Some Northeast High kids are going to the moon on Friday, but they’ll be home in time for school dismissal.
Astronauts from the Space Re-search Cen-ter in-side the Med-ic-al, En-gin-eer-ing and Aerospace Mag-net School in Northeast will continue work on building a per-man-ent hab-it-at on the moon. In May, SPARC’s astronauts began building a permanent lunar habitat in the moon’s ancient caves.
“The purpose of using the caves was to protect the astronauts from the harmful radiation that exists beyond the protective atmosphere of the Earth,” said Joe Connelly, SPARC’s program director. “Since then, we have been investigating a new material, called graphene.”
“Graphene is pure carbon in the form of a very thin, nearly transparent sheet and is one of the strongest materials made today. It also has the characteristics of transmitting light but resisting radiation,” he added. “This could make it an ideal material to use for human habitats on the moon.”
The astronauts will place a dome made of graphene on their simulated moon’s surface, where it will remain until they return during their two-day April mission. To test the effectiveness of graphene, they’ll leave behind plants, whose progress they’ll measure in April.
“This will help the team determine if graphene is a suitable material to use in future moon construction,” Connelly said.
There will be a lot of new faces during Friday’s flight, Connelly said. Many SPARC mission veterans graduated in the spring. ••
