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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Regolith Adherence Characterization, or RAC, is one of 10 science and technology instruments flying on NASA’s next Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) flight as part of the Blue Ghost Misison-1. Developed by Aegis Aerospace of Webster, Texas, RAC is designed to study how lunar dust reacts to more than a dozen different types of material samples, located on the payload’s wheels. Photo courtesy Firefly Aerospace The Moon may look like barren rock, but it’s actually covered in a layer of gravel, pebbles, and dust collectively known as “lunar regolith.” During the Apollo Moon missions, astronauts learned firsthand that the fine, powdery dust – electromagnetically charged due to constant bombardment by solar and cosmic particles – is extremely abrasive and clings to everything: gloves, boots, vehicles, and mechanical equipment. What challenges does that dust pose to future Artemis-era missions to establish long-term outposts on the lunar surface?
That’s the task of an innovative science instrument called RAC-1 (Regolith Adherence Characterization), one of 10 NASA payloads flying aboard the next delivery for the agency’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and set to be carried to the surface by Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 lunar lander.
Developed by Aegis Aerospace of Webster, Texas, RAC will expose 15 sample materials – fabrics, paint coatings, optical systems, sensors, solar cells, and more – to the lunar environment to determine how tenaciously the lunar dust sticks to each one. The instrument will measure accumulation rates during landing and subsequent routine lander operations, aiding identification of those materials which best repel or shed dust. The data will help NASA and its industry partners more effectively test, upgrade, and protect spacecraft, spacesuits, habitats, and equipment in preparation for continued exploration of the Moon under the Artemis campaign.
“Lunar regolith is a sticky challenge for long-duration expeditions to the surface,” said Dennis Harris, who manages the RAC payload for NASA’s CLPS initiative at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “Dust gets into gears, sticks to spacesuits, and can block optical properties. RAC will help determine the best materials and fabrics with which to build, delivering more robust, durable hardware, products, and equipment.”
Under the CLPS model, NASA is investing in commercial delivery services to the Moon to enable industry growth and support long-term lunar exploration. As a primary customer for CLPS deliveries, NASA aims to be one of many customers on future flights. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the development of seven of the 10 CLPS payloads carried on Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander.
Learn more about. CLPS and Artemis at:
https://www.nasa.gov/clps
Alise Fisher
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-2546
Alise.m.fisher@nasa.gov
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-2546
Alise.m.fisher@nasa.gov
Corinne Beckinger
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-544-0034
corinne.m.beckinger@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Dec 20, 2024 EditorBeth RidgewayContactCorinne M. Beckingercorinne.m.beckinger@nasa.govLocationMarshall Space Flight Center Related Terms
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Seen at the center of this image, NASA’s retired InSight Mars lander was captured by the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter using its High-Resolution Imagine Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on Oct. 23, 2024.NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona New images taken from space show how dust on and around InSight is changing over time — information that can help scientists learn more about the Red Planet.
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) caught a glimpse of the agency’s retired InSight lander recently, documenting the accumulation of dust on the spacecraft’s solar panels. In the new image taken Oct. 23 by MRO’s High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, InSight’s solar panels have acquired the same reddish-brown hue as the rest of the planet.
After touching down in November 2018, the lander was the first to detect the Red Planet’s marsquakes, revealing details of the crust, mantle, and core in the process. Over the four years that the spacecraft collected science, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which led the mission, used images from InSight’s cameras and MRO’s HiRISE to estimate how much dust was settling on the stationary lander’s solar panels, since dust affected its ability to generate power.
NASA retired InSight in December 2022, after the lander ran out of power and stopped communicating with Earth during its extended mission. But engineers continued listening for radio signals from the lander in case wind cleared enough dust from the spacecraft’s solar panels for its batteries to recharge. Having detected no changes over the past two years, NASA will stop listening for InSight at the end of this year.
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NASA’s InSight Mars lander acquires the same reddish-brown hue as the rest of the planet in a set of images from 2018 to 2024 that were captured by the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter using its High-Resolution Imagine Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera.NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona Scientists requested the recent HiRISE image as a farewell to InSight, as well as to monitor how its landing site has changed over time.
“Even though we’re no longer hearing from InSight, it’s still teaching us about Mars,” said science team member Ingrid Daubar of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. “By monitoring how much dust collects on the surface — and how much gets vacuumed away by wind and dust devils — we learn more about the wind, dust cycle, and other processes that shape the planet.”
Dust Devils and Craters
Dust is a driving force across Mars, shaping both the atmosphere and landscape. Studying it helps scientists understand the planet and engineers prepare for future missions (solar-powered and otherwise), since dust can get into sensitive mechanical parts.
When InSight was still active, scientists matched MRO images of dust devil tracks winding across the landscape with data from the lander’s wind sensors, finding these whirling weather phenomena subside in the winter and pick up again in the summer.
The imagery also helped with the study of meteoroid impacts on the Martian surface. The more craters a region has, the older the surface there is. (This isn’t the case with Earth’s surface, which is constantly recycled as tectonic plates slide over one another.) The marks around these craters fade with time. Understanding how fast dust covers them helps to ascertain a crater’s age.
Another way to estimate how quickly craters fade has been studying the ring of blast marks left by InSight’s retrorocket thrusters during landing. Much more prominent in 2018, those dark marks are now returning to the red-brown color of the surrounding terrain.
HiRISE has captured many other spacecraft images, including those of NASA’s Perseverance and Curiosity rovers, which are still exploring Mars, as well as inactive missions, like the Spirit and Opportunity rovers and the Phoenix lander.
“It feels a little bittersweet to look at InSight now. It was a successful mission that produced lots of great science. Of course, it would have been nice if it kept going forever, but we knew that wouldn’t happen,” Daubar said.
