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LunaH-Map
Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper, or LunaH-Map, is one of 10 CubeSats launched with Artemis 1 on 16 November 2022. Along with Lunar IceCube and LunIR, LunaH-Map will help investigate the possible presence of water-ice on the Moon. Arizona State University began development of LunaH-Map after being awarded a contract by NASA in early 2015. The development team consists of about 20 professionals and students led by Craig Hardgrove, the principal investigator. The mission is a part of NASA's SIMPLEx program.NASASmall Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration Program Abstracts of selected proposals August 8, 2015. Retrieved Nov. 17, 2022. Objective LunaH-Map's primary objective is to map the abundance of hydrogen down to one meter beneath the surface of the lunar south pole. It will be inserted into a polar orbit around the Moon, with its periselene located near the lunar south pole, initially passing above Shackleton crater. LunaH-Map will provide a high resolution map of the ab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Small Innovative Missions For Planetary Exploration
Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) is a planetary exploration program operated by NASA. The program funds small, low-cost spacecraft for stand-alone planetary exploration missions. These spacecraft are intended to launch as secondary payloads on other missions and are riskier than Discovery or New Frontiers missions. The program selects missions from multiple proposals and gives them some money to begin development. After early development they are analyzed to see if they are cost-effective and scientifically valuable during Key Decision Point-C. If they pass Key Decision Point-C then they move into full development. The missions must weigh less than 180 kg. So far only the first two missions have launched, and the remaining missions have struggled to stay within budget and find missions to launch with, and have been removed from multiple launches. Missions On August 8, 2015, the first two SIMPLEx missions were selected: Q-PACE and LunaH-Map.NASASm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Q-PACE
CubeSat Particle Aggregation and Collision Experiment (Q-PACE) or Cu-PACE, is an orbital spacecraft mission that would have studied the early stages of proto-planetary accretion by observing particle dynamical aggregation for several years.NASASmall Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration Program Abstracts of selected proposals August 8, 2015. Retrieved Nov. 17, 2022. Current hypotheses have trouble explaining how particles can grow larger than a few centimeters. This is called the meter size barrier. This mission was selected in 2015 as part of NASA's ELaNa program, and it was launched on 17 January 2021. As of March 2021, however, contact has yet to be established with the satellite, and the mission is feared to be lost. Overview Q-PACE is led by Joshua Colwell at the University of Central Florida and was selected NASA's CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) which placed it on Educational Launch of Nanosatellites ELaNa XX. The development of the mission was funded t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lunar Water
Lunar water is water that is present on the Moon. Diffuse water molecules can persist at the Moon's sunlit surface, as discovered by NASA's SOFIA observatory in 2020. Gradually water vapor is decomposed by sunlight, leaving hydrogen and oxygen lost to outer space. Scientists have found water ice in the cold, permanently shadowed craters at the Moon's poles. Water molecules are also present in the extremely thin lunar atmosphere. Water (H2O), and the chemically related hydroxyl group (-OH), exist in forms chemically bound as hydrates and hydroxides to lunar minerals (rather than free water), and evidence strongly suggests that this is the case in low concentrations as for much of the Moon's surface. In fact, of surface matter, adsorbed water is calculated to exist at trace concentrations of 10 to 1000 parts per million. Inconclusive evidence of free water ice at the lunar poles had accumulated during the second half of the 20th century from a variety of observations suggestin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
LunIR
LunIR is a nanosatellite spacecraft launched to the Moon collecting surface spectroscopy and thermography. It was launched as a secondary payload on the Artemis 1 mission on 16 November 2022. Mission LunIR is a technology demonstration mission funded by NASA that uses a low-cost 6U CubeSat spacecraft. LunIR will perform a lunar flyby, collecting spectroscopy and thermography for surface characterization, remote sensing, and site selection. The spacecraft includes two deployable solar panels and will have a total mass of about . LunIR was selected in April 2015 by NASA's NextSTEP program ( Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships) and awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin Space worth US$1.4 million for further development. LunIR will communicate with Earth via ground stations operated by Kongsberg Satellite Services. LunIR will use 13-meter-diameter radio antennas located in Punta Arenas, Chile; Svalbard, Norway; and Troll station, Antarctica. Launch LunIR w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lunar IceCube
Lunar IceCube is a NASA nanosatellite orbiter mission to prospect, locate, and estimate amount and composition of water ice deposits on the Moon for future exploitation by robots or humans. It was launched as a secondary payload mission on Artemis 1 (formerly known as Exploration Mission 1), the first flight of the Space Launch System (SLS), on 16 November 2022. Overview The lunar mission was designed by Morehead State University and its partners, the Busek Company, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), and The Catholic University of America (CUA). It was selected in April 2015 by NASA's NextSTEP program ( Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships) and awarded a contract worth up to US$7.9 million for further development. The Lunar IceCube spacecraft will have a 6U CubeSat format, and a mass of about . It is one of ten CubeSats planned to be carried on board the maiden flight of the SLS, Artemis 1, as secondary payloads in cis-lunar space, in 2022. It will be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Artemis 1
