SwRI-developed instrument delivered for lunar lander mission

LMS instrument will study electrical conductivity of the Moon’s interior

2023-03-27

(Press-News.org) SAN ANTONIO — March 27, 2023 —Southwest Research Institute recently delivered the Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) to Firefly Aerospace in Cedar Park, Texas, for integration into the Blue Ghost 1 lunar lander scheduled to arrive at the Moon in 2024. The sounder will determine the electrical conductivity of the interior of the Moon by measuring low-frequency electric and magnetic fields.

“For more than 50 years, scientists have used magnetotelluric techniques, which use natural characteristics of the Earth’s electromagnetic fields to determine the electrical resistivity of the subsurface for research and resource exploration,” said SwRI’s Bob Grimm, principal investigator of the instrument. “LMS will be the first extraterrestrial application of magnetotellurics.”

NASA’s Artemis program is series of increasingly complex missions to build a sustained human presence at the Moon for decades to come. To support these goals, LMS is part of a 12-day lunar lander mission to help understand the Moon’s subsurface in a previously unexplored location. LMS is being funded and delivered to the lunar surface via NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative and is expected to land in Mare Crisium, an ancient, 350-mile-diameter impact basin on the Moon that subsequently filled with lava. It is a dark circular spot in the northeast region of the Moon’s nearside that stands apart from the large, connected areas of dark lava to the west of where most of the Apollo missions landed.

These vast, linked lava plains are now thought to be compositionally and structurally anomalous to the rest of the Moon. From its vantage point at Mare Crisium, LMS may provide the first geophysical measurements representative of the overall Moon.

Electromagnetic fields penetrate to greater depths with decreasing frequency, allowing LMS to probe the interior of the Moon to depths up to 700 miles or two-thirds of the lunar radius. The electrical conductivity depends on the temperature and composition of the materials traveling through the field. The measurements will shed light on the differentiation and thermal history of our Moon, a cornerstone to understanding the evolution of solid worlds.

For more information, visit https://www.swri.org/planetary-science.

END

[Attachments] See images for this press release:

SwRI-developed instrument delivered for lunar lander mission 2

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Socially vulnerable carry disproportionate COVID burden due to lower likelihood of vaccination not vaccine effectiveness

2023-03-27

INDIANAPOLIS – The burden of the pandemic has disproportionately affected socially vulnerable populations. One of the first studies to look at the intersection of social vulnerability with COVID-19 vaccine utilization and effectiveness has found that while vaccination rates have varied substantially between socially vulnerable and communities that are not socially vulnerable, there has been no difference in vaccine effectiveness between those who are socially vulnerable and those who are not. “We found that protection against emergency room and urgent care center visits, hospitalization and death conveyed by a COVID-19 mRNA vaccination ...

Positive experiences in close relationships are associated with better physical health, new research suggests

2023-03-27

Social relationships influence physical health, but questions remain about the nature of this connection. New research in Social Psychological and Personality Science suggests that the way you feel about your close relationships may be affecting the way your body functions. Previous smaller-scale studies have examined the connection between relationship conflict or satisfaction with stress levels and blood pressure. The new research examines the effects of positive and negative relationship experiences on the body, as well as how these experiences and health outcomes change ...

Research may speed identification of patients who need liver transplants

2023-03-27

Research findings from Rutgers, the University of Michigan, the University of Texas Southwestern, and the Medical University of South Carolina could save lives by enabling faster and more accurate identification of hospitalized patients who need liver transplants or are likely to recover. Retrospective analysis of blood samples and medical records from 270 patients admitted to the hospital with acute liver failure (ALF) found that concentrations of a short-lived but abundant serum protein called carbamoyl phosphate synthetase 1 (CPS1) helped predict which patients survive or die without a transplant. “We still need to validate these results in more patients to ...

Finger-prick test developed for ‘trich’ a common, undiagnosed STI

2023-03-27

PULLMAN, Wash. – A quick, affordable diagnostic test developed by a Washington State University researcher may help curb one of the most prevalent but least discussed sexually transmitted infections. More common than chlamydia or gonorrhea, Trichomonas vaginalis, also known as trich, causes no symptoms in about 70% of those infected. Even when asymptomatic, trich is linked to a host of bad health outcomes, including increased susceptibility to HIV, prostate cancer in men and infertility and pregnancy complications in women. Trich is easily ...

Surprise effect: Methane cools even as it heats

2023-03-27

Most climate models do not yet account for a new UC Riverside discovery: methane traps a great deal of heat in Earth’s atmosphere, but also creates cooling clouds that offset 30% of the heat. Greenhouse gases like methane create a kind of blanket in the atmosphere, trapping heat from Earth’s surface, called longwave energy, and preventing it from radiating out into space. This makes the planet hotter. “A blanket doesn’t create heat, unless it’s electric. You feel warm because ...

A puff of air could deliver your next vaccine (video)

2023-03-27

INDIANAPOLIS, March 27, 2023 — Nobody likes needles, but they’re necessary for delivering many vaccines and biologics into the body. But what if those could be puffed through the skin instead, with just a little pressure, like being hit in the arm with a foam toy? Today, scientists report steps toward making that a reality. Using powdered vaccines that don’t require refrigeration and a system driven by compressed gas, their “MOF-Jet” could easily deliver therapeutics against cancer and other diseases in a relatively painless way. The researchers will present their results at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS ...

Human cells help researchers understand squid camouflage

2023-03-27

INDIANAPOLIS, March 27, 2023 — Squids and octopuses are masters of camouflage, blending into their environment to evade predators or surprise prey. Some aspects of how these cephalopods become reversibly transparent are still “unclear,” largely because researchers can’t culture cephalopod skin cells in the lab. Today, however, researchers report that they have replicated the tunable transparency of some squid skin cells in mammalian cells, which can be cultured. The work could not only shed light on basic squid biology, but ...

Genetic tests unexpectedly find genes linked to heart disease — now what?

2023-03-27

Statement Highlights: As health care professionals, researchers and consumers increasingly use genetic testing, they are uncovering incidental genetic abnormalities, or variants, that are associated with cardiovascular diseases. The statement writing committee cautions that incidentally identified single gene variants may or may not be risk factors for disease, so it is important to interpret them correctly and cautiously. The new scientific statement offers a framework to support health care professionals in appropriately assessing individual genetic variants, communicating findings with patients and families, and, when ...

Biochar and energy from pyrolysis can pave the way for carbon-neutral agriculture in China

2023-03-27

Since the Paris Agreement to combat global warming was reached in 2015, many countries have committed to becoming climate neutral, i.e., achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. The world's largest agricultural country, China, is also committed to join the green transition. As the largest agricultural country, China is also the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, yet it has set itself a target of achieving carbon neutrality by 2060. According to Professor and Head of Land-CRAFT at Department of Agroecology at Aarhus University Klaus Butterbach-Bahl, this places huge demands on agricultural systems: "Agriculture in China accounts ...

Two striking new species of carnivorous plants discovered in the Andes of Ecuador

2023-03-27

A team of botanists from Ecuador, Germany, and the United States has described two new species of carnivorous plants with striking appearance. They are part of the butterworts (genus Pinguicula), a group of flowering plants with about 115 species that can catch and digest small insects with their sticky leaves. Whereas the majority of butterwort species is distributed in the northern hemisphere, these new species were discovered in the high Andes of southern Ecuador, close to the border with Peru. Carnivorous plants use animals (usually small insects) as an additional source of nutrients ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

The Lancet Obstetrics, Gynecology, & Women’s Health: Taking paracetamol during pregnancy does not increase risk of autism, ADHD or intellectual disabilities, confirms new gold-standard evidence review