Plasma spectrometer delivered for moon mission

Southwest Research Institute has delivered a plasma spectrometer for integration into a lunar lander as part of NASA’s Lunar Vertex investigation, scheduled to commence next year. The target site is the Reiner Gamma region on the moon’s nearside, a mysterious area known to have a local magnetic field. The SwRI-developed Magnetic Anomaly Plasma Spectrometer (MAPS) will study the interaction of the solar wind with surface materials on the moon, aiming to understand the origin of the sinuous patterns of bright and dark soil, known as lunar swirls, that correspond with anomalous regions of magnetic rocks.