Illustration of an Artemis astronaut on the Moon. Credit: NASA
Upgrade work continues outside the space station …
An updated strategy for landing Artemis astronauts on the Moon …
And unsealing pieces of the past … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at 
Upgrade Work Continues Outside the Space Station
On March 23, the crew onboard the International Space Station conducted the second spacewalk this month to continue upgrades to the orbiting laboratory. During the outing, NASA astronaut Raja Chari and European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer worked to install new thermal system and electronics components on the station’s U.S. segment. They also worked to install a power and data cable on the Columbus module’s Bartolomeo science platform, replace an external camera on the station’s truss, and conduct other upgrades to station hardware.
Updated Strategy for Landing Artemis Astronauts on the Moon
Also on March 23, we announced plans to create additional opportunities for commercial companies to develop an astronaut Moon lander that can transport humans between our lunar orbiting space station known as Gateway and the lunar surface, for missions beyond Artemis III, which will be the first mission to land astronauts on the Moon in more than 50 years. The announcement is part of a strategy by the agency to pursue two parallel paths for continuing lunar lander development and demonstration, one that calls for additional work under an existing contract with commercial partner,
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Mars Astronauts Could Use Lettuce to Battle One of Space’s Great Threats
A special kind of lettuce could help anyone headed to Mars stay healthy.
Sciepro/Science Photo Library
The year 2030 might be when humans finally take their first steps on Mars — per NASA’s timeline, that is. Elon Musk’s recent estimate falls one year earlier, in 2029.
Regardless of when it happens, we know one thing for sure: Mars-bound astronauts will have a long journey through space ahead of them, subjected to microgravity for months. Those conditions will put the pioneers at risk of extensive bone loss. But there may be a tasty, crunchy and healthy solution.
On Tuesday, at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society, scientists presented their blueprint for a new transgenic lettuce. It’s similar to the salad ingredient we know and love, but genetically engineered to prevent bone loss — and it can be grown right in outer space. Eating the plant would be like collecting a video game power-up that protects against the threats of microgravity.
“It’s a very simple and cost-effective way to make a therapeutic,” Karen McDonald, a chemist at the University of California, Davis and one of the researchers behind the plant, said in a Tuesday media briefing.
This lettuce produces a bone-stimulating hormone that could help mitigate bone loss in space and on Earth.
Kevin Yates
On Earth, our body maintains a balance between breaking down minerals in our bones and repairing things to make sure we’re always getting the nutrients we need. In microgravity, though, this equation loses its harmony. Bone mineral breakdown still happens, but subsequent repairs can’t keep up, which leads to loss of overall bone density.
To counteract such bone loss in space, astronauts often exercise on their spacecraft. The International Space Station, for instance, has a bicycle, treadmill and special weightlifting device. But in the new study, researchers note that there hasn’t been enough evidence to support that exercise is sufficient to stave off bone density reduction.
That’s why space explorers also carry syringes of medication that have what’s called a human parathyroid hormone, or PTH, in the mix. Basically, PTH helps stimulate bone formation — but this therapy has its own downsides. It requires you to take injections every single day, which isn’t ideal. With the team’s new lettuce concoction, on the other hand, each day “an astronaut would need to eat about eight cups of lettuce in order to get the proper dose,” Kevin Yates, who’s also a chemist at the University of California, Davis, said in the media briefing.
Astronaut Steven Hawley runs on a treadmill on the middeck of the space shuttle Columbia. The exercise is part of an experiment to evaluate the Treadmill Vibration Isolation System as planned hardware for the International Space Station.
NASA
Preparing lettuce for space travel
“We decided to use lettuce because lettuce is a plant that’s been grown on the International Space Station,” McDonald said. “It’s also a plant that’s very productive in terms of producing seeds, so our idea is that if we created a transgenic plant, one seed can generate thousands of seeds.”
And unlike standard astronaut medication, the team’s transgenic lettuce is synthetically engineered to have a gene that correlates with a slight variation of PTH. This variation is a combination of PTH and a protein known as — prepare for a mouthful — the fragment crystallizable domain of a human antibody. In many different ways, Fc helps PTH thrive in the human body.
Mizuna lettuce growing aboard the ISS before being harvested and frozen for return to Earth.
