MOFFETT FIELD, Calif.--If you're in the planning stages of sending people back to the moon, as NASA is, you'd better know as much as possible about it.
That's one of the reasons NASA launched, in late 2007, the Lunar Science Institute (LSI), an organization with an annual budget of $10 million for the study and research of the moon, as well as the role of supporting and inspiring new generations of lunar scientists.
According to Greg Schmidt, LSI's deputy director, it is a "virtual" institute with a staff of just eight or nine people at any given moment. LSI is focused on collecting and sharing Web data and communications, chiefly among the scientists doing research on behalf of the institute, and who work in teams around and outside the country that are competitively selected.
This robot, called K-10, is part of the Lunar Science Institute, and NASA's, efforts to research the conditions that lunar rovers will encounter on the moon. Here, it traverses the Arizona desert.
(Credit: NASA)While lunar science has been around for more than 40 years as a formal discipline, LSI is focusing on a different set of problems than the researchers were in the 1960s. Yet, the institute also benefits from the work done decades ago. "We have a tremendous amount of data that we can pull together to answer the questions our scientists have," Schmidt said.
LSI is built around studying three main areas. The first is looking at the lunar science of the moon itself: the hard rock geology or the moon; lunar minerology and researching the moon as a planetary object, Schmidt explained. The second is studying the science on the moon, science that involves human exploration. And the last is science from the moon, which Schmidt said means thinking of the moon as an observational platform.
To Schmidt, that is one of the most exciting scientific areas imaginable. And part of that involves a proposal from one of LSI's principle investigators, University of Colorado astrophysicist Jack Burns, who is interested in putting a radio telescope on the far side of the moon.
"The far side of the moon is the quietest radio area in the inner solar system, and would make a perfect place for such a telescope, a very long wave telescope," Schmidt said. "We can peer further into the universe's history than with anything else if we had such a telescope. And I'm very confident that there's at least one Nobel Prize in this work. Totally confident."
He acknowledged that it will be years before any such telescope is put in place. After all, it will take a huge amount of research into the most efficient and cost-effective methods of undertaking such a project.
"I just can't wait until we do that," he said. "But, man, what an interesting question for humanity to be able to answer something like that."
Encouraging the next generation
One problem facing the lunar science community, Schmidt argued, is that the scientists who have been prominent in the field are aging. And that means that in order to keep the field fresh and growing, new blood has to be brought in.
With that in mind, another part of LSI's mission is to help find and encourage young people to join the field. LSI hosts an annual lunar science conference, timed to the anniversary of Apollo 11's landing on the moon, and it happens that this summer's edition of the conference will go on just as we reach the 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's pioneering July 1969 trip to the moon.
Last year, he said, one of the best parts of the conference was seeing the innovative ideas that current lunar science graduate students are coming up with and nurturing those students and their ideas.
And while LSI is primarily a NASA organization, it couldn't achieve its goals without partnerships with research teams in many other countries. Among them are teams that are deeply involved with lunar research in India, China, and Japan, as well as England, where there are 14 different different academic and industry members, Schmidt said.
"We're getting the best lunar science from the UK as part of the Lunar Science Institute," he added. "And they have an equal seat at the table as our principal investigators."
At next month's LSI conference, meanwhile, the researchers will finally get a chance to see the first data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, as well as from the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which NASA plans to launch next week.
"Both of those together are just incredibly exciting, so...we're hoping to get the first mission results from LRO," he said. "We won't see a lot yet, but there is a lot of data that is going to be collected, in multiple wavelengths with LRO...What we're expecting to see in July are the first images from the LRO camera. And so, that I think is exciting in itself. These are going to be the highest-resolution images that have been taken since the Apollo era."
Schmidt explained that one of the most exciting elements of this project is that the lunar researchers have a chance, for the first, time, to compare high-res images taken today by the LRO to the images taken more than 40 years ago by the Lunar Orbiter, and which have recently been reconstructed at NASA.
