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By NASA
NASA, ESA/Matthias Maurer An astronaut aboard the International Space Station snapped this picture of the Moon as the station orbited 265 miles above the U.S. state of Minnesota on Dec. 17, 2021.
Astronauts aboard the orbital lab take images using handheld digital cameras, usually through windows in the station’s cupola, for Crew Earth Observations. Crew members have produced hundreds of thousands of images of the Moon and Earth’s land, oceans, and atmosphere.
On Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024, International Observe the Moon Night, everyone on Earth is invited to learn about lunar science, participate in celestial observations, and honor cultural and personal connection to the Moon. Find an event to join in the celebration.
Image credit: NASA, ESA/Matthias Maurer
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By NASA
5 Min Read 9 Phenomena NASA Astronauts Will Encounter at Moon’s South Pole
An artist’s rendering of an Artemis astronaut working on the Moon’s surface. Credits:
NASA NASA’s Artemis campaign will send the first woman and the first person of color to the Moon’s south polar region, marking humanity’s first return to the lunar surface in more than 50 years.
Here are some out-of-this-world phenomena Artemis astronauts will experience:
1. A Hovering Sun and Giant Shadows
This visualization shows the motions of Earth and the Sun as viewed from the South Pole of the Moon.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Near the Moon’s South Pole, astronauts will see dramatic shadows that are 25 to 50 times longer than the objects casting them. Why? Because the Sun strikes the surface there at a low angle, hanging just a few degrees above the horizon. As a result, astronauts won’t see the Sun rise and set. Instead, they’ll watch it hover near the horizon as it moves horizontally across the sky.
2. Sticky, Razor-Sharp Dust …
This dust particle came from a lunar regolith sample brought to Earth in 1969 by Apollo 11 astronauts. The particle is about 25 microns across, less than the width of an average human hair. The image was taken with a scanning electron microscope. The lunar dust, called regolith, that coats the Moon’s surface looks fine and soft like baking powder. But looks can be deceiving. Lunar regolith is formed when meteoroids hit the Moon’s surface, melting and shattering rocks into tiny, sharp pieces. The Moon doesn’t have moving water or wind to smooth out the regolith grains, so they stay sharp and scratchy, posing a risk to astronauts and their equipment.
3. … That’s Charged with Static Electricity
Astronaut Eugene Cernan, commander of Apollo 17, inside the lunar module on the Moon after his second moonwalk of the mission in 1972. His spacesuit and face are covered in lunar dust. Because the Moon has no atmosphere to speak of, its surface is exposed to plasma and radiation from the Sun. As a result, static electricity builds up on the surface, as it does when you shuffle your feet against a carpeted floor. When you then touch something, you transfer that charge via a small shock. On the Moon, this transfer can short-circuit electronics. Moon dust also can make its way into astronaut living quarters, as the static electricity causes it to easily stick to spacesuits. NASA has developed methods to keep the dust at bay using resistant textiles, filters, and a shield that employs an electric field to remove dust from surfaces.
4. A New Sense of Lightness
In 1972, Apollo 16 astronaut Charles Duke hammered a core tube into the Moon’s surface until it met a rock and wouldn’t go any farther. Then the hammer flew from his hand. He made four attempts to pick it up by bending down and leaning to reach for it. He gave up and returned to the rover to get tongs to finally pick up the hammer successfully.
NASA’s Johnson Space Center Artemis moonwalkers will have a bounce to their step as they traverse the lunar surface. This is because gravity won’t pull them down as forcefully as it does on Earth. The Moon is only a quarter of Earth’s size, with six times less gravity. Simple activities, like swinging a rock hammer to chip off samples, will feel different. While a hammer will feel lighter to hold, its inertia won’t change, leading to a strange sensation for astronauts. Lower gravity has perks, too. Astronauts won’t be weighed down by their hefty spacesuits as much as they would be on Earth. Plus, bouncing on the Moon is just plain fun.
5. A Waxing Crescent … Earth?
This animated image features a person holding a stick with a sphere on top that represents the Moon. The person is demonstrating an activity that helps people learn about the phases of the Moon by acting them out. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory When Artemis astronauts look at the sky from the Moon, they’ll see their home planet shining back at them. Just like Earthlings see different phases of the Moon throughout a month, astronauts will see an ever-shifting Earth. Earth phases occur opposite to Moon phases: When Earth experiences a new Moon, a full Earth is visible from the Moon.
