Journey to Mars: NASA's Artemis Program and Future Missions

Woody Hoberg emphasizes the importance of establishing a sustained human presence on the Moon to prepare for Mars exploration.

### Journey to Space: Insights from an Astronaut's Experience
* 🚀 "The path to becoming an astronaut is **not clear**," reflects Woody Hoberg, who shares his journey from Earth to the International Space Station (ISS) after **22 years of experience** in space.
* 🌕 With the goal of establishing a **sustained human presence on the Moon** and a **Proving Ground for Mars**, Hoberg emphasizes the challenges of **living and working in the unforgiving environment of space**.
* 🛰 The ISS, which began with a crew launch in 2000, has evolved significantly, now weighing **a million pounds** and orbiting Earth at **250 miles**, completing a full orbit every **90 minutes**.
* 🚀 The retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011 led to reliance on Russian rockets until SpaceX's historic **Crew Dragon launch in May 2020**, which marked a **new era for sending astronauts to the ISS**.
* 👨 Hoberg's own mission aboard Crew Dragon Endeavor included a **close call with a launch scrub** but ultimately led to a **successful six-month stay on the ISS**, where he participated in various scientific experiments, including **studying heart tissue in weightlessness**.
* 🛠 The daily routine involved maintenance tasks, exercise, and even fun activities like playing chess with Mission Control, showcasing the **balance between work and leisure** in space.
* 🌌 As NASA prepares for the Artemis missions, Hoberg highlights the **importance of establishing a base on the Moon** to facilitate future missions to Mars, with Artemis 2 scheduled for a **crewed flight in fall 2025** and Artemis 3 aiming for a **lunar landing in 2026**.
* 🌍 The excitement of space exploration continues as new missions, like the Polaris Mission, push the **boundaries of human presence in space**, with Hoberg expressing pride in the **collaborative spirit among astronauts** and the broader goal of **advancing human exploration beyond Earth**.

the path to becoming an astronaut is not clear. The path was not clear for me either, Dave Fredberg. This is Woody Hoberg calling you from the International Space Station. How do you hear me? Hey Woody, I hear you well. How are you? 22 years of experience living and working in space. We have learned so much, and so what that sets us up to do now is to go further. Space is hard; it just is hard. It's not a forgiving place. We intend to set up a sustained human presence on the moon, and we're going to set up a Proving Ground to go to Mars. Thank you so much; it is such an honor to be here. I'm going to start with a bit of history. The left photo is one of the last moments in recorded human history when all living humans were on Earth. This was October 31st of the year 2000 at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and the crew of Expedition One launched up to the International Space Station. It was just three modules.

at that time, and they started a continuous human presence in space that continues today. By 2011, the ISS was assembled and looked roughly like this. Humans live in the pressurized modules running front to back in this photo, and the truss running left to right is unpressurized, so only accessible by Space Walk. ISS is solar-powered. On an average workday, it consumes about 75 kilowatts. It is a million pounds of mass in low Earth orbit. It's about 250 miles above Earth. To stay in that orbit, it has to travel 5 miles every second, so that works out to a 90-minute orbit. We see 16 Sun and 16 sunsets every day. Now, in 2011, when the space shuttle retired, it left us our only option to continue sending humans up to the space station was a Russian rocket. That situation changed in May of 2020. SpaceX made history. They launched NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on a test flight of the Crew Dragon.

spacecraft, and at that time, the world was just two months in grappling with the pandemic. Allin had just published episode three. Bob and Doug spent two months on the space station before they successfully returned. And I didn't know it at the time, but I would eventually fly on crew Dragon Endeavor, which is the same capsule as Bob and Doug. Less than a year later, I was assigned to be the pilot for the crew 6 Mission up to the ISS. And so, my crew, from left to right: on the left, Russian cosmonaut Andre Fidth, Commander Steve Bowen, myself flying as pilot, and then Sultan Aladi, who was the first UAE astronaut to do a long-duration Mission, six months on the ISS. We actually scrubbed our very first launch attempt. We got within 2 and a half minutes of launch, and we had an issue with the system that ignites our engines. And so, um, we had to scrub. We got all the fuel off the vehicle, and 3 days later, we were ready to try.

