Protesters ‘Stand Up For Science’ At Rallies Nationwide | Blue Ghost Lunar Lander

Scientists aren’t always encouraged to be politically active. But recent political interference by the Trump administration has many fired up. And, the Blue Ghost lunar lander, part of NASA’s CLPS initiative, completed the first fully successful commercial moon landing.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  WNYC is supported by Bear. Science is about asking questions, testing, trying again. It's not easy, but it's relentless. It evolves, and that's why science delivers. Learn more at sciencedelivers.com.

• 0:18Flora Lichtman?

  This is Science Friday. I'm Flora Lichtman. Today, scientists and concerned citizens are taking to the streets in cities across the US to protest the Trump administration's science policies. Joining me to fill us in on the Stand Up For Science rallies is Anil Oza, reporter for STAT and MIT, based in Boston, Massachusetts. Welcome back, Anil.

• 0:41Speaker 02

  Hey, Flora, good to be back.

• 0:42Flora Lichtman?

  Tell us about Stand Up For Science. What is this rally all about?

• 0:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is a rally put on by a handful of scientists to sort of support science. It has a very vague goal, but it is to protest a lot of the movements that the Trump administration has made to attack the scientific process and the institutions of science.

• 0:59Flora Lichtman?

  And where are the events?

• 1:00Speaker 02

  So these events are going to take place across the country and actually across the globe, but there are 32 official protests that are affiliated that are mostly in state capitals, and the biggest one is in Washington, DC. But there'll be a lot of large ones in cities that are very popular, sort of university or research towns. So I'm in Boston. That is slated to be a pretty big one. New York City is also slated to be pretty large, as is Seattle and LA.

• 1:24Flora Lichtman?

  Are the big science orgs standing up for the Stand Up For Science march?

• 1:29Speaker 02

  No, they are, and I think that's one of the key differences between this march and the science march that happened during Trump's first term, which is the March for Science. In 2017, almost every major scientific society that you could think of formally endorsed the March for Science, but we're not seeing that this time. And I think it speaks to the sort of weird moment we are in politically, where scientists are very upset and stressed about the future of the scientific enterprise here in the US, but there's also a lot of fear, particularly at the top, to speak out against the Trump administration and to further target themselves.

• 2:01Flora Lichtman?

  Even at these big science orgs?

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like, a notable exception here is that the AAAS, which is the Association for the Advancement of Science, which was a major player in the March for Science in 2017, has not endorsed this march at all.

• 2:17Flora Lichtman?

  What came of that one? What's different about this one?

• 2:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think, taking a step back, we're in a very similar moment to 2017. There is a lot of pressure on scientists. They feel like they're under attack. Trump is having the sort of same rhetorical attack on scientific institutions, on universities. There's threats to funding. He's putting appointees that eschew the scientific consensus. And so in 2017, scientists, right as Trump first took office, sort of said enough is enough. We need to take to the streets. And so they planned this march for Earth Day in 2017. They had, by their own estimates, about a million people in 650 marches on every continent across the globe. It was this really watershed moment because scientists don't really like to engage in political activities.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  And after that march, which was huge, they formed this nonprofit, which was around for a couple of years. They were around into the next election cycle in 2020, but they definitely had diminished influence. They didn't really know how to run a nonprofit. There was definitely clashing ideas of what they should be focused on. And so they kind of petered out.

• 3:22Flora Lichtman?

  I'm hearing drama.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  Absolutely, which is very common in activist groups and in nonprofits. But I think it was disappointing to a lot of people that went out in 2017 and wanted to see this movement sustained. And while the organization March for Science did not last, I think its effects can be seen in the fact that it did seed a generation of scientists that are activists. And it did change this ethos of political engagement and science communication among scientists.

• 3:51Flora Lichtman?

  Wait, say more about that.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, so historically, scientists don't love to engage in politics. There's this image of a scientist in their lab completely separated from the rest of the world. And scientists would go back and forth about this all the time, about whether they should engage in politics directly. And 2017 kind of shut the door on that. It said that, yes, we need to be out in the streets. We need to be engaged. Otherwise, there will be attacks on science. And so that really fundamentally changed this conversation. And obviously, scientific activists would argue for the better, that it enabled scientists to go out into the streets. And I think an event like the one that we are about to see today would not even be thinkable if it was not for the March for Science in 2017.

• 4:34Flora Lichtman?

  Anything you'll be keeping your eye on as you cover this today?

