New Brunswick student chosen to help NASA pick new landing sites on the moon

<p>FREDERICTON – A University of New Brunswick graduate student who is studying the geology of planets has been chosen to help NASA evaluate future landing sites on the moon.</p> <p>Tiziana Trabucchi is one of 10 people chosen from around the world to spend 10 weeks this summer at the Johnson Space Center in Houston as part of the Constellation Lunar Exploration Program.</p> <p>”It’s really fantastic to have been chosen for this program,” Trabucchi said in an interview Tuesday from her home in Truro, N.S.</p> <p>She is one of two Canadian students selected for the work program. The other is Myriam Lemelin from the University of Sherbrooke.</p> <p>Trabucchi has a master’s degree in geology and is working on her PhD in Martian geology.</p> <p>She was a young child when NASA launched its last manned mission to the moon in 1972, but said she has developed an excitement for the program and the need to return.</p> <p>”One goal can be to better understand our planet, but there can also be another more economical reason related to resources,” she said.</p> <p>John Spray, director of the Planetary and Space Science Centre at UNB, said much has been learned about the moon over the last 40 years through the use of sophisticated orbiters.</p> <p>”They have been able to determine that the moon is not as simple geologically as we had thought from the Apollo missions,” he said. “We’re embracing new views of the moon.”</p> <p>Spray said if humans are to return to the moon for extended lengths of time, they will have to be able to live off the land.</p> <p>”Every kilogram shipped from the Earth to the moon costs a tremendous amount of money,” he said. “If we can get materials from the moon and process them there, that will save a tremendous amount of money.”</p> <p>Spray said the unique training provided at UNB has prepared Trabucchi for the project with NASA.</p> <p>”We are one of the few centres in the world that specializes in impact cratering,” he said.</p> <p>While most of the Earth’s craters are no longer visible, he said the moon presents one of the best environments to study impact craters.</p> <p>Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version had misspelled Trabucchi.</p>