DIX Planetary Science Seminar

Abstract: Every ten years, the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey sets the goals for NASA's exploration of the Solar System. The recent Decadal Survey—"Origins, Worlds, and Life"—included a lot of exciting missions, but few were as surprising as Endurance: a concept for a long-range rover to traverse 2,000 kilometers across the gigantic South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin that dominates the farside of the Moon. SPA is the largest and oldest (undisputed) impact basin on the Moon, and provides a window into Solar System chronology, planetary evolution, and more. Endurance would accomplish this science by collecting a large mass of samples along the traverse and deliver those samples to Artemis astronauts for return to Earth. In this presentation, I'll share how this concept has come to be, the exciting science enabled by it, and the long road ahead of it.