No doubt, it will be Program ArtemisThe crew’s mission — returning humans to the Moon for the first time in more than five decades — will stand out for NASA when Artemis actually lifts off later in the decade.
But behind the scenes, Artemis has a support team: the Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program (CLPS), which plans to contract with a private company to deliver various robotic payloads to the lunar surface.
And NASA last Thursday (June 10) announced that he had chosen Three new science experiments will fly to the lunar surface on special rockets under the CLPS program. NASA hasn’t announced how these payloads will reach the Moon, but they will arrive in 2023 or 2024.
Related: NASA reveals 16 payloads that the special lunar lander will bring to the moon
One of the recently announced science payloads is the Lunar Vertex, a landing craft and custom craft Rainer Gama, a mysterious piece of a brightly colored substance called the “moon vortex”. We don’t know how lunar vortexes form or even what they actually are, but scientists have discovered that they are related to them. high magnetic field area. So, by taking measurements of the magnetic field, the Lunar Vertex hopes to uncover some of the secrets of this lunar vortex.
The other two charges are a pair of science bundles attached to them Schrödinger lubang hole, The impact of the basin on the far side of the moon. One of them is the Persian Seismic Suite (FSS), which will carry a pair of seismometers to the Schrödinger crater for measurements. moonquake Under the far side of the moon – and how often small meteorites collide.
Third, the Lunar Internal Temperature and Materials Collection (LITMS), which hopes to explore how the Moon’s interior conducts heat and electricity. Together, FSS and LITMS hope to shed light on what lies beneath the far side of the Moon.
This experience may be nothing compared to a crewed landing, but it is a task that NASA will take on to begin establishing a human presence on the Moon for the first time, a few years after China’s National Space Agency. Chang’e 4 Moon lander and rover Yutu 2.
If NASA succeeds, CLPS won’t stop there. Artemis finally hoped the humans would land on the far side. The agency hopes that the program will lay the groundwork for humans to live on the moon forever.
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