April 11, 2026 • 12 mins
A new era of space exploration has begun, after Artemis II successfully splashed down from its journey around the far side of the moon.
The four astronauts returned 'happy and healthy' from their 10 day journey, careening safely down into the Pacific Ocean.
Former NASA scientist Dr Morgan Cable says she was pleased to see the mission went well - even with a few bumps in the road.
"Being able to understand how that can affect the crew, even on this shorter, 10-day mission, can really be helpful for understanding what it means to have a long-term human presence around the moon - or on the way to Mars."
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
It's the dawn of a new era in space exploration.
Early yesterday afternoon, Artemis who completed its ten day mission
around the Dark side of the Moon GABA flashdown waiting
on VLDRE.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Splashdown confirmed at seven oh seven pm Central time five
oh seven pm Pacific time. From the pages of Jules
Verne to a modern day mission to the Moon, a
new chapter of the exploration of our celestial neighbor is complete.
Integrity's astronauts back on Earth.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Humans have now traveled further into space than ever before.
So what is the significance of this mission, what have
we learned, and what does it mean for the future
of space exploration. Dr Morgan Cable is a senior lecturer
at Victoria University. She's also a senior scientist at the
Planetary Science Institute and a former NASA scientist, and she
joins me, now, good morning.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
Mordana, how are you very good?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Thank you, thank you so much for being with us now.
As someone who works so closely in this industry, what's
the feeling like when you see the astronauts safely land
on Earth.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Oh well, I think a lot of the things I
was feeling were echoed by pretty much everyone else on
Earth who was watching. Just supreme relief, joy and just
such a I mean I let out a breast that
I didn't realize that I was holding when I saw
those first dragshoots deploy and then the larger parachutes, And
(01:38):
I mean the two sort of most scary parts of
any crude planetary mission are launch and re entry and landing,
and so to just be able to see them emerge
from that capsule waving and smiling and happy and healthy,
it was such a joyous feeling.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I let out quite a breath when I saw the
separation of the crew and the service modules. It just
sort of just happened on screen. That gave me a
bit of a fright.
Speaker 4 (02:04):
Yeah, that as well. I mean, any of those kind
of major operations where there's no going back once that happened,
and you're just like, well, all right, we're committed, hoping
for the best, and trusting in the engineering and the
designs and everyone who was supporting that mission back here on.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Earth as a novice, as somebody who's not an expert
in this it looked like it all went well, though, Morgan,
it absolutely did.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
I mean couldn't have gone better. If you look at
some of the envelopes for where we expected the performance
of the Orion crew vehicle to be, it was all
within just pretty much dead on the bullseye, as it were,
and we're just so pleased that things went so well.
Of course, there were a few bumps along the way,
the toilet being one of them, but those are problems
(02:52):
that you really can't fully understand until you go and
test the system, which is what the whole point of
Artemis two was so explained.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
To us, what the significance of this mission is.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
There were a couple of things. First and foremost was
essentially just kicking the tires of the entire Orion spacecraft,
seeing how it interacted with the crew, and how the
crew were able to manipulate and move that spacecraft around,
see how it behaved in the space environment. That was
the first and foremost the primary aspect of Artemis too.
(03:25):
But they were also able to do quite a bit
of science on the way as well, a lot of
that involving how the crew, how humans and our bodies
interact and are affected by deep space. So deep space
is what we call anything that's sort of outside of
the Earth orbits where we're sort of partly still protected
in some respects from certain things like radiation environments and
(03:49):
other things that are present as you get further and
further away from our planet, and so being able to
understand how that can affect the crew, even on this
shorter ten day mission, can really be helpful for understanding
what it means to have a long term human presence,
either on the Moon or on the way to Mars,
or on Mars itself.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
What else have we learned from the mission?
