This Week in Space 205: All About Artemis

Summary

This Week in Space 205: All About Artemis

Date: April 10, 2026
Host: Rod Pyle
Guest: Tarek Malik (Space.com)
Theme: An in-depth recap of Artemis 2—the first crewed lunar mission in over 50 years. Rod and Tarek recount their behind-the-scenes reporting from NASA, discuss the mission’s highlights, memorable moments, crew experiences, challenges, and what Artemis 2 means for moon exploration.

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Main Theme Overview

This special Artemis episode covers the historic Artemis 2 mission: splashdown details, the spectacle of launch, on-board challenges (notably the infamous space toilet), crew perspectives, lunar observations, hardware and technical learnings, and the cultural impact of returning humans to deep space for the first time since the Apollo program.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Historic Context and Media Frenzy

• Artemis 2 is the first human flight beyond Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972—a gap of over 50 years ([02:05]).
• Both hosts were embedded at Johnson Space Center, offering firsthand coverage.
• Press presence was lighter than expected, reminiscent of the Shuttle era: “[The press] was pretty light... for first time leaving Earth orbit in half a century.” (Rod, [15:00])

2. Pre-Launch & Launch Experience

• Smoothest Countdown Ever:

  • Compared to previous missions, Artemis 2 launch prep went unusually smoothly, with only minor issues (battery, range instrumentation) quickly resolved ([06:20]).

• Launch Sights and Sounds:

  • Tarek describes it as more intense, brighter, and louder than even Starship launches:

    “It was so much louder than the Starship launch... so bright too. Much brighter than the Starship launch.” (Tarek, [07:51])

• Astronaut Jerry Griffin’s Take:

  • Apollo-era flight director Jerry Griffin declared it the “smoothest launch he’s ever seen.” ([09:43])

3. Press Room Vibes & NASA's Grappling with Budgets

• Nostalgia for the Shuttle era among journalists, even though the facilities have diminished due to “not exactly swimming in cash these days.” ([14:16])
• Coffee and snacks in the media room were scarce and press amenities were “threadbare, but they did the best with what they’ve got.” (Rod, [14:07])

4. Odyssey of the Space Toilet

• A running joke and real issue: headlines and press conferences obsessed over the toilet’s malfunction ([03:15]-[04:16]).
• Problem traced to needing to “prime the pump”—eventually solved, but required backup “collapsible urinal device” use for a day ([19:00]-[20:25]).

• “It was the first story I wrote after the launch…they’re having toilet trouble.” (Tarek, [19:00])

• The containment and waste management stories became so prevalent “the toilet was a breakout star…literally asked every single press conference.” (Tarek, [03:15])

5. Life Aboard Orion: Crowded Quarters & Crew Routines

• Orion’s interior “looks big in wide angle shots… but it’s still really small.” ([21:08])
• Compared to Apollo, it’s larger, but living space is tight:

  “I’m a little claustrophobic… maybe break into a cold sweat being in there for 10 days with three of your closest friends.” (Rod, [21:52])

• Crew kept to exercise routines in the cramped quarters—Victor Glover’s televised workout became an unexpected viral moment:

  “Victor Glover… takes his shirt off in front of millions of people… looked like something out of a Marvel movie.” (Rod, [32:50])

6. Lunar Flyby: Scientific & Emotional High Points

• Personal Moments:

  • Crew named lunar craters after their spacecraft (“Integrity”) and after commander Reid Wiseman’s late wife, “Carol”—an emotional, tearful broadcast ([42:02]-[44:08]).

  • “Not a dry eye in the press room… or mission control… such a moment.” (Tarek, [42:02])

• Astronaut Wake-Up Calls:

  • Charlie Duke (Apollo 16) and a pre-recorded message from the late Jim Lovell (Apollo 8/13):

    “Welcome to my old neighborhood… don’t forget to enjoy the view.” (Jim Lovell, [44:49])

• New Frontiers—Observations from Lunar Orbit:

  • Crew broke the Apollo 13 record for farthest humans from Earth ([44:38]).
  • First human eye observations of meteor impacts on the Moon’s far side, catching at least four flashes ([47:34]).
  • Descriptions of the moon’s terrain—crew spotted unexpected colors and lighting, prompting intense interest from scientists ([48:16]).
  • Ongoing debate: how much is “seeing with the human eye” critical, vs. what remote sensing already offers? NASA gave it heavy emphasis during live coverage ([49:53]).

• Photographic Innovations:

  • Crew used Nikon D5, Z9, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and GoPros in various positions. Laser communication beamed back up to 75-80GB of high-res imagery in a single session ([35:25]-[38:29]).

• Watching a Solar Eclipse from Space:

  • Witnessed a “glowing halo” as the sun passed behind the moon, lighting the lunar surface from behind—a spectacular and rare event ([54:29]).

7. Presidential Call: Technical Glitches and Awkwardness

• President Trump (whose administration set Artemis in motion) called the crew post-flyby ([56:37]).
• Communication issues led to an awkward silence captured live, with laughter from the press inadvertently sent over the link ([58:23]-[60:27]).
• Reflection by hosts: the call focused on “neighbors in Canada” (for Canadian astronaut Hansen) and missed an opportunity to emphasize Trump's role in initiating Artemis ([61:34]).

• “It’s sad that everyone’s focusing on that awkward silence because I think there’s more to it than that.” (Tarek, [62:15])

8. Technical and Safety Challenges: Heat Shield Concerns

• The mission’s riskiest moment: reentry with a revised trajectory and a heat shield whose new Avcoat formulation (modified for EPA compliance) was less robust ([67:01]-[68:34]).
• To avoid chunks popping off due to gas buildup (observed in Artemis 1), this mission opted for a steeper, hotter reentry for a shorter time.

• “It is the most dangerous part of the mission… and it’s the very last stage.” (Tarek, [68:55])

• Robust follow-up plans for Artemis 3 (and beyond) to reinforce heat shield design ([71:12]).

9. Looking Ahead: Artemis Implications and Personal Reflections

• Artemis 2 set many milestones: first woman, first Black astronaut, first Canadian to lunar orbit, farthest from Earth, and more ([71:17]).
• Personal anecdotes: Waffle House breakfasts, press camaraderie, and Rod’s fire truck as comic relief ([64:05]).
• Both hosts underscore the mission’s importance:

  “Someone please watch it… This is an important mission, and it’s going to set the stage for humanity’s return to the moon.” (Tarek, [74:38])

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On launch energy:

  “It was as smooth as humanly possible. It lifted off. It was gorgeous… You could feel it.”
  (Tarek, [06:20]-[07:51])

• On the Artemis “star of the show”:

  “I think one of my stories was that how the toilet was a breakout star because they literally asked every single press conference…”
  (Tarek, [03:15])

• On astronaut Victor Glover’s viral workout:

  “He takes off his shirt… these rippling muscles, cracking big biceps… looked like something out of a Marvel movie… And then NASA cuts the feed.”
  (Rod, [32:50])

• On the emotional crater naming:

  “…They [named] one after their spaceship, one after Reid Wiseman’s late wife Carol… there wasn’t a dry eye in the press room or mission control.”
  (Tarek, [42:02])

• On the presidential call technical fail:

  “…And then Trump stopped talking, there’s this long silence… The press starts laughing, and Tarek will tell us what wasn’t realized at that moment until later.”
  (Rod, [59:09])

• On Artemis 2’s significance:

  “…First female astronaut to the moon, first Black astronaut to the moon, first Canadian non-American to the moon. All sorts of records set on this flight.”
  (Tarek, [71:17])

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Notable Timestamps

• [02:05] – Framing Artemis 2 as the headline, after 53+ years since Apollo
• [06:20] – Pre-launch preparations and Tarek’s firsthand launch account
• [09:43] – Jerry Griffin’s historic perspective on launch smoothness
• [19:00] – Toilet drama: day one post-launch, fixing and workaround
• [21:08] – Aboard Orion: living/crew space details
• [32:50] – Victor Glover’s workout, cut feed, and press room reaction
• [42:02] – Emotional moment: crew names a crater after commander’s late wife
• [44:49] – Jim Lovell’s recorded “Welcome to my old neighborhood…” message
• [47:34] – Crew sees lunar impact flashes, live science excitement
• [54:29] – Crew witnesses solar eclipse from lunar orbit
• [56:37] – Presidential call and viral awkward silence
• [67:01] – Technical deep-dive: heat shield concerns and chemistry
• [71:17] – Records set by Artemis 2 and look ahead to Artemis 3
• [74:38] – Where to watch splashdown (and why it matters)

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Concluding Thoughts

Rod and Tarek’s insider coverage blends technical analysis and human storytelling. Artemis 2, beyond its engineering achievements, was marked by authentic crew moments, a surge of public curiosity, and the revival of lunar ambition for a new generation. The hosts reflect on their nostalgia, hope for Artemis’ continued success, and the ever-present need to inspire the public—one toilet joke, space photo, and lunar milestone at a time.