NASA
Once the team had their synthetic gene ready to go, they used a common gene encoding method to transfer it into the genome of regular lettuce, they explained, then grew lettuce plants from the seeds of the first lettuce, harvested seeds from those plants, and the story goes on. Plus, to make sure PTH-Fc successfully entered the plants, they can take out proteins from the growing lettuce and analyze them.
“I don’t think we’ll be able to do deep space exploration with a crew of humans without this sort of technology,” Yates said. “It’s not just the lettuce on its own, it’s part of a broader way of thinking where we try to use every resource that we have available to us, whether it’s on spacecraft or the moon or Mars.”
And aside from space exploration, the researchers emphasize that their invention can be given to anyone predisposed to bone loss. “We need ways to produce therapeutics in a simple fashion, and also in a lower-cost manner, and I think the use of plants to make therapeutics, such as PTH-Fc, would be very valuable here on Earth,” Yates said.
Before we get to that point, though, the team emphasizes that they must first conduct lots of other tests, such as animal studies, clinical trials, drug optimization and even seeing how the plant fares in a space-like environment. In fact, it hasn’t yet been tasted by humans because of those clinical science hurdles.
Still, Yates says, “I hope that it is every bit as delicious as regular lettuce and that it will be a good break from powdered and dehydrated food that long-duration space travelers might otherwise be eating, most of the time.”
Astronauts Complete 6 Hour and 54 Minute Spacewalk To Install Space Station Upgrades
Astronauts Raja Chari and Matthias Maurer are pictured replacing an external high-definition camera during a 6-hour 54-minute spacewalk today. Credit: NASA TV
Expedition 66 Flight Engineers Raja Chari of 
In the video above, recorded a few days ago, ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer shares a statement on his first spacewalk.
The spacewalk known as US EVA 80 saw the pair stepping outside the International Space and spending approximately six and a half hours working in space. Matthias was EV-2, wearing an all-white spacesuit, while Raja was lead spacewalker, known as EV-1, in a white spacesuit with red stripes.
Their tasks included installing hoses on a radiator beam valve module that routes ammonia through the Station’s heat-rejecting radiators to regulate system temperatures, installing a power and data cable on the Bartolomeo science platform outside ESA’s Columbus module, replacing an external camera on the Station’s truss, and conducting other upgrades to Station hardware.
Spacewalking astronauts restore radiator, replace space station camera after wardrobe malfunction
Two astronauts on a spacewalk completed several maintenance tasks outside of the International Space Station, despite getting off to a slow start due a wardrobe malfunction.
NASA astronaut Raja Chari and Matthias Maurer with the European Space Agency (ESA) spent 6 hours and 54 minutes on Wednesday (March 23) performing a number of tasks to restore and extend equipment mounted to the exterior of the space station. The extravehicular activity (EVA, or spacewalk) began at 8:32 a.m. EDT (1232 GMT) as the two Expedition 66 crewmates switched their spacesuits to internal battery power.
Chari and Maurer were originally scheduled to head off to different worksites after exiting the U.S. Quest airlock, but a difficulty in keeping Maurer’s helmet-mounted video camera secure in place delayed the start of their planned activities by about an hour. Ultimately, Chari used a spare wire tie to hold down Maurer’s helmet cam and associated light unit to make sure that Mission Control had a clear view of Maurer’s progress during the spacewalk.
In photos: The most memorable spacewalks of all time
Once that issue was solved, Maurer headed off to route a power and data cable for a camera to be replaced later in the spacewalk, while Chari prepared to ride at the end of the Canadarm2 robotic arm, as controlled by fellow astronauts Kayla Barron and Tom Marshburn from inside the space station.
“We’re excited that Raja is having a chance to fly the smooth and friendly skies of Kayla and Tom,” radioed astronaut Stephanie Wilson, who served as the spacewalk coordinator from Mission Control in Houston.
“Absolutely. Way better than business class,” replied Chari.
The space station has six radiators, three on each side of its backbone truss, which are used to draw heat and keep the modules at a livable temperature. A pair of flex hoses connecting one of the port-side radiators to a valve module was leaking ammonia coolant, which led to a 2017 spacewalk to vent the hoses and remove them from use.
The leaky hoses were returned to Earth the following year, repaired and relaunched in 2019. On Wednesday, Chari reinstalled the flex hoses, restoring use of its associated radiator and completing the primary task planned for this spacewalk.
