325. UFO Stories & AI as Co-Pilot for Artemis II

Introduction

0:00Hi, everybody. Sheryl Ackeson here. Welcome to another edition of the Sheryl Ackeson podcast.

0:11Today, from pocket calculators to super advanced technology, Artemis II's co-pilot is AI. In the 60s and 70s, NASA's Apollo program achieved what many at the time thought would be impossible, sending astronauts to the moon using technology that today fits into a child's toy. The Apollo guidance computer, the spacecraft's onboard brain, it had just four kilobytes of random access memory RAM and 72 kilobytes of read-only memory ROM. That's less processing

0:46power than a modern pocket calculator. Astronauts instead relied on banks of switches and manual controls. They had constant voice contact with Earth-based mission controllers who were the ones who performed the most complex calculations on the ground. Today, with Artemis II, the first

Artemis II Mission

1:05manned lunar mission since Apollo 17 in 1972, NASA's sending four astronauts on a 10-day flyby the moon using the Orion spacecraft. And this time, artificial intelligence serves as a tireless digital partner, transforming how man travels into deep space.

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1:55Hey, I like your new RAV4. Thanks, yours too. What does RAV stand for anyway? To me, it's the remarkably advanced vehicle. Really? To me, it's the runway approved vehicle for its amazing style. What about remarkably adaptable vehicle because of its versatile cargo space? Or really admired vehicle? Oh, or really awesome vehicle. It really is the recreational activity vehicle. The stylish 2026 Toyota RAV4 Limited. What's your RAV4? I was excited to learn that I would happen to be in Titusville, Florida for the launch of the Artemis II mission on the rocket ship Orion recently.

2:37Somehow, I had missed that this was even happening until just a few days before. Same with a lot of friends of mine. They didn't know this mission was happening until kind of shortly before, maybe even the day before in many cases. I just don't think it got the deserved publicity that we would normally expect to see in the media for something so important. Returning manned missions to the moon after so many decades. And it's been so long since we went to the moon and the technology is so different. It's almost like we're starting over.

3:09I mean, ideally, if we had kept going to the moon, the trips in some ways would be getting, you'd think, easier and easier. But, of course, we're having to reestablish as if we're starting from scratch in some ways with entirely new equipment and technology. And I assume there is almost no institutional knowledge at NASA if you're talking about humans who were actually there or part of these manned space missions before and the current staffing at NASA.

3:40Nobody's fault. That's just how it is. It's been so long. So, in many respects, we're having to reinvent the wheel. And as I watched this launch, which was just amazing, it's always an emotional experience, not just for me, but I look around and I see other people when you're there in person and you see it pretty close. It just evokes feelings that you maybe don't really expect.

Technological Advancements

4:03And afterward, I decided to do a little research to figure out the differences in the abilities we have now when it comes to technology compared to what we were using back in the day. So, that's what this podcast today is about. When it comes to the modern-day manned mission to the moon, the leap in raw computing power alone is staggering. Orion, that's the rocket ship, carries four redundant flight computers, each built around ruggedized IBM PowerPC processors derived from commercial airliner technology.

4:39Now, these systems, we're told, operate 20,000 times faster than the Apollo guidance computer, and they have 128,000 times more memory. While Apollo's single computer handled narrow tasks like lunar descent guidance, Orion's computers manage virtually every system. This is life support, navigation, power, and propulsion. There are almost no manual switches inside this thing except for rare emergency overrides.

5:10Everything from trajectory adjustments to system checks, they run through these high-speed, radiation-hardened machines, allowing the spacecraft to basically fly autonomously for long stretches, and this was a capability that was tested and proven during the unmanned Artemis I test flight. But I think you could say the real revolution lies in how artificial intelligence turns the computing power into intelligent oversight, something they probably couldn't have even dreamed of all those decades ago.

5:43During Orion's development and testing, Lockheed Martin integrated NEC's System Invariant Analysis Technology, S-I-A-T, I assume they say SIAT, NEC's System Invariant Analysis Technology, SIAT, Japanese technology, by the way. This AI tool examined data streaming from 150,000 sensors across the spacecraft, imagine that,

6:14and mapped out over 22 billion logical relationships between systems. The result is an anomaly detection engine that can spot subtle behavior shifts in everything from power distribution to life support equipment long before they become serious problems. SIAT, that system continues to operate during flight, and it provides real-time monitoring that was just not possible in the Apollo era. Crews and ground teams back then had to catch issues through limited telemetry and human judgment alone.