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. I think the first thing is just crowd size. I think it'll be really interesting to see how many people show up. Like I said, we are in a moment where the temperature is very high, where scientists are losing jobs, are losing funding. They are very upset. And I'll be keeping an eye to see if that does translate to crowd size. We are, obviously, today's a Friday, so we may not get as many sort of casual people that just support science out in the streets. But then going forward, I want to see if it does nudge these bigger players to step into the field. This is being put on by mostly early career researchers. So I think the real thing to keep an eye on is going forward, do universities, scientific

• 5:16Speaker 02

  societies, university presidents, these big wig scientists, and eventually politicians, step into the fray to also defend science, to sort of buy into some of the notions of this march and, you know, really step against the Trump administration and its funding cuts and all these other attacks on the scientific process that they've enacted over the past about month and a half.

• 5:37Flora Lichtman?

  Thanks for joining us today, Anil.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Absolutely. A pleasure to be here.

• 5:41Flora Lichtman?

  Anil Ozil, reporter for STAT and MIT, based in Boston, Massachusetts. We put out a call to listeners to find out whether you were going to the march, and we got a huge response. So we've got two young scientists on the line to tell us why their bunsen burners are on 11 for this, and why they feel like they have to be there. Mike Wong is a planetary scientist and astrobiologist marching in Washington DC, and Emily Reed studies environmental sustainability at the University of Louisville. She is attending the rally in her hometown of Frankfurt, Kentucky. Thank you for joining us.

• 6:15Speaker 03

  Happy to be here.

• 6:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is a real honor.

• 6:19Flora Lichtman?

  Well, we are happy to have you. Why did you feel like you needed to be at this rally? Mike, let's start with you.

• 6:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, I am an early career scientist whose salary comes completely from federal funding. And with the sudden cuts to federal funding for science and the fact that it seems like the entire scientific infrastructure in the United States is crumbling all around us, I felt that it was really necessary as a practicing scientist and as somebody who helps mentor up and coming scientists, that we need to speak out.

• 6:56Flora Lichtman?

  Emily, are the changes that are happening in science right now, the changes to funding Making you rethink going into science?

• 7:05Speaker 03

  A lot of people in my school and in my generation are very worried about what their futures are going to look like. That doesn't mean that they are shaken in trying to strive for that world, but it does mean that we are anxious and, uh, just kind of, yeah, we're worried and stressed out.

• 7:27Flora Lichtman?

  Wait, tell me more about that stress. Unpack it for me.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  We're worried about the industries we're going to go into. We are worried about the budget cuts that are currently happening and how that is going to affect not just us personally, but also the world at large with NIH funding that is getting halted or delayed. With the delays in grants that are being given out across college sectors that is going to slow down research or even stop research in certain areas with the certain censoring that's happening. People aren't going to be able to ask the questions and do the research that they want to do to make the world a better place. So not only are my generation very worried about their jobs on the personal level in the future, but also just what the world in the future is going to be like versus the world that we grew up in

• 8:16Speaker 03

  or that we thought we were gonna get.

• 8:19Flora Lichtman?

  Mike, what about you? Do you feel the stress?

• 8:22Speaker 04

  Absolutely. And it's honestly so heartbreaking to hear that stress pervade all the way down to, you know, Emily's generation as well. You know, it just feels like doors are shutting right in our faces and the opportunities are dissipating, evaporating right in front of our eyes. And Emily's absolutely right. The science is both a personal endeavor in terms of trying to, you know, get a career in science as an individual, but the ramifications extend all the way up to the planetary scale.

• 8:53Flora Lichtman?

  Does it make you rethink your path in science?

• 8:55Speaker 04

  I love coming to work every single day and I can't imagine doing anything else. But it makes me hesitate about, you know, what's going to come down the road in a year and two years. As a postdoc, I'm still seeking a permanent position, a job like a tenure track faculty position or as a civil servant working for NASA, for instance. And it just seems like those avenues are dwindling and I'm not sure what the future holds and I'm very anxious about it.

• 9:26Flora Lichtman?

  You know, one thing that really strikes me about this is that I don't, I don't know that taking to the streets is the natural state for many scientists. And, you know, in covering science for decades, I've heard from many scientists that you can actually be penalized for, for speaking out, for being a public figure. Does it feel significant to you that you're seeing this swell of interest from scientists to sort of get out there and raise their voice?