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For in-depth reporting, photos, and updates:

• Space.com – Artemis
• NASA TV/plus – Artemis 2 highlights and splashdown coverage

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Tarek Malik]

Coming up on this Week in Space, it's splashdown for Artemis 2. And Rod and I are going to get down to brass tacks about what this 10 day mission was like, what it means for the future of moon exploration, and what it was like to be in the newsroom when we saw our first glimpses of the far side of the moon. Check it out.

[Rod Pyle]

Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is turret. This is this Week in space, episode number 205, recorded on April 10, 2026. All about Artemis. Hello and welcome to another very exciting episode of this Week in Space. The All About Artemis edition, where we talk all about Artemis. Because that's kind of what's going on. I'm Rod Pyle, editor in chief, Badass magazine. I'm here with tarek malachospace.com who is one hard working son of a gun as I saw at Johnson Space center for eight days.

[Tarek Malik]

Hey, Rod. Rod. I miss you. I miss you. It's the first time we've not been in like the same room together for like a week and a half or something like that.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, we had separate motel rooms. I mean, just want to be clear here. Yeah, yeah. And by the way, you know where I'm going, right?

[Tarek Malik]

Oh, my gosh.

[Rod Pyle]

So Tarek says, hey, here's where I'm staying. It looks pretty good. It's a day, a Wyndham days in, in Houston, near nasty.

[Tarek Malik]

And I thought, okay, name brands, all name brands. Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

From what you can see, from what you can see on the ad, it looked pretty good. So we get there and this place looks like murder central, you know, peeling pain. The doors have all been patched because they've been kicked in and all that. But the best part is we go in the lobby and we're looking for the person, you know, and there's a little robot kiosk with a face on it. Somebody from India or Pakistan somewhere sitting there eight hours a day staring at the screen. And you check in by kiosk and there are no human beings involved. So that was very, very weird.

[Tarek Malik]

It's weird. You look for the front desk and then you just hear a voice out of nowhere saying, can I help?

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Hello.

[Rod Pyle]

All right, so, but. So welcome back to New Jersey, my friend.

[Tarek Malik]

Yes, that's right. That's right. Welcome back to Los Angeles.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, Splashdown day. So this week is going to be all Artemis because we're going to need this whole episode to recap our first crewed mission beyond Earth orbit in 54, count them years.

[Tarek Malik]

50. 50. Well, 53. It'll be 54 years.

[Rod Pyle]

Let's see, you're the mathematician now. We're going to bag the headlines this week because Artemis is the headline.

[Tarek Malik]

That's right.

[Rod Pyle]

As I mention, we both just returned from jsc, which was very cool.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

Where so much of this unfolded. And we do have a lot to talk about. But first, of course, we have a space joke once again from the inimitable Joel Olson.

[Tarek Malik]

Joel.

[Rod Pyle]

Hey, Tarik.

[Tarek Malik]

Yes, Rod?

[Rod Pyle]

Did you hear about the difficulties the Artemis astronauts were having with their space toilet?

[Tarek Malik]

Ooh, a timely one. No, no, I didn't hear it. What?

[Rod Pyle]

They tried to investigate the problem, but they had nothing to go on. That one's really good.

[Tarek Malik]

That's a good one.

[Rod Pyle]

I mean, we get to good. But that was like finally.

[Tarek Malik]

You know, I wrote. I wrote three toilet stories this mission. Three.

[Rod Pyle]

And you were probably behind the curve. I mean, I think, you know, some of the networks were talking about nothing but that.

[Tarek Malik]

It was almost. I think one of my stories was that how the toilet was a breakout star because they literally asked every single press conference of the mission, every.

[Rod Pyle]

About the pooper.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, yeah, no, we. It was the urine feed, Rod. The whole time and it was the urine tank.

[Rod Pyle]

I know, but you know, by the way.

[Tarek Malik]

By the way.

[Rod Pyle]

Yes.

[Tarek Malik]

If you're going to pack a ship to go to the moon, maybe include a tank that's bigger than like an office waste basket. Wastebasket, you know, maybe.

[Rod Pyle]

Tank. Yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

Just saying. But I guess that's the design of the spacecraft. They thought they'd be able to. To like push it out to space and.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, not so much pushing.

[Tarek Malik]

We'll talk about it.

[Rod Pyle]

We'll talk it out. Can always be a problem, but we will, we will address that. Now, I've heard that some people want a roto rooter us when it's joke, but as always, you can help by sending us your best, worst, at most indifferent space joke. Oh, actually, I wrote the most incontinent space joke. Mostly different space joke to TwistWit TV. John is shaking his finger at me. Get over it, buddy. Oh, no.

[Tarek Malik]

Is he pissed off?

[Rod Pyle]

Do we care?

[Tarek Malik]

Oh, we missed. We missed. We missed my joke. I had another p. Joke, but okay, let's.

[Rod Pyle]

We're going to toss our. Our breaks into a bit of disarray here, but let's go ahead and get rolling on our main story because.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, our main story. A1 astronauts returning to Earth. Big day.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah. But first. But first, tell us of it. You were at Kennedy for the launch. I was not. I was Doing a TV hit and you were at Kennedy. So tell us about what you saw, what you felt, what you heard, what it was like.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, so 10 days ago, you have to do the Little Wayne's world thing to go back in time on, on April 1st. No, it was, it was, it was amazing. Now, I've been to dozens, I want to say dozens of space shuttle launches, as well as, as some, you know, SpaceX launches and whatnot. I, I wish I could, you know, see more. One of my friends has seen 100 launches, but I've never seen a launch quite like this. The last big launch that I saw and that I described, I think Rod, to you, was the starship launch, which is the world's biggest rocket. And probably a good thing to compare this to. And it was really strange because. Because a very smooth countdown for, you know, as compared to when I was out for Artemis 1 and I didn't see Artemis 1. I don't know if folks remember that. I went out three times and they scrubbed all three times. And the fourth time I sent a different writer and Brett Tingley was able to see it. But compared to that countdown and, and a lot of others, even space shuttle ones, this was like the smoothest countdown I had ever seen. I mean, just the days running up to it, I showed up on flight on L minus 2, so two days before launch. Our photographer was there a few days earlier, and it was smooth sailing. They had a few little glitches, little teeny tiny things, but they were able to get through it all. And I think during the countdown, only I think there was like a battery issue on the launch abort system. And there was a weird range issue with the eastern range on the Space Force side of the station. Right. And they fixed those.

[Rod Pyle]

They weren't getting a ping back from the rocket.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah. And they thought it was an equipment issue on their end. And they ended up having some extra spare old equipment from the shuttle era on hand to use, and they just used that instead. And it was all fine. Yeah. And so it was, it was pretty amazing. It was so clear. And then 10 minutes before launch, they do the big. The big go no go. The crew says that they're going for all humanity. And then it's rush out to the viewing stand. And if people watch the livestream, there's the big clock with the flag. And then you see the video. And we were off to the left of the big clock. Josh, Dinner and I, we were waiting to see it. And it seemed like it was as smooth as humanly Possible it lifted off. It was gorgeous. It was a beautiful, beautiful day on a Wednesday. Going up all the way up. You saw all the way up through SRB sep and you saw the boosters fall away separately. It was phenomenal. And it was so much louder than the starship launch was to me because we were closer. We were about 3 miles away from pad 39B where they lifted off reservoir about 5 miles away from the starship pad back in Boca Boca Chica. Boca Boca Boca Chica, Texas. So it was spectacular and you could feel it. It was so loud. I think we shared the video last time. Is that right? Of what it felt like? It was so bright too. Much brighter than the starship launch.

[Rod Pyle]

Like a welding tor shape.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah. And I, I think that's because they still use locks and, and hydrogen, whereas the stars.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, I think wasn't the brightest part of it, the, the SRB exhaust which is from this, from the solids.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, it's, it's absolutely gorgeous. It was, it was just spectacular. I mean I, I can't wait to see the next one and the next one and maybe the next one. I don't know. I guess we'll find out what happens after those, after those missions themselves.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, I'd like to just see one.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, I mean it was, I feel like they've got it down these leaks and everything because they were like not even a peep. So it was absolutely phenomenal. The astronauts said it was a great write up. Got a bit smoother after SRB SAP, that's usually the case. And, and then it was a packed, packed like two days to get the tla.

