NASA Shares Plans to Accelerate Artemis, Return to Moon

In an update on Oct. 23, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and other agency leaders shared the agency’s path to returning Americans to the lunar surface in 2028.

Agency leadership provided updates on the previously announced acceleration plans for the Artemis program, advancing toward the agency’s Artemis III test flight in 2027 and Artemis IV Moon landing mission in 2028. Building on the priorities  announced at Ignition earlier this year, NASA leadership shared the agency’s significant progress across its missions, working with industry partners to test critical capabilities, reduce risk, and build toward a sustained American presence on the Moon.

This graphic shows NASA’s concept of operations for Artemis III. The mission will send four astronauts to low Earth orbit next year to test critical systems needed for future lunar landings.

NASA

“This is a very energized NASA, and these updates are only a small part of that story. We are bringing extreme focus to the mission to ensure delivery of world-changing outcomes as quickly, safely, affordably, and successfully as possible,” said Isaacman. “NASA is driving outcomes to make Moon missions a reality, and we’re not waiting for others to bring their plans to us — the campaign must move with urgency as strategic competitors pursue a permanent presence beyond Earth.”

The agency shared details of the Artemis III mission, which will test rendezvous, docking, and operations between NASA’s Orion spacecraft and lunar lander test vehicles from SpaceX and Blue Origin in Earth orbit. Four astronauts will fly aboard Orion, launched on NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket, for a planned 14-day mission in Earth orbit to reduce risk ahead of the Artemis IV moon landing mission.

The Artemis III mission will unfold in sequence: Blue Origin will launch a Blue Moon lander test article into Earth orbit, SLS will launch Orion and its crew, docking with the Blue Moon lander test article, then SpaceX will launch a Version 3 Starship lander test article while Orion will undock from Blue Moon and dock with Starship.

The Oct. 23 updates follow other recent updates about the Artemis missions. Hardware for Artemis III is on track, with processing timelines sharply reduced by about half. NASA also redesigned, built, and tested a critical fuel-line component in-house in five months, at roughly a tenth of the cost of an earlier outside-vendor estimate.

“NASA should be expected to do this kind of work, and we have some of the best technical knowledge in the world on rocket hardware and operations to do it,” said Jeremy Parsons, the agency’s Artemis program manager. “It’s an example of how we are rebuilding our core competencies and developing centers of excellence in technical functions instead of continuing to outsource expertise.”

Artemis IV: Pursuing multiple paths to Moon landing

For the agency’s Artemis IV mission in 2028, astronauts will launch aboard Orion on the SLS rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA is working with SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop lunar landers to carry those astronauts to the Moon’s surface. Both companies have redesigned their approaches to simplify the missions and make them more efficient and flexible as compared to previous mission designs.

SpaceX’s Starship will refuel in Earth orbit, rendezvous with Orion, and then carry the spacecraft toward the Moon. Blue Origin’s approach involves transfer stages in Earth orbit to push its Blue Moon Mark 2 lander toward the Moon, where it will meet Orion in a closer lunar orbit before descending to the surface.

NASA

NASA

Both SpaceX and Blue Origin are targeting to be able to support a crewed lunar landing in 2028.  

For Artemis IV, NASA is pursuing two upper-stage options for the SLS rocket: its current stage, the interim cryogenic propulsion stage; and a stretched version of ULA’s Centaur V which can carry more propellant. Pursuing both options ensures NASA is maintaining flexibility and preventing single-point dependency.

NASA also announced plans with spacesuit provider Axiom Space to develop a second, lighter suit design called the “Sortie suit” to enable the first moonwalks. The Sortie suit will not replace Axiom’s primary suit, which will be used for longer, more demanding missions in the future. The Sortie suit is roughly half the weight of the larger suit and lets NASA move faster on the earliest surface missions.

As part of a Golden Age of innovation and exploration, NASA will send Artemis astronauts on increasingly difficult missions at the lunar South Pole to explore more of the Moon than ever before. In addition to providing economic benefits and advancing scientific discovery through its Moon missions, NASA will establish an enduring human presence on the lunar surface and build on the agency’s foundation for the first crewed mission to Mars.

Learn more about Artemis: https://www.nasa.gov/artemis 

Jonathan Deal

Public Affairs Officer 

Source: NASA Shares Plans to Accelerate Artemis, Return to Moon - NASA

NASA-funded Study Details One of Oldest Mars Meteorites Ever Found - Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Called Teghaza 001, this rose-colored rock is one of the most ancient Martian meteorites ever found on Earth.

Credit: © Darryl Pitt / Maine Mineral & Gem Museum

When a rose-colored meteorite was found in the Sahara Desert in 2022, no one knew how old it was or where it came from. Not until NASA-funded scientists age-dated its minerals did they realize the nearly 2-pound (800-gram) rock was a piece of Mars that formed more than 4.1 billion years ago, making it one of the oldest Martian meteorites ever found. Named Teghaza 001 after the salt plain in Mali where it was discovered, the meteorite is one of roughly 435 from the Red Planet.

