Note: there is a required supplemental form for applicants in addition to the artifacts module process. Review the Moon Tree Seeding Application Guideto complete your submission.As a requirement, potential recipients will register through NASA Gateway and NASA CONNECTS (Connecting our NASA Network of Educators for Collaborating Together in STEM ). Recipients of a Moon Tree seedling will be encouraged to develop educational opportunities to connect students, schools, and communities to the ARTEMIS mission. Through NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement (OSTEM) and NASA’s Artifact Module, museums, universities, federal agencies, community groups, USDA Forest Service Partners, including NASA Field Centers, and K-12 serving organizations located in the contiguous United States are eligible to apply for ownership of a Moon Tree seedling. Nearly 2000 tree seeds travelled to the Moon and back to Earth aboard the Artemis I, Orion space capsule! Education and community organizations are invited submit a proposal for an Artemis Moon Tree Seedling through NASA’s Artifacts Module Program. It is, rather sadly, the end of an era.NASA’s Next Gen STEM project in partnership with USDA Forest Service is excited to kick-off the upcoming school year with a unique opportunity. "However, it does mean that the continuity of our measurements, which we have established since the Apollo missions, will now have to stop. "These are very good centres," said Shelus. The spokesman added that two other astronomy centres - at Apache Point in Texas and Observatoire de la Côte d'Azure in France - were expected to carry out lunar-ranging experiments in future. These measurements have, in turn, allowed scientists to carry out valuable tests of theories about relativity and gravity, added Shelus.Ī spokesman from the NSF told the Observer last week that, after carrying out two reviews, it had decided there was no longer "a strong science case" for continuing its 40-year support for the lunar laser ranging project. This bulge - which we experience as tides - exerts a gravitational pull on the moon, slowing it down as it circles Earth at a distance of 240,000 miles.Īs a consequence of being held back by this pull, the orbit of the moon becomes altered and it moves slowly away from Earth - at a rate of two-and-a-half inches a year. "We know the speed of light, of course, so that timing allows us to calculate the moon's distance with incredible precision."Īfter these laser measurements were amassed for years, calculations by astronomers at the McDonald Observatory showed that as the moon orbits Earth, it creates a bulge of water that travels round the planet behind it. "Essentially, we measure when that beam goes out and when it comes back," said Shelus. In addition, a second pair were built by French scientists and flown to the moon by the Soviet Union on their robot Luna probes.Ĭorner mirrors are important scientific instruments because, when struck precisely by a laser beam, they reflect that beam in a parallel path straight back to the source of the laser. Two other corner mirrors were brought to the moon by astronauts on later manned lunar flights, on the Apollo 14 and the Apollo 15 missions. The mirror left by Aldrin and Armstrong after they landed on the Sea of Tranquillity on 21 July 1969, was one of five known as "corner mirrors" or "retro-reflector arrays" that were taken to the moon in the later Sixties and early Seventies. However, we are hopeful that this work will be continued at other astronomy centres." "We have done a great deal of important work using the moon mirrors but it is clearly time for it to end. "It is a bitter-sweet feeling to know this is going to come to end at McDonald," said Peter Shelus, head of the laser ranging project. The mirror's existence, and the fact that astronomers can bounce lasers off it and detect the returning beam, has also provided Nasa and other scientists with compelling evidence to refute the claims of moon-landing deniers who claim the Apollo lunar mission were hoaxes filmed in an Earth-based studio. Among the project's unlikely achievements has been the discovery that the moon is moving away from Earth at a rate of two-and-a-half inches a year. The decision means that four decades of continuous lunar laser research at the McDonald Observatory, run by the University of Texas at Austin, will be halted by the end of this year.
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