[Rod Pyle]

So I was, I was here in lovely Alhambra, California on News Nation for that. It was sort of, I don't know, co commentary with former shuttle astronaut Stephen Holly, which was fun. I mean it was cool. You know, I planned to just sit in a chair with a shot of whiskey and you know, salute the launch. But as it turned out, I got to actually very tangentially be involved in people watching it, which was cool. So didn't see it in person, but saw it that way. Great fun being on that show. And immediately after that, because I was doing local radio the next day, immediately after the launch, I called Jerry Griffin, friend of the show, former Apollo flight director and the only Apollo flight director to show up at mission control for this launch. In fact, one of the only people from the Apollo generation that showed up. So I said, okay, give me your impressions. He said, great launch, Smoothest countdown he can remember other than the Hold. Which I think may have been planned, that 10 minute hold. Yeah, it was planned, yeah. Okay. You know, he said he's watched every human space flight system since the Redstone go up and every human space flight since Gemini. He's seen the first flight of, and oversaw actually most of those up until this. And he said it was the smoothest countdown he's ever seen. It was the smoothest launch he's ever seen. Everything went perfectly. You know, they're having a little bit of weather there and he was having a little bit of PTSD from the lightning strikes on Apollo 12. He was the flight director during launch, but everything just went fine. And he did add a cute story. He, of course, is treated like royalty when he shows up because he's one of the few from that generation. And after the launch, the flight director said, here, going to come in the back room with us for a second. So he went back there and they all introduced themselves. They give their name, then they give their number. So flight director number 87. Flight director number one. 103, whatever. He smiled, shook their hands and said, hi, I'm Jerry Griffin, flight director number six.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, you were saying. That's so that's.

[Rod Pyle]

I said that last week, didn't I?

[Tarek Malik]

Okay, yeah, it's good, it's good. It's a good memory. It's worth remembering. I mean, it was. Yeah, I forgot about the weather because it was cloudy, but it was very far away, like to the north. It seemed like from, from the, from, from Canaveral because you could see the rain and the lightning over there. But it wasn't close enough to be like a problem at all. There were some big fluffy clouds that they always worry about, but, but it was just, it was phenomenal just watching it like arc over when they do the roll and, and it's just, just solid blue. It was gorgeous. I was. I love it. I love it. And I need to see more of it.

[Rod Pyle]

This is all good. So let's launch ourselves into a break and we'll be right back. So hold your camp down.

[Tarek Malik]

Got it.

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[Rod Pyle]

So we, we finished launch and I immediately jumped online and bought a ticket to JSC because you know, constrained budget for the magazine and all that. So I thought, okay, I'm not going to go sit there for four days while they have launch holds. Turned out I didn't have to. So I showed up there the next afternoon. Tarek, you showed up there what about noon?

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, I got there in the morning. I had time for breakfast at Luby's. It was great.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah. So you had time to see the blood stains in your room before I got there?

[Tarek Malik]

No, I didn't check in until the evening actually.

[Rod Pyle]

Oh, that's true. Okay, so here we are, we go over to Johnson Space center, you know, get credentialed and all that. And you know, NASA is not exactly swimming in cash these days. So it was a little, little threadbare, but they did the best with what they've got. I just literally like as far as I could tell, you know, if one of the media reps for JSC thinks of it, they have to stop in the morning and buy cookies and creamer for us because the Space center doesn't have the budget for it, so it's, it's kind of rough.

[Tarek Malik]

I was surprised they had coffee, but.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, but they did it. That's my point, you know. But I think they did it out of the kindness of their hearts and pity for us more than anything else. But there was prob. For the first couple of days, I think there was maybe 20 press reps there.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

And then of course for flyby there was more, but I was expecting it to be packed to the gunnels because, you know, first time leaving Earth orbit in half a century. The big mission going to the moon. And the press was, was presence was pretty light.

[Tarek Malik]

This actually was, it really reminded me of the space shuttle days because if, if for folks who are unaware, the pattern for reporting if you're not local to either Florida or Houston is you fly down a few days before launch. You're there until they get off the ground. Then on the next day you fly to Houston, which is what I did. And then you're there for the duration. Now I had to come back. I've got some family stuff and I've got to pay taxes, you know, but we have a reporter in Houston, so we did a handoff for that Josh dinner, who is there covering splashdown for us and, and, and all that thing. But you, you, you, you make that transition. And then for space shuttle, you would go back to Florida for landing on the hopes that they would land there. And of course we can't do that because they're landing offshore in San Diego. You could have gone down there on your boat rud and gone and crashed,

[Rod Pyle]

did some quick calculations the other, the other day. If they land where they expect to, which is not certain because due to this revised trajectory, they have a little less precision than they would have otherwise or will have. For items three and four, it would cost me, I think, 12 to $1300 to drive out to the landing zone and come back because boats get horrible

[Tarek Malik]

mileage only to get, only to get a nice, a nice little slap on the wrist by the US Navy to say stay away. Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

Or you're sitting there looking and you're saying, wow, look at the capsule. It's cool. It's getting bigger and bigger. Wait, it's not moving sideways. Ah, no, I wouldn't do that.

[Tarek Malik]

But I say all this because for me it was a bit of a return to like, I don't know, like a bit of a nostalgia coming back to at home now at jsc where they set us up. There's this place called The Teague Auditorium. It's a very historic place. Has a great atrium that has a vast Robert McCall mural. My favorite part of the. Of the Johnson Space Center. And there used to be a press room, like a little amphitheater where the people Rod is talking about. We would all just sit there for a whole mission, watching everything. And then they'd have press conferences there. NASA doesn't have that anymore. They got rid of it after Covid and after the space shuttle era ended. So now they put us up on folding tables in this atrium so it's a little bit louder. But it was very much of a reminiscent. What's that word? Nostalgic thing for me, because it's something that we had done during shuttle era, and we were doing it again. Everyone's there, plugged in with power, which they did provide to everyone eventually. And you've got the live feed going on. You've got access. They were answering questions quickly, which I was. I was pretty happy to hear. I mean, well, some questions. They didn't answer all of them, but. But it was really fun to be there. And then to watch this historic thing. I mean, that's. That's the reporter's eye view. To watch this historic thing that we haven't done since 1972. And that. I mean, I have [e-mail] as a permanent staff person. Like, I was freelance before, but I became staff in 2004, the year that Constellation, that project was announced. And I was like, okay, great, so we're gonna go to the moon. And then we never went to the moon. So like, we have finally now and throughout my career, delivered on that process. You know, NASA has. And so that was really something to

[Rod Pyle]

behold, I think, to see, well, hey, try waiting. Since Apollo 17. Yeah, that was a grimace. So we got seven minutes, six minutes before the next break, we gotta talk about the toilet. So this just took over the airwaves. It's like, come on, There's a lot going on this mission that's not just all about the toilet. But during launch, they saw a fault light. Later, they had a weird smell. The fan was jammed. They fixed that. But it was the gift that just kept giving in terms of the press, I guess.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, I mean, everybody. It's one of the. It's one of the most popular questions that people ask and that kids ask, right? Is like, how do you go to the bathroom?

[Rod Pyle]

About space flight in general.

[Tarek Malik]

About space flight is like, what? Because everyone has to do it. And so. And this actually started on the first flight date. It was actually the first story that I wrote after the launch story was that they're having toilet trouble. And after the first conference they talked about it, that they're trying to figure out what was going on. It was, it was the fact that they don't have to, they have, they have to prime the pump, the water pump, the air pump that like sucks all the stuff in the fan and they have to do that by pouring water through it. And they hadn't done that yet, so they had to, to do that. And it sounded like jiggling a handle to make sure that the toilet flushes properly is what it sounded like to me. And they got, once they got that fixed, it was good to go. They didn't have that weird smell. So that was on for the first flight day.

[Rod Pyle]

But that actually it was a couple of days before it was approved for use, wasn't it?

[Tarek Malik]

No, they, they, it was, it was approved for use. Like they said, once you get it going, then that's fine and then you can start, start doing that. But they had already used a contingency collapsible urinal device. At least one of them by then. Yeah, they have two of them. There's a photo of them. What's his name? Don Pettit shared it. They're like PVC tubes that have an access point at one end where they can hook up their attachments that they would use on the regular toilet. And then the other end has a little bit of a gasket thing that they can screws into the venting tank overboard. And then that's how they, they reuse it over and over.

[Rod Pyle]

But you want to do those as separate acts.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

[Rod Pyle]

You don't want your parts pulled through the venting valve.

[Tarek Malik]

He said that just one of those, those, Those devices replaces 25 diapers on the space on the spacecraft. Can you imagine? Wow, that is crazy.

[Rod Pyle]

But they didn't, I don't think they had to use the other contingency collection device which used to be called the Top hat.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah. For the, for the, for the number. For going number two. They could always use the toilet for going number two.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

And it, but I mean toilets apparently are hard. It's why Apollo didn't have them. Right. They take up a lot of space. Well, in the room and they're very difficult. Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

And we did get a chance. We went over to. Was it Building nine?

