When NASA’s Artemis 1 launches next week on a trip to the Moon, no animals or people will be on board, but it will still take biological investigations to see how living things react to the deep-space environment. The Orion spacecraft will transport items such as yeast, algae, fungi and seeds, rather than a traditional crew.
Findings from these experiments are essential in helping to pave a way for humans to safely return to the Moon and an eventual manned landing on Mars via future Artemis missions.
The Artemis team expects the inaugural mission to launch between 9:33 am and 11:33 am ET on Monday, August 29. After liftoff, the Orion spacecraft will set off on a 42-day journey, traveling farther beyond the moon than any spacecraft ever intended to transport humans has ventured, including the Apollo missions.
Experiments traveling with Orion, both inside and outside the spacecraft, will be exposed to radiation from the deep space environment that exists beyond low Earth orbit, where the International Space Station is located.
This includes three mannequins walking around inside Orion. Two of the mannequins are wearing protective gear, including an enhanced flight suit and vest. The many sensors attached to the dummies will capture data on how much vibration and radiation they experience during travel, among other exposure factors, which can help inform solutions to protect astronauts on upcoming missions.
These are just a few of the experiments that will soon take off on a lunar journey — and their discoveries could change the future of space exploration.
Shoebox-sized missions in space
Some of the more intriguing payloads accompanying the Artemis 1 mission are 10 CubeSats. These tiny satellites are each the size of a shoebox and perform and test science and technology demonstrations. Each weighs about 11 pounds.
Despite their tiny size, some of the CubeSats will make a big impact by shedding new light on the lunar environment that will help improve the design of exploration systems, according to Jacob Bleacher, NASA’s chief exploration scientist on Goddard Space Flight. Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Once Orion is in space, the upper stage of the rocket will separate from the spacecraft. When that milestone happens, the CubeSats will set off on their own, each deployed to unique destinations on individual missions that can last anywhere from a few days to a few years.
Four of the space satellites will focus on the Moon, three will analyze radiation and two will serve as technology demonstrations.
And then there’s the 10th mini-satellite, known as the Near-Earth Asteroid Scout. Developed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, this CubeSat will cruise for approximately two years to capture images and study a small asteroid. When the NEA Scout finally hits its target, it will be 150 million kilometers from Earth — and the first CubeSat to hit an asteroid.
A solar sail measuring 86 square meters in area will power the CubeSat. The thin reflective sail, which resembles aluminum foil, will test the sail as a primary propulsion system in deep space.
The four lunar CubeSats are called Lunar IceCube, LunaH-Map, LunIR and OMOTENASHI.
Lunar IceCube will look for water and other elements in orbit around the moon. LunaH-Map will create high-fidelity maps of the permanently shadowed regions of the lunar south pole, where future Artemis missions aim to land and detect hydrogen near the surface. And LunIR will capture images of the lunar surface using infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye.
The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency developed OMOTENASHI, or Outstanding MOon exploration TEchnologies, demonstrated by the NAno Semi-Hard Impactor experiment. It is considered the smallest lunar module in the world.
The small spacecraft will test the technology and maneuvers needed to make a semi-hard, survivable moon landing. As OMOTENASHI descends towards Çua, it will freefall. Its airbags and shock-absorbing mechanism serve as shock absorbers to help the satellite survive the fall.
“I often say that science is our toolbox for survival during exploration,” Bleacher said, noting that these experiments will help keep future crew safe and optimize hardware durability.
How life reacts to space
A series of sensors inside the Orion spacecraft will detect how much radiation exposure future human crews may face. Capturing this data will allow NASA and its partners to work on the best ways to protect Artemis astronauts.
Within Orion will be NASA’s Biology Experiment-1, which will investigate the impact of radiation on fungal DNA repair, yeast adaptation, seed nutritional value and algal gene expression.
“Each of these four experiments will help us understand a unique aspect of how biological systems can adapt and thrive in deep space,” Sharmila Bhattacharya, NASA’s program scientist for space biology, said in a statement.
“Gathering information like this and analyzing it post-flight will help us paint the full picture of how we can help humans thrive in deep space.”
Traveling out of Orion will be the CubeSat BioSentinel, developed by NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, where Bhattacharya is based. The satellite will carry single-celled yeast to measure what happens when living organisms are exposed to radiation for long periods of time.
BioSentinel will be the first long-term biology experiment in deep space, according to NASA scientists. After passing the Moon, the satellite will orbit the Sun for six to nine months.
Yeast cells, which have biological mechanisms similar to those seen in human cells, are likely to suffer radiation damage. The CubeSat’s biosensor technology will monitor the growth and metabolic activity of yeast cells throughout the journey.
The impacts suffered by yeast microorganisms could help scientists better understand what humans might experience when traveling beyond low Earth orbit.
“BioSentinel is the first of its kind,” said Matthew Napoli, BioSentinel project manager at NASA’s Ames Research Center, in a statement. “It will take living organisms further than ever before.”
Source: CNN Brasil