6. An Itty-Bitty Horizon
A view from the Apollo 11 spacecraft in July 1969 shows Earth rising above the Moon’s horizon. NASA Because the Moon is smaller than Earth, its horizon will look shorter and closer. To someone standing on a level Earth surface, the horizon is 3 miles away, but to astronauts on the Moon, it’ll be only 1.5 miles away, making their surroundings seem confined.
7. Out-of-This-World Temperatures
This graphic shows maximum summer and winter temperatures near the lunar South Pole. Purple, blue, and green identify cold regions, while yellow to red signify warmer ones. The graphic incorporates 10 years of data from NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter), which has been orbiting the Moon since 2009.
NASA/LRO Diviner Seasonal Polar Data Because sunlight at the Moon’s South Pole skims the surface horizontally, it brushes crater rims, but doesn’t always reach their floors. Some deep craters haven’t seen the light of day for billions of years, so temperatures there can dip to minus 334 F. That’s nearly three times colder than the lowest temperature recorded in Antarctica. At the other extreme, areas in direct sunlight, such as crater rims, can reach temperatures of 130 F.
8. An Inky-Black Sky
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An animated view of Earth emerging below the horizon as seen from the Moon’s South Pole. This visual was created using a digital elevation map from LRO’s laser altimeter, LOLA. NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio The Moon, unlike Earth, doesn’t have a thick atmosphere to scatter blue light, so the daytime sky is black. Astronauts will see a stark contrast between the dark sky and the bright ground.
9. A Rugged Terrain
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An overhead view of the Moon, beginning with a natural color from a distance and changing to color-coded elevation as the camera comes closer. The visual captures the rugged terrain of the lunar South Pole area. It includes a color key and animated scale bar. This visual was created using a digital elevation map from NASA LRO’s laser altimeter, LOLA. NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio Artemis moonwalkers will find a rugged landscape that takes skill to traverse. The Moon has mountains, valleys, and canyons, but its most notable feature for astronauts on the surface may be its millions of craters. Near the South Pole, gaping craters and long shadows will make it difficult for astronauts to navigate. But, with training and special gear, astronauts will be prepared to meet the challenge.
By Avery Truman
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Sep 11, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, announced Wednesday it will continue its historic in-space autonomous systems payload mission aboard an orbiting satellite through a follow-on agreement with Sidus Space, Inc.
“We are excited to report the historic ASTRA (Autonomous Satellite Technology for Resilient Applications) mission will continue,” said Chris Carmichael, chief, Stennis Autonomous Systems Laboratory (ASL) branch at NASA Stennis. “We look forward to working with Sidus Space to demonstrate the capabilities of the NASA Stennis payload and our autonomous systems team.”
With this new agreement, the ASTRA payload will be used to collect onboard data on satellite systems and support management of the satellite’s Electrical Power System (EPS). The NASA Stennis ASTRA system will monitor and autonomously optimize the satellite’s battery system, ensuring the satellite continues to operate as needed for the course of its remaining mission lifetime. The ASTRA EPS management capability provides a new, innovative level of adaptability and efficiency for monitoring the satellite’s ongoing operations.
Developed by NASA Stennis to fly and demonstrate an autonomous systems hardware/software payload, ASTRA is the on-orbit mission. The NASA Stennis ASTRA technology demonstrator is a payload rider aboard the Sidus Space LizzieSat-1 (LS-1) small satellite. Partner Sidus Space is responsible for all LS-1 mission operations, including launch and satellite activation.
The LS-1 small satellite launched into space on the SpaceX Transporter 10 rideshare mission March 4 and deployed the same day. Following payload activation by Sidus Space, the NASA Stennis team worked with the company to establish a telemetry link to send and receive data in the ASTRA Payload Operation Command Center located at the NASA site. The ASL team continued to checkout and verify operation of ASTRA, confirming in early July that ASTRA primary mission objectives were successful.
