WASHINGTON — NASA has updated a list of candidate landing sites near the Moon’s south pole for the Artemis 3 mission, taking into account surface conditions and the capabilities of SpaceX’s Starship lander.

NASA announced on October 28 that it had updated the locations in the lunar south pole region that it was considering for the Artemis 3 mission. The agency had published a list of 13 candidate landing locations in August 2022.

The nine locations include some of the same regions from the previous list as well as some new locations. All are clustered near the lunar south pole, a region of scientific interest and exploration due to the potential for water ice deposits in permanently shadowed craters.

The analysis required a “multivariate” analysis, said Tamra George of NASA’s Johnson Space Center during an Oct. 28 presentation on landing sites at the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) annual meeting. “Our number one priority is the safe landing and safe return of our astronauts, and in doing so, achieving amazing scientific results,” she said.

This required taking into account a wide range of factors. They include surface conditions at the landing site within Starship’s capabilities as well as lighting conditions and visibility of Earth for direct communications with Earth. This can be “tricky,” she said, particularly in winter, when it can be difficult to find both acceptable lighting and Earth visibility conditions for the planned six-day stay in surface.

These factors mean that each location is only available for part of the time. “We’re going to stay pretty limited” for Artemis 3, she said, “while we wait for more infrastructure to arrive for future missions.” This would include relay satellites that would alleviate the constraints of direct communication to Earth.

“We wanted to maintain the flexibility of the availability of this mission in any potential schedule changes, so we wanted to keep it open longer instead of really restricting it at the moment,” she said later in the meeting when asked why NASA selected nine sites.

Science is also a factor in site selection. “Artemis 3 is still a test flight, but it’s an opportunity to do some amazing science,” Sarah Noble, Artemis lunar science lead at NASA Headquarters, said at the LEAG meeting. “We can do good science anywhere, but some sites are better than others. »

Future Artemis landing sites will not be limited to the list established for Artemis 3. “Science will help us determine the choice of landing site” for Artemis 4, she said. This would include the previous list of 13 sites as well as other potential locations that may be of scientific interest.

This could, in theory, lead to landings outside the south polar region to achieve broader scientific goals. “We’re opening up the entire lunar surface for (Artemis) 4 and 5,” said Jacob Bleacher, NASA’s chief exploration scientist at LEAG. “We 100% recognize that we cannot achieve all the goals on one site. We also recognize that some objectives require data collected elsewhere on the Moon.

He added, however, that it was unlikely that the first Artemis landings would take place outside the south polar region, citing interest in volatile substances like water ice as well as architecture that includes the use of the nearly rectilinear halo orbit optimized for polar regions. landings. “In my opinion, these first missions will go to the south polar region,” he said.

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