The Blue Ghost spacecraft will carry an instrument to study the interior of the Moon

Blue Ghost is Firefly’s vehicle to land on the surface of the Moon and deliver payloads to it as part of NASA’s CLPS program. One of them should be the Lunar Magnetotelluric Probe, which will reveal what lies deep beneath the surface of our moon.

Blue Ghost landing site. Source: phys.org

New lunar mission

As part of its Artemis campaign, NASA is continuing a series of increasingly complex lunar deliveries to ultimately ensure a sustained human presence on the Moon for decades to come. As part of the agency’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative, commercial company Firefly Blue Ghost will conduct a 14-day mission to the Moon in the Mare Crisium, delivering NASA science and technology to the Moon to help explore the lunar interior in a previously unexplored location.

Developed by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), NASA’s Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) will explore the Moon’s interior to depths of up to 1,000 km, two-thirds of the way to the center of Earth’s moon. The measurements will shed light on the differentiation and thermal history of our Moon, a cornerstone for understanding the evolution of solid worlds. 

Magnetotelluric study of the Moon’s interior

Magnetotellurics uses natural variations in surface electric and magnetic fields to calculate how easily electricity flows in underground materials, which can reveal their composition and structure. 

“For more than 50 years, scientists have used magnetotellurics on Earth for a wide variety of purposes, including to find oil, water, and geothermal and mineral resources, as well as to understand geologic processes such as the growth of continents,” said Dr. Robert Grimm, principal investigator of the LMS from the Swiss Institute for Magnetic Research. “The LMS instrument will be the first extraterrestrial application of magnetotellurics.”

Mare Crisium is a 350-mile-diameter ancient impact basin that subsequently filled with lava, creating the dark spot visible on the Moon from Earth. The first astronomers who called the dark spots on the Moon “maria,” which is Latin for “Mare,” mistakenly thought they were real seas. 

Mare Crisium stands apart from the large, connected patches of dark lava to the west where most of the Apollo missions landed. These large, connected lava plains are thought to be compositionally and structurally different from the rest of the Moon. From this single observation point, the LMS can provide the first geophysical measurements representative of most of the Moon.

How will the LMS probe operate?

The LMS tool throws cables with electrodes at a 90-degree angle to each other at distances up to 60 feet. The device measures the voltage across opposite pairs of electrodes, similar to the probes of a conventional voltmeter. The magnetometer is deployed using an extendable mast to reduce interference from the descent vehicle. The magnetotelluric method detects the vertical profile of electrical conductivity, which provides insight into the temperature and composition of penetrating materials in the Moon’s interior.

“The five individual subsystems of LMS, together with connecting cables, weigh about 14 pounds and consume about 11 Watts of power,” Grimm said. “While stowed, each electrode is surrounded by a ‘yarn ball’ of cable, so the assembly is roughly spherical and the size of a softball.”

Payload as part of NASA’s CLPS initiative

The LMS payload will be delivered to the lunar surface as part of NASA’s CLPS initiative. The Southwest Research Institute, based in San Antonio, has created central electronics and manages research. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provided the LMS magnetometer to measure magnetic fields, and Heliospace Corp. provided electrodes to measure electric fields. 

Under the CLPS model, NASA is investing in commercial lunar delivery services to enable industry growth and support long-term lunar exploration. As the primary customer for CLPS delivery, NASA intends to be one of many customers for future flights. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is leading the development of seven of the 10 CLPS payloads carried by the Firefly Blue Ghost lunar lander.

According to phys.org

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