NASA Completes Astronaut-Deployed Science Instrument for Lunar Surface

NASA Science reports that engineers have completed LEMS, the Lunar Environment Monitoring Station—a suitcase-sized instrument astronauts will deploy on the Moon's south pole to detect moonquakes and meteorite impacts. Fully autonomous, LEMS will run on solar power and advanced thermal insulation to survive the Moon's two-week night, when temperatures drop to minus four hundred degrees Fahrenheit. The device builds on a legacy of Apollo-era moonquake monitors from the nineteen sixties and seventies, which recorded about thirteen thousand tremors and revealed the Moon's interior structure. Now, with a modular design that can accommodate future instruments, LEMS opens a new era of continuous lunar surface science.

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