Lunar Science is set to replace NASA’s Artemis lunar program, which will send astronauts to the moon’s surface after an absence of more than 50 years and launch nearly five dozen robotic missions over the next three years. .
The Artemis 1 mission is currently scheduled to launch on August 29, with an unwrapped Orion capsule aboard a Space Launch System rocket — NASA’s largest, most powerful rocket since the Saturn V. the Apollo missions. The capsule will orbit the moon before returning to Earth, paving the way for a crewed mission to orbit the moon in 2024 and then astronauts to land on the moon’s south pole in early 2025. or 2026.
It will be the first time astronauts have walked on the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972, and it will bring new opportunities for science.
Related: The Ultimate Guide to Moonkeeping
Debra Needham, a planetary scientist at the NASA Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, told Space.com “Humans are providing an incredible resource to return to the surface of the moon”.
In reality the robotic missions are slow, and everything they feed their human handlers comes back to Earth. And although the introduction of artificial intelligence has automated this process somewhat, the robot does not have the quick thinking, interest or rigor to carry out the collection of rock samples in an effective way. for example.
Ryan Watkins, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Space.com “It’s easy for an astronaut to pick up a rock and then, out of the corner of his eye, see another rock that immediately looks interesting. ” “Real-time decision making is much faster and more efficient.”
The first landing site
To achieve the best science possible, astronauts must go to the right places on the moon. The six Apollo sites were clustered in a region on the side of the moon. On the same subject : NASA and SpaceX launch climate science research, more for the space station. Artemis 3, which is set to be the first Artemis mission to put its shoes on lunar regolith, will instead venture to the southern region of the moon. Not only does this region attract large amounts of water ice hidden in permanent shadow craters, but it is the first time astronauts have gone there, far from the Apollo landing sites.
“Although fairly distributed over the surface, the Apollo missions still basically went to a part of the moon that may have been affected by the massive impact that created Mare Imbrium,” Needham said. Mare Imbrium (“Sea of Rain”) is a large, 712-mile-wide (1,146 km) impact basin that formed 3.9 billion years ago and has since been flooded.
Scientists speculate that the creation of this impact basin coincided with the Last Big Bang, which is proposed to have occurred between 4.2 billion and 3.9 billion years ago when the inner planets ejected asteroids and comets. However, a recent discovery (opens in a new tab) casts doubt on this view, and samples from other parts of the moon can help resolve the debate.
“One reason we’re going so far from that impact basin is to be able to access different types of rocks that are potentially older and preserve the ancient lunar record,” Needham said. “We’ll be able to get a better sense of whether there was a period of heavy bombing or not.”
Lots of robotic science
Artemis is not just about astronauts. Although humans will be able to do great science in a short period of time, the once-a-year plans mean that astronauts will not be able to be everywhere on the moon. So, to help lunar science during the Artemis program, dozens of robotic experiments will be deployed to locations across the moon between 2022 and 2025. To see also : Explore a mysterious exoplanet in the new video game ‘Earth’s Shadow’. These experiments are facilitated by the Lunar Payload Service (CLPS), which commercial contractors working as NASA pays $2.6 billion for a program to launch small scientific missions to the moon, with 46 payments completed so far.
Watkins said her personal favorite mission is the Lunar Vulkan Imaging and Spectroscopy Explorer (Lunar-VISE), which will land on the Gruithuisen volcanic globe between Mare Imbrium and Oceanus Procellarum (“Ocean of Storms”). and that Watkins studied as a student using orbital data.
These rocks are believed to be silicic, meaning they formed from silica-rich magma. But on Earth, silicic-based volcanic structures require plate tectonics and form near plate boundaries in oceans. So how could they form on the surface of the moon, without oceans or tectonics? There are some geologic theories, and Lunar-VISE will be equipped with both a lander and a rover that will make creative measurements in different areas around the properties to test different theories.
Water on the moon
Needham is also excited about many of the challenges in the CLPS program, including the Volatile Near Infrared Spectrometer System, the Neutron Spectrometer System on a small rover called MoonRanger, and the Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations. Multiple copies of these three instruments will be sent to the moon by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technologies later this year and by California-based Masten Space Systems in 2023. Read also : Mike Moon is leaving Netflix as head of adult animation. They will work together to detect and study various “volatiles.” “- compounds with a low boiling point, such as water and carbon dioxide – on the surface of the moon, near the ground, and slightly above the surface, in the thin “exosphere.”
