NASA is hoping to take off to the far side of the moon for the first time with two new scientific payloads to land on the moon’s other hemisphere. The objective is to obtain data for future astronauts to become familiar with the area that faces away from Earth.
While this being the first for NASA to explore the lunar hemisphere, China’s Chang’e- 4 mission has already landed spacecraft on the dark side back in 2019. Learning all there is to know about this new region is a top priority before sending humans to visit.
NASA has been submitting proposals of their projects to agencies that will help deliver the payloads to their correct location on the far side of the moon. The goal is to have these payloads launched and set in place for activity in 2024.
“The selected lunar payloads represent cutting-edge innovations and will take advantage of early flights through our commercial services project. Each demonstrates either a new science instrument or a technological innovation that supports scientific and human exploration objectives, and many have broader applications for Mars and beyond,” said NASA’s associate administrator Thomas Zurbuchen.
One of NASA’s proposals include monitoring tectonic activity of the crater called the Schrödinger basin. A Jet Propulsion Laboratory project known as the Farside Seismic Suite will launch two seismometers (a device sensitive to vibrations) to stay there for months assembling data for NASA.
Data on the moon’s structure and impacts of external activity affecting this new hemisphere contributes to the other payload and its data collected. The other payload is known as the Lunar Interior Temperature and Materials suite and will be monitoring heat flow and electrical conductivity along the Schrödinger basin.
The two suites will be working hand in hand to help NASA understand how the moon’s hemispheres correlate to one another and what makes them different. Other proposals to learn more about lunar swirls from Earth are also being considered to study magnetic field. These new technological advances and discoveries for NASA are “one small step for man, and one giant leap for mankind.”
