Humans return to the Moon Stunning Earth views the future of space

Now, let's take look at some of the world's other news. Now, NASA's Artemis 2 astronauts are on their way to the moon. Integrity, AMD high. crucial engine burn has sent their spacecraft out of Earth's orbit. The crew is now on course for lunar flyby early next week. It's the first time astronauts have been sent towards the moon since the final Apollo mission in 1972. Well, first and foremost, we all wanted to give shoutout to our families first cuz we are pretty far from Earth and we have not gotten to say hi to them yet. but there was moment about an hour ago where mission control Houston reoriented our spacecraft as the sun was setting behind the Earth. And don't know what we all expected to see in that moment, but you could see the entire globe from pole to pole. You could see Africa, Europe, and as if you looked really close, you could see the northern lights. It was the most spectacular moment and it paused all four of us in our tracks. Now, joining us from Melbourne is Sarah Webb. She's space scientist and astronomer at the Swinburne University of technology. Sarah, it's very difficult to not channel your inner child when you talk about space. So, just forgive this question, but yay, we're going to the moon. But actually, we're not going to the moon, right? We're going back to the moon, but we're not touching the moon just yet. And agree, it's always really hard and not that we should, but that childlike enthusiasm often comes out when we start to talk about the moon. And think that that's something that we need more of in the world. This idea of excitement and wonder and the possibility of curiosity that is driven by these types of mission. And this is certainly ignited that around the world, which has been wonderful to see. But it's Is it first step? Because NASA has said that it's $20 billion to establish base on the moon, which think is great idea. don't know what's on the moon and what will you'd actually get for your $20 billion, but it sounds like something we should be shooting for. Is this the first step towards that? It is indeed the first step towards that. So, this is the first time in over 50 years that humans have been back to the moon. So, there's many critical technologies that we are testing for the first time in many of our our lifetimes. Lots of advances have happened certainly since the Apollo era. And with NASA's very ambitious goals to build lunar base by the 2030s, which is an extraordinarily complex and exciting undertaking, this is very much the first step. And and you mentioned, you know, it's exciting to build lunar base, but why would we be going there? And the moon actually offers lot to us scientifically, but also potentially in terms of minerals and other valuable resources that we might potentially use in the future of space travel. There's multi-faceted reasons why we're interested not only in returning to the moon scientifically, but establishing base there in the long term. Now, there's lot of, you know, political challenges here when you want to justify, you know, spending money on you know, moon mission. So, has that been the the reason that we haven't been back there since 1972, or is it just that, you know, we've been concentrating on other technologies? It's certainly part of part of the reason. It is incredibly expensive to do space travel, especially long-distance space travel, say to Luna and beyond. And lot of the money that has been used in the last several decades has been focusing on other critical technologies in space. So, this includes satellites, infrastructure for things like the International Space Station, and having continuous presence in microgravity, and understanding material physics and biological sciences from that particular perspective. And so, certainly after the Apollo era, the funding that was once pumped into this machine that was the Apollo program was limited quite significantly. And so, it's taken decades to build up the expertise and the position which the United States now find themselves in to be able to aim for mission like this. It is incredibly expensive, but what like to remind people is that lot of these critical technologies trickle down into our everyday lives. Everything from material science to life support systems that we end up seeing in the modern world is all thanks to this what we call blue sky research. And so, that's something we need to remember when we think about investment like this is that it will ultimately benefit all of us as humankind. One of the reasons, as understand it, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the reasons that we did go to the moon is because NASA was centralized government agency. In the years since then, private space agencies have become thing, SpaceX, etc. And that's diverted funds away and and weakened centralized space agencies. Has that been damaging, do you think? think it might actually be the the opposite. When we start to think about the idea that instead of being centralized, say, nation-run space agency, and this is true for many other countries that have centralized agencies as well, we can now expand to companies that have been building different technologies, have invested time and money into technologies that are now able to advance us. And that's very much the case, not just in the United States, but for lot of the different countries that are major players in the space ecosystem is the fact that we rely now heavily on private companies doing their own research and development to develop technologies that we ultimately use and rely on. And so, it's an interesting it's very different model than it once was, but it's one that has been working very well over the past couple of decades to allow us to do some really interesting things in space and have more access to space as well, not just for, centralized scientific body for particular nation, but for different companies, for different researchers, for different collaborations across the world to make it more global interest, which think is really again important shift that we're absolutely seeing, but one that think is ultimately benefiting us in the long run. Space, the final frontier. Sorry, had to get that in. Sara, thank you so much for your thoughts. Thank you for having me.