6:49In many ways, if you think about it, it's incredible we made it to the moon at all. And I know some of you are out there saying we didn't, but let's just operate for the moment on the assumption that we did. Working with SIAT, that system, S-I-A-T, are digital twin simulations. These are virtual replicas of Orion and its systems that are running in parallel with the real spacecraft. So you've got simulations going on the same time as the real spacecraft is accomplishing its mission.

7:20And obviously, this is a huge safety and performance addition over the Apollo days. The AI-driven models, they can constantly compare predicted performance against actual sensor readings, what's really happening. They can flag things like drifts in oxygen levels and temperature, radiation exposure, or propulsion health. On Artemis II, the vast majority of trajectory planning, life support monitoring, and navigation decisions happen autonomously through advanced algorithms.

7:52But the astronauts have a ton of other things to do, and they do still take manual control at key moments to test handling and build experience. But AI is going to handle the relentless data crunching that would otherwise or could otherwise overwhelm a crew thousands of miles from Earth. Communication delays with mission control can stretch for seconds or minutes in deep space. Well, this is much less risky when onboard AI can analyze options and suggest solutions instantly.

8:24The missions themselves highlight this shift in technology toward AI handling a lot of those things because the Apollo flights aim for bold objectives like lunar orbit insertion, landings on the surface, precise returns with the crews, often performing critical maneuvers by hand, while Earth teams were on the ground calculating every burn. But Artemis II follows what's believed to be a safer free return trajectory, where the moon's gravity acts as a natural slingshot to bring the crew back home without relying on a major engine firing.

9:00AI will ensure the spacecraft stays on course and healthy throughout the roughly four-day outbound leg and the high-speed lunar flyby. In the Apollo era, astronauts were pioneers operating at the edge of human and machine limits. In a few minutes on this podcast, I'm going to share some of the stories that I've been told about and by some of these astronauts.

Astronaut Stories

9:25Today's Artemis II crew, Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen, they're operating together as a skilled team supported by AI that processes censored data at scales that no human could possibly match. It predicts issues proactively and frees the people to focus on science, observation, and the experience of deep space. Orion itself offers, by the way, 30% more habitable volume than the Apollo command module, powered by solar arrays rather than fuel cells, and it features a modern glass cockpit with digital displays instead of toggle switches.

10:06I've been able to see a space capsule or an Apollo capsule close up and sit in a, I'm sure it was a simulation, a simulator of some kind, and boy, that thing was pretty tiny. If you imagine the guys going to the moon, sitting so close together for a matter of days as they headed out. So again, this one has 30% more habitable volume, may not be huge, but it's somewhat bigger. Now, this evolution and all the help that AI gives, it does not undercut, to me, the human courage and the ingenuity it takes to plan and serve on a moon mission.

10:43But you have to really think with wonder about how man reached the moon in the Apollo era with little more than slide rule precision and raw determination. The next chapter is being written through a true partnership between astronauts and intelligent machines. AI is truly acting as co-pilot. But let's hope it doesn't all turn out like it does too often in the movies. After a short break, a few interesting space astronaut stories. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify.

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John Glenn's Mission

12:39I've always been a space nerd or maybe you'd say a space fanatic. Not that I'm some kind of walking encyclopedia on all things about space. I leave that to my good friend Bill Harwood. He's amazing on everything. But I do enjoy hearing about it. I think astronauts, particularly those from the Apollo era, are the true pioneers. If you think about men willing to get on a giant Roman candle and just on faith and hope, blast off into space.

13:10Well, when I was first hired at CBS News in the 1994 era, there was extra money to be had. I was based out of New York and I was anchoring the overnight program for one year called Up to the Minute. And this was a long time ago. If you think about a news organization actually saying, we have a little money left in the budget. What would you like to spend it on? And indeed, my supervisor, Tom Bradford, asked that question. And I said, I'd love to get together some of the legends, the space astronauts, and do a roundtable with them.

