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So 

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Clementine was a mission to the moon 

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and then to the asteroid geographic 

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dose . It was a concept 

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mission where we were mostly trying to 

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take existing miniaturized technology 

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and rapidly turned it into a space 

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platform . Frankly , none of us was 

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sure what we were getting into . 

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This was new territory . We've never 

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done anything other than earth orbiting 

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satellites , how you track a satellite 

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out at those you know , distances and 

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all that was all new stuff . We had to 

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take basically a concept from a napkin , 

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and we had less than two years to 

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design , build , integrate , test , 

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launch and operate admission of such 

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complexity that even if you took 

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today's technology and try to 

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accomplish that , that that type of 

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achievement , it would have been 

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extremely difficult to be able to 

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complete . It's different than normal 

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schedule pressure . When you go in 

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after an asteroid that's just flying by . 

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You know , if you're not there , that's 

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it . You're done . There's no such 

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thing as Give me another week or so you 

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can't do it . It was very exciting . Uh , 

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time leading up to it with all the 

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contingency planning is , we had a very 

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short in relative terms Launch window 

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where we had to get off the ground and 

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on our way , or we were not going to be 

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able to get to the asteroid . The 

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command we thought have been sent that 

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would do a certain thing , did 

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something else . It opened valves on 

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the propulsion system and spun 

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the satellite up . And we used all the 

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remaining fuel . So the geographic as 

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part never happened . We found a 

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facility and National Guard armory . 

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That was nothing more than a shell of a 

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building . Roll up garage doors , oil 

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on the floor and we had to start from 

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scratch and retrofit that whole 

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building into a state of the art 

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satellite operations facility . The Bat 

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cave got its name . It was a Honeywell 

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building , and it was a large truck 

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Bays . Bats had taken residence up in 

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that large high bay area where these 

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trucks were , so it got the name of the 

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bat cave . But it was a cool name for 

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where we were doing mission operations 

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for the Clementine mission . When we 

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finally got into orbit around the moon 

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and we had gotten confirmation that the 

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satellite was in fact in orbit around 

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the moon pretty easy to miss it unless 

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you slow the satellite down just the 

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right amount to much . It's not good to 

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little . It's not good . Uh , you just 

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skip right on by . So we hit it , we 

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nailed it . We were in a perfect orbit 

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and I couldn't be happier . We work 12 

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hour shifts at the bat cave . Um , lots 

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of times , I volunteered to stay on the 

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night shift for doing those mission 

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operations less , um , dignitaries 

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walking through and able to focus on 

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what was going on with the mission . We , 

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in effect transfer in almost two 

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million digital images of the lunar 

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surface to our ground station . And 

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this was not transferred from the low 

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earth orbit or geosynchronous orbit 

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from those those long distances . So in 

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effect , it was It was an amazing 

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achievement to be able to transfer 

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almost two million digital images of 

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the lunar surface . And this was kind 

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of the birth of the , you know , the 

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internet . And so that data was 

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streaming on very little delay . It was 

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near real time , and people who knew 

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the address could access it . And some 

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of the V I p s over in the Pentagon 

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were going gaga . They were sitting 

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there at their terminal . It's great 

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internally and and even externally , a 

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lot of people knew it is Clementine 

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because it was going to follow the 

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story of the song um , 

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my darling Clementine . And after that 

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it was gonna do the fly by of 

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geographic us complete its mission , 

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and it would have been lost and gone 

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forever at that . So where did it end 

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up ? It is definitely lost and gone 

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forever . It's in a I think they call 

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it Helio Centric Orbit . The satellite 

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went past and it's in an orbit similar 

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to that , maybe a little outside of it . 

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And there are stories that 15 years 

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after Clementine launched , it probably 

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came back past Earth again . What's in 

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this Helio centric orbit ? Dead as a 

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doornail . But the data that he 

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collected surely lives 

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on