The team is now focused on demonstrating autonomous system management as part of the LS-1 satellite’s planned four-year mission. “We are excited about the opportunity to continue this unprecedented mission,” Carmichael said. “Every step helps advance our autonomous systems work and lays a foundation for continued development and success.”
The NASA Stennis ASL team works to create safe-by-design autonomous systems. NASA’s ASTRA demonstrates technology that is required by NASA and industry for upcoming space missions. The ASTRA computer on the satellite runs a digital twin of key satellite systems, which identifies anomalies, and autonomously generates plans to resolve those issues.
The ongoing success of the ASTRA mission comes as NASA Stennis moves forward with strategic plans to design autonomous systems that will help accelerate development of intelligent aerospace systems and services for government and industry.
For information about NASA’s Stennis Space Center, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/stennis
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By NASA
On Sept. 10, 2009, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched its first cargo delivery spacecraft, the H-II Transfer Vehicle-1 (HTV-1), to the International Space Station. The HTV cargo vehicles, also called Kounotori, meaning white stork in Japanese, not only maintained the Japanese Experiment Module Kibo but also resupplied the space station in general with pressurized and unpressurized cargo and payloads. Following its rendezvous with the space station, Expedition 20 astronauts grappled and berthed HTV-1 on Sept. 17, and spent the next month transferring its 9,900 pounds of internal and external cargo to the space station and filling the HTV-1 with trash and unneeded equipment. They released the craft on Oct. 30 and ground controllers commanded it to a destructive reentry on Nov. 1.
Left and middle: Two views of the HTV-1 Kounotori cargo spacecraft during prelaunch processing at the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan. Right: Schematic illustration showing the HTV’s major components. Image credits: courtesy JAXA.
The HTV formed part of a fleet of cargo vehicles that at the time included NASA’s space shuttle until its retirement in 2011, Roscosmos’ Progress, and the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Automated Transfer Vehicle that flew five missions between 2008 and 2015. The SpaceX Cargo Dragon and Orbital (later Northrup Grumman) Cygnus commercial cargo vehicles supplemented the fleet starting in 2012 and 2013, respectively. The HTV weighed 23,000 pounds empty and could carry up to 13,000 pounds of cargo, although on this first flight carried only 9,900 pounds. The vehicle included both a pressurized and an unpressurized logistics carrier. Following its rendezvous with the space station, it approached to within 33 feet, at which point astronauts grappled it with the station’s robotic arm and berthed it to the Harmony Node 2 module’s Earth facing port. Space station managers added two flights to the originally planned seven, with the last HTV flying in 2020. An upgraded HTV-X vehicle will soon make its debut to carry cargo to the space station, incorporating the lessons learned from the nine-mission HTV program.
Left: Technicians place HTV-1 inside its launch protective shroud at the Tanegashima Space Center. Middle left: Workers truck the HTV-1 to Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). Middle right: The HTV-1 atop its H-II rolls out of the VAB on its way to the launch pad. Right: The HTV-1 mission patch. Image credits: courtesy JAXA.
Prelaunch processing of HTV-1 took place at the Tanegashima Space Center, where engineers inspected and assembled the spacecraft’s components. Workers installed the internal cargo into the pressurized logistics carrier and external payloads onto the External Pallet that they installed into the unpressurized logistics carrier. HTV-1 carried two external payloads, the Japanese Superconducting submillimeter-wave Limb Emission Sounder (SMILES) and the U.S. Hyperspectral Imager for Coastal Ocean (HICO)-Remote Atmospheric and Ionospheric detection System (RAIDS) Experiment Payload (HREP). On Aug. 23, 2009, workers encapsulated the assembled HTV into its payload shroud and a week later moved it into the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), where they mounted it atop the H-IIB rocket. Rollout from the VAB to the pad took place on the day of launch.
Liftoff of HTV-1 from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan. Image credit: courtesy JAXA.
Left: The launch control center at the Tanegahsima Space Center in Japan. Middle: The mission control room at the Tsukuba Space Center in Japan. Image credits: courtesy JAXA. Right: The HTV-1 control team in the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
On Sept. 10 – Sept. 11 Japan time – HTV-1 lifted off its pad at Tanegashima on the maiden flight of the H-IIB rocket. Controllers in Tanegashima’s launch control center monitored the flight until HTV-1 separated from the booster’s second stage. At that point, HTV-1 automatically activated its systems and established communications with NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. Control of the flight shifted to the mission control room at the Tsukuba Space Center outside Tokyo. Controllers in the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston also monitored the mission’s progress.
