- Peregrine, Astroboic’s robotic lunar lander, will land near the Gruithuisen Dome.
- Apart from Peregrine, NASA also carried three other instruments to investigate volatile substances on the Moon.
CLEAR — The US Space Agency (NASA) will launch the first unmanned robotic space mission to the lunar surface, Monday 8 January.
“As part of NASA’s commercial lunar payload services (CLPS) initiative and the Artemis program, United Launch Alliance (ULA) and Astrobotic are targeting the launch of the first mission on January 8 at 02:18 local time,” NASA officials announced and were quoted as saying spacenews.com. “The first commercial robot will launch and land on the surface of the Moon.”
ULA’s Vulcan booster, which will carry Peregrine — a commercial robot made by Astrobotic — will lift off from Launch Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Station, Florida. Peregrine is expected to land near the Gruithuisen Dome, outside the Moon’s polar regions thought to hold water and ice.
Cert-1, the name of this mission, carried not only the commercial lunar lander robot, but also three other instruments; Near-Infrared Volatile Spectometer System (NIRVSS), Neutron Spectometer System (NSS), and Peregrine Ion Trap Mass Spectometer (PITMS). The three will study volatile substances such as water on the surface and exosphere of the Moon.
“We did not expect any natural water at the Peregrine landing site,” said Richard Elphic, NSS principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “But, the lander will paint the surface with rocket exhaust as it descends.”
The exhaust includes water which can be detected by the NSS and two other instruments. So, the three instruments will work together, to help understand how water molecules migrate and possibly end up at the Moon’s cold poles.
“Other volatile materials that these three instruments can detect are carbon dioxide, ammonia, and methane,” said Tony Colaprete, NIRVSS principal investigator at NASA Ames. “It will be interesting to see if there is sulfur at the landing site.”
2024-01-06 03:16:21
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