The Visual Experience at the Lunar South Pole
NASA’s Artemis Campaign intends to return humans to the moon in the coming years, with the intent to explore and establish permanent human presence there. The targeted landing and habitation sites are at the Lunar South Pole (LSP). These sites experience very different lighting conditions from those in the Lunar middle latitudes, where the Apollo landings occurred, which typically are in full sun for half the lunar day (approximately twenty-nine earth days). At the poles, the sun is never high in the sky. It never gets above seven degrees in elevation, at the sites being considered, and it is more often only one or two degrees above the horizon. As a result, the visual experience for the astronauts who explore and live there will be very different from that which the Apollo astronauts encountered. Those earlier missions were planned such that the sun was far above the astronauts, for most or all of their time on the surface. In contrast, at the LSP, the sun will often be in their field of view, and the shadows will be extremely long, when they face away from the sun. Their visual systems will be stressed by high intensity and glare and then often need to adjust to extreme darkness. Since the human eye does not make such shifts rapidly, highly capable lighting systems must be carefully designed. The NASA Engineering & Safety Center (NESC) is studying the problem, to characterize the extremes that astronauts will encounter and help programs characterize the lighting systems and glare protection that will be needed for safe surface operations. This presentation will describe the natural environments and the attempts to simulate the visual experience. It will also explain the risks derived from the lighting environment, for the mission goals currently planned and the kinds of new capabilities in simulation and surface equipment that will support those mission goals.
Speaker Biographies:
Charles Dischinger - Charlie joined the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in 1994, as his third career. He was fortunate enough to be married to someone NASA needed. He has worked on human factors design for the International Space Station, for EVA and IVA systems. He was a systems engineer for Gravity Probe B. He worked on requirements development for the Constellation Program and at Headquarters, in the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance. On his return to MSFC, he became the team lead for the Human Engineering Assessment Team, and then the deputy to the Technical Fellow for Human Factors. Throughout his NASA tenure, he has worked on some of the most interesting efforts imaginable, in which he has been propped up and made to look presentable by many of the smartest people in the world; don’t think he doesn’t know it and appreciate it.
Mary K. Kaiser - After 30 years as a research psychologist in the Human Systems Integration Division at NASA Ames Research Center, Mary K. Kaiser now serves as a consultant to the Human Factors Technical Discipline Team of the NASA Engineering & Safety Center. Mary received her Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Virginia, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan in applied experimental psychology before joining Ames in 1985. The author of over sixty articles and chapters on perceptual psychology and human factors and a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, Mary also served as an associate editor of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance (1998 – 2009) and as Project Scientist for NASA’s Space Human Factors Engineering Project (2009 – 2013). She holds two patents for innovative display technologies. Mary lives with her husband, Franz, near Portland, Oregon. Their two sons had the audacity to grow up and move out of the house.
