Pod Insights Science Friday Protesters ‘Stand Up For Science’ At Rallies Nationwide | Blue Ghost Lunar Lander About this episode 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.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 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.
0:18 Flora 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.
0:41 Speaker 02 Hey, Flora, good to be back.
0:42 Flora Lichtman? Tell us about Stand Up For Science. What is this rally all about?
0:46 Speaker 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.
0:59 Flora Lichtman? And where are the events?
1:00 Speaker 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.
1:24 Flora Lichtman? Are the big science orgs standing up for the Stand Up For Science march?
1:29 Speaker 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.
2:01 Flora Lichtman? Even at these big science orgs?
2:03 Speaker 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.
2:17 Flora Lichtman? What came of that one? What's different about this one?
2:20 Speaker 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.
3:03 Speaker 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.
3:22 Flora Lichtman? I'm hearing drama.
3:23 Speaker 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.
3:51 Flora Lichtman? Wait, say more about that.
3:53 Speaker 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.
4:34 Flora Lichtman? Anything you'll be keeping your eye on as you cover this today?
4:36 Speaker 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
5:16 Speaker 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.
5:37 Flora Lichtman? Thanks for joining us today, Anil.
5:39 Speaker 02 Absolutely. A pleasure to be here.
5:41 Flora 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.
6:15 Speaker 03 Happy to be here.
6:16 Speaker 04 Yeah, this is a real honor.
6:19 Flora 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.
6:26 Speaker 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.
6:56 Flora Lichtman? Emily, are the changes that are happening in science right now, the changes to funding Making you rethink going into science?
7:05 Speaker 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.
7:27 Flora Lichtman? Wait, tell me more about that stress. Unpack it for me.
7:31 Speaker 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
8:16 Speaker 03 or that we thought we were gonna get.
8:19 Flora Lichtman? Mike, what about you? Do you feel the stress?
8:22 Speaker 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.
8:53 Flora Lichtman? Does it make you rethink your path in science?
8:55 Speaker 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.
9:26 Flora 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?
9:55 Speaker 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.
10:21 Flora Lichtman? Before we let you go, what's on your poster boards?
10:25 Speaker 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
11:09 Speaker 04 funding, it'll be very hard to accomplish that.
11:12 Flora Lichtman? Emily?
11:13 Speaker 03 First off, you are so cool.
11:16 Speaker 04 Oh, thanks.
11:18 Speaker 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.
11:52 Flora Lichtman? Thank you both.
11:53 Speaker 04 Thanks, Flora.
11:54 Speaker 03 Thank you.
11:55 Flora 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.
12:15 Speaker 05 Hello?
12:16 Flora Lichtman? Hey, Samantha.
12:17 Speaker 05 Hi, good to hear from you.
12:19 Flora Lichtman? Who's speaking? What's happening right now?
12:21 Speaker 05 Francis Collins is currently speaking. The, I guess, former, now former director of the NIH.
12:27 Flora Lichtman? Are people riled up? What's Francis saying?
12:30 Speaker 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.
12:43 Flora Lichtman? Does it feel like a big crowd there?
12:45 Speaker 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.
12:53 Flora Lichtman? What's the crowd like? What's the nerdiness level?
12:56 Speaker 05 Pretty high.
12:59 Speaker 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.
13:14 Flora Lichtman? Have you seen anyone cool? What's been the best speaker so far?
13:17 Speaker 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.
13:34 Flora Lichtman? Beaker.
13:35 Speaker 05 Beaker, yes.
13:37 Flora Lichtman? What's the vibe like? Are people fired up?
13:41 Speaker 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.
13:53 Flora 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.
14:05 Flora Lichtman? After the break, what does it take to build your own moon lander?
14:09 Speaker 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.
14:22 Flora Lichtman? Stick around.
14:28 Speaker 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
15:13 Speaker 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.
15:58 Speaker 00 Learn more at sciencedelivers.com.
16:01 Speaker 07 Support for Science Friday comes from the William K. Bost Jr. Foundation.
16:13 Flora 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.
16:57 Speaker 06 Thank you. Thank you for having us.
16:59 Flora 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?
17:06 Speaker 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.
17:34 Flora Lichtman? What was the biggest challenge? Like, what was the thing that kept people up at night?
17:37 Speaker 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.
18:20 Speaker 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?
18:49 Flora Lichtman? Hmm. Nikki, there's a bunch of NASA science on this lander. Tell me about some of the experiments.
18:56 Speaker 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
19:40 Speaker 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.
20:15 Flora Lichtman? So a lot of interest in the dust is what I'm hearing.
20:17 Speaker 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.
20:39 Flora Lichtman? How do you make the call, Nikki, for which instruments you're going to send on which lander?
20:45 Speaker 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.
21:27 Flora Lichtman? Nikki, talk me through the advantages, disadvantages of using commercial flight versus something in-house.
21:34 Speaker 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
22:19 Flora Lichtman? Moon P S.
22:21 Speaker 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.
22:32 Flora Lichtman? Kevin, are you designing the spacecraft around the science?
22:37 Speaker 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?
23:19 Speaker 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,
24:04 Speaker 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.
24:19 Flora Lichtman? I want to talk a little bit more about your business model. I mean, who do you imagine are your customers?
24:25 Speaker 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.
24:47 Flora Lichtman? Yeah.
24:48 Speaker 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.
25:19 Flora Lichtman? We're so needy. Yeah.
25:21 Speaker 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.
26:05 Speaker 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.
26:29 Speaker 06 Regardless of what kind of economy emerges at the moon, we're building out capabilities that are applicable across the solar system.
26:37 Flora 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.
26:44 Speaker 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.
27:07 Flora 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?
27:29 Speaker 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.
28:06 Flora Lichtman? Nikki, when will we start seeing science roll in from Blue Ghost?
28:10 Speaker 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.
28:49 Speaker 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.
29:00 Flora Lichtman? I love that. Thank you to you both for joining me today.
29:03 Speaker 06 Absolutely. Thank you for having us.
29:05 Speaker 05 Thanks.
29:06 Flora 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.
29:28 Flora Lichtman? And that is about all we have time for. Lots of folks helped make the show happen, including George Harper.
29:35 Speaker 07 John Dinkowski. Annie Nero. Jason Rosenberg.
29:39 Flora Lichtman? Ross Shutteridi. I'm Flora Lichtman. Thanks for listening.
Previous The Effort To Save Thousands Of Donor Kidneys | Ocean Liner Will Become An Artificial Reef Next What Does Dismantling USAID Mean For Global Health? Page updated November 4, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated