Artemis II Results Show How Much Science People Can Do at the Moon

"mrpg" writes:

The crew's observations highlight what human eyes can add to lunar exploration:

Six months after the Artemis II mission sent four astronauts around the moon, the value of their closeup view is coming into focus. The first science results, released on October 7, reveal details of the moon's array of colors, how often it gets hit by tiny rocks and lessons for squeezing as much science as possible out of future human lunar missions.

"We worked extremely hard to make sure we were able to maximize lunar science return from wherever we could in this mission," said Artemis II flight science operations lead Kelsey Young at a virtual Lunar Surface Science Workshop meeting on October 7. "This is creating yet another tool in our toolbox as planetary scientists to understand our moon, our solar system, even our own planet."

[...] With three days to spare, the team released three reports and a massive data archive on October 7, the 67th anniversary of when the Soviet Luna 3 spacecraft took the first photograph of the farside of the moon. The results offer a rare test of what trained human observers can add to lunar research and what NASA can learn for future missions to the lunar surface.

"We're really excited to release all of this data," earth scientist Sara Schmidt of NASA Johnson Space flight Center in Houston said during the meeting. After six months of hard work, "this is enabling science to happen for the next, I don't know, 60 years, if not more."

Surprisingly, the most valuable data from the mission were not the mind-blowingly gorgeous photos, but the astronauts' verbal and written descriptions of what they were seeing.

[...] During the flyby, the astronauts worked in pairs. Two of them spoke to mission control on the ground, giving periodic updates to the science team on what they were seeing. The other two recorded themselves describing their observations and reactions and used a stylus to annotate specially made maps of the moon that had been uploaded to their tablets during flight. Those notes, doodles and recordings were not made public until now.

The idea was to give the crew high tech field notebooks, Young says.

"If you have any field experience, you know your field notebook is your best friend," she said in the meeting. On Earth, geologists capture nuance and context in written and spoken words, as well as sketches, she said. "We wanted to provide the ability to capture that nuanced information from the crew."

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.