Ontario professor part of NASA’s geology team for Artemis III moon mission
Global News
Gordon Osinski has spent the last two decades studying craters left behind by meteorites.
Gordon Osinski has spent the last two decades studying craters left behind by meteorites.
The analysis of planetary geology has taken the Ontario university professor around the world and will now see him work on the NASA team that will develop the lunar surface science plan for the first people to walk on the moon in more than 50 years.
Osinski is the sole Canadian on the geology team recently announced by NASA for the Artemis III mission — the experts will plan the science tasks to be carried out by astronauts expected to land near the south pole of the moon as early as December 2025.
“It still feels pretty surreal, to be honest,” Osinski, an Earth sciences professor at Western University, said in a phone interview. “It’s still sinking in.”
NASA is planning several Artemis missions that will take humans back to the moon and explore more of the lunar surface with the goal of using the findings to inform an eventual mission to Mars.
The Artemis II mission — which includes Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — will send a crew of four into space as early as November next year for a figure-8 manoeuvre around the far side of the moon. It will mark the first time any human has ventured so far from Earth.
The Artemis III mission, which Osinski is supporting, will be the first human-crewed mission to the lunar south pole and a return to the moon for the first time since 1972.
The geology team Osinski is a part of will plan astronauts’ scientific tasks during their moonwalks, which will include field geology studies, the collection of lunar samples, imagery and scientific measurements. The samples and data collected will help deepen the understanding of fundamental planetary processes, NASA has said.