So this weekend,
the moon is going to give us an incredible show, a real treat.
All weekend long will be treated to effectively a full moon.
And it culminates on Sunday night with this beautiful lunar eclipse.
So starting at about 10 p.m.
Eastern on Sunday night, the moon will start passing through the Earth's shadow
and right around midnight will be the peak of this eclipse,
when the moon will turn this beautiful coppery reddish orange color
and then gradually move out of the Earth's shadow.
So all night long, late Sunday night into Monday morning on the East
Coast, we'll be treated to this beautiful lunar eclipse.
So this weekend we are treated to a spectacular
sight of a full moon, culminating in a lunar eclipse.
Now, I would encourage people to go out any time during the night, Saturday
and Sunday night, even Friday night.
Look up to the sky and you'll see the beautiful majesty of a full moon.
Now, during the eclipse, if it's cloudy, if it's.
If it's. If you're surrounded by trees or tall buildings, you'll want to find
a relatively open space where you have a good view of the sky.
Now, there's no one critical moment that you have to be outside to see this.
The eclipse will begin about 10 p.m.
Eastern time on Sunday night, reaching its peak just around midnight.
And then gradually the moon will be passing
out of the earth's shadow over the next few hours.
So find your ideal location, whether it's in your backyard
or on the top of your building or in some location,
or have a beautiful, unobstructed view of the sky.
You want to be clear of bright lights or tall buildings around you, if you can,
and just relax and enjoy the show.
The moon turns this beautiful red color during the eclipse
because of this really special connection between the earth and the moon.
Just the same reason why when you go out at sunset
or sunrise, the horizon turns that beautiful red orange color.
Well, now imagine all of the sunrises and sunsets
from the earth get projected onto the surface of the moon when it passes in
to the shadow of the earth.
And so during the peak of the eclipse, which is just to right around midnight
Sunday night, East Coast time,
the moon will turn this beautiful, coppery brown color.
And again, that's the projection of all of the sunrises and sunsets
on the earth onto the surface of the moon.
We're preparing for the art of exploration
of the South Pole of the Moon by doing really two fundamental things.
One is we're analyzing the data that we've collected
for the moon over the last 13 years, thanks to the Lunar Reconnaissance
Orbiter, a spacecraft NASA's sent to the moon in 2009 to do
just this, to help chart the the places that we want to send astronauts.
We want to send robotic missions to
to look for scientifically interesting and safe places to explore.
And so, on one hand,
we're studying that data to find those ideal locations to send crew.
We're also preparing those astronauts, the Artemis astronauts have been selected
to, you know, begin their education on geology, on planetary science,
so that when they're on the surface of the moon, they can make the decisions
of which samples to collect and what to do while they're exploring the moon.
So we're at this very exciting point where we have the data,
we have the talent, and it's now a matter of of letting letting time march on
and prepare for 2025 to send that first crew to the South Pole of the moon.
The Moon is a wonderful
surface are a quarter of the processes that occur across the solar system.
When we look at the lunar surface, we are gazing back to the earliest part
of the history of our solar system, four and a half billion years.
And so when we look at the craters that have formed
on the surface of the moon and we look at the
the volcanic eruptions that have occurred there, we are peering back in time.
And indeed, when we study any other object in the solar system,
whether it's Mercury, whether it's Mars, whether it's Pluto.
Our understanding of the processes, the changes that have occurred on
those planets are in large part due to the understanding we have of the moon.
We look at the moon.
We understand the fundamentals of how planets work
and then apply those rules to other objects in the solar system.
So the moon is really this incredible Rosetta Stone for understanding
how planets work.
And so when we look at other objects around other stars, our understanding
of what we think is happening there
in large part is informed in our understanding of how the moon
formed and evolved over four and a half billion years.
To me, the most surprising thing that we've learned from the LRO spacecraft
in its 13 year mission to the moon is that we were able to see
the moon change underneath our feet.
We've identified new impact craters that have formed in the last 13 years.
We're seeing surface changes.
We're seeing the presence of volatiles, water
at the surface of the moon and how it moves around
as a function of the time of day on the surface of the moon.
We've really taken the moon from being what was once thought to be
a sort of a static, unchanging world and are now actually able
to measure changes on the lunar surface, the dynamics of the moon,
and how it evolves, not over millions or billions of years,
but over the span of a human lifetime of several years.
And so we've taken the moon from being this ancient object
and really showing how compelling and how dynamic it is.
And again, all with the lens of how do we prepare to send future
explorers, both crew and robotic explorers, to the surface of the moon,
to take the lessons that we've learned from orbit and apply them to the surface?
So this next era of lunar exploration is very exciting, but it's informed
in large part of the discoveries that we've made over the last 13 years.
We have a number of
important science questions of things that we want to learn about the moon.
We're still arguing among ourselves, the scientific community,
about how the moon formed, how old the moon is.
We think we have a good understanding of that, in large part
because of the samples that were brought back by Apollo.
But what Artemis will do in
exploring the South Pole of the moon, a completely new frontier of the lunar
surface, is inform those models, those hypotheses
that we have, and ultimately potentially challenge those hypotheses.
We may find out the moon is older than we think it is.
The places that we want to go at the South
Pole are going to be some of the oldest surfaces
that we've ever explored on
any planetary body, whether it's with humans or with robots.
And so those first explorers will be peering back in time
to the very earliest history of the moon.
We'd also like to know what what the volatiles that we've mapped
from orbit, the water that we see from orbit, what is it like?
How much is there?
And so these very first missions to the surface of the moon, to the South
Pole are going to really be telling us something fundamental
about the age of the moon , as well as how much water might be present there.
And that water becomes a valuable resource that we could potentially use in
future exploration of the moon to sustain a long term presence at the moon.
And so the fundamental questions of how the moon formed its age
and how this precious water actually got to the surface of the moon,
are some of the key questions that we'll be asking.
If you're interested in learning more about this eclipse
and what we have learned about the moon in general,
I would suggest people go to the website moon dot nasa.gov and really dive
into everything we've learned, everything that we are learning about the moon.
To help you understand how to take pictures of the moon.
We have a number of resources there
for four lunar observers over the weekend and during the eclipse.
I would encourage people to tune in to our NASA's broadcast of the Eclipse.
Go to nasa.gov, slash live and you'll get treated to
a wonderful sharing of the lunar eclipse around the world.
If it's cloudy where you are, you can tune in and still enjoy it
from the comfort of your own home.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was launched
in 2009 for what was supposed to be a 1 to 2 year mission.
We recently learned that we've been given a three year extension to our mission,
which will take our operations out until 2025, at least.
And so what we've done is take this 1 to 2 year mission
and turn it into now a decade plus long mission.
This June, we'll be celebrating 13 years of orbiting the moon.
And in that time, we've discovered new impact craters.
We've found that the moon is
changing in ways that we had never expected before.
We're actually able to see the surface change very slowly underneath our feet.
We're able to measure the presence of water on the surface of the moon.
And so over the next several years, we're going to be looking at the presence,
abundance of water in places near the south pole of the moon, places
that we hope to explore with future human and robotic explorers.
We're also looking at the volcanic and impact history of the moon,
the fundamental geologic evolution of the object over billions of years.
And so the next three years of LRO data is going to really
reveal some of the additional mysteries about the moon and set us up
for the next decade and beyond of lunar explorations
with both human and robotic explorers going to the surface of the moon.