Keith Cowing, a former NASA scientist and the creator of NASAWatch, has been a part of the space sector for decades. He's also one of NASA's most vocal critics.
Guest | Keith Cowing, Editor, NASA Watch
On Twitter | https://x.com/keithcowing
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-cowing-9b94076/
On Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/keith.cowing
Host | Matthew S Williams
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/matthew-s-williams
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Episode Notes
Keith Cowing, a former NASA scientist and the creator of NASAWatch, has been a part of the space sector for decades. He's also one of NASA's most vocal critics. We sat down to discuss the current state of affairs at NASA, which has become chaotic thanks to the shakeup caused by the current U.S. administration
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Resources
NASA Watch: https://nasawatch.com/
Astrobiology.com: https://astrobiology.com/
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For more podcast Stories from Space with Matthew S Williams, visit: https://itspmagazine.com/stories-from-space-podcast
WTF Is Happening At NASA? | A Conversation with Keith Cowing | Stories From Space Podcast With Matthew S Williams
Episode 94 - Keith Cowing
[00:00:00] The authors acknowledge that this podcast was recorded on the
traditional, unceded lands of the Lekwungen peoples. Hello, and welcome back
to Stories from Space. I'm your host, Matt Williams. And joining me today is a
very special guest, Keith Cowing, an astrobiologist, a former NASA employee,
and the current editor and webmaster of NASA Watch.
He's also the editor of SpaceRef. com, an online space news service, and
Astrobiology. com, an online resource about life in the universe. He's also an
author, an educator, and an executive coach. Keith, thank you so much for
coming on today. My pleasure. So let's get right into it here. NASA is
experiencing a What I would probably describe as a terrible shake up right now,
as a result of the new [00:01:00] administration, as a result of the hiring and
firing of government employees.
As someone who has covered NASA, events at NASA, and has worked for
them for several years, what exactly is your take on this? This all started almost
out of nowhere. Moments after Mr. Trump was inaugurated, uh, as president
and the chaos ensued at warp speed. It's at the point now where he puts these
things out every day called executive orders, which in essence, tell everybody to
do something.
Half of which are immediately challenged in court, but these things come out at
such a rate. The government agencies here, just as they are understanding how
they have to deal with one of them, two more arrive. So, in NASA parlance, it's
like drinking from fire hoses. And they have five or six at any given point that
they're drinking from.
And F equals MA, so every one of them is pushing somebody to the other side
of the room, so it's chaos. Uh, [00:02:00] but most of these have to do with
What NASA does and who does it. And it's the same for all the government
agencies. They have a goal of cutting back the workforce because they seem to
think that if they cut 25 percent of the government workforce will say vast
amounts of money, but in reality, personnel cuts on 1 2 percent of the entire
federal budget.
They're not going to really change much of anything, but, you know, it's all
about appearances. So, NASA being a medium sized organization hasn't been
hit hard. Yet. I'll say that yet. If you were transcribing this, the yet would be an
uppercase letter. Well, yes. So, in terms of what they have been hit with, therehas been, uh, I know for a fact that, uh, their DEI office has been forcibly
closed.
They've been ordered to, uh, drop, uh, statements regarding climate change
from their, uh, from That's just [00:03:00] started. That's just started. Uh, that's
the next, you'll ask me the question, so what's next, Keith, and I'll tell you that's
next, but they're really going after DEIA, which is, uh, just, uh, diversity, equal
opportunity, it's, it's an essence.
Making the workforce representative of what our country really looks like in
terms of, you know, uh, ethnicity, diversity, skills, age, gender, the whole thing.
And that was almost instantaneous that they were ordered to remove all
mention. Of those programs, all websites of those programs, anybody working
on those programs, and then they went out to all the contractors and
universities, uh, who get money saying you have to, if we gave you money to do
those things, you're not doing it anymore, and by the way, you have to remove
all those rules from your website, and we'll check back with you, and then they
said, oh, by the way, we need to know if you forgot anything, because we want
to go get more of these people, And that was superseded by, oh, [00:04:00] and
by the way, now we're going to cut workforce.
And it sort of went from an amateurish, you know, just respond to this email
that you'd like to leave the government. And then that didn't work. So they
would put memos out, each of which would change things. And eventually it
became the, uh, you know, the retirement, you know, hereby leave the agency
thing.
