{"id":13396,"date":"2019-07-15T04:01:37","date_gmt":"2019-07-15T03:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ounews.co\/?p=13396"},"modified":"2019-07-15T04:01:37","modified_gmt":"2019-07-15T03:01:37","slug":"open-university-announced-as-nasa-partner-on-mission-to-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/science-mct\/space\/open-university-announced-as-nasa-partner-on-mission-to-the-moon\/","title":{"rendered":"Open University announced as NASA partner on mission to the Moon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Scientists from The Open University (OU) are supporting one of a\nseries of ground-breaking missions by NASA to go back to the Moon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The announcement comes as the world prepares to mark the 50th<\/sup>\nanniversary of the first Moon landings, when astronauts from Apollo 11 walked\non the Moon on July 20th<\/sup> 1969. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These new US missions, together with others involving the OU, could\nultimately pave the way for the next human visitors to the Moon. It\u2019s a prime\nexample of the world-leading lunar research carried out by OU academics, which includes\nresearching methods that may help build future habitats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The OU has teamed with NASA Goddard Spaceflight Centre (in cooperation with the European Space Agency) to develop an instrument called PITMS to monitor the very thin atmosphere near the surface of the Moon. The instrument will be carried to the Moon in 2021 by a commercially-provided lander, under NASA\u2019s Artemis program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
The PITMS instrument<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Finding out\nabout the natural \u201cwater cycle\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Simeon
Dr Simeon Barber<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The OU\u2019s Dr Simeon Barber, who is leading the OU\u2019s contribution to\nPITMS, explained that the instrument will help investigate the emerging concept\nof a natural \u201cwater cycle\u201d on the Moon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cThere is increasing evidence from orbiting probes that water may migrate away from equatorial regions, as visited during the Apollo era, driven by extreme day to night temperature cycles, until it becomes tightly \u201ctrapped\u201d at permanent cold polar locations,\u201d said Dr Barber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The PITMS instrument will provide an early opportunity to study\nthe dynamic behaviour of water on the Moon today, as well as proving some of\nthe detection technology that will be used by the OU on subsequent\nmissions.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Understanding the sources and movement of water on the Moon\nare key open questions in lunar science. Finding answers would lead to\ndeveloping plans to harvest lunar water as a resource to support future human\nexploration mission and the establishment of lunar bases. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The instrument selected by NASA is a variant of OU\u2019s ProSPA\nmobile laboratory already in development for the European Space Agency and\nscheduled to land near to the Moon\u2019s south pole on a Russian spacecraft in\n2025. In\nthis cold region of the Moon, the scientists expect to find elevated levels of\nwater ice on or below the surface which would be collected by a drill for\nanalysis. ProSPA is being designed to enable scouting of the Moon\u2019s surface to\nestablish if it is possible to extract oxygen from Moon rocks or dust, to\nreveal if this important gas can be produced on the lunar surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The OU is also a collaborator on another upcoming lunar project,\nthe LUVMI-X: developing mobile instruments for lunar exploration, led by the\nOU\u2019s Dr Simon Sheridan, Research Fellow in the STEM faculty. While Dr Sungwoo Lim, OU Research Fellow in Space Sciences has created\na bespoke industrial microwave to melt simulants of soil from the Moon to see\nif the microwave heating method is possible to fabricate building components on\nthe Moon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pioneering\nlunar research & collaborations<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

These projects, concerned with scientific exploration of the Moon,\nare closely linked to the institution\u2019s legacy of lunar and space research. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An OU research team led by Dr Mahesh Anand has pioneered the\nsearch for water on the Moon over the last 10 years by analysing the Moon rocks\nreturned to Earth by Apollo (NASA) missions in the 1960s and 1970s. The new\ntechniques developed in the laboratories at the OU have found much higher\nconcentrations of water in some rocks than were evident in the original\ninvestigations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The OU, thanks to its expertise and instrumentation, is at the\nforefront of the search for water on the Moon as well as playing a lead role in\nsteering the strategic way forward for its exploration both now and in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The OU collaborates with UK, European, US, and Russian lunar\nprojects and there are ongoing discussions with Chinese space players,\nregarding missions and projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Dr Barber, that collaboration is key. He said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo properly understand the Moon, we need to visit new places, with new scientific tools. We need to collaborate with partners to obtain the best coverage of the surface, and compare what we find in order to build up a global picture. <\/em><\/p>

\u201cThe science we achieve, in particular on the availability of accessible water and oxygen, could help the international community to formulate new ways to explore the Moon and space in a more sustainable manner by using these off-planet resources.<\/em>\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Legacy of\nMoon research<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Mahesh
Dr Mahesh Anand<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The OU\u2019s Dr Mahesh Anand, a renowned lunar scientist and Reader in\nPlanetary Science and Exploration, pioneered the discovery of water in Moon\nrocks. This discovery, combined with the data that has revealed water ice in\ncraters on the Moon, has been a game-changer in Moon exploration and the race\nto consider building habitats and creating a base on the Moon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Anand, who has published more than 30 scientific papers on Moon rocks and water, said: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think discoveries made in the last five years have made it much more likely that we will see humans going to the Moon for extended periods of time in the not too distant future. There is definitely a global demand for this as many more powers enter the space race.<\/em>\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The continued study of Moon rocks and ways to extract water from lunar soil, coupled with missions to search for water on its surface – all involving OU scientists – combine to make the possibility of a return to create a permanent base on the Moon a real possibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

The Open University gratefully acknowledges funding for our lunar activities from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), European Commission (EC), Royal Society, UK Space Agency (UKSA), the European Space Agency (ESA) and co-funding by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union, grant agreement 727220.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scientists from The Open University (OU) are supporting one of a series of ground-breaking missions by NASA to go back to the Moon. The announcement comes as the world prepares to mark the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landings, when astronauts from Apollo 11 walked on the Moon on July 20th 1969. These new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":13404,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[35,1469,1525,2081,2115],"class_list":["post-13396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space","tag-ou50-moon","tag-moon","tag-news-home","tag-space","tag-stem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}