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From the Daily Camera: The ��ƷSM����ӰƬ is building three instruments that will fly in NASA’s Artemis missions and help prepare astronauts to land on the moon for the first time since the Apollo missions.

All three instruments will fly before the anticipated launch of Artemis 3 in 2026, which will take humans back to the moon and focus on exploring the moon’s south polar region. ��ƷSM����ӰƬ Assistant Professor Paul Hayne said the goal of the missions before Artemis 3 is to close “knowledge gaps” about the moon. He and his team at ��ƷSM����ӰƬ are working on two instruments that hope to answer essential questions about the moon before humans land again. “These robotic missions are critical to the success of the Artemis program, particularly the Artemis 3 mission,” Hayne said.

One of the instruments Hayne developed with colleagues and graduate students at ��ƷSM����ӰƬ is called the Lunar Compact Infrared Imaging System, or L-CIRiS, which is an infrared heat sensing camera. L-CIRiS will deploy to the unexplored south pole of the moon near where Artemis 3 will land.