again ready for an on-time launch for the instant 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 engine full power and lift-off you're on your back you lift off at about one and a half [Applause] G's station pitching down R 1.7 Million by the time all the fuel burns out you're up about 4 and 2 Gs and then we stage this is the second stage engine and again it starts off with only a little bit of acceleration it builds up to about 4 and 1/2 GS there you can see on your screen confirmation Dragon separation confirmed and so 12 minutes after launch you're in space this is where we experienced weightlessness for the first time and we took about a day like 24 hours to to do all the phasing up to the ISS for me the ISS had been this place that I trained about it's kind of an abstract object off in space and actually arriving and seeing it in

our thermal camera. I still remember it. Sent chills down my spine. It's pretty fun the first few days getting used to weightlessness. Steve was our resident chef. He was famous for baking pies in space, and we had a great handover with Crew Five, who kind of taught us all the little tricks to living and working in space. And we got right to work, full complement of science experiments. This is the Japanese module. You see the primary glove box mount sideways, and that's American astronaut Frank Rubio working in the glove box. He currently has the American record for duration of a single space flight. Now, it turns out weightlessness causes heart tissue to age much faster than on Earth, so we're using that as a model to study treatments for heart disease. So, see that top one beating? Looks like happy heart cells. So, I still remember the day that Sultan looked through the microscope and saw these beating heart cells. Just mind-blowing. We printed a section of human meniscus using a biofabrication.

facility, and in addition to all the science, we have to do all of the maintenance and repairs on board. So, this is some of the less glamorous stuff. This is fixing our toilet. We have to do regular maintenance on the space suits to keep them ready for action. Uh, try to find me in this photo. This is repairing one of our CO2 scrubbing machines. You see my legs poking out. And this is how we get rid of trash. We load up cargo vehicles and send them home to a destructive re-entry through Earth's atmosphere. There's a regular cadence of these cargo vehicles coming to and from ISS all the time. Frank and I here are capturing uh the ng19 mission with our Canadian robotic arm and birthing it to the bottom of node one. And the team on the ground is always uh sending us with every new cargo vehicle fresh fresh food and it's always a special treat. We also have to take care of ourselves. This is Sultan on our treadmill. It's mounted on the wall. You

run facing the floor. We do like two and a half hours of exercise every day, half cardio and half this resistance exercise. So, lots of time to listen to music and podcasts. I did get to talk to Fredberg for, uh, we had a great conversation actually, um, from low earth orbit. I love chess, so I got a chess board sent up, and we actually played ISS crew versus Mission Control. We played a few games back and forth, did like one or two moves every day, and we always picked out a flight controller from a specific console to make our moves on the board in Mission Control. Now, one of my favorite parts of training, uh, preparing was spacewalk training. It's really tactile learning to use a pressurized space suit. So, we have the neutral buoyancy lab in Houston, amazing team of divers supporting us to practice all of our procedures. And I was thrilled when I found out that I would get to do two spacewalks to install a couple new ISS rollout solar arrays. They're the vertical, uh, rolls you see in

this photo. We were getting ready for the spacewalks, and two weeks prior, we were flying over the Pacific Ocean and got some photos of this storm, which unfortunately damaged one of the ground sites in Guam that supports the satellites that we used to talk to Mission Control. So, this meant that during my spacewalks, we would not have the ability to talk to Mission Control for some large chunks of time. Everyone rallied. Frank and Sultan set up this kind of Command Post in the US lab on the space station. So, in addition to operating the robotic arm, they would hand off back and forth with mission control for those com gaps, and Frank and Sultan would walk us through all of our procedures. My friend Brian, who will be speaking shortly, actually told me that my mission would be an utter failure if I didn't get at least one space selfie. So, I got this as soon as I could. Frank and Sultan flew me over to the arrays, and Steve and I unbolted them, and then this is the commute out to the

work site the array unit. It's 800 lb of mass, so it's weightless, but you still feel the inertia of that 800 lbs in your hands. So mainly, I was happy I did not drop it. After we finished the installation, Steve got this shot. There's two dragon spacecraft in this photo. On the right side of node 2 is crew 6 Dragon Endeavor, what I flew up in. And then up on the top is CRS 28, that's a cargo vehicle that flew the arrays up and down in the end of the robotic arm. You can see the foot restraint that was holding me while I was holding the arrays. So it was an amazing mission. After 185 days, it was time for crew 6 to come home. The dragon hatch itself is closed, that coming at 4:19 a.m. Central Time. You see the thrusters firing as we back away and get another nice view of is on the big loop. The part burn one is complete and nominal. Sultan got this view past his