• 9:55Speaker 04

  I think you're absolutely right, Flora. We scientists, we like to stay in our labs, do, do as much research as possible, you know, uncover the mysteries of the universe. And so this, this feeling that we need to be galvanized as a community to go and, and march in state capitals around the country and in Washington DC really does speak to, I think, the, the dire nature of the situation.

• 10:21Flora Lichtman?

  Before we let you go, what's on your poster boards?

• 10:25Speaker 04

  Great question. I made a poster today with my, one of my favorite quotes from Mr. Spock. It says insufficient facts always invite danger from the Star Trek original series, episode Space Seed. The reason why I chose that quote is because I want to stand up for evidence-based policymaking. We need facts to guide the way that we act in the world, both for, you know, human health, for environmental justice, for everything. Because without facts, we're really just in the dark with regard to what the consequences of our actions are. And so I think science really gives us a way to move forward and build that prosperous future that I think we all want to see. And if we cut off science

• 11:09Speaker 04

  funding, it'll be very hard to accomplish that.

• 11:12Flora Lichtman?

  Emily?

• 11:13Speaker 03

  First off, you are so cool.

• 11:16Speaker 04

  Oh, thanks.

• 11:18Speaker 03

  My poster board says, "Research equals investment," with the whole idea that a lot of this stuff is happening because it's not efficient somehow. I wanted to do something against that and say that it is an investment for the future. You need to put aside some amount of resources for investing, for research, for science, so that in the future, things can be even better or more efficient.

• 11:52Flora Lichtman?

  Thank you both.

• 11:53Speaker 04

  Thanks, Flora.

• 11:54Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 11:55Flora Lichtman?

  Mike Wong, planetary scientist based in Washington DC, and Emily Reed, student at the University of Louisville, based in Kentucky. Before we wrap, let's check in with a listener at the DC rally to hear what the scene is like. Samantha is a computational genomics researcher based in Baltimore.

• 12:15Speaker 05

  Hello?

• 12:16Flora Lichtman?

  Hey, Samantha.

• 12:17Speaker 05

  Hi, good to hear from you.

• 12:19Flora Lichtman?

  Who's speaking? What's happening right now?

• 12:21Speaker 05

  Francis Collins is currently speaking. The, I guess, former, now former director of the NIH.

• 12:27Flora Lichtman?

  Are people riled up? What's Francis saying?

• 12:30Speaker 05

  He was talking about the Gettysburg Address on the Lincoln Memorial and how it's, you know, of the people, by the people, and for the people. And how that's really science, too. It's of the people, by the people, and for the people. And we are the people.

• 12:43Flora Lichtman?

  Does it feel like a big crowd there?

• 12:45Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. I would say it's a decent-sized crowd, given that this is the middle of the workday. I mean, I'm sure it helps that it's a beautiful day in DC right now.

• 12:53Flora Lichtman?

  What's the crowd like? What's the nerdiness level?

• 12:56Speaker 05

  Pretty high.

• 12:59Speaker 05

  There are lots of signs that are nerdy, you know, with references to statistics and science and citing facts and numbers. That's kind of a sort of thing that you see at a science rally versus a different protest.

• 13:14Flora Lichtman?

  Have you seen anyone cool? What's been the best speaker so far?

• 13:17Speaker 05

  Francis Collins is pretty good. There was also, just before him, there was a young woman who was the first, one of the first recipients of CAR-T cell therapy that treated her childhood cancer. There's a guy here dressed up as the Muppet, Bunson or Beaker, but the one.

• 13:34Flora Lichtman?

  Beaker.

• 13:35Speaker 05

  Beaker, yes.

• 13:37Flora Lichtman?

  What's the vibe like? Are people fired up?

• 13:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think people are understandably upset about all that's been going on in the federal government. It definitely doesn't feel defeatist. I mean, there's a big cheer right now. I hope Francis Collins is singing.

• 13:53Flora Lichtman?

  OK, we'll let you go and enjoy those dulcet tones. Thank you so much, Samantha. Samantha is a computational genomics researcher based in Baltimore.

• 14:05Flora Lichtman?

  After the break, what does it take to build your own moon lander?

• 14:09Speaker 06

  Taking this on seemed like its own, forgive the strained metaphor, but moonshot for our company. And then, once we got into it, we suddenly realized, holy cow, this is actually something we can pull off. This might actually be something that we can keep building on.

• 14:22Flora Lichtman?

  Stick around.

