NASA Field Geology Training Enhances Artemis Mission Support
by Clarence Oxford
Los Angeles CA (SPX) May 10, 2024
In preparation for the Artemis missions, NASA staff including engineers, managers, and flight directors, recently engaged in a field geology course in Northern Arizona’s volcanic terrain. This training is designed to equip the Artemis mission support teams with a practical understanding of lunar geology.
The two-and-a-half-day program mirrors aspects of the intensive training that astronauts undergo for missions to the Moon’s South Pole, aiming to develop a shared language and operational knowledge among the various NASA teams.
“We are building a common language and a common understanding of what it will be like to do field geology on the surface of the Moon,” said Cindy Evans, Artemis geology training lead at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
During the exercise, participants, guided by experts from NASA, the USGS, and academic institutions, analyzed the geological history of the area by studying rocks and forming hypotheses to test in the field. Similar to procedures on the Moon, selected rocks were examined for their mineral content.
Jacob Bleacher, chief exploration scientist at NASA Headquarters, explained the scientific value of studying the Moon: “The Moon doesn’t have an atmosphere or flowing water like we have here on Earth, and doesn’t have plate tectonics, which are processes that erase a lot of the evidence from the early Earth,” he noted. “The Moon still has that evidence, so we can go to the Moon and learn lessons about our home planet that we can’t learn here on the Earth.”
In practice, team members utilized core geological methods to piece together the environmental history of the terrain. This included adapting their exploration plans, a practice termed “flexecution,” which reflects the dynamic decision-making process expected during lunar missions.
“The geologists will be the science evaluation room during Artemis missions, assimilating real-time mission data to understand the observations, tracking the samples, going back to the maps that they’ve built trying to understand how all those pieces fit together on a day -by-day and traverse-by-traverse basis,” added Evans.
This field geology training lays foundational knowledge for future lunar explorations and deeper space missions, aiming to expand human understanding of the Moon and its connection to Earth.
Upcoming activities include simulated moonwalks in the Arizona desert to test new technologies and equipment such as augmented reality in spacesuits, further supporting Artemis’s goal to send a diverse crew to explore the Moon extensively.
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