“What’s neat is that we’re going to fly a few of these payloads, first going to a non-polar region, and then we’ll also send them to a polar region later,” Needham said. . “So we will be able to compare these two very different parts of the moon using the same instrument.”
At first glance, the moon doesn’t seem wet, and tests of rock samples brought back to Earth by the Apollo missions have found them to be bone-dry. But apart from the ice hidden in the cold traps of permanent shadow holes on the poles, water molecules (or at least hydroxyl molecules, which represent water made from an oxygen atom joined to a single hydrogen atom, instead of two hydrogen atoms (such as water) are seen moving to the surface of the Moon near the diurnal terminus. These observations were first made by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument on India’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft in 2009, and in 2020, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), which flies on the back of a modified Boeing 747, confirmed the presence Water molecules near the surface of the moon, although they are in a very thin layer.
“Now we know there’s a lot of water everywhere on the moon,” Needham said. “But it comes from a different source than the water in the southern region. These loads can give us some real-time data on long-range measurements, and that’s important for feeding models that describe the moon’s water cycle.”
It is not yet clear how sustainable human spaceflight in the Artemis spacecraft program will be and whether more crewed missions will land on the moon after Artemis 3, given that each flight will cost will more than $ 4 billion. Meanwhile, the low cost of the CLPS component of the Artemis program will guarantee the delivery of dozens of scientific experiments across the moon, giving scientists an unprecedented amount of new data to sort through.
“We’re really looking forward to the discoveries we’re going to make to new places on the moon,” Needham said.
Follow Keith Cooper on Twitter @21stCenturySETI. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
Join our Space Forums to keep talking about the latest missions, the night sky and more! If you have news, corrections or comments, let us know: community@space.com.
Keith Cooper is a freelance science journalist and editor based in the United Kingdom, with a degree in physics and astrophysics from the University of Manchester. He is the author of “The Relational Paradox: Challenging Our Assumptions in the Search for Beyond Intelligence” (Bloomsbury Sigma, 2020) and has written articles on astronomy, space, physics and astronomy for numerous journals and websites.
Keith Cooper is a freelance science journalist and editor based in the United Kingdom, with a degree in physics and astrophysics from the University of Manchester. He is the author of “The Relational Paradox: Challenging Our Assumptions in the Search for Beyond Intelligence” (Bloomsbury Sigma, 2020) and has written articles on astronomy, space, physics and astronomy for numerous journals and websites.
NASA’s Artemis I Moon rocket sits on Launch Pad Complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on June 15, 2022.
How much does a trip to Moon cost?
In a report on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing two years ago, Forbes calculated that the Apollo 11 mission cost $355 million to launch in 1969. Adjusted for inflation, that works out to about $2.7 billion in today’s dollars. — 34% cheaper than projected SLS launch price.
Where is Artemis going?
NASA aims to launch Artemis 2, a lunar probe, by 2024.
Where will Artemis start? The space agency will host a series of Artemis 1 webcasts this week and next leading up to the unmanned launch of NASA’s first Launch System megarocket from Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Why is Artemis going to the moon?
The goals of the Artemis program include landing a diverse crew of astronauts on the moon and exploring the lunar south pole for the first time. The ambitious effort also aims to establish a permanent presence on the moon and to create reusable systems that could enable human exploration of Mars and possibly beyond.
Where is the Artemis mission going?
Through the Artemis mission, NASA will land the first woman and the first human on the moon, paving the way for long-term lunar exploration and serving as a stepping stone to send astronauts to Mars.
What is Artemis 1 going to do?
Artemis 1 will launch the 322-foot (98 meter) SLS megarocket and Orion capsule on a 42-day mission to orbit the moon and return to Earth. NASA will charge a test flight for its first mission to return to the moon with a lunar powered crew in almost 50 years.
Why did NASA stop exploring the Moon?
Apollo 17 was the last mission to land a man on the moon, indefinitely. The main reason for this was money. The cost of finding the Moon was, surprisingly, astronomical.
