In upcoming missions, Pittsburgh will be planting a flag on the moon
Pittsburgh will be planting a flag on the moon in America’s upcoming missions to our only natural satellite.
It won’t be a literal flag or a Terrible Towel. Rather, Pittsburgh will be playing a part in the planned moon missions in the months and years ahead, thanks to the unmanned Peregrine spacecraft that will be launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and travel to the moon at a yet-to-be-determined date. The craft was built at the Astrobiotic facility on Pittsburgh’s North Side, and visitors to the Moonshot Museum, located inside Astrobiotic, can watch as spacecraft are being built.
“For me, it’s very exciting,” said Mike Hennessy, manager of learning and programs at the museum, in a May 4 talk at Bethel Park Public Library. “There’s nowhere else you can go and look at an actual spacecraft under construction.”
Hennessy, a Bethel Park resident who has stints at the Carnegie Science Center and Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia under his belt, pointed out that Pittsburgh has a long and storied link to moon missions above and beyond the upcoming Peregrine flight. James Irwin, who walked on the moon in the Apollo 15 mission in 1971, grew up in the Beechview neighborhood, and Pittsburgh companies like Alcoa and Westinghouse crafted material that were used in the Apollo spacecraft during the program’s duration. Also, Jack Kinzler, who grew up in Pittsburgh, was a NASA engineer during the Apollo era and devised a way to make a U.S. flag “fly” on the moon’s surface.
“It’s our turn to build on that,” Hennessy said.
The last time man set foot on the moon was December 1972, with the Apollo 17 mission. No other country has taken on a moon trip in the half-century since, though successful unmanned journeys have happened. NASA is rekindling its lunar ambitions, however, through the Artemis program that is aiming to return a crew to the moon – or, at least, the moon’s orbit – by the end of 2024. The crew of Artemis II will travel around the moon and come back to Earth in a 10-day trip. It will pave the way for future missions that will have astronauts once again putting boots on the moon’s surface and, it’s hoped, creating an infrastructure there that can be used for later trips to Mars.
“It could be a great jumping-off point for going to Mars,” Hennessy said. “We can take pride in the fact that Pittsburgh is leading the way back.”
The Moonshot Museum is open Thursday through Monday each week and is billed as Pennsylvania’s first space museum and the sole museum on the planet to focus on what its site calls “career and community readiness for the 21st century space industry.” It’s a nonprofit operated by the Astrobiotic Foundation. Additional details can be found at moonshotmuseum.org.