S1: Welcome in San Diego. It's Jade Hindman. On today's show , we're talking about a family friendly event at the Air and Space Museum to watch Artemis Two's splash landing. This is KPBS Midday Edition , connecting our communities through conversation. So we've now seen parts of the moon no human has ever seen before. And that's thanks to the four person crew of NASA's Artemis two mission , along with plenty of other scientists here at home on Earth. It's a story many of us have been following over the past week , marking humanity's return to the moon after more than 50 years. Well , here in San Diego , we are well over the moon and excited to welcome the Artemis two back down to Earth on Friday. They'll be splashing down right off San Diego's coast , The San Diego Air and Space Museum has plenty of plans to celebrate. Joining me now is David Neville. He's communications director for the museum. David , welcome to midday Edition.
S2: Well , thank you , Jade , thank you very much for having me.
S1: So glad to have you here. So this ten day moon mission is really just capturing attention all around the world.
S2: The first was not just to prove that we can go to the moon again. Of course , that was important , but it was to test out the systems on all the different the space capsule , the rocket , the communication systems , the telemetry , the navigation , the life support systems on this to test those systems for when we go back to deep space again and we get better at it , going further , farther and better at it in the future. So we're out there for longer and so that we can study all of how those systems work and then how they interact with the astronauts themselves and how their bodies react during being into deeper space , because that's really the goal. Moving forward is to go into deeper space , eventually go back to the moon , stand on the moon , set up settlements , and then use that as a jumping point , eventually to go to Mars.
S1: Set up settlements.
S2: The reason they want to go to the South Pole is there's some very , very deep craters on the South Pole where they believe there's ice , which ice leads to water , and water leads to life , to oxygen , and potentially for fuel for future space missions. So that is definitely one of the goals moving forward.
S1: Very interesting. I , I could have a whole show on that alone , but many of us have seen those remarkable photos of the moon.
S2: Yes , Apollo astronauts went there , but they were much closer to the moon when they went by. This flight was further away. There were as much as 4 to 6000 miles away at their closest. They were a little over 4000 miles. So these astronauts were able to see both poles of the moon from the far side for the first time ever. And so they've got better cameras , better video cameras. They've been able to make these amazing observations of part of the moon that human eyes had never seen before. Of course , you know , robotic photos , images those are important , but there's nothing more important than seeing it with human eyes and getting those reactions so they can recognize different things that they had never seen before , that we've never seen before. And then they can interpret that and then get that information back to the scientists , back to Earth , so they can look at that information , analyze that , to look forward to see. Hey , where are the best places to search for on the the dark side of the moon ? The far side in future expeditions.
S1: What does it say to you about our planet , about Earth that we are that.
S2: Wow. Right. It blue and white and occasional browns and greens. And they're looking back. And here's this , you know , blue marble out in space with the blackness of space behind it. And so they thought to themselves how fragile that is. So part of this mission has been looking and see , you know , it's important to have the life support systems for the astronauts in the spacecraft. But it's also looking at , okay. Earth is our life support system. This is how we want to , like , cherish it , take care of it. This is what we need to do moving forward.
S1: Well , NASA expects the crew of Artemis to splashdown off San Diego's coast this Friday.
S2: Mm. Um , they're they're splashing down 50 miles off the coast in between San Clemente Island and Santa Catalina Island. It's probably you're not going to be able to see it. And if you are , again , you'll need to be on the coast and maybe a little bit further north in North County , San Diego , You'll see it for probably 30 to 45 , maybe to a minute. There's a little fireball before the initial parachutes deploy. Um , the best views of it will be on NASA's live stream. That'll be taken from planes that are in the air , flying around , waiting for this to arrive before it actually splashes down in the ocean. They'll have good video of that as best they can. Right ? Because it's , you know , very technically , very challenging. Um , but it's all the whole event itself is once they get into the water is also very interesting.
S1:
S2: Like I said , it's going to be about 50 miles off the coast. There will of course be a perimeter set up by the Navy , uh , for the safety of everybody involved , for the recovery team , for the astronauts and the space capsule , and of course , for anybody that's out there in a boat , they won't want you to get too close. Uh , interesting note , the last time there was a splashdown off the coast of San Diego. What really caught me by surprise. The what ? The capsule is floating around in the ocean , and then all of a sudden , there's a pod of dolphins going up and. Yeah. And they're very curiously looking at it and say , hey , welcome to our neighborhood. Welcome home. Uh , so maybe hopefully something like this happens again.
S1: It's like they're checking in. Is everybody okay ? Exactly.