And the courts put that off several times, but in the, in the midst of all that, they
were scrubbing things that. Justify the programs that a lot of these people were
working on so as to make their departure from the government easier to do. And
so we're sort of at that point right now where that process is underway just to get
rid of people.
Yes. So, yes. What's next? Yes. One of the things NASA does is study our
planet. And most people aren't aware of this, I guess, because they vote,
weirdly, but we live on a planet. And, uh, one of the ways you understand
what's happening on this planet is [00:05:00] to study other planets, and you
study other planets, you know, and compare them to each other.
And out of that becomes an emergent property of how planets and climate and
all these things work together. Well, for some reason, Earth is special, not just
because we're living on it, but because, uh, the current administration thinks thatthe theories behind how we're changing our climate, because we can do that, are
bogus and bullshit and just not real.
So That is now on the list of things to be purged. Now, NASA isn't the only
government agency here in the States that studies climate. You have the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is part of the, or
NOAA, part of the Commerce Department. Between NASA and NOAA, we
launch and operate all, virtually all the satellites that the United States puts up
that study climate and weather, weather forecasting, El Nino, uh, floods, the
whole thing.
At the National Science Foundation and the USGS, the United States
Geological Survey, they also studied the Earth. Now, together, [00:06:00] these
organizations over the years will all work together, you'll see people with grants
to study climate change and so forth, and they'll get grants from NOAA, NASA,
NSF, USGS, and a lot of other places.
There will be a systematic series of executive orders that go to each of these
organizations saying, you're not doing it anymore, remove all that stuff, come
back to us and tell us how much you were spending, how many people there
are, where they are. And we're going to remove that, and what's left, they'll
probably leave some things because they want to have satellites up that are
looking at weather, and it'll be consolidated somewhere.
I don't think it'll be in two agencies. There's always been talk of making NOAA
disappear, or bring it into NASA. But there's also been talk of taking NASA's
Earth Science and putting it in NOAA. But since they probably want to destroy
NOAA, we're probably going to keep it here and shrink it. If you, now, if you, if
you've lost your way in what I'm saying, you're not the only one who's confused
about this.
So essentially [00:07:00] just another day under the Trump administration since
inauguration. Yeah. It's been unmitigated chaos. Well, on a good, on a good day
that is. Yes, that is frightening to know. And in fact, I did hear there had been
some talk about how NOAA was being targeted next, how they were, yes, they
were to remove all mention of climate change from their research and literature.
It's hard to know. I mean, yes, the news is coming at us so unbelievably fast. I
also wanted to get your opinion, obviously. Now, the appointment of Jarek.
Isaac Newton as NASA administrator, his position there, I heard some people
who were clearly looking for a silver lining saying, well, this will be to the
benefits of NASA itself, the guy believes in space exploration and so forth.And of course, Musk being appointed to an executive role. Which does not exist
officially and, uh, is not elected and so forth. [00:08:00] What are your thoughts
on those moves and how might those impact the space sector? Well, right now,
uh, the way that they normally do this when a new administration comes in,
they fill the big slots first.
And that's the cabinet level agencies or departments. And so they've been
focusing on that and we're just, we've got Kennedy, you know, and so forth. All
these guys have made it through. These were the difficult ones. And if the
difficult ones get through, the others that are not controversial almost will fly
right through.
And so the next tier is likely going to include NOAA, NASA, National Science
Foundation, and these second tier organizations, which are often called cabinet
level agencies. They're not part of the cabinet, but they're big and powerful, and
their leaders are seen as peers, even though they're not technically in the
president's cabinet.
Now, there's a problem here in that we've got the first tranche through. Just as
we're getting ready for the other guys, the Democrats have said that they're
going to oppose [00:09:00] every nominee in a way that makes each one, like,
pulling teeth, putting them back in, and pulling them out again. And as that is
happening, even if you've got somebody who's, you know, Perfectly acceptable.
They're going to have to get mine. Oh, and there's generals and there's other
under secretaries and so forth Oh, and by the way, just this is picking up We're
coming to the march 14th deadline here in america Where this whole budget
thing is going to explode in in a messy way and totally preoccupy congress so
the real question is whether they're going to get any of these additional
nominations through before that so When it does happen, uh, Mr.