feet of the plasma as we re-entered our atmosphere. We're basically inside a meteor. So, pyro Hive fired, and we have good confirmation of drug shoots. Two drugs and release the drug slow us down to about 140 mph, sets us up to deploy mains safely. And you can see here the hot spacecraft and cold parachutes in the thermal cam. We landed in some of the highest Seas to date for Crew Dragon. An amazing recovery team comes out, rig the vehicle, and they lift us onto the recovery ship with us still inside. So, you see our smiling faces here. It was like the thrill of a lifetime to get to spend six months living and working in space, but there's also just nothing like returning home to the people you love. Thank you. I want to spend just a moment beyond my mission and talk about where we're headed next. NASA is headed back to the moon, and to really put this in context, I just have to show you. So, I've asked Fredberg for some

help and he's kindly agreed. Come on out for you. Okay, go on this side all the way down or stay with me for a second. Okay, so it's a convenient quirk of the scale of the objects in our solar system that if you make the Earth a basketball, this is the Earth, then the Moon is a tennis ball. And I invite you, if you don't know this answer, to think about how far the Moon is from Earth in this scale. If you already know, that's fine, but take a guess. Should I say the answer? Do uh 180,000 miles, 225,000 miles, 225,000 miles. All right, when I'm going to do very well on Jeopardy. Here we go. When should he stop now? Keep going, keep going, keep going. Okay, slow down there. So in this scale, it's 24 feet. You can do the math. So we will stay here. Let's lose the tape measure and stay there, Friedberg. I would not make a good after. I was telling Woody, I'm like, I

can't imagine like you walk out in space and it's like there's just space that like I'm not sorry go ahead don't drop the moon either. I'm sorry I just want to tell you a couple things here. This is the earth. I told you this the ISS where I was was I spent six months half an inch off the basketball wow. That's where low earth orbit is wow and you guys probably saw Polaris Dawn launched this morning maybe a quick Round of Applause for SpaceX [Music]. So they're going way higher than the is ISS way higher. They're going an inch off the basketball with aremis. So we already launched Artemis in 2022. It flew uncrewed out around the moon and the Artemis 2 crew is already in training to fly Orion around the moon and come home and then emis 3 is going to be the landing on the surface of the Moon and we're going to set up shop. We're going to make a Proving Ground to get to Mars.

and so while we have this scale Mars, let's see if you could imagine 3/4 of a mile away in this scale. 3/4 of a mile, that's Mars, and we're doing all this work on the moon to eventually get to Mars. And then I know you guys are forward-thinking, so I just want you to imagine beyond even Mars. 34 miles, 34 miles away is Uranus. [Applause] [Music] I heard Cham laugh. He loved that. Amazing. All right, I think we're going to talk for a minute. Yeah, that was great, Woody. Thank you. Let's chat. Grab a seat right here. Grab a seat right here. What should we do with the Earth? Good question. So, couple quick questions. What's the timeline? Emis 2, Artemis 3? Yeah, and yeah, just tell us a little bit about the timelines. It's super setting. We already launched Emis 1. Emis 2 crew is in training right now. They're scheduled to fly in the fall of

2025. So, in a year, um, they're going to test out the Orion spacecraft. That flight's going to be a big deal. They're actually going to go further from Earth than humans have ever been because they go a little farther from the Moon than Apollo did. Wow. And then, uh, the plan right now is for that first crude landing in 2026 with Artemis 3. 2026. Yep. Are you in the running to be, yeah, every astronaut in the office is in the running to be assigned to an Artemis mission. Is it like the movie Right Stuff where you guys are all super competitive with each other on, like, or how? Tell us about the cooperative or the competitive nature of being an astronaut in the NASA program. It's actually one of the most fun things. So, it's definitely kind of a wait in line till you're told that you're assigned to a mission. I still remember when I got the phone call assigning me to Crew 6 to do my first mission. It's just one of those phone

