Extendable mast on the top deck of Blue Ghost lander. Image credit: Firefly Aerospace/Inside Outer Space screengrab
The Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Moon lander has deployed electrodes on the lunar surface, an experiment to study the deep interior of the Moon.
Shortly after its March 2 landing, Blue Ghost deployed four tethered Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) electrodes, developed by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI).
The LMS experiment is designed to probe the structure and composition of the Moon’s interior to depths up to 700 miles or two-thirds of the lunar radius.
Extendable mast
The LMS magnetometer was deployed from the Blue Ghost top deck via an extendable 8-foot mast to reduce interference from the lander. The LMS instrument ejected cables with electrodes at 90-degree angles to each other at distances up to 60 feet.
From within the Mare Crisium impact basin, the SwRI-led Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) may provide the first geophysical measurements representative of the bulk of the Moon. Most of the Apollo missions landed in the region of linked maria to the west (left image), whose crust was later shown to be compositionally distinct (right image) as exemplified by the concentration of the element thorium. Mare Crisium provides a smooth landing site on the near side of the Moon outside of this anomalous region.
Image credit: NASA
“For more than 50 years, scientists have used magnetotellurics on Earth for a wide variety of purposes,” said SwRI’s Robert Grimm, principal investigator of LMS.
Those purposes include finding oil, water, geothermal and mineral resources, as well as to understand geologic processes such as the growth of continents, Grimm advised. Now on the Moon, the LMS instrument is the first extraterrestrial application of magnetotellurics, he said.
“Yarn ball” of cable
“The five individual subsystems of LMS, together with connecting cables, weigh about 14 pounds and consume about 11 watts of power,” Grimm said in a SwRI statement. “While stowed, each electrode is surrounded by a ‘yarn ball’ of cable, so the assembly is roughly spherical and the size of a softball.”
The LMS instrument for the Mare Crisium lander mission, which includes (from left) a magnetometer, a central electronics box and four spring-launched electrodes.
Image credit: SwRI
The LMS payload was funded for delivery to the lunar surface through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
SwRI designed the instrument, built the electronics box and leads the science investigation. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center provided the LMS magnetometer to measure the magnetic fields, and Heliospace Corporation provided the magnetometer mast and four electrodes used to measure the electrical fields.
To view a video of the Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder Deployment, go to:
https://youtu.be/mjsT99ergfA?si=RaVpJnxTcdF32q1O