34]:
It was fun. But there was a moment where Worf shows up, I guess that bar, you know, where the whole Tribbles thing happened or something. And, you know, somebody's looking at him and they're looking at the Klingons in The Original Series who just look like Russian sailors with face makeup. And they said, What's with the— he says, there's something we do not speak of. And I thought that was the cheesiest script dodge I had ever heard. Clever, but lame.

Chelsea Gohd [00:25:01]:
Good.

Rod Pyle [00:25:02]:
Okay, so we brought you here for a reason today, actually.

Tariq Malik [00:25:06]:
Not to talk about Star Trek.

Chelsea Gohd [00:25:07]:
To hang out, come on,

Rod Pyle [00:25:09]:
come on.

Tariq Malik [00:25:09]:
We should though.

Rod Pyle [00:25:11]:
Well, we will. But first, let's get to the Great Lunar Dump.

Chelsea Gohd [00:25:15]:
Yes.

Rod Pyle [00:25:15]:
Which is kind of a weird way of putting it, but there was a big Big data dump from NASA, one of a couple, with 800 gigabytes of stuff. And that stuff included, as I understand it, science data, images, video, personal observations by the astronauts, some 11,000 images and video clips, 8.5 hours of audio, crew annotations, as many 18,000— as many as 18,000 more may be coming. And when I was researching this, I looked at The Verge, who called it observations from the dark side of the moon. How anybody could do that?

Chelsea Gohd [00:25:54]:
The far side of the moon.

Rod Pyle [00:25:55]:
I know, it's like, come on, you guys. But why is this a big deal?

Chelsea Gohd [00:26:00]:
I mean, it's, it's a big deal for many reasons. And like the data itself, there's so much in there. But I mean, not only has it been well over 50 years since the Apollo program ended, But to go back to the moon and get all of this data with the technology that we have now, it's, it's just, it's looking at the moon truly like we've never seen it before, as close up with, you know, with, with technology we've never used this close up before. And it just, it's scientifically big. But it's also, I mean, it's historic. The mission itself is historic. And then, you know, it's not just rah-rah and pomp and circumstance. I mean, We're really getting some super unique observations that, while we hope, are one, gonna be really cool science going forward, but also gonna help inform when we actually start landing on the moon, what places might be of scientific interest, where we might not actually wanna land 'cause it might not be a good place to land, things like that.

Chelsea Gohd [00:26:55]:
So there's some practical applications, but there's also just some really weird, cool science.

Tariq Malik [00:27:01]:
How—

Rod Pyle [00:27:01]:
All right, well, wait, wait, wait. We're gonna talk more about that, but hold on. I'm observing a break coming. Let's quickly go to a break. We'll be right back, so stand by.

Tariq Malik [00:27:10]:
So, so, Chelsea, well, thank you. Thank you for that, that, that kind of intro. Uh, I guess for our, our readers who maybe missed the entire month of April in space of 2026, we should remind people that, that of course Artemis II was the first crewed flight to the Moon, as Chelsea just mentioned, uh, since the Apollo era. Uh, NASA did fly to the Moon with Artemis I, but it was an uncrewed test flight back in 2022. Then it took them 4 years to get this crewed mission around. And it was a 7-hour kind of close approach flyby on April 6th, 2026, that this all happened, where they collected all of this data and everything. And that was a 10-day mission from launch to landing, which the bulk of us, I think, were all there. Right, Chelsea? Did you get to watch it while you were at JPL? No, you didn't, because you were like—

Chelsea Gohd [00:27:59]:
I was in between the 2 jobs, but I I was watching from afar and texting Josh Dinner and some of the other colleagues over at space.com like, I know I start in a couple days, but the FOMO is killing me.

Rod Pyle [00:28:13]:
Josh was sitting right across a horrible little table from us.

Tariq Malik [00:28:16]:
Nice. That's right. That's right. So it's been 6 months now-ish since that mission. And so I'm curious how NASA put this whole thing together and, you know, like why release it now? I remember there being like something where they were like, it was like written into the mission that they were gonna have to have a, a big report out, and that's what this was part of. But, but kind of set the stage about how they all, uh, you know, met to start talking about this, because it sounds like they're not done yet, but this was like the big bulk reveal.

Chelsea Gohd [00:28:50]:
Yeah, so as you mentioned, this was definitely all very intentional and part of the plan. 6-month mark out from the mission, um, to have the first big data release. They're not done. This isn't it. But I think, I think a big reason for that is because, you know, NASA is a public government agency and they have a legal obligation to share the data they collect with the public. And so as part of this mission, they set this timeline so that they had this intention, they had this plan to reveal the data cohesively. I don't think they expected the general public to tune into their 5-hour-long presentation and briefing But I think that it also took all of this time because while things like photos or annotations can just be uploaded and that's kind of simple data to put together, it was more than that. It was more than just compiling the data and observations themselves.

Chelsea Gohd [00:29:41]:
It was also a lot of going through and kind of analyzing and revisiting how did the crew train, what were their experiences, how did the crew get educated on how to do these observations and use this technology before before the mission and kind of assessing how that went and what can be changed. So it was more than just the data itself. It was really part of like a comprehensive analysis of how a lot of steps during and leading up to the mission went. So I think that's probably why they wanted to do this as kind of one singular planned 6-months-out thing.

Tariq Malik [00:30:17]:
And it was like a symposium kind of a thing, right? Yeah, it was like a Zoom meeting. It was a big one giant Zoom meeting.

Chelsea Gohd [00:30:25]:
One giant Zoom meeting.

