LSU may be the first university in the world to land technology on the moon next year as the U.S. returns to the lunar surface again after 50 years.
The research mission, called Tiger Eye 1, aims to take measurements of radiation in space and on the moon. The technology will be onboard the IM-1 mission in early 2022, one of several commercial space flights to bring technology to the moon ahead of the Artemis mission scheduled for 2024, which aims to be the first crewed lunar landing mission since Apollo 17 in 1972.
The Houston-based technology manufacturer Intuitive Machines is the company that will be providing the lunar lander containing the Tiger Eye, and will be attached to a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
“We will be not only the first institution to take these types of measurements both on the way to the moon and on the moon, we’ll be the first university to just land something on the moon, period,” said Jacob Miller, an electrical engineering senior and student project manager of the Tiger Eye mission.
The Tiger Eye mission is being operated almost entirely by LSU students from the SpaRTAN lab (Space Radiation Transport and Applied Nuclear Physics), focused on understanding the impact space radiation has on both the health of human spaceflight crews and the resilience of space vehicle hardware systems.
Jeff Chancellor, an LSU physicist, oversees the SpaRTAN lab and the Tiger Eye mission. Chancellor worked for or with NASA for 25 years before coming to LSU.
The radiation device works by tracking the amount of ionizing radiation that gets deposited onto it. It does this with a pixelated sensor acting sort of like a telescope, providing data on radiation doses both in space and on the moon.
“They need to know what the radiation levels are because there’s only a certain level of radiation people can be exposed to in space before it becomes really dangerous,” said Emily Friedman, a mechanical engineering sophomore who will be taking over as student project manager.
This sort of data hasn’t been collected on the moon before and will be crucial to understanding for future crewed missions, especially if lunar bases are established, to help safeguard the health and safety of people on the moon.
“Once you’re successful at doing something this difficult, you have a good track record. It’s not easy but it makes it easier to propose and do additional work,” Chancellor said.
The mission is currently scheduled for 2022, but could be delayed due to the difficulty in organizing and launching space missions, Chancellor said.
The work being done on this mission will help pave the way for NASA’s Artemis mission, whose long-term goal is to set up human habitation on the moon.
“I honestly never really expected to be doing something like this whenever I started at LSU… hopefully this opens the doors for it to be sort of commonplace for students at LSU to get the chance to work on stuff like this,” Miller said.
