Canadian Astronauts Prepare For Future Lunar Missions
Canada is working steadily to earn its place among the countries that are planning missions on Earth’s natural satellite, the Moon. That is how the Canadian Lunar Sample Return Analogue Mission, or CanMoon, came into being. At the moment, Canadian astronauts prepare for future lunar missions.
CanMoon is a simulated mission on the Moon to prepare astronauts to undergo missions in space alongside NASA. As it is a simulation, the astronomers are being trained in individual facilities on Earth, more specifically, at the University of Western Ontario. But the astronomers are not the only ones that are preparing. Alongside them are the scientists, professors, and students that aim their attention at the way a real mission is usually run, together with controlling a rover as if it is on the lunar surface.
The exciting part is that the ‘rover’ is not an actual machine, but a team of people that obey the commands received from UWO. The team is on the Lanzarote Island, part of the autonomous Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean.
Canadian Astronauts Prepare For Future Lunar Missions
They have to meet all the requirements of a lunar rover, meaning that they have to walk at a speed of one kilometer per hour because a real rover usually moves really slowly. They also concentrate on possible locations where samples can be collected. Many elements have to be taken into consideration while on a lunar mission.
An essential element is that researchers must keep in mind the fact that the environment on the Moon is very severe – the temperatures vary from 100 degrees Celsius during the lunar day, while at night temperatures fall up to -173 degrees Celsius. A lunar rover cannot survive much on the Moon without the right technologies.
Therefore, all those who participate in the mission must work together to come up with solutions to all possible problems that might appear while in space. Canadian astronauts are planning to continue giving a hand on NASA’s lunar missions as it did 50 years ago with the Apollo missions.
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