Tariq Malik [00:30:26]:
How many hours was it again? It

Chelsea Gohd [00:30:27]:
was 5 hours. There was one planned break 2 hours in, but they were slightly behind schedule, so they decided to forego the break. And I wish that they had not, because it was 5 interesting but long hours.

Tariq Malik [00:30:46]:
Well, and I guess you raise the point, how did all of this data get collected? Obviously, we're in the 21st century of space exploration. There's cameras and and I guess sensors on anything. But you mentioned that the astronauts had to be trained to actually do science reporting. Last I checked, Reid Wiseman, uh, Christina Koch, and the others, you know, weren't lunar geologists. And so I'm curious what these scientists were looking for from what they heard and saw that these astronauts took.

Chelsea Gohd [00:31:15]:
Definitely. So it was a lot of photo observations, a lot of photographs, a lot of like visual imagery, but also And you can see in the data release, I think we have this in the article that I put out, but annotations was a huge part of it. And they look like kind of silly, like almost like MS Paint or some super crude program, but they have an image of the moon and these just handwritten really quick from the Orion capsule drawings of here's where I saw this lunar flash, here's where this happened, this person saw this here. This was really cool. This looked like this. So it was a lot of like a surprising amount of handwritten notes or even I think Christina Koch had some like actual drawings in there of what she saw and a lot of audio observations as well. So it was this crew where again, you know, they're not lunar geologists on this mission, but they are describing the texture, the color and all of that of what they saw. And leading up to the mission, which they went over in this briefing, They, they very much taught the crew how to make these observations in a way that they could use them.

Chelsea Gohd [00:32:20]:
You know, like, how, how do you look for certain things? What should you be looking for? Like, what do the geologists actually want to see? What do they care about? Instead of just like, oh, I'm looking at something kind of neat. It's like, well, that's not very helpful. So they really went into it very intentionally looking for specific things and kind of knowing how to talk about them and describe them.

Tariq Malik [00:32:41]:
Awesome.

Chelsea Gohd [00:32:42]:
Yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:32:43]:
So I, I think when you're talking about handwritten, you're talking about on their tablets, right?

Chelsea Gohd [00:32:48]:
Yes, on their tablets. So one of them from Christina, I swear it looks like pencil. It looks like pencil and paper.

Tariq Malik [00:32:54]:
Poor Christina, her, her tablet fizzled out on the way to the moon, and so she had to borrow one, like a backup from someone else's.

Rod Pyle [00:33:01]:
Radiation. So yeah, because some of them kind of look like Etch A Sketch illustrations, if anybody remembers what the heck an I don't think they had

Chelsea Gohd [00:33:08]:
any Etch-A-Sketch up there.

Rod Pyle [00:33:10]:
No, probably not, although they would be radiation-proof if they did. But I guess a question that Tariq and I talked about some while we were over at Johnson was trying to figure out— and they sort of addressed it, but in a kind of a glancing way, in my opinion anyway— it's like, look, we had many, many dozens of hours of Apollo astronauts orbiting the Moon.

Chelsea Gohd [00:33:33]:
Mm-hmm.

Rod Pyle [00:33:33]:
Strictly equatorial, much lower, about 60 miles, but still, we've got that. We've got decades and decades of increasingly high-resolution images of every nanometer of the lunar surface, at least within, you know, a certain equatorial distance. So they made a very big deal about, yes, but we're seeing it with human eyes. I thought, this sounds like a rationalization. What What was it that's so special, if you know, about seeing it with human eyes versus instrumentation?

Chelsea Gohd [00:34:05]:
Well, there are, there are a few things that they like. Seeing it with human eyes was really the best, and in some cases the only way to really make these observations. Um, the main one being the impact flashes. So these tiny, like just a couple-inch-long little rocks hitting the Moon, no atmosphere to slow them down, just, you know, barreling into the Moon. Um, they were happening too fast for them to capture them, uh, in photography. And so there were only 5 of them that they witnessed throughout the mission, kind of in quick succession. And so if they hadn't been looking at them just with, with their eyes, they would have missed them entirely. Um, and they— these were seen.

Chelsea Gohd [00:34:44]:
There were some impact flashes seen throughout Apollo, but they were seen from much closer up. Right. So with Artemis II, they were something like close to 50,000 feet away from the surface. So they actually weren't sure if they were going to see anything at all. And so they were actually quite surprised to not only see impact flashes, but really bright and clear and multiple of them. So that was a really big deal. And then also when they approached the terminator line, obviously there's photographs and things like that.

Tariq Malik [00:35:14]:
We should explain— you should explain what the terminator line actually is.

Chelsea Gohd [00:35:17]:
Yes, the terminator line. It's Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't just like up there being the Terminator. It's essentially just the boundary between the, the day side and the far side of the Moon. So it's just that it's not like a hard line in the sand, it's just kind of that transition point. But the shadows that happen at the terminator from this kind of play between light and dark create really, really striking shadows, really striking shadows that make a lot of the texture of the terrain really clear. And obviously you can see that in photographs, but The audio descriptions and some of the written descriptions from the crew, I think, add a lot of like kind of like just color commentary that helps to better understand what that terrain is really like, what it appears like. And again, when we're talking about like actually sending humans there and what they might experience, even like small changes in terrain and that texture and stuff could really make a big difference or just be really interesting to listen to. Victor Glover had a lot of really good quotes.

Chelsea Gohd [00:36:18]:
He was like freaking out seeing this thing. He was loving it so much.

Rod Pyle [00:36:22]:
That was all after he put his shirt back on, much to the dismay of a certain percentage of our population.

Tariq Malik [00:36:28]:
I think that was actually on the way back, if memory serves, Rod.

