NASA prepares new lunar dust and seismic studies for Artemis IV

by Clarence Oxford
Washington DC (SPX) Dec 05, 2025

NASA has selected two science instruments for astronauts to deploy on the lunar surface during the Artemis IV mission to the Moon's south polar region, with the goal of improving understanding of the local environment to support future human and robotic exploration to the Moon and on to Mars.

Nicky Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said the Apollo era showed that as missions travel farther from Earth, they become more reliant on science to protect and sustain human life on other worlds, and described the Artemis IV surface instruments as part of a broader effort to build a practical guide for keeping spacecraft and crews safe as they return to the Moon and prepare for Mars expeditions.

One of the selected investigations is DUSTER, short for DUst and plaSma environmenT survEyoR, which will fly as a suite of instruments on the Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform, or MAPP, a small rover to be provided by Lunar Outpost, a company based in Golden, Colorado that develops and operates robotic systems for space missions.

Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan highlighted how lunar dust complicates long-term exploration because it clings to surfaces and is abrasive, and DUSTER is designed to address these concerns by measuring dust and plasma conditions at the Artemis IV landing site and tracking how they change in response to human activity, rover traverses, and lander operations, including liftoff.

The DUSTER measurements will characterize the Moon's natural dust and plasma environment and reveal how the presence of astronauts and hardware modifies that setting, information that will be used to reduce risks to crew health and surface systems. The DUSTER investigation is led by Xu Wang of the University of Colorado Boulder under a contract valued at 24.8 million dollars over three years.

The second investigation, the South Pole Seismic Station (SPSS), is a surface seismometer package intended to characterize the lunar interior and the seismic environment at the south pole so scientists can better understand geologic processes that shape planetary bodies and mission planners can account for shaking in future surface operations.

SPSS will help determine the current rate at which meteorite impacts strike the Moon, monitor the seismic conditions that could influence how astronauts work and how systems perform on the surface, and use the resulting data to infer properties of the Moon's deep interior.

As part of the SPSS campaign, the Artemis IV crew will conduct an active-source experiment using a mechanical "thumper" to generate controlled seismic energy to probe the shallow subsurface structure around the landing site in detail. The SPSS instrument is led by Mark Panning of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California under a three-year award worth 25 million dollars.

Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, said these two investigations will be placed on the Moon by human explorers to tackle science goals that NASA and the broader research community have identified as high priorities, and noted that the instrument teams will be integrated into the Artemis IV Science Team.

The DUSTER and SPSS payloads have been approved for continued development for a potential flight opportunity on Artemis IV, with final decisions on their placement in the mission manifest to be made later.