University Place

Apollo 11, Life Sciences Research and Mars

– Welcome everyone to Wednesday Nite @ the Lab, I’m Tom Zinnen and we’re here at the UW-Madison Biotechnology Center. I also work for the Division of Extension here at UW-Madison and on behalf of those folks and our other co-organizers, Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Alumni Association and the UW-Madison Science Alliance, thanks again for coming to Wednesday Nite @ the Lab. We do this every Wednesday night 50 times a year. And speaking of 50, [audience chuckling] tonight we have a very very joyous event to celebrate hence my happy shirt. [audience laughing] From the summer of ’69, the 50th anniversary of the landing on the moon, by the folks on Apollo 11. Jaime Cordova is here. He’s from the Department of Genetics. He’s also a NASA Solar System Ambassador. He’s going to be talking with us about the next giant leak. Excuse me, the next giant leap from the Apollo program through life sciences research for the journey to Mars.

Jaime was born in Lynwood, California and he went to Warren High School in Downey, California. And he went to Cal State Long Beach where he studied molecular and cell biology, and is here as a PhD genetics student in the Perna lab. You’ll notice if you saw the picture that Jaime had that we promoted, it was in front of the Griffith Observatory and that place is famous for many things but at least two big movies. One was Rebel Without a Cause and the other more recent, La La Land. And I think that really makes Jaime special. [audience laughing] So please join me in welcoming Jaime Cordova to Wednesday Nite @ the Lab. [audience applauding]

– All right, can you guys hear me? All right, cool, awesome. All right, so hello everyone. Thank you all for being here, it’s really a privilege to be here to speak to you all. My Wednesday Nite @ the Lab is a little bit different as I hope you can all tell and some of you have already told me, I did not work on Apollo, I am much too young to have worked on Apollo. [audience laughing]

So I won’t be speaking about my own work which made it a little difficult when Tom asked me to share a personal connection. So I thought well what can I share? So I figured, or after a lot of thinking I realized that I had two connections, excuse me. My first connection was really in terms of my love for flight and my love for space flight. As far as I can remember, I’ve always been fascinated by flight, I have a scar right here from a metal toy plane that someone gave me when I was like four years old which is a great gift to give a four year old, right? Something I could easily cut myself with. My mom loves telling that story, said that I did that. Beyond that as time progressed, I remember, another recollection is second grade laying down in the room on my floor with a stack of books on all the planets including Pluto, with all the planets there. And I remember just being so fascinated. And as time progressed, my second grade teacher, he noticed that I had a real interest in science and particularly in the planets. And actually I forgot to mention, my love for flight continued on for a long time where I actually, I grew up underneath the LAX final approach path, and this is one of my favorite planes, the Lufthansa 747. I just wanted to mention that. [laughing]

So anyways, back to the original story, is my second grade teacher noticed I had a real love for science and for astronomy. So he gave me this book which I actually still have at home. I remember two distinct memories about this book. One was crying my eyes out when I was reading about black holes, because I was so scared I was going to die soon despite people telling me that the sun wasn’t going to die for another five billion years and even then now knowing that it won’t turn into a black hole. My second memory is reading about the space shuttle and reading about a cruise going up to space. And I remember thinking just how cool it was that every once in a while people would occasionally get to go into space. I started watching all the space shuttle launches. Unfortunately there was a time where there weren’t any because I started watching them shortly before the Columbia disaster. But my love for space continued and I eventually started asking my parents, I was like, “Hey, you know what? “I really want a book on space,” because around that time I still didn’t really know how to use the Internet. So, good old books, and I actually still have the book that they gave me, and this is, or that I got at the book fair that I asked ’em to buy me.

And what was cool about this book is it just had so much information on the planets, on crewed missions, things like that. My love for astronomy and that’s really where my love for astronomy and for spaceflight kind of took off, no pun intended. After high school, I started volunteering at the California Science Center with the space shuttle Endeavour and I was there for about five years before I actually moved here to Madison. Along with being there, I was working at a job, at a paint store and I got tired of selling paint. So what I ended up doing is I wanted to switch a job, and by chance when I was deciding that I really wanted to quit that job, for a variety of reasons, I ran into an application for the Griffith Observatory. And I started working there a little bit over three years ago. And that’s really kind of where it all took off and it’s really thanks to this book. And one of my favorite things about this book is well one, it was published in 2000 but in here it says that the James Webb Space Telescope is supposed to be launching by 2007. [audience laughing] Now the people who laughed understood why that’s funny. That’s because the James Webb Space Telescope hasn’t launched yet, yeah.

So it’s 12 years overdue and the reason why it’s overdue is really because launching things into space is hard, along with not only space telescopes and satellites but sending humans is hard, into space. But we love the challenge, we love the challenge of going into space. When President Kennedy almost 60 years ago challenged the nation, we decided to take on that.

– Say the moon. Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, “Why climb the highest mountain? “Why 35 years ago fly the Atlantic? “Why does Rice play Texas?” [audience laughing] We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon. [crowd applauding and cheering] We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

– Now with President Kennedy’s challenge to the nation and to NASA, it led to the development of Project Apollo. And this is where my second connection comes in. No, I’m not a Kennedy and again no, I didn’t work on Apollo, but with the project, with NASA getting this challenge and deciding to hopefully take humans to the moon, they decided to hire a large number of contractors.

One in particular or one special to me is North American Rockwell which, sorry, North American Aviation which eventually became North American Rockwell, which was, their plant was in Downey, my hometown. And actually here’s a picture from the museum there, that’s the Columbia Memorial Space Center which has a boiler plate from the Apollo era outside. The command and service module were actually built there, which is again that’s why it’s kind of special to me because I kind of grew up there for the past couple of years. And for a long time actually didn’t know this took place there until I really started getting deep into the weeds of the history of Downey. But this was just one of the centers. Excuse me, this was just one of the centers. As you saw on that map, there were so many contractors who were actually working on the Apollo program, and well over 400,000 people worked on it to get man to the moon. Now, as many of you may know, or I’m sure you probably know, is the project actually ended almost shortly before it even got started. And that’s because of its tragic beginnings. That’s with Apollo 1 with Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee.