Maurer, meanwhile, finished running the power and data cable for the new camera before moving over to install a jumper on a Columbus module and release some clamps on the Bartolomeo science platform, the latter an exterior mount for science experiments that was launched and attached to the European lab in 2020.
Mission Control next directed that both spacewalkers meet at the Port 3 (P3) truss segment to work on removing and replacing the older video camera with a high definition unit and wireless communications port. Achieving the swap, Chari connected the cable earlier routed by Maurer to the back of the new camera, bringing it online.
A “ping” test showed the installation was successful.
With the old camera and other tools in tow, Chair and Maurer made their way back to airlock. The spacewalk ended at 3:26 p.m. EDT (1926 GMT) when re-pressurization of Quest began.
The EVA was the third of the year and the 248th in support of the assembly, maintenance and upgrade of the International Space Station since 1998. It was Maurer’s first spacewalk and Chari’s second, exactly doubling his career total time working in the vacuum of space. Chari has now logged to 13 hours and 48 minutes.
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Russian Astronauts Board ISS in Colors Similar to Ukraine Flag
Three Russian astronauts launched to the International Space Station early Friday. A few hours later, their Soyuz spacecraft docked at the space station and, when they boarded the orbiting outpost, they were wearing flight suits of striking colors — yellow and blue, similar to the colors of Ukraine’s flag.
The Russian astronauts did not say anything that would suggest that their clothing was a political statement. Yet it seemed difficult to believe it was happenstance. The outfits worn by astronauts in orbit on a daily basis tend to be subdued. But recent crews from Russia have worn vibrant flight suits of various colors during their arrival, including Yulia Peresild, an actress who arrived on the station in November in a bold red coverall.
Eric Berger, a space reporter at the website Ars Technica, said the flight suits are usually prepared and packed months in advance but that substitutes could have been added among the last items to be loaded on the spacecraft.
Jonathan McDowell, a scientist at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics who closely follows space missions, suggested the colors might actually be those of Bauman Moscow State Technical University, which all three of the astronauts — Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov — attended. An official from the university spoke as a guest on the Russian livestream of the launch on Friday.
Mr. Berger, however, noted that the colors of the flight suit more closely matched those of the Ukrainian flag.
Russia’s space program and some of its partners and customers have been collateral damage of the war in Ukraine and the sanctions that have followed. The European Space Agency suspended on Thursday a mission to Mars that was to launch on a Russian rocket. Earlier this month, OneWeb, a British satellite company partially owned by the British government, canceled launches of its internet satellites that were to travel on Russia’s Soyuz rockets.
Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, has responded with a series of provocative messages on Twitter, including retweeting a parody video that suggested Russia would leave behind Mark Vande Hei, a NASA astronaut who is scheduled to return to Earth in a Russian Soyuz later this month. Mr. Rogozin feuded publicly with Scott Kelly, a retired astronaut who held the record for consecutive days in space by an American until Mr. Vande Hei passed it recently.
In public statements, NASA officials have ignored Mr. Rogozin’s statements and insisted that operations are continuing as usual with their Russian counterparts. They said that there had been no change in plans for Mr. Vande Hei’s return.
A pair of crews will fly SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft to the station in the coming month — one a private crew of tourists with the company Axiom, the other a mix of NASA and ESA astronauts.
NASA astronauts on spacewalk prep space station for new solar array
The International Space Station is now ready for the addition of an upgraded solar array after two NASA astronauts completed a nearly seven-hour spacewalk on Tuesday (March 15).
Expedition 66 crewmates Kayla Barron and Raja Chari secured brackets and erected struts at the base of one of the space station’s eight original power-providing arrays, preparing the area for the future installation of an ISS Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA). Their work on the S4 channel of the 3A solar wing deployed the support structure for the third of six new arrays and the first to be added to the starboard side of the space station’s backbone truss.
Barron and Chari began the spacewalk at 8:12 a.m. EDT (1212 GMT) as they switched their extravehicular mobility unit (EMU) spacesuits to internal battery power. The two exited the U.S. Quest airlock carrying the parts and tools they would need for the iROSA kit, prior to making their way to their worksite at the far right side of the orbiting complex.
