Eight teams to join NASA's Solar System Exploration to study Moon, Mars and more

NASA has selected eight new research teams that will look in the space science and human exploration of the Moon, asteroids and the solar system. The research will take place under the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) and will look into basic and applied scientific questions that will help in the better understanding of space and its environments. The studies will be funded $10.5 million per year by NASA’s Science and Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorates for a period of five years. These eight teams will join four existing teams that are studying the Moon, near-Earth asteroids and Mars’ moons Phobos and Deimos. These teams will collaborate with international partners and domestic universities via virtual technology. [caption id=“attachment_6835461” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”] Representational image.[/caption] The eight teams are as follows:

• The Center for Lunar and Asteroid Surface Science (CLASS) team from the University of Central Florida will study the regolith that is the soil like material on the Moon and asteroids.
• Interdisciplinary Consortium for Evaluating Volatile Origins (ICE FIVE-O) from the University of Hawai’i at Honolulu will look into how things weather in space.
• Resource Exploration and Science of OUR Cosmic Environment (RESOURCE) from the Ames research centre in Silicon Valley of California will study the quantity and availability of resources on the Moon, test the technology required to process these resources, and conduct field tests to see what will it take for humans to stay on the Moon.
• Remote, In Situ, and Synchrotron Studies for Science and Exploration 2 (RISE2) from Stony Brook University New York, will look into how the environments on other planets affect human bodies by studying animal tissues and cells with regard to regolith.
• Institute for Modeling Plasmas, Atmospheres and Cosmic Dust (IMPACT) from the University of Colorado Boulder will measure micron-sized dust impacts on the Moon’s surface using the world’s fastest “dust impact” facility. It will also carry out experiments to prove/disprove existing theories about Moon dust, a.k.a. regolith

[caption id=“attachment_6911241” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”] the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI). Image credit: NASA[/caption]

• Lunar Environment And Dynamics for Exploration Research (LEADER) from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland will look into the effects of the Moon’s environments on robots and humans beings.
• Center for Lunar Science and Exploration (CLSE) from Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston will track the formation and distribution of volatiles i.e. a group of chemical elements and chemical compounds with low boiling points, from the solar system and the Moon.
• Geophysical Exploration Of the Dynamics and Evolution of the Solar System (GEODES), at the University of Maryland in College Park, will use geophysical modelling and laboratory techniques to characterise the overall evolution, stability, and volatile content of the Moon and asteroid subsurfaces.

Lori Glaze, director of the Planetary Science Division in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate said, “The discoveries these teams make will be vital to our future exploration throughout the solar system with robots and humans.”