preparing for fresh worlds by thinking about property management. Once more, cows and astronauts sat in the great plains of Babbitt Ranches as NASA tested products, conducted moonwalking drills, and practiced geography in readiness for Artemis 3, a manned mission to the black lunar south pole region, which is planned for 2026. The slow-moving visitors wearing astronauts, a occurrence for the cattle over the past 50 years, appeared unperturbed. ” I smile when I think about my grandfather, John Babbitt, a calm, understated, hardworking person who opened up the cattle walls for NASA in the 1960s for the Apollo operations”, said Babbitt Ranches President Billy Cordasco, during a press briefing at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff last quarter. ” He had just one request: ‘ Do n’t let the cattle out – be sure to close the gates behind you.’ Like my granddad, on behalf of the Babbitt Ranches Community, I only have one request or hope, really, and that is: that we, as humans, carry the land- use ethic that we – along with the USGS, Coconino County, NASA and JETT – promote on Babbitt Ranches, to other worlds “.The event was a reunion of sorts for Babbitt Ranches, USGS and NASA’s Joint EVA and Human Surface Mobility Test Team ( JETT), as they share a land stewardship philosophy. The group’s last communication occurred in Northern Arizona in October 2022. In a statement in honor of NASA, JETT, USGS, and Babbitt Ranches,” We acknowledge a personal and professional commitment to helping maintain the integrity of the land on which we are testing.” ” Flagstaff is so supportive as a community. We love testing out in the terrain, working with the Babbitts, being out on their land and the property, and preparing for Artemis “.Astronauts Kate Rubins, Ph. D., and Andre Douglas, Ph. For some of their field exercises, which included hi-fi cameras that beam a video signal back to Mission Control and a toolbelt with collection packs to carry rock samples, D. donned the most recent 95-pound ExCon spacesuit prototype. Our actual spacesuits will weigh 300 pounds, and they will be subjected to 4.3 PSI, Rubins said. This is “kind of like being inside a basketball and having to perform scientific and physical work.” ” As you kneel down on one knee, you have to stabilize”, said Douglas. To ensure our safety in the suit, we must be careful with how we move our legs. The analog enables us to comprehend how to accomplish that in the present. Even inserting a rock into the bag and using the swing arms can be a little challenging.” On their backs was a portable life support system. ” That’s going to be the backpack that carries our oxygen, our cooling loops, our CO2 scrubbing. So, as you can see, we’ve got this really hi- fidelity model and we can test that out as we’re doing all of our geology”, said Rubins. USGS geologist Jim Skinner, who lives in Flagstaff, helped chart the course for the astronauts to find a variety of rock samples. We anticipate the moon to be very flat, with a lot of distributed rocks and sediments, probably ones that were ejected from craters from various locations, he said. ” From a geologist’s standpoint and in training the crew, the gradation of sediments across the surface is very, very subtle. One of the things we’re testing out is whether the astronauts can tell the difference between one type of sediment and another. We’re very interested in the subtle variations on the surface that we observe from orbit as we map the moon. We’re not sure what those variations are, according to USGS geologist Lauren Edgar, who lives in Flagstaff and works for Mission Control in Houston. We were testing out scenarios where the crew might be unable to communicate because the topography might block the signal, or where the crew might not be able to access the crew’s video feed a short distance from the lander. In order to help them interpret geology during the EVA]Extravehicular Activity, we also tested a situation where we could receive real-time images from the crew and send them to the Houston science team. This is another way of seeing what they’re seeing. Our collaborators at NASA’s Johnson Space Center have created some excellent software tools that can help us piece together all of the information in space and time. ” This is a really great place for us to learn what might happen on the moon”, said Douglas,” but also, for just about anybody interested in geology. Because it’s just a rich place to look at different features and different minerals, we train people from beginners to experts.” The astronauts went on two night walks because the sun will be low on the horizon and the moon’s south polar region will have challenging lighting conditions. NASA is interested in learning how water is kept there. ” We do n’t know what form it is in”, said Edgar. Is it a solid layer of ice, or not? Is it trapped in pockets in the regolith? It would be a significant resource for longer-term exploration of the moon, providing water for people, and providing important amounts of hydrogen and oxygen for rocket propellant. Douglas holds a doctoral degree in systems engineering. He worked in space exploration, planetary defense, and maritime robotics at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab while serving as a naval architect for the U.S. Coast Guard. Rubins, a microbiologist with a doctorate in cancer biology, is the first person to sequence DNA in space. She spent 300 days in space and participated in two International Space Station flights. She claims that the space program’s innovations will have” a serious impact” on countries that lack access to safe water or effective methods to sanitize waste. ” On the International Space Station, we recycle all of our water”, she said. ” If you do n’t have a lot of mass that you can lift off of Earth, every single molecule is important. However, if you consider the kinds of things we’ll need to do to reach Mars and the moon in a sustained way, conserving our carbon cycle means breaking down waste, making human waste biologically safe, and making sure we have plants that can remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and then returning that nitrogen to the plants. All of these technologies are useful for people on Earth to improve how we live in our environment, improve the quality of our water, eliminate waste, and lessen our impact on the environment. Cordasco added,” What the community of NASA, USGS, JETT, Coconino County and others, along with Babbitt Ranches, provides with regard to our obligations to a land- use ethic, matters today and will benefit generations to come”. FBN By Bonnie Stevens, FBNHear more about the Artemis 3 mission from USGS geologist Lauren Edgar on Zonie Living: Business, Adventure and Leadership at https ://starworldwidenetworks .com/shows/bonnie-stevens.