Isaacman, I'll tell you, I'm, I'm absolutely going to give the man, uh, the benefit
of the doubt, just like you did Jim Bridenstine. And I, I, I have to say, I thought
Jim was a wonderful administrator. I wish he'd come back, but he probably, you
know, you know, burned a few, too many candles at both ends in the years he
was there.
And God bless him for doing that. Isaacman, in many ways, is like [00:10:00]
him. Um, he comes from the private sector, he's self made, he's rich and all that.
But, you know, he's put his money where his mouth is, literally. He's bought
rides into space, he's gone into space, and he's done it in a very, um, what's the
long word, eleemosynary, in the public interest.And he raised a gargantuan amount of money for Jews, St. Jude's, did every
outreach thing he could think of. And so, you know, I sit back and I look at the
guy, I've heard what he said, I got to say that he gets space exploration and it's
his dream to be involved. And so I got to give him that, you know, significant
number of points out of the As to whether he's able to run the agency, well, he's
a billionaire.
He started companies, dropped out of high school, built companies. So, all right,
he's figuring that one out. But running a company as an entrepreneur Uh, where
you can make the rules and break them is different than running a government
agency, so that's the challenge. Normally you fix that by having deputies
[00:11:00] and people in place who've done this before.
And they've recently brought Janet Petro up from Kennedy Space Center to run
the place in an acting fashion. The question is, will she become the deputy
administrator? I, we don't know. That said, there's some big decisions that are
going to come to NASA, one of which you were going to ask about, I'm sure, is
the whole moon thing, the SLS, Orion, Gateway.
And yeah, that's, um, you know, I get asked about this a lot. Is it too expensive?
It's, yeah. Uh, is it behind schedule? Uh, yes. Is it a good rocket? It worked the
first time. I'm sure this hardware will all work, but is it the best way to Go back
to the moon, you know, there's probably better ways and you just go to twitter
and you can find 15 people Uh telling you by nine o'clock in the morning how
they would do it if they uh could get their powerpoint and cartoons turned into
rockets that said Um, you got to ask yourself do I want to give the new
administrator a horrible thing to do on his first day in the [00:12:00] job?
And, and preside over the cancellation, or are we going to cancel that first, you
know, create all the uproar and tumult, and then he comes in and he's the, you
know, let's fix all this sort of thing. That's my guess, is that you'll probably hear
that bad news before he shows up. I would do it that way. That way you give
him, you know, a tabula rasa, a blank slate, to pick up and run with.
But right now, uh, I don't know of anybody who's against it, other than some of
the Republicans who say, Hey, you gave a couple hundred thousand dollars to
Democrats. Well, so did Trump, so I don't know what the Problems going to be
there. I think that'll be the bulk of the questions, but then there'll be, you know,
are you ready to lead these people?
Do you, what are you going to do when half your, you know, quarter of your
workforce disappears? I mean, those are going to be the real questions he getsput to. And again, he's running a company. So I think he'll probably, if God had
the answer, no, you know what? I got to get that answer and I'll get back to you
tomorrow morning with that.
So, [00:13:00] if you were to put money down on what the next few years
holds, it's that, yes, NASA is going to have its funding cut, its personnel cut, and
they're going to expect Jared Eisenman to basically, with his entrepreneurial
background, to cut through the red tape and make everything happen for cheap.
Does that happen?
I don't know about cheap, but it happened, and of course, I have to drop into
why I, why you're talking to me in 2025. When I started doing this in 1996, I
started doing that when it was, I quit NASA after the Space Station Freedom
was reorganized and my entire office was blown up and all that, and I quit.
And I started the website, NASA Riff Watch. When my friends at NASA were
telling me that there was a reduction in force threatened and I got a chart
forwarded to me that said, um, you know, just had a presentation where they
talked about fear as a tool in corporate downsizing, direct quote. Here we are,
30 years later, [00:14:00] the same thing is happening again, except it's fear on
steroids.
Whereas before, it was people worried about their job. Now it's, we're not even
going to give you time to cry about losing your job. We're just going to, we're,
they know the cost of things, they don't understand the value of things. And that
is what they're really facing at NASA right now. So, Isaacman's got to come
into that.