The launch was planned for February 21st, 1967 but unfortunately the crew perished on January 27th, 1967. [static crackles] Oh, didn’t play how it was supposed to. Let me try that again. [static crackles]

– Man: Fire in the cockpit! Sorry about that. So there was a fire aboard the capsule and the launch crew was not able to get to them in time unfortunately. This tragic accident ended up sending NASA back to the drawing board. Now sending them back to the drawing board and also putting the manned program to a stop. Now, before the mission, the crew expressed several concerns and this is actually at the North American Aviation plant in Downey, the crew expressed several concerns about the capsule, including that it had a lot of combustible material on the inside. It was pressurized, was 100% oxygen here on Earth and the capsule door didn’t have any explosive bolts. They also weren’t able to actually open it from the inside, meaning that only people on the outside can open it.

But NASA decided to approve the launch anyway and because of that, the astronauts decided to take this relatively, this pretty cryptic picture where they were praying to, where they were praying with the Apollo capsule right next to it. And unfortunately disaster struck. As I mentioned, NASA put a stop to the manned missions but they continued with unmanned tests, dubbed Apollo 4, 5, and 6. First is Apollo 4, which was the first test of the Saturn, of the new Saturn V launch vehicle. Apollo 1 was used as Saturn 1B vehicle. And this was unmanned I should say again. Then came Apollo 5, which was the first test of the lunar module. This was again using a Saturn 1B. And then finally the final test was Apollo 6 which used the Saturn 5 again. Now with this particular mission, it carried a payload that was approximately 80% of the payload of a full Apollo mission.

At some point during the launch, something went wrong; it still made it into space, but it didn’t go into its planned orbit. Because of that, some people didn’t totally feel comfortable with the Saturn 5 still. But NASA decided that because Apollo 4 had to work so successfully, they decided to, they were confident to use it in crewed missions. And during this time, the Apollo capsule had been improved and the concerns of Apollo 1 had been addressed including as you can see right here, or one of the many things was the door being able to be opened from the inside. And the reason behind this actually, the reason behind this is NASA really didn’t want their astronauts’ lives to go in vain. And I been just researching all this which I learned a lot about the Apollo missions more than I ever thought I would. I ran into this quote from Gus Grissom that “The conquest of space is worth the risk of life. ” And NASA again was determined to not let their lives go in vain. So 20 months later, came Apollo 7 which carried Donn Eisele, Wally Schirra and Walter Cunningham. This was the first successful launch of a crewed launch into space for the Apollo program.

And this uses Saturn 1B. This was meant to place the new capsule under tests and fortunately, it worked out. In addition to being the first capsule test, excuse me, it was also the first TV broadcast of Americans from space. And despite the astronauts really not wanting to do it, they dubbed it The Walt, Wally, and Donn Show. [audience laughing]

– Man: It says from that lovely Apollo something? You guys should write-

– Man: Apollo Room. High atop everything. High atop everything. – Man: Looks good, I can see Wally handle it now, Donn has a smile on his face, and there’s Walt. Okay, what’s the next one? A little closer Wally. [beeping] Keep those cards coming.

– Man: Lots of letters coming in.

– [laughing] So yeah, so they really didn’t want to do it and as you can see, it didn’t all work out. Some of them you were able to read but not all of it. A couple of months later came Apollo 8, which ended up going beyond Earth. This carried Frank Borman II, William Anders, and former UW Badger James Lovell Jr. For those of you who may not be familiar, James Lovell came here to the University of Wisconsin before traveling or before transferring to the Naval Academy. Now this mission was considered the Christmas mission because it launched on December 21st. And as you can tell by the mission patch, it was the first crewed spacecraft to actually go beyond Earth orbit and to the moon. And this actually also was the first launch of the Saturn 5 rocket. It was originally planned to be uncrewed, but because of the success of the prior missions and growing concern that the Soviet Union would potentially put a man into orbit first, they decided to turn this into a crewed mission after all.

And with this resulting or what the goal of this particular mission was, was again not only to test the Saturn 5 and to go into that orbit, but also to take high-resolution pictures of potential landing sites. And this mission was considered a success that allowed the astronauts to go into lunar orbit, making them the first to escape Earth’s gravity and along with also being the first to use Saturn 5 rocket or crewed Saturn 5. And another, one of the many results of this image is something that you all may be very familiar with which is the iconic Earthrise image. It’s a very beautiful picture. Then next came Apollo 9 and by the way I’m just going to do a quick little review of all the Apollo missions, so to go through the whole history. Then next came Apollo 9 which, the goal of this was to put the lunar module to the test. This carried James McDivitt, David Scott, and Rusty Schweickart. The mission launched on March 3rd and unlike Apollo 8, this actually was an Earth orbiting mission. So they didn’t go around, they didn’t go around the moon. This was the first crewed mission of the lunar module, and actually the lunar module was originally supposed to go on Apollo 8, but when it was delivered there were several defects and NASA basically decided finally that we shouldn’t launch something that may be a little defective.

Sorry, that sounded a lot shadier than it should have. The crew tested various docking and undocking maneuvers, and along with performing extravehicular activity, so yeah. Then finally came Apollo 10, which was one last practice as I like to call it. This carried Gene Cernan, Thomas Stafford, and John Young. The mission launched just two months after Apollo 9 on May 18th, and this was NASA’s final dress rehearsal before the lunar landing. They were really starting to pick up speed and again it was exceptionally critical for this mission to be successful, because it was the last time that they got to practice essentially. Fortunately, it was a success and they did everything but actually landing on the moon. Two months later, 50 years ago yesterday, came the day that the nation and the world was awaiting on.