Rod Pyle [00:36:31]:
I think it was on the way back.

Chelsea Gohd [00:36:32]:
He can do what he wants.

Rod Pyle [00:36:34]:
Of course he can. With a torso like that, he can do anything he wants. I have a quick follow-up and then we'll run to a break, but is the primary interest in the micrometeoroid impacts for mission safety in the future or just scientific?

Chelsea Gohd [00:36:48]:
I think there's a scientific interest, but I think there's a pretty big safety concern because, yeah, like I mentioned, there's, you know, there's no atmosphere really slowing these things down. So even like a tiny couple-inch rock, I think, I think they were surprised from how far away how bright they were. And so I think that, that, that will hopefully inform safety issues for astronauts on the moon if they're not all living in caves and tunnels and whatnot.

Rod Pyle [00:37:12]:
Yeah. Okay. Well, let's strive for some impact ourselves as we go to yet another break, and we'll be right back. So go nowhere.

Tariq Malik [00:37:19]:
Okay, Rod. Okay. Mea culpa. I admit defeat. In the break, I did a double check and you are correct. Victor Glover took the bath, uh, 2 days before the actual Moon flyby. It was on the way out because lo and behold, I apparently wrote a story about it on space.com.

Chelsea Gohd [00:37:36]:
I was

Tariq Malik [00:37:37]:
able to go and find out when that happened. So, uh, so there you go. There you go. If you want to know what that was like, look up Artemis II bath Moon. Tariq Malachy.

Rod Pyle [00:37:46]:
All I remember is, is perhaps I may be exaggerating this in my memory, but When he— when they cut back to him and he was mostly unclothed at that point, and the CAPCOM said, uh, uh, uh, uh, that there was kind of a hush in the room and a lot of people were going, oh my God, look at this guy. You look like something out of a superhero movie.

Tariq Malik [00:38:07]:
And then he said, nope, it's fine. And so they just turned it all back on again.

Rod Pyle [00:38:10]:
Yeah. They took his pants off.

Tariq Malik [00:38:12]:
Yeah. He wanted

Chelsea Gohd [00:38:13]:
to be clean and fresh for his lunar flyby. I get it. I get it.

Tariq Malik [00:38:17]:
There is not a lot of room in that Orion spacecraft, you know. Like, everyone, you're all thinking, oh, these astronauts are taking or making these, these Moon observations in kind of like comfort and whatever.

Rod Pyle [00:38:28]:
Their living room. Yeah.

Chelsea Gohd [00:38:29]:
And they're all like each other.

Tariq Malik [00:38:31]:
What I remember is that they were working in like tag teams of 2 and then rotating out. What, people at the window, someone else like, uh, uh, taking notes and stuff like that while they were doing their own thing, and then they would swap out to go to different places. But you mentioned in your, your earlier note before we took a break, Chelsea, about how the Terminator offers like those really striking separation between light and dark and, and like colors and whatnot. But I recall, I remember Victor Glover in particular talking about seeing green patches on the Moon. And there was a lot of discussion of the colors, as I understand it, reading your article that you had written. By the way, her article is called Dude, no way! Scientists jump for joy over Artemis II moon science results. So

Chelsea Gohd [00:39:17]:
dude is yelled multiple times by the astronauts from the capsule, by the way. That was not the only dude, no way.

Tariq Malik [00:39:22]:
That's right, that's right. So, so where do these colors come from? I know that there's like orange stuff because— was it, was it 17, Rob?

Rod Pyle [00:39:31]:
Apollo 17? Yeah, there's orange soil.

Tariq Malik [00:39:33]:
You went, uh, uh, uh, the astronauts there, you think that remember everyone's names, but no.

Rod Pyle [00:39:40]:
Having just met him recently, yes.

Tariq Malik [00:39:42]:
Harrison. I was going to say Harrison, but Jack. Yeah, Jack Schmidt.

Chelsea Gohd [00:39:45]:
Different Schmidt.

Tariq Malik [00:39:46]:
What's the deal? What's the deal with the color?

Chelsea Gohd [00:39:49]:
Yeah. So I mean, there's blue, there's green, there's red, there's orange, there's yellow, and they're all from different things. A lot of the colors are signs of minerals. There's titanium, there's iron. So that's where a lot of the color comes from. But To me, the one that is most different is the green, and they describe it almost like a glass-like green because it is kind of glass. And this is left over from volcanic activity and impacts from asteroids, like ancient impacts literally creating like moon glass on the surface. Really? So the green is super weird.

Chelsea Gohd [00:40:28]:
So yeah, the others are mostly interesting, like minerals and things that are just kind of found in the regolith. Um, but that green is like from these— from the heat of these ancient impacts just left over. So that one's super cool.

Tariq Malik [00:40:41]:
Wow.

Chelsea Gohd [00:40:41]:
Rainbow moon. I mean, the colors are super subtle when you're actually seeing, even, even in like the digitally enhanced where they kind of try to bring out the colors in the photographs. But, you know, you can hear from the audio from the crew, they are— they were just with their eyes seeing subtle color changes. from that close up. Um, so, so it's, it's interesting because I know that, yeah, there's been like those little bits of observations of other colors on the Moon over the years, but I don't think we've ever seen anything quite as colorful as this before.

Tariq Malik [00:41:10]:
I thought it was all just gray.

Chelsea Gohd [00:41:12]:
Well, from, from far away it's all just gray, but, but turns out, you know, a little more than meets the eye.

Rod Pyle [00:41:21]:
So, uh, were there any other, in your mind, standouts in what you saw of the data package and any conversation about what's still coming? That we haven't seen yet?