More About MRO and InSight
The University of Arizona, in Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., in Boulder, Colorado. A division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL manages the MRO project and managed InSight for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
The InSight mission was part of NASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supported spacecraft operations for the mission.
A number of European partners, including France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), supported the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors.
For more about the missions:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/insight
science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-reconnaissance-orbiter
News Media Contacts
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Dec 16, 2024 Related Terms
InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) Radioisotope Power Systems (RPS) Explore More
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By NASA
Congratulations to the selected teams and their schools who will participate in the Lunar Autonomy Challenge! 31 teams were selected for the qualifying round, engaging 229 students from colleges and universities in 15 states. Teams will now move on to a Qualifying Round where they will virtually explore and map the lunar surface using a digital twin of NASA’s lunar mobility robot, the ISRU Pilot Excavator (IPEx). Teams will develop software that can perform set actions without human intervention, navigating the digital IPEx in the harsh, low-light conditions of the Moon. The Qualifying Round will extend to February 28, when the top-scoring teams will proceed to the Final Round, with the winners announced in May 2025.
The Lunar Autonomy Challenge is a collaboration between NASA, The Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), Caterpillar Inc., and Embodied AI.
Learn more: https://lunar-autonomy-challenge.jhuapl.edu/
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We are committed to providing educational opportunities for students interested in pursuing professional experiences in the life science disciplines. Our…
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By NASA
2 Min Read Turn Supermoon Hype into Lunar Learning
Caption: The Earth-Moon distance to scale. Credits:
NASA/JPL-Caltech Supermoons get lots of publicity from the media, but is there anything to them beyond the hype? If the term “supermoon” bothers you because it’s not an official astronomical term, don’t throw up your hands. You can turn supermoon lemons into lunar lemonade for your star party visitors by using it to illustrate astronomy concepts and engaging them with great telescopic views of its surface!
Many astronomers find the frequent supermoon news from the media misleading, if not a bit upsetting! Unlike the outrageously wrong “Mars is as big as the moon” pieces that appear like clockwork every two years during Mars’s close approach to Earth, news about a huge full moon is more of an overstatement. The fact is that while a supermoon will indeed appear somewhat bigger and brighter in the sky, it would be difficult to tell the difference between an average full moon and a supermoon with the naked eye.
A whiteboard illustration of Earth’s Moon at perigee, or closest position to Earth. Credit: NASA There are great bits of science to glean from supermoon discussion that can turn supermoon questions into teachable moments. For example, supermoons are a great gateway into discussing the shape of the moon’s orbit, especially the concepts of apogee and perigee. Many people may assume that the moon orbits Earth in a perfect circle, when in fact its orbit is elliptical! The moon’s distance from Earth constantly varies, and so during its orbit it reaches both apogee (when it’s farthest from Earth), as well as perigee (closest to Earth). A supermoon occurs when the moon is at both perigee and in its full phase. That’s not rare; a full moon at closest approach to Earth can happen multiple times a year, as you may have noticed.
This activity is related to a Teachable Moment from Nov. 15, 2017. See “What Is a Supermoon and Just How Super Is It?” Credit: NASA/JPL While a human observer won’t be able to tell the difference between the size of a supermoon and a regular full moon, comparison photos taken with a telephoto lens can reveal the size difference between full moons. NASA has a classroom activity called Measuring the Supermoon where students can measure the size of the full moon month to month and compare their results.
Comparison of the size of an average full moon, compared to the size of a supermoon. NASA/JPL-Caltech Students can use digital cameras (or smartphones) to measure the moon, or they can simply measure the moon using nothing more than a pencil and paper! Both methods work and can be used depending on the style of teaching and available resources.
/wp-content/plugins/nasa-blocks/assets/images/media/media-example-01.jpg This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth. NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI View the full article
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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
ESI24 Nam Quadchart
SungWoo Nam
University of California, Irvine
Lunar dust may seem unimposing, but it presents a significant challenge for space missions. Its abrasive and jagged particles can damage equipment, clog devices, and even pose health risks to astronauts. This project addresses such issues by developing advanced coatings composed of crumpled nano-balls made from atomically thin 2D materials such as MoS₂, graphene, and MXenes. By crumpling these nanosheets—much like crumpling a piece of paper—we create compression and aggregation resistant particles that can be dispersed in sprayable solutions. As a thin film coating, these crumpled nano-balls form corrugated structures that passively reduce dust adhesion and surface wear. The deformable crumpled nano-ball (DCN) coating works by minimizing the contact area between lunar dust and surfaces, thanks to its unique nano-engineered design. The 2D materials exhibit exceptional durability, withstanding extreme thermal and vacuum environments, as well as resisting radiation damage. Additionally, the flexoelectric and electrostatically dissipative properties of MoS₂, graphene, and MXenes allow the coating to neutralize and dissipate electrical charges, making them highly responsive to the charged lunar dust environment. The project will be executed in three phases, each designed to bring the technology closer to real-world space applications. First, we will synthesize the crumpled nano-balls and investigate their adhesion properties using advanced microscopy techniques. The second phase will focus on fundamental testing in simulated lunar environments, where the coating will be exposed to extreme temperatures, vacuum, radiation, and abrasion. Finally, the third phase will involve applying the coating to space-heritage materials and conducting comprehensive testing in a simulated lunar environment, targeting up to 90% dust clearance and verifying durability over repeated cycles of dust exposure. This research aligns with NASA’s goals for safer, more sustainable lunar missions by reducing maintenance requirements and extending equipment lifespan. Moreover, the potential applications extend beyond space exploration, with the technology offering promising advances in terrestrial industries such as aerospace and electronics by providing ultra-durable, wear-resistant surfaces. Ultimately, the project contributes to advancing materials science and paving the way for NASA’s long-term vision of sustainable space exploration.
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