‘Like the Moon’: Astronauts flock to Spanish isle to train

Kneeling on the sting of a deep crater, astronaut Alexander Gerst makes use of a chisel to gather a pattern of volcanic rock which he fastidiously places inside a white plastic bag.

Gerst shouldn’t be on the Moon, even when it appears to be like prefer it. He’s in the midst of Los Volcanes Pure Park on the island of Lanzarote in Spain’s Canary Islands, off the northwest coast of Africa.

With its blackened lava fields, craters and volcanic tubes, Lanzarote’s geology could be uncannily just like that of the Moon and Mars—a lot in order that the European Area Company (ESA) and NASA have for years been sending astronauts to the island to coach.

“This place has lavas which might be very, similar to those that we discover on the Moon,” Gerst, a 46-year-old German astronaut with the ESA, informed AFP.

He stated the island was “a novel coaching floor”.

Gerst, who has accomplished two missions on the Worldwide Area Station, is one in all a couple of dozen astronauts who’ve taken half within the ESA’s Pangaea coaching course in Lanzarote over the previous decade.

Named after the traditional supercontinent, Pangaea seeks to provide astronauts in addition to space engineers and geologists the abilities wanted for expeditions to different planets.

Trainees discover ways to determine rock samples and accumulate them, do on-the-spot DNA evaluation of microorganisms, and talk their findings again to mission control.

“Right here, they’re put into the sector to expertise the exploration of a terrain, which is one thing they must do on the Moon,” stated Francesco Sauro, the technical director of the course.

Six-year eruption

Gerst stated the Pangaea coaching course, which he has simply accomplished, helps put together astronauts to work in a distant setting on their very own.

“If we run into an issue, we’ve to unravel it ourselves,” he stated.

He accomplished the Pangaea coaching together with Stephanie Wilson, one in all NASA’s most senior astronauts. Each are doable candidates for NASA’s subsequent crewed Moon missions.

Named for the goddess who was Apollo’s twin sister in historical Greek mythology, NASA’s Artemis program goals to return astronauts to the Moon’s floor as early as 2025, although many consultants imagine that timeframe would possibly slip.

Twelve astronauts walked on the Moon throughout six Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972, the one spaceflights but to position people on the lunar surface.

NASA and the ESA additionally repeatedly use Lanzarote’s panorama of twisted mounds of solidified lava to check Mars Rovers—distant managed autos designed to journey on the floor of the Purple Planet.

Lanzarote’s distinctive geography stems from a volcanic eruption that started in 1730 and lasted six years, spewing ash and lava over giant swathes of land.

Thought-about one of many biggest volcanic cataclysms in recorded historical past, the eruption devastated over 200 sq. kilometers (77 sq. miles) of terrain—a couple of quarter of the island which is at the moment residence to round 156,000 folks.

‘See far-off’

Whereas there are different volcanic areas equivalent to Hawaii that is also used for astronaut coaching, Lanzarote has the benefit that it has little vegetation because of its desert-like local weather.

“You’ve a number of several types of volcanic rocks in Lanzarote. And they’re uncovered. You do not have timber,” stated Pangaea undertaking chief Loredana Bessone.

“You possibly can see far-off, as if you happen to had been on the Moon,” she informed AFP.

The Canary Islands is making an enormous contribution to space exploration in one other method too. The island of La Palma is residence to one of many world’s largest optical telescopes.

Situated on a peak, the Nice Canary Telescope is ready to spot among the faintest, most distant objects within the Universe.

La Palma was chosen as the location for the telescope due to its cloud-free skies and comparatively low mild air pollution.

© 2022 AFP