Chelsea Gohd [00:41:30]:
Yeah. So they didn't really allude to what's coming next from Artemis II, leaving a little bit of mystery there. But there was also a lot of discussion about the Earth observations that they made from Orion, as well as the almost inverse eclipse that they saw when they were on the other side of the Moon and seeing kind of this ring of light from the other side and this kind of total solar eclipse that really just they have seen like this. And the images they took are unbelievable. And I can't imagine what that moment must have actually been like for them. So there was definitely a lot of discussion of that. And then how the position of the sun as they were looking at the Earth from this vantage point kind of similarly created unique shadows and contrast that also allowed for— obviously we can see our planet from orbit through all kinds of satellites. But this was a little bit of a different view.

Chelsea Gohd [00:42:26]:
And even just in like kind of the plain photography of the Earth from Orion looks a little bit different. And I think you can see things a little bit differently. So I feel— I'm hoping that in kind of follow-up Artemis II data results, we'll see a little bit more of, okay, what can we actually learn from these images of Earth now that we have all this data? I assume scientists are going to be kind of piling on, poring through it, analyzing it. And kind of starting to figure out what it all means. So we'll see.

Rod Pyle [00:42:54]:
Well, and I just want to say— sorry, Tariq, then I'll get to you. But I just want to say, as the only boomer in the room, it was quite a revelation to be able to see this stuff, what they sent down real time, you know, the compressed versions of some of these images. When as a kid, we just saw this blobby black and white, you could barely discern what the heck was going on, smeary, like 80 lines of resolution video. And the rest of it, you had to wait till they got the film back to NASA. And then some poor jerk is handed this canister of film and saying, okay, this just came back from the moon. It's the only one like it in the universe. Don't screw this up. And, you know, having been a photographer back in those days, I know there was a lot of ways to screw up color processing.

Rod Pyle [00:43:38]:
So it's pretty amazing it all worked out. Sorry, Tariq, go ahead.

Tariq Malik [00:43:40]:
I don't know about like back in your day, Rod. When I started at space.com, I had to write to NASA for Betamax tapes for flight highlights from So that they would be delivered overnight every day during a space shuttle mission. So not that long ago, you know, it's hard to believe, hard to believe. The future is televised and it is in 4K from the Moon, which is great. I just have one more about Artemis II, because I know that, Chelsea, when we were talking, you hinted that there might be some details that we can expect for Artemis III about what kind of science they might be doing and whatnot. Yes. But I just wanted to ask, in your opinion, if you thought that the Artemis II mission broke these astronauts, that the Moon broke them. Because in the 6 months that these scientists have been dutifully going over their 800-whatever gigabytes— by the way, I've got like a hard drive on my video game computer that has more data than they got from the Moon.

Tariq Malik [00:44:31]:
But it sounds like more is coming, so that's beside the point. But in that 6 months, Christina Koch has left active duty, right?

Chelsea Gohd [00:44:40]:
The last of the 4.

Tariq Malik [00:44:42]:
And so she's gonna be like the deputy chief engineer at NASA, I believe. And Victor Glover has gone over to Cal Poly in California for academia. Reid Wiseman is astronaut emeritus. I guess he's going to spend more time with his kids and family. And Jeremy Hansen has left active duty for Canada to become an Air Force reservist. So what did they find, Chelsea?

Chelsea Gohd [00:45:07]:
That they did not find aliens. No, no. I do think it's strange that all 4 of them in such quick succession, literally like within 6 months of the mission, because the mission got so much public attention. I mean, it could just be that the mission was so big and so historic and also that they got so much public attention that they were like, okay, this is enough, this is it. I could understand that. I could also see if perhaps, you know, really seeing the inner workings of the astronaut corps, they perhaps got tipped off that, While they did this historic mission, it was very unlikely that they would be part of a moon landing. They'd fly again. Even if they flew again, they might not actually do a moon landing.

Chelsea Gohd [00:45:49]:
They might be like, okay, well, I did this historic mission to the moon. That's enough for me. Go out on top. Don't jump the shark kind of a thing. I'm sure it was a different and personal decision for all of them, but yeah, there must be something more behind it other than I got another job offer. because that, you know, they're astronauts.

Rod Pyle [00:46:09]:
I have a suggestion. Uh, Wiseman and Glover at least have already signed with CAA, the premier talent agency in Los Angeles, and their base rate is somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000 per 1-hour talk. So that's a pretty compelling reason to move on.

Chelsea Gohd [00:46:25]:
That's compelling. That's compelling.

Tariq Malik [00:46:27]:
No, Chelsea raises a really good point though. I mean, Reid Wiseman, Vic Glover, Christina Cook, they are veteran veteran astronauts. Cook spent, um, the better part of a year in space, right? On a single mission and, and whatnot. So, and, and Jeremy, as a first mission, he was a rookie before they went on that flight.

Chelsea Gohd [00:46:49]:
Crazy.

Tariq Malik [00:46:49]:
It's kind of hard to top that. And of course, Canadian spots on flights are at, uh, you know, that's part of international agreements, and it would be even more unlikely for him to get to fly on a moon flight Yeah, because they would want to probably spread out whatever sites they get around. So that's, that's interesting. So

Chelsea Gohd [00:47:07]:
I think if they thought they were going to land on the moon in the next few years, I think they would have stuck around in the astronaut corps because, you know, why not land on the moon? But I think they, they probably are seeing how it's going and, and, you know, are happy for their piece of it and to move on and perhaps enter the entertainment world.

Tariq Malik [00:47:26]:
I would feel, if I was with them, very— and I'm sure that they do— Very satisfied and overjoyed and relieved to have, like, seen—

Chelsea Gohd [00:47:36]:
That it went well.

