On Monday (Jan. 8), the first private U.S. lunar spacecraft, Astrobotic's Peregrine lander, successfully launched from Florida on the first-ever mission of United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur rocket.
Peregrine is expected to reach the lunar surface on February 23, but it is unclear whether that will happen: the lander suffered an anomaly shortly after deploying from the Vulcan Centaur, and the mission team is working to fix it. When Peregrine reaches the moon, it will collect vital information about the lunar surface using an array of five NASA science instruments.
This data could be crucial in informing future manned missions to the moon, including Artemis 3, which not only aims to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time in 50 years in 2025, but also a massive will take a step in the field of diversity by sending the first woman and first person of color to the moon.
Read on for an overview of the NASA science equipment aboard Peregrine during this groundbreaking mission. (There are also several private payloads on the lander, including memorial capsules containing human remains.)
Related: Vulcan rocket launches private US lunar lander, human remains in debut
Peregrine will consider this: Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA)
The Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA), developed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, is designed to facilitate measurements between spacecraft that both orbit the moon and land on the lunar surface.
To do this, the instrument is equipped with eight retroreflectors in the form of glass cube prisms 0.5 inches wide (1.25 centimeters) that can reflect light backwards or 180 degrees. These units are encased in a gold aluminum sphere mounted on the deck of the Peregrine lander.
The LRA's design means it can reflect a laser beam coming in from a spacecraft in a wide range of directions and then return it to its point of origin. This allows researchers to perform "laser ranging" to measure distances to Peregrine with a high degree of accuracy.
Because the LRA is a passive optical instrument, it will serve as a location marker on the moon for decades to come and form the basis of an essential guidepost that future astronauts can use in pinpointing precise locations.
On the hunt for hydrogen: the Neutron Spectrometer System (NSS)
The purpose of the Neutron Spectrometer System (NSS) is to determine the composition of the lunar soil known as regolith, which consists of dust and broken rocks, while hunting for hydrogen-bearing material.
The NSS instrument, developed by NASA's Ames Research Center in California, hunts for hydrogen by counting the number of neutrons on the moon's surface and measuring the energy these particles carry.
This is possible because when neutrons - which are present thanks to high-energy cosmic rays falling on the moon - hit a hydrogen atom, they lose a lot of energy. So this is an indicator that can be used to deduce the amount of hydrogen atom. hydrogen present in the lunar environment.
The NSS can measure the total hydrogen volume up to 0.9 meters below the moon's surface.
Assessing radiation risks for astronauts with the Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer (LETS)
It may seem like little more than a simple circuit board, but the Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer (LETS) could be an essential tool in protecting the health and well-being of future space travelers.
The lunar environment poses the risk of astronauts being inundated with higher radiation doses than is experienced in Earth orbit, such as aboard 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 common on the moon's surface as in low Earth orbit, and space weather generated by activity on the sun. .
LETS, developed by NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston and related to instruments that flew into space in 2014 during the first test flight of the agency's Orion capsule, is a 4.7-inch-long (12 cm) printed circuit board with a solid -state silicon Timepix detector that measures the speed of incident radiation.
As such, it will determine the amount of radiation exposure that the Artemis 3 astronauts and other future lunar explorers will experience as they traverse the lunar surface.
"The combination of dose and LETS also allows us to translate data into more biologically equivalent values that we can use for crew radiation protection during future lunar operations," said Nic Stoffle, science and operations lead for LETS at NASA, during a January 4 teleconference. "And with any luck, we may also measure a solar particle event during the mission, which will give us insight into how such an event will affect the local radiation environment at the surface before the crew arrives."
Related: Space weather: what is it and how is it predicted?
Monitoring lunar composition and temperature: Near-Infrared Volatile Spectrometer System (NIRVSS)
The Near-Infrared Volatile Spectrometer System (NIRVSS), developed by NASA, has a wide range of applications. Chief among these is the detection of water both on and beneath the lunar surface.
In addition to detecting water, which could be a vital resource for future space missions, which could provide hydration for astronauts and even hydrogen which could be used as a fuel source, the NIRVSS can also measure other molecules such as methane and carbon dioxide on the surface and below the surface.
The instrument will also map the moon's surface and measure its temperature by collecting light reflected from the moon's surface in different wavelengths. NIRVSS is part of Peregrine's Ames imaging module, a camera that captures images to add context to the spectrometer's data. This allows operators to see if an image contains water or other compounds.
Understanding lunar volatile emissions: Peregrine Ion-Trap Mass Spectrometer (PITMS)
The Peregrine Ion-Trap Mass Spectrometer (PITMS), developed by NASA Goddard, the British Open University and STFC RAL Space, will measure lunar volatile emissions throughout Monday and track how they move across the moon.
This will answer lingering questions about where volatiles - elements and molecules such as water that can be evaporated relatively easily - come from. PITMS will also help scientists determine which transport mechanism is responsible for the movement of volatiles.
PITMS draws inspiration from the spectrometer of the European Rosetta mission, which conducted a similar study of volatiles on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
PITMS works in passive mode and waits for molecules to fall into it. It will provide time-resolved variability of water, noble gases, nitrogen and sodium compounds released from the lunar soil and present in the moon's wispy outer atmosphere over the course of a lunar day.
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The data from PITMS will be combined with observations from other Peregrine instruments to allow scientists to paint a more comprehensive picture of the lunar soil, the moon's atmosphere and the moon's environment in general.
"We are very excited to fly PITMS aboard Peregrine Mission 1 as it is highly complementary to NSS and NIRVSS and seeks to understand the processes involved in the delivery and movement of volatiles on the lunar surface," said Daniel Cremons, deputy principal investigator of PITMS. .
