Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center,

Episode 396, Lunar Surface Research. I'm Gary Jordan, and I'll be your host today. On this podcast,

we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, and astronauts all to let you know what's going on

in the world of human spaceflight and more. NASA's commercial lunar payload services or clips is an initiative to enable

uncrewed commercial spacecraft to land on the lunar surface. Instead of carrying people, the spacecraft

carries scientific instruments, and to get there, U.S. companies have to design, develop,

and operate these spacecrafts. On this podcast, we've talked about clips a number of times, namely

ahead of the launches. Earlier this year, we previewed two of the clips flights that landed on the

moon, Fireflies, Blue Ghost, Mission 1, or BGM 1, and intuitive machines IM2. On episodes 367 and

373, respectively, we talked about the mission and the science on board

and how once on the surface, the spacecraft and flight control teams on the ground would

transition to surface operations to look after vehicle health, activate payloads, and downlink

some precious scientific data. On this episode, we'll revisit these missions and share the story of the work after landing

on the moon.

What exactly happened during these operations?

And how did they differ from our expectations?

And what did we learn?

Returning to the podcast to walk us through these topics, we have NASA Project

Scientists for BGM-1 Maria Banks and Sue Lederer, NASA Project Scientist for BGM1, Maria Banks, and Sue Letterer, NASA

Project Scientist for IM2. They each share just what it is we're up to on the moon and why it's

of scientific value. With that, here's Maria Banks and Sue Letterer. Enjoy. Sue and Mary, we have a lot of course.

Isn't we have a podcast.

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