Keith’s note: A few weeks ago a robotic explorer named Odysseus completed a journey – one not unlike its mythological human namesake undertook – and struggled ashore at the south pole of the Moon. While injured and out of sorts for a while, Odysseus managed to accomplish much of what it had been tasked to do – starting with a precision landing in a place no human or droid has ever visited before. The way that Odysseus made it to the lunar surface involved some truly heroic thinking the mission control team – rather fitting for a space droid named after a hero.
Odysseus – aka IM-1 – was sent to the Moon by Intuitive Machines as a commercial mission with NASA being one – albeit the largest – customer with various scientific payloads on board. Among the commercial partners was Lonestar Data Holdings which had the first fully operational lunar data center onboard.
In addition to the NASA science payloads there were also many other things on board ranging from personal mementos to works of art to things of historic importance which were stored inside Lonestar’s data center on Odysseus.
According to Lonestar CEO Chris Stott: “Our primary payload was from the State of Florida which comprised the overwhelming amount of data i.e. 99% on board. This was a visionary forward-looking step by the State of Florida regarding the protection of its crucial data for its citizens and government. For this mission they chose the maps and data covering every state park in Florida. In essence this was Florida on the Moon – launched from Florida – taken there by a Floridian company. We then also formally carried data for the SSPI the largest networking and educational scholarship organization in the global space industry.” (BTW Chris Stott is Chair Emeritus alongside Sir Arthur C. Clarke.)”
Stott continued: “We carried images and art from a number of NGOs and non-profits: images of the Explorers Club flag, the Challenger Center logo, Conrad Foundation logo, and the Space For Art Foundation, founded by astronaut Nicole Stott whose incredible art therapy work with pediatric cancer patients and refugee children around the work is deeply inspiring to the entire Lonestar team – and many others around the world. In a purely personal and informal gesture, we then also privately carried a series of images and photos for the Lonestar team, investors, advisors, friends, and family – including an image from Sian Proctor from her flight, and of course your image, Keith.”
Rather than try to weave everything into a larger story I am going to list the things that I know about one by one contained within the memory of IM-1. My item is the last on the list. As such you would be quite right in assuming I have a biased take on this mission and all that was on board.
A copy of the formal position paper “Private Sector Utilization of the Moon: A Right of Use“ written by Delbert Smith and Chris Stott for the American Bar Association (ABA);
A copy of the sheet music for The Moons Symphony – 7 Movements for Orchestra and Choir composed by Amanda Lee Flakenberg;
A copy of “Light of the Moon” by Davy Knowles (a native of the Isle of Man);
Artwork by astronaut Sian Proctor;
Some data for the AMAR Foundation for Baroness Nicholson;
And as part of the data center test the U.S. Declaration of Independence was sent to the Moon and the back to Earth.
In addition The Earthling Project crowdsourced voices from around the world representing humanity’s spirit and diversity – and they are onboard Odysseus as well – see “Odysseus Has a New Home and Brings the Earthling Project Along for the Ride” from the SETI Institute. The Earthling Project is part of a collaboration between Pérez Santiago and Dr. Jill Tarter, co-founder of the SETI Institute and an astronomer best known for her pioneering work in SETI research.
If I come across any other things that were on board I’ll be certain to add them.
Chris Stott added some historic context to how his team at Lonestar gets through the day “The quote we keep up on the big screen every day all day for all our work – “For the ashes of our fathers and the temples of our gods” – from Lays of Ancient Rome by Thomas Babington Macaulay. Yes, we changed it a little … but the sentiment is very much the same.”
“Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods.”The barbarians are literally at our gates … what will we do …?”
We are resuming a vigorous program of robotic and human exploration of the moon – a natural continuation of what we have done on Earth. Chris Stott makes reference to “Horatius” – Horatius Cocles – a famous Roman general – on a spacecraft landing on the Moon named after Odysseus a legendary Greek king of Ithaca mentioned in Homer’s “Odyssey” and the “Iliad”. You space exploration history types may recall that Craig Steidle used a famous line “Fortuna Audaces Juvat” i.e. “Fortune favors the bold” a latin proverb most prominently repeated in Virgil’s “Aeneid” at 10.284. Jim Bridenstine often ended many official statements with “Ad Astra” (“to the stars”) which is taken from another Latin phrase common in exploration and military history “Per aspera ad astra / ad astra per aspera“ (“through hardships to the stars”). Bridenstine often used the phrase “Forward to the Moon” as his variant to this notion. And of course the NASA program to return humans to the Moon is named “Artemis” after the sister of Apollo.
