Dr. Polanski, a postdoctoral researcher at Lowell Observatory, explains how scientists at Lowell are carrying on that legacy, providing education and outreach to the Artemis Generation!
Host | Matthew S Williams
For more podcast Stories from Space with Matthew S Williams, visit: https://itspmagazine.com/stories-from-space-podcast
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Episode Notes
From Apollo to Artemis: What Lowell Observatory Knows About Going Back to the Moon
Fifty years is a long time to forget how to do something. That is, more or less, where NASA stood when Artemis 1 left the pad — and where it stands now, with Artemis 2 having put humans beyond low Earth orbit for the first time in half a century. The institutional memory had thinned. The people who built Apollo had moved on, retired, or passed away. The books, as Dr. Alex Polanski puts it in this episode, had to be dusted off.
Polanski, a Percival Lowell postdoctoral fellow at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, joins host Matt to talk about what Artemis 2 actually proved, and why Lowell — an observatory better known for its exoplanet work and its founder's obsession with Mars — has always sat closer to crewed spaceflight than most people realize. The nine Apollo astronauts trained on the volcanic terrain of northern Arizona. They studied lunar maps made at Lowell. They walked the same ground tourists walk today, in the shadow of the Clark refractor.
The conversation moves from the geology of the Moon's Highlands and Maria to the meteorite work of Dr. Nick Moskowitz, the mapping happening at the USGS office down the road, and the longer question behind all of it: is the Moon a stepping stone to Mars, or a detour? Polanski makes the case for the stepping stone — not out of caution, but because there are things we don't yet know we need to know, and a one-second light delay is a much more forgiving classroom than a twenty-minute one.
And then there's what comes next. Radio telescopes in the craters of the far side, shielded from Earth's noise. Optical interferometers spread across lunar real estate, free of the atmospheric wobble that makes ground-based astronomy feel, in Polanski's words, like reading a note card at the bottom of a pool. For the first time, the possibility of actually seeing the surfaces of other stars.
Percival Lowell saw canals on Mars that weren't there. He may have been looking at the veins in his own eye. A century later, his observatory is helping figure out how to look at the real thing.
🎙️ Guest: Dr. Alex Polanski, Lowell Observatory 🌐 lowell.edu
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Resources
Dr. Alex Polanski's Twitter
https://x.com/AlexNeedsSpace
Dr. Alex Polanski's company
https://x.com/LowellObs
Dr. Alex Polanski's LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-polanski-9ba397113/
Dr. Alex Polanski's Facebook profile
https://www.facebook.com/alex.polanski.3
Moon to Mars / NASA's Artemis Program
https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/artemis/
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For more podcast Stories from Space with Matthew S Williams, visit: https://itspmagazine.com/stories-from-space-podcast
The authors acknowledge that this podcast was recorded on the traditional unceded lands of the
Lekwungen peoples. Hello, and welcome back to Stories from Space. Today, I have a special
guest all the way from Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, Dr. Alex Polanski, who is a
Lowell astronomer, and here today to talk to us about the Artemis program and Lowell's long
history of assisting lunar missions. And what comes after? Dr. Polanski, welcome aboard. Hi,
thanks, Matt.
Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. In any case, I wonder if you could tell us a little bit
about yourself and your role at the Lowell Observatory.
And of course, then I got a slew of questions all about the Artemis mission. And did you happen
to see the launch, the landing, and the highlights? Yep, watched it all from Lowell campus.
It was great. Excellent, yes. Very emotionally involved, which is how I would describe my own
experience of it and my wife's.
So yes, getting back to you.
[Speaker 1]
Tell us about yourself. Yeah, so I'm an astronomer. I'm a Percival Lowell postdoctoral fellow,
which means I am doing work after getting my doctorate.
That technically needs a title, even though all work I do now is work that I do after my doctorate,
technically speaking. But so I don't study the moon, but I study planets around other stars. So
exoplanets, we know about 6,000, over 6,000 of them so far, and we're still finding more.
So a lot of my work at the observatory is about finding new planets, figuring out what they're like,
and understanding what implications that has for us here in the solar system on planets that we
know the best.
[Speaker 2]
Well, that is another really, really fertile topic. Can we maybe just scooch some time in at the end
for that? Anyway, so today tell us a bit about Artemis 2 and as part of the Artemis program, right,
setting the context of it.
Just what was the significance of this mission?[Speaker 1]
Yeah, so this has been the culmination of a lot of sort of starts and stops with NASA with trying to
get back to the moon. I mean, it's been nearly over 50 years since we have sent someone into,
you know, anywhere in the vicinity of the moon out that far beyond low-Earth orbit. And so it's
really, you know, Artemis 1 was a great test that, you know, we have the rocket, we have the pod,
we know we can do this.
But, you know, the big, big test is, you know, can we send humans and safely get them back to
Earth? And I think that's a massive achievement because once you've, you know, made that step,
everything else, you know, you start having momentum to be able to do the other exciting stuff
like actually landing on the moon again and potentially setting up long-term presence on the
moon, which a lot of people think is a really necessary stepping stone to getting to other planets,
potentially, one day, like Mars.
So it's a huge achievement. It's really a testament to the due diligence that NASA does to try to
make these missions a success the first time, which is really important when you're when you're
throwing humans up on the top of that rocket.
[Speaker 2]
Absolutely, yes. And that was exactly what was going through my mind. Both missions now,
Artemis 1 and 2.
There have been a lot of public criticism and cynicism about the delays and so forth and whether
or not this is ever going to happen. But yes, I kind of feel like NASA got a I told you so moment
there.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, two times now. Maybe my side of the debate also has, but I would also probably say that
there's as many people saying, well, why are we going to the moon again as there are, why did it
take so long to get to the moon again? So, you know, hopefully minds are being changed
because it's it's hard to imagine why we would do that without seeing seeing it up close personal,
seeing it actually happen.
So, yeah, it's a really great moment to be in, honestly.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, and I love that question, too. Why did it take this long? That was actually the subject of my
very first episode on the show.
Anyway, so a little bit about Lowell's lunar legacy. It was involved, it played a very direct role inpreparing astronauts to go to the moon with the Apollo program and reading about it was very
fascinating stuff. So can you give the listeners a bit of a summary?
[Speaker 1]
So Lowell's laboratory sits on the, you know, the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau up in
northern Arizona, an interesting area geologically. People don't actually know this very
commonly, but there's a lot of craters in northern Arizona. They're not impact craters, except one
of them critically is a meteor crater just just east of Flagstaff where the observatory is located, but
there's a lot of volcanic terrain.
And so it was an interesting sort of counterpoint and test bed for understanding how we're going
to, you know, behave on the moon, do science on the moon. And Lowell played a really central
part in that in giving the astronauts sort of an up-close and personal experience with the moon
before they actually went there. So a lot of lunar mapping was sort of done at Lowell Observatory
and the astronauts got to come to Lowell many times to, you know, understand intimately the the
surface features that they will be seeing up close and personal and not too distant future for
them.
[Speaker 2]
Hmm. Yeah, in fact, the volcanic terrain, is that not, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's similar to
the Lunar Highlands, isn't it?
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, so in a way, the moon has a really interesting volcanic history. So the Lunar Highlands are
what we think of as sort of older areas of the lunar surface, whereas the darker areas, the maria,
what Galileo sort of interpreted as seas, which is the direct translation of maria. But those are
actually, he was sort of right.
He was on the right track. It just wasn't oceans of water, but oceans of magma at one point.
Those are large oil, not oil, lava flows.
And so you can actually see the stratification of time on the lunar surface, even just with your eye,
which is really, really incredible. And so the environment of well, northern Arizona was really an
important and convenient place to sort of do that training to understand, you know, geologically,
maybe not geolunarology, you know, what are they going to be looking at and what are they
going to be trying to understand? Because you have this incredible opportunity.