And somehow talk to a bunch of people that you know, the ones who were fired
are gone You don't have to worry about them. They're gone It's the people who
stayed who watched their friends get fired who probably had to compete with
them to keep a job Who have been traumatized for months like, you know, do I
have a job?
Do I send my kids to college next fall? Do I whatever and they're recovering
from that and oh, by the way We're gonna change everything we were gonna do
and go to the moon, but oh wait We're gonna go to mars too and we're gonna do
it a different way. Totally that we haven't figured out yet And you're sitting
there having just been beat up by the tennis match of, you know, Whiplash, and
you say, Okay, [00:15:00] yeah, I'm here, you know, and that's what we're
looking forward to.And by the way, if you go look at the Doge charts, they just put one up today,
and the average age of NASA is in the 50s. You know, so this isn't a bunch of,
you know, uh, right stuff, Apollo 13, let's fix the work, the problem people. It's,
it's a bunch of older folks who, um, probably have a lot of skills, but haven't had
to run marathons, so to speak for quite some time, and they're going to fire
people too, and the people who are going to get laid off are likely the ones last
brought in, which are the younger people, the minorities, the women and so
forth, so that diversity and recent hires and new smarts may not be there.
So. Sounds like a lot of problems. Uh, you know, out of chaos comes
opportunity, I guess, and Mr. Isaacman, you know, I wish him well. So, some
good could come of this, that's what I'm choosing to take from that, because
Yeah, yeah, [00:16:00] there is. It's not all bad, it's mostly bad. But it's not
completely bad because there will be people left over after the earthquake,
tsunami, impact event, whatever is going to happen with the agency.
And by the way, it's happening everywhere else. So it's not like the NASA
people will be moaning and groaning. It'll be everybody and my neighbors here
in Washington, D. C. saying, you want to buy my house? Yes, I understand.
Also, there This is basically the stuff of rumor and speculation, but I did in fact
ask my boss at Universe Today if I had permission to go off and investigate this.
So, tell me if you've heard this one, I imagine a few times now, that Elon Musk
is using his position as being right there in Trump's right hand to basically
advocate for the exploration of Mars, to bypass going to the Moon, There's
something to that effect now. I've seen no evidence of this beyond the fact that
Trump had [00:17:00] announced that, yes, Mars, we want to plant the flag
there and ramble, ramble, ramble.
And of course, Elon Musk was there beaming happily. So Is there any, well, do
you think there's any merit to this, that, that Artemis could be screwed? You've
described it well, and I have had that same sort of, uh, sniff and feeling that
that's going on. I mean, you gotta look at, again, what Trump said about Mars,
how he said it, and the reaction of the people who want to go to Mars.
Um I haven't heard the same enthusiasm about the moon, going back to the
moon. I, you know, I haven't heard him say no, but I haven't heard anything
other than Mars. Elon wears the t shirts in the Oval Office that says Occupy
Mars, so yeah, I guess that's where he's interested in going. Jared Eisenman
bought two flights from Elon Musk, and he's a Mars guy too.That doesn't mean that they're going to walk away from the moon [00:18:00]
program. It may be that they're just going to do it differently. Um, with a
different thought as to, you know, do we build lunar bases there or are we just
practice ops and so forth and then just pivot quickly and go to Mars? Or do we
do both?
I, you know, could you go to Mars cheaper? Yes. I mean, yeah, anybody can do
it cheaper than NASA. Safer. I, I don't know, you know, more that those are the
other things we'll see proved out. But when you have rockets that are so cheap
that you build them like corn silos and you improve them literally in a real time
fashion as a consumer product, you're looking at a capability that may not exist
today but might exist in a year or two.
Whereas with NASA, you know, it's launch a rocket every two or three years
and hope it all works right. And if it doesn't, you're hosed. Whereas with Moss,
he goes, Hey, here's my blooper reel. I mean, he's got a totally different take on
it because he builds these like corn silos. Yeah, so that's what that's the
paradigm.
It's not a paradigm shift. [00:19:00] It's sort of like one of those hand whizzers.
It's just gonna go This is a totally different take on things and we don't really
quite know How it will fit into what everybody's expecting to go to Mars. It
may be, he has two, they may have two Tiger teams, competing inside of
SpaceX in the best way to do it, or competing with, with Blue Origin.
