Today's Show Transcript

NATASHA CHEN, CNN 10 ANCHOR: Hello everyone and thanks so much for joining us today. I'm Natasha Chen in for Coy Wire.
What a treat to be back with all of you. Today is Your Word Wednesday, so listen up to see if one of the vocabulary words you submitted made it into today's show.
Now, let's get you your news. We begin with a big announcement for the next generation of space exploration. NASA has officially announced its next class of astronauts who will help the agency race toward a return to the moon and perhaps even Mars. The 10-person class includes former engineers, Navy test pilots, and even an undersea medical officer. They were selected from a field of 8,000 applicants and it's the first ever class to feature more women than men.
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SEAN DUFFY, ACTING NASA ADMINISTRATOR: There's nothing that embodies the American dream more than the 10 of you today having these spots. I know it was hard work, a lot of effort, a lot of studying, a lot of training for you to win these spots at NASA, but you truly today are living the American dream and again congratulations.
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CHEN: The new astronauts will spend the next two years in intense training, learning about everything from geology to space health and even training on high-performance jets. Once training is complete they'll be eligible for flight missions and their experience could be entirely different than every class that's come before them. NASA plans to decommission the International Space Station in the early 2030s. That's been the only in-space destination for astronauts for more than two decades, which means this class will help NASA usher in a new era of space exploration, including possible Artemis program missions to the moon and Mars.
Time for 10-second trivia.
How many people have walked on the moon?
Is it 5, 8, 12, or 15?
If you said 12, you're out of this world. All 12 people who have ever walked on the moon were American astronauts. Though several countries have sent robotic missions, the last time a human set foot on our moon was Captain Gene Cernan in 1972.
NASA also just revealed new details about the mission to return man and woman to the moon. Although actually walking on the moon isn't planned until phase three of the Artemis mission, Artemis 2 will send four astronauts on a 10-day test flight to orbit the moon.
Much of this mission will be testing the spacecraft and equipment to ensure it actually matches the ground models engineers have been building for decades.
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JEFF RADIGAN, ARTEMIS II LEAD FIGHT DIRECTOR: And then all of those checkouts will be interrupted by a lunar flyby and it'll be very enjoyable for us to watch the crew and enjoyable for them to watch as they fly past the moon. It's going to look a little different than previous flybys and here we've got the video going of what it's going to look like to the crew. They're going at least 5,000 nautical miles past the moon, which is much higher than previous missions have gone.
And so, the moon's going to look a little bit smaller. A comparison I can give you is if you held a basketball out from your hand, that's about the distance, the sight distance that the moon will appear to the crew in the windows.
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CHEN: Artemis II is slated for takeoff no later than April 2026.
Meanwhile, we're learning about another space mission that could save lives here on Earth. It's the world's first fleet of more than 50 satellites designed to scan the planet for signs of wildfires.
FireSat will deliver almost continuous real-time intelligence to responders worldwide. Check this out.
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BRIAN COLLINS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, EARTH FIRE ALLIANCE: If you look at the planet Earth from space, many people think of planet Earth as a planet of water. But the Earth is also a planet of fire.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: And for the people on this block, their lives now are forever changing.
KYLE STORY, SENIOR MANAGER, DATA PRODUCT, MUON SPACE: Wildfires across Earth are becoming larger, becoming more damaging every year, year over year.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Damage is extraordinary.
STORY: We see this in the United States. We see this across the globe.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Firefighters have been battling this blaze for weeks.
COLLINS: Fires are dynamic, they move fast, they have different intensities, and we didn't have a way to track a fire as it moved across a large landscape.
The first step that we're taking at Earth Fire Alliance is to build and launch a constellation of satellites called the FireSat Constellation.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Copy, I Alpha.
COLLINS: In order to detect and monitor fire activity across the planet, on every fire, every day, so that we can understand their effects and change the way our communities respond to those wildfires.