calls you'll never forget. You know, um, it's actually not. We all support one another, and there's honestly nothing cooler than watching your friends fly to space. Yeah, so, and we all know we're eventually going to have that chance, and so it's less like directly competitive than you might imagine. So does the moon base kind of feel like an ISS? Is it like we're going to set up a facility at some point, and is there that sort of long-term planning going on? Absolutely, and I think, yeah, there's a strategic plan looking way out into that Artemis campaign. We talked about it being a sustained presence, you know, right now. Um, I mean, I think we'd all love to eventually have a permanent presence, meaning that humans are always on the moon. Yeah, at first, it's not going to be that we're going to send missions, uh, but unlike Apollo, we are really going to stay. We intend to stay there for a long time, and we're actually in, unlike Apollo, instead of going to the equator, we're

going to go initially to the South Pole, which is scientifically really interesting, and the intent is to do all the cool things: Rovers, moon bases, like nuclear power on the moon. We want to do it all. Why did it take humans half a century to come back and do this again? I think, um, did we really go to the Moon, by the way? We absolutely went to the moon. Just for the Joe Rogan crowd, I just want to make sure we're like, I think I, I think it's, you know, political will, right? Yeah, we have to decide that it's what we want to do, and I think that's one of the coolest things about this time. I mean, who's heard of the Artemis program? Yeah, few people, good, good many. Um, we could probably do a better job advertising, but you know what? Like, the cool thing about Artemis is we truly have bipartisan support. That's NASA's, um, like, issue over many years, is can you sustain as administrations change? Because it takes a long time to do this.

stuff and right now we feel like we have real bipartisan support to go do this. The people want us to go do this and sorry and so once you're on the moon. There's a lot of constant resupply needed in the current model. So that's part of the logistics is like how do we continually resupply. Yeah and I think as the missions get more complex. It stship involved in 100%. So right now um we actually have two providers. So SpaceX is Big Starship. Yeah maybe you can just talk about why it's so important. Yeah so um the we already talked about the Orion spacecraft which is what the astronuts are going to fly from Earth to the to a lunar orbit in. But the human Landing system which is going to take them down to the surface. We have two providers for that and one of those and actually the one we plan to use for that first landing is the SpaceX Starship. They' uh SpaceX plans to do an uncr demo before we send our astronauts down and we're

super looking forward to it. So, is Emis um a close partnership with SpaceX that NASA relies on? And SpaceX is a critical um partner to that program, to that mission. Yeah, we're using them for our Landing then. SpaceX talks and Elon talked a lot yesterday about trying to get Starship uncrewed over to Mars in two years. And is, I don't want you to necessarily aine in a negative way, but like how realistic is it that there's going to be a crude Starship to Mars in four years, as he claimed? And is that a NASA partnership, or is that we are cheering on every Starship flight? I mean, I've watched every single one. It's, we love the development. So, if we can get to Mars in years um, that's great. What NASA is specifically contracting SpaceX on is to go to the Moon. We believe the Moon is the right place to go, set up a sustained presence, and really practice um, set up a Proving Ground to eventually go to Mars. And does all the development on Starship.

is in the direction of goodness. It's, yeah, and is it um, does NASA have a development program on getting to Mars and timelines? Do they have talk about that at all? And is there an actual Mission yet? We actually reorganized within NASA, and we have an entire directorate called the Moon to Mars directorate. And so um, it's absolutely, we see the moon as our path to Mars, and that is absolutely the strategy. Yeah um, so uh, maybe you could just tell us coming a little bit closer to Earth uh, the Polaris Mission. It's 5 days long. They just launched this morning. Elon was here, and then he he actually flew in, came to the summit, got back on his plane, went back to Florida, and they got off. Yeah, so maybe you could tell us a little bit about the mission and what these folks are going to be doing. We didn't get to talk about it with Elon yesterday. It's amazing, and you know Jared Scott, Sarah, and um, Jared, Jared Isman. Yeah, Jared Isman is the the

commander. I mean, and he paid for the whole mission. Yeah, yeah, he paid for the whole mission. I mean, these guys are friends, actually, you know, friends and family, so we're rooting them on. If you've been to Florida and see, there's a different emotion when you see a crewed launch than an uncrewed launch. Like, uncrewed launch, big rocket go up, cool. Um, when you see, when you have friends and family on board one of these rockets, it's a different experience to watch the launch. So, um, we're rooting them on. They're in space right now experiencing, and they're going to do a spacewalk. They're going to do a spacewalk in a couple of days. That's right. Um, it'll be the first commercial spacewalk. So, NASA's been doing spacewalks for a long time, but they are making history. They're going to depressurize the vehicle to vacuum, so they don't have an airlock or anything. They're going to take the vehicle all the way to vacuum.

