CALIFORNIA, iNews.id – NASA has selected three new scientific payloads under the Commercial Lunar Payload Service initiative. This is part of the Artemis program.
Of the three, two will land on the hemisphere of the Moon which always has its back to the planet Earth. This will mark the first time NASA has landed a payload on the far side of the Moon and its goal is to gather data about the area as a potential future destination for the astronauts of Artemis.
The far side of the Moon remained untouched by engines and spacecraft until the China Chang’e-4 mission landed there in 2019. There is still much we need to know about the Earth’s hemisphere before starting to send humans to visit it.
One of the proposals selected by NASA, for example, would be to land in an impact crater called the Schrödinger basin to better understand tectonic activity on the far side.
The Farside Seismic Suite, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory project, will spend months collecting data using two seismometers. Apart from giving us more information about the moon’s tectonic activity, it is also expected to shed light on how the far side is affected by small meteorites, as well as provide more data about the Moon’s internal structure.
Findings from this project will complement seismic data collected by another payload heading into the Schrödinger basin: The Lunar Interior Temperature and Materials Suite. Equipped with two instruments, it will investigate the internal lunar heat flow and electrical conductivity.
Editor: Dini Listiyani