JONNY DYER, CEO AND CO-FOUNDER MUON SPACE: Satellites in orbit today are either fast, at very low resolution, or they're extremely slow and somewhat higher resolution. And so, if you're a fire responder, you're thinking, maybe I'll get a picture in 12 hours. And that's just not operationally useful.
FireSat will have this unique combination of both very high resolution, but also updated on a very frequent basis. And so every 20 minutes, a fire agency will be able to see a new picture of how has the fire moved? Has it increased in intensity? What's at risk? Where are my resources relative to it? And that's really a completely transformational sort of near real time stream of information.
STORY: We're going to be monitoring the entire surface of the Earth for wildfires to be able to inform responders and the public. That is a huge amount of data. And so you simply cannot have a human going through and looking at all of that data. That's infeasible. It won't work.
So, that's where A.I. is critically important to take this massive amount of observations that we'll be taking from these satellites, process it, distill that down into the decision-making information. Experts in the field, wildfire professionals can use to do their jobs better and safer. Detect fires earlier and be able to respond to them quickly.
COLLINS: We will need to lean into the artificial intelligence community and the data science community to observe how fire is acting in one part of the United States or in one part of the globe and understand what you can learn from those experiences will improve your ability to respond in another part of the world.
STORY: It will help the scientific community advance our understanding of fire science, of the ecosystem impacts of greenhouse gas emissions from wildfires. The mission is to eventually be providing a comprehensive global census of every fire on the surface of the earth. That is a level of insight and information that has just not been possible before that's going to be enabled by this system.
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CHEN: Now to an update on that powerful storm we told you about yesterday. Millions of people in Hong Kong and the southern Chinese mainland are bracing for the arrival of Typhoon Ragasa. Videos coming into CNN showed the enormous waves already flooding parts of Hong Kong.
And look at this from the Philippines. Rescuers use a chainsaw to free several fishermen from their boat after the vessel capsized during the storm. Authorities have ordered the closure of schools and businesses across the region as Ragasa heads toward landfall in mainland China. It's bringing winds up to 138 miles per hour. Most passenger flights in and out of the area are delayed until early Thursday.
He's more than just the science guy. Bill Nye, the beloved educator, author and television host, received Hollywood's most coveted honor on Monday. His very own star on the iconic Walk of Fame. In his speech, Nye said he was gobsmacked when he saw the star in person. But his message was more serious. He said supporting science and research is more important than ever.
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BILL NYE, HOLLYWOOD WALK OF FAME HONOREE: It has been said many times when you're in love you want to tell the world. And I love science. I love comedy. I love television, which was invented with science. It's part of why the U.S. has become so influential worldwide. By the way, the word science is even in the Constitution. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, the progress of science and useful arts. It's the best idea humans have ever had.
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CHEN: Nye began his career as a Boeing engineer, but he eventually quit. His hit 1990s show, Bill Nye, the Science Guy, has won a total of 19 Emmys.
Today's story getting a 10 out of 10, a Pennsylvania teen who turned his passion for spooky season into something spectacular. 16-year-old Joseph Vanzia and his dad built a custom haunted house in the family's basement. And this thing is the real deal.
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JOSEPH VENZIALE: So, this is our front desk and it's just very old Hollywood style. It's like you walked into the 1930s.
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CHEN: This year, Joe is adding a ballroom attraction complete with custom moving mannequins, all designed by him. He said he and his dad have been collecting items for the exhibit for the past six months.
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VENZIALE: I always like to improve what I'm doing for not only myself, but for everyone else to enjoy.
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CHEN: He charges $5 for entry and all proceeds go to a nonprofit that helps children in the hospital celebrate Halloween.
All right, superstars, congratulations to Mrs. Shockley's RISE class at Eudora Middle School in Eudora, Kansas for winning today's Your Word Wednesday contest. They submitted gobsmacked, an adjective that means utterly astonished or astounded.
And another shout out goes to Mrs. Scholl's Sixth Grade class at Brywood Elementary in Irvine, California.
I hope you all have an awesome day. Remember, no act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
We'll see you tomorrow, everybody.
I'm Natasha Chen, and this is CNN 10.
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