[Tarek Malik]

Building nine, yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

Where they have the mock up of the Orion cap. So we couldn't go inside because all the switches were Set. And the whole thing was set up exactly as it is in flight in case the backup crew has to get in there and work through a problem. So they very carefully shepherded us around with a lot of. A lot of hairy eyeballs turned our direction. Don't touch that. Don't go there. Don't shoot that. But, you know, we did get to lean in and look around, and Tarek and Josh and I all got our shot. It's small. It is. You know, it looks big in the. In the wide angle shots. And compared to Apollo, it's about 40% larger, but it's still really small. And, you know, they talk about. Well, it's about the size of two minivans. Well, that's the pressurized space.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

But when you.

[Rod Pyle]

By the time you load in the spacesuits and the food and all the collected stuff that's under those orange nets you saw usually off to the left, it's small, and there's four people floating around in there. And, you know, I'm a little claustrophobic, as I've confessed before, but not extremely so. But just looking in there. Maybe break into a cold sweat being in there for 10 days with three of your closest friends, especially you. Oh, my God.

[Tarek Malik]

Oh, man. We'd go space crazy. We'd open the hatch. No, it's funny because after that visit to Building 9 and seeing how it was set up, because actually during. While we were there, an engineer did come in and go into the bathroom. We saw them open the door and go inside.

[Rod Pyle]

The floor.

[Tarek Malik]

In the floor. So I'm, like, looking at the feed right now that we are watching from NASA. And you can see it. It's behind Rod's head here. Can we go there? So back there you can't see very well, but. Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

Are you looking through the windows?

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, yeah. So got a camera set up behind the commander and the pilot as they're sitting in the pilot seat. And it's like. Oh, it looks. It looks enormous because you can see that Christina Cook is floating, doing some work below them.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

And when you. It's. We're actually looking from the top down in this view. But it's. It's the top down, but it's on the side. So they're actually lying on their backs in the spacecraft.

[Rod Pyle]

Right.

[Tarek Malik]

And when you look at it like that, there is no. There's nothing underneath it. That's like the bottom of the ship where their backs are. And this is.

[Rod Pyle]

Right. So they reassembled the couches, right?

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, they reassembled Their seats and so behind them. Yeah. As we've got the feed now for folks watching the stream. So this view is not from the top. You can see there's. It looks like someone's eaten lunch down, down below them. Yeah, that's Christina. They're on their back. So we're looking at it from the side of the ship, like looking across and so that where, where Christina is in the background, that's just the other side of the ship. That's all the space that they have. So we're like looking from one end of the minivan to the other side of the minivan. So, I mean, 33% larger than Apollo. Still not that big. 300 square.

[Rod Pyle]

330 cubic feet.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, cubic feet. Cubic feet.

[Rod Pyle]

Apollo is 220. And actually I was surprised. I didn't realize Crew Dragon is larger by about another 30%. Yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

Crew Dragon has like stuff like underneath the seats where you can go down.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, it's huge in there.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

I mean, I only. I did get to go in that one, but it was before they had it completely kitted up. But they're really big. Anyway, speaking of big, we have a major break to go to, so we'll be right back. Standby.

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[Rod Pyle]

And we're coming back to me so I can show off my cool new Artemis T shirt.

[Tarek Malik]

Look at that, ladies and gentlemen. Look at that. You got the baseball claws.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, and I could have gotten it on Amazon, but I got it at the JSC gift shop.

[Tarek Malik]

I was going to say, you got the gift shop at the cafeteria.

[Rod Pyle]

I'd like to say an astronaut gave it to me. You were there.

[Tarek Malik]

So you can wear that to events and have the crew sign it wherever you go.

[Rod Pyle]

Right.

[Tarek Malik]

So or, or have, while you're wearing

[Rod Pyle]

it, or have the crew look at me and just shake their heads and go, another fanboy. So let's just remind people, you know this, I think most people know this, but this mission, you know, they left Earth, Norbit went up to a much higher 24 hour orbit to do a checkout. And that was the majority of the work that was done by the upper stage of the rocket. And then after that, all they needed was the service propulsion system on Orion to nudge them out of that and head for the Moon. Now at that point, they're basically aiming a hunting rifle and firing the spacecraft like a bullet towards the moon. So they got to know exactly where to fire it to be in front of the moon when it arrives at that point in its orbit and at just the right altitude to be slung around the back of it by gravity and, you know, all the way back to Earth and reentry in that 2 degree reentry corridor, which is, I think I mentioned earlier, is equivalent to a piece of tissue paper wrapped around an Earth globe. So it's really narrow. Yeah, all that they want to do at that first firing, now they can do corrected burns. They did A couple. I think they're doing the third today. Yeah. Or did their third today.

[Tarek Malik]

I think they did already.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah. But they got really close and they had up to six burns. Some, Some sources say eight. I think it was six planned, but they only needed to do three. And I think one of those was kind of optional from what I recall. Right.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, they, the, the, the Orion team seemed extremely impressed with the performance of the vehicle. And of course, that. What the, the engine burn that Rod is talking about, the trans Lunar injection, that was the first time we've done that with astronauts, you know, since 1972. They did the Go for the moon, you know, and Christina Cook said that they don't, they don't do this to choose the moon, they do it to choose Earth. Because the minute they shut the engine down on that burn, they were committed not just to fly around the moon, but for today, as we're recording this, to come back to the Earth, which has been really exciting to see.

[Rod Pyle]

Can I just add a point.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

You know, at every one of these steps, and this is not a complaint, really. It's an observation. You know, mission control has a scripted moment, and the astronauts have a scripted moment. And on the mission control feed, you can see the flight director looking down at the note she's got. And, you know, these are inspirational statements and all that. But I do kind of miss the part about Apollo where it was test pilots in the air, engineers on the ground, and they'd say, you're going for tli. And then, you know, the, the command module pilot would say something like, okay, let's see if this works button. And I kind of, I kind of liked it that way. So the scripted stuff, it's not as bad. The commercial launches are the worst. Blazing new frontiers for national security with the Delta, Blah, blah, blah, blah.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

It's awful.

[Rod Pyle]

You know, this wasn't bad, but I just, I'm not sure we need, we need those bits.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, you know, it's, it's, it's part of the show. You know, I like it because I feel like we've paid for it because it's our tax dollars at work.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, but who's paying for us?

[Tarek Malik]

It shows that. It shows that they are in an era where TikTok and Twitter and whatever is how people get their news. Getting those sound bites, I think is really important to sell what they're doing. I mean, even my daughter was wondering why they didn't land on the moon, you know, for this mission. And I feel like the challenge is pretty high. To get the whole thing across on. On our end, too, Rod. Right. We have to make sure that.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

Letting people know. But. But I think I would fight for eyeballs. I think they are.

[Rod Pyle]

I. I just think they would do better, especially on social media, with a little more off the cuff, if you will, than this scripted stuff, you know,

[Tarek Malik]

I mean, well, you have to listen for that. You have to listen. There is a moment when they're talking, they're working through all these toilet issues. I thought. I thought it was hilarious. Well, there are two moments. There's two moments. One moment for the toilet. One is Christina. You know, they're talking about their morning and their day, and Christina asks mission control, so what's the deal on the toilet? Like, when. When can we start using it again? And they're like, well, you know, we're still trying to. We think we understand what's going on.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Engineers speak.

[Rod Pyle]

Quack.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, maybe. Maybe we'll have forward action, you know, or whatever. Back to you in an hour. And she goes, all right, got it. What if we. Just one person. What would that be?

[Rod Pyle]

There's a little hint there. And this is why the Apollo astronauts all consumed low residue diets before departing Earth.

[Tarek Malik]

Because the second part. And I think we're gonna talk about this later, too, but there is a moment where one of the astronauts, Victor Glover, finishes working out.

[Rod Pyle]

Wow.

[Tarek Malik]

Right? So he's the pilot. He's a very athletic guy, as we all learned and he was working out. They have this special device to test. It's like a rowing machine that they can set it to use it as a rowing machine for, like, aerobic exercise, or they can make it for, like, weight exercise and do different types of things to try to keep their bone mass. And they exercise for half an hour a day, each of them. They build up a sweat like we just talked about. It's like, you know, imagine that you're using the treadmill in your minivan, you know, and then you got to clean up after that. So they use wet wipes as they do, and. And Victor Glover is there kind of getting ready to get cleaned up, and he just takes his shirt off in front of, you know, millions of people.

[Rod Pyle]

And may we add, it was like the rock. You know, this was a. An Adonis moment. He takes off his shirt, and you see as he's doing so, these rippling muscles, these cracking big biceps and all that. Well, I know, but not all Navy flyers look like that. He was like. It looked like something out of a Marvel movie, you know, And I Thought, whoa. And then NASA cuts the feed.

