NASA Chooses First Three Instruments To Land On The Moon With Artemis Astronauts

Three instruments will accompany the exploration of astronauts (photos/doks. NASA)

JAKARTA NASA announced that it had selected three scientific instruments that Artemis astronauts would use while on the Moon. The three instruments will be placed on the Moon's South Pole. The three instruments to be used by astronauts are the Moon Environment Monitoring Station (LEMS), Lunar Effects on Agricultural Flora (LEAF), and Lunar Dielectric Analysis (LDA). These three instruments play an important role in scientific investigations. Joel Kearns, Deputy Administration of the Association of NASA Science Mission Directorates, said that these three instruments are the first charges for exploration months after the Apollo program. All three are part of our high priority science recommendations since Apollo to take advantage of the unique ability of human explorers to carry out transformative lunar science, Joel said, quoted from NASA's official blogs. LEAF, and LDA were selected to answer three science goals of the Artemis mission, namely understanding of planetary processes, character and origin of lunar polar volatiles, and investigation for risk mitigation during lunar exploration.

LEMS is designed to continuously monitor seismic environments. This series of autonomous seismotors will, "characterize the regional structure of the crust and lunar mantles, which will add valuable information to models of lunar formation and evolution." Different from LEMS, LEAF is designed to investigate the impact of the lunar environment on plants. LEAF is the first experiment deployed to observe photosynthetic processes as well as growth of plants in space with partial gravity. Finally, LDA is designed to measure the regolite's ability to propagate electric fields. This is a tool that becomes a key parameter in the search for volatiles or changes of gas into vapor on the moon. This process is expected to occur in ice.