One of them is asu, going to the moon to try to locate hydrogen. Right. Why is that important, to try to see where hydrogen deposits might be . Geologically, we arent really sure why theres a lot of deposits of hydrogen at the poles. We understand that the pole sort of wobbles over time and we concentrate water at the poles of any planet that has water on it. But the moon is very dry, from what we know. Passing asteroids or comets might shed off water, and that would sort of get deposited in a blanket uniformly around the moon, and it gets redistributed over time. So you get meteorites that impact on the moon and sort of ballistically shoot the hydrogen around and it ends up in the places that are the coldest. Thats the only place its stable. Those places on the moon are these shadowed craters that are permanently in darkness all the time at the south pole because of the topography down there. As the moon rotates the light never gets in and so we know from about two other missions that theres enrichments of know where they are. They might be up in a corner of the crater. They might be distributed uniformly throughout the crater, and thats important for understanding how much there is which would tell us about the geologic history of the moon. Is it all there just from passing comets or asteroids . Is it implanted by the solar wind . Understanding those kinds of questions about the history of the solar system are important. So we dont know yet, hannah, everything, even though weve been there. Weve walked on it. Weve been there several times. We dont know everything there is to know about the moon yet. Absolutely not. Not even close. What would be, say, 1 out of 100, where are we, what percentage are we, of what we know about the moon . 60 . I dont think we can even know the amount that there is to know about the moon. Even the total of what there is to know is unknown. So to be able to say how much we know is really impossible. To take the next step, is this important that we know about the moon because of missions to mars . Is this linked in any way . Knowing more about mars and you can think of technologically why you would want to know how much water is on the moon, because its much easier to get a rocket to mars if you launch off the moon. So if we just launch our resources to get to the moon and then we can use the hydrogen that we are finding in these permanently shadowed regions to convert into fuel for these rockets, its going to take a lot less fuel to get to mars, and we can bring more things with us. Oy, really basic here. Its easier to launch from the moon because of the lack of gravitational pull. Its a much smaller gravitational pull. You dont need as much of a rocket to do it, a propulsion system. So, the biggest challenge in spacecraft and, like Space Exploration at all, is overcoming earths gravity well. So, gravity on the moon is a sixth of the gravity on the earth. Thats why our astronauts bounced around up there. Pretty cool to see that video still. Does it disappoint you ever that we dont have Something Like that, like we had in the 60s, the mission to the moon, the 60s and 70s, that really coalesced the scientific community, the public opinion, pride, all of those things that really, the things that came out of that program technologically were amazing. And, yes, speaking personally i think we do need some kind of vision like that and thats part of what we are doing. We are catching a ride on the space launch system, sos rocket, which will be bringing astronauts eventually back into the solar system on a nasabuilt rocket. Part of the accommodation of the orion capsule, thats where the astronauts actually live inside and to be delivering the astronauts to the Asteroid Belt or to the moon or eventually to a spacecraft that will take sort of the first step and part of that is accommodating small spacecraft like our own that can have their own little investigations and contribute to the primary missions. Our mission is not necessarily related to the orion capsule in this case but we are demonstrating that capability for future missions. Lets bring you up to speed on that, because this cube sat project is amazing, and Nicole Garcia went out to asu and this will kind of give you an idea what they are working on and its remarkable. Take a look. This is what asu scientists have invented. Its called a cube sat, basically, a miniature spacecraft and in a couple of years, itll be launching to go to the moon. Its a huge first for asu. A team of about 60 professors and scientists will be designing, building and operating a mini satellite for nasa which will search for hydrogen and water on the moon. We had a great idea here to fly very low over the south pole and map these deposits of hydrogen where we think water is bound up in the south pole the moon, and nasa thought that was a great idea, too. Out of all of the ideas they received, they selected ours. The shoebox sized spacecraft, called a cube sat, will hitch a ride out of this planet on a nasa rocket, eventually making its way to the moons orbit. We have a small propulsion system on this end that well actually use to put ourselves into lunar orbit. So well be in a, its called an elliptical orbit. Very elliptical, it allows us to skim over the south pole of the moon, very low, and mounted on this side of the spacecraft well have a neutron spectrometer, and thats sensitive to hydrogen. Thats how well make the measurements that we want to make. The instruments on the cube sat will measure and map pockets of hydrogen and ice, trying to pinpoint where water might be on the south side of the moon, paving the way for humans to eventually reach the area and maybe one day, make an historic lunar discovery. The launch date is scheduled for 2018 and its expected to actually reach the moon by the end of 2019. Im Nicole Garcia, fox 10 news. Newsmaker sunday, dr. Craig hardgrove, assistant professor, asu school of earth and Space Exploration, and hannah kerner, who is the luna hmap software lead on the project. Fascinating, and youre designing it right now. So up goes this new nasa rocket, thats, how is it different than past Propulsion Systems from nasa . Is this rocket much different . Its sort of a reversion to what we were doing back in the launching astronauts on a capsule, up to lunar orbit, so wed need a very similar Mission Architecture to that. Its certainly more its a saturn rocket. And the capsule, too. If you look at the orion capsule that the humans actually stay in, it looks much more like the gemini and apollo capsules than, it doesnt look like a space shuttle. Oh sure, because the shuttle is basically a bus. Yes, its a capsule and they drop it into the ocean. So when this goes up in how many, 18 . About 13. 