Image (Credit): Mare Tranquillitatis pit crater revealing boulders on an otherwise smooth floor. (NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University)
If you are looking for a comfortable spot on the Moon, you could do much worse than a lunar pit. These pits have shaded portions that maintain a comfortable temperature of about 63 F. That is much better than the surface temperatures of 260 F in the day and minus 280 F at night. Such pits can also be useful to visitors by protecting them cosmic rays, solar radiation, and micrometeorites.
You may ask why we are looking at building space habitats when such locations exist. A good question, but I expect the location, size, and stability of these pits will also be important. Maybe they can at least serve as a safe shelter should the be needed.
More study is necessary, of course, before any big decisions on human settlement can be contemplated.
You can read more about the lunar pits here. You can also check out this video.
Image (Credit): This diagram shows Lucy’s orbital path in green after her October 2021 launch to visit the Trojan asteroids. (Southwest Research Institute)
Last week I noted some of the mission priorities in the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) first year. Those priorities were listed under “Exoplanets and Disks.” I thought I would highlight a few more, this time from the “Solar System Astronomy” list. Here are five more priorities:
Pluto’s Climate System with JWST;
The Moons of Uranus: A NIRSpec Investigation of Their Origins, Organic Constituents, and Possible Ocean World Activity;
A Pure Parallel Survey of Water in the Asteroid Belt;
DiSCo-TNOs: Discovering the Composition of the Trans-Neptunian Objects, Icy Embryos for Planet Formation; and
JWST Observations of Lucy Mission Targets.
Each of these priorities come with an explanation of the mission. For example, here is a little more about NASA’s Lucy mission from the JWST proposal:
The Lucy spacecraft – to be launched at approximately the same time as JWST – will perform the first ever in situ exploration of the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. Trojans are the largest population of solar system bodies currently unvisited by spacecraft, and revealing their composition and formation history is the key to untangling disparate hypothesis for the early dynamical evolution of the entire solar system.
Understanding these enigmatic bodies requires not just the high spatial resolution imagery and spectroscopy that will be afforded by Lucy, but also the superb near- and mid-infrared spectroscopy of which JWST is uniquely capable. The high signal-to-noise, high spectral resolution, and extended wavelength coverage beyond the capabilities of Lucy will allow JWST to sensitively probe the organic, carbonate, and silicate components of the surfaces of the Trojans. Meanwhile, the Lucy spectra and images will place these observations into their geological and historical context, greatly extending the scientific utility of both the JWST observations and the Lucy visit. Together these observations will paint a rich picture of this population, allowing us to trace connections with other bodies studied remotely and in situ across the solar system.
Lucy was launched last October and is expected to encounter its first Trojan asteroid until August 2027. You can find the full mission timeline here.
Image (Credit): Water levels in the Overton Arm, which is the northern portion of Lake Mead. (NASA)
While we get excited about NASA discoveries of water on exoplanets, NASA is also monitoring water levels here on Earth, and it is scary in some areas. The images above from NASA’s Near Earth Observatory show water loss in the Overton Arm of Lake Mead. The lake is currently filled at 27 percent of capacity, threatening the availability of drinking water, electricity from the Hoover dam, and recreational boating. You can read more about water projections in the region here.
Luckily, we have plenty of water covering the majority of our planet, so alien civilizations will still be able to pick up on water signatures as we do elsewhere. However, the loss of drinking water is something we need to resolve, be it overdrawing on such resources or pushing the climate into a direction that threatens this resource. If we hope to keep our civilization intact as we look to the stars, we need to make some changes as soon as possible. We want to travel to Mars, not mimic its dried-up river beds.
Image (Credit): China’s Yutu 2 rover explores the far side of the moon shortly after its Jan. 2, 2019, touchdown. (China National Space Administration)
“As two scholars who study space security and China’s space program, we believe that neither China nor any other nation is likely to take over the Moon in the near future. It is not only illegal, it is also technologically daunting – the costs of such an endeavor would be extremely high, while the potential payoffs would be uncertain.”
-Statement by Svetla Ben-Itzhak, Assistant Professor of Space and International Relations, Air University and R. Lincoln Hines, Assistant Professor, West Space Seminar, Air University in the Astronomy magazine article “Why China is unlikely to claim the Moon anytime soon.” It follows an earlier statement by NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who said, “We must be very concerned that China is landing on the Moon and saying: ‘It’s ours now and you stay out.‘”
Image (Credit): SpaceX Dragon capsule approaching the ISS. (NASA)
This week’s image is from the International Space Station (ISS) as it awaits incoming cargo from an uncrewed SpaceX Dragon capsule approaching the station on July 16th. NASA noted that what we are seeing is an orbital sunrise above the Pacific Ocean.
NASA also highlighted the various experiments aboard the Dragon that will be added to the station, including one on extraterrestrial concrete:
Biopolymer Research for In-Situ Capabilities looks at how microgravity affects the process of creating a concrete alternative made with an organic material and on-site materials, such as lunar or Martian dust, known as a biopolymer soil composite. Using resources available where construction takes place makes it possible to increase the amount of shielding.
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