– Man: 15 seconds, guidance is internal. 12, 11, 10, 9, ignition sequence start.

6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0. All engines running. We have a liftoff, liftoff on Apollo 11.

– Apollo 11 launched at 8:32 a. m. Eastern Standard Time and as you’ll see throughout the presentation and maybe along these walls you guys may have noticed the Wisconsin State Journal, I spent a couple of hours at the archives making sure that I got some of these pictures to show to you all. Yeah, it launched July 16th, 1969 at 8:32 a. m. Eastern Time. And for those of you who may not know, I’d strongly recommend, CBS is actually replaying all of Walter Cronkite’s coverage which you’ll hear me mention a little bit throughout the presentation.

So Apollo 11’s destination was the moon, and arguably carrying the most famous astronauts which I probably don’t even have to tell you. Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin. As I mentioned, the mission launched on July 16th and it lasted through July 24th with the goal of being the first human moon landing and having Armstrong step on the moon. They traveled for a little bit over three days before actually reaching the moon’s orbit on July 19th, with the goal of landing in the Sea of Tranquility. And if you’re not familiar, this is the side that faces, the side of the moon that faces us. Armstrong and Aldrin went into the lunar module on July 20th at approximately 1:11 Eastern Time or 1:11 p. m. Eastern Time. And I tried very hard to find, I went into like five archives to try and find more pictures of them before they actually touched down and I could not find anything. So sorry, but yeah, they went into the lunar module on July 20th.

And then Michael Collins actually stayed on the command module. He’s often called the loneliest, or referred to as a loneliest person in the universe, but he said multiple times including in a very recent interview which I believe was yesterday, was just published yesterday, that he actually wasn’t lonely at all. He actually enjoyed the peace and quiet of being up there by himself. I’m sure throughout the stress of the mission, [laughing] he says that he would drink coffee while he was up there and would occasionally get to listen to music during his free time. And he would especially get some peace and quiet during the occasional 40 minutes that he lost control, that he lost contact with Mission Control which I’m sure was nice. [audience laughing] The astronauts, Aldrin and Armstrong started their descent onto the moon. It was actually not a very, not a smooth descent and this is something I just recently learned. There were a series of anomalies that happened during the landing, including alarms going off and they started running out of fuel. So they had to take over a manual landing and it actually ended up being that they were off target by a couple of miles. But eventually at 3:17 p.

m. Eastern Time on July 20th, 1969, 50 years ago this Saturday, they made history.

– Buzz: Contact light, okay, engine stop.

– Mission Control: We copy you down Eagle.

– Neil: Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.

– As I already mentioned, CBS replaying Walter Cronkite’s coverage. And I was watching it yesterday and I think he described it best. Man’s dream and I quote, “Man’s dream and a nation’s pledge has now been fulfilled, the lunar age had begun. ” This nation, and there was a moment that changed the nation and the world.

From what I understand, about 650 million people around the world paused what they were doing to watch the historic moment. And watching a couple of interviews, Armstrong and Aldrin mentioned that they didn’t actually have a lot of emotion. They just kind of smiled at each other, a little smile of satisfaction and then they shook hands. After having landed on the moon for about, or after being on the moon for about six hours, that’s actually when Armstrong uttered his most famous phrase.

– Neil: Ladder, the LM footpads are only depressed in the surface about one or two inches. Although the surface appears to be very, very fine grained as you get close to it. It’s almost like a powder. Down there it’s very fine. I’m going to step off the LM now. That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

– Now someone has already mentioned to me before the presentation started. Did he say one small step for a man or one small step for man? From what I understand and from what, me listening to it, I heard one small step for man. But he says that he had intended to say one small step for a man, it’s up for debate. I’m just going to go with what he said on the video. [laughing] But yeah, they were on the moon for about, for a little bit over 21 hours. So 21 hours and 36 minutes. Their EVA, or extravehicular activity was about two and a half hours however, so that’s probably the amount of time it took you to get here, watch this, go home, and times two. In Los Angeles, that’s how long it would take me just to get to work, [audience laughing] so yeah. [laughing] While they were there, Armstrong set up, Armstrong and Aldrin set up the early Apollo scientific package near the lunar module and this was a scientific package that would be replicated throughout the other Apollo missions with the goal of basically gathering the same measurements, gathering the same measurements throughout all the different landing sites. Now one of the experiments on the left is the passive seismic experiment which is used to detect moon quakes to hopefully provide information on the interior structure of the moon.

This is the first time that a seismometer had ever been placed on another world. And I’ll just throw a quick plug, a seismometer was placed last year on a second world. The Insight mission to Mars placed a seismometer there. You can actually go online and listen to some of the recordings and listen to the sound of Mars. Additionally, on the right was a laser ranging retroreflector. This was used to measure the distance between the moon and Earth and really, not only determine the distance between the moon and Earth but also determine at what rate the moon is moving away from us. So every year the moon moves about one and a half inches away from us, meaning then in maybe 500 million years is the estimate I saw, we won’t have total solar eclipses. So they’ll all be annular eclipses. So enjoy them while you can. [laughs] [audience laughing] The next one here in the United States is April 2024.

So you only have to drive a little bit south to see it. And this from what I understand, this retroreflector is still being used if I remember correctly. In addition to that, they also set up the solar wind experiment, which is used to collect solar wind particles. So it was essentially, figure a sheet of aluminum foil to collect solar wind particles. And so they could return to Earth for analysis and this is impossible here on Earth thanks to our lovely magnetic fields that help protect us from the solar wind and also give us beautiful auroras which we can apparently occasionally see here in Madison. And another quick mention. So the solar wind is just basically high-energy particles that travel throughout the solar system. And that solar wind is actually why Mars doesn’t have an atmosphere. It doesn’t have a magnetic field to protect it from the solar wind, so its atmosphere was stripped billions of years ago. And finally, another main goal of the mission was to collect lunar samples to understand the moon’s history.