Spacewalks: How they work and major milestones
The space station’s legacy solar arrays were designed with an on-orbit life of 15 years. Though all are still functioning, they have begun to show signs of degraded power production. The new iROSAs are installed such that they partially overlap the original arrays.
When all six of the more capable iROSAs are installed, they will augment the station’s existing power generation, increasing the complex’s total available power from 160 kilowatts to up to 215 kilowatts. The additional power is needed to continue operations through 2030, while also supporting increased commercial activities aboard the station.
In addition to ensuring that the station has the power it needs, the addition of the iROSAs is also serving as a test for NASA’s Artemis Gateway to be deployed in orbit around the moon. The Gateway’s planned arrays will be longer and be deployed remotely, but otherwise will use the same technology developed by Redwire.
Completing the prep work for the iROSA installation more than an hour ahead of their planned time line, Barron and Chari were directed by Mission Control to tie back multi-layer insulation on spare battery charge/discharge units to support their robotic replacements or relocations.
For similar reasons and with time to tackle more “get-ahead” tasks, the two astronauts also broke torque and reset bolts on multiple orbital replacement units (ORUs) stored on an exterior platform on the S4 truss segment. The spacewalkers used a power drill called a pistol-grip tool to loosen the bolts holding the ORUs in place on the pallet.
Barron and Chari wrapped up the spacewalk by inspecting the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), a cosmic-ray detector that underwent repairs during a series of challenging spacewalks in 2019. The duo assessed the access to a patch panel for possible further work on the science instrument in the future.
Tuesday’s spacewalk came to an end at 3:06 p.m. EDT (1906 GMT), 6 hours and 54 minutes after it began, with Barron and Chari back inside the Quest airlock.
The outing was the second of the year and the 247th extravehicular activity (EVA) in support of the assembly, maintenance and upgrade of the International Space Station since 1998. It was Chari’s first spacewalk and Barron’s second, bringing her career total time on EVA to 13 hours and 26 minutes.
Another spacewalk is scheduled for March 23 to route coolant hoses and power and data cables, as well as replace an external camera. NASA was waiting to assign the astronauts for that EVA until mangers could assess the outcome of Tuesday’s outing.
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NASA astronauts conduct spacewalk to provide space station power upgrades
The space station is preparing for more power upgrades as two NASA astronauts conduct the first spacewalk of the year on Tuesday.
The spacewalking duo will assemble and install modification kits that will allow for future solar array upgrades outside of the space station. Barron and Chari will install struts and brackets that will be used to support the arrival of more ISS Roll-Out Solar Arrays, or iROSAs.
During the spacewalk, Barron will be extravehicular crewmember 1 wearing the suit with red stripes and Chari will be identifiable as extravehicular crewmember 2 in the suit with no stripes. It’s Barron’s second spacewalk after completing her first in December and a career-first for Chari.
Two of the iROSAs were put into place during previous spacewalks and once all of the arrays installed, they are expected to increase six of the eight power channels on the space station, kicking up the available supply from 160 kilowatts to 215 kilowatts.
Six of the solar arrays arrived at the space station on June 5 after launching on the 22nd SpaceX Dragon cargo resupply mission. The arrays are rolled up like carpet and are 750 pounds (340 kilograms) and 10 feet (3 meters) wide. Four more arrays will be delivered during a future mission.
While the current solar arrays on the space station are still functioning, they have been supplying power to the space station for more than 20 years and are showing some signs of wear after long-term exposure to the space environment. The arrays were originally designed to last 15 years.
The agency is preparing for a second spacewalk to take place on March 23, beginning around 8:50 a.m. ET.
Although the two crewmembers have yet to be announced, they will be responsible for conducting a number of installation upgrades, including the replacement of an external camera and placing hoses on a Radiator Beam Valve Module that routes ammonia through the station’s heat-rejecting radiators to maintain the proper temperature.
International cooperation in space
The space station is about to be a hub of activity, with a new Russian crew set to launch to the ISS on Friday, joining the four Americans, one European and two Russians already aboard.
On March 30, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei is set to return to Earth alongside Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov.
NASA said Monday that Vande Hei will return from the ISS board a Russian Soyuz spacecraft as previously planned. The space agency sought to reaffirm Monday that it’s still working closely with Russian space agency Rocosmos on the International Space Station, despite mounting geopolitical tensions.
