en.Wedoany.com Reported - The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has selected Mission Space through an Announcement of Collaborative Opportunity (ACO) to collaborate with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, to advance the development of the LEEMR (Lunar Electrostatic Environment Monitor), a compact lunar dust and surface charging monitoring instrument. This project aims to extend Mission Space's operations from orbital space weather intelligence to lunar surface environment monitoring.

This ACO effort aligns with NASA's priorities for accelerating lunar surface capabilities, encompassing sustained lunar operations, commercial lunar infrastructure, and more frequent surface missions. LEEMR is specifically designed for the conditions lunar assets will face on the surface, providing real-time measurements of surface charge accumulation, dust density variations, and dust charging levels around landers, rovers, habitats, tools, power systems, and surface stations. Dust behavior varies with changes in local electric fields, solar wind interactions, landing activities, rover movements, astronaut activities, and nearby charged structures.

Mission Space is developing LEEMR based on existing space weather hardware and software, leveraging proven electronics and autonomous measurement components from the ZOHAR radiation monitoring payload to reduce development risk and mature the flight-ready instrument design. Mary Glaz, CEO and co-founder of the company, stated that lunar missions send landers, rovers, payloads, power systems, and personnel to the surface, and they need data to design missions and provide real-time warnings for actual conditions such as asset location, surface activity, dust behavior, charging, and radiation variations around hardware. LEEMR is seen as the first step in Mission Space's effort to build a real-time lunar surface space environment platform.

The company currently operates proprietary space weather instruments in orbit, providing localized warning and monitoring products for satellite operators, government agencies, defense users, and future lunar infrastructure. NASA's ACO selection extends this roadmap from orbital space weather intelligence to lunar surface environment monitoring.