Moon

A Telescope On The Moon Could Illuminate The Dark Ages Of The Universe

Anonymous — Sat, 15 May 2021 19:09:00 +0000

A Telescope On The Moon Could Illuminate The Dark Ages Of The Universe Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 05/15/2021 - 13:09

Eric Betz

From �鶹��Ƶ: Some 13.8 billion years ago, our universe burst into being. In a fraction of a second, it ballooned from subatomic to the size of a grapefruit. And as the cosmos grew and grew, it also cooled, until the building blocks of matter — subatomic particles called quarks and gluons — could form. Eventually, this quark soup aggregated into atoms. Atoms merged into larger molecules. Gas filled the universe. Yet the cosmos would sit like this — dark — for hundreds of millions of years before light shone from the first stars and galaxies.

We understand parts of what happened in the early universe. But a huge blank still haunts astronomers. They call it the “dark ages” because, with no starlight to study, they’re left guessing where all the familiar stuff came from. How did we go from a gas-filled universe to the one we now see in the night sky?

“The early universe had no galaxies, just hot stuff. As things cooled off, something had to happen before the galaxies formed,” says Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist John Mather of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “Honestly, we’ve got lots of stories and lots of predictions, but no measurements.”

Unravelling this mystery is “one of the great objectives of modern-day astronomy,” he adds.

To solve it, scientists and engineers have identified an unlikely location for their work, one that could help shape the next generation of astronomical research: the farside of the moon. Read more...

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Exploring the far side of the Moon and beyond with NESS

Anonymous — Fri, 23 Apr 2021 23:34:43 +0000

Exploring the far side of the Moon and beyond with NESS Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 04/23/2021 - 17:34

Clifford Holt

From Innovation News Network: NASA has created the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI), bringing together teams of researchers who are interested in the Moon, asteroids, and the moons of Mars, airless bodies in Earth’s neighbourhood. Most of the teams involved in SSERVI are therefore interested in areas such as lunar geology, resource extraction, and so on. However, the Network for Exploration and Space Science (NESS), which is headed up by Dr Jack Burns at the �鶹��Ƶ, proposed to do astrophysics and cosmology from the Moon, as the far side of the Moon, in particular, is the only truly radio quiet location in the inner Solar System. As such, the far side of the moon is the perfect place to locate radio telescopes that can be used to explore aspects of the Universe that cannot be addressed in any other way. These include, Burns told The Innovation Platform, the so-called ‘dark ages’ of the Universe, the cosmic dawn, and, indeed, exoplanets. “We can also use these telescopes on the far side of the moon to look at the Sun,” he said.

Led by the University of Colorado, NESS has developed into a team of ten universities and NASA centres which have been working together for almost four years. The network is actively involved in addressing some of the broad design questions for missions to the Moon. Burns explained: “We look at the science drivers, undertake theoretical modelling, conduct equipment and instrument design, and plan missions. We have been successful in doing that, and there are a couple of exciting missions coming up in the next few years, and then we will propose more for the longer term.” Read more…

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3 questions after the discovery of water molecules on the sunlit moon

Anonymous — Fri, 30 Oct 2020 21:33:28 +0000

3 questions after the discovery of water molecules on the sunlit moon Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/30/2020 - 15:33

Isabella Isaacs-Thomas

From PBS News Hour: In 2018, astronomers directly confirmed for the first time that water, in the form of ice, is on the moon’s surface. Aptly named water ice resides in the coldest, darkest parts of our planet’s satellite, like the shadow-shrouded craters that dot its polar regions, the deepest parts of which never see sunlight.

But new research published Monday verified a suspicion that researchers had long been unable to confirm. A team of scientists who studied a slice of the moon aboard NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) — considered to be the world’s largest flying observatory — detected the first evidence that water molecules can exist on the unforgiving landscape of the sunlit lunar surface. That means that those molecules could be found across more parts of the moon than scientists previously imagined...

The presence of water on the moon is “an absolute game-changer” for both future exploration and paving the way toward a sustainable human presence there, said Jack Burns, a professor in the department of astrophysical and planetary sciences at the �鶹��Ƶ. Read more...