They may throw a prize modality into this. I, I don't know. So, you know, is the
moon passé? You know, all I can say is, I'm, I'll be 70 in a few months. I grew
up during Apollo. They said we're going to land on the moon by the end of the
decade. And little six year old me said, well, hot damn. Well, we did. And then
they said, Mars by 1981.
I'll be in college. I'll be in my 80s when we do this. So, you know, we'll see in
the football. Uh, but then, you know, I would hear, well, moon, we've been
there. Forget about it for 20 years. Then we're going to go back to the moon.
Now we're going to Mars. Now we're going to the moon, Mars, and it's almost
like, are you moon or moon, Mars?
It's like this [00:20:00] purity test. And so, I don't know where the pivot is right
now. I'll be, so, when there's an absence of clarity in this, all things are possible,
and all things are not possible. And we're sitting in that, you know, uh, limbo
right now, and until Something falls out of the sky, it's the Twitterverse that'sgonna be figuring out what may or may not be going on with the pretty pictures
that show up every night at two in the morning.
That strikes me as a very, very sensible and sane characterization of a very
insane situation, yeah. Exactly! I feel, yes, and I feel almost silly to ask you
these questions and say, what is going on here? Anyone knows because it does
seem like it's interesting because I get interviewed a lot on I kind of like doing
International television because I like to talk to people that in the echo chamber
here in the states And a lot of times I have to talk to a translator and I used to be
in a sign [00:21:00] language interpreter So I had I have the brain that can pause
and you know I have to sit and change i've done that in real time And when I get
asked with an interpreter, I have to think all right You and I can talk in English.
You speak Canadian, I speak English, and you know, whatever. But, when you
try and explain this to people in the real world, in simple language, it's hard to
do. They'll say, well, the moon, it's up there. We, we went there. Can't we just
use those things to go back? And you have to explain that whole, well, that was
then, this is now thing.
Let me just toss something into the discussion here that I think We in the West,
or at least in America, forget, I was on CNN one time and they were brought up
the whole China thing about, you know, landing on the moon and go, you know
what, let 'em, we, we did it. You know, you know, and I'm, I'm certain that
they'll land and we'll land next to, in our big American gas guzzle and lunar
lander, we roll down the window and say, [00:22:00] Hattie, where do you want
me to park?
You know, uh, I mean, it's gonna be okay. If you look at the rest of the world, I
remember when there was, uh, 1969 and they said it's the largest audience that
ever watched anything on television, a billion, two billion people. That was a
big deal. Well, now that's like, you know, that's a bad audience for something
global.
And when we do land humans on the moon again, more than two thirds of the
people living will have never seen humans walk on another world live. To them,
it's been history, myth, conspiracy mongering, and so forth. And as I have often
said, this will be doing the same thing again for the first time. This will be the
first lunar landing for many billions of people.
In countries that we would never have thought back in the day would be capable
of landing on the moon, like China. India is going to have its own spacecraft. I
mean, you've got a dozen countries with the [00:23:00] technologicalsophistication. And you've got people with more money in their back pocket
than some countries for space agencies.
So the whole paradigm has utterly changed. And you and I, we've both got gray
hair and so forth, are one foot in the old way of doing things. And there's a
whole new way of things that's about to pop up. And I guarantee you, when we
land people on the moon again, and then on Mars, it will be, in a way, That we
would not think possible you and I here sitting right now because things are just
different and I don't even know what I mean by that other than things are
different.
Yes, earlier when I mentioned the last 12 years, in fact, I was just thinking about
connections or deja vu from the first Trump administration. Because as you, I'm
sure recall so much better than I do, but I remember when the, they took office,
they [00:24:00] had not met with NASA once at that point. And for a very long
time, they still hadn't met with NASA.
And so NASA really didn't know what to do other than just carry on. They got a
transitional funding bill. And then Mike Pence announces we're reactivating the
National Space, uh, the National Space Council. And that we're going to, we're
prioritizing the moon. And he didn't say anything about Mars. But other than
going back to the moon will be good for us going to Mars.