[Tarek Malik]

There was. So there was. So the NASA says they cut the feed immediately and they go to mission control. And then there's this really long silence and. And then the Capcom calls up and says, hey, just to let you know, because we didn't know what you want that they saw. They had live video going when Victoria, you know, of Victor, they just say of Victor. And they didn't know. And then they called out and they're like, no, it's fine. You know, they're like, they're fine to come over. So they come on board and then there's Victor like, like, like taking the rest of his shammy bat there for everyone. And when they go back to it, like the whole press room, especially the CNN desk, just went, woo.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, well, because he was at that point he was just in his skivvies. He was just wearing his shorts.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, he's just wearing shorts by then. Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

And so now you're seeing the leg muscles and stuff. I mean, you know, it's intimidating enough to me for, to see somebody normal who like works out every now and then like you. But seeing this guy.

[Tarek Malik]

Oh, he said, I'm normal.

[Rod Pyle]

Everybody just, just give up hope. You know, you look at Victor Glover, it's like, okay, I should just crawl in early grave and call it a day.

[Tarek Malik]

But like that, that, those kind of moments are really, that was great. You know, there, there's a few, we'll talk about a few others, I'm sure. But that's why I think those moments to acknowledge something is happening is really important because if like my daughter is going to see 60 seconds of the launch and that's the 60 seconds that they see now there is a perceived weight to it because they weren't watching like there, everyone was in the 60s and 70s on the TV channel. Like they didn't have the one chance to watch it. So you had to watch it. They had to get everything in like the, they have to get everything in there. 60 seconds now.

[Rod Pyle]

So I think ours. That's right, right. Didn't even have Betamax. Okay, so before the next break, I'm gonna do a little photo fanboy geeking out, if I may. Yeah, so photographs were a huge part of this mission. In fact, some might say the major part of the flyby. And there were questions about, okay, what cameras are they going to use? And I figured they'd probably use what they did in the past, albeit digital ones. In the past they were all film cameras. Now they're digital and There's a lot of talk by Sony and about Sony, but it turned out they took a bunch of Nikon D5s, which was released in 2016 and discontinued in 2021. Nikon Z9 at Reed Wiseman's request, which is their newer mirrorless camera. A bunch of iPhones which I thought was Great.

[Tarek Malik]

Apple, Apple, iPhone 17 Pro, Maxis is

[Rod Pyle]

what they are, just like what I have. I wonder if they were orange. And they also took GoPros which were out at the end of the solar arrays. Now normally when NASA procures things, you know, it's a huge expensive process and your $400 GoPro suddenly becomes a half million dollar GoPro. But in this case, I gather that was not the case. In the case of the Nikon specifically, they're very reliable. They're, you can, you know, break rocks with them in an emergency if you need to hammer in a nail or something. I mean, I've got a Nikon D3.3. They're just unbelievably robust. But also apparently part of it was they're easier to operate if you have gloves on, which they didn't in this case. And critically, they had been proven in radiation rich environments to not have the sensor. So get over and stop. Yeah, or, or the back display give out, which a number of the other cameras would probably the lesser Nikons too. So the D5 is just a tank of a camera. But I did think it was kind of cool that they were taking older hardware because it works and also, and

[Tarek Malik]

they probably had a lot of that stuff lying around from like shuttle.

[Rod Pyle]

And, and well I, I think they procured these. Yeah, but, but they did have them from the ISS. That's true.

[Tarek Malik]

The GoPro NASA didn't procure. The GoPros are on the service module at the end of the solar rays. And the European Space Agency. Okay, so Airbus and then got those cameras to put on there and they were the heroes of Artemis 1. And they did deliver on this mission as well when NASA got the high data rates to get the high def video.

[Rod Pyle]

Okay, but I'm not done, I'm not done.

[Tarek Malik]

Sorry, go ahead.

[Rod Pyle]

So the lenses, for those of you who care about such things were an 80 to 400 millimeter Nikor and a 12 to 24 Nikor, both zooms. Also an older fixed focal length prime 35 millimeter Nikkor D, which is again an older lens. I think part of why these old cameras work is the chips are larger and the larger the chip, the less likely it is to get Bit by a cosmic ray hit. So larger chips are better than smaller, newer ones. And the thing that really got me, though is they were using this experimental laser communication system between the spacecraft and three ground pace telescopes. One in White Sands, New Mexico, one at Table Mountain in California, and one in Australia. And there was one day, I think it was mission day four, where they said they had downloaded 50 gigabytes in this session, which, you know, in the old days, it's like, okay, we just squeaked through a radio message and 50 gigabytes. I mean, that's remarkable.

[Tarek Malik]

The day of the flyby, I think they got like 75 to 80 something. Yeah, they were saying, yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

So, all right, we need to take another break. So we will be right back. Don't go anywhere.

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[Rod Pyle]

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[Rod Pyle]

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[Tarek Malik]

All right, so. So let's. Let's skip ahead a couple days because we talked about all of the preps. We talked about the burn to go to the moon. That was flight day two. And they arrived at the moon on flight day six. So it took them four days to get to the moon. They did a lot of checkouts during that time. So they did some tests of the vehicle. They did some manual flying. They did a lot of photography, like what Rod was saying, some PAO events where they talked to reporters such as ourselves. And then Rod, on Monday, April. What was that? April 6, they arrive at the moon and it was pretty spectacular because it was like a seven hour engagement they had rehearsed for the entire time. And it started with what is quite possibly the most poignant moment I have ever seen in a human space flight ever. And. And it takes a bit of a backstory for people to know. So the commander of this mission, Reid Wiseman, is. Is a father of two daughters and his wife, Carol Taylor Wiseman, tragically, she passed away in 2020. She died from cancer.

[Rod Pyle]

And she was an astronaut, too, right, Carol?

[Tarek Malik]

I. I don't recall. I'm so sorry, Rod. I don't. I don't recall.

[Rod Pyle]

But putting you in the detention box.

[Tarek Malik]

I know, I know. I. I should know that. I should know that. And I don't know. So I'll look at it. So. Yeah, you can. While you're looking it up, I'll explain. So he's got two teenage daughters. She was an astronaut.

[Rod Pyle]

No, go ahead.

[Tarek Malik]

Okay. Yeah. So he has two teenage daughters, and he was raising them as a single father. That's when I talked to him back in September, and I asked about how he explains the risk and all. And it was a discussion that they had as a family, he had said at the time. But it was a challenge. Right, because you're training for this mission to go to the moon farther than any human has gone before, explaining to your daughters that you will be back. But it's a risk worth taking, especially after they've lost their mother.

[Rod Pyle]

Excuse me, she was a pediatric nurse. I had that wrong.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah. So. So. So in this moment, as they start their lunar flyby, they're getting ready for the seven hour period where they're going to be taking observations on the moon with their eyes, their cameras. They're going to be writing things down, narrating into devices. They pause for a minute and they say that on approach to the moon, they had spotted two unnamed craters. And then Jeremy Hansen, the Canadian astronaut, asked that they would like to name one of them Integrity after their ship, which makes a lot of sense, and it's a very nice kind of pomp and circumstance way. But then, like, he pauses and then he says that they would like to honor, like, someone who isn't with them anymore. And they asked to name the other crater Carol C A R R O L L, after Reid's wife. And I kid you not, there was not a dry eye in the press room. There wasn't a dry eye back home in the Space.com offices. And it would be hard to believe that there was a dry eye in mission control because it was such a moment like they all broke down in tears. You could see them crying. The crew, while they were talking to mission control. They have a big hug. And then Reed Wiseman later said that then they, they all kind of like dried their eyes, got themselves back together and then they got to work. But that's like the kind of moment that I think really we would not have seen before, you know, where we didn't have these live videos all the time in the, in the, in the cabin. And it really set the stone, the stage for how much weight was going on. Right. Because it's not, it's not like science, you know, eggheads going to get pictures of the moon, you know, beep, boop, beep to get science observations. These are four people who have lives and families, you know, have had their own challenges that aren't involved in exploration and set all of that aside so that they could go do this thing for everyone. And I thought that that was really an amazing moment, you know, to say the least. And then the flyby begins and we see these spectacular views.

[Rod Pyle]

Can I add something before that?

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

So. So just to, to put a point on what you said, you know, in the 1960s, astronauts didn't cry, especially not on camera. So it's a new age, a new new human side of them. And that was great. But one other wonderful thing happened. They had two wake up calls from Apollo astronauts.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

The first one was from Charlie Duke, Apollo 16 moonwalker, still with us. He got on with his South Carolina accent and he talked about it's great you're up there and all that. He pointed out that their lunar module was named Orion and that he was proud to pass that name on to

[Tarek Malik]

their ship because their lander was called Orion.

[Rod Pyle]

Right, yeah, their lunar module. I believe I said that, didn't they?

[Tarek Malik]

Oh, you know what? He said that. Yeah, I misheard you. I thought you were saying that the.

[Rod Pyle]

I said their ship. Yeah, you're right. Anyway, but the real moment for me was somebody had the foresight to record a message from Jim Lovell before he died last year for. And he came on and said, I'm Jim Level and welcome to my old neighborhood. And then he signed off with don't forget to enjoy the view. And I thought coming from a guy who flew by in the same trajectory on Apollo 13, looking down at the place that he would never walk on because of the failure of the command module, service module, anyway, was just. That was one of my kind of dewy eyed moments, I have to admit.

