by Specialists are now pulling together potential photography tasks for NASA’s Artemis 2 crewed moon flyby, now projected to take place in September 2025.
Tucked inside a Orion spacecraftNASA will chase them on the moon Spatial Address System (SLS) rocket and travel about 4,600 miles (7,400 km) beyond its the moon during the almost 10 day trip. To help them prepare for their journey, lunar scientists have begun plotting out some pretty photographic “Kodak Moments” for the foursome. Artemis 2 crew to consider when viewing outside the window.
Surprisingly, one task that could be imagined for the astronauts is to keep an eye on a light burning on the surface of the moon. It turns out that astronauts during the Apollo moon landing program saw three impact-induced flashes due to meteors. What are the chances that the Artemis astronauts could see the same thing?
Related: Boom! Japanese astronomer captures meteorite smashing into moon (video)
Color changes
“We have been working with the Artemis 2 crew to identify imaging and observation targets/plans during their journey to and from the moon,” says Noah Petro, project scientist for Artemis 3 and is the current project scientist for NASA Lunar Exploration Orbit mission.
Petro told Space.com that plans are being written to use the Artemis 2 crew to observe and a photo of the moon as regularly as the flight plan allows.
These preparations focus on selecting photographic targets for the period of the time during the crew’s closest approach to the moon, says Petro. “At that time our plan is to have crew members look at the moon, looking for color variations on the surface, as seen from orbit by many Apollo crew members.”
In addition, the Artemis 2 team could evaluate surface texture and properties, according to Petro, to validate or refine existing spacecraft data.
What are the odds?
Earth-based observations show that 5 meteorites the size of a ping-pong ball hit the moon every hour, says William Cooke, head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Telescope located at the NASA in the middle, Cooke notes, one pulse is seen every two hours in an area of 4 million square kilometers. “Particles can penetrate a current spacesuit 71 times less than this,” he says, “so over 10 million hazardous meteoroids hit the moon every hour.”
But that’s over the entire surface of the moon, Cooke quickly adds, and that’s 38 trillion square meters. “Astronauts only have a surface area of a square meter or so, which makes the likelihood of an impact on a moonwalker’s suit quite small.”
As far as strike frequency is concerned, “we usually notice an impact every 2 hours of observation time,” says Cooke. However, during the Geminid Meteor Showerthe rates jumped by a factor of more than 10, from 0.5 per hour to over 5 per hour, he says.
Pick the light
“There are a lot of meteoroids in the Geminid stream! Apollo 17 It orbited the moon during the 1972 Geminids – a great time to see impact flashes,” says Cooke.
“Hey, I just saw a flash on the surface of the moon,” Schmitt said during the Apollo 17 mission. “It was just out there north of Grimaldi … you might see if you got anything on your seismometer, although a small impact would probably give a fair amount of visible light,” the astronaut reported.
“It was a small bright flash right out there near the crater. Look at the crater right at the edge of Grimaldi,” Schmitt. “Then there’s another one north of it. There’s a very sharp one north of it that was just a pinprick of light.”
The bottom line, according to Cooke, is that impact flashes would typically last much less than a second, “so you’d need a video camera to record them. The chance of catching a flash is slim.” in a short exposure image.”
Big new craters
William Bottke is a pioneering lunar scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
In fact, if the Artemis 2 lunar astronauts see something interesting, Bottke suggests they should try to document the location of the site so that follow-up observations can be made.
“Occasionally, some of the flashes are large enough to show significant new craters on the surface of the moon,” says Bottke, and NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter patrol can look at those sites. , or other future instrument.
Risk: low but not zero
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The Apollo crews apparently saw these flashes, as did observers on Earth, which is not rare. Should that be a concern for future permanent crews working on the moon?
The IS World and the moon is often hit by small impactors and meteoroids, Bottke answers. It points to studies by NASA’s Environmental Meteoroid Office on the danger to astronauts from meteoroids and small impacts.
“In general, the risk is considered low but not zero,” says Bottke. “Furthermore, the longer you stay on the moon, the greater the cumulative risk.”
Meteoroid impacts will be a bigger concern for lunar bases, Bottke says. “These structures need to be built with meteoroid impacts in mind. They’ll probably need some kind of shielding or strong material when they’re built.”
The lunar science community is very interested in the observations that the Artemis crews could make while on the moon.
“Although we do not expect the teams to capture any flashes,” NASA’s Petro says, “their photographs and descriptions of the surface and lunar environment will be an important contribution to lunar science.”