Then he moved up the timetable. 2024 or, you know, heads are going to roll and
myself, I immediately began anticipating, Oh my God, they're going to, they're
going to have to scrap the lunar gateway and all that. Cause there's no way they
can have that deployed in time, which ended up being the case. And then of all
things, Donald Trump undermined what they were doing by publicly stating,
why are we going back to the moon?
We should be going to Mars. He, he tweeted that as I recall. [00:25:00] Yes.
And uh, yes. At this point, I, I've sort of been scratching my head since looking
at NASA's preparations, so putting aside the chaotic situation we're now in, it's
like, okay, so NASA's current mission architecture for Artemis is that they're
still going to launch Artemis 2, fly around the moon, come home.
Then Artemis three, it's going to consist of the Orion spacecraft with crew
launching SpaceX launching their Starship HLS, the human landing system, it
refueling several times over in order to get fuel. Yeah. Then it's going to
rendezvous with Orion. Then it's going to take two astronauts down, bring them
back up and, and basically drift in lunar orbital, whatever.Now, of course, everything about that, uh, seemed like. Well, that seems very
[00:26:00] inefficient and wasteful, frankly. Um, but, um, yeah, that is still their
current mission architecture. So I'm, I'm wondering, yeah. What is the
likelihood that they're actually going to make their original deadline of 2028
with Artemis three?
Yes. At this point, is there even a hope that, that this will take place that the SLS
will be used, et cetera? Well, you know, this is again back to the issue that I
know that this discussion is happening. I don't know that they've made Decision
yet, because it's, it's trivial compared to all the other nonsense that we see going
on Ukraine and, you know, treasury and judges and all this sort of stuff.
Um, if they do decide to discontinue Orion and SLS, I guess the question is,
you're just going to fly the ones you have, which would be, you know, the next
couple, or you just not do it at all. I don't know what the answer is that I suspect
that. The next Orion flight, I mean, they're [00:27:00] stacking hardware now,
so I gotta think that's probably likely they'll do that.
As for the other one, yeah, it's real complicated. It's complicated because
Gateway's in the middle. If you were to cancel Gateway and say, you know, um,
we're just gonna, uh, maybe you can launch the crew into orbit on, uh, you
know, an SLS and maybe bring some Food with here or whatever, but we're
going to have a starship in orbit that's going to go to the moon and come back
and you just fuel it more times.
Then it becomes simpler in that you don't have the gateway and all that, all
those halo orbits and all that stuff is gone. You're just going to go to the moon,
do the thing, come back. For all we know, then you may land another starship
ahead of time and all the stuff so that the one that can land just has fuel to come
and go.
I, I don't know. It really comes down to, if you're going to cancel SLS, how do
you cancel it, when do you cancel it, will the funding there be, be cut, or will
the funding shift over, you know, when you cancel a program, you don't keep
the money, never happens in [00:28:00] government, it goes away, unless you
reprogram or do something else, and of course, you've got to ask the question,
well, how do you get the bids in, well, are you going to have SpaceX bid, Uh,
you know, there's a conflict of interest maybe, uh, we just had that thing where
the Department of Defense got here supposedly had a 400 billion dollar bid for
armored cyber trucks and suddenly they had the monkey with that procurement
and that's sort of in limbo.So are they gonna have, you know, Blue Origin bid? Well, Blue just fired 10
percent of their workforce. I don't know. It all comes down to how you do this.
And if you put the facilities in place to A, ask for a more, a new approach that
goes through a procedure where you get hardware and mission ops and
everything, and the money to do it and the commitment to do it and a timeline
to do it by 2028, that would really, I don't know.
I honestly don't know at this point, there's, this is an equation with 77 variables
in it, you know, and it's, you know, it's really hard to collapse that into
something, and [00:29:00] unfortunately, you know, because there's a lot of
smart people that follow this, that's where you get the whole Twitterverse going
off, and Elon just loves to jump in the middle of that, and it just swirls around,
so everything seems real, even though it's not.
Thank you, Keith. This effectively ends part one of our look at recent changes at
NASA and how they could affect the future of the space agency. Stay tuned for
part two, coming soon, where we'll get even deeper into the big questions about,
such as, will NASA make it to the moon again before the Chinese send
Taikonauts there for the first time?
All that and more, coming soon. Thank you for listening. I'm Matt Williams,
and this has been Stories from Space.