On Monday, the South Korean Ministry of Science and ICT announced that a lunar space environment monitor (LUSEM) developed by the state-run Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) is ready to join the unmanned space mission of the U.S. moon exploration Artemis program. The payload will be sent to the headquarters of Intuitive Machines Inc. in Houston, Texas, and will be loaded on the Nova-C lander in 2024 as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS).
LUSEM is a sensor that detects high-energy particles with 50 keV, or kiloelectron volts, on the moon’s surface, and is one of four science payloads that KARI will send to the lunar surface. The other three are the Lunar Vehicle Radiation Dosimeter (LVRAD), the Lunar Surface MAGnetometer (LSMAG) and the GrainCams for dust particles. It is expected to be installed on Nova-C early next year, and then launched on Space X’s Falcon 9 launch vehicle in late 2024.