In Greek mythology, the name Artemis refers to the goddess of the moon who looked after her mother right after birth and is seen as the protector and nurturer of the young.
The satellites employed in NASA’s ARTEMIS mission will seek to mimic their namesake’s nurturing capabilities by trying to understand the moon’s interaction with its nemesis, the sun.
Project members at UCLA and NASA said this information could eventually lead to ways to protect astronauts from deadly solar emissions.
The project relies on the deployment of two satellites that will analyze the moon’s surface as solar winds immediately land on the dark side of the moon.
Solar winds are gaseous protons that are emitted from the sun.
These particles travel together at speeds of a million miles per hour and are extremely hot, said Vassilis Angelopoulos, principal investigator of the ARTEMIS mission and a professor at UCLA’s Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics.
Earth and other bodies in space that have a magnetic field are protected from solar winds because these fields deflect the charged particles from piercing the atmosphere, said Chris Russell, an ARTEMIS researcher and professor at the institute.