Vande Hei, who launched to the ISS in April 2021,will land aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft in Kazakhstan, as is customary. NASA officials did not say there would be any significant changes to plans to get Vande Hei back to the United States after he lands. He’ll travel home via a Gulfstream jet, as other US astronauts have before him.
For nearly a decade, Russia’s Soyuz vehicles had been the only means of getting astronauts to and from the space station. But that reliance ended after SpaceX debuted its Crew Dragon capsule in 2020, and the US regained human spaceflight capabilities.
Joint operations between NASA and Roscosmos at the Russian facilities at Baikonur, Kazakhstan, “continue to go well,” according to Joel Montalbano, the manager of NASA’s International Space Station program. “I can tell you for sure Mark [Vande Hei] is coming home” on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, Montalbano said Monday.
Inside space plan to create ‘oxygen farm’ on the MOON for Nasa astronauts
THE ESA is planning to build an oxygen plant on the Moon to help astronauts breathe in outer space.
On Wednesday, a winner was selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) to be the first to construct a payload tasked with extracting oxygen from the Moon’s surface, according to a new report.
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Led by Thales Alenia Space in the UK, the winning team will need to produce a small instrument that can assess the likelihood of building larger plants on the Moon.
The purpose of these lunar plants is to “extract propellant for spacecraft and breathable air for astronauts – as well as metallic raw materials for equipment,” according to the report.
An imperative requirement of the payload is the ability to extract 50 to 100 grams of oxygen from lunar regolith, which is fine gray soil on the moon’s surface that features a density of about 1.5 g/cm3.
The instrument, which will be running on solar power, also needs to be able to deliver precise measurements of performance and gas concentrations.
“The payload needs to be compact, low power, and able to fly on a range of potential lunar landers, including ESA’s own European Large Logistics Lander, EL3,” David Binns, Systems Engineer from ESA’s Concurrent Design Facility, said.
On top of meeting the aforementioned criteria, the team’s payload craft has to be able to complete these tasks within one lunar day, which is equivalent to a 12-day period on Earth.
Previous studies conducted by the ESA have already shown that lunar regolith’s most abundant element is oxygen, making up about 40–45% of its weight.
Still, it’s not as easy as it seems to extract this oxygen due to it being chemically bound as oxides in the form of minerals or glass.
However, a prototype oxygen plant set up in ESTEC’s Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory has perfected the procedure.
The process consists of utilizing electrolysis to break simulated lunar regolith into metals and oxygen – the staple resources for long-term and sustainable space missions.
“Being able to extract oxygen from moonrock, along with useable metals, will be a game-changer for lunar exploration,” Binns said.
He noted that the feat will allow international cosmonauts to live off the land without requiring expensive terrestrial supply lines.
Lastly, Binns proclaimed that the team is looking forward to working with the winning consortium “to make their design a practical reality.”
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NASA spots football stadium-sized asteroid fast-approaching Earth
NASA is currently tracking an asteroid that is approximately the size of a football stadium as it makes a close approach with Earth.
The asteroid is dubbed “Asteroid 2015 DR215,” and according to NASA’s Asteroid Watch database, the asteroid will make a safe fly-by Earth at a distance of 4,160,000 miles. It should be noted that while 2015 DR215 is classified as a “Potentially Hazardous Object,” it doesn’t mean that it could collide with Earth. NASA classifies any space rock that comes within 4.6 million miles of Earth, or 19.5 times the distance to the moon, as a potentially hazardous object.
Other criteria for an object to be classified as potentially hazardous includes being larger than 500 feet in diameter. As for 2015 DR215, while the asteroid may be stadium-sized, it will pose no risk to Earth as it passes by on March 11 at an incredible speed of 19,000 miles per hour. Notably, this isn’t the first time 2015 DR215 has made a close approach with Earth, as its last fly-by was in March 2021. For more information on this story, check out this link here.
NASA Just Opened a Sealed Lunar Sample Collected by Apollo Astronauts 50 Years Ago
Credit: NASA
People say good things come to those who wait. 