I'm not a planetary scientist, but there's plenty of planetary scientists at Lowell Observatory who
study objects, primarily in the solar system, and what they wouldn't do to get an in-situ sample of
whatever they're studying. And so you're going through all this expense to send two people to the
surface of the moon a handful of times. You want them to know exactly what they're looking forand be able to do the test that they need to do, figure out what they need to bring back that'll be
most scientifically useful, because they're not there for all that long.
[Speaker 2]
Maybe the Apollo moon rocks, for example. Yeah, exactly. Still providing detailed science returns,
I think that's really quite cool.
Yes, so in fact, it was the nine Apollo astronauts, they came to the Lowell Observatory to do that
training and study maps that the observatory created about the lunar terrain. So tell us about, in
terms of the Artemis program, now, Artemis 2 has set the stage for what was going to be the
lunar landing. That was originally Artemis 3.
And Isaacman recently announced that, in fact, they're going to do an additional step there,
where they're going to do a rendezvous in orbit with the human landing system. It'll be interesting
to see which one that is.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, the race is on.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah. And so, yeah, Artemis 4 by 2028. Now, what role has Lowell played in preparing the
Artemis astronauts for going back?
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, that's a really good question. I mean, so a lot of planetary science is still being done here
at Lowell. We are actively studying near-Earth objects.
For example, Dr. Nick Moskowitz, he has a meteorite program, so understanding and trying to
find meteorites as they come into the Earth's atmosphere from deep space to be able to not just
have an idea of how many, you know, how much debris is coming into our atmosphere onto the
Earth, but also to be able to try to find it as well. You really want to be able to find these
meteorites when they're on the ground. And so you could actually study them and understand
their composition.
And so a lot of, you know, for a while, that's been our best way of getting in-situ samples of
bodies that are not on Earth. And so work like that is going to be really essential for prepping
Artemis astronauts for figuring out what they're actually going to be looking for. And hopefully
they'll be able to think a little more long term about what geological features will be important.
And, you know, even a couple minute drive from Lowell is the USGS Solar System MappingDivision in Flagstaff, whose job is to make really good maps of a lot of solar system bodies. And
so all of Flagstaff, really, including Northern Arizona University, is really contributing to the prep
knowledge that Artemis astronauts are going to need when they finally land on the surface again.
[Speaker 2]
Seeing some of those maps, and they are, good thing if not richly detailed.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, it makes me jealous. I really wish I could see my exoplanets directly, but they have the fun
job.
[Speaker 2]
So the Lowell Observatory also has a number of immersive exhibits, as they're called. And one of
them does, in fact, address the role that the Lowell Observatory played in astronaut training for
Apollo. And you've got a bunch of others.
And for people who are actually able to visit there, I strongly recommend you guys go see this
and tell me about it so I can get some vicarious enjoyment from you. Because I don't know when
I'm going to be able to get down there.
[Speaker 1]
You're always welcome down at NASA, let me know.
[Speaker 2]
Thank you. Yeah. In fact, one jumped out at me, which was One Step Beyond, because the title
alone really sells it.
But that is about the Artemis and the next step, which is, of course, going to Mars. And what can
you tell me about that? Because I am rather eager to see that one.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, so like I said before, being able to get out of low Earth orbit and get to the moon is a huge
stepping stone. We're going to learn a lot of the moon. We're going to learn, relearn a lot of the
things that we actually forgot in the intervening half century between Artemis and Apollo, which is
really important because we had this critical amount of knowledge just off of the Apollo program,
which meant that if we really had put our minds to it, we probably could have gone to Mars.
But a lot of people have moved on, retired. That knowledge base has been sort of eroded away
and there's cobwebs everywhere. And so now we're dusting off the books, essentially, andfiguring out how to do this deep space stuff again.
And so the Artemis program will be incredibly useful for that. There's a saying, once you get into
low Earth orbit or get out of low Earth orbit, you're sort of 99 percent of the way to anywhere.
Getting out of Earth's gravity well is really the hardest part.