13, that will be jettisoned off. Basically bus stops along the way to the moon. They will be dropped out . Shot out . How does it work . They are deployed. Its called a deployer and just on a spring and we are, the front door opens and were shot out of the side of the secondary payload deployer. Its a ring. Many meters across and sort of slowly rotating and we get deployed at the appropriate spot. In that mission where are you guys are in that we need to get off very quickly. So you guys saw the small box, its a shoebox size spacecraft, and thats everything inside there. We have a radio, we have our instrument, we have our propulsion system and solar panels, and so our propulsion system is very small, and its not going to be nearly as capable as, say, the sls rocket. We need to spend a long time slowing down, that rocket is shooting out very fast on its way to the moon. We need it to turn around and slow down. So, retrorockets, or Something Like that to try to ion drive, which is fun. So the dawn spacecraft is currently in orbit, it was orbiting the asteroid vesta, and ceres, used as the first demonstration of an ion propulsion system. So what is your role in this project, hannah . Everything that happens on board the spacecraft is determined by a software command. Something on this flight computer says, now its time to start slowing down. Slow down by this much. This is how much ions were going to be shooting out at any given time. When do we talk to earth . When do we receive things from earth . All of that is controlled by software. Ill be designing the system that commands the spacecraft and communicates within it. Youre really more a computer person, then. Yes. And thats your im a computer scientist. So youve got, who takes care of the physics to decide what needs to be done and then you program it . How does that work . We have a team scattered throughout the country. This is sort of the same as mission. We have to have all of the same players and we got those players so we have a Mission Analysis and trajectory design team. Theyre the same folks that did the design for the Messenger Mission to mercury and you guys probably saw the Cool Pictures of pluto recently. They design the trajectory for that mission as well, which took 10 years. They have tons of experience, basically figuring out how to tell us what to do so we can make sure we get in orbit around the moon. And then youve got to program it. Yup. Wow. Very collaborative. Its not somebody tells me here, put this in. We all get to have this conversation. Its really fun. Im curious on something that big, where every step is critical to make it a success, how do you troubleshoot that and make sure every step is right . Are there just tons of eyes looking at it, looking at it again and again and again . How does that work . We will have multiple people developing the software and checking each other like with any Software Application to make sure you get everything. Heritage. So the Software Architecture that we are building off of for this has also been flown on other missions. So its not like were starting from scratch. You can even model it, right . Right. You can simulate it. Yeah, and we can do, its called hardware in the loop tests, where we will have a little model of the spacecraft and our components that we can simulate everything that will happen before we are launching. One of the fantastic things about these cube sat ideas is that you can actually buil what we call a flat set, just on the side of your desk, and you can plug it into a board and do all your testing at your desk, at your office, and so, as opposed to a large spacecraft like is traditionally flown that requires you to go travel or integrate your component into it to do any testing, we can do the entire end to end test for the most part at our desk. How did asu end up selected for this . Because everybody, theres money on the line. Theres research on the line. You all have to put in a submission. Yeah, yeah. Year ago for ideas and about 25, 30 researchers and their teams put together packages to submit to nasa headquarters and ours was one that was selected. There were only two. And one was sort of enter earth orbit, a lower budget, but not as large of a mission. Ours was the only mission that was selected that had a propulsion system, a large scale spacecraft with the science goal of making these maps of the moon. It really, only one very large proposal was selected out of that process, and it was here its really unique for asu. We have a ton of experience, like you mentioned, with Mark Robinson of lroc and Phil Christensen and jim bell on mastcam and those are instruments on larger spacecrafts but this is an opportunity for asu to build, design, test, and fly and operate a spacecraft all out of asu. Can we talk for a moment and i want to explore this a little more in the next segment, manned versus unmanned. Can we learn what we need to learn without putting people in spacecrafts . Each other . I dont think its versus. I think its manned plus unmanned. As a computer scientist, of course i love