On Apollo 11, Armstrong and Aldrin collected about 50 pounds worth of rocks and soil samples. And some of these apparently are still unopened and they’re all housed at the Johnson Kennedy, at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. And you can actually watch a video online. It’s like a bank vault essentially to actually get in there. Now this was important not only for NASA, but it was actually also had a local connection. There were two professors here at the university, Eugene, I was supposed to be able to read that. Eugene Cameron and Larry Haskin who were chosen to actually analyze these soil samples and the rock samples. I didn’t run into any of their data, but a couple of Wisconsin connections. They left various mementos such as pictures of families, messages from nations’ leaders, and this plaque, and of course the famous flag. And a fun fact is that I believe this flag was bought at Sears.

[audience laughing] It was either bought at Sears and that’s what I read, it was either bought at Sears or it was made by someone from Milwaukee. So there’s two kind of conflicting stories. Essentially, NASA didn’t want a repeat of Tang, and if you guys are familiar with that story, so yeah. The crew remained on the moon for about 21 hours and 36 minutes before actually launching off the moon. And they took off from the moon at 12:54 p. m. on July 21st and docked with the command module approximately three hours later. They returned to Earth heroes to all mankind. And a couple of more Wisconsin connections is you can see here that they returned as I mentioned on July 24th. Well, something interesting is when they landed in the Pacific Ocean, is the crew that picked them up was the USS Hornet.

Well, there was a crew on board which was being supported or sorry, the USS Hornet was being supported by a squadron of helicopters known as the Black Knights. Well, the commander of the squadron and the pilot of the helicopter that day happened to be UW-Madison alumni and Madison native, Commander Donald Jones. And unfortunately Commander Jones passed away a couple of years ago, but he was the one to help recover them. Another Wisconsin connection is Navy Lieutenant Clancy Hatleberg. He is from Chippewa Falls and he’s actually, in this picture he’s the guy who’s closing the dock and he’s the one who provided the astronauts with their biohazard suits and also essentially bleached them down because of the risk of contaminants from the moon. Now we’re all familiar with President, we all may be familiar with President Nixon’s, with this picture of President Nixon talking to the astronauts after they returned in their quarantine. In doing a lot of research, and looking through several papers and articles, I’m pretty confident to say that the reason why they were in quarantine also has a University of Wisconsin-Madison connection. So Professor Joshua Lederberg and his wife, Esther Lederberg were researchers here at the university. He received the Nobel Prize in 1958 for work on bacterial conjugation, something that they were both the researchers on. Do with that information what you will.

After the launch of Sputnik in 1957, Lederberg became concerned about the risk of humans contaminating space, excuse me, the risk of humans contaminating space and astronauts bringing back contaminants from other worlds. So he wrote a letter to the National Academy of Sciences and he made it very clear that this was something of concern and something that they should take into consideration. And in 1958, they sent, they created or they wrote a official concern letter about this. So again I’d like to, I would feel comfortable in attributing their quarantine to him. After that, after they were released from their 21-day quarantine, they were welcomed into the nation or around the nation as American heroes. Now the program continued with six missions but only five landings. And I’m sure you know why. Apollo 12, it was an electrifying return to the moon as I’d like to call it. This carried Charles Conrad, Richard Gordon, and Alan Bean. The mission was from November 14th to November 24th, just a couple of months after Apollo 11 had touched down.

This mission actually almost didn’t go up. Well, it almost didn’t go all the way up I should say. The reason behind that is during the launch, by chance, lightning struck the Saturn 5 twice and essentially fried, or not fried I should say, but turned off all the electronics on the inside, so the astronauts were flying blindly. From what I understand, they only had about a minute time window before they actually, okay let’s try and figure something out or let’s abort and not keep going. Fortunately they were able to find a solution that one flight controller happened to remember from a training the year before. They ended up making it to the moon successfully and put down the Apollo lunar surface experiments package which as I mentioned was, the earlier version was carried on Apollo 11. And the goal was again to gather information from each landing site. And they also collected pieces of Surveyor 3 which had landed earlier for analysis. And Surveyor 3 is from the jet, if I remember correctly, was developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory which the Solar System Ambassadors is housed by. Then there’s unlucky Number 13.

The mission carried Fred Haise Jr. , John Swigert and James Lovell Jr. Again when I was practicing this, someone told me you shouldn’t say that James Lovell was unlucky because he still didn’t end up making it to the moon, but he still didn’t end up making it to the moon unfortunately so I’m going to say it anyways. During the launch or I’m sorry, when they made it into space, there was an explosion in one of the oxygen tanks on the command and service module, which essentially caused a lot of damage to it. And there was a risk that the astronauts may not make it home. And I know there’s a lot more to this story but in terms of time, just going to keep it short. The crew ended up not making it to the moon and Mission Control had to figure out a way to get the astronauts back home safely. While Mission Control was figuring out how to get them back home, here on the ground, the astronauts on board were trying to replicate the same thing. They ended up using the lunar module kind of as a life raft after hot-wiring it because some of the batteries had gone down. And after overcoming several challenges including the loss of navigation system where they had to use, they basically had to use the sun, stars, and the Earth’s terminator, which is a division between the day and night, to actually be able to make it back home.

