The first ESA instrument to land on the Moon has detected the presence of negative ions on the lunar surface produced through interactions with the solar wind.
The European team working with the Negative Ions at the Lunar Surface (NILS) instrument confirmed the success of this scientific mission that flew to the far side of the Moon aboard the Chang’e-6 spacecraft.
The discovery of a new component of plasma at the surface of the Moon opens a new window for space physics and for human and robotic missions in an era of renewed lunar exploration.
It’s been too long since we had an operational European launcher. I hope Vega C and A6 are available and reliable by the end of the year. There is quite a queue of new missions, several of them already had to be launched with SpaceX.
Outside an atmosphere like Earth’s, everything is already exposed to intense ionizing radiation from the sun/stars. A bit more from an RTG, even a big one, is a drop in the ocean. If we found signs of extraterrestrial life, then we’d want to be extra cautious about not sterilizing by accident, but that’s not currently a major concern. And of course, any sort of nuclear rocket propulsion would need to be handed with utmost care, but it’s also not a major issue once it’s outside the atmosphere.
It’s fine, both of the last two US Rovers are powered off RTGs and several of the deep space probes run off RTGs also. For low Earth orbit and stuff closer to the sun it doesn’t make sense but going further out and especially in a place like Mars where solar panels are prone to being covered in dust an RTG power source makes sense.
There is currently no mission planned for her as Australia just paid the training cost when she did not get selected into the ESA astronaut chor.
Australia would also now have to pay for a ride to the ISS. The tourist ticket info I found was about 30 MUSD but that’s including the training I think.
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