Speaker 4 (04:10):
Let's see, Well, we did see a really incredible eclipse,
which was awesome. Being able to have that visibility of
the far side of the Moon not only with human eyes,
but they took some incredible imagery is really important, and
I believe I heard they did catch a couple of
impacts that occurred during that time. Those kinds of scientific
(04:35):
aspects are important as well. But the crew, in addition
to just being able to study them and understand their
physiology and any changes, they were able to conduct a
lot of sort of biomarker immunity studies where the crew
would say, put a piece of essentially just filter paper
(04:56):
in their mouths on occasion, let that saliva sink in,
which contains a lot of sort of immune biomarkers, hormones
and things like that, and then those when they're returned
now can be analyzed to sort of understand any physiological
or immunological changes that are happening during that time and space.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Yeah, it's going to be really interesting, isn't that. I
understand that the astronauts have headed to Houston for their
medical checks. What would you expect to see when it
comes to impacts on the human body after being in
space for ten days?
Speaker 4 (05:29):
Well, ten days is not an incredibly long amount of
time compared to a lot of the stints that astronauts
have spent on the International Space Station, for example. But
there are different radiation effects of being further away from Earth.
There are things like a galactic cosmic rays that we're
not as shielded from as we get closer and closer
(05:50):
to the Moon or are pushing towards that permanent human
presence on the Moon. And while there are some sort
of effects that we can predict, potentially the things that
might you might expect, say the potential risks of cancers
and things like that, but there are certain other effects
that I think we're still trying to understand, and so
(06:10):
being able to study and understand that impact on the
crew firsthand is really going to help us. We have
lots of models and things that we can plug that
data into to understand more broadly and to extend those
timelines out and understand for a long term what that
could potentially mean for astronauts health on some of these
longer missions that are planned.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Well, then for someone like yourself another scientists working in
this field, what does it mean to see this mission
succeed after such a long gap in terms of this
kind of exploration.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
Ah, it's just been so inspirational and moving, and it's
really been just a triumph of engineering, of the human spirit,
and of collaboration and coming together. This was not just
an ASSA mission. This was a strong collaboration with the
Canadian Space Agency and with other partners, and we're looking
(07:03):
I think the future of space involves this goal global collaboration,
not just with different governments but our commercial partners as well.
And so to see this first step taken and perform
so beautifully, I think really sets the stage trust to
continue to build on this success in the future.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
And that's what's grabbed me. The future and where this goes.
What is the ultimate goal here?
Speaker 4 (07:28):
The ultimate goal is establishing a permanent human presence, first
on the Moon and then ultimately further out. I mean,
as Neil de grass Tyson, the famous after physicist, likes
to say, anytime a meteor comes screaming by the Earth,
that's the Universe's way of saying, you know, hey, hey, humans,
how is that space program coming along? You know, at
some point we are at risk, just like the dinosaur's
(07:51):
word about sixty five million years ago, of some sort
of global event happening. And if we can establish ourselves
as more than just a one planet civilization, I think
that'll be a really critical moment in history for us.
That will that will ensure the human race can move
forward together.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Wellgan, what is the timeline? I mean I sort of
heard the NESSA administration you say, say, you know, there's
another mission next to you, twenty twenty eight, we're going
to start building this base on the Moon.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
Yeah, So the plan is this one's Artemis two, Artemist
three is going to happen. I think about mid twenty
twenty seven, and that one is going to be important,
although it won't involve a lunar landing. This one is
going to be testing the interface between the Orion crude
spacecraft and a lunar lander. We currently have a couple
of lunar landers being developed by SpaceX and by Blue Origin,
(08:41):
and so it may test docking either with one or both.
That's still to be determined, but that's next year. And
then after that, Artemis four is going to be the
first lunar landing of the Artemis program, sometime planning I
think for early twenty twenty eight, and they're going to
be planning to land on the south pole of the
Moon and that will be the first step of our
(09:04):
what they're calling phase one, to build, test and learn.
