Preparing for new worlds with a land stewardship mindset.
Once again, cows and astronauts shared the high desert landscape of Babbitt Ranches as NASA, assisted by geologists from USGS, tested equipment, conducted moonwalking drills and practiced geology in preparation for Artemis 3, a crewed mission to the dark lunar south pole region, anticipated for 2026.
The cattle seemed untroubled by the slow-moving visitors in spacesuits, a recurring event throughout the last half century. “I smile when I think about my grandad, John Babbitt, a quiet, understated, hardworking man who opened up the cattle gates for NASA in the 1960s for the Apollo missions,” said Babbitt Ranches President Billy Cordasco, during a media briefing at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff last month. “He had just one request: ‘Don’t let the cattle out – be sure to close the gates behind you.’ Like my granddad, on behalf of the Babbitt Ranches Community, I only have one request or hope, really, and that is: that we, as humans, carry the land-use ethic that we – along with the USGS, Coconino County, NASA and JETT – promote on Babbitt Ranches, to other worlds.”
The event was a reunion of sorts for Babbitt Ranches, USGS and NASA’s Joint EVA and Human Surface Mobility Test Team (JETT), as they share a land stewardship philosophy. The group last connected in Northern Arizona in October 2022.
“We acknowledge a personal and professional commitment to helping maintain the integrity of the land on which we are testing as we take this next step off our world and onto another,” said NASA Project Manager Barbara Janoiko, in a statement created in honor of NASA, JETT, USGS and Babbitt Ranches. “Flagstaff is so supportive as a community. We love testing out in the terrain, working with the Babbitts, being out on their land and the property, and preparing for Artemis.”
Astronauts Kate Rubins, Ph.D., and Andre Douglas, Ph.D., donned the latest 95-pound ExCon spacesuit prototype for some of their field exercises, which included hi-fi cameras that beam a video signal back to Mission Control and a toolbelt with collection packs to carry rock samples.
“Our actual spacesuits are going to be 300 pounds, they are going to be pressured to 4.3 PSI, so it’s kind of like being inside a basketball and then having to do scientific and physical work,” said Rubins.
“As you kneel down on one knee, you have to stabilize,” said Douglas. “We have to be careful how we move our legs to make sure we stay safe in the suit. The analogue helps us understand how to do that in the environment that we’re in. Even putting it [a rock] into the bag and using the swing arms can be a little bit of a challenge.”
On their backs was a portable life support system. “That’s going to be the backpack that carries our oxygen, our cooling loops, our CO2 scrubbing. So, as you can see, we’ve got this really hi-fidelity model and we can test that out as we’re doing all of our geology,” said Rubins.
Flagstaff-based USGS geologist Jim Skinner helped chart the path for the astronauts to find a variety of rock samples. “We expect the moon to be very flat with a lot of crater holes in it and a lot of distributed rocks and sediments, probably that had been ejected from craters from different areas,” he said. “From a geologist’s standpoint and in training the crew, the gradation of sediments across the surface is very, very subtle. One of things we’re testing out is whether the astronauts can see the difference from one kind of unit of sediment into another. As we map the moon, we’re very interested in those subtle variations on the surface that we see from orbit. We don’t know what those variations are.”
Meanwhile, Flagstaff-based USGS geologist Lauren Edgar was receiving the information from the astronauts at Mission Control in Houston. “We were testing out situations in which the crew might be out of communications due to topography blocking the signal, or how we might not get the video feed from the crew beyond a certain distance from the lander. We also tested a situation in which we could get some real-time images transmitted from the crew to the science team in Houston, which is another way of experiencing what they’re seeing so we can help them make geology interpretations during the EVA [Extravehicular Activity]. Our colleagues at NASA’s Johnson Space Center have developed some great software tools that help us piece together all of the information in space and time.”
“This is a really great place for us to learn what might happen on the moon,” said Douglas, “but also, for just about anybody interested in geology. We train people from beginners to advanced because it’s just a rich place to look at different features and different minerals.”
The astronauts practiced two night walks, as the moon’s south polar region will have challenging lighting conditions with the sun low on the horizon. NASA wants to know how water is stored there.
“We don’t know what form it is in,” said Edgar. “Is it a solid layer of ice? Is it trapped in pockets in the regolith? It would be a critical resource for supporting longer term exploration of the moon, to serve as a source of water for humans and as an important source of hydrogen and oxygen for rocket propellant.”
Douglas holds a doctoral degree in systems engineering. He served in the U.S. Coast Guard as a naval architect and was a senior professional staff member at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, where he worked in maritime robotics, planetary defense and space exploration.
Rubins, a microbiologist with a doctorate in cancer biology, is the first person to sequence DNA in space. She has worked on two flights on the International Space Station and spent 300 days in space. She says the innovations being developed for the space program could have “a serious impact” on remote corners of the world that don’t have access to clean water or effective ways to sanitize waste.
“On the International Space Station, we recycle all of our water,” she said. “If you don’t have a lot of mass that you can lift off of Earth, every single molecule is important. But if you think about the kinds of things that we’re going to need to do to get to the moon in a sustained way and to get to Mars, conserving our carbon cycle means breaking down waste, making human waste biologically safe, potentially using that to build structures, making sure that we have plants that can scrub CO2 out of the atmosphere and then put that nitrogen back into the plants. All of these things are useful technologies for humans on Earth to help us live in our environment better, provide clean water, reduce waste and reduce our impact on the environment.”
Cordasco added, “What the community of NASA, USGS, JETT, Coconino County and others, along with Babbitt Ranches, provides with regard to our obligations to a land-use ethic, matters today and will benefit generations to come.” FBN
By Bonnie Stevens, FBN
Hear more about the Artemis 3 mission from USGS geologist Lauren Edgar on Zonie Living: Business, Adventure and Leadership at https://starworldwidenetworks.com/shows/bonnie-stevens.