• 14:28Speaker 00

  Science Friday is supported by PBS, presenting Going Wild. If you love learning about the natural world and meeting the scientists who help us understand it, be sure to check out the new season of Going Wild with Dr. Ray Wynn Grant. It's the chart-topping and Webby Award-winning podcast from the folks at Nature on PBS, now with a video companion series. In this season of Going Wild, host acclaimed wildlife ecologist Dr. Ray Wynn Grant heads out into the field to explore the animals, people, and stories that make nature worth saving. Stops include a hibernating black bear den in Arkansas and an underwater shipwreck site off the Florida coast. If you're looking for a place to start, check out the season's debut episode, where Ray joins beloved biologist and influencer Jordan King in the Florida Everglades to learn about

• 15:13Speaker 00

  his unlikely journey into science and how to study a wetland when it's not very, well, wet. So don't miss out. Follow Going Wild with Dr. Ray Wynn Grant on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. WNYC is supported by Bear. Every day in America, science delivers. Not just in the headlines, but in the moments that matter most. Science is a journey, one of curiosity, persistence, and progress. It's about asking questions, testing, learning, and improving again and again. Science delivers harvests that feed families, tools that help farmers grow more with less, and new ways to protect land for generations to come. Let's keep asking, keep testing, keep discovering, so science can keep delivering.

• 15:58Speaker 00

  Learn more at sciencedelivers.com.

• 16:01Speaker 07

  Support for Science Friday comes from the William K. Bost Jr. Foundation.

• 16:13Flora Lichtman?

  Last week, a robotic lander touched down on the surface of the moon, the Blue Ghost. It's carrying a bunch of NASA science experiments, but the lander itself wasn't built by NASA or any other space agency. It was built by Firefly Aerospace, a company based in Texas. It's the first commercially-built spacecraft to successfully land on the moon. Joining me now to talk about the mission, how it got there, and what it'll be doing on the moon are my guests. Kevin Schulz is the Future Systems Architect for Firefly Aerospace in Texas, and Dr. Nikki Fox is the Associate Administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, which is wrangling 10 experiments onboard this lander. Welcome to Science Friday.

• 16:57Speaker 06

  Thank you. Thank you for having us.

• 16:59Flora Lichtman?

  Kevin, let's start with you. How did this project begin? Was it, did it feel audacious to say, oh, yeah, we can go to the moon?

• 17:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, absolutely. It was definitely an audacious kind of undertaking. When we started this project off, we hadn't yet launched our first Alpha Launch Vehicle, and taking this on seemed like its own, you know, forgive the strained metaphor, but moonshot for our company. And then, once we got into it, we suddenly realized, you know, holy cow, this is actually something we can pull off. This might actually be something that we can keep building on and taking further. And it's been just a surprise every step of the way.

• 17:34Flora Lichtman?

  What was the biggest challenge? Like, what was the thing that kept people up at night?

• 17:37Speaker 06

  Oh, that changed, I think that changes daily. You know, early on, we started this project close to the beginning of COVID. So, you know, you think of the kind of office environment that you have to be in in order to work on a lunar lander with other people, and all of a sudden, everyone's having to work remote. And it's, you know, that's a huge challenge early on. And then, honestly, you know, war in Ukraine limited some of our supply chain choices, and we had to pivot on that as well. And then, I think just... You know, you look at the history of landing on the moon or landing on any planetary body and it should stop you in your tracks to think about what it is you're about to attempt, considering how few attempts are successful.

• 18:20Speaker 06

  So every day, every test campaign, it was a constant focus. You know, how is our propulsion going to perform? How is our vision navigation going to perform? You know, what are the things we haven't thought of? A couple of months before we launched, our chief engineer went around the office and gave everyone a hypothetical. You know, it's two months after our mission. We were a terrible failure. Tell me why. You know, just to, just to get the juices kind of going and saying, what, what's the last thing that we didn't think of yet?

• 18:49Flora Lichtman?

  Hmm. Nikki, there's a bunch of NASA science on this lander. Tell me about some of the experiments.