13:45So that's exactly what we did. And I got to meet some heroes, including Pete Conrad, who was an American astronaut commanding the Apollo 12 mission. And he became the third person to walk on the moon with the first two ahead of him in the Apollo 11 mission, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Between our recording of segments on a lot of interesting historical things, I got to speak with Pete Conrad and the others off camera. And he told a lot of funny stories.

14:16But one of them that I remember him telling had to do with when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. And you remember the famous quote, one small step for man, a giant leap for mankind. Well, Pete Conrad said at the moment he was watching from home with a journalist friend of his. And they were thinking about the quote, you know, the historic quote that Neil Armstrong gave. And Pete Conrad already knew that he was going to be traveling to the moon next. And he and his journalist friend debated as to whether NASA made Neil Armstrong say that.

14:52Did NASA write that line? Or was it something that Neil Armstrong came up with on his own? And Pete Conrad said he told his friend, no, no one's going to tell us what to say. We get to say what we want. And to prove it, he says he and his journalist friend together talked about and decided upon exactly what he was going to say when he landed on the moon next in 1969. And they decided since Pete is shorter in stature than Neil Armstrong, that he would say something such as that may have been a small step for Neil Armstrong.

15:25But that's a long one for me. And indeed, listen to what he said later when he landed on the moon. Conrad, blind out first.

15:41Okay.

15:43Okay, I'm at the porch.

15:48Hey, I'll tell you what we're planked next to. What? We've got 25 feet in front of the surveyor crisis. That's good. That's how we wanted to be. I bet you when I get down to the bottom of the ladder, I see your surveyor.

16:03Okay.

16:07Yeah, but the bed. Okay. Okay. Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one, shall we?

16:16Yep, that's what he said. He said, man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me. So, again, the bet he made with his friend prior to the launch that he'd be able to say whatever he wanted to was apparently proven when he actually set foot on the moon. My next space story, fast forward to October 29th, 1998. I got to cover the return of Senator John Glenn to space aboard the space shuttle Discovery, becoming, at age 77, the oldest person to fly in space.

16:50Prior to that, he had become the first American to orbit the Earth on February 20th, 1962, which is why we called the new space shuttle mission has returned to space. There was a lot of attention to and concern about his health conditions at his age going back into space. And prior to the launch, I got a tip that said they had detected atrial fibrillation in John Glenn, but had decided to let the launch go anyway.

17:24So at CBS News, that was actually a lead, something nobody else knew, or at least nobody else had reported. So the context would have been that on the eve of the launch, it was discovered he had this health issue. Apparently, afibrillation can lead to blood clots in the heart and increase the risk of stroke, heart failure, other heart-related complications. So it was a concern, although a lot of people also have atrial fibrillation apparently with no health issues. In any event, as we prepared to report this as part of the launch, there was a huge debate and discussion that went on behind the scenes.

18:01I'm not even sure among whom and at what levels. I just know that the result was I was told we should not report this. And I remember thinking, maybe this was one of the first times I was aware of knowing something important, but having a decision be made that we as gatekeepers shouldn't tell the public what we know, lest we not like how they interpret it. Or maybe someone in management thought NASA wouldn't like it, or maybe they've been asked by NASA for us not to report it.

18:32I'm not even sure why, but we didn't report it. And he was just fine in space, although I don't know if you remember anything about this launch. When they landed, he stayed aboard the space shuttle for quite a while, and there was some concern, what's going on? Is there health risk? Why is he staying on the shuttle? They were just keeping him in place. And we were told he was just really, really swollen, that his face was really puffed up and super puffy, but that he was otherwise okay.

19:04While we're talking about John Glenn, you know there's an audio recording of him on that mission when he was the first American to circle or to orbit the Earth, in which it is said that he saw UFOs. Did you know that? I'm going to play about two minutes of the audio, and he's going to say, it's a little hard to hear because it's communications, you know, on this spaceship, but he's saying something like, I never saw anything like it. They are coming in the capsule. They look like little stars, a whole shower of them coming by.

19:36So let's listen to this two minutes of audio from that mission. This is John Glenn. This is Fred Schiff's head, and I'll try to describe what I'm in here. I'm in a big mass of some very small particles that are brilliantly lit up like they're luminescent. I never saw anything like it. They're around a little, they're coming by the capsule, and they look like little stars, a whole shower of them coming by. They swirl around the capsule and go in front of the window, and they're all brilliantly lighted.