But it's hard for people to realize the sort of vast distances in space. Going to Mars is, you know,
a couple of orders of magnitude of a greater challenge than going just around the moon and back
to Earth. And so it's going to be sort of this cislunar space, the area between the moon and Earth,
moon orbit, possibly on the surface as well, is going to be really the big training ground for that.
And Lowell Observatory has had a huge history, not just with the Apollo missions, but just going
back all the way to its start with Percival Lowell, who was fascinated by the planet Mars, so much
so that he maybe went a bit too much into the deep end with these canals on Mars, ideas of
civilizations that are dying and trying to, you know, get resources from the pole down to where the
cities would have been in the mid part of the planet. And so Mars has always been sort of a
central object in Lowell lore, and it's probably going to continue to be with people trying to study it.
[Speaker 2]
Yes, it was. It was very fascinating stuff that he did there. And to be fair to him, that was a popular
opinion among scientists at the time.
There's definitely something going on there.
[Speaker 1]
And he also had similar observations of Venus, actually, which is interesting. And the
explanations for those are also really fascinating. Possible that he may have been constricting the
pupil of the telescope so much that he was actually seeing the veins in his eyes being projected
into the image.
So, you know, these old, you know, if you go and visit Lowell Observatory, we have a Clark
refractor, which is this massive, you know, steampunk-esque refracting telescope. It's our sort of
showpiece of the main thing at the observatory to see before the ADC, the Astronomy Discovery
Center was built, of course. But, you know, those instruments are amazing to look through, but
I'm really happy we have things like cameras and CCDs so we can trust but verify is the adage of
the time now.
[Speaker 2]
Well, what other exhibits do you have there? Because I also understand you've got a rooftop
planetarium and a bunch of.[Speaker 1]
Yeah, we have a dark side planetarium. It is essentially what you would expect as a planetarium,
except that we have taken the dome off. So people familiar with going to planetariums, you know,
you go and you sit in these nice reclining seats and a projector, very fancy projector will project
constellations and the moon on this domed projector screen.
So we took the we took the roof off because Flagstaff, of course, is a one of the first, the first dark
sky city. And so we have exquisite light pollution control. And so we have really, really good night
skies.
You know, I can go, I can drive two minutes in town and find a spot where I can actually see the
Milky Way in summer, which is amazing. And so that's one of the best parts of the new
Astronomy Discovery Center is, you know, you have this open sky planetarium. So members of
the of the public staff can, you know, not just project and show you a fake star, but show you the
real one that we're talking about.
And even better is the seats are heated. And I like to say that the building has a better trim
package than my car.
[Speaker 2]
So a very basic question for you now. We've heard now for several decades NASA's mission
architecture has been the moon to Mars. And of course, you've got the people on the opposite
side of it there, such as Robert Zubrin, who are saying, no, Mars Direct, that's the way to go.
So. And this, of course, you know, I am asking for your personal opinion here and you may be
limited in what you you can say, but yes. How is the moon to Mars architecture, how is going to
the moon, back to the moon to stay, ultimately going to get us to Mars?
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, that's a really good question. So there's obviously a ton of debate about what you should
do. Should you just go direct to Mars or, you know, screw around at the moon for a bit and then
and then go back?
I think I think at the end of the day, you do kind of need to figure out what you're doing in at the
moon or at the very least in, you know. A much larger space station in low Earth orbit, the ISS is
certainly aging, but, you know, the light travel time delay between here and the moon is about a
second. It's much longer at Mars.
You have to be you have to have a level of autonomous capabilities in your crew to be able to
make a Mars mission work. And I think we just need more experience out in low Earth orbit,
because I think there are things that we are going to low Earth orbit and in and in cislunar space.I think there's just more that we need that we have.
There's things that we know, there's things that we know that we don't know, and there's things
that we don't know that we don't even know. And, you know, going 350 million miles out to
another body, we're going to start learning things that we didn't even know we had to know in the
first place really quick. And so I think it I think it is a rational decision to, you know, figure out, dip
our toes into the water around the moon and then really reach out and try to try to get to Mars.