[Tarek Malik]

And I handed the torch from one of the first people ever to fly around the moon on Apollo 8. Right?

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

So, and so a bit of a twofer in that message. And the crew really, really, like, appreciated. I do think that Reid asked about the toilet quickly, before he, before he mentioned, before he mentioned that they, they really appreciated those words and that they were honored to kind of be in the same, in the same boat as level and this crew. But that sets the stage because Apollo 8 Bill Anders takes the Earthrise photo, and on this flyby, they took an Earth set photo, which was spectacular, one of the first big images. And even on the way out, they took photos of the Earth that I'd never seen before, like, kind of like a night picture of the Earth where you still see the lights from as far away as they were because of the reflection of the moonlight on it. And, and, and then on this fly around, they, they were about 4,100 miles, or maybe no, 4,4070 miles above the surface of the Moon. They, they went beyond the Apollo 13 record. So they, they set a new record for the farthest you've ever flown from the Earth for at least seven hours. And, and they observed not just the, the craters and the moon, the Terminator, which Victor Glover talked so much about, about how cool that was. He talked about there being mountains on the, on the, the, the night side of the Moon that were so high their tips were poking up and being illuminated by the sun, which just sounds crazy. And, and then they get around to the dark, the dark side, they get around to the night side of, of of the Moon and they start looking for lunar impact flashes, right? And they saw them, and they saw at least four. They might have seen six. And the scientist, Kelsey Young, like I was watching the feed from Mission Control, she stands up when they say that they've seen this. They said they've seen at least four.

[Rod Pyle]

She's a science lead.

[Tarek Malik]

She's a science lead. She stands up and she goes, right, because they, they, they had only hoped that they could see them. And they actually had lro, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, looking at the Moon at the same time. And they're hoping that LRO might have been able to find them and see the flashes as well, to corroborate that.

[Rod Pyle]

And this is a reminder for the future when we're talking about lunar bases, why you want to bury these habitats in sufficient regolith or dirt that they're protected from these small impacts, because, you know, these are very small events, but they're High energy, and you don't want it hitting the hull of your habitat. So this is a reminder that it happens all day, every day, especially on the far side.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah. Christina Cook said that when she was observing the moon that she saw different shades of brown, like in the. In the. In the. In the terrain. I think Victor said that he could see some greens, which will be crazy to see if they could. If their images shows that too. But, like, it's their. It's their. Their eye observations that the scientists were really looking forward to for this. Oh, I see you cringing, Rod. I see you cringing.

[Rod Pyle]

So I. When I was doing KFI this morning, which is our big regional talk radio blowtorch here, the host was like, okay, clarify for me what makes this one so special. After we, you know, orbited Apollo 8 and landed, blah, blah, blah. So I was trying to explain to him, but he said, but what's with all this seeing things? The human I have never seen before. And I said, look, I can only give you my personal opinion, which is, you know, this is an engineering mission, right? Yeah. We're testing life support, we're testing navigation, we're testing ground control systems, and the people testing the heat shield, which we'll talk about before we go. But it's primarily engineering mission. And I did feel that NASA was pulling the taffy a little thin when they were talking about, okay, let's drill down and make this specific enough that we can't get pop for it. We will see things that have never before been seen by the human eye, even though we've mapped the moon pretty much every square centimeter, because we've had polar orbiters there, I believe, and so know we've seen that photographically. They talked about how the eye can pick up subtle variations and all that, and that's probably true. Is it critical to mission success, moving ahead? I don't think so, but they were there, so you might as well do it anyway. But it's really pound on that. Yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

And astronauts need to be able to see their. Their destination to do it. You know, they don't want to look through a screen, you know, that kind of thing. That's why the original astronauts fought for a window. By the way, Mercury seven astronauts named yesterday in 1957. So nice little two for there. I think we're coming up on the Apollo 13 anniversary, too, this weekend.

[Rod Pyle]

So it's on space Dot com. We have a break to go to.

[Tarek Malik]

Oh, yeah, let's go to the break, and then we'll talk about my Friend

[Rod Pyle]

who never watches the clock. Okay, I write back.

[Tarek Malik]

I do not K pop.

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[Tarek Malik]

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[Tarek Malik]

Okay, so we talked about the flyby, but I thought it was spectacular. It was otherworldly. We only had kind of low res views from the ship until the loss of signal, but we got the high res really soon after and it was absolutely spectacular. They did lose Contact, Rod for 40 minutes. Out of contact, expected to be. Yeah, no one was worried, at least who I spoke to. You know, I talked to the flight directors. They said that they did. They didn't think it was going to be a big issue. Of course they didn't have to do an engine burn.

[Rod Pyle]

Right.

[Tarek Malik]

There wasn't like any big critical maneuvers to do at the moon and the crew just kept on, kept on going. Reid Wiseman later said that they had like a moment where they all acknowledged that they were on their own for a little bit. And then after they had that moment of silence, they just acknowledged it and then went about their. Their day observing the rest of the moon.

[Rod Pyle]

I think they probably enjoyed the mission, the downtime from crosstalk, frankly.

[Tarek Malik]

Exactly, exactly. There was a lot of that, you know, you were talking about the human eye and how NASA was making a big old to do and. And we heard a lot of them making a big to do of the Descriptions that the astronauts were making, which I thought was interesting because you heard the science lead was talking directly to them saying these are great observations, only you can be seeing this, you know, like that kind of stuff. And I think that they were really excited too. But it did seem to like get in the way of things, you know, just, just let the astronauts talk, you know, and then we can talk about that later on. After the flyby, about an hour later they get, they had another big thing and that was when they passed the sun passed behind the moon. From their view, they got this big total solar eclipse. And I don't know what I was thinking. I was like, oh, you know, it's because the sun's so much smaller than the moon at that distance. You know, we on Earth get a total solar eclipse because through some kind of cosmic coincidence the moon appears to be the same size as the disk of the sun in the sky for now, for us, which is why we get those spectacular views that we've seen. But these astronauts, like the moon is so much larger to them than the sun. It goes behind it and I just thought okay, it'll go behind, then it's gone. And then they wait and then it comes back around on the other side like eclipsing a star. And what we saw from both the high res photos and even like the low res stuff that they got later is that the sun passes behind the moon and it just lights the entire back of the moon up so there's this glowing halo all around it. And it was otherworldly. I think Victor Glover described it as unreal that they were going into sight like full sci fi now after the, the moon flyby because it, there was reflections off of that, that sunlight from around the edge of the, of the moon off their ship off like the, they were seeing Earth shine on the, on the, on the, the night side of the, of the moon, which isn't something you drink.

[Rod Pyle]

That's what you see reflecting off the Earth from the moon.

[Tarek Malik]

Exactly.

[Rod Pyle]

Dark.

[Tarek Malik]

And they observed the corona of, of the sun as well. Describing like, like what, whatever they could see in the form plasma and whatnot. There were I think some solar eruptions during that time. So they may have seen some of that. It's unclear as, especially as the sun peeked out around from the lunar limb over time. But it was just phenomenal to see. And I think my favorite photo that they took was from the GoPro cameras on the solar arrays of the ship and the moon with like the eclipsed sun behind them. It was just absolutely Gorgeous to see. And that's something that they're not going to see all the time. You know, we've seen eclipses from. From the Moon before on past Apollo missions, but not like this and probably not like it again, depending on how the. The future flights are going to be.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, and there was a science moment here because they wanted to see if there was. Because the rear illumination with the sun coming back out behind the Moon, they wanted to see how much dust they might be able to pick up looking on the lunar rim, the limb, I should say. Yeah, because it's a very static, rich environment and it's got a very, very thin, what they call an exosphere, which is, you know, hardly worth mentioning. But there is a slight atmosphere there. And as we know from the Apollo missions, you know, dust was a real issue. You walk around, shuffle your feet a bit, and the next thing you know, all the dust in the world is coming up and sticking to your suit. So they want to see how much of that was ambient to the atmosphere. And again, this is something they can do with lunar orbiters, but they did ask them to make those observations. I don't think we've seen the.

[Tarek Malik]

I want to. I want to interrupt you really quick. Sorry, Rod. If people, though. Show Rod again. Show Rod again. John. If. If people. If people can see behind Rod, the feed from NASA. The astronauts are using their iPhones right now to take pictures of the Earth. So they're the victor. And Reid are pointing their iPhones out the windows above their stations so that they can take pictures of the Earth as it's getting bigger in their windows right now.

[Rod Pyle]

How cool is that?

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

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[Rod Pyle]

Bigger.

[Tarek Malik]

Yep.