20:15They've probably averaged maybe seven or eight feet apart, but I can see them all down below me also.

20:28Negative, negative. They're very slow. They're not going away from me more than maybe three or four miles per hour. They're going at the same speed I am, approximately.

20:41They're only very slightly under my speed. Over. They do have a different motion now for me, because they swirl around the capsule and then depart back the way that I am looking.

20:56Are you receiving? Over.

21:00There are literally thousands of them.

21:26This is Friendship 7. Am I in contact with anyone? Over. Now, that was not the only time on that mission that John Glenn saw the same thing. Listen to this description he also gave. Hi, John. It's over. Hi, Roger. This is Friendship 7, and now that sunrise is starting, I have all these little particles coming around the capsule again, just at sunrise.

21:56Hi, Roger. Friendship 7. Hi, Roger. Hi, Roger. Friendship 7.

21:59I also can see the light on my, on steam from the thruster when I operate it. Over.

22:08Now, this is Friendship 7. I think my, I can see a little bit of steam spitting against the dark sky here, occasionally from my pitch-down manual thrust. Over. Hi, Roger. Now, this is Friendship 7. And all these little particles, there are thousands of them, and they're not coming from the capsule. There's something that's already up here. Because they're all over the sky, way out. I can see them, uh, as far as I can see, in each direction, almost.

22:35Roger. Friendship 7.

22:39Now, this is Friendship 7. I'm trying to get some pictures of these particles that are outside here. Over. Now, Friendship 7, this is Canton. John, we also have no indication that your landing bag might be deployed. Over.

22:53Hi, Roger. Did someone report landing bag could be down? Over. What's happening there is they are really not believing him that these particles are something that he's just seeing independent in space. They are theorizing down there at NASA because it's something they don't understand, that these could be particles coming off of the ship from a deployed bag. And John Glenn's trying to tell them that that's not where these particles are coming from. I can hear it. This was over.

23:23Well, I think they probably thought these particles I saw might have come from that. But these are, there are thousands of these things. And they go out for, uh, it looks like miles in each direction from me. And they move by here very slowly.

23:38I saw them at the same spot on the first orbit. Over. Hi, Roger. Are you still seeing our particles in the air here? Are they at the floor? Negative. I don't seem to see them right here on this side. I saw a few, uh, just a few, uh, just after I left Canaveral and turned around facing forward. Uh, they were coming toward me at that time. I was going, uh, so I know that they are not coming from the capsule at all.

24:05Interesting because later, because nobody really understood what these could be, they tried to brush them off as some kind of space hallucination. Maybe they weren't really there. Must be frustrating if you're the astronaut seeing something unprecedented and you are certain about what you're seeing that it's not coming from your ship and that in your mind it's not a hallucination. But because they don't understand it, they're trying to tell you that maybe that's all it is. And if you look into it today, it will say, oh, these were likely ice crystals or frost

24:38flakes from the spacecraft, although they can't know for sure and admit they don't know for sure. But that's what will come up as the official explanation. It will say if you search online, most likely that these were not UFOs or anything extraterrestrial. Another interesting point, though, you heard John Glenn say he was capturing images of these lights. There are no images that have ever been released that I can find, and I've done quite a bit of searching. So if he was capturing images of these things, but we don't have any images, why is that?

25:13Which brings me to my next space astronaut story. Before I worked at the national level for CNN and CBS, I worked in local news. I worked in local news in Florida, sometimes covering what we call the space coast, running across stories and people who were involved in the missions, knew the astronauts, and so on. And one day in the early 1980s, I was covering a story unrelated to all of this, but I happened to have an interview with a psychiatrist about something, again, unrelated.

25:45But I noticed a book on his shelf that he had written about astronauts and space. And I started asking him what was his expertise or why he had written this book. And he said that he had actually treated astronauts upon their return to Earth after they'd been in space and to the moon. And I said, well, treated them for what? And he said, all of them see UFOs, not just some of them, all of them see UFOs, and they

26:15are forbidden from discussing some of these things, he says. But I guess he talked with them about some of that and the implications. He couldn't say too much, but I thought that was fascinating. Now, I know UFO just means something unidentified akin to what John Glenn saw, or it could be something even more specific, we don't know, because maybe we're not told everything that happens on these missions. But isn't that interesting?

