NASA announced to share an “exciting new discovery about the Moon” on Monday, October 26. The announcement has generated a lot of excitement in the space community and among space fans across the world. NASA will share the new science revelation at 12 pm EDT (1600 GMT) on Monday and it can be watched live on the space agency’s website and on Space.com
NASA has not revealed the exact lunar discoveries to be shared on Monday, but analysts said it will be related to the agency’s Artemis program for which NASA plans to put astronauts to the moon’s the South Pole in 2024. Space experts also speculate that the revelations to be shared by NASA will be gleaned from the data obtained by the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA).
“This new discovery contributes to NASA’s efforts to learn about the moon in support of deep space exploration,” NASA teased.
SOFIA is a specialized German-American astronomy facility that first flew in 2007. The space facility observatory is built into a remodeled 747 jet that can fly far above the atmosphere of Earth.
“Flying above 99% of the atmosphere’s obscuring water vapor, SOFIA observes in infrared wavelengths and can pick up phenomenon impossible to see with visible light,” NASA said.
Flying high into space, SOFIA is able to make space and land observations that would have been otherwise impossible or impaired from atmospheric interference if taken from ground-based observatories. With its 10-hour flights, SOFIA is able to analyze infrared lights from our own solar system and other distant galaxies.
The SOFIA jet observatory flew again in August after it was grounded in March because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But then, NASA’s Monday conference will include Naseem Rangwala, project scientist for the SOFIA mission at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California; Paul Hertz, who leads NASA’s astrophysics division; Jacob Bleacher, the chief exploration scientist for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate; and Casey Honniball, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
Source: space.com