[Rod Pyle]

All right, so we're getting close to the hour, but we got some more stuff to cover.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

So we're sitting in the press center, and it's time for the presidential phone call. Yes, the time of Richard Nixon and Apollo 11.

[Tarek Malik]

This is the same night as the flyby, Everybody.

[Rod Pyle]

So Apollo 11 astronauts are on the moon doing a moonwalk. Each second they're up there is costing tens of millions of dollars. When Richard Nixon gets on the phone. Richard Nixon, the president who did not start the Apollo program, did not develop the Apollo program. That was Kennedy and Johnson, but who inherited it a year before. And now he's on the phone going, ill pose. It's a proud moment for everybody. And even as a kid, I remember thinking, this is revolting. But whatever. We didn't know Nixon was a crook at that point, but it set a precedent. So Trump came on Jared Isaacman Came up for the press conference. He's standing at the podium. He says, you know, we have somebody special who wants to talk to you. And so Trump comes on and he, as he often will, he delivered some scripted comments and then ad libbed a bit, which is fine. I mean, this is the kind of thing you want to hear. Although he did talk an awful lot about our friends in Canada. Astronauts kept straight our neighbors.

[Tarek Malik]

Our neighbors.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, I believe he said our good friends and the wonderful people of Canada when he was talking to Jeremy Hansen, didn't he?

[Tarek Malik]

No, he said good neighbors are good neighbors.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, well, he did. He talked about Canada for a bit, and that was, you know, we're kind of biting our fingernails a bit to see what would be said. All went fine. Hanson was very gracious. All the astronauts are gracious. But then Trump continued talking, and the astronauts got these kind of funny looks on their faces a little bit. Kind of half like they're sick to their stomach and half like, what's going on? And then Trump stopped talking. There's this long silence. And all of us in the press center realized they weren't hearing us.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

Which may very well have been an artifact. Their vox system, which is their push to talk or automatically switch to talk, because communications are one way out and back and out and back. And if that system gets stuck and you're in and switch to talk mode, then you're not going to hear what's coming up. Mission control. So they missed a big chunk of it and then gradually came back on and they said some very generic remarks because I think they realized they'd missed part of it. But the funny part was while this is happening, and Jared's, you know, keeping kind of a mild smile on his face, but I think he knows something isn't quite right. But what do you do? You're the NASA administrator. You have to keep an absolute neutral pitch. But the press starts laughing. And Tarek will tell us what wasn't realized at that moment until later.

[Tarek Malik]

What? What? That they couldn't hear them.

[Rod Pyle]

The hot mic.

[Tarek Malik]

Oh, yeah, yeah. It's just. It's an awkward silence. Right. And where everyone's like, waiting to see what they're going to see. I think, I think what happened is that, you know, when they do these calls on the space station, there's a screen on the space station and the crew can see what's happening and they can, like, mirror or intuit, like when, you know, the gap between that. But the crew didn't have that on this flight. So they think that the President is with Jared either, you know, wherever they are together, but Jared is. Jared Isaacman is in Mission Control. Trump is in the White House. So they're in different places, and there's no screen.

[Rod Pyle]

Actually, Jared was in the auditorium with us.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, yeah, sorry, yeah. I mean, Johnson Space center, he was. He was in Teague with us. And so I think that the crew didn't know who was gonna talk and was waiting for someone to talk. And then, of course, the President and Jared are waiting for the crew to talk, and there's that disconnect for a while. And then you hear Reid ask for a com check just to make sure that they're still. They're still there. But while that's happening, no one else knows what's going on. They just see a bunch of people staring at each other across a quarter million miles. Right. And so there's a bit of a chuckle. We found out later that that chuckle was heard.

[Rod Pyle]

Excuse me. There was a chuckle rippling through the press corps.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, yeah. That. We found out later that laughter did get through the audible mics, which I think was going through Jared's mic at the podium. And I saw the next day that the awkward silence is what went viral, and not the fact that the President hailed these. These heroes for their grit and their courage, which is the story that I wrote about. And what I think that was really missed in that moment, and I think that Trump himself missed it because he talked about how the Space Force was his baby. But this moment. This moment happened because in Trump's first term, he was tired of the. Impatient of the delays, and had Mike Pence go up in a Space Council hearing and tell them that these companies were gonna get their bleep together and get to the moon by any means necessary. And if that meant that NASA was gonna choose different people, they were gonna choose different people, and everybody better get work. Get to work. So. And they named it the Artemis Program. At that point in time, this moment was his baby, not the Space Force. Right. And I really felt that Trump could really have led into that because there was enthusiasm from him about asking them what they saw, what their favorite thing was and all of that. When they said, are you still there after this moment of, like, this awkward bit? He was like, yeah, I'm here. Because he had more. He wanted to hear more from what they had to say. And I really felt that they could have leaned into the fact that this Artemis Program started in his term, like, he called it that, and that now here they are going to the moon. And he did miss that part a bit, I think. But. But it's sad that everyone's focusing on that awkward silence because I think there's more to it than that.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, I guess the more to it for me is, you know, you're congratulating this mission. It's exciting. You want to see a moon landing before end of your term. This is not a political statement. But no, stop. Stop trying to cut the budget.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, there's that. That all happened.

[Rod Pyle]

You know, I know that you're.

[Tarek Malik]

We didn't talk about that. We talked about a little bit last week.

[Rod Pyle]

But yeah, I know that you're cutting money from everything but Artemis, but. But it's not helpful, you know, and the slashing cuts that went through because of Doge were not helpful to this cause. And I think we saw some of that weird Johnson. You know, they're up. There's all this talk about fraud and waste. Walk around the Johnson Space center where stuff hasn't been painted for 30 years and the furniture's broken and they're barely hanging on. The extension cords are practically ready to short because they're worn out. These people are getting by with next to nothing to fulfill their mission. And I, I don't know about you, I did not see. I wouldn't see fraud, but I didn't. Certainly not did. Didn't see any waste.

[Tarek Malik]

No, no. I mean, I love the mural and I'm glad that it's still there. And so that's like my favorite part of that whole place. But. All right, I miss, I miss having the press room and having a place that was dedicated. But at least we had, you know, power and, and, and Internet and such as it was. And, and like the live feeds were there too. So we'll have to see how we go for Artemis 3 and beyond.

[Rod Pyle]

So let's wrap up with the re entry sequence. We're coming up in re entry again.

[Tarek Malik]

That's right.

[Rod Pyle]

This is not an abort once around thing. This is. You get to Earth and you gotta come down and you have about 2. 1 to 5. 1 point. Excuse me, 1.5 to 2 degree variation. Which is as I mentioned, about the thickness of a piece of tissue paper wrapped around Earth globe. So it's pretty darn narrow. What did you just write me?

[Tarek Malik]

I says I have a fire truck. That's why I muted myself. But now like defeats the whole point. Now the world. So I'll go ahead and now you can all hear the fire truck outside.

[Rod Pyle]

I thought you were referring to the Fire truck I used to own.

[Tarek Malik]

No.

[Rod Pyle]

Like what's that have to do with it? Okay, yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

By the way, everybody, Rod used to own a fire truck that he bought. Son, I did.

[Rod Pyle]

So when my kid went to school,

[Tarek Malik]

you were the perfect things that I could have cut out. But now we have to leave this

[Rod Pyle]

in because when my kid went to school school and told his friends I got a fire truck, they said, I got a fire truck too. It's this big. He said, no, we got a real one. Do not. So would I deliver him to school in this 30 foot pumper at elevator.

[Tarek Malik]

Cut it out, John. And just put it as like an extra. Nope, it's in the sh. I learned that on this mission. I wouldn't have learned that about Rod if we didn't go cover Artemis 2 together there. I've brought it back. I've brought it back.

[Rod Pyle]

Drink for the two of us who rarely ever drink was had by all

[Tarek Malik]

stays in the episode.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, well, and a sloppy drunk he is. But anyway, whatever.

[Tarek Malik]

He doesn't know you had two beers.

[Rod Pyle]

I know. So, so, so we're coming back. There's no going around when you're here. You got to re enter. If you, as you remember from Apollo 13, if you're a little too high, you bounce off and often space you go. You might be able to come back around over time, but your oxygen may not last that long. If you come in too steep, you burn up. End of story. So we're counting on them to get it right. They've done it many times before, so confidence is high. However, there has been concerns much amplified by the press, like suddenly yesterday and today, who've been sleeping on this story for months, that they're concerned about the heat shield. So the heat shield is made. We've discussed this on the show before from Avcote, which is the same thing they use the Apollo heat shields, but it's a different structure. Apollo was very labor intensive, hand filling these honeycomb shaped holes and then sanding them down and so forth with this epoxy silica stuff. And Artemis chose to use blocks, which is, you know, that's okay. That's the kind of heat shield design they used on the shuttle, all the different material. However, the formulation of AVcode has changed. So I mentioned that I talked to the chief engineer on that on the heat shield project back in 2014 after EFT1 and those problems, the heat shield. There have since been a couple of articles that reinforce this. Because of EPA regulations, they had to change the chemical formulation of Avco Specifically with regard to solvents which are icky and you don't want them going in the atmosphere. So even though they could build these heat shields in a vacuum chamber, and even though everything was sealed and would not have been a problem, these are blanket EPA regulations. So just to be blunt here, and I love the epa, I love what they do, but this was the wrong application of those rules. Risking the lives of astronauts by modifying the formulation of this thing. It's slower to cure. It doesn't cure as hard. This is not good. So that in mind, they designed it to be thick enough and robust enough to survive the heat of reentry, which is about 5,000 degrees at its peak. But during the two uncrewed Artemis missions, EFT1 and Artemis 1, they did see significant erosion and some chipping with big chunks of it coming out the charring.