After that we'll be establishing some of the early infrastructure
in Phase two and then ultimately leading to a long
duration human presence in phase three. That's the current plan.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
What is the complication about landing on the Moon, Well.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
There are a few things. First of all, the Moon
has no atmosphere, which means you can't use parachutes to land, right,
There's nothing to provide any drag, So really your only
options are thrusters, and we've seen with some of our
attempts to land commercial lunar payloads that can be tricky,
and so there are some challenges associated with that. The
(09:46):
other things are just where to land and what to
do once you land. Because the Moon is tidally locked
with Earth. That's why we only see the near side
of the Moon. We never get to see the far
side here from Earth. What that means is that on
the Moon, a day lasts about a month, which means
if you wanted to use solar panels, if you were
(10:07):
somewhere on the equator, your solar panels would only work
for about fourteen days, and then they would be dark
for fourteen days, okay, And that's why we're targeting landing
on the poles because then you can have more access
to sunlight for a lot longer. So there are a
lot of challenges that's just associated with how to have
that power. Deal with that either extreme bright light and
heat from the sun when you're facing it, or the
(10:28):
extreme cold when you're not. So there are quite a
few things that the Artemis astronauts are going to have
to face, but I'm sure that they'll be able to
tackle those challenges.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
So Morgan, you tooked us through those phases there. If
we look at it in terms of years, are we
talking about ten, twenty years, thirty years until we see
humans living on the Moon, do you think?
Speaker 4 (10:47):
You know, I'm very confident that we will have humans
back on the Moon soon along the lines of about
that twenty twenty timeline that the administration is baselining. But
it is going to take sustained investment and support to
be able to have that human presence. And I think
that's more than just NASA endeavor. That's going to involve
(11:08):
a lot of support from the international community and from
the commercial side as well. So I hope it happens soon,
but you know, I think time will tell. This is
certainly as they said the first chapter, and I'm really
excited to see where it will lead. And just one
thing that Christina Cook said just recently in their interview,
(11:32):
now that they're back safely at Houston, she talks about
what it means to be a crew, and when they
were up in space looking down at Earth, it struck
her that planet Earth is a crew. That we're all
in this together, and I think the more that we
can achieve together as an international community, is really going
to make that sustain human presence on the moon possible.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Doctor Wilgan Cable, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
For more from the Sunday session with Frandchessica Runken, listen
Lived Newstalks It be from nine am Sunday well follow
the podcast on Iheard Radio
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
It's the dawn of a new era in space exploration.
Early yesterday afternoon, Artemis who completed its ten day mission
around the Dark side of the Moon GABA flashdown waiting
on VLDRE.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Splashdown confirmed at seven oh seven pm Central time five
oh seven pm Pacific time. From the pages of Jules
Verne to a modern day mission to the Moon, a
new chapter of the exploration of our celestial neighbor is complete.
Integrity's astronauts back on Earth.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Humans have now traveled further into space than ever before.
So what is the significance of this mission, what have
we learned, and what does it mean for the future
of space exploration. Dr Morgan Cable is a senior lecturer
at Victoria University. She's also a senior scientist at the
Planetary Science Institute and a former NASA scientist, and she
joins me, now, good morning.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
Mordana, how are you very good?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Thank you, thank you so much for being with us now.
As someone who works so closely in this industry, what's
the feeling like when you see the astronauts safely land
on Earth.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Oh well, I think a lot of the things I
was feeling were echoed by pretty much everyone else on
Earth who was watching. Just supreme relief, joy and just
such a I mean I let out a breast that
I didn't realize that I was holding when I saw
those first dragshoots deploy and then the larger parachutes, And
(01:38):
I mean the two sort of most scary parts of
any crude planetary mission are launch and re entry and landing,
and so to just be able to see them emerge
from that capsule waving and smiling and happy and healthy,
it was such a joyous feeling.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I let out quite a breath when I saw the
separation of the crew and the service modules. It just
sort of just happened on screen. That gave me a
bit of a fright.