Alas, NASA no longer bothers to do much in the way of noting historic resonances (see “Spaceship Endeavour Is In Orbit“). The exploration of space is a natural extension of humanity’s exploration of our home world. This was something that astronaut John Grunsfeld and I tried to capture in the NASA Administrator’s Symposium that we developed and co-chaired “Risk and Exploration: Earth, Sea and the Stars” in 2004. I would hope that NASA goes beyond just “Apollo 2.0” sorts of things and really embraces all aspects of human exploration as they head back to the Moon.
Oh yes. Then there’s my picture on board Odysseus:
Background: Chris Stott and I both served on the board of Directors of the Challenger Center. His wife Nicole helped to start the whole “Flat Gorby” thing which ended up with a picture of Astronaut Sun Williams’ dog Gorby and me on the summit of Mt. Everest with another Astronaut Scott Parazynski along with some Moon rocks. Scott and I had some Apollo 11 Moon rocks with us in Nepal which are now on the ISS along with a piece of the summit of Mt. Everest. We also sent prayer flags honoring lost astronauts and various non-profit organizations with Scott to leave on the summit. These memorials that Scott and I did inspired student Michael Kronmiller (whose parents are long time space community members) who was doing education programs with students in Nepal to get a piece of Everest (i.e. another piece of Nepal) to place on the Peregrine Lander which was supposed to go to the Moon. But it didn’t. So stay tuned – we may try this again.
What’s in the picture? Clockwise:
- our late cats “Biner” and “Tip” in 1998 sniffing a display piece of ALH 84001 (the famous “Mars meteorite”) for which I volunteered to be a ‘Mars Rock courier’ for an event at NASA Ames (a practice run for my Moon rock courier efforts in Nepal). One time Biner started to scream when I was on the phone doing an interview with Leroy Chiao who was in orbit on the ISS.
- the ‘certificate of flight’ that Blue Origin gives to passengers for things they took on their flight into space. In my case it was my old tattered (and officially voided) NASA badge – which has been to the summit of Mt. Everest, the South Pole, Devon Island and the White House Press room (with me), the Titanic. It went into space with Dylan Taylor and then later to the bottom of the Challenger Deep – again with Dylan – with a Challenger Center patch given to me by my friend June Scobee Rodgers.
- a picture of me holding 4 small Apollo 11 Moon rocks over my head at Everest Base Camp as the Moon rises above me. Scott took the rocks to the summit a few days later. We were practicing how he’d do the photo op on the summit.
- “Ruby” our neighbor’s 19 year old cat who adopted us during the pandemic. During the pandemic she managed to get on global TV more than once by jumping into my lap during interviews I did from my basement. She was also present in 2009 when I brought the Apollo 11 moon rocks over for her family to see just before I left for Nepal. She’s now “Moon cat”.
- Finally, in the middle, is my wife Jenny and I at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar Hazy facility at Dulles airport (near our house). We’re standing in front of Space Shuttle Discovery. I stood inside of Discovery’s aft fuselage as it was being assembled when I worked at Rockwell Downey in the 1980s. Many of my friends have gone into space onboard this marvelous machine.
The things that were sent to the Moon on this mission are not at all unusual. Its a tradition among space faring nations and the people who work on the missions. NASA does try to get as many people as possible involved by putting their names on board various missions, providing ISS sighting times, having astronauts talk to schools, live webcasts from distant places, and supporting outreach for global phenomena such as meteor showers and eclipses. Alas, these outreach efforts are often focused on the people who already think this stuff is cool. And they are fleeting. NASA mostly drops the ball when it comes to making the greatest possible use of its utterly unparalleled brand identify and global reach when it comes to underserved – or often ignored – audiences who also pay for the whole space thing and/or benefit from it.
I regularly go outside at night when the ISS flies overhead – just to see it. My wife is quite used to this by now. The little Moon and Everest rocks that Scott and I schlepped around the Himalayas are now up there. And I was one of thousands who helped design the ISS and the science onboard. The space station has lived up to the whole “brightest human made thing in the night sky” meme we used to mention when I worked at NASA.
For me, like nearly everyone who has worked on a space project, I am not one of those people who gets awards. Only our bosses get the awards. Nor, after all these years, am I expecting any awards. That’s just fine with me. Seeing things from my own life – and others’ – inside a robot’s brain on the south pole of the Moon – at the Earth’s extremes – or watching ISS soar over my house with a piece of my dreams inside – just makes the whole space exploration enterprise that much more personal and profound.
I dearly wish more people could experience this enduring, hopeful feeling of un-diminished awe and childlike wonder that space has infected me – and so many others with. Given the uncertain planet that we live in, you simply cannot do too much of that.
Thanks Chris.
Ad Lunam
Ad Astra
Keith
