admin NASA has selected 12 new science and technology payloads that will help us study the Moon and explore more of its surface as part of the agency’s Artemis lunar program. These investigations and demonstrations will help the agency send astronauts to the Moon by 2024 as a way to prepare to send humans to Mars for the first time.
The selected investigations will go to the Moon on future flights through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) project. The CLPS project allows rapid acquisition of lunar delivery services for payloads like these that advance capabilities for science, exploration, or commercial development of the Moon. Many of the new selections incorporate existing hardware, such as parts or models designed for missions that have already flown. Seven of the new selections are focused on answering questions in planetary science or heliophysics, while five will demonstrate new technologies.
“The selected lunar payloads represent cutting-edge innovations, and will take advantage of early flights through our commercial services project,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “Each demonstrates either a new science instrument or a technological innovation that supports scientific and human exploration objectives, and many have broader applications for Mars and beyond.”
The 12 selected investigations are:
MoonRanger
MoonRanger is a small, fast-moving rover that has the capability to drive beyond communications range with a lander and then returns to it.
Heimdall
Heimdall is a flexible camera system for conducting lunar science on commercial vehicles. This innovation includes a single digital video recorder and four cameras: a wide-angle descent imager, a narrow-angle regolith imager, and two wide-angle panoramic imagers.
Lunar Demonstration of a Reconfigurable, Radiation Tolerant Computer System.
Lunar Demonstration of a Reconfigurable, Radiation Tolerant Computer System aims to demonstrate a radiation-tolerant computing technology. Due to the Moon’s lack of atmosphere and magnetic field, radiation from the Sun will be a challenge for electronics.
Regolith Adherence Characterization (RAC) Payload
RAC will determine how lunar regolith sticks to a range of materials exposed to the Moon’s environment at different phases of flight.
The Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder
The Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder is designed to characterize the structure and composition of the Moon’s mantle by studying electric and magnetic fields. The investigation will make use of a flight-spare magnetometer, a device that measures magnetic fields, originally made for the MAVEN spacecraft, which is currently orbiting Mars.
The Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment (LuSEE)
LuSEE will integrate flight-spare and repurposed hardware from the NASA Parker Solar Probe FIELDS experiment, the STEREO/Waves instrument, and the MAVEN mission to make comprehensive measurements of electromagnetic phenomena on the surface of the Moon.
The Lunar Environment heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI)
LEXI will capture images of the interaction of Earth’s magnetosphere with the flow of charged particles from the Sun, called the solar wind.
Next Generation Lunar Retroreflectors (NGLR)
NGLR will serve as a target for lasers on Earth to precisely measure the Earth-Moon distance.
The Lunar Compact InfraRed Imaging System (L-CIRiS)
L-CIRiS is targeted to deploy a radiometer, a device that measures infrared wavelengths of light, to explore the Moon’s surface composition, map its surface temperature distribution, and demonstrate the instrument’s feasibility for future lunar resource utilization activities.
The Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER)
LISTER is an instrument designed to measure heat flow from the interior of the Moon.
PlanetVac
PlanetVac is a technology for acquiring and transferring lunar regolith from the surface to other instruments that would analyze the material, or put it in a container that another spacecraft could return to Earth.
SAMPLR: Sample Acquisition, Morphology Filtering, and Probing of Lunar Regolith
NASA’s lunar exploration plans are based on a two-phase approach: the first is focused on speed – landing astronauts on the Moon by 2024 – while the second will establish a sustained human presence on the Moon by 2028. The agency will use what we learn on the Moon to prepare for the next giant leap – sending astronauts to Mars.
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