By Laine Kowalski, U of A Office of Research and Partnerships - April 28, 2026
As NASA prepares to return humans to the moon for the first time since 1972, University of Arizona researchers are pushing beyond the seemingly undisturbed lunar surface to capture buried insights that will help lay the groundwork for future exploration.
Scientists at the U of A’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL), in partnership with seismic technology company Silicon Audio Inc. and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, have developed a compact seismometer suite designed to continuously measure seismic activity on the moon, from shallow moonquakes to the deepest ground vibrations.
NASA’s Lunar Environment Monitoring Station, or LEMS, consists of two seismometers, which will be deployed by astronauts expected to land on the moon under a future Artemis mission.
“LEMS is one small step toward building a deeper understanding of the moon, as humanity aims to leap beyond Earth’s surface once again,” said LEMS seismometer lead and co-investigator, Daniella Mendoza DellaGiustina, an LPL professor.
LEMS seismometer lead and co-investigator Daniella Mendoza DellaGiustina.
Photo by Kris Hanning, U of A Office of Research and Partnerships
LEMS lays the groundwork for future exploration
As planned, starting with Artemis IV, humans will land on the moon for the first time in more than 50 years and will serve as a stepping stone for NASA to send astronauts to Mars as part of the larger Artemis campaign.
The crew will deploy LEMS near the moon’s South Pole, which remains largely unexplored, burying the instruments under the loose, rocky material that makes up the lunar surface. LEMS will operate autonomously for at least two years, collecting continuous seismic data that will help scientists better understand the moon’s interior and how to sustain long-duration human operations on this potential moon base.
NASA recently outlined a three-phase initiative to establish the moon base, which would enable a sustained U.S. presence on the lunar surface. Assessing regional risks and safety concerns is a prerequisite for establishing a future, long-term human presence on the moon. Researchers must understand the frequency and intensity of moonquakes to determine whether a given site is suitable for infrastructure such as habitats, landing systems or long-term scientific installations. The seismometers will be sensitive enough to detect nearby surface activity, including human footsteps, offering a way to monitor interactions between astronauts and the environment.
For LEMS, a two-year operational lifetime is optimal. Continuous measurements over extended periods allow scientists to capture a wider range of seismic events and build a more complete picture of the moon’s behavior. Interest is growing within NASA to expand beyond a single seismic station towards creating a broader network of seismometers, which would improve the ability to locate and characterize seismic events around the entire moon.
Beyond immediate mission planning, the data collected by LEMS will contribute to broader efforts to learn more about lunar evolution. By refining models of the moon’s internal structures, scientists can better understand how rocky bodies form and change over time. Specifically, LEMS may enable scientists to refine models of the moon’s formation, which has long been debated within the astronomy community.
Seismic science on the moon
DellaGiustina, along with former program manager Hop Bailey and tech company Silicon Audio, developed an initial project idea in 2016 to create seismometers equipped for spaceflight. At the time, no such instrument existed domestically.
Now, their work is part of the broader LEMS collaboration led by Mehdi Benna at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, with NASA Goddard building and operating the fully integrated instrument suite. U of A assistant research professor Angela Marusiak serves as a LEMS co-investigator alongside DellaGiustina and Bailey, and Arizona associate research professor Veronica Bray supports science operations.
Over the last three years, DellaGiustina’s planetary instrument laboratory has optimized and re-designed the seismometers to withstand both the forces of spaceflight and the harsh lunar environment.
U of A LEMS seismometer lead systems engineer Dathon Golish examines one of the LEMS seismometers during the instrument’s testing phase.
Photo by Kris Hanning, U of A Office of Research and Partnerships
When the ground shifts on Earth during an earthquake, sensors measure that motion to record the planet’s activity and support early warning systems. Translating that concept for the moon requires rethinking many aspects of how a seismometer is built to effectively detect what’s called a moonquake.
“The configuration of two sets of identical sensors gives you something really interesting because you're able to reduce noise, which improves data quality by comparing signals from both seismometers,” said Dathon Golish, the U of A LEMS seismometer lead systems engineer focused on testing and development.
Each sensor consists of a weighted mass suspended on a spring. When seismic waves pass through the ground, the mass shifts. The amount of shifting is related to the acceleration of ground motion. Each seismometer will use three sensors oriented in different directions so that motion can be measured along three perpendicular axes, enabling researchers to reconstruct how seismic waves propagate through the lunar surface.
“These sensors are capable of detecting very small vibrations, even as small as someone setting a coffee cup down on a table,” DellaGiustina said. “They're extraordinarily sensitive.”
The seismometers are designed to capture signals from a range of sources, including deep tidal forces caused by Earth’s gravitational pull on the moon, shallow moonquakes generated as the moon continues to cool and contract overtime and even impacts from micrometeorites striking the surface.
Unlike Earth, the moon does not have plate tectonics, but it is still seismically active. As seismic waves travel through different materials, they change speed and behavior. Scientists can then use information about these waves to infer properties of the lunar crust and its deeper interior layers.
What makes LEMS unique is where it will be deployed. The 1960s Apollo-era instruments, including seismometers, were placed on the near side of the moon. LEMS, however, will operate at the lunar South Pole to determine how seismic hazards and activity there might compare to other regions.
Transforming a terrestrial seismometer into a spaceflight-ready instrument required extensive redesign and precision in partnership with Silicon Audio. These sensors must withstand the intense vibrations and accelerations of launch and survive temperature shifts of 200 degrees Fahrenheit on the lunar surface, where it can get as cold as –256º F in the southern region.
“We had to be very careful about how we selected our materials because when something gets hot, various components within the instrument will expand, and when it gets cold, they’ll contract,” DellaGiustina said. “We have to ensure these components are not expanding and contracting at such different rates that something ends up moving inside the sensor, which could throw off the alignment.”
Even glues used in the instruments had to be evaluated to ensure they would still adhere in the cold. Testing and refinement took two years, including the development of prototype models to resolve issues before the final flight versions were built.
Arizona’s legacy on the lunar surface
For the U of A, LEMS represents both a forward-facing effort towards humanity’s future on the moon and a continuation of the university’s longstanding lunar legacy.
“Engineers like Dathon continue to work on spaceflight program after program and have learned from people before him who passed down that knowledge,” DellaGiustina said. “Even though things change with time, maintaining that continuity of expertise is key to sustaining our legacy that really was born out of the Apollo era.”
Researchers at LPL played a critical role in the 1960 Ranger and Apollo missions, producing lunar surface maps that helped guide astronauts to safe landing sites and contributing instruments, including lunar magnetometers designed by Charles Sonett. That history established the laboratory as an integral player in planetary instrumentation, a role it continues to maintain through decades of mission involvement. Now, the development of LEMS brings Arizona back to the lunar surface, alongside technological advances and a renewed national focus on returning to the moon.
Both seismometers will undergo performance testing at Sandia National Laboratories before being transported to NASA Goddard.
“It's incredible to know that something that we’ve helped build is going to be deployed on the moon,” Golish said. “I'll be able to look up and see where it is every single day, and I think that's pretty special.”
LEMS seismometer and mission patch displayed together
Photo by Kris Hanning, U of A Office of Research and Partnerships
Research & Partnership - Seismometers Re-designed by U of A Will Measure Moonquakes During a Future Artemis Mission