Hi, I'm Hannah, and I'm very excited to be hosting What in the World, a new daily podcast

from the BBC World Service, where we try to help you make sense of the world around you,

of the big things that are happening, the small things that are happening, and everything

in between.

Search for What in the World, wherever you get your BBC podcasts, and hit subscribe.

Hello, and thank you very much, I'm Dr Kevin Fong. This is the BBC World Service, and welcome

to the Royal Geographical Society in London, a place with a famous history of planning expeditions

into every region of the world. I'm here with an audience and three engineers all pushing

exploration beyond this planet into deep space. Last year saw the launch of the uncrewed space

craft Orion, which flew 1.4 million miles, circled the moon, and returned safely to Earth.

It was a successful test run for next year, when Orion will be launched again this time

with a human crew on board to fly astronauts around the moon for the first time since 1972,

and if all goes to plan, landings on the lunar surface will follow. It's all part of

the Artemis programme involving NASA, the European Space Agency, the Japanese and Canadian

space agencies, and many partners from business. They plan to put a space station in lunar orbit,

a moon base on the surface, and start repairing for a human expedition from the moon to Mars.

The chief engineer of the spacecraft at the heart of Artemis is Howard Hu. He is the Orion

programme manager at NASA, and he's with us now, as is Sarah Pastor, a chief engineer

for the crew's living quarters on the lunar space station. She's the European Space

Agency's project manager for the International Habitation Module, or I have aboard the

lunar gateway. And Libby Jackson is here too, a former flight director for the International

Space Station, and now the UK Space Agency's head of human exploration, she also coordinates

...