In a paper published Thursday in Science, researchers offered an initial characterization of Teghaza 001, providing a rare snapshot of Mars’ ancient crust and formation. What scientists learn from future studies could help answer many questions, including how water and rocks interacted on ancient Mars. A separate paper published in Science Advances in June detailed the meteorite’s water content, offering a look at how water shaped the early planet’s surface.

“It was only after we started looking closely that we realized this meteorite is really unique,” said the paper’s lead author, Yang Liu of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “One of the paper’s reviewers called it a Rosetta Stone for Mars.” 

This slice of Teghaza 001, a Martian meteorite, was used to study its mineralogy and chemistry.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Rose-colored stone

What sets Teghaza 001 apart from other Martian meteorites is its texture and age as well as the uniqueness of its igneous, or volcanic, minerals. It is one of the three most ancient Martian meteorites found on Earth. While invaluable, the others provide more limited glimpses of Mars’ geological history. They include ALH84001, which is composed almost entirely of one mineral and is similar in age to Teghaza 001. The other meteorite, nicknamed “Black Beauty,” formed about 2.1 billion years ago and is composed of small, volcanic rock fragments.

Unlike its ancient peers, Teghaza 001 has a mix of igneous minerals that tells a story about how the planet’s crust formed from cooling magma before it was eventually altered by subsurface water. The meteorite’s distinctive mineralogy matches what NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has observed in the planet’s cratered southern highlands. No one will ever know exactly where the meteorite originated on Mars, but the paper identifies several potential locations that match Teghaza 001’s mineralogy and chemistry.

“This is really our first piece of Martian crust from a part of Mars we’ve never had a sample of before,” said the new paper’s second author, Lee Saper, who conducted the research while at JPL as a postdoctoral scholar. Lee now is a scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. “It records interactions of water and rock and maybe even an imprint of the Martian atmosphere as it was losing water.”

Although the Mars meteorites found on Earth differ from one another, they share a common history, having been blasted off the Red Planet’s surface by an impact, followed by a trajectory that eventually placed them on Earth and into the hands of scientists. Meteorites are often found by collectors in deserts or snowy plains, where they stand out from the rest of the barren landscape. Scientists can verify a meteorite as Martian by matching its mineral and chemical components to data collected by NASA’s Mars missions, including the Viking landers as well as the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers.

Scientists identified 13 locations on Mars that match the mineralogy and chemistry of Teghaza 001, one of the most ancient Martian meteorites ever found on Earth.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/USGS

Signs of water

When Liu was first asked to look at Teghaza 001, she almost passed on the opportunity.

Researchers at the University of New Mexico had already identified it as Martian based on its oxygen isotopes, which serve as geochemical fingerprints for different planetary bodies. In this case, the researchers matched the meteorite’s oxygen isotopes to those seen in other Martian meteorites. Teghaza 001 appeared to be a shergottite which is the most common class of meteorite from the Red Planet. As an expert in planetary samples, Liu has seen plenty of those, but she decided to take a peek, anyway.

At the very least, there were odd textures and unusual minerals she hadn’t seen before. Liu and her colleagues discovered zircon crystals in Teghaza 001, which record clues to a rock’s formation and can be used by geologists to precisely age-date a sample. Further analysis revealed when Teghaza 001 formed and when certain changes, like water alteration, occurred.

Caltech coauthor Francois Tissot helped the researchers utilize a novel age-dating method pioneered by his team. Compared with bulk-analysis techniques, where a sample is entirely dissolved and analyzed, Tissot’s in-situ rubidium-strontium age-dating used a piece of Teghaza 001 that was smaller than a fingernail, analyzing single mineral grains on its surface. Besides its extreme precision and speed, the technique preserves rare samples like Martian meteorites for future studies.

“Right now, we are one of very few labs in the world able to perform this kind of age-dating, and the first to date such an ancient Martian meteorite,” Tissot said. “Our hope is to pave the way for dating even more Martian meteorites, or samples returned from other planets, their moons, and asteroids.”

When the age-dating results came back, Liu was shocked: This rock had been altered by Martian water sometime around 4.1 billion years ago, suggesting it originally formed even earlier. Clues within the oxygen isotopes, texture, and chemistry of Teghaza 001 minerals point to a much more dynamic water cycle on early Mars.

This year’s papers are just the start. Liu and her co-authors are eager to see what the rest of the scientific community can learn from Teghaza 001.

“We’ve only scratched the surface,” Liu said. 

Source: NASA-funded Study Details One of Oldest Mars Meteorites Ever Found - NASA