Left: HTV-1 approaches the space station. Middle: NASA astronaut Nicole P. Stott grapples HTV-1 with the station’s robotic arm and prepares to berth it to the Node 2 module. Right: European Space Agency astronaut Frank DeWinne, left, Stott, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert Thirsk in the Destiny module following the robotic operations to capture and berth HTV-1.
Following several days of systems checks, HTV-1 approached the space station on Sept. 17. Members of Expedition 20 monitored its approach, as it stopped within 33 feet of the orbiting laboratory. Using the space station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm, Expedition 20 Flight Engineer and NASA astronaut Nicole P. Stott grappled HTV-1. Fellow crew member Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert Thirsk berthed the vehicle on the Harmony Node 2 module’s Earth-facing port. The following day, the Expedition 20 crew opened the hatch to HTV-1 to begin the cargo transfers.
Left: Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert Thirsk inside HTV-1. Middle: NASA astronaut Nicole P. Stott transferring cargo from HTV-1 to the space station. Right: Stott in HTV-1 after completion of much of the cargo transfer.
Over the next several weeks, the Expedition 20 and 21 crews transferred more than 7,900 pounds of cargo from the pressurized logistics carrier to the space station. The items included food, science experiments, robotic arm and other hardware for the Kibo module, crew supplies including clothing, toiletries, and personal items, fluorescent lights, and other supplies. They then loaded the module with trash and unneeded equipment, altogether weighing 3,580 pounds.
Left: The space station’s robotic arm grapples the Exposed Pallet (EP) to transfer it to the Japanese Experiment Module-Exposed Facility (JEM-EF). Right: Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert Thirsk and NASA astronaut Nicole P. Stott operate the station’s robotic arm to temporarily transfer the EP and its payloads to the JEM-EF.
Left: The Japanese robotic arm grapples one of the payloads from the Exposed Pallet (EP) to transfer it to the Japanese Experiment Module-Exposed Facility (JEM-EF). Right: European Space Agency astronaut Frank DeWinne, left, and NASA astronaut Nicole P. Stott operate the Japanese robotic arm from inside the JEM.
Working as a team, NASA astronauts Stott and Michael R. Barratt along with Thirsk and ESA astronaut Frank DeWinne performed the transfer of the external payloads. On Sept. 23, using the station’s robotic arm, they grappled the Exposed Pallet (EP) and removed it from HTV-1’s unpressurized logistics carrier, handing it off to the Japanese remote manipulator system arm that temporarily stowed it on the JEM’s Exposed Facility (JEM-EF). The next day, using the Japanese arm, DeWinne and Stott transferred the SMILES and HREP experiments to their designated locations on the JEM-EF. On Sept. 25, they grappled the now empty EP and placed it back into HTV-1’s unpressurized logistics carrier.
Left: Astronauts transfer the empty Exposed Pallet back to HTV-1. Middle: NASA astronaut Nicole P. Stott poses in front of the now-closed hatch to HTV-1. Right: European Space Agency astronaut Frank DeWinne, left, and Stott operate the station’s robotic arm to grapple HTV-1 for release.
Left: The space station’s robotic arm grapples HTV-1 in preparation for its unberthing. Middle: The station’s robotic arm has unberthed HTV-1 in preparation for its release. Right: The arm has released HTV-1 and it begins its separation from the space station.
Following completion of all the transfers, Expedition 21 astronauts aboard the space station closed the hatch to HTV-1 on Oct. 29. The next day, Stott and DeWinne grappled the vehicle and unberthed it from Node 2. While passing over the Pacific Ocean, they released HTV-1 and it began its departure maneuvers from the station. On Nov. 1, the flight control team in Tsukuba sent commands to HTV-1 to execute three deorbit burns. The vehicle reentered the Earth’s atmosphere, burning up off the coast of New Zealand, having completed the highly successful 52-day first HTV resupply mission. Eight more HTV missions followed, all successful, with HTV-9 completing its mission in August 2020.
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