#NASAatHome: Touch Down with NASA’s Human Landing System

Hello, my name is Erica Alvarez and I’m
work at NASA Marshall Space FlightCenter in Huntsville Alabama. I work on
the human landing system program andtoday we’re going to talk about the
Artemis mission. Now what is the Artemismission? the Artemis mission is actually
a mission where we’ll be taking crew orastronauts to the moon on the Space
Launch System and they will be on anOrion capsule once they get to the moon.
Let’s pretend this is the Moon. they willmeet up with a lunar lander, this is just
a small mock-up of the Apollo lunarlander, but it will be very similar now
the lunar lander will orbit around themoon and have to come down and touchdown,
sometimes in very dark areas. Now thething that’s difficult is let’s pretend
this is a large crater here you may behaving to go down and be able to avoid a
large obstacle and your lander will haveto be sturdy. The legs will have to be
strong and you don’t want to shake theastronauts too much, because you really
have to protect them. Now on the rimlander we have an engine that will slow
the lander down and be able to actuallytouch down safely
Today we’re going to work on a projectcalled touchdown and touchdown is
actually going to be a link on thebottom of this video that will show you
what supplies you need so we can buildyour own lunar lander at home. This is
called the Artemis mission and so wewant you to be part of the Artemis
mission. So in order to perform thisexperiment we just need a few materials
that you probably already have at home. First we’ll start with three index cards
these are actually three by five andsize, three rubber bands, a piece of
cardboard four inches by five inches youcan actually use the hard poster board
or cardboard or any kind of hard paperyou may have at home. Ten mini
marshmallows, a cup, I like to use thesmall
bathroom cups you can use a larger cup butit’s a little more challenging, when you
use the small cup. Two large marshmallowsthese will be your astronauts that will
sit in your crew compartment, which willbe the cup. Your goal is to try to get
this cup to touch down and for theastronauts to not fall off, for this not
to tip over where they fall, you have tokeep them safe. Scissors, some tape and
eight straws preferably the Flexi onesthat you can try to use to build legs or
another part of your lander. Now forthis next part in our video, my special
assistant Peter is going to help us withthe test, what we have is a few legs here
to act as support, some minimarshmallows as feet. We use the paper
almost like an accordion to help us damp the blowor the vibration. And the big marshmellow inside, pretend they are astronauts going to space. Exactly. So now Peter give us a countdown nine
eight seven six five four three two one -drop!Success! So now the challenge is for you
to build your own lander in your home. Visitus for more ideas at NASA at home
#NASAatHome. And the best partof this experiment is the finale – the
marshmallows.