And another little connection I will add is that astronauts for the Apollo program trained at Griffith Observatory using our planetarium during their training. So again the crew didn’t end up making it to the moon, but they did thankfully make it back to Earth four days later. Then came Apollo 14 which was the most extensive science, the mission with the most extensive sciences. This carried Stuart Roosa, Alan Shepard, and Edgar Mitchell. The launch was January 31st and lasted through February 9, 1971. And Apollo 14, 15, 16, and 17 all became focused on landing the astronauts on various locations of the moon to help gather a variety of rock samples. And Apollo 14 landed on the moon’s Fra Mauro formation which is an area that was believed to have created, to have been created as a result of a collision between the moon and a very large mass. And it happened to end up being a great place to study and this was actually the original landing site for Apollo 13, had they made it. They also studied the lunar ionosphere. And this time, as opposed to the passive seismic experiment, they used an active seismic experiment which provided them information on the structure of the top 100 meters of the lunar regolith.

In addition to that, Roosa took measurements on regional variations of the gravitational acceleration. There was also a scattering of the radar that he was doing while he was up on the command module. Another cool thing about this mission is they collected a large amount of samples, which was about 97 pounds of rocks including my personal favorite, Big Bertha, that you guys may be familiar with, yeah. So it’s a very big rock. And I don’t think any oh, well, I don’t think any of these are Big Bertha but yeah. Then another favorite moment was Alan Shepard golfing.

– Alan: Houston, while you’re looking that up, you might recognize what I have in my hand is the handle for the contingency sample return. It just so happens to have a genuine six iron on the bottom of it. In my left hand, I have a little white pellet that’s familiar to millions of Americans. I’ll drop it down.

Unfortunately, the suit is so stiff I can’t do this with two hands, but I’m going to try a little sand-trap shot here. [audience laughing] [audience laughing]

– Ed: You got more dirt than ball that time. [Jaime and audience laughing]

– Alan: Got more dirt than ball, here we go again.

– Fred: That looked like a slice to me, Al.

– Alan: Here we go. Straight as a die, one more. Miles and miles and miles. [Jaime and audience laughing] – After Apollo 14 came Apollo 15, which included David Scott, Alfred Worden, and James Irwin and a new member riding along with them, the Lunar Roving Vehicle. The mission went on from July 26, so just a little bit over two years after Apollo 11. And this was the first time that the Lunar Roving Vehicle had actually gone up and it was meant to be used on Apollo 15, 16, and 17 as well.

This allowed the astronauts to travel a lot farther from the lunar module than previous. And in fact, on Apollo 14, Alan Shepard set the record for how far away an astronaut had walked away from the lunar module at 9,000 feet. On this mission, on Apollo 15, it allowed the astronauts to go about 17 miles, so yeah. Apollo 15 was actually the first of a new type of mission known as an Apollo G mission, where it allowed the astronauts to actually stay longer for almost three days as opposed to a little bit under a day for the previous missions. And another cool video which, so one of my favorite things about science is that, I mean I love science a lot, but I love how there’s times where you can just do the silliest experiments and it works out. And I love that this is how, and I genuinely love that this is how our tax dollars went.

– David: On my left hand I have a feather, in my right hand a hammer. I guess one of the reasons we got here today was because of a gentleman named Galileo a long time ago, who made a rather significant discovery about falling objects in gravity fields. And we thought that where would be a better place to confirm his findings than on the moon. And so we thought we’d try it here for you.

The feather happens to be appropriately a falcon feather, for our falcon, and I’ll drop the two of ’em here and hopefully they’ll hit the ground at the same time. How about that? [Jaime and audience laughing] Mr. Galileo was correct in his findings.

– I love that, when I saw that I was like, “That’s the coolest thing ever. “Just, let’s drop that. ” Apollo 16 was the first time that a biology experiment had actually been done on the moon. It carried Ken Mattingly, John Young, and Charles Duke Jr. This was a couple of months later on April 16th and it lasted through April 27th, 1972. And as I mentioned, it was the first time that a biology experiment had been taken into space. This is known as the biostack.

And the goal of it was to test the biological effects of various heavy cosmic particles essentially coming from space that we are, as I mentioned earlier, protected from here on Earth. And this biostack actually carried a variety of different organisms and seeds and spores, so like arabidopsis, bacillus subtilis. So just a variety of experiments which I thought was pretty cool, being a biologist. They also were able to, I tried to find the video of John Young roving around. I could not find a decent quality video that wouldn’t just be all grainy. But they kept on exploring and continued using the seismic experience and all the other experiments used in the Apollo package. And finally came Apollo 17, which I like to call “Not the End. ” The mission carried Harrison Schmitt, who was the first and only scientist to travel on the Apollo missions and is also apparently, I just learned the other day at three in the morning when I couldn’t sleep, that he is actually an adjunct professor here at the university. So that was pretty neat. It also carried Eugene Cernan and Ronald Evans.

And the mission took off December 7th and it came back down on December 19th. And this was the final launch of Apollo. It was also the most extensive mission where three EVAs were done or extravehicular activities, sorry. Each one was about seven hours and they were on the moon for a little bit more than three days. Cernan and Schmitt ended up collecting about 243 pounds worth of material. I mean it was the last time that who knows until when, well now we know at least 50 years, right? That we’d go back to the moon. And one of the things that Schmitt got excited about being a geologist, is this orange soil that is right here, and you can kind of see it right here. Yeah, didn’t come out as great on the projector. But yeah, that soil was something that he was super interested and there’s a video where he’s like “Wow, orange soil, “come check this out. ” And from what I understand, he ended up replacing another crew member and some of, the two other crew members weren’t so excited until they realized that hey, he’s a scientist, awesome.

And these samples as I mentioned earlier, some of them have gone unopened. They continue to provide more and more information about the moon as new tools and techniques are being developed. And with that came Cernan and Schmitt’s launch from the moon and they remain the last men to walk on the moon and no humans have been back since December 14th. We’ll let that video play. There we go.

– Harrison: 99 proceeded, three, two, one, ignition.

