Moon Mission
Story: Rob Biertempfel
Like every other kid in America on July 20, 1969, Ronald Rosemeier was awestruck as he watched the grainy, black-and-white images of astronaut Neil Armstrong’s one small step flicker on a television screen. The memory of that historic event still inspires him. Fifty-five years later, Rosemeier is trying to take his own giant leap from a western Pennsylvania coalfield to the surface of the moon—and beyond.
Last December, a spectrometer that Rosemeier helped create was nestled at the tip of a thirteen-ton rocket aimed at the moon. The device was stowed along with other scientific instruments, five micro-robots built by the Mexican space program, a small chunk of rock from the summit of Mount Everest, and the cremated remains of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.
Those diverse payloads—including the Near-Infrared Volatiles Spectrometer System (NIRVSS) that Rosemeier’s company built to search for signs of life in space—were selected to be part of the Peregrine Mission, America’s first lunar landing since the early 1970s. It was an important first step toward NASA’s goal of establishing a permanent, manned lunar base. “Before NASA returns humans to the moon, we are sending lots of science and technology,” a NASA promotional video states.
The mission was supposed to launch on Christmas Eve but was delayed by last-minute complications. “No big deal,” Rosemeier said with cheerful optimism. “The good part is, we’re still going to be on the moon! That’s the main thing.”
Rosemeier, P’70, C’74, was an undergraduate student at Saint Vincent College when the United States sent its last manned Apollo mission to the moon in 1972.
He grew up in Cokeburg, Pennsylvania, a town of roughly 700 residents in Washington County. The son and grandson of coal miners, Rosemeier went to Saint Vincent Prep intending to become a priest. Those plans changed when Rosemeier became entranced by science.
Dr. Michael Gainer, who taught at Saint Vincent College for thirty-five years and was chair of the Physics Department, turned Rosemeier on to physics. With Gainer’s help, Rosemeier got into Johns Hopkins University, where he earned his PhD and met his wife, Dr. Jolanta Soos. In 1980, Rosemeier founded Brimrose Corporation, a research-and-development firm based in Hunt Valley, Maryland, about a half-hour north of Baltimore.
“I was kind of lucky on all this stuff coming together,” Rosemeier said. “Saint Vincent was very instrumental in getting me to do all of this.”
In 2019, NASA told top R&D companies it needed a device that could survive the harsh conditions of space travel and collect evidence of water and/or biological material throughout the solar system. It chose the NIRVSS (pronounced “nervous”), which uses a component designed twenty-five years ago by Soos, Brimrose’s chief technology officer.
Brimrose’s spectrometer identifies materials by measuring specific wavelengths of light. The core technology has been used by the food industry, pharmaceutical companies, and defense contractors. Now, it’s on track to go to the moon—and someday, perhaps, Mars—to search for the building blocks of life.
Ronald Rosemeier (center) examines a spectrometer with fellow Brimrose scientists
PHOTO COURTESY OF RON ROSEMEIER.
“We designed [this specific spectrometer] before anybody else had it, but it was so new back then that everybody kind of scratched their heads and went, ‘Oh, well, um...,’” Rosemeier said. “Twenty-five years later, it’s finally coming to life for all these new applications.”
The Peregrine Mission was rescheduled for January 8, 2024.
Rosemeier watched with excitement as the Vulcan Centaur rocket roared off a launching pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida, bound for the final frontier. However, the mission had a premature and fiery conclusion.
Shortly after liftoff, the spacecraft was crippled by mechanical issues and a fuel leak. The moon landing was scrubbed, and the Peregrine lurched through space for a few days and collected whatever data it could.
On January 18, the lander and everything on board burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere over the South Pacific Ocean. “Not so lucky on this mission,” Rosemeier said, still sounding resolute after the back-to-back disappointments. “We’ve got to keep pushing forward.”
Some of the items on the Peregrine, such as Roddenberry’s ashes, were meant to be jettisoned into space before the spacecraft reached the moon. The rest was supposed to land aboard the Peregrine on an ancient lava flow called the Bay of Stickiness, or Sinus Viscositatis.
A stationary drill would have brought up soil samples before the NIRVSS went to work. The NIRVSS spectrometer can differentiate between water and its molecular cousin, hydroxyl—either form would be useful for someday making rocket fuel at a moon base. The NIRVSS also can detect different types of minerals and ices that might be present in the lunar soil, such as frozen carbon dioxide, ammonia, and methane.
NASA will include the NIRVISS on two more of its lunar missions.
“Saint Vincent was very instrumental in getting me to do all of this.
It’s like I’ll be on the moon forever.”
The next one is set to launch in November. This time, the NIRVSS will be attached to the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER), which, unlike the stationary Peregrine, will roam and explore for water at multiple spots on the south pole of the moon. Instruments on the VIPER likely will be fully operational only for about two weeks before the lunar sunset, when the temperature drops to minus-380 degrees Fahrenheit. However, that should be ample time for the spectrometer to gather and record all the data it needs.
“Our instrument is very good at detecting water and also if there’s any kind of microbiology,” Rosemeier said. “So, it can [determine], is there life there? Was there ever life there? Are there any kind of molecular compounds left over? We’ll be able to tell instantaneously. If we find that there’s a biological structure there, that would be a game-changer.”
Astrobotic, a Pittsburgh-based company founded by Carnegie Mellon University graduate John Thornton, was contracted by NASA to oversee the Peregrine and VIPER missions. Successfully landing even an unmanned spacecraft on the moon is a high-risk venture. Only four countries have accomplished the feat, and, as of January, no private company had ever done so.
The information the NIRVSS gathered before the Peregrine burned up at the end of its truncated mission, along with the experience of staging the mission, could still be helpful down the line. “We didn’t make it [to the moon], but we still got some good stuff from the mission,” said Vladimir Stanislavsky, Brimrose’s chief operating officer. “It’s a learning curve for future missions. We also are developing the same technology to go to Mars in the near future. So, there are good things ahead for us.”
After successfully operating a rover on the moon in 2023, the government of India now is aiming for Mars. The India Space Research Organization (ISRO) had an unmanned probe in Mars’ orbit from 2014 to 2022 mapping the surface of the Red Planet for potential landing spots. The ISRO already has asked Brimrose to produce a spectrometer for the Mars landing mission.
“It’s in the early stages [of planning],” Rosemeier said. “We’re building some devices for [ISRO], and they’ll start the testing. I think probably it will be another three years or so.”
In the meantime, planning for the next moon mission continues. The names of Rosemeier and his wife, along with everyone else at Brimrose who worked on the project, are engraved on the outside of the box that will hold the NIRVSS onto the VIPER. When the rover runs out of power, the box will become a sort of eternal monument on the dusty, barren surface.
“It’s like I’ll be on the moon forever,” Rosemeier said with a chuckle. “A thousand years from now, they’ll look at it and go, ‘Hey, who was this guy?’ It’s fun stuff.”