‘It’s time to break orbit’ Clark County astronaut, NASA admin talk Artemis Program with Herrera Beutler

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“There are a lot of things very exciting in space today,” NASA Astronaut and Clark County native Michael Barratt said during a recent talk about the space agency’s future plans. 

Barratt was participating in a virtual discussion Oct. 15 featuring him, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Battle Ground, to talk about NASA’s latest spaceflight program and answer questions from students at two Clark County schools: Vancouver ITech Prep and Camas Odyssey Middle School.

Both Barratt and Bridenstine talked about the Artemis Program, which NASA is planning on using to send astronauts back to the moon and beyond. Bridenstine said American astronauts have been in low-Earth orbit for close to 20 years aboard the International Space Station, adding that the next step for NASA was returning for a sustained presence on the moon.

“We want to go to the moon to stay,” Bridenstine said. 

Unlike the Apollo Program, which saw the first men on the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Artemis — which is named after the twin sister of Apollo and goddess of the moon in Greek mythology — plans to have the first woman on the moon in 2024, and will result in permanent habitation of Earth’s biggest natural satellite. 

Bridenstine added that also differing from Apollo, Artemis will feature international and commercial partners that weren’t available during the prior program that ended almost a half-century ago. He said part of NASA’s goal was to use the resources of the moon, saying there were “hundreds of millions of tons” of ice on the moon’s south pole, which is where the program aims to land.

Sustained occupation of the moon wasn’t the last step, as Bridenstine added that NASA was looking toward going to Mars. He said that recent discoveries of complex organic compounds and potentially liquid water 12 kilometers below the surface of the planet makes the chance for even more discoveries on the planet tantalizing, which future astronauts would be able to do after learning the sustained habitation of the moon.

Bridenstine explained that any manned missions to Mars would likely have to stay on the planet for years given the window of time missions there have every 26 months, though he said advances in propulsion technologies may change that.

Herrera Beutler introduced the Camas-based Barratt, with her notably-excited oldest child seen in the video feed.

“This program is something that I think captures all of our imaginations, whether we’re older or younger. It’s a big deal,” Herrera Beutler said. 

The congresswoman said that not only did the event highlight the work and plans of NASA but also reinforced the importance of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education integral to the work the space agency does.



Herrera Beutler said that while in the past Southwest Washington had relied on timber forests for its economy, “what I like to say now is that we have a growing ‘silicon forest’ because of the growth of our tech industries,” adding nearly 40 percent of the gross regional product of Southwest Washington was in STEM-related industries.

“When most people think of NASA they think of astronauts, which is an important part of the agency, but it also includes researchers and scientists and doctors and engineers, which are absolutely vital in running NASA’s many programs,” Herrera Beutler said.

Barratt joined NASA in 1991 and has participated in two space flights totalling 211 days in space, including two spacewalks. He was a NASA flight surgeon before being picked as an astronaut in 2000, launching both from the Russian Soyuz rocket and on the last flight of Space Shuttle Discovery.

Barratt said the main use of the ISS was for scientific research, with the station serving as a laboratory that has rendered a host of discoveries over the decades.

“When you remove gravity, you find things,” Barratt remarked, “and we have found so many things way beyond what we expected out there.”

Barratt said one of the biggest differences between what space exploration was developing when he was a kid and what is happening now was the amount of different players, pointing out a handful of private companies including Boeing that were designing spacecraft. With all the new developments he said there was a paradigm shift in astronautics from the past several decades, highlighted by the goals of the Artemis Program.

“It’s time to break orbit and go explore,” Barratt rsaid. 

He mentioned a few of the craft being developed for the Artemis Program, including the Orion Capsule, a “Gateway Station” in the lunar vicinity and a human landing system, the last of which Barratt has provided medical input on its development.

Barratt likened a sustained presence on the moon as a “god-given space station” to allow for further exploration, including Mars.

Barratt brought the conversation back to the importance of STEM, pointing to a quote from Carl Sagan from 1990 — “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.”

“I would say that is more true now,” Barratt said. “There is a bit of a gap in the public awareness of that science and technology that really fuels us — our economy, our exploration, our whole lives.”