– Eugene: We’re on our way, Houston.

– Harrison: Rates are good, AGS solid.

– And with that was the end of the Apollo missions. In total about 33 people, I’m sorry, not about.

33 people flew, there were six moon landings, 12 astronauts walked on the moon and over 840, and about 842 pounds of moon rocks were returned. What we learned from the Apollo missions is that the moon is not a primordial object, it is ancient and it still preserves an early history of the terrestrial planets. The youngest moon rocks provided us information that told us that they’re basically as old as the oldest Earth rocks and also, unfortunately to astrobiologists, that it’s lifeless and it contains no living organisms, fossils, or native organic compounds. As you saw me call it, I called it “Not the End” because the moon has never really been the end goal. I was watching, again I’m going to keep up bringing Walter Cronkite up. I was watching the replay of the coverage and he had Arthur Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey on as a guest and it was funny. The Saturn 5 hadn’t even launched yet. It was I think like five minutes before it was launching. And Arthur Clarke was already talking about “Yeah, “we’re going to go to the moon,” and that was 50 years ago. And well, I mean we haven’t been there obviously and we haven’t been back to the moon.

But NASA’s next goal, their new campaign aims to do just that. With the new Explore Moon to Mars campaign. The Moon to Mars campaign will use the Space Launch System which when it is developed, will be the most powerful rocket ever developed, even more powerful than the Saturn 5. And its first launch is estimated to be in 2024. It will carry the Orion capsule, which is just slightly bigger than the Apollo capsule. If you’ve ever seen an Apollo capsule, kind of give you a picture of it. And its first mission and its, sorry. The goal of it is to again carry astronauts to the moon and to Mars with the first mission being Artemis 1, I was about to call it Exploration Mission 1, but we just changed it to Artemis 1. And if you’re not familiar, I believe Artemis 1 is the sister, twin sister of Apollo, thank you. So yeah.

Now another goal of NASA is, or to help with the journey to Mars is to actually set up a lunar gateway around the moon. And the goal of this is to actually set up a gateway, or essentially an orbiting space station, that will orbit the moon that’ll make it easier for astronauts to launch from the moon and then go on for the journey to Mars. Now before we actually go to Mars, there’s several challenges that we need to overcome, mostly focused on humans, such as food for example. We can’t carry it all. And so because the journey to Mars is roughly two to three years round-trip. So we need to grow this food in space and grow it on Mars. Well, thankfully here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison there have been several endeavors to grow plants in space including potatoes, which you may be familiar with Spuds in Space, arabidopsis and brachypodium. Now another little personal connection is Skylab. Skylab, the first plant experiment or one of the first plant experiments was actually done by a student from Downey High School. They were rivals to Warren High School so I don’t give ’em too much props, but nonetheless.

[Jaime and audience laughing] Donald Schlack proposed an experiment to study rice seeds, and it happened to be so similar to Joel Wordekemper’s experiment from Nebraska that they actually ended up sending both of them together. And the experiment was done again in 1973 aboard Skylab. Then now coming back to the University of Wisconsin. was Spuds in Space. This flew aboard STS-73 on the space shuttle Columbia which again unfortunately perished in 2003. And this was in 1995 and it carried five potato leaves. And it was the first time that food had ever actually been grown in orbit. And what it was and actually let me go to this picture first with Astronaut Coleman actually planting these whatchmacallit, these leaves. They actually sprouted tubers. And it was the first time that food had ever actually been grown in space.

And Tom told me that this is a particular point I should make a point of, [laughing] that it was the University of Wisconsin. Now the cool thing about this is that it opened the doors for a lot of horticulture experiments on board. This was in 1995, I believe is what I said. Yeah, 1995, sorry. So it was in 1995, and the goal of it was to again be able to grow food in space and test this out for whenever the International Space Station was built, which wouldn’t happen for at least another three years. Not only with the goal of one, creating food for the astronauts, but also acting as a natural recycling system essentially, where the plants would absorb the oxygen, I’m sorry, absorb the carbon dioxide, release oxygen, and purify water by transpiration. Then a second experiment that went up into space from the university was the Wisconsin fast plants, our brassica rapa. These were onboard Mir. This was actually two years later and the succession, though the experiment itself was not run by the university, this succession was actually created here at the university. And what’s cool about these particular plants is that they have a life cycle of about 45 days, making them ideal for use in space because astronauts only have so much time to dedicate to a particular experiment, right? There’s so many experiments that go on that you only get a certain time window and if you miss that time window, then it’s done.

Another cool thing about this is that you can actually buy them online. [laughing] I tried to buy some and, I don’t know if it let me or not or, I just wasn’t, I’m not good with plants, that’s why I study bacteria, so yeah. And these actually had a part two. On STS-87, the fast plant seeds went up again, and this time it was part of an educational component where school children around the U. S. and in the Ukraine, over 500,000 students I believe, were growing these plants in their own classrooms to help mirror the experiments that were going on aboard the space shuttle. Then finally, the International Space Station. Its construction began in 1998 and it was a new place to grow, to study plants under microgravity. And two groups here at the University of Wisconsin currently take advantage of that. The first which you may be familiar with is the Gilroy Lab.

They are in the department of botany, and they’ve had four launches so far with more in the pipeline including one this year around Christmastime and one potentially next year, early next year. But as you all know space is difficult. So sometimes that may change, but we’ll see. [laughs] Now I’m going to be focusing on their most recent experiment that launched, which was aboard SpaceX, a commercial resupply mission, commercial supply service mission number 13 that launched on December 13th 2017. [rocket engine roaring] Now during this mission, the group sent up arabidopsis thaliana, and the goal of it was to test and I’m going to try and remember the name, it’s for the test of arabidopsis space transcriptome or TOAST, and I genuinely thought about bringing a piece of toast on here just to act as a, just as a prop. Now if you’re not familiar, the transcriptome is essentially the set of genes that are being expressed in an organism. And this, this grew– The goal of this was to actually see how or what the genetic and molecular stress response was in space. Because the group had noticed that while they’re growing on board the International Space Station, for whatever reason they weren’t getting enough oxygen and they were exhibiting a stress response. And the lab sent up a variety of strains or I’m sorry, accessions. So a wild type strain and others as well.

