Swiss instrument will travel on a NASA moon mission
A mass spectrometer designed at the University of Bern will be used for chemical analysis of moon rocks.
The Laser Ablation Ionization Mass Spectrometer (LIMS) will be heading to the moon as early as 2027 as part of the NASA Commercial Lunar Payoad Services (CLPS) initiative, the university announced on Thursday.
Landing in the south polar region of the moon will enable LIMS to carry out stationary measurements on site. According to researchers, this region is particularly interesting because certain elements occur there whose isotopes make it possible to determine the age of the material.
+ Switzerland and the first Moon landing
The university was already involved in NASA’s Apollo moon mission in the 1960s with a solar wind sail. When Buzz Aldrin became the second man to get out of the lunar module on July 21, 1969, the first thing he did was unfurl the Swiss-made solar wind sail and stick it into the lunar soil, according to the university.
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
More
European nations snub Swiss-made weapons over Ukraine restrictions
More
Swiss reject biodiversity and pension reform proposals
More
Switzerland now has a Professor of Gender Medicine. She’s here to stay.
More
Six lessons from Swiss voters’ rejection of occupational pension reform
More
Today in Switzerland
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.