• 18:56Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, we're really excited. We actually have 10 instruments on the lander, all working beautifully. I could talk about all of them, obviously, but maybe if I sort of group them, um, you know, this one's really looking at the characteristics of the regolith, so of the surface of the moon. Um, on the way down, we had an instrument called scalps that is actually looking at how the rocket plume as the lander was descending, how it sort of interrupts, um, and interferes with the regolith and how the regolith sort of responds. So we're looking at how the dust is kicked up as the lander comes down, uh, so that, you know, we can sort of see how, if you had sensitive equipment and you were bringing another lander down, what is that kind of keep out zone that we would need to do and

• 19:40Speaker 05

  that helps us model, um, as we start to think about larger and larger landers. We also have a instrument that, um, is looking at kind of how sticky the regolith is. So once it's kicked up and it lands, how hard is it to actually move it? How much does it adhere to surfaces? And then we have, um, an electrodynamic dust shield instrument, which is kind of, it's going to be putting, um, like an electric current through, uh, some of the materials to see if you can actually kind of shake off that regolith. So that's like sort of a nice grouping of three of them that are really characterizing the lunar surface for us.

• 20:15Flora Lichtman?

  So a lot of interest in the dust is what I'm hearing.

• 20:17Speaker 05

  Yes, I mean, we learned from the Apollo mission just how tacky that regolith was. You know, it's stuck to everything. It's stuck to the spacesuits, to the boots, to everything. And it, you know, it does get into your lungs and can cause some health issues. So we really want to make sure that we are protecting our future astronauts as they return to the moon with the Artemis program.

• 20:39Flora Lichtman?

  How do you make the call, Nikki, for which instruments you're going to send on which lander?

• 20:45Speaker 05

  That is a really great question. So most of the time, we make it by the the actual destination of the lander. So this particular one going to Mercurium, which was an area that was formed by an asteroid impact. And so it sort of flooded the basin with volcanic lava, which is kind of a very dark lava, which is actually commonly found here on Earth. And so because we were going there, we we sort of planned the instruments that make sense to go to that that location. We do have some instruments that are kind of destination agnostic. They'll do great science wherever they go. So they can sort of take advantage of any of them, but a lot of them are just selected because it is the best place for them to go.

• 21:27Flora Lichtman?

  Nikki, talk me through the advantages, disadvantages of using commercial flight versus something in-house.

• 21:34Speaker 05

  Well, actually, there's a couple, a couple of reasons. So one is, you know, the main goal of the CLIPS program is to actually create a sustainable lunar economy. And, you know, we want to do that by really incentivizing and supporting American companies to be able to do these daring, amazing things. So we have companies often that haven't done any sort of real space work before. So it's really exciting for us. I mean, we want to be able to focus on the science. We want to be able to put more instruments on the surface of the moon, more instruments into space for less money. And so honestly, we, you know, we want to end up just paying for this as a delivery service, just as you would ship a package. We want to ship packages up to the moon on a very regular basis. And so

• 22:19Flora Lichtman?

  Moon P S.

• 22:21Speaker 05

  Yes, absolutely. So it's it's incentivizing and stimulating the the American companies to be able to do this for us and also to just do it in a more efficient and economical way.

• 22:32Flora Lichtman?

  Kevin, are you designing the spacecraft around the science?

• 22:37Speaker 06

  The way the spacecraft is designed, it's mostly around the spacecraft itself. Because as Nikki was mentioning, we're trying to build a service. And the eventual goal, and we're still iterations away from this. The eventual goal is to get to the point where you can have that, if it fits a chip's kind of approach with payloads, where we're able to incorporate them on a fairly standard kind of spacecraft. And as a commercial entity, our big push is to make the spacecraft as repeatable in its build as possible. There's huge cost savings in that. There's huge engineering savings. If we can prove that the system works, why customize it more than we need to each time around?

• 23:19Speaker 06

  So there's quite a bit of it that's standardized around the idea of like, I'm building a lander, what do I need a lander to do? And then there is some customization that we have to provide for the individual payloads based on their unique sensitivities. So what we're learning about as we take on this kind of great experiment of commercial payload services is there are certain kinds of interfaces that are kind of hard to standardize when it comes to things like electromagnetic interference or mounting locations. Some payloads want to be on top of the lander looking back at Earth. Some payloads want to be underneath the lander getting dirty with the regolith as the engines are firing. And it's kind of hard to anticipate and standardize that. So there is a fair amount of customization that happens,

• 24:04Speaker 06

  but it's nowhere near to the extent that you might expect for a Mars lander mission, for example, where really the science comes first and every engineering decision has to trace back to the science investigation.

• 24:19Flora Lichtman?

  I want to talk a little bit more about your business model. I mean, who do you imagine are your customers?

