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UPI
5 days ago
- Science
- UPI
NASA to unveil last piece of hardware for the Artemis II Orion mission
1 of 3 | The Artemis II Orion stage adapter was built at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. It's the final piece to the space flight hardware for the Space Launch System rocket for the Artemis II mission. Photo courtesy of NASA Aug. 12 (UPI) -- NASA is ready to show off its final piece of space flight hardware for the Space Launch System rocket for the Artemis II mission. NASA has invited media to the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., to see the piece. The rest of the SLS rocket for Artemis II is stacked on mobile launcher 1 at Kennedy. Artemis II, NASA's first mission with crew aboard the Orion spacecraft, is scheduled for a 10-day trip around the moon in April 2026. The Orion stage adapter, built by NASA Marshall, connects the SLS rocket's interim cryogenic propulsion stage to NASA's Orion spacecraft. The small ring structure is the topmost portion of the SLS rocket. The adapter will also carry small payloads, called CubeSats, to deep space. Through Artemis, NASA will send astronauts to explore the moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars, NASA said. That lunar flyby mission carrying four astronauts is set for launch in April 2026. It's a flight test mission that will pave the way for landing the first woman and the next man on the moon. Onboard will be Commader Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. Wiseman, Glover and Koch are NASA astronauts. Hansen is from the Canadian Space Agency. According to Artemis mission manager Mike Sarafin, Artemis II builds on the uncrewed Artemis I flight test. "This mission will prove Orion's critical life support systems are ready to sustain our astronauts on longer duration missions ahead and allow the crew to practice operations essential to the success of Artemis III," Sarafin said in a statement.
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
It's Official: Scientists Have Confirmed What's Inside Our Moon
Well, the verdict is in. The Moon is not made of green cheese after all. A thorough investigation published in May 2023 found that the inner core of the Moon is, in fact, a solid ball with a density similar to that of iron. This, researchers hope, will help settle a long debate about whether the Moon's inner heart is solid or molten, and lead to a more accurate understanding of the Moon's history – and, by extension, that of the Solar System. "Our results," wrote a team led by astronomer Arthur Briaud of the French National Centre for Scientific Research in France, "question the evolution of the Moon magnetic field thanks to its demonstration of the existence of the inner core and support a global mantle overturn scenario that brings substantial insights on the timeline of the lunar bombardment in the first billion years of the Solar System." Probing the interior composition of objects in the Solar System is most effectively accomplished through seismic data. The way acoustic waves generated by quakes move through and reflect from material inside a planet or moon can help scientists create a detailed map of the object's interior. We happen to have lunar seismic data collected by the Apollo mission, but its resolution is too low to accurately determine the inner core's state. We know there is a fluid outer core, but what it encompasses remains under debate. Models of a solid inner core and an entirely fluid core work equally well with the Apollo data. To figure it out once and for all, Briaud and his colleagues collected data from space missions and lunar laser-ranging experiments to compile a profile of various lunar characteristics. These include the degree of its deformation by its gravitational interaction with Earth, the variation in its distance from Earth, and its density. Next, they conducted modeling with various core types to find which matched most closely with the observational data. They made several interesting findings. Firstly, the models that most closely resembled what we know about the Moon describe active overturn deep inside the lunar mantle. This means that denser material inside the Moon falls towards the center, and less dense material rises upwards. This activity has long been proposed as a way of explaining the presence of certain elements in volcanic regions of the Moon. The team's research adds another point in the "for" tally of evidence. And they found that the lunar core is very similar to that of Earth – with an outer fluid layer and a solid inner core. According to their modeling, the outer core has a radius of about 362 kilometers (225 miles), and the inner core has a radius of about 258 kilometers (160 miles). That's about 15 percent of the entire radius of the Moon. The inner core, the team found, also has a density of about 7,822 kilograms per cubic meter. That's very close to the density of iron. Curiously, in 2011 a team led by NASA Marshall planetary scientist Renee Weber found a similar result using what were then state-of-the-art seismological techniques on Apollo data to study the lunar core. They found evidence of a solid inner core with a radius of about 240 kilometers, and a density of about 8,000 kilograms per cubic meter. Their results, Briaud and his team say, are confirmation of those earlier findings, and constitute a pretty strong case for an Earth-like lunar core. And this has some interesting implications for the Moon's evolution. We know that not long after it formed, the Moon had a powerful magnetic field, which started to decline about 3.2 billion years ago. Such a magnetic field is generated by motion and convection in the core, so what the lunar core is made of is deeply relevant to how and why the magnetic field disappeared. Given humanity's hope to return to the Moon in relatively short order, perhaps we won't have long to wait for seismic verification of these findings. The research has been published in Nature. A version of this article was first published in May 2023. Curiosity Cracked Open a Rock on Mars And Discovered a Big Surprise We May Have Finally Laid Eyes on The Universe's Very First Stars Record Discovery: Impact Crater in Australia's Outback Oldest by a Billion Years
