NASA selects Brown-led team to study the Moon in effort to establish permanent lunar base

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — NASA has selected a team led by Brown University scientists to participate in a scientific research effort that will enable the space agency to not only return to the Moon for the first time in 50 years, but also help to establish a permanent lunar presence.

The Brown-led team will include 24 faculty members from the University’s Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Science and 26 researchers from 21 other institutions around the world. The group was one among five new research teams chosen to collaborate on lunar science and analysis for the next five years as part of NASA’s Artemis program, the agency announced on Thursday, May 11.

A five-year grant from NASA, expected to total approximately $7.5 million, will support the team, which will be known as LunaSCOPE — Lunar Structure, Composition, and Processes for Exploration. The researchers will examine the Moon’s origin, evolution and structure. The idea is that by understanding both the Moon’s present state and how it got there, they will be able to inform NASA’s upcoming Moon missions and future exploration efforts.

“Our work will be doing a large-scale, very fine characterization of the Moon and its history, trying to understand surface properties and characterizing potential hazards, like the possibility of Moonquakes,” said Alexander Evans, an assistant professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Brown and LunaSCOPE’s principal investigator. “This includes everything from the size of the particles on the surface to what materials there are on the Moon, like the amount of water or other precious metals that might be used to sustain a habitat.”

read more at https://www.brown.edu/news/2023-05-11/brown-sservi