And here you can see Canadian Space Agency Astronaut David Saint-Jacques growing this. And then this is actually inside of the VEGGIE component aboard the space station. And the VEGGIE component was also produced here in Madison, developed by Orbital Technologies also known as Orbitec. And unlike everything else that NASA makes, it doesn’t have an acronym. So VEGGIE doesn’t stand anything, it’s just called VEGGIE. [audience laughing] And this was also used for, to grow space lettuce which made a lot of news when Scott Kelly was aboard the space station. And thanks to my good friends over at the Gilroy Astrobotany Laboratory, they were able to share some videos to test you all. So can you tell me which ones were the ones that grew on earth and which ones were the ones that grew up in space? [audience murmuring] So left was what? Earth, okay. And then so then right is in space, and that’s correct, because you can tell that on these, yeah the roots exactly. So the roots were growing straight downward or aboard, the plants that grow onboard the International Space Station were kind of a little wonky.

Well, in following with the Wisconsin idea, the group wished to produce, to do outreach with knowledge that’s being learned here at the university throughout Wisconsin and the world, the group actually made all their TOAST data, all the transcriptomics open access. So anyone who’s interested in this data can actually go online to their website on astrobotany. com or you can use the QR code if you’d like. So if someone wants to try that out, you can go in and download all this data and access it and play around with it. And also following along with the Wisconsin idea, the group, there we go. The group developed this, this device which is called a 3D klinoset. And basically what it does, is it randomizes gravity. So anything that’s growing inside like plants, microbes, embryos or stem cells, something like that, they don’t have a sense of gravity. And the group is particularly excited because they’re actually the first to integrate lights and to integrate camera. So they can look at what effect and there’s some of the lights right there.

They can actually look at to what effect the different light variables are playing on to these plants or whatever they’re growing in there. And again the goal in following along with the Wisconsin idea, the group is hopefully planning on using this experiment with students around the country, at least around Madison, so they can replicate the TOAST data. And one of their, there you go. And one of the group’s upcoming missions, a little sneak preview is Tic-Toc or the Targeting Improves Cotton Through Orbital Cultivation and this is in partnership with Target. And the goal of this is to understand how cotton grows up in space. So now going from arabidopsis to hopefully understanding cotton. Now a second group that does work in space here at the university and particularly in my home department is the lab of Patrick Masson. His group launched APEX-06. So it’s Patrick and his co-investigator, Shih-Heng Su. And this is a picture of them at Kennedy Space Center that they thankfully provided to me.

Now they sent up brachypodium. The reason why they sent up brachypodium, the goal behind understanding it, is it’s a major, it’s a model for all major crops that are monocots, sorry. So some of these for example, other monocots are barley, oats, and wheat. Now the reasoning behind doing the study is yes, there’s a lot of data from arabidopsis, but arabidopsis is a dicot. So it’s unclear whether that data can actually be extrapolated to monocots. Now, the group’s mission launched aboard SpaceX resupply mission number 14 with three questions. One, will they grow at all? Because it was the first time that brachypodium had ever been sent up to space. And also would there be differences between ground control and the ISS growth? and what are the growth and transcriptomic responses? And here you can actually see a video of Astronaut Scott Tingle injecting the media and actually they were awesome enough to lend me this. So this is a space-rated device to actually be able to grow their brachypodium plants. So basically what you can do, or what they do I should say is they insert at least, or at most I should say, six brachypodium seeds onto each side that have been surface sterilized.

Now the goal behind that, or the goal behind this is with arabidopsis, you use a particular wavelength of light to make sure that it doesn’t, to make sure it doesn’t germinate before it gets into space. Well, it turns out that that same wavelength of light actually activates germination in brachypodium. Of course, right? So the goal of this was to, as you can see in the video down on the bottom, the goal of it is, that the plants remain dry and then the astronaut connects a tube under here and actually injects the medium into there and rehydrating them. At the same time, while the astronauts were doing their experiment up on the space station, the group replicated the experiment here on Earth. And there was a delay of two days in the way that they grew their experiment to time along with the way that the experiment was being done aboard the space station. And again, they were awesome enough to provide me some pictures. So can you tell which one is the one, this one’s maybe a little harder to tell. Can you tell me which one is the one that is was grown in space, which one was grown here on Earth? [audience murmuring] Right is space? All right, yeah, awesome. So yeah, so the ones that were grown on the right, that are on the right were grown aboard the International Space Station. And I should mention that they actually grew three different accessions that had a very, basically three different strains of brachypodium and that’s because they all show different growth profiles.

And then here’s another little close-up. That’s pretty awesome. And this is the group’s first mission and they hope to launch some more. Now aside from plants, [laughing] aside from plants, we actually need to take care of these space farmers, right? So we need to understand what does microgravity and what does living in space, what effect does that have on astronauts? Because again the journey to Mars is two to three years so they’re going to be living out there for a long time. So the Human Research Program, a NASA program has been studying this with focusing on five different hazards to humans including microgravity, isolation, because I mean you’re in a tight space with only three other people for two years. So I hope you like them. Hostile environments, radiation and the distance from Earth. So these are the five focuses that NASA has and these were actually also the focuses of a study that you all may be familiar with, which is the NASA Twins Study. The NASA Twins Study happened in 2015 and it focused on astronaut Scott Kelly and astronaut Mark Kelly. NASA is lucky enough to have twin astronauts in their group.

