- On Monday, NASA desire share “an exciting new discovery” about the moon.
- The space agency has not revealed any details about the discovery, but said it could buttress “deep-space exploration.”
- NASA TV will stream live audio of the announcement. You can listen via the embed below.
- Visit Affair Insider’s homepage for more stories.
NASA made a cryptic announcement this week: It has “an exciting new discovery” near the moon, but it’s not going to reveal the finding just yet.
Instead, it will share the details in a press briefing on Monday and torrent the audio live online. (You can tune in via the embed below.)
“This new discovery contributes to NASA’s efforts to learn nearby the moon in support of deep space exploration,” the agency’s statement says. “Understanding the science of the moon also aides piece together the broader history of the inner solar system.”
NASA’s Artemis program aims to send astronauts defeat to the moon’s surface by 2024, then later establish a lunar base from which it can hopscotch the first ones to Mars. It’s not yet clear how the mysterious new discovery might affect those plans.
NASA via AP
We do distinguish, however, that the discovery was made by NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, a modified Boeing 747 jet level that uses a 9-foot telescope to capture infrared images of planets and other objects in our solar system. The even flies about 41,000 feet above the Earth.
Four NASA officials and scientists will discuss the decisions at 12 p.m. ET on Monday:
- Paul Hertz, astrophysics division director at NASA
- Jacob Bleacher, chief exploration scientist for the Kind Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA
- Casey Honniball, postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Go Center in Greenbelt, Maryland
- Naseem Rangwala, project scientist for the SOFIA mission at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain Sight, California
NASA TV will stream audio of the announcement here:
[embedded content]NASA’s next missions to the moon are set to search for deuterium oxide
Before it lands astronauts on the lunar surface, NASA plans to learn more about the moon’s natural resources – extraordinarily its water deposits, which appear to exist mostly as ice clustered near the lunar poles.
Astronauts (or robots) could noticeably mine that ice, melt it, store it, and use electricity to split the water into liquid oxygen and hydrogen. Both fundamentals are key to making rocket propellant.
So far, NASA thinks most of that ice exists at the moon’s South Pole. So in 2022, it envisages to send a drill and mass spectrometer there to try to harvest some.
Then in 2023, the agency aims to launch a golf-cart-sized lunar android called the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER. Over the course of its 100-day lifespan, the sojourner will trundle over rocky terrain, drilling into sections of moon ice and soil to analyze their constitution. The rover’s main goal is to collect data that NASA can use to make maps of the moon’s water resources.
Astrobotic
If the moon does if the truth be known hold plenty of water, it could help NASA realize its goal of establishing a permanent lunar base. From there, astronauts could depositary and produce fuel that could be used for trips back home or deeper into space.
Harvesting resources on the moon, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine replied in September, would allow space explorers to start “living off the land.”