NASA Volunteers Help Track Lunar Meteor Flashes from Earth

During NASA’s Artemis II mission in early April, astronauts observed brief flashes on the lunar surface caused by meteoroid impacts. Simultaneously, volunteers participating in the NASA-funded Impact Flash project tracked these flashes from Earth using their own telescopes and submitted videos to scientists for analysis.

Ben Fernando, a planetary scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and lead of the Impact Flash project, expressed gratitude for the volunteer contributions. “We were incredibly grateful for the videos people submitted,” he said. Collecting observations from multiple locations allows researchers to better determine the characteristics and origins of the impacting meteoroids and to study the resulting craters.

With the Artemis II astronauts having returned to Earth, their in-space observations have paused; however, the Impact Flash project continues to seek volunteers equipped with telescopes of four inches in diameter or larger and video recording capabilities. Continuous monitoring helps refine estimates of lunar impact rates and track how they change over time.

Why it matters

Tracking meteoroid impacts on the Moon informs scientists about current and evolving impact threats to its surface. The data also assists ongoing and future lunar exploration efforts by improving understanding of surface hazards and impact frequency, critical for mission planning and astronaut safety.

Future lunar interior studies

The project team plans to use impact flash data to study moonquakes—seismic tremors on the Moon similar to earthquakes—which reveal information about its internal structure. Fernando noted that upcoming lunar seismometers will measure ground shaking, and correlating these measurements with impact flash data will help pinpoint moonquake sources and enhance knowledge of the Moon’s interior.

Collaboration with amateur astronomy networks

The Impact Flash project partnered with various amateur astronomy groups during Artemis II, including NASA-funded networks like Kilo-nova Catchers, Exoplanet Watch, UNITE, Night Sky Network, and the Lunar Impact Flashes project based at Italy’s National Research Council (IMATI-CNR). This global collaboration expands the coverage of lunar impact observations.

Volunteers interested in contributing can find instructions and submit their observations at the Impact Flash website maintained by the University of Maryland: https://www.geodes.umd.edu/impactflash.

The project acknowledges support from the Institute for Applied Mathematics and Information Technologies-Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (IMATI-CNR, Italy), as well as data curation contributions from Aberystwyth University (UK) and the Technical University of Munich (Germany). IMATI-CNR receives funding from the Italian Space Agency in support of the European Space Agency’s Lunar Meteoroid Impacts Observer mission.

Read more Space & NASA stories on Goka World News.