On April 6, while flying just a few thousand miles above the moon, the Artemis II astronauts reported seeing several bright, ephemeral flashes of light on the moon’s surface, sending mission scientists on Earth buzzing with excitement.
This excitement is reason enough for scientists to plan future lunar exploration missions. These short flashes caused by small meteorites impacting the moon help researchers track when and where the impact occurred. Such data can improve scientists’ understanding of the risks these effects pose to long-term infrastructure and the continued presence of humans on the moon.
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“We need to plan for less frequent, more dangerous events,” David Kling, a scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, told Live Science. In 2016, Kling proposed the idea that future lunar explorers should try to detect such impact flashes on the far side of the moon. “The lunar flash observed by the Artemis II astronauts reminds us to plan for the unexpected,” Kling said.
“I can hear the screams of joy.”
The crew of Artemis II discovered the flash during its historic flight around the far side of the moon. At that time, the moon temporarily blocked the sun, causing a total solar eclipse. The eclipse lasted almost an hour, leaving the far side in total darkness. Against this stark backdrop, the crew observed flashes on the lunar surface that were at least 4 milliseconds long, and possibly as many as six, Commander Reed Wiseman radioed to controllers in Houston.
“I felt a little dizzy,” Wiseman said via the mission’s livestream, relaying previous observations while also reporting that crew member Jeremy Hansen had spotted a new flash. “It was definitely a shock flash to the moon.”
“Unbelievable news, Reid,” Science Officer Kelsey Young responded from the control room, pressing her hand to her forehead in awe. Young told reporters at a press conference on April 7 that he “heard cries of joy” from scientists when the observations came in.
Scientists on Earth have already begun matching the crew’s observations with data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter orbiting the Moon, with the aim of improving existing models of how often such collisions occur. To do so, researchers plan to combine astronaut reports and orbital data to extract key measurable details about the flash, such as its brightness, the mass of the meteorite, and whether the phenomenon created new craters on the moon.
Meteorite and lunar earthquake
A less visible result of these collisions is shock waves that ripple through the moon. Recording these “lunar quakes” with seismographs reveals how energetic and potentially damaging each quake was.
Like the Artemis II crew, the Apollo astronauts reported seeing a small number of impact flashes, most of which were too far away from the seismometers operating at the time to detect them, a recent analysis found. Still, Apollo-era instruments recorded about 1,700 impact-related lunar earthquakes. Kling said some were powerful enough to “tumble rocks down slopes,” but the largest could “cause the collapse of craters and canyon walls,” potentially posing a danger to future lunar habitats.
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However, there are currently no seismometers operating on the lunar surface to support the Artemis era.
“We hope the first Artemis landing mission will change this,” University of Maryland geophysicist Nick Schumer, co-author of an analysis cross-referencing Apollo-era flashes and moonquakes, told Live Science.
The seismometer is one of the instruments NASA plans to deploy on early robotic missions ahead of human landings planned for 2028 and beyond. By combining astronaut observations with data from seismometers, telescopes, and orbiting satellites, scientists are now able to pinpoint impact events and track their effects.
“We definitely want to know the effects on the lunar base, especially if it hits near critical infrastructure,” said Schumer, who is also deputy principal investigator for the proposed seismometer, known as the Artemis Lunar Environmental Monitoring Station (LEMS). “The more observations of a particular flash by different observers, the better the results.”
Kling said such observations could help scientists accurately estimate the amount of asteroid and comet debris that hits the moon. Larger impacts could unearth material from deep beneath the Earth’s surface, revealing otherwise inaccessible geology on the moon. If such an event were to occur near the polar regions, Kling added, it could expose ice that NASA and other space agencies suspect exists and could one day be used as life support systems or rocket fuel.
Looking further into the future, Kling said that by analyzing lunar samples brought to Earth from the Artemis landing site, researchers could determine the types of meteorites that hit the moon and track how their composition has changed over the solar system’s roughly 4 billion-year history. But ultimately, he added, these effects are “important because they create and modify the lunar soil that future Artemis astronauts will walk on.”
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