robots. But as a cooperative its a lot less expensive. It is less expensive, but not always, because it depends on what you allow the robot to do. So i think the human traverses on the moon have been far longer in terms of distance than curiosity has traveled on mars. Yet, to try to keep astronauts alive during the duration of the flight and all of the redundancies to keep them alive, that is wickedly expensive. It is extremely expensive. Truth be told, curiosity cant just go flip over a rock or drill as easily as a human might be able to deploy a drill. So far. So far, until hannah invents a robot that can do that for us. It is much quicker to have a person on the ground exploring and there is that Human Element thats really important to get people excited and invested in the it harkens back to how we explored the earth. It was done. We didnt do it with robots, necessarily. When we come back on newsmaker sunday we are going to talk about the ultimate question, are we alone here . Thats really what we get at, when we get into Space Exploration and learning about how our galaxy was formed. How our world was formed. Were going to talk about those things when we come back on newsmaker sunday, with our guests. . Music . Back on newsmaker sunday with our guests from asu from just an amazing program. This is the asu school of earth and Space Exploration. Hannah kerner is a luna map software lead. Well explain with that is, if youre just joining us. Dr. Craig hardgrove is assistant professor, asu school of earth and Space Exploration. When we look out there and space telescopes are peering deeper and deeper into our universe, is it safe to say that we are going to make contact at some point here in the next, would you put a number on it . I personally wouldnt. I dont know when that is. You hear some people say we will have this happen in our lifetime. There will be contact and then other people say no. Its just too vast. Anyone tells you they know probably isnt sure. You cant know for sure. But we have identified, already out there that could be hospitable to life. Absolutely. Many . At least hundreds at this point in that zone where you think, could be sort of that goldilocks zone, from what i understand. But were just too far of a view to see if theres any activity there, or if anythings going on. Its a point of light, its a speck of light, and we can divide that out into wavelengths and tell you something about the composition, maybe something about the mass, but its difficult to, we cant see people waving at us, very easily. And theyre so fa that for light to travel to us, it can take hundreds, thousands, millions of years. And some of these bodies may not even exist by the time we get the light coming back from them, right . Right, thats very possible. A guy named louis friedman, who you know, hes an expert in this area. He is saying that he is optimistic about Space Exploration but he feels that humans will never venture beyond mars at least not in way. Is mars really the kind of the final frontier, given the way we travel right now and what we can envision . So nasa sort of has, and its not a formal plan but they do have a bit of a plan to get us to mars by, i think its 2039 or so, before the end of 2040. So that is feasible. They have come up with a way that thats feasible with the current funding schedules and Technology Developments that were aware of, and mars is really appealing because we think it was once very much like earth. It was much warmerha bigger atmosphere. Yeah, it was some of it looks like sedona. Looks like arizona. So its currently very cold and very dry and there is not very much atmosphere there at all so we couldnt breathe very easily. As far as places that look a lot like earth, its very appealing. We could spend decades looking around mars, digging, seeing what happened on mars billions and billions of years ago. Is there a mining component to all of this that may offset Precious Metals and things that are rare metals. I think some of that is, our experience on earth is that we have plate tectonics. The plates move around and hydrothermal activity that were aware of, and we can determine where there are elemental concentrations that are of interest economically. We have coal, we have fossil fuels and thats all related to life and so we need to answer some very fundamental questions about mars because its a great target and other places in the solar system before we might know if there is economically viable resources out there. That said, there are companies that are investigating mining asteroids, and looking into what rare earth elements might be out there in the Asteroid Belt. I think mining for materials in space is more suitable for building things while youre in space. So its not, at least to me, the goal is not to go find some diamond asteroid and bring it back to earth and make a whole bunch of money. Comet that has a bunch of water and turn all that into hydrazine fuel, or build a spacecraft out of a big aluminum asteroid. You said youre, you kind of have a friendship with robots. You love that idea. And we have gotten some amazing stuff from mars. Robots that were supposed to peter out years ago and they are still going. Reminds me of hubble which everybody said was dead and gone, and they fixed it and upgraded it and its still providing really valuable science, right . So the idea that you have to put a human on mars, you dont think, i take it, that thats the end all and be all. That you can do a lot with robots there, and we have. I think you can do a lot with robots but you can do far more with robots in team with humans. So there is like an element of human exploration and human intuition that we cant get with robots, at least right now. Sent out to mars, now, given what we learned on the moon with humans being up there, have we learned quite a bit about mars from the robots that have been there . Absolutely. We