NASA Selects New Science Investigations for Future Moon Deliveries:
As NASA continues plans for multiple commercial deliveries to the Moon’s surface per year, the agency has selected three new scientific investigation payload suites to advance understanding of Earth’s nearest neighbor. Two of the payload suites will land on the far side of the Moon, a first for NASA. All three investigations will receive rides to the lunar surface as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, initiative, part of the agency’s Artemis approach.
[...] Lunar Vertex, one of the three selections, is a joint lander and rover payload suite slated for delivery to Reiner Gamma – one of the most distinctive and enigmatic natural features on the Moon, known as a lunar swirl. Scientists don’t fully understand what lunar swirls are or how they form, but they know they are closely related to anomalies associated with the Moon’s magnetic field. The Lunar Vertex rover will make detailed surface measurements of the Moon’s magnetic field using an onboard magnetometer.
[...] NASA also has selected two separate payload suites for delivery in tandem to Schrödinger basin, which is a large impact crater on the far side of the Moon near the lunar South Pole. The Farside Seismic Suite (FSS), one of the two payloads to be delivered to Schrödinger basin, will carry two seismometers: the vertical Very Broadband seismometer and the Short Period sensor. NASA measured seismic activity on the near side of the Moon as part of the Apollo program, but FSS will return the agency’s first seismic data from the far side of the Moon—a potential future destination for Artemis astronauts.
[...] The Lunar Interior Temperature and Materials Suite (LITMS), the other payload headed to Schrödinger basin, is a suite of two instruments: the Lunar Instrumentation for Thermal Exploration with Rapidity pneumatic drill and the Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder. This payload suite will investigate the heat flow and electrical conductivity of the lunar interior in Schrödinger basin, giving an in-depth look at the Moon’s internal mechanical and heat flow.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @04:17AM
and I'll post first today.
Ha, Ha!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @10:54AM (1 child)
>> Two of the payload suites will land on the far side of the Moon, a first for NASA.
Except it's not NASA doing this, it's subcontractor SpaceX. Eliminate the middleman.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @09:14PM
SpaceX isn't doing any of those landings, they are just one of the launch providers. ULA is the other launcher. The four lander companies are:
Astrobotic Technology
Firefly Aerospace
Intuitive Machines
Masten Space Systems
So by my count that is six middlemen and the project is still cheaper than the traditional single bidder cost plus contracts Congress loves so much.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday June 14 2021, @06:23PM (2 children)
Isn't the Lunar Gateway supposed to be in cislunar orbit? (Cislunar: [merriam-webster.com] The space orbiting the earth, but inside of the moon's orbit.)
The far side of the moon is not cislunar.
Now does a trans lunar injection (TLI) get one into a cislunar orbit close to the moon as in the Artemis architecture envisioned using the SLS to maximize wasted tax dollars?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @09:35PM
Following your link I get
The phrase "The space orbiting the earth, but inside of the moon's orbit." does not occur on the page.
The dictionary definition is also imprecise. Cislunar can be more appropriately defined as anywhere inside the Moon's Hill Sphere [wikipedia.org]. Thus the far side of the moon is cislunar. The definition of TLI [wikipedia.org] is any trajectory that arrives at the Moon, thus TLI becomes cislunar by definition.
The Lunar Gateway is intended to orbit in a near-rectilinear halo orbit [wikipedia.org] in cislunar space due to the SLS being too anemic to send the Orion pod to low lunar orbit [wikipedia.org]. This higher orbit is why the Blue Origin and Dynetics lunar landers are having so much trouble with limited payload mass.
SLS isn't a waste of tax dollars. No dollar that lines a Boeing or Lockheed Martin executive's wallet or that becomes a Congressional campaign contribution from a preferred donor is ever wasted. In fact the SLS is carefully tuned to ensure that a minimum number of tax dollars are wasted building and flying rockets or putting grifting astronauts or useless science payloads into space.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @09:46PM
》 Now does a trans lunar injection (TLI) get one into a cislunar orbit close to the moon as in the Artemis architecture envisioned using the SLS to maximize wasted tax dollars?
No, but it does allow NASA to say that they're trans friendly, which keeps the pink-hairs off their backs.