Buzz Aldrin Interview

26:42The last space story I will tell for this podcast has to do with me speaking with Buzz Aldrin. Again, just a huge hero as far as I'm concerned. And I had the pleasure of taking him to a work dinner when I worked for CBS News. We have these Washington journalism dinners that occur a couple of times a year, and he was my invited guest. So I got to talk with him and ask him a lot of questions. And it was about the time that the John Glenn mission, the return to space, had happened

27:14or was about to happen. So I started to discuss that with Buzz Aldrin, and I asked, would he like to go back into space or back to the moon? And what he said was, no. And I said, why not? And he said something like this. He said that when you get to the moon and you look back at the earth, he said, it is the loneliest, most desolate feeling that one can ever have. He said it was really indescribable.

27:45And he said something like, when you look from that view, you realize how all alone we are. And he said, I never want to feel that way again. Not the response I thought I would get. But that was unexpected. And I did ask him what he and his fellow astronauts, Mike Collins and Neil Armstrong, talked about on those days in which they traveled back from the moon after doing such an historic thing. Again, I had seen a mock-up of the space capsule, and they were basically shoulder to shoulder

28:18for days on the way back. What did they talk about? And he told me, we didn't really talk. I thought that was interesting, too. When I told that to a space expert, a civilian space expert who's an acquaintance of mine, he explained why it was. He said there were a lot of hard feelings among those three astronauts. Now, this I don't know firsthand. This is just what I've been told by somebody who seems to know a lot about all of it. But he said, if you think about it, all three men went to the moon, you know, to the moon

28:52area. But each man, so the story goes, had reason to be aggravated about something. Buzz Aldrin was aggravated because, simply because of the seating structure where they happened to be seated in the lunar module that actually got them onto the moon. Neil got to get out first and got to be the first man on the moon. So, according to the story, my acquaintance told me, Buzz was kind of ticked about that. Neil was ticked, according to the story, because Buzz Aldrin wouldn't take any pictures of Neil

29:26on the moon. The only picture that exists of Neil is actually taken in the reflection of Buzz Aldrin's helmet. A few little modifications. I looked that up and it is largely true, but maybe not quite exactly true. There are some images of Neil Armstrong on the moon, but not great ones. Apparently, Armstrong was the photographer. There was one main camera from most of the mission down there on the moon. So, Neil Armstrong was taking most of the pictures and there were plenty of Buzz Aldrin.

29:59But Buzz only held the camera for a short sequence and he mostly took panoramas. And he did get a little bit of Armstrong, but nothing very good. No iconic profile photos of Neil Armstrong on the moon, as it happens. There is some video or film footage showing Neil Armstrong coming down the ladder, taking his first steps, moving around and so on. That was from a camera mounted on the lunar module. But anyway, you've heard why two of the astronauts were kind of supposedly aggravated and may not

30:32have had much to say to each other on the trip back. But what about Mike Collins? Well, so the story goes, can you imagine going all the way to the moon and yet not getting to set foot on the moon? You're part of this historic mission, but you had to stay inside. You didn't get to walk on the moon's surface. In any event, according to Buzz Aldrin himself, very little discussion for days between those pioneers, those heroes, after their historic moon mission, as they traveled back to Earth

31:03for splashdown.

31:06I hope you enjoyed today's space-themed podcast and that if you did, you will subscribe to it, leave a terrific review and share it with your friends. Check out my other podcasts, Full Measure After Hours. And be sure and support independent journalism by going to the Sheryl Ackeson store. Go to SherylAckeson.com and click the store tab for some great gift ideas designed exclusively for independent thinkers like you and your friends and some of your family members with proceeds supporting causes such as the ION Awards that I created for independent reporting,

31:42both at the professional level and also at college level, and other independent journalism causes. Do your own research. Make up your own mind. Think for yourself.

31:53Think for yourself. Think for yourself.

32:23Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Thank you.

33:22Thank you.

33:52Thank you.

34:22Thank you.

34:52Thank you.

35:22Thank you.