This is the first episode of Space on Tap, a special "Are We There Yet?" event series. It's a live, semi-scripted space-science show. This episode was held at Judson's Live in Orlando on March 23.
“Moon” or false
NASA’s Artemis program could hit a big milestone as soon as April 1 with the launch of the Artemis II mission. It will be the first human mission to the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.
There’s fresh excitement about a new human moon mission, but for Kerri Donaldson Hanna and Addie Dove from the University of Central Florida, that excitement never waned.
The two work as the Principal Investigator and Deputy Principal Investigator on the Lunar-VISE mission, or the Lunar Vulkan Imaging and Spectroscopy Explorer. The lander-rover combination will analyze the moon’s Gruithuisen domes to discover how they formed.
In a game of true or false -- or as ‘Are We There Yet?’ host Brendan Byrne called it, moon or false -- Dove and Donaldson Hanna answered pressing questions and debunked common misconceptions.
The rocks on the moon are only shades of gray.
False.
“When we look at the moon, we see mostly shades of gray, but there's volcanic glasses that come in shades of red, orange, yellow and green,” Donaldson Hanna said.
“[The different colors] tell us about how they might have formed. The orange glass beads are probably formed from volcanic mechanisms, for instance,” Dove said.
The Lunar South Pole has some of the coldest temperatures in the entire solar system.
True.
“The Diviner Lunar Radiometer, which is onboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, measured temperatures of the South Pole and the North Pole [of the moon],” Donaldson Hannah said. “There are areas that get down to 40 K, which is as cold as some of the outer planetary bodies in space. And it's because there's areas that get no sunlight.”
“Moon doesn't have an atmosphere, so there's no sort of equilibration across the surface,” Dove said. “If you're not in sunlight, it's very, very cold. If you are in sunlight, it's very, very hot.”
There is active volcanism on the moon.
False, but there used to be.
“There's several different kinds of volcanism on the moon,” Donaldson Hanna said. “When you look at the moon at night and you see the really dark, large expanses on the near side. Those are all ancient volcanoes that have flowed, covered and filled in the basins.”
Curious Space
Kids’ curiosity about space is boundless -- and so are their questions.
During a visit to the Orlando Science Center, children recorded questions for Veteran NASA astronaut Winston Scott to answer.
Scott, a retired United States Navy Captain, spent over 24 days in space on missions STS-72 Endeavour and STS-87 Columbia. The spacewalker sat with Brendan Byrne live at ‘Space on Tap’ to answer burning questions from young minds.
Curious children asked about aliens and the splashdown of spacecrafts. One child asked if any of Scott’s spacecrafts ever collided with “space garbage?”
He answered that his spacecraft was hit, just not by space junk.
"The debris we hit were micrometeorites. It wasn't uncommon to bring the space shuttle home and have micrometeorite damage,” Scott said.
“My STS-87 Columbia flight had some of the heaviest tile damage, and the tile damage came from our collisions with micrometeorites. So, it was not going to usually have to change the front wind windshields on the shuttle or change tiles, because we collide with micrometeorites.”
He went on to describe how spacesuits are equipped with a hard Kevlar section on the upper torso to protect the astronaut if anything were to hit them.
These suits are heavy, Scott said in response to a kid asking how the spacesuits felt. The orange suits for launch and recovery weigh around 50 lbs., but the Extravehicular Mobility Unit used during spacewalks weighs over 300 lbs.
“Now, space is an amazing place, because up there, it doesn't weigh anything, but you still have over 300 lbs. of mass on your body,” Scott said. “You're moving your body mass. You're moving your tools. Physically speaking, the most difficult thing we do [in space] is spacewalking. The suit is big, bulky and cumbersome, and it resists every move that you make. It takes a lot of training and practice and conditioning.”
In response to a question asking Scott’s inspiration for going to space, he said he always looked for new challenges during his position as a naval aviator. The more important reason to him for his spaceflight goes far beyond himself.
"I think we all want to, in some way, contribute to life here on Earth,” Scott said. “The things that we learn in space all benefit each and every one of us on Earth. So many people contribute in different ways. You know, our professors and teachers teach us. Doctors take care of our health. Well, astronauts, the things that we do in space benefit everybody on Earth.”