Speaker 4 (02:04):
Yeah, that as well. I mean, any of those kind
of major operations where there's no going back once that happened,
and you're just like, well, all right, we're committed, hoping
for the best, and trusting in the engineering and the
designs and everyone who was supporting that mission back here on.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Earth as a novice, as somebody who's not an expert
in this it looked like it all went well, though, Morgan,
it absolutely did.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
I mean couldn't have gone better. If you look at
some of the envelopes for where we expected the performance
of the Orion crew vehicle to be, it was all
within just pretty much dead on the bullseye, as it were,
and we're just so pleased that things went so well.
Of course, there were a few bumps along the way,
the toilet being one of them, but those are problems
(02:52):
that you really can't fully understand until you go and
test the system, which is what the whole point of
Artemis two was so explained.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
To us, what the significance of this mission is.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
There were a couple of things. First and foremost was
essentially just kicking the tires of the entire Orion spacecraft,
seeing how it interacted with the crew, and how the
crew were able to manipulate and move that spacecraft around,
see how it behaved in the space environment. That was
the first and foremost the primary aspect of Artemis too.
(03:25):
But they were also able to do quite a bit
of science on the way as well, a lot of
that involving how the crew, how humans and our bodies
interact and are affected by deep space. So deep space
is what we call anything that's sort of outside of
the Earth orbits where we're sort of partly still protected
in some respects from certain things like radiation environments and
(03:49):
other things that are present as you get further and
further away from our planet, and so being able to
understand how that can affect the crew, even on this
shorter ten day mission, can really be helpful for understanding
what it means to have a long term human presence,
either on the Moon or on the way to Mars,
or on Mars itself.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
What else have we learned from the mission?
Speaker 4 (04:10):
Let's see, Well, we did see a really incredible eclipse,
which was awesome. Being able to have that visibility of
the far side of the Moon not only with human eyes,
but they took some incredible imagery is really important, and
I believe I heard they did catch a couple of
impacts that occurred during that time. Those kinds of scientific
(04:35):
aspects are important as well. But the crew, in addition
to just being able to study them and understand their
physiology and any changes, they were able to conduct a
lot of sort of biomarker immunity studies where the crew
would say, put a piece of essentially just filter paper
(04:56):
in their mouths on occasion, let that saliva sink in,
which contains a lot of sort of immune biomarkers, hormones
and things like that, and then those when they're returned
now can be analyzed to sort of understand any physiological
or immunological changes that are happening during that time and space.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Yeah, it's going to be really interesting, isn't that. I
understand that the astronauts have headed to Houston for their
medical checks. What would you expect to see when it
comes to impacts on the human body after being in
space for ten days?
Speaker 4 (05:29):
Well, ten days is not an incredibly long amount of
time compared to a lot of the stints that astronauts
have spent on the International Space Station, for example. But
there are different radiation effects of being further away from Earth.
There are things like a galactic cosmic rays that we're
not as shielded from as we get closer and closer
(05:50):
to the Moon or are pushing towards that permanent human
presence on the Moon. And while there are some sort
of effects that we can predict, potentially the things that
might you might expect, say the potential risks of cancers
and things like that, but there are certain other effects
that I think we're still trying to understand, and so
(06:10):
being able to study and understand that impact on the
crew firsthand is really going to help us. We have
lots of models and things that we can plug that
data into to understand more broadly and to extend those
timelines out and understand for a long term what that
could potentially mean for astronauts health on some of these
longer missions that are planned.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Well, then for someone like yourself another scientists working in
this field, what does it mean to see this mission
succeed after such a long gap in terms of this
kind of exploration.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
Ah, it's just been so inspirational and moving, and it's
really been just a triumph of engineering, of the human spirit,
and of collaboration and coming together. This was not just
an ASSA mission. This was a strong collaboration with the
Canadian Space Agency and with other partners, and we're looking
(07:03):
I think the future of space involves this goal global collaboration,
not just with different governments but our commercial partners as well.
And so to see this first step taken and perform
so beautifully, I think really sets the stage trust to
continue to build on this success in the future.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
And that's what's grabbed me. The future and where this goes.