Tariq Malik [00:47:37]:
That it went well. You get one shot. You get 7 hours to do a job that you've been training for, like, 4 to 5 years on. And

Chelsea Gohd [00:47:44]:
it hasn't been done in over half a century.

Tariq Malik [00:47:47]:
Exactly. And the scientists are like, you know, that'll do, astronaut. That'll do.

Rod Pyle [00:47:51]:
Well, I also wonder, in Christina Koch's case at least, and I haven't run the numbers on this because I just thought of it,

Tariq Malik [00:47:58]:
The radiation meter?

Rod Pyle [00:47:58]:
I don't think she's up against the radiation limit, but between a year in low Earth orbit, we are fairly protected. And then this jaunt out where you're passing through the Van Allen belts twice and all that stuff, don't know what her numbers would be. But speaking of such things, let's radiate ourselves into a break and we'll be right back for our last segment. So stand by. All right. So this has been great. Let's talk about Artemis III a little bit. So we have the former First return to the Moon for American astronauts in the 21st century.

Rod Pyle [00:48:27]:
Now it's an orbital mission to test the lunar landers, whichever one or ones might be available. So we have SpaceX slowly grinding along with the Human Landing System's version of Starship, big question marks there. And then we've got Blue Origin apparently in the lead with their Blue Moon lander. And we hope at least one of them will be ready for this mission because otherwise, what's the point? So I guess that's the question. What are they gonna do? What's the science? And is there a chance they'd fly it without landers, or do they just slip until they're ready?

Chelsea Gohd [00:49:02]:
I mean, I feel like if they flew out without landers, it would defeat a big purpose of the mission, 'cause I think the main bulk of the mission is seeing how the capsule docks with one of the landers. You know, they're hoping to test both Blue Origin and Starship kind of against one another, see which one is gonna work better. But without one or both landers, it would really change the mission. I mean, they do have science objectives and I can go through that. But without those landers, I think they're going to push until they have at least one of them actually ready to safely test with this, which Starship's had an interesting history. So fingers very crossed for that. In terms of the science, in this Artemis II briefing, they outlined the main themes for the Artemis III science, one of which being observing the Earth from space, observing the Earth atmosphere and the sun. So kind of like a lot of the different missions, they were going to, while they're in space, try to make as many observations of Earth as possible.

Chelsea Gohd [00:50:07]:
The second science objective is to, is basically to support safe human exploration. They do mention in here that they're not just gonna be testing you know, biological systems for humans on board. They also include microbes and plants in this theme. So I don't know if they're gonna be bringing Petri dishes or plant experiments on board, but they do specifically— Bees!

Tariq Malik [00:50:29]:
Take some bees!

Chelsea Gohd [00:50:30]:
Bees? Bees? No, don't bring bees. I like bees, but I wouldn't put them in a capsule. But so it seems like they're gonna have some kind of actual experiments that maybe the crew will be working on with plants and microbes on board. They're also going to be kind of, working on practicing for sample collection for future moon missions, kind of a dress rehearsal for sample recovery. And they're also going to be, as they call it, characterizing the external vehicle environment and the factors that influence it. So I don't know exactly what they mean by that or what they have planned. They're keeping it relatively vague, I think, Especially because they don't know yet exactly what's going to happen with docking with these 2, hopefully 2 landers. I think they're keeping it vague, probably intentionally.

Chelsea Gohd [00:51:24]:
Um, so as they get, as they get more information about what that's actually gonna look like, they'll know maybe what's possible. Um, so—

Rod Pyle [00:51:31]:
So what, what kind of sample collection do you test in zero-g that hasn't been done a jillion times already? That, that's a puzzle.

Chelsea Gohd [00:51:39]:
I don't know. I mean, perhaps there are sampling arms or instruments that are a part of the capsule or a part of the landers that they are going to be just, just testing in zero-g, just, just seeing how they work, seeing how they've, you know, if there's any issues with them. But again, they're keeping it pretty vague.

Tariq Malik [00:51:58]:
I think, I think that a point needs to be made because I saw this and I was actually very surprised at the take during Artemis II. Why aren't they doing more science, right? Because they're going around. And the whole point of the mission I got to be honest, was not to actually take like all of these pictures of the Moon and do this. They flew further than Apollo 13 did, right?

Rod Pyle [00:52:18]:
But it's an engineering mission.

Tariq Malik [00:52:19]:
Yeah, well, that's what I say. It's to see if the spacecraft will keep them alive and protect them all the way out to the Moon. And that's what Artemis III is going to be too. So yeah, I can— everyone should like mark their calendars for the big backlash about what these astronauts are going to be doing like on the, uh, wasting their time in orbit around the Moon. They're there to make sure— I think that the mission is supposed to be twice as long, like 20 days, because they're gonna— they're hopefully they'll have 2 launches in that period. 2 landers. Well, 2 launches of landers. And the Blue Origin, uh, Mark II, they're supposed to be able to not just dock but also enter the vehicle.

Tariq Malik [00:53:02]:
So test ingress for that. That's like— that was a baseline goal that Jared Isaacman had mentioned, uh, before. And NASA has said that for, uh, Artemis, for the Starship, if the Starship is ready, it will be a docking kind of target and simulator only. Yeah. So that they will be able to rendezvous with it and, and do some, some prox ops. Maybe they link up with it so it has a a docking thing, but, but they're not going to go inside. They just reached orbit for the first time, you know, a few weeks ago as we're recording this with Flight 14, and we're waiting for some more there. So like, those are big things, but they take a lot of time.

