For all the stargazers, October 26 is not just going to be a Monday but also it will be an interesting Monday as NASA is going to unveil a new discovery about our very own Moon. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration in a tweet has announced that it will be revealing a new discovery about the surface of the Moon from its airborne SOFIA Telescope observatory.
Taking to Twitter, NASA wrote, "Mark your calendars: We will be revealing a new discovery about the surface of the Moon from our airborne
@SOFIATelescope observatory, and YOU are invited. Pencil us in for 12pm ET on Monday, Oct. 26!..."
NASA will announce an exciting new discovery about the Moon from the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) at a media teleconference at 12 p.m. EDT Monday, October 26. Audio of the teleconference will stream live on the agency’s website.
This new discovery contributes to NASA's efforts to learn about the Moon in support of deep space exploration. Under NASA's Artemis program, the agency will send the first woman and next man to the lunar surface in 2024 to prepare for our next giant leap – human exploration of Mars as early as the 2030s.Understanding the science of the Moon also helps piece together the broader history of the inner solar system.
NASA new moon discovery: Know your briefing participants:
- Paul Hertz, Astrophysics division director at NASA Headquarters, Washington
- Jacob Bleacher, chief exploration scientist for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters
- Casey Honniball, postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
- Naseem Rangwala, project scientist for the SOFIA mission, NASA’s Ames Research Center, Silicon Valley, California
How to participate
To participate in the teleconference, members of the news media should contact Felicia Chou at felicia.chou@nasa.gov by 9 am Monday, October 26, to receive the dial-in information.
As the world's largest airborne observatory, SOFIA is a modified 747 that flies high in the atmosphere to provide its nearly 9-foot telescope with a clear view of the universe and objects in our solar system. Flying above 99 per cent of the atmosphere’s obscuring water vapor, SOFIA observes in infrared wavelengths and can detect phenomena impossible to see with visible light.