Front from left, Drs. Ryan Zeigler, Rita Parai, Francesca McDonald, Chip Shearer and back left from left, Drs. Zach Sharp from the University of New Mexico and Francis McCubbin, Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division (ARES) astromaterials curator look on in excitement as gas is extracted into the manifold after the inner tube was pierced. Credit: NASA/James Blair
“Understanding the geologic history and evolution of the Moon samples at the Apollo landing sites will help us prepare for the types of samples that may be encountered during Artemis,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “Artemis aims to bring back cold and sealed samples from near the lunar South Pole. This is an exciting learning opportunity to understand the tools needed for collecting and transporting these samples, for analyzing them, and for storing them on Earth for future generations of scientists.”
When Apollo astronauts returned these samples around 50 years ago, NASA had the foresight to keep some of them unopened and pristine.
“The agency knew science and technology would evolve and allow scientists to study the material in new ways to address new questions in the future,” said Lori Glaze, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters. “The ANGSA initiative was designed to examine these specially stored and sealed samples.”
From left, Dr. Juliane Gross, Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division (ARES) deputy Apollo curator, alongside Drs. Alex Meshik, and Olga Pravdivtseva, from Washington University in St. Louis, begin a gas extraction process using the manifold. Credit: NASA
The ANGSA 73001 sample is part of an Apollo 17 drive tube sample collected by astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison “Jack” Schmitt in December of 1972. The astronauts hammered a pair of connected 1.5-by-14-inch tubes into the lunar surface to collect segments of rocks and soil from a landslide deposit in the Moon’s Taurus–Littrow Valley. The astronauts then individually sealed one drive tube under vacuum on the Moon before bringing them back to Earth; only two drive tubes were vacuum sealed on the Moon in this way, and this is the first to be opened. The other half of this drive tube, 73002, was returned in a normal (unsealed) container. The sealed tube has been carefully stored in a protective outer vacuum tube and in an atmosphere-controlled environment at Johnson ever since. The unsealed segment was opened in 2019 and revealed an interesting array of grains and smaller objects, known as rocklets, that lunar geologists were eager to study.
Now, scientists are focusing attention on the sealed, lower segment of the core. The temperature at the bottom of the core was incredibly cold when it was collected, which means that volatiles (substances that evaporate at normal temperatures, like water ice and carbon dioxide) might have been present. They are particularly interested in the volatiles in these samples from the equatorial regions of the Moon, because they will allow future scientists studying the Artemis samples to better understand where and what volatiles might be present in those samples.
From left, Dr. Juliane Gross, Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division (ARES) deputy Apollo curator, and Dr. Francesca McDonald, from ESA, take precise measurements from the piercing device prior to using the newly developed tool. Credit: NASA/James Blair
The amount of gas expected to be present in this sealed Apollo sample is likely very low. If scientists can carefully extract these gases, they can be analyzed and identified using modern mass spectrometry technology. This technology, which has evolved to levels of extreme sensitivity in recent years, can precisely determine the mass of unknown molecules and use that data to precisely identify them. This not only makes for improved measurements, but also means the collected gas can be divided into smaller portions and shared with more researchers conducting different kinds of lunar science.
NASA’s Ryan Zeigler, the Apollo sample curator, is overseeing the process of extracting the gas and rock. It’s also Zeigler’s job to properly prepare, catalog, and share the sample with others for research.
“A lot of people are getting excited,” said Zeigler. “University of New Mexico’s Chip Shearer proposed the project over a decade ago, and for the past three years, we’ve had two great teams developing the unique equipment to make it possible.”
The device being used to extract and collect the gas, called a manifold, was developed by Drs. Alex Meshik, Olga Pravdivtseva, and Rita Parai from Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Francesca McDonald from the European Space Agency led a group in building the special tool to carefully pierce the container holding the lunar sample without letting any gas escape. Together, they’ve created and rigorously tested a one-of-a-kind system to collect the extremely precious material – gas and solid – that is sealed inside the containers.
On, February 11, the team began the careful, months-long process to remove the sample by first opening the outer protective tube and capturing any gas inside. Zeigler and his team knew what gases should be present inside the outer container and found everything was as expected. The tube seemed to contain no lunar gas, indicating the seal on the inner sample tube was still likely intact. On February 23, the team began the next step: a multi-week process of piercing the inner container and slowly gathering any lunar gases that are hopefully still inside.
After the gas extraction process is finished, the ARES team will prepare to carefully remove the soil and rocks from their container, likely later this spring.