Space: what is this “exciting new discovery” to be announced by NASA on Monday?

A “major reveal” is about to be announced. As NASA reported on Wednesday, October 21, in a statement, an “exciting new discovery” is due to be released on Monday, October 26, 6 p.m. see you Monday to really know what NASA has in store for us, the space agency has already given some clues here.

This discovery, made possible thanks to SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, an airborne infrared telescope, will make it possible to “better know the Moon and deep space”, can we read in the press release. It is actually a Boeing 747 equipped with a revolutionary telescope, used to study the atmosphere of planets.

This exploration is part of the space agency’s Artemis program, which aims to deposit a crew, including the first woman, on the lunar surface by 2024. The objective is to stay there for a long time.

Four people from the agency will participate in the press conference. Three of them, Paul Hertz, Jacob Bleacher and Naseem Rangwala, are senior executives representing NASA’s astrophysics division and its directorate of human exploration and operations missions, and the Sofia mission.

The fourth person is Casey Honniball, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. According to the Nasa Watch website, he has conducted extensive research in recent years on how we could find water on the Moon. One of his reports also highlights a new technique, which can be carried out via Sofia, to detect real water molecules on the “satellite”.