[Speaker 2]
Absolutely. So, in fact, this this was part of NASA's planning. I remember seeing it, their sort of
three phase idea, low Earth orbit, the moon and cislunar space and then to Mars.
And number two, that it was called grooving ground, which basically it's this is how we test all the
technologies we're going to be using out there in deep space. And yes, once we're bound to
another physical body. So is Lowell, as far as you know, is it scheduled or slated to play a role in
the eventual, let's call them Ares missions, which could be happening in the next day, next
decade or possibly the 2040s?
Is there any plan in place for helping to train the Ares astronauts?
[Speaker 1]
So at the moment, I'm not currently aware of any concrete plan to help train potential Ares
missions. But the work that we do in terms of planetary science, understanding these bodies in a
remote sense, whether it be through large telescopes here down on Earth, like at the Lowell
Discovery Telescope, which is just a couple of hours south of Flagstaff, or through our scientists
and astronomers' involvement with remote missions, such as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
or something like that. This is all necessary lay work that we have to do to be able to understand
the environment at Mars.
And while maybe we're not going to be helping out the Mars astronauts out in the Mars field, but
the information that we're gathering right now is going to be incredibly important to the success of
those potential missions. But aside from just the science bit, I mean, we are also a world-class
public outreach facility and educating the public about space, about our solar system, about the
ways we do science. And so once Artemis might become old news and we're starting to think
about our moves towards Mars, we're going to be right there at the front lines, so to speak, saying
this is going to be an exciting thing and this is why you need to be paying attention to it.
And, you know, telling your congressmen and congresspeople to actually support it.
[Speaker 2]
In fact, I want to mention that, yes, to the listeners, mapping here is very key, especially given thelevel of, as you said, autonomy that's going to be required for Mars missions. They need to know
where to land because they need to use the local resources. And the brass ring of that is, can we
land somewhere where there's ready access to water?
And yeah, subsurface water too, especially around the mid-latitudes. Oh, you got to have it. It's
fascinating stuff to see that too.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, you can't keep recycling your urine eventually. That doesn't work.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah. And so getting back to Artemis for a moment here, the, you mentioned starts and stops of
which I'm, yeah, I'm relatively familiar with how that worked, having covered the NASA's plan for
going back to the moon, then on to Mars there for over a decade, yes, there were a lot of
disappointing developments along the way. And do you, yes, do you know what the current status
of the gateway is?
Because it faced cancellation, but apparently they fought, pushed back against that. But now
NASA is talking about building a base on the surface. So, yes, it has been rather curious that
way, but in terms of what the Artemis program has accomplished so far, I mean, I think people
would agree that it's on track now.
It's really, really proven their mettle. So, yes, the next few missions, what, what are we likely to
see? Aside from just, as mentioned, the rendezvous in orbit and then going to the lunar surface?
What kind of operation do you think?
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, so I think that's definitely going to be, you know, once we do the rendezvous in orbit, figure
out what we're going to do, you know, what landing vehicle are we actually going to use? And
then actually, you know, going to the surface again, you know, the world of possibilities really,
you know, opens up significantly with what you can start doing on the moon. Once you can get
there and reliably get there, you can start doing a lot of really interesting activities, you know,
whether or not that is, you know, building some sort of orbiting space station around the moon to
make actually going down to the moon a little more of a regular thing, you don't have to, you
know, get into cislunar orbit with your, you know, bring your landing vehicle with you, we could
just keep recycling.
Landing vehicles over and over again, which make things quite a bit easier. You know, I certainly
learned that in Kerbal Space Program, that's for sure. But, you know, there's also interesting
opportunities for astronomy on the moon, there have been, there have been people who haveproposed that building things like radio telescopes in the craters of some lunar craters would be
incredibly useful, because, especially on the far side of the moon, you know, you start blocking a
lot of the, the radio noise that is coming from Earth, because we have a civilization on the
surface. And so, you know, building a radio, giant radio telescope in, in, on a, you know, far side
of the moon crater would be absolutely incredible thing for radio astronomers. I know there are
people who are thinking about building interferometers on the surface of the moon, because there
is no real atmosphere.