Tariq Malik [00:53:41]:
So these astronauts are gonna have to loiter for a bit. It's great that they've got this science that they can do.

Chelsea Gohd [00:53:46]:
It's a bonus. It's a bonus.

Rod Pyle [00:53:48]:
Can I, can I complain for a moment? No, you're— it's a good point.

Chelsea Gohd [00:53:52]:
He's winding up. He's ready.

Rod Pyle [00:53:54]:
Being a person who remembers Apollo 9, it's like, first mission of the Apollo capsule is a week in orbit with Apollo 7, just test the hardware. Next leap, which is a huge one, is to send the capsule and the service module only, with no backup capability whatsoever, out not to pass the Moon, but to orbit the Moon for a day and then come back, which was a big deal. Then Apollo 9, They rendezvous with the first lunar module that's flown and move to it and separate and test the propulsion system and stage and test the ascent system and so on and so on. And I, you know, it's hard to compare because these were contractors working underneath the NASA jackboot in terms of design and quality control and all that. And it was really expensive, more money—

Tariq Malik [00:54:40]:
In a space race that didn't have— it had an empty check, right?

Rod Pyle [00:54:45]:
Well, I had a blank check, but nonetheless, it seemed like a really smart way to do it. And this seems so incremental, especially with the SpaceX thing, if they're not going to even enter it in pressure suits, that it's almost pointless.

Tariq Malik [00:55:01]:
Well, I would say that they're just doing different things. I'm sorry, Chelsea, we are now like in a debate. I didn't mean for it to start.

Chelsea Gohd [00:55:09]:
I feel like I sit somewhere in the middle. 'Cause I don't think it's pointless 'cause it's important to test this tech. But do we think that they're actually going to land on the moon with Starship if during Artemis III they're not going to ingress in the same way that they're gonna be doing with Mark II?

Tariq Malik [00:55:25]:
It's a good question 'cause they're gonna have to fly another mission to do it again.

Chelsea Gohd [00:55:28]:
Yeah.

Tariq Malik [00:55:29]:
You know?

Rod Pyle [00:55:29]:
Exactly.

Tariq Malik [00:55:31]:
And so, I mean, it is valid. It is valid. But, you know, the contracts are there.

Rod Pyle [00:55:36]:
That's after designing a life support system that works.

Chelsea Gohd [00:55:39]:
Yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:55:39]:
That's after testing orbital refueling, which they won't have done by then, at least not in any— in any— at any scale. That's after testing at least one lunar landing with that big, tall, tippy rocket. And, you know, I, I don't like to be a naysayer. Well, actually, I don't think

Tariq Malik [00:55:55]:
that's true.

Chelsea Gohd [00:55:55]:
I think you totally 100% want to be a naysayer.

Rod Pyle [00:55:58]:
I, I want to believe in SpaceX. I want to believe in their mission. I want to believe their capability. But as we're watching them sort of trudge through this series of tests, which I gotta say, to my untutored eye, look like about a 60/40 balance of we're really more worried about Starlinks and repeatable launch and catch on Starship than you are about this, this lunar program that we are giving billions of dollars for. It's a little frustrating.

Tariq Malik [00:56:23]:
It's a fair point, but that's what's paying for the program for them, for, for them to be able to afford it, right? Uh, is the Starlink money that they get in and, uh, and, and whatnot. I mean, you wait. There's—

Rod Pyle [00:56:33]:
yeah, because Elon can't afford it.

Tariq Malik [00:56:35]:
Yeah, well, they just put SpaceX thrusters on a Tesla, right? We just—

Rod Pyle [00:56:41]:
they can't afford it. And honestly, you know, I hate to sound simple-minded, although it's a— it's something I can't help doing, but at a certain point you want to grab these guys gently by the lapel and say, just step up Just do what you said you wanted to do and pay for it, because you'll still be solvent if you spend the entire NASA budget for next year finishing your lunar lander. You'll still have hundreds of billions of dollars, so what's the hang-up? But of course, that's—

Tariq Malik [00:57:09]:
Pretty sure he'll have a trillion.

Chelsea Gohd [00:57:12]:
Yeah, it's essentially infinite money. You'd have to work really hard to spend it in a lifetime.

Rod Pyle [00:57:16]:
But

Chelsea Gohd [00:57:17]:
yeah, yeah, it doesn't really

Tariq Malik [00:57:20]:
make any

Chelsea Gohd [00:57:20]:
logical sense, but

Tariq Malik [00:57:21]:
A trillion is 1,000 billion, right? That's what a trillion is?

Rod Pyle [00:57:25]:
Yeah, I think so.

Tariq Malik [00:57:26]:
Yeah, yeah.

Chelsea Gohd [00:57:27]:
That's a million billion.

Tariq Malik [00:57:28]:
That's a—

Chelsea Gohd [00:57:29]:
could be a thousand billion.

Rod Pyle [00:57:29]:
You'd have to spend $1 million every second for the next 100 years or something. Yeah. Get there. Yeah.

Tariq Malik [00:57:35]:
Well,

Rod Pyle [00:57:36]:
but I'm sorry, we're not letting Chelsea comment on this, Tariq. I'm sorry.

Chelsea Gohd [00:57:40]:
No, I mean, I, you know, I, I'm dubious about SpaceX a lot of the time, and I, I was impressed by them getting to orbit recently, but I think just with Artemis 3. It's like, if, if they're— if the astronauts are going to be able to get into Mark 2, if they're going to be able to actually safely demonstrate that they can get into this lander and that it works to dock—

Rod Pyle [00:58:02]:
The blue moon.