know quite a bit. I was going to add to what hannah said, that is that every time we send a landed mission to the surface of mars weve learned something fundamentally new about that planet. So i have no doubt in my mind, that if we send another robot we would learn something incredible about the history of mars, every single time. Its what happens. Weve only sent five or six, its a big planet. And you were saying before we started taping today, that mars, you believe, and the science is there, that it was a far different place than it is today. They had climate change. They did. Caused by . Were not sure. We need to figure that out. We need to look at the geologic record to figure that out. Thats why curiosity went where its going. We see this very large dichotomy in the mountain that curiosity is driving up right now and were not entirely sure why thats there, but we think it represents that period of mars history where the earthbased telescope. When you can go out in space, and you dont have Light Pollution and all of this stuff, why are earthbased telescopes still valuable when you can go much deeper, it would strike me, having a spacebased telescope . You can make them much larger. On the surface of the earth. Thats the reason. Yeah, we only have a handful, hubble and then jwst hopefully will be launching. Those are our large big telescopes in space. Are they looking fo are the spacebased looking at Different Things versus what were doing on earth . Because of the size they tend to look much further out into the other galaxies, other solar systems. Thats where those are pointed. One of the cool things about, sort of related to what we are doing with cube sats is if you can make a telescope on a small spacecraft you could start launching much more of them at lower cost and point them at one particular spot for much longer period of time. Its like a National Laboratory in space, like hubble. So you have to allocate the its pointing at various different places that are of scientific interest to researchers. But if you could have one small, shoeboxsize spacecraft that pointed at a particular site for a very long time you might make a discovery that you might otherwise not make. Even though its not as big as the other telescopes, it can still make an observation that might be useful for science, because of the time devoted. We will take a break here on newsmaker sunday. When we come back im just going to throw to you guys where were at in trying to handle potential asteroid threats, because thats another area that is interesting, and i dont know if asu is even involved in that, but i want to ask you about it, when we come back on newsmaker sunday. . Music . Back talking about space and asu right in the middle of this stuff with the school of earth and Space Exploration which is in a terrific program right now to map hydrogen on the moon thats what the cube, what do you call it, again . Cube sat. A cube sat. This is this tiny shoebox satellite that will go around, and once you figure this all out, it will try to map this. And also we know water is on the moon. There is agreement that there is water there. Yes. So the real innovation here is that we will be able to determine more accurately where it is. One of the cool things about these craters at the south pole is that we think the and thats where well be looking. Right outside of those areas at sort of the peaks of the craters, they are impact craters that have these raised ridges. At the ridges themselves there are areas that always are illuminated. Only four hours out of a year are these areas in shadow at all if you were to think about parking a moon base or some gas station for example that would utilize this hydrogen, you might want to know exactly what corner of the crater to park that in and thihis part is sort of getting into Human Resources and called in situ resource utilization which would enable us to go further out in the in solar system. Hannah, what else is asu involved in right now, in your department . We are involved in the mars 2020 mission. So jim bell who is a copi or deputy pi on the mastcam camera on curiosity right now is also going to be building those cameras for the mars asus made a big leap in this area, right . This program has really jumped. Youve had several successes and thats building this program. Yeah. Phil christensens team was recently selected to put a thermal spectrometer on the europa mission, the europa clipper mission, sort of, to be defined. That instrument is being developed at asu. More recently, osirisrex has a thermal emission spectrometer from Phil Christensens group, that was actually built in the 1st floor of our building at the school of earth and Space Exploration. So not everything is happening at jpl. Right. Yeah, right. Go devils. I love it. So thats newsmaker sunday. I appreciate you guys coming down. Thanks for having us. You were very good about answering a lot of kind of iffy questions. Nice work. We will see you next week on newsmaker sunday. . . Hey, is this our turn . Honey. Our turn . Yeah, we go left right here. woman vo Great Adventures are still out there. Well find them in our subaru outback. avo love. Its what makes a subaru, a subaru. Get zero percent on select subaru models during the subaru a lot to love event, now through august thirtyfirst. Sweet sun ripened strawberries. Rich. , creamy. And delicious. Nothing else tastes like philadelphia . A deadly night on valley a deadly night on valley streets after a car strikes a bicyclist. More on the Police Investigation into what may have happened. A plus, investigators catch a serial shooter. How one organization is helping to take action. Watch your back. The warning that arizona game and fish is warning for campers and hikers for one Tucson Mountain area. He looks scary but they say he seems somewhat friendly. Would still run. I think friendly was in quotes. Interesting story what this