they're all in a suit. They're all going to be in suits. They have to be. They'll open the hatch and um I think it's Jared and Sarah that are going to go out and do that first uh I believe uh do that first space walk. So they're going to go out and be like holy I'm in space. Yeah I I'll say I don't know that I'm not not super up to date on the details of I'm sure they have objectives for the spacewalk. It's always how it is you while you're out there. There's things you want to do. Imagine at the ISS you walk out. It's a large structure. There there's there's some grounding context to it. But yeah these guys are just outside of the the capsule. Yeah and I think another interesting you know I had the benefit on ISS. I had been floating for months actually before I did my space walk. So I was used to the idea that you're now in this world where everything floats. And so going outside I mean you look down and it's a 250 mile

drop to the surface of Earth, but it didn't feel scary or anything because I knew I was just going to stay floating next to the space station where everything's falling. Um, their experience, they've only had a couple of days to orient to this, um, so it'll be um pretty cool. Yeah, well, I mean cool for some. It takes a different kind of person. I don't know um really incredible guys. Please join me in thanking Woody for being here at the all Summit.

NASA Astronaut Woody Hoburg | All-In Summit 2024

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All-In Podcast

The Journey to Space: Woody Hoberg's Experience

Woody Hoberg, calling from the International Space Station, reflects on 22 years of experience in space and the goal of establishing a sustained human presence on the moon and Mars.

The ISS has been continuously occupied since 2000, with its assembly completed by 2011, and it plays a crucial role in sending humans to space.

Hoberg's journey to the ISS included a historic SpaceX launch in 2020 and a subsequent Crew 6 mission, where he experienced weightlessness for the first time after a successful launch.

Life and Work on the International Space Station

The crew adapted to weightlessness while conducting science experiments, including studying heart tissue aging and biofabricating human meniscus.

They managed maintenance and repairs on board, including fixing the toilet and CO2 scrubbing machines.

The crew also exercised, played chess with Mission Control, and trained for spacewalks to install new solar arrays, all while coordinating with the ground team during communication gaps.

A Thrilling Journey: From Space Mission to Moon Exploration

The speaker reflects on their experience installing an 800 lb array unit in space and the significance of the two Dragon spacecraft in the photo.

After 185 days in space, the crew successfully re-entered the atmosphere and landed, with a recovery team lifting them onto the ship.

The speaker then discusses NASA's upcoming moon missions, using a basketball and tennis ball analogy to illustrate the distance between Earth and the Moon, and highlighting the importance of these missions in preparing for future exploration of Mars.

NASA's Plans for Lunar and Martian Exploration

NASA is using a scale model to illustrate the distance from the Moon to Mars and beyond, with Mars being 3/4 of a mile away and Uranus 34 miles away.

The timeline for the Artemis program includes the launch of Artemis 2 in fall 2025 and a crewed landing on the Moon in 2026.

NASA aims for a sustained presence on the Moon, with plans for rovers, moon bases, and nuclear power, while also seeking bipartisan support for long-term exploration efforts.

NASA's Lunar and Mars Mission Partnership with SpaceX

NASA is working closely with SpaceX for its lunar and Mars missions, with the Starship set to play a crucial role in landing astronauts on the Moon.

The agency has reorganized to establish a Moon to Mars directorate, emphasizing the Moon as a stepping stone to Mars.

SpaceX's ambitious goal of an uncrewed Starship mission to Mars in two years is supported by NASA, which is cheering on the development and flights.

A crewed space mission, funded by friends and family, is currently underway, with the team set to make history with the first commercial spacewalk.

The crew will depressurize the vehicle to vacuum and open the hatch, with Jared and Sarah leading the spacewalk.

The unique experience of transitioning from the capsule to space adds an exciting challenge for the crew, who have only had a few days to orient themselves.