Artemis 1, officially Artemis I and formerly Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), was an uncrewed Moon-orbiting mission. As the first major spaceflight of NASA's Artemis program, Artemis 1 marked the return of the agency to lunar exploration originally begun as the Apollo program decades earlier. It was the first integrated flight test of the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. Its main objective was to test the Orion spacecraft, especially its heat shield, in preparation for subsequent Artemis missions. These missions seek to reestablish a human presence on the Moon and demonstrate technologies and business approaches needed for future scientific studies, including exploration of Mars. The Orion spacecraft for Artemis 1 was stacked on October 20, 2021, marking the first time a super-heavy-lift vehicle has been stacked inside NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) since the final Saturn V in 1973. On August 17, 2022, the fully stacked vehicle was rolled out fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Janus (spacecraft)
''Janus'' is a planned NASA mission that will send dual space probes, ''Serenity'' and ''Mayhem'',https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=50260.0;attach=2070175;sess=0 to visit asteroids that will be chosen prior to launch date. The mission is part of NASA's SIMPLEx program and was expected to be launched in October 2023 as a secondary payload on Falcon Heavy together with the ''Psyche'' spacecraft, but it was removed due to an inability to reach its target from that launch date. On 3 September 2020, ''Janus'' successfully passed Key Decision Point-C and was approved for the final design of hardware. The mission budget is limited to US$55 million. Currently the new launch date and new launch vehicle is yet to be confirmed. Spacecraft The two small 36 kg spacecraft —which fall under the 180 kg mass limit for SIMPLEx missions — will conduct stand-alone planetary science missions. The spacecraft is jointly developed by two teams, based ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solar System
The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar System" and "solar system" structures in theinaming guidelines document. The name is commonly rendered in lower case ('solar system'), as, for example, in the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' an''Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary''. is the gravity, gravitationally bound system of the Sun and the objects that orbit it. It Formation and evolution of the Solar System, formed 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of a giant interstellar molecular cloud. The solar mass, vast majority (99.86%) of the system's mass is in the Sun, with most of the Jupiter mass, remaining mass contained in the planet Jupiter. The four inner Solar System, inner system planets—Mercury (planet), Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars—are terrest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mars Cube One
Mars Cube One (or MarCO) was a Mars flyby mission launched on 5 May 2018 alongside NASA's ''InSight'' Mars lander. It consisted of two nanospacecraft, MarCO-A and MarCO-B, that provided real-time communications to Earth for ''InSight'' during its entry, descent, and landing (EDL) on 26 November 2018 - when ''InSight'' was out of line of sight from the Earth. Both spacecraft were 6U CubeSats designed to test miniaturized communications and navigation technologies. These were the first CubeSats to operate beyond Earth orbit, and aside from telecommunications they also tested CubeSats' endurance in deep space. On 5 February 2019, NASA reported that both the CubeSats had gone silent by 5 January 2019, and are unlikely to be heard from again. In August 2019, the CubeSats were honored for their role in the successful landing of the ''InSight'' lander on Mars. The ''InSight'' lander re-transmitted its telemetry data during the landing, which demonstrated the new relay system and t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arizona State University
Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the U.S. One of three universities governed by the Arizona Board of Regents, ASU is a member of the Universities Research Association and classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very High Research Activity". ASU has nearly 150,000 students attending classes, with more than 38,000 students attending online, and 90,000 undergraduates and nearly 20,000 postgraduates across its five campuses and four regional learning centers throughout Arizona. ASU offers 350 degree options from its 17 colleges and more than 170 cross-discipline centers and institutes for undergraduates students, as well as more than 400 graduate degree and certificate programs. The Arizona State Sun Devils compete in 26 varsity-level sports in the NCAA Division I Pac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shackleton (crater)
Shackleton is an impact crater that lies at the lunar south pole. The peaks along the crater's rim are exposed to almost continual sunlight, while the interior is perpetually in shadow. The low-temperature interior of this crater functions as a cold trap that may capture and freeze volatiles shed during comet impacts on the Moon. Measurements by the '' Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft showed higher than normal amounts of hydrogen within the crater, which may indicate the presence of water ice. The crater is named after Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton. Description The rotational axis of the Moon passes through Shackleton, near the rim. The crater is in diameter and deep. From the Earth, it is viewed edge-on in a region of rough, cratered terrain. It is located within the South Pole–Aitken basin on a massif. The rim is slightly raised about the surrounding surface and it has an outer rampart that has been only lightly impacted. No significant craters intersect the rim, an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neutron Detection
Neutron detection is the effective detection of neutrons entering a well-positioned detector. There are two key aspects to effective neutron detection: hardware and software. Detection hardware refers to the kind of neutron detector used (the most common today is the scintillation detector) and to the electronics used in the detection setup. Further, the hardware setup also defines key experimental parameters, such as source-detector distance, solid angle and detector shielding. Detection software consists of analysis tools that perform tasks such as graphical analysis to measure the number and energies of neutrons striking the detector. Basic physics Signatures by which a neutron may be detected Atomic and subatomic particles are detected by the signature they produce through interaction with their surroundings. The interactions result from the particles' fundamental characteristics. * Charge: Neutrons are neutral particles and do not ionize directly; hence they are harder than ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