"Our idea is taking those (older images) and comparing those to the LRO pictures that are going to be taken and seeing what we find that has changed," Schmidt said. "And we expect to find quite a lot. The moon, it's not a static body. I like to think about it as our cosmic companion for 4 billion years. And so, it is what we think of as a witness plate for what has happened in the Earth's neighborhood. It records not just the early bombardment that happened in the Earth's system, but also the bombardment that's happening now."
With its $10 million annual budget, LSI is giving grants to teams throughout the United States and in other countries that are doing the next rounds of lunar research. And to Schmidt, that is crucial as the world stands ready for the next stage of lunar exploration. Within years, it is expected that we'll be visiting the moon again, and now is the time, he clearly believes, to encourage the kind of research that will best prepare us for those visits.
"I can still remember when Apollo 11 landed, and I can still feel those emotions," he said. "We want to bring (the moon) within our sphere and what (LSI is) about is bringing it within our scientific sphere...It's just really important for us to do this right now, and to bring in a new generation to do it."
On June 21, Geek Gestalt will kick off Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be looking for the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and South and North Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.
NASA has released a fully restored 42-year-old image of Earth taken from the moon. The image was released as part of a project that will allow scientists at NASA and beyond to compare historical images of the moon with new images that will be captured when NASA sends new missions to the moon in the coming years.
(Credit: NASA/LOIRP)
MOFFETT FIELD, Calif.--Scientists who want to see how the moon has changed in the years since the Apollo missions will soon have the ability to do just that.
That's thanks to a new NASA project in which the agency has restored 42-year-old images taken of and from the moon, all of which will be made freely available to the public.
And while many people will surely have an interest in examining the iconic images, several NASA personnel on hand Thursday at an event celebrating the project explained that it provides the real scientific benefit of making it possible to closely compare even the smallest changes to the lunar surface over the last 40-plus years.
The images in question were taken in the 1960s by cameras onboard five separate Lunar Orbiter spacecraft. They were captured on magnetic tapes and then transferred to film for analysis.
Unfortunately, the full resolution of those images was not available because the technology didn't exist to extract it all.
And in the years since, the data has been stored on large tapes, awaiting the eventual decision of what to do about them.
Now, the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP), which is based at NASA Ames Research Center here, has undertaken the task of translating the original analog data from 1,500 tapes taken from the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft and stored at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory into digital form from which the highest resolution can finally be analyzed.
"This project is an opportunity to revel in what was done in the past," said Pete Worden, director of Ames Research Center, "and get excited about what we're doing in the future."
In particular, Worden said, because once NASA returns to the moon in the coming years, scientists looking closely at the high-resolution versions of the images will be able to see in minute detail how things on the lunar surface have changed.
Once the translation of the images is finished, NASA plans to make all of them available to the public in digital form with the idea that they will be viewable for generations to come.
Worden said that one benefit of being able to compare the historical images with new ones that will be taken starting next spring from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is that it will be possible to see recent meteor impacts too small to see in images taken from afar.
And that's because these images are the highest-resolution taken of the lunar surface to date, said Dennis Wingo, who led the image recovery process.
Greg Schmidt, deputy director of NASA's recently opened Lunar Science Institute, said: "Just imagine for a moment taking these images here, and the hundreds more (that will be generated by LOIRP) and comparing them with what the lunar reconnaissance orbiter will be returning to us in the coming years. We're going to see how the moon is changing, and I'm expecting some very interesting surprises."
The image shown above, the "image of the century," was the first ever taken in which Earth is seen from another celestial body. In it, it is possible to see the north coast of Africa, as well as the glint of the sun on the Atlantic Ocean, said Wingo.
That glint is important, Wingo said, because it indicates to astronomers the possibility of other Earth-style planets.
Wingo also explained how he and his team worked frame by frame to extract the original analog information and turn it into the currently available digital images (See video below).
All told, Wingo said his team has 48,000 pounds of tape to deal with, and that the time frame to complete the project is very short as there is only one person on Earth who has the expertise to work with the playback heads needed to process the original tapes. And at 68 years old, he wants to retire in just 14 months.
"We're almost at the closing of the window," Wingo said. "If we hadn't done this now, it wouldn't have been possible."
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