by On Monday (January 8), America’s first lunar spacecraft, Astrobotic’s Lander, successfully launched from Florida on the first ever mission of a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket.
The Falcon is scheduled to reach the lunar surface on February 23, although it is unclear whether that will happen: The lander suffered an anomaly shortly after it was deployed from the Vulcan Centaur, and the mission team is working to solve it. If the moon landing is successful, Hawk will collect critical information about the lunar surface using a suite of five NASA science instruments.
This data could be key to informing future manned missions to the moon, including Artemis 3, which aims not only to return humans to the lunar surface first time in 50 years in 2025 but will also make a huge step for diversity through the first woman and the first person of color to the moon.
Read on for a glimpse of NASA’s science equipment aboard Peregrine on this groundbreaking mission. (The lander also carries a variety of private payloads, including memorial capsules containing human remains.)
Related: A private US lunar lander Vulcan rocket launches the first human remains
The Hawk will consider this: Laser Reconnaissance Array (LRA)
The Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA) developed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland is designed to facilitate measurements between spacecraft orbiting the moon and landing on the lunar surface.
To do this, the instrument is equipped with eight retroreflectors in the form of 0.5-inch wide (1.25 centimeter) glass cube prisms that can reflect light back, or by 180 degrees. These units are encased in a golden aluminum sphere mounted on the landing deck of the Falcon.
The LRA’s design means it can bounce a laser beam coming in from a spacecraft over a wide range of directions and then send it back to its point of origin. This allows researchers to make a “laser range” to measure the distance to the Hawk with high accuracy.
As a passive optical instrument, the LRA will act as a position marker on the moon for years to come, and will form the basis for important signals to be used by future astronauts to determine precise positions.
Hunting for hydrogen: the Neutron Spectrometer System (NSS)
The Neutron Spectrometer System (NSS) aims to determine the composition of the lunar soil, known as regolith, which consists of dust and broken rocks, in the process of hunting for hydrogen-bearing material.
The NSS instrument, developed at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, hunts for hydrogen by counting the number of neutrons present at the surface of the moon, and measuring the energy these particles carry.
This is possible because when neutrons – present thanks to high-energy cosmic rays hitting the moon – hit a hydrogen atom, they lose a lot of energy, and therefore, this is an indicator that can be used to infer the amount of hydrogen present in the lunar environment.
The NSS is able to measure the total volume of hydrogen down to 3 feet (0.9 meters) below the surface of the moon.
Assessing astronaut radiation risks with the Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer (LETS)
It may not look like much more than a simple circuit board, but the Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer (LETS) could be a vital tool in protecting the health and well-being of future space tourists.
The lunar environment risks exposing astronauts to higher doses of radiation than in Earth orbit, such as on board the International Space Station (ISS).
The two main sources of radiation exposure on the moon are galactic cosmic rays, charged particles such as protons, neutrons, and electrons that are twice as prevalent at the surface of the moon as they are in low Earth orbit, and space weather generated by activity on the sun .
Developed at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and associated with instruments that flew into space on the first test flight of the agency’s Orion capsule back in 2014, LETS is a 4.7-inch (12 cm) solid-silicon circuit board. -state. A timepix detector that will measure the incident radiation rate.
As such, it will determine the amount of radiation exposure that the Artemis 3 astronauts and other future lunar probes will receive as they traverse the lunar surface.
“The combination of dose and LETS allows us to translate data into biologically equivalent values that we can use for crew radiation protection during future lunar operations,” said Nic Stoffle, head of science and operations for LETS at NASA, in a teleconference January 4. “And with any luck, we will also be able to measure solar particle events during the mission, which will give us insight into how such an event will affect the local radiation environment on the surface before crews arrive.”
Related: Space weather: What is it and how to predict it?
Monitoring lunar precipitation and temperature: Near-Infrared Volatile Spectrometer System (NIRVSS)
Developed by NASA, the Near-Infrared Volatile Spectrometer System (NIRVSS) has a wide range of applications. These include the detection of water on and below the surface of the moon.
In addition to detecting water, which could be a critical resource for future space missions, providing hydration to astronauts and even hydrogen that could be used as a fuel source, the NIRVSS can measure other molecules such as surface and subsurface methane and carbon dioxide.
The instrument will also map the lunar surface and measure temperature by capturing light reflecting off the lunar surface in a range of wavelengths. NIRVSS is inside Peregrine’s Ames imaging module, a camera that captures images to provide context for the spectrometer’s data. This will allow operators to see if there is water or other compounds in the image.
Understanding the emission of volatiles on the moon: the Hawksbill Ion Trap Mass Spectrometer (PITMS)
Developed by NASA Goddard, the UK’s Open University, and STFC RAL Space, the Peregrine Ion-Trap Mass Spectrometer (PITMS) will measure the release of fluctuations on the moon throughout the lunar day, tracking how they move across the moon .
This will answer ongoing questions about where volatiles — elements and molecules such as water that can evaporate relatively easily — come from. PITMS will also help scientists determine which transport mechanism is responsible for volatile movement.
PITMS takes its inspiration from the spectrometer carried by Europe’s Rosetta mission, which conducted a similar investigation of volatiles on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
Operating in a passive mode, waiting for molecules to fall into it, PITMS will provide variability of water, noble gases, nitrogen compounds and sodium released from lunar soil and present in the moon’s lunar atmosphere over the course of a lunar day.
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The data provided by PITMS will combine with observations from other Hawk instruments to allow scientists to paint a more comprehensive picture of the lunar soil, the lunar atmosphere, and the lunar environment as a whole.
“We are very excited to fly PITMS on board the Falcon 1 Mission, as it is very complementary to NSS and NIRVSS and seeks to understand the processes involved in the delivery and movement of volatiles at the lunar surface,” said PITMS deputy principal investigator Daniel Cremons. .
