by NEW ORLEANS – It was just two days ago that Peregrine, the private launch lander contracted under NASA’s Commercial Payload Services program, rocketed toward space aboard the first private flight of United Launch’s Vulcan rocket Alliance.
Only an hour into the trip, the Hawk started to fail.
Astrobotic, the company behind the spacecraft, continues to provide updates on how the Hawk appears to be progressing post anomaly; the struggling craft even provided a photo for scientists to analyze as they figured out what to do. Honestly, things aren’t looking great for the lander, and Asobotic has confirmed it they will not be making a soft landing on the surface of the moon.
However, the morning after Peregrine’s fall, CLPS’ ultimate goal seemed to shine through during an astrophysicist. Jack Burns‘ a very optimistic presentation at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society. While obviously disappointed when looking back at the failure of the first official CLPS mission, Burns, professor emeritus in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences and the Department of Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder, simultaneously makes a point of looking forward. with what will soon be the second mission. The effort is scheduled for February, and Peregrine’s goal is not expected to change that.
“We saw the first Astrobotic launch yesterday,” said Burns during the presentation. “Unfortunately, it has had some propulsion problems and is leaking some fuel, so we are not sure if it will be able to make it to the surface. But, it will be followed next month by a second spacecraft: Lander built by the company Intuitive Machines.”
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That lander, got a title Nova-C, will launch a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to deliver six NASA payloads to the lunar surface — one of which Burns is involved with. It is given ROLES, which stands for Radio Wave Observations on the Lunar Surface of the photoElectron Sheath, and it’s really interesting. But beyond detailing the next CLPS effort and the bright promise of ROLSES, Burns emphasized that this second effort will represent the main point of NASA’s commercial effort. “It’s not a one-shot deal,” he told Space.com.
The whole reason NASA started the CLPS program is because it wanted a cheaper and more efficient way to return scientific payloads to space that would be easier. “If, heaven forbid, the James Webb Space Telescope was not deployed, we would be really stuck,” said Burns of the moment. A $10 billion observatory currently locked in a position on the side of the Earth that never faces the sun. Meanwhile, CLPS provides a way to distribute risks and costs across many receivers and missions. “The idea behind the CLPS program is the rapid acquisition and delivery of services,” he said.
If private companies can provide the agency with rockets and landers, NASA scientists can essentially be paying customers and treating a few experiments. Non-NASA scientists can do so as well. And while it’s understandable that Hawkeye’s apparent failure has cast doubt on whether NASA’s CLPS concept is a bit flawed, Burns added that Astrobiotic’s story doesn’t end with Hawkeye either. “They have another shot,” he said. “They got multiple shots, and even another mission coming up in about a year.”
However, he says, “we are friends with all the people who work on the Hawk and the Starburst so we were there trying to make them succeed. So, we are heartbroken.”
What is ROLSES?
In short, Burns says the far side of the moon is the best place to do radio astronomy—or as he puts it, “it’s the only truly radio-quiet place in the inner solar system.”
As the name suggests, radio astronomy is the study of things that happen in space through radio frequencies emitted by the sources of those things. So, naturally, you wouldn’t want any unsourced radio signals to interfere with the sensitive signals you’re trying to use. And the Earth causes its own radio interference. But if you put a radio telescope on the far side of the moon (the area of the lunar surface always hidden from our planet), any radio interference coming from Earth would be blocked by thousands of miles of the moon’s own rocks.
The moon also lacks a significant ionosphere, or atmospheric layer, where many zippy particles hang out and risk radio interference. The Earth’s ionosphere is full of these particles.
“Perhaps less well-appreciated,” Burns said, “is that the radio beams of these instruments electromagnetically match the subsurface conditions that occur on Earth, and that on the moon.” This is a problem on Earth because soil moisture, for example, can change what is known as the “dielectric constant,” or the ability of an insulating material to store electrical energy, from one day to the next. “That’s not true on the moon,” Burns said. “It is stable and very dry.”
Alas, radio astronomy on the moon (especially the far side) is a great idea, he says. And he is not alone. Several scientists throughout the January 9th portion of the meeting provided blueprints of their ideas for how to begin building science observatories on our beloved celestial companion. Ethicists and policy makers are also thinking about how to manage such a future.
Specifically, ROLSES will target a landing site near the moon’s south pole region in a small crater that is only about 10 degrees from the actual south pole. “This is the closest anyone has gotten to the south pole,” Burns said. “There the Indian Space Agency landed three Chandrayaan-3s about 30 degrees away, so we’re swinging in towards the south pole.
“This is not the pristine radio-quiet environment, but it is a good place for us to start conducting operations from the moon.”
From the outside, the team says they will definitely get there eventually. A mission called “LuSEE-Night” will someday travel to the neutral spot, marked on the lunar surface (yes, nothing like the grayscale watercolor side we see from our planet). That day could come as early as 2026 if all goes as planned, when LuSee-Night It is to be launched aboard Firefly Aerospace’s upcoming “Blue Ghost” lander.
“The ‘night’ comes from the fact that we will need 40 kilos [88 lbs] of batteries. We will not only be able to survive, but actually work at night on the moon.” This piece is quite interesting because lunar rovers and landers are known to die during long frosty lunar nights. India’s Chandrayaan-3 components, such as for example, a spectacular landing near the south pole of the moon last year but unfortunately they did not wake up after the frigid stretch Space enthusiasts were crushed everywhere, although there was little dream to believe that they would survive.
The future of the moon radio astronomy
“The CLPS program is supposed to be a high-risk reward program. We already see some of the risk with Astrobotic,” Burns said. “With the ROLSES payload, the nice thing about this is that we’ll be landing two or three of these payloads per year.”
To that end, NASA has already approved an upgraded version of ROLSES for 2026. Currently, “we have a total of 2.5 meter single pinhole telescopes that we will be operating and we have two bands – low band and high band. – and ranges all the way to 10 kilohertz for plasma observations up to 30 megawatts for astrophysical observations ,” Burns said. If those frequencies were measured from the point where the contraption would land, it would be the first point on that front. ROLES also doing things like studying the density of the photoelectron sheath on the moon, which involves photomissions from the lunar regolith (almost lunar dirt) that looks like a pile up. I hope that this will help scientists know what astronauts might experience on the surface of the moon in the extraterrestrial environment.
One of the payloads attached to ROLSES on Nova-C is also a pair of CubeSats that will be ejected during the landing descent, turn back and take images of the lander heading towards the surface. “That will be really cool,” Burns said. “That will give us a glimpse of the lander coming down to the surface for the first time.”
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Early in the presentation (ironically around when my phone started buzzing with Peregrine failure updates) Burns pulled up a video of the iconic Arthur C. Clarke during his presentation. It was a snippet of an interview in which Clarke discusses — believe it or not — radio astronomy on the moon.
“Particularly on the far side of the moon, shielded from the earth’s electronic racket by 2000 miles of rock, it’s a perfect location for radio astronomy telescopes,” Clarke says in the black and white film, “and I think that in a few generations, almost all serious astronomy will be done on the moon or in space.”
“It’s now a few generations,” Burns said just after the clip ended.
“We are there.”