• 24:25Speaker 06

  That's a great question. I use the term great experiment, and that's kind of where we're going into this with. As we look out at the market for what could happen at the moon, there's, there's a whole slew of, of possibilities and it's, it's a real challenge to predict the future. I mean, it's the one thing that you can guarantee about predicting the future is that you'll be wrong.

• 24:47Flora Lichtman?

  Yeah.

• 24:48Speaker 06

  But the, there, there's promise in terms of some materials resources on the moon. There's, there's promise in the world of things like helium three and its use in refrigerants for quantum computing and its use for, for fusion. Um, there's promise in the science activity and being an ancillary logistical support for a sustained, permanent human presence on the moon. I mean, those pesky humans, they need food, they need water, they need things to read.

• 25:19Flora Lichtman?

  We're so needy. Yeah.

• 25:21Speaker 06

  The logistics supply chain itself is, is kind of a, a huge potential uh, market if we're going to have a continuous presence there. But then there's all sorts of unknowns as well. And, and as a, an analogy in this, you know, I think back in the sixties and seventies, you know, when we were first putting satellite constellations around the earth, the, the idea of using a satellite to broadcast TV was considered so niche and esoteric. Like, why, why would you ever do that? Who, who except the most wealthiest of people would ever do something like that? And then low and behold, you know, the eighties and nineties, that's, that is the largest business for satellites. Um, and it was completely unexpected.

• 26:05Speaker 06

  So part of, part of this is getting out there, figuring out what's real, what isn't, figuring out what kind of customers might come along that we weren't even thinking of before. And then pivoting from there. And along the way, from a commercial, you know, business standpoint, you know, it's a, it's an incredible diversification for us in that.

• 26:29Speaker 06

  Regardless of what kind of economy emerges at the moon, we're building out capabilities that are applicable across the solar system.

• 26:37Flora Lichtman?

  Is there a target cost you're going for? Like, oh, we'll ship whatever you want to the moon for $19.95 a pound.

• 26:44Speaker 06

  I mean, the goal for commercial competition is always, you know, finding the lower cost. So a lot of our costing is competitive in nature and we're driving for the best value for NASA. That's really the major goal there. I don't know that I'd be able to give you a specific range that we're at right now, but the goal is always lower.

• 27:07Flora Lichtman?

  Nikki, it seems like a really busy time for moon science. Thursday, another private lander called Athena made it to the moon, but was on its side and the mission ended after its batteries ran out. Last week, another moon-oriented mission launched, the Lunar Trailblazer, which is an orbiter. It's had some communications problems after launch. What's going on with that now?

• 27:29Speaker 05

  Yes, we definitely have had some communication problems. We're using as many resources as we can to kind of image the spacecraft and figure out it's kind of tumbling right now. And so hoping that it will reorient itself so that it's in the right configuration and we can actually establish communications with it and send some commands. The team is fantastic. Believe me, if anyone can bring back the spacecraft, it's the Lunar Trailblazer team. So just wishing them lots and lots of luck in trying to recover this beautiful little mission.

• 28:06Flora Lichtman?

  Nikki, when will we start seeing science roll in from Blue Ghost?

• 28:10Speaker 05

  It is already rolling in. My goodness, Blue Ghost didn't waste any time. They were taking data, as Kevin noted, some of them, some of our instruments wanting to get dirty to actually be able to image those plumes. So a lot of the instruments were on during the landing even. And then as soon as possible, you know, we've been turning on instruments. Some of them have already achieved all of their science goals. Obviously, we're going to Keep going to get bonus science, you know, just trying to get more science for our money as always. But yeah, we're already seeing science rolling in and beautiful images.

• 28:49Speaker 05

  And if you have not yet seen the unbelievable sunrise, lunar sunrise image from Blue Ghost, then please go look for it because it is stunning.

• 29:00Flora Lichtman?

  I love that. Thank you to you both for joining me today.

• 29:03Speaker 06

  Absolutely. Thank you for having us.

• 29:05Speaker 05

  Thanks.

• 29:06Flora Lichtman?

  Kevin Schulz is the future systems architect for Firefly Aerospace in Texas, and Dr. Nikki Fox is the associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. And you can see that lunar sunrise picture Nikki mentioned at sciencefriday.com/lunar.

• 29:28Flora Lichtman?

  And that is about all we have time for. Lots of folks helped make the show happen, including George Harper.

• 29:35Speaker 07

  John Dinkowski. Annie Nero. Jason Rosenberg.

• 29:39Flora Lichtman?

  Ross Shutteridi. I'm Flora Lichtman. Thanks for listening.