Elizabeth Bass
2 dispatches · Potrillo Volcanic Field
Day 5: The Astronauts’ Way
On the final field day, Apollo 17 moonwalker Harrison Schmitt returned to Kilbourne Hole, where he had trained 45 years earlier, to assess the instruments that future lunar crews might carry. He and active astronaut Butch Wilmore both pressed the RIS4E team on the same concern: efficiency, and the cost of wasted seconds on another world.
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A caravan of journalists descended on Kilbourne Hole, New Mexico, in June 2017 to cover a NASA-funded field test unlike any other. The RIS4E team, more than 30 scientists from 10 institutions, spent 10 days in a volcanic crater that doubles as a moonscape, running simulated spacewalks with NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore and testing handheld instruments that could one day guide explorers on the Moon or Mars.
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