That's actually the, you know, I'm really happy that I can breathe, don't get me wrong, but actually
one of the most annoying things about doing astronomy is the fact that we have this really wobbly
atmosphere. It's like trying to, it's like trying to read a, you know, a note card at the bottom of a
pool. The, the light gets distorted, and it's really hard to actually, you know, make out clearly what
you're looking at.
And the atmosphere has that exact same effect on stars that I'm trying to look at. And so people
want to go to the moon to set up what we call interferometers, which is a really fancy way of
building a very large telescope with a lot of very small telescopes. We do this for radio astronomy
all the time.
That's how we imaged the first, you know, got the first real image of a black hole, not only in our
own galaxy, but in another galaxy nearby. Just by combining the signals from, you know,
individual radio telescopes around the world, we were able to make an effective telescope about
the size of the Earth. And when you're talking about astronomy, size, unfortunately, does matter
in most cases.
And, you know, you want a bigger bucket, but making a bigger bucket can be expensive if you
want to make the whole bucket. And so what some people want to do, what people are currently
doing here on Earth is doing sort of small scale optical interferometry. So for a wide variety of
reasons, it's a lot easier to do this technique in radio light, as opposed to optical light.
But people have been doing it here on Earth, outside of Los Angeles at Mount Wilson, there's a
Chara array. But then there's also the VLT down in Chile. But people really are excited about this
idea of putting interferometers on the moon, because hypothetically, you would need much
smaller individual telescopes in order to actually get really good resolution on the sky, because
you have eliminated the atmosphere, and you can, you know, it's the moon, there's real estate for
days, you can kind of just, you know, put these telescopes really far apart, nothing's really going
to affect them, there's no weather on the moon, really, to speak, there's a little bit of dust, but, you
know, if there's, if you see dust, you just kind of close the shutter of the telescope, which is quite
easy. And so with this, we can actually start seeing the surfaces of other stars, which is
incredible, we've been starting to do this with really massive giant stars that are quite nearby, but
you really want to be able to actually see the surface of, you know, sort of nearby some like stars,
which is going to be really exciting, because, you know, we still only see them as points of light.[Speaker 2]
Yes, and in fact, I was going to mention one other thing that on the far side of the moon, there are
micrometeoroids and little impactors, but you can close the shutter for that too, right? Yeah, yeah,
exactly. And in fact, Artemis 2, that came up there, when they were observing the far side of the
moon, they were seeing flashes, and yes, that information, it's going to come in really handy, that
and other mapping observation things on the far side, it's going to come in really handy for
knowing when and where these impacts happen, so that, yeah, telescopes, when they're built
there, can actually know when to close their shutters, and just wait for the rain to end, basically,
right?
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, exactly, just like we do down here on Earth, except slightly more consequences if
something hits you.
[Speaker 2]
Yes. So, to wrap up on the Artemis program, it seems really obvious here, it being a stepping
stone to Mars, that's clear how that works and what's going on there, but there is just a ton of
science investigations and exploration, it's like going to the moon to stay, just all on its own,
seems like a really worthy endeavor. And, yeah, so yes, hopefully, we've got two missions
scheduled for the next two years, and, yeah, my fingers, everything that I could possibly cross is
crossed right now, wanting to see that succeed.
[Speaker 1]
And it's not just going to be like a wealth of scientific data, although it absolutely will, it's going to
be incredible, but it's also like another source of inspiration, which I think we've sort of been really
long overdue since the end of, say, the shuttle program, like I got to look up at the moon for the
first time and know that there are other humans in that field of view, there are other humans at
that body, which is something I've never been able to experience before, it's something my dad
got to experience, and he keeps talking about it, about how he didn't think he would actually see
a second time that he could actually have that experience. And so, you know, this is, you know,
every, this is something that the late and great Carl Sagan said is that, you know, every time, this
is, I think, an almost direct quote, every time humanity stretches itself, it gets this jolt of productive
vitality.
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