Chelsea Gohd [00:58:03]:
Even if, even if they can dock with Starship, even if everything with Starship goes well, if they can't do that with Starship, it's not going to be the lander for at least the first, you know, moon landing mission, if, if not the first few, because it's, it's gonna take a lot of testing to get to that point from where they are now. So, I mean, I hope they get there. I just hope they don't rush it because I think sometimes the business side of things forgets that, hey, there's people involved. It's a little different when there's people on board. You can't just say, ah, whatever, you know, it explodes, it explodes. You can't do that anymore. You can't. Can

Rod Pyle [00:58:38]:
I say something snarky?

Chelsea Gohd [00:58:40]:
Yeah, always. I don't think I'm going to stop you either way.

Rod Pyle [00:58:43]:
Let's hope they don't become the Boeing of the The lunar landing trade. Okay, sorry, just had to go there.

Tariq Malik [00:58:48]:
Hey, hey, they just bought more flights on Boeing.

Chelsea Gohd [00:58:52]:
I was at the first uncrewed Starliner test and it did not go well, if you recall. And it was wild. Everyone from Boeing there cleared out in a matter of like seconds. They had a whole tent outside and there was breakfast.

Rod Pyle [00:59:06]:
No comment, no comment, no comment.

Chelsea Gohd [00:59:07]:
And about 5 seconds into it clearly not going to plan, everyone Cleared out, gone. It was unbelievable.

Tariq Malik [00:59:15]:
You were there for us, huh? You were there for space. That's right.

Chelsea Gohd [00:59:18]:
I was. I was.

Tariq Malik [00:59:20]:
Wow.

Rod Pyle [00:59:21]:
So Tariq, I'm going to leave the last question to you.

Tariq Malik [00:59:25]:
Well, what is our last question? I

Rod Pyle [00:59:26]:
believe we're talking about EVA suits.

Tariq Malik [00:59:29]:
Oh, the suits too. Yeah. Well, I think this may not be— I don't think that they would have talked about this unless they actually have science targets for the suits themselves. But Chelsea, the reason I put this on here was because you were with me and Steve, right?

Chelsea Gohd [00:59:45]:
At Prada.

Tariq Malik [00:59:46]:
At the Prada event here in New York City when they unveiled the Axiom undersuit or whatever they call it, the cooling garment. So I just wanted to ask kind of for like a short update if you had any about what you know about the mobility suits. I know that they said they hope to be able to test it on Artemis III, but they may not be able to because they might not be ready in time. Like, what do you know there about the suits? What should we be looking for?

Chelsea Gohd [01:00:13]:
Yeah, I mean, they still haven't, you know, officially revealed exactly what they're going to be doing with them, but the hope is still using these Axiom Prada suits for Artemis III. They look really snazzy. They've got— yeah, they've got this cooling undergarment that we got to go see revealed. And I think the hope is that they are essentially flexible for the astronauts and allow the astronauts to just do everything they need to do easily, comfortably, collect samples with ease, and do what a suit's supposed to do. Yeah. Keep you alive, safe, and comfortable, but hopefully a little bit more comfortable than the suits of the past. And so it'll be interesting. I mean, it seems like they've put a lot of thought and care into making that happen, but this is gonna be the first actual real big test of it all together, all the components.

Chelsea Gohd [01:01:03]:
I'm excited to see that.

Tariq Malik [01:01:04]:
Yeah, what I, I think I recall that they are already planning to take them to the ISS as like a fallback. So we should be looking for that. And that if they can't get them, if they, if they can't get them on Artemis III, I thought they had told us at that event that they were going to put like mass simulators of the suits inside the, the Mark 1 lander, the Mark 2 lander for Blue Origin. Blue, yeah, blue, the Blue Moon lander. just to see. So that's what I— but it's unclear. But I think, I think they look, they look cool. I think maybe, maybe there'll be some swag that we can all get some Prada suits, right?

Chelsea Gohd [01:01:40]:
Well, I was hoping we could try on the suits. They said no. We kept asking.

Tariq Malik [01:01:44]:
They did something new. We'll probably have to do— we'll have to invite Axiom on to talk about space stations and spacesuits, uh, one, one day. Axiom, if you're listening, uh, the invite is there.

Rod Pyle [01:01:53]:
I'm sure they're, they're listening breathlessly as we speak. Hey, they invited us on their show! That's amazing!

Tariq Malik [01:01:59]:
But, uh, uh, You know, the mocking tone isn't really needed there.

Rod Pyle [01:02:03]:
Oh, sorry. Wow.

Tariq Malik [01:02:06]:
But what I— what I think is really interesting is that the Prada suits, for the cooling garment, they built the tubes into the woven of the garment instead of weaving them on the outside, which is really interesting to see. So

Chelsea Gohd [01:02:17]:
yeah, which seems like, you know, probably a lot easier for the people putting them together than actually putting them on, instead of weaving these tiny tubes into these like long string compartments. Um, but it also seems like it'll probably make them Maybe more resistant to damage, maybe more resistant to tears or breaking.

Tariq Malik [01:02:34]:
And reusing and all that stuff, yeah.

Chelsea Gohd [01:02:36]:
Totally. Thumb holes and everything.

Rod Pyle [01:02:38]:
Trivia question. Who made that part of the garment for the Apollo program for the EVA suits?

Chelsea Gohd [01:02:42]:
Oh, oh my God.

Rod Pyle [01:02:43]:
Playtex.

Chelsea Gohd [01:02:45]:
No, not technically Playtex. ILC Dover, a subsidiary of Playtex.

Rod Pyle [01:02:50]:
There you go. I thought Playtex was subcontracted for them.

