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- On Monday, NASA will share “an exciting new discovery” about the moon.
- The space agency has not released any details about the discovery, but said it could support “deep space exploration.”
- NASA TV will broadcast live audio of the announcement. You can listen through the insert below.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
NASA made a cryptic announcement this week: It has “an exciting new discovery” about the moon, but is yet to reveal it.
Instead, he will share the details at a press conference on Monday and stream the audio live online. (You can tune in via the insert below).
“This new discovery contributes to NASA’s efforts to learn about the moon in support of deep space exploration,” says the agency statement. “Understanding the science of the moon also helps reconstruct the larger history of the inner solar system.”
NASA’s Artemis program aims to send astronauts back to the moon’s surface by 2024, and then establish a lunar base from which it can scratch the first humans to Mars. It’s not yet clear how the mysterious new discovery could affect those plans.
An illustration that NASA made available in April 2020 shows the Artemis astronauts on the moon.
NASA via AP
However, we do know that the discovery was made by NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, a modified Boeing 747 jet that uses a 9-foot telescope to capture infrared images of planets and other objects in our solar system. The plane flies at about 41,000 feet above Earth.
Four NASA officials and scientists will discuss the findings at 12 p.m. ET Monday:
- Paul Hertz, Director of NASA’s Astrophysics Division
- Jacob Bleacher, Chief Exploration Scientist with NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate
- Casey Honniball, Postdoctoral Fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland
- Naseem Rangwala, SOFIA mission project scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California
NASA TV will stream the audio of the announcement here:
NASA’s next missions to the moon are scheduled to search for water
Before astronauts land on the lunar surface, NASA plans to learn more about the moon’s natural resources, especially its water reservoirs, which appear to exist primarily as clumped ice near the lunar poles.
Astronauts (or robots) could apparently mine that ice, melt it, store it, and use electricity to split the water into liquid oxygen and hydrogen. Both elements are key to making rocket propellants.
So far, NASA believes that most of that ice exists at the South Pole of the Moon. So in 2022, he plans to send a drill and mass spectrometer there to try and collect some.
Then, in 2023, the agency aims to launch a golf cart-sized lunar robot called the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER. Over the course of its 100-day lifespan, the rover will traverse rocky terrain, drilling through sections of lunar ice and soil to analyze their composition. The rover’s primary goal is to collect data that NASA can use to map the moon’s water resources.
An illustration shows Astrobotic’s Griffin lunar lander deploying a ramp on the surface of the moon.
Astrobotic
If the moon actually contains a lot of water, it could help NASA achieve its goal of establishing a permanent lunar base. From there, astronauts could mine and produce fuel that could be used for trips back home or into space.
Harvesting resources on the moon, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in September, would allow space explorers to begin “living off the land.”