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A Roadmap for Science on the Moon

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 17:41:56 +0000

A Roadmap for Science on the Moon Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/30/2020 - 11:41

Daniel Strain

From CU Boulder Today: Scientists at CU Boulder have laid out a roadmap for a decade of scientific research at the moon.

Teams from the university will participate in four upcoming or proposed space missions that seek to use the moon as a unique laboratory for peering back to the dawn of the cosmos—collecting unprecedented data on an epoch in the life of the universe before the first stars formed.

The first of these efforts will deploy an instrument called Radiowave Observations at the Lunar Surface of the photoElectron Sheath (ROLSES). It’s slated to land on the moon in just over a year. Another involves a proposed satellite known as the Dark Ages Polarimetry Pathfinder (DAPPER). It could be in orbit around the Moon by the decade’s midway mark.

“It’s a completely unexplored part of the early universe, which we call the Dark Ages,” said Jack Burns, a professor in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at CU Boulder. “We have no data from this period and no prospect of getting any data using traditional telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope.”

Burns described the four missions during a virtual talk this month at the annual meeting of Lunar Exploration Advisory Group (LEAG), a scientific advisory body for NASA.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, who also attended the meeting, shared in the excitement. Read more…

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NASA patented a faster, cheaper route to the moon. The first spacecraft to use it could make Nobel Prize-winning discoveries about the universe.

Anonymous — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 21:57:53 +0000

NASA patented a faster, cheaper route to the moon. The first spacecraft to use it could make Nobel Prize-winning discoveries about the universe. Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/02/2020 - 15:57

Dave Mosher

From Business Insider: The moon is both seductively close to Earth and cosmically far away: Decades after the end of the space race, it remains extraordinarily expensive and difficult to actually get there.

The journey just got a bit easier, however, thanks to a freshly published NASA invention. The agency's patent doesn't cover a new piece of equipment or lines of code, but a trajectory — a route designed to save a lunar-bound mission time, fuel, and money and boost its scientific value.

On June 30, the US Patent and Trademark Office granted and published NASA's patent for a series of orbital maneuvers, which Business Insider first learned about via a tweet by a lawyer named Jeff Steck.

The technique isn't meant for large spaceships that carry astronauts or rovers, but for smaller, more tightly budgeted missions tasked with doing meaningful science. And the first spacecraft to take advantage of this new orbital path could deliver unprecedented discoveries from the far side of the moon. Read more...

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Under a DAPPER Moon: NASA Eyes Wild Radio Science Projects on the Lunar Farside

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Dec 2019 20:14:36 +0000

Under a DAPPER Moon: NASA Eyes Wild Radio Science Projects on the Lunar Farside Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 12/23/2019 - 13:14

Meghan Bartels

From Space.com: NASA's quest to return humans to the moon could boost a field of research that might not seem particularly lunar in nature: cosmology.

But the far side of the moon could be a powerful place to answer some of the most compelling questions about the universe — and NASA's push to bring humans back to the moon could cut the prices enough to make this science a reality. Even a scientist leading the push for NASA to investigate these missions admits it wasn't the most intuitive idea when he first heard about it.

"We were [science fair] judges together and they were asking me what I thought about telescopes on the moon," Jack Burns, an astrophysicist at the �鶹��Ƶ, told Space.com. "And I said, I didn't think much about it at all. It just didn't occur to me."

Since then, he and his colleagues have thought about it a lot. Their conclusion is that observatories on the far side of the moon offer a unique opportunity for modern astronomers. Burns has spent this year thinking through two specific mission concepts designed to take advantage, focusing particularly on the period before stars began to form, called the dark ages. Read more...

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New VIPER Lunar Rover to Map Water Ice on the Moon

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Oct 2019 16:45:08 +0000

New VIPER Lunar Rover to Map Water Ice on the Moon Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/25/2019 - 10:45

Grey Hautaluoma and Alana Johnson

From NASA.gov: NASA is sending a mobile robot to the South Pole of the Moon to get a close-up view of the location and concentration of water ice in the region and for the first time ever, actually sample the water ice at the same pole where the first woman and next man will land in 2024 under the Artemis program.

