Jayden Peirano

May 18, 2023

Period 5
Ms.Valle

NASA Langley research center + Why NASA wants to go back to the moon

Some of the equipment+buildings NASA Langley uses

The first equipment would be the 14- by 22-foot Subsonic Tunnel. The Subsonic

tunnel simulates aerodynamic conditions at speeds up to 235 miles per hour. It is used

to test things like stability, control, acoustics, and basic airflow surveys.)

The second building would be the FDRF (Flight dynamics research facility.) This

facility is a highly versatile and cost effective vertical wind tunnel for conducting

flight-dynamics and other research on all manner of atmospheric flight vehicles.

The third piece of equipment would be the Vacuum Spheres. Vacuum spheres are part

of NASA Langley’s hypersonic wind tunnel facilities. Hypersonic wind tunnels use

pressure differentials between high pressure bottles and vacuum spheres to create air

flow. Vacuum spheres are used to test Scramjets.

The fourth building is the Katherine G Johnson Computational Research Facility.

This facility is used to process, analyze, and store data in every area, such as flight,

earth science, and space exploration. The facility can also run simulations for

computational fluid dynamics (CFD.)

The fifth building is the advanced manufacturing facility. In there, they fabricate

metallic and composite test articles for a variety of aerospace applications. Using
Jayden Peirano
May 18, 2023
Period 5
Ms.Valle

advanced systems, engineers and researchers can readily evaluate and test new and

unique designs in-house.

The sixth and final building is the Flight Research hangar. There, the rendezvous

docking simulator was installed in 1963 to train the Gemini and Apollo astronauts.

Today, the Langley hangar specializes in flight and earth science research.

“Why Nasa wants to go back to the moon” Article

The Article “Why NASA wants to go back to the moon” starts the first paragraph

talking about when on September 12, 1962, U.S president John F. Kennedy talks about

his plan to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Kennedy told 40,000

people at rice university that, “We choose the moon because that challenge is one that

we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone and one which we intend to

win.”

The next main thing in the article was how NASA wants to develop a sustainable

human presence on the moon, meaning missions would last several weeks. Their goal

is to better understand how to prepare for a multi round trip to mars. NASA wants to

learn how to use the resources present on the surface. For example, water in the form

of ice, (which has been confirmed to exist on the lunar south pole) could be

transformed into rocket fuel by cracking it into its separate hydrogen and oxygen

atoms.
Jayden Peirano
May 18, 2023
Period 5
Ms.Valle

NASA is also working on the development of portable nuclear fission systems. A

big part of the artemis program is the construction of a space station in orbit around

the moon, called gateway, which will serve as a relay before the trip to Mars.

The article goes on to talk about how apart from Mars, another reason to settle

on the moon is to do so before the chinese. They plan to send taikonauts to the moon

by 2030. The article states “We don’t want China suddenly getting there and saying

‘This is our exclusive territory.” NASA boss Bill Nelson had said.

During the apollo misson, the samples NASA collected changed the way they

view their solar system. From the Apollo mission, Jessica Meir exoects thurther

scientific breakthroughs just like during the Apollo era.