Chelsea Gohd [01:02:53]:
Not technically Playtex.

Tariq Malik [01:02:54]:
No, they were the owner.

Rod Pyle [01:02:55]:
Well, in any case, it was great that a bra manufacturer was building spacesuits. I always thought that was cool.

Chelsea Gohd [01:03:01]:
And they were up against the much bigger space company, and then they showed up and blew them out of the water.

Rod Pyle [01:03:09]:
It was like, yeah, actually—

Chelsea Gohd [01:03:11]:
Oh, was that Clark? I think so, yeah. They were like, oh, astronauts actually want to be in comfortable stretchy fabric, not like big metal tin cans, because this isn't like science fiction. They want to actually be able to walk around. So Playtex showed up and made it happen.

Rod Pyle [01:03:26]:
I wanted to see them look like Tabor the Conqueror, but that's just— well, hey, uh, one day we're reaching that, that time that we all abhor, which is the end of the show. But I want to thank everybody, and you especially, Chelsea, for joining us today for episode 232 that we like to call the Lunar Dump. And I will add, Mike Wall, if you're listening, which I'm sure you do every week, You have a challenger here.

Tariq Malik [01:03:51]:
Uh-oh.

Rod Pyle [01:03:52]:
Really good. Yeah. Chelsea, where's the best place for us to keep up with your fantastic work?

Chelsea Gohd [01:03:58]:
I will— at space.com. I also share all my stuff online. All my handles are @Chelsea.Gohd, G-O-H-D. It's not God, it's not Gould. I've gotten every pronunciation. It is Gohd.

Rod Pyle [01:04:10]:
I bet you have.

Chelsea Gohd [01:04:11]:
Oh yeah. But yeah, I always, always up and about doing things on space.com. So that's an easy place to find my stuff.

Rod Pyle [01:04:19]:
And should we be expecting a book project or anything from you in the future?

Chelsea Gohd [01:04:24]:
Hey, I hope so. I hope so. Nothing, nothing on the horizon. If any book publishers are listening, though.

Rod Pyle [01:04:31]:
Well, I know at least one person on this podcast right now keeps saying that he wants to write a book. So maybe there's a partnership in there somewhere.

Chelsea Gohd [01:04:39]:
Yeah, we should all write books. Come on.

Tariq Malik [01:04:41]:
What's for Dinner in Space? That's my kids' book series.

Rod Pyle [01:04:44]:
Oh, okay.

Chelsea Gohd [01:04:45]:
Oh, Tariq, you're gonna do the space toilet book. Come on. Oh yeah, I could write that. Who else could write that?

Tariq Malik [01:04:50]:
Yeah, I'm thinking about it. I was— I got an idea for that book too. I gotta—

Rod Pyle [01:04:53]:
Everybody Poops and How. Oh, so Tariq's

Tariq Malik [01:04:56]:
Pooping on the Move, right? A history of, of transportation toilets, right?

Rod Pyle [01:05:01]:
Wouldn't that be great? Tariq, where can we find you pooping on your online empire?

Tariq Malik [01:05:05]:
That was uncalled for.

Rod Pyle [01:05:07]:
I know, but you know better.

Tariq Malik [01:05:10]:
No, you can find me at— well, actually, by the way, before I do my own plug, uh, you can also look up Chell sees music. Uh, she is very talented as a singer and a musician, so please look that up. She's really awesome. And so maybe you can catch her live in a show.

Rod Pyle [01:05:24]:
Wow, we didn't talk about that at all. What about—

Chelsea Gohd [01:05:26]:
We'll have to do a space music episode in the future, I guess. Yeah,

Tariq Malik [01:05:30]:
her music has gone to space, Rod.

Chelsea Gohd [01:05:32]:
True, it's orbited around the planet.

Tariq Malik [01:05:34]:
That's right.

Rod Pyle [01:05:35]:
Wow.

Tariq Malik [01:05:35]:
Um, but no, you can find me at space.com, as always on the socials at Tariq J. Malik. And if you like, you know, video games, or whatnot, you can find me on YouTube at Spacedrawn Plays. And, and this weekend, hopefully you'll find me relaxing for like one time, the first time in a long time. So it's going to be great.

Rod Pyle [01:05:56]:
Well, or on the other hand, if you're a mature adult, you can find me at pilebooks.com or adastromagazine.com where I like to hang out. And also the National Space Society, who is the owner and sponsor of Ad Astra magazine, which will have a whole new thing going on for 2027 that we'll talk about when we get a little closer. Remember, you can always drop us a line at twists@twit.tv, especially if you're going to compliment Chelsea or insult Tariq. We welcome these comments, suggestions, ideas, and of course, space jokes, because we can. And you've been stepping up. Yeah,

Tariq Malik [01:06:29]:
we've been getting a lot.

Rod Pyle [01:06:30]:
Like 6 of them in the last couple of weeks, which is a record. New episodes of this podcast published every Friday on your favorite podcatcher, so make sure to subscribe. Tell your friends and give us reviews. We'll take whatever you got. Uh, finally, you can also follow the TWiT Tech Podcast Network. TWiT Tech—

Tariq Malik [01:06:48]:
You can do it. You can do it. I believe in you, Rod. I believe in you!

Rod Pyle [01:06:50]:
You can follow the TWiT Tech Podcast Network @TWiT on Twitter and— Nailed it. And TWiT.tv on Instagram. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Chelsea. Thank you, Tariq. Thank you, John. Thank you, everybody on Discord.

Rod Pyle [01:07:03]:
And thank Thank you, all of you, for listening. We love you to death, and we'll see you next week. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.