So Scott went up to space for 340 days. He launched on March 28th, 2015 while Mark stayed here on Earth. Excuse me, and this is actually part of the one-year mission which also include Mikhail Kornienko and he was also in space for about 340 days. And throughout the whole time, while they were off in space, Mark here on Earth was taking the same measurements, he was basically kind of eating the same things, doing the same exercises. So they can have a one-to-one comparison. Scott and Mikhail eventually returned on March 1st, 2016 having spent 340 days aboard the space station. Now with this, this was as I mentioned and part of the NASA Twins Study which incorporated 10 different research areas. And after a couple of years which I was finally excited, the paper was finally published. It was a summary paper that was published in April of this year. So that data is out there but it’s a 22-page paper, so I’m not going to give you all the results.

But I will give you some of the top three. First is telomeres. So they noticed a change in Scott’s telomeres where, sorry, what telomeres are is that every time that the cell replicates these shorten a little bit, they act to protect the chromosomes. Well, they noticed that for whatever reason, in Scott they actually lengthened while he was up in space. Now does that necessarily mean that he got younger? And that is a picture of Scott and Mark from when they were three years old. Not necessarily, because once he actually returned to Earth, they continued doing studies on him and they found that they just basically went back to normal. Another major result was their immune system. So you can see that both Scott and Mark were injecting themselves with the flu vaccine to test what their immune system response was. And it turns out it was basically the same. So awesome, perfect, right? And then the last one was they noticed changes in gene expression.

Now that’s not changes in the actual genes. When the story came out there was a lot of like wait, so the genes were changed or what was it? But no, it was just simply the way that their genes were expressed so how they were being produced, or how the protein was being produced. And they also noticed that Scott, sorry, he had changes in his gene expression. But in addition to that, they also found that there was a lot of DNA damage. And one of the causes of DNA damage in particular is radiation. And being up in space, you’re exposed to a lot more radiation than you are here on Earth. The majority of the changes in his gene expression returned back to normal after some time, but he still ended up with a lot of DNA damage. For a lot of these results, NASA isn’t necessarily sure what the longer term effects are. Now in science, you don’t just do an n of one, right? You want to have at least three, at least three replicates or more than that, otherwise you won’t get published, right? [audience laughing] So yeah, so NASA’s future directions for the Human Research Program is that they will actually be, they’ve actually already proposed to replicate this study. Not unfortunately with another set of twins but just in general with other astronauts to replicate what they’re doing up in space and then here on Earth and take measurements.

And in addition to that, because generally they only stay up there for I mean, at this point now a year, what NASA is planning on doing is taking measurements or having astronauts focus on one month, six months, and a year long so they can actually extrapolate that data and figure out how quickly and when are those changes occurring. And finally, I’d like to just say and share NASA’s message that we are indeed going back to the moon and we are indeed hopefully going back to Mars. Or sorry, not going back, going to Mars [laughing] and hopefully going back to the moon by 2024. And I’ll close with this video.

– Male Narrator: 50 years ago we pioneered a path to the moon. The trail we blazed cut through the fictions of science and showed us all what was possible. Today our calling to explore is even greater. To go farther, we must be able to sustain missions of greater distance and duration. We must use the resources we find at our destinations. We must overcome radiation, isolation, gravity, and extreme environments like never before.

These are the challenges we face to push the bounds of humanity. We’re going to the moon to stay by 2024. And this is how.

– Woman: This all starts with the ability to get larger, heavier payloads off planet and beyond Earth’s gravity.

– Man: For these we design an entirely new rocket.

– The Space Launch System. SLS will be the most powerful rocket ever developed.

– Woman: And with components in production,

– and more in testing.

– Woman: This system is capable of being the catalyst for deep-space missions.

– Woman: We need a capsule that can support humans from launch, – Woman: Through deep space and return safely back to earth.

– Woman: For this we’ve built Orion.

– This is NASA’s next-generation human space capsule.

– Man: Using data from lunar orbiters that continue to reveal the moon’s hazards and resources, we’re currently developing an entirely new approach to landing and operating on the moon.

– Man: Using our commercial partners to deliver science instruments and robotics to the surface, we’re paving the way for human missions in 2024.

– Narrator: Our charge is to go quickly and to stay, to press our collective efforts forward with a fervor that will see us return to the moon in a manner that is wholly different than 50 years ago.

– Woman: We want lunar landers that are reusable, that can land anywhere on the lunar surface.

– Woman: The simplest way to do so is to give them a platform in orbit around the moon from which to transition.

– Man: An orbiting platform to host deep-space experiments and be a waypoint for human capsules. We call this lunar outpost, Gateway.

– Woman: The beauty of the Gateway is that it can be moved between orbits.

– Man: It will balance between the Earth and moon’s gravity.

– Woman: In a position that is ideal for launching even deeper space missions.

– In 2009, we learned that the moon contains millions of tons of water ice.

– Man: This ice can be extracted and purified for water.

– We can separate oxygen for breathing or hydrogen for rocket fuel.

– Woman: The moon is quite uniquely suited to prepare us – and propel us to Mars and beyond.

– This is what we are building.

– This is what we’re training for.

– This we can replicate throughout the solar system.

– This is the next chapter of human space exploration.

– Narrator: Humans are the most fragile element of this entire endeavor, and yet we go for humanity. We go to the moon and on to Mars to seek knowledge and understanding and to share it with all. We go knowing our efforts will create opportunities that cannot be foreseen. We go because we are destined to explore and see it with our own eyes. We turn towards the moon now not as a conclusion, but as preparation, as a checkpoint toward all that lies beyond. Our greatest adventures remain ahead of us. We are going.

– We’re going.

– We are going. [rocket blasting off]

– We are going.

– We’re going.

– And with that, I’d be happy to take any questions. [audience applauding]