[Tarek Malik]

They saw more char, like come off. Right.

[Rod Pyle]

So you want the heat shield to charge the ablative heat shield, you want it to burn. That burning and removal of the epoxy resin is what removes the heat. So that's all good. When big chunks come out, that's not good because beneath that is titanium. And then the, the hole of the spacecraft. So this. So they, they spent two years looking at this. They sent the heat shield samples off to Ames Research center where they got a big plasma torch experiment and they got some stuff at Marshall and other other places. So they looked at this. And as far as they can figure, because of the skip RE entry that they used on both those missions, I think Certainly in Artemis 1, the heating was less, but over a longer period of time.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

So as these blocks heat up, they would start to generate gas which would build up. And because they're not as permeable as the previous abcoat formulation, they'd pop. There was nowhere to go. And so they start popping off chunks of the heat shield. So counterintuitively, what they decided to do was use a steeper RE entry profile with a modified lift maneuver, which isn't as precise for landing, but still works, works. So it'll actually get hotter but for a shorter period of time.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

And they said this is kind of hard to get your head wrapped around it, but having it get hotter is actually good because that releases the permeability of the upper layer and allows those gases to escape. And there's less of those gases because it doesn't go as long. So that's a very long winded explanation of what I understand about the heat shield issues. So there is some concern here, but we Think it'll work?

[Tarek Malik]

It is the most dangerous part of the mission, and it's at the very last stage. It's 13 minutes from entry interface to splashdown. They're going at upwards of 24,000 miles an hour. Right. They're screaming back to Earth. There is no, there is no like, brakes or whatnot, aside from this heat shield. And they're gonna go from like about 24,000 miles an hour to 20 miles an hour at splashdown. In that 13 minutes, there is a final maneuver which is after they separate from the service module. They're going to do like a raise maneuver to face the heat shield in the right orientation to come down, and then that's it, all the way down. We saw live video of the, the plasma environment from orion, from Artemis 1. They'll have six minutes of comms blackout after entry interface, and then it's just all the way down from there. They're going to travel something like 2000 miles in that 13 minutes from entry interface to splashdown, and then they're going to be about 60, 70 miles, maybe 100 or so off the coast of San Diego. Your boat's old stomping grounds. Rot.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

Where 11 parachutes have to do their jobs. Like the, the, the, the drogue's got to pop off the COVID of the parachute that, holding them in has to pop off, pull those drogues out. The drogues pull out the pilots, the pilots pull out the mains. The mains come down and then they, they splash down. There's, you know, if Artemis 1 is any judge, the ship, the USS John Murtha will be there with the recovery teams within the hour to have them off the ship. So. Which is an amazing improvement from the Apollo days for sure.

[Rod Pyle]

Right. In which case they sometimes had to wait for hours.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, yeah. So, so, I mean, everything is going fine for now, but that heat shield has to work and, and NASA is confident in it. Jared Isaacman is confident in it. The astronauts are confident in it. But this is the first time that they're carrying a crew. They will be making improvements to the heat shield. I think. Artemis 3, I think it's for Artemis 3 and beyond. Ahmed Kasharia. I apologize if I pronounce that wrong.

[Rod Pyle]

For a guy whose first name is pronounced wrong on a consistent basis, you should have a little more sensitivity.

[Tarek Malik]

I apologize. I apologize. I got to practice saying it in the mirror so I can get it right next to the, the associate administrator of NASA, you know, so that they're very, they've Tested it as much as possible. So they're going to. They're going to stand behind all of that tests for this. And then, and then hopefully, you know, the crew will not only will have a nominal entry, that they will have, you know, a successful splashdown that will cap a phenomenally successful test flight of the Orion vehicle of the Space Launch system. The first time with astronauts so many records set on this mission. We talked about being the farthest from. From the Earth, the first female astronaut to the moon, the first black astronaut to the moon, the first Canadian non American to the moon. All sorts of records set on this flight. And this is just one more. They will not be breaking Apollo 10's record. Rod of the fastest reentry, though that is one thing that they will not be doing on this flight.

[Rod Pyle]

No, we'll give them time. And I just want to thank, from the bottom of my heart, the Johnson Space center media team, who's very accommodating to us. I pulled a fast one on them. I wanted to deliver some copies of Ad Aster magazine to them. I asked the publisher to send 10, they sent 50. So I had to say, hey, sorry to deliver all these crates to you, but here, just hand them out. And they were very gracious about it, but they did accommodate us. We had some snacks, we had some coffee. We had some oat milk creamer. Ick. But, you know, it doesn't go bad when it's not cold.

[Tarek Malik]

So coffee is coffee, my friend. And just that's my. My favorite thing to do is you're gonna upset Adam. So. So I. I actually don.

[Rod Pyle]

Ashley.

[Tarek Malik]

They make. They make fun of me or they. Or they laugh at me at the press room because I'm the one that kept making coffee. And then when the coffee machine broke, I figured out how to fix it, but by unplugging it and plugging it back in.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, Tarik's the one that kept saying, where's the Folgers? Where's the Nescafe Instant?

[Tarek Malik]

I did not. I did not. And by the way, they had Maxwell House there. It was good.

[Rod Pyle]

Oh, that's great stuff, by the way. We. We did stop at a number of coffee shops for Easter breakfast. Tarik and I celebrated at Waffle House, which, if you've never gone to a Waffle House, it's a real experience, and I'll just leave it there.

[Tarek Malik]

I had a good time. Eight bucks.

[Rod Pyle]

It's a real Hee Haw. Serious. And then before that, went to a coffee shop and we had an Artemis donut special.

[Tarek Malik]

I did parlor donuts across the street

[Rod Pyle]

from there, which was like blueberry frosting and crystal sugar. And I just thought it was amazing. He liked it.

[Tarek Malik]

It was amazing. I wanted to bring one back home for the family, but they, they, they, they stopped making them before the flyby. They stopped making them. So.

[Rod Pyle]

But you could see that on video on space.com social so, so, hey, this has been a really fun hour. I wish we had a little more time, but I think we probably bored everybody to death by now. So I want to thank all our loyal listeners and viewers for joining us for episode 205, a very special one for us. We call all about Artemis Tark. Where should we look for you? Splashing down.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, you can find [e-mail] in it for the duration. Splashdown. By the way, we did not talk about the time. 8, 7pm Eastern tonight, 5:07pm Pacific time. So be tracking it. You'll find me watching that.

[Rod Pyle]

And you can see it on Space.com

[Tarek Malik]

you'll see it on Space.com you can see it on NASA. Plus you can see it on, you know, every, every place. But somebody watch it, please. This is an important mission and it's going to set the stage for humanity's return to the moon. And it has to go right. And it's going to be exciting to see these astronauts, see how they're doing. So I'll be, I'll be doing that. You find [e-mail] as always, on the socials, at Tarekj, Malik, at YouTube, at spaceronplays. Been on a hiatus the last couple weeks because we're doing, you know, other things about going to the moon, but looking forward to getting back into that. And then this weekend, like Jack Swigert, you will find me doing my taxes. Don't forget to do that, everybody. You got till the 15th.

[Rod Pyle]

So that's what extensions are for. And of course, you can find me at pilebooks.com [e-mail] and later this evening during Splashdown, at least I was told I'd be on Fox national with the show, whose name I can't remember at the moment, but we'll see. Maybe, maybe not. Remember, you can always drop us a line at twistswit tv. We welcome your comments, suggestions, ideas, and space jokes. Keep them coming. That's TwistWit TV. New episodes. This podcast publish every Friday on your favorite podcatcher. So make sure to subscribe, tell your friends, give us reviews, give us your love. Five stars with thumbs up will do nicely. You can also head to our website at Twit TV Twists. And you can follow the Twittech podcast network at Twit on Twitter and on Facebook and Twit TV on Instagram. Thank you, my friend. Thank you, John Ashley.

[Tarek Malik]

Thank you.

[Rod Pyle]

Thank you, Johnson Space center, and thank you, Artemis program for the gift that keeps giving. And we'll see you all next, next week. Bye. Bye.