What is the ultimate goal here?
Speaker 4 (07:28):
The ultimate goal is establishing a permanent human presence, first
on the Moon and then ultimately further out. I mean,
as Neil de grass Tyson, the famous after physicist, likes
to say, anytime a meteor comes screaming by the Earth,
that's the Universe's way of saying, you know, hey, hey, humans,
how is that space program coming along? You know, at
some point we are at risk, just like the dinosaur's
(07:51):
word about sixty five million years ago, of some sort
of global event happening. And if we can establish ourselves
as more than just a one planet civilization, I think
that'll be a really critical moment in history for us.
That will that will ensure the human race can move
forward together.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Wellgan, what is the timeline? I mean I sort of
heard the NESSA administration you say, say, you know, there's
another mission next to you, twenty twenty eight, we're going
to start building this base on the Moon.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
Yeah, So the plan is this one's Artemis two, Artemist
three is going to happen. I think about mid twenty
twenty seven, and that one is going to be important,
although it won't involve a lunar landing. This one is
going to be testing the interface between the Orion crude
spacecraft and a lunar lander. We currently have a couple
of lunar landers being developed by SpaceX and by Blue Origin,
(08:41):
and so it may test docking either with one or both.
That's still to be determined, but that's next year. And
then after that, Artemis four is going to be the
first lunar landing of the Artemis program, sometime planning I
think for early twenty twenty eight, and they're going to
be planning to land on the south pole of the
Moon and that will be the first step of our
(09:04):
what they're calling phase one, to build, test and learn.
After that we'll be establishing some of the early infrastructure
in Phase two and then ultimately leading to a long
duration human presence in phase three. That's the current plan.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
What is the complication about landing on the Moon, Well.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
There are a few things. First of all, the Moon
has no atmosphere, which means you can't use parachutes to land, right,
There's nothing to provide any drag, So really your only
options are thrusters, and we've seen with some of our
attempts to land commercial lunar payloads that can be tricky,
and so there are some challenges associated with that. The
(09:46):
other things are just where to land and what to
do once you land. Because the Moon is tidally locked
with Earth. That's why we only see the near side
of the Moon. We never get to see the far
side here from Earth. What that means is that on
the Moon, a day lasts about a month, which means
if you wanted to use solar panels, if you were
(10:07):
somewhere on the equator, your solar panels would only work
for about fourteen days, and then they would be dark
for fourteen days, okay, And that's why we're targeting landing
on the poles because then you can have more access
to sunlight for a lot longer. So there are a
lot of challenges that's just associated with how to have
that power. Deal with that either extreme bright light and
heat from the sun when you're facing it, or the
(10:28):
extreme cold when you're not. So there are quite a
few things that the Artemis astronauts are going to have
to face, but I'm sure that they'll be able to
tackle those challenges.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
So Morgan, you tooked us through those phases there. If
we look at it in terms of years, are we
talking about ten, twenty years, thirty years until we see
humans living on the Moon, do you think?
Speaker 4 (10:47):
You know, I'm very confident that we will have humans
back on the Moon soon along the lines of about
that twenty twenty timeline that the administration is baselining. But
it is going to take sustained investment and support to
be able to have that human presence. And I think
that's more than just NASA endeavor. That's going to involve
(11:08):
a lot of support from the international community and from
the commercial side as well. So I hope it happens soon,
but you know, I think time will tell. This is
certainly as they said the first chapter, and I'm really
excited to see where it will lead. And just one
thing that Christina Cook said just recently in their interview,
(11:32):
now that they're back safely at Houston, she talks about
what it means to be a crew, and when they
were up in space looking down at Earth, it struck
her that planet Earth is a crew. That we're all
in this together, and I think the more that we
can achieve together as an international community, is really going
to make that sustain human presence on the moon possible.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Doctor Wilgan Cable, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
For more from the Sunday session with Frandchessica Runken, listen
Lived Newstalks It be from nine am Sunday well follow
the podcast on Iheard Radio
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