NASA recently selected a proposal involving researchers at the University of New Mexico as a candidate for the next mission in the agency’s New Frontiers Program. The mission, “Moonrise: Lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin Sample Return Mission,” is led by Michael Duke from the Colorado School of Mines. UNM Professors James Papike and Barbara Cohen from the Institute of Meteoritics (IoM) are co-investigators on the proposal.
The proposal includes landing two robots on the moon’s surface near the south pole and return with more than two kilograms (about five pounds) of lunar materials from a region of the moon’s surface believed to harbor materials from the moon’s mantle. It was selected along with a proposal to study Jupiter’s deep atmosphere.
In the three decades since the U.S.’s Apollo and the USSR’s Luna missions returned lunar rocks to earth, scientists have found them an invaluable scientific resource. Lunar rocks are key to understanding the early history of planet formation and bombardment, because the surface of the moon is not recycled or weathered like the earth’s crust.
Papike has been studying lunar rocks since 1969 and was in mission control during the Apollo 14, 15, 16 and 17 missions. Cohen is interested in unraveling the bombardment history of the earth-moon system, and has done so by studying ages of lunar meteorites, random samples of the lunar surface.
The moon is also home to one of the two largest and oldest impact craters within the inner planets of the solar system. The crater, named South Pole-Aitken basin, is more than 2000 kilometers wide and blew out rocks from very deep in the lunar interior. Cohen would work on samples from this location to tell the story of how very large impacts, early in planetary history, affected the moon and its nearest neighbor, earth. This large crater is also a window into the moon’s mantle, providing pieces of the moon’s interior from kilometers deeper than any drill could penetrate.
Papike, along with IoM collaborators Chip Shearer and Lars Borg, would use these samples to understand how and when the moon formed, melted and cooled.
“These two outstanding proposals were judged to be the best science value among the seven submitted to NASA in 2004,” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for space science at NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
The Moonrise proposal will now receive $1.2 million to conduct a seven-month feasibility study. NASA intends to select one of the mission proposals for full development as the second New Frontiers mission by May 2005 with a mission cost cap of $700 million.
If selected, the Moonrise mission would launch in 2009 and return samples in 2010. The IoM would be among the first institutions to receive samples for study. Papike and Cohen, along with Shearer and Borg, would have the first crack at learning about the moon’s mantle and largest crater.
Contacts: James Papike, (505) 277-1646; Barbara Cohen, (505) 277-3345; or Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821
Posted by scarr at July 23, 2004 02:29 PM