The phenomenon is \u201csomething that we have not witnessed often,\u201d the mission\u2019s back-up astronaut Jenni Gibbons told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were really high priority science for us, so the fact that they saw four or five was just outstanding.\u201d<\/p>\n
No doubt<\/p>\n
As the astronauts hurtled towards home, Nasa asked them about the meteorite strikes they saw during their nearly seven-hour observation period.<\/p>\n
\u201cWere they prolonged? And did you notice any colour?\u201d Young asked yesterday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a pinprick of light,\u201d replied Canadian crew member Hansen. \u201cI would suspect there were a lot more of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say they were a millisecond, like the fastest a camera shutter can open and close,\u201d added Wiseman, who said the flashes were \u201cwhite to bluish white\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo me there was no doubt we were seeing it, and we were all seeing it,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
According to Nasa\u2019s tally, the team \u2013 which broke the record for the furthest distance from Earth during their flyby \u2013 reported a total of six meteorite impacts on the lunar surface.<\/p>\n
Ground crews are now working to match these observations with data from a satellite orbiting the moon, Young said, adding that the majority of the sightings took place during a solar eclipse, when the moon passed in front of the sun.<\/p>\n
\u2018Challenge\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m personally … surprised they would see that many, although they [had] been trained to look for them,\u201d Bruce Betts, chief scientist at the Planetary Society, said.<\/p>\n
According to Betts, the descriptions will allow scientists to \u201cget some idea of the frequency of impact\u201d as well as the size of the projectiles.<\/p>\n
One question was what size an object needed to be to create a flash visible to the astronauts, Betts said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a piece of dust, but it\u2019s not a metre-size boulder, either.\u201d<\/p>\n
The observations raise questions and show that the \u201cdaily flux of meteors should be monitored more closely in the future before a lunar base is established,\u201d Peter Schultz, Professor Emeritus of Geological Sciences at Brown University, said.<\/p>\n
On Earth, smaller objects \u201cburn up high in the… atmosphere due to friction\u201d before they reach the ground, noted Betts, which is not the case on the Earth\u2019s natural satellite.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is more of a challenge on the moon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The phenomenon is \u201csomething that we have not witnessed often,\u201d the mission\u2019s back-up astronaut Jenni Gibbons told AFP.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[6282,24322,14900,8208,2837,54473,6628,43300,6804,9876,20942,93117,7239,8036,37731,111,139,69,1118,90,193724,193725,11745,147,9433,18916,392,4477,35924,1361,165,63258,28251],"class_list":{"0":"post-370251","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-artemis","9":"tag-astronauts","10":"tag-crew","11":"tag-curiosity","12":"tag-during","13":"tag-flyby","14":"tag-historic","15":"tag-impacts","16":"tag-light","17":"tag-lunar","18":"tag-meteorite","19":"tag-meteorites","20":"tag-mission","21":"tag-moon","22":"tag-nasas","23":"tag-new-zealand","24":"tag-newzealand","25":"tag-nz","26":"tag-of","27":"tag-on","28":"tag-pinprick","29":"tag-piqued","30":"tag-rugged","31":"tag-science","32":"tag-scientists","33":"tag-sight","34":"tag-space","35":"tag-striking","36":"tag-surface","37":"tag-that","38":"tag-their","39":"tag-witnessed","40":"tag-witnesses"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}