NASA is preparing to set foot on the moon again in 2025. This will be the first landing of a man on the moon in more than 50 years. The mission is called Artemis 3 and already promises to be historic. For example, this will be the first time a woman has set foot on a natural satellite. In addition, the list of tasks to be carried out by the US space agency includes checking whether there really can be life on the moon.
A new study suggests that some micro-organisms could survive in the supercold, permanently shadowed craters located at the moon’s south pole. And there is even a hypothesis about the possibility that some type of terrestrial microbial life has already reached the moon.
“In relatively sheltered places, some airless bodies may have potentially habitable niches for such life,” said Prabal Saxena, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “This is one of the most amazing things our team has found,” Saxena said. space.
The scientist explained that they are analyzing which organisms could survive, in particular, in the area located in the direction 84th degree south latitude of the Moon’s pole. At the same time, which parts of this territory can have the best conditions, such as maximum temperature and protection from radiation.
Hypothesis about life reaching the Moon in meteorites
Small pieces of our planet could have been thrown onto the moon as “Earth Meteors”: rocks thrown into space by powerful cosmic impacts.
Heather Graham, an organic geochemist at NASA Goddard and a member of the research team, says it’s likely.
Graham says one interesting hypothesis is that some microbial life could have moved from our planet to the moon in this way. However, there is no data to support its usefulness. “While extraterrestrial transport of organic molecules from meteorite sources is highly plausible and indeed observed in our own analysis of terrestrial meteorites, microbial transport from such sources does not carry the same weight of evidence,” the expert explained.
But some microorganisms may end up traveling with the astronauts on Artemis 3. The research team recognizes that humans are the biggest carrier of microbes to the moon. “Soon we will have a 50-year history of people and their objects on the surface without stringent direct pollution requirements,” he said.
Artemis is also not expected to trigger an avalanche of microbes that will begin to populate the lunar south pole. However, Graham states: “It is almost certain that we will house abundant spores in microniches protected where the maximum temperature and radiation shielding characteristics of that site allow them to be maintained.”
Be careful not to touch too much
Paul Lucy of the Hawaiian Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Science at the University of Hawaii at Manoa warns against human impact on the moon. “There is no doubt that the latest approaches of the Artemis spacecraft will leave carbon dioxide and water ice in permanently shadowed areas,” Lucy said. Space. This may jeopardize the results of this and other types of studies.
Saxena explained that for this reason, the mission must carefully evaluate the route and the exact landing site, which is still under evaluation. Anything done in this case will also serve as an entrance for future missions. According to the researcher, the planning tools, methods and instruments used can also be useful for the exploration of Mars.
Artemis 3 will be the first man to land on the moon since 1972 when Apollo 17 achieved it. The four crew members are expected to stay there for a little less than a week. Two of them plan to make up to four moonwalks. For this trip was Orion spacecraftwhich in December last year made a test flight around the moon, which lasted almost 26 days.
Source: Hiper Textual