S2: Wow.
S1: Wow. Well , just to get a sense , I mean , what will be happening inside the ship as they make their descent toward Earth.
S2: So they're going to be experiencing something that very few people have ever experienced in their lives. It's a very small group of people that have traveled 25,000 miles an hour. It's very difficult to replicate other than coming back from the moon. They're going to be doing that speed 25,000 miles an hour when they hit the atmosphere. And so they'll go through the atmosphere. They will slow down while they're going through the atmosphere. And they'll be , you know , feeling a lot of G's outside their spacecraft will be 5000°F. Wow. It'll be still. Yeah. They'll be seeing flames outside their windows. When they get through the atmosphere. They'll still be going very fast , but they will be slowed down when the initial drogue shoots. Two great big , huge parachutes. Uh , slow them down. They'll deploy. They'll slow them down to 307 miles an hour , which is still very fast. You're still , you know , screaming through the air. And then eventually , after a little while , the three pilot parachutes will replace those drogue parachutes , slow them down to 17 miles an hour. So when they splash down into the ocean , they'll splash down at 17 miles an hour , depending on the waves , depending on the seas. They could be getting floating around pretty good , you know. So it gets a little topsy turvy in there. They've been at zero gravity up until they got into the Earth's gravity for quite some time. So there have been some instances in the past where that's been kind of a rough ride. Once you're in the water for the astronauts , hopefully this is going to be very smooth for them. Everybody reacts differently to them , and they won't know for sure until they experience it themselves again. Um , but at the same time , an amazing experience , something that only a handful of people have experienced in , uh , you know , history of the world and something I'm sure they'll talk about for the rest of their lives.
S1:
S2: They'll be assisted by medical personnel first. They'll open up the capsule to come in , check on everybody , make sure everybody's doing okay. Then they'll be assisted out one by one onto , um , litters , basically seats that they'll be able to , gurneys that they'll be able to sit up. You know , give a thumbs up and then they'll be checked out by more medical personnel on the ship than they will be flown by helicopters from the US Navy that are based here at North Island. Flown back to North Island. Checked out again. Some more for medical personnel. You know , I'm sure they'll go to the infirmary for a little while , and then they'll. When , however long it takes for them to recover enough for the four of them to get on a plane. They'll fly from San Diego to the Johnson Space Center in Houston , where they'll continue to go under medical evaluation for quite some time. Interesting.
S1: Interesting. So over at the San Diego Air and Space Museum , you're hosting a splashdown watch party. And that's happening Friday.
S2: The start time for the splashdown party is 4 p.m.. The splashdown itself is scheduled for 5:07 p.m.. We're encouraging people to come early. Um , we are open all day at the museum. We're encouraging people to come early simply because parking might be a little bit of a challenge. We're going to have all sorts of fun activities for kids all around the pavilion and throughout the museum. Things like stomp rockets and just basically hands on activities for them to say , okay , this is what it takes to live in space. These are kind of the things that go along with that. So it's going to be really fun for kids. Then we're going to have the live feed on in our pavilion and in monitors around the museum showing , uh , NASA's feed for the actual splashdown , and that's always a very exciting event and very it's just kind of amazing and awe inspiring. So that's going to be something really good for families , for everybody to get together , enjoy. See all those things then after the splashdown itself will stay open for a while. We want to watch the recovery efforts just like everybody else. We want to see eventually the astronauts getting out of the space capsule , depending how long that takes. There's no timeline. It's just however it works out on that particular day. But we're really looking forward to it. We can't wait to welcome everybody into the museum to enjoy this historic event with us.
S1: Yeah , it sounds like it's going to be a lot of fun , and it's just so inspiring in the sense that this makes everyone realize that their imagination can actually be real.
S2: And if you listen to the astronauts from this read Wiseman , Victor Glover , Christina Cook , and Jeremy Henson , they will all tell you as kids , this is something they dreamed of. And so you've heard it in their voices , the reports back to Earth about. They can't believe they get to do this. They can't believe that they're the ones that get to go to the moon. See all these things , experience all these things , and they've done this magnificent , magnificent job of sharing the human feelings that they're experiencing back with everybody here on Earth , which I really think that that's resonated with everybody that's been watching it.
S1: Well , yeah , absolutely. Well , listen , you can find all of these details about the Watch Party and more on our website , pbs.org. I've been speaking with David Neville. He's communications director for the San Diego Air and Space Museum. David , thank you so much.
S2: Thank you. Thank you very much.
S3: And thank you.
S1: That's our show for today. I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
