UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — When you look into the night sky a few years from now, you might be saying to yourself, "There’s a vehicle built by Penn State students on the moon right now." That voyage to the moon is the focus of the student-run Lunar Lion team’s efforts, and they recently brought on two new team members — both geosciences majors — to help plan the team’s lunar research.
“Joining Lunar Lion is a good opportunity to get involved in something that’s going to continue past our time at Penn State and expand the knowledge that we’ve gained in our classes,” said geosciences senior and Lunar Lion science team leader Mitch Hastings, a native of Delmont, Pennsylvania.
Lunar Lion was originally formed in 2011 and was competing in the Google Lunar XPrize, which seeks to innovate and reduce costs of spacecraft design. The Penn State team was the only university-led team to pursue the XPRIZE, competing with 33 other teams from around the world to execute the first privately funded mission to land on the Moon.
However, in 2015, the Lunar Lion team decided to leave the competition to expand its focus and be more in alignment with the goals of the students.
“Lunar Lion is all about student achievement,” said team lead Chris Covert, a senior majoring in aerospace engineering. “Our goal is very much to land a craft on the moon, but in order to get there, we’re educating so many students about space systems, propulsion and other subsystem specialties.”
Leaving the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition — but still continuing on their path toward a space voyage — provided Lunar Lion with a blank slate for what science it could accomplish on the moon.
The geosciences students are looking at what is known about the moon from returned samples and remote observations, and then asking where the Lunar Lion mission could fill in knowledge gaps. There are many unanswered questions related to the moon's geology.
Sonny Harman, a geosciences doctoral candidate and science adviser to the team, is working with the two geosciences students to shape the science questions for the Lunar Lion mission. They are exploring a number of compatible science goals, including more closely examining sites of recent volcanic activity, or investigating magnetic anomalies. Further exploration can address unproven theories related to lunar geology.
“Basically, there are a lot of theories but not a lot of ground truth for those theories. We have the chance to potentially help confirm or deny some of those,” said Cassie Hanagan, a sophomore majoring in geosciences who hails from State College, Pennsylvania.