�鶹��Ƶ the size of a golf cart, the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, will roam several miles, using its four science instruments — including a 1-meter drill — to sample various soil environments. Planned for delivery to the lunar surface in December 2022, VIPER will collect about 100 days of data that will be used to inform the first global water resource maps of the Moon.

“The key to living on the Moon is water – the same as here on Earth,” said Daniel Andrews, the project manager of the VIPER mission and director of engineering at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. “Since the confirmation of lunar water-ice ten years ago, the question now is if the Moon could really contain the amount of resources we need to live off-world. This rover will help us answer the many questions we have about where the water is, and how much there is for us to use.”

NASA's Artemis program begins a new era where robots and humans working together will push the boundaries of what’s possible in space exploration. In collaboration with commercial and international partners, NASA’s ambition is to achieve a long-term sustainable presence on the Moon – enabling humans to go on to Mars and beyond. Read more...

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Robots to install telescopes to peer into cosmos from the moon

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Jul 2019 17:50:09 +0000

Robots to install telescopes to peer into cosmos from the moon Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/15/2019 - 11:50

Joey Roulette

From Reuters Science News: BOULDER, Colo. (Reuters) - As the United States races to put humans back on the moon for the first time in 50 years, a NASA-funded lab in Colorado aims to send robots there to deploy telescopes that will look far into our galaxy, remotely operated by orbiting astronauts.

The radio telescopes, to be planted on the far side of the moon, are among a plethora of projects underway by the U.S. space agency, private companies and other nations that will transform the moonscape in the coming decade.

“This is not your grandfather’s Apollo program that we’re looking at,” said Jack Burns, director of the Network for Exploration and Space Science at the University of Colorado, which is working on the telescope project.

“This is really a very different kind of program and very importantly it’s going to involve machines and humans working together,” Burns said in an interview at his lab on the Boulder campus. Read more...

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NASA Thinks We Could Turn the Moon into a Space Water Machine

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Feb 2019 22:10:39 +0000

NASA Thinks We Could Turn the Moon into a Space Water Machine Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 02/25/2019 - 15:10

Elizabeth Rayne

From SYFY Wire: The moon may look like a vast extraterrestrial desert, but on the molecular level, it has the potential to quench an astronaut’s thirst.

NASA scientists have discovered how future moonwalkers can use lunar chemistry to their advantage when it comes to getting a water refill. A study that simulated the chemistry that happens when the solar wind hits the moon, recently published in the journal JGR Planets, revealed that protons from the intense solar wind interact with electrons to form hydrogen atoms. That hydrogen then bonds with oxygen atoms in the silica (SiO2)-rich moon dust to form a hydroxyl molecule (OH) — a vital component of the hydrating stuff we take for granted on Earth.

If we’re going to pack up humans in a spaceship and blast them to the moon, we need to understand exactly how much potential water the moon is hiding. This is even more critical if our species is going to establish a permanent lunar base. Plasma physicists Orenthal James Tucker and William M. Farrell of NASA’s Goddard Space Center were two of the scientists who developed the simulation, with Tucker heading the research. They believe water, or at least the potential for it, isn’t so rare in space as we might believe.

“We think of water as this special, magical compound,” Farrell said. “But here’s what’s amazing: Every rock has the potential to make water, especially after being irradiated by the solar wind.” Read more...

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NASA Selects Experiments for Possible Lunar Flights in 2019

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Feb 2019 22:01:25 +0000

NASA Selects Experiments for Possible Lunar Flights in 2019 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/21/2019 - 15:01

From NASA: NASA has selected 12 science and technology demonstration payloads to fly to the Moon as early as the end of this year, dependent upon the availability of commercial landers. These selections represent an early step toward the agency’s long-term scientific study and human exploration of the Moon and, later, Mars.

“The Moon has unique scientific value and the potential to yield resources, such as water and oxygen,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “Its proximity to Earth makes it especially valuable as a proving ground for deeper space exploration.”

NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) initiated the request for proposals leading to these selections as the first step in achieving a variety of science and technology objectives that could be met by regularly sending instruments, experiments and other small payloads to the Moon. Read more...

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