The Year’s Most Audacious Private Space Exploration Plans

From Wired.com:  The Year’s Most Audacious Private Space Exploration Plans

It has been a remarkable and exciting year for commercial spaceflight companies.
Private asteroid mining! Commercial trips to the moon! Mars settlements! We barely had time to catch our breath from the last secret organization announcement when suddenly some other team was cropping up and declaring a bold new adventure in space.
“You had the unveiling of these really audacious business plans that at first blush you would dismiss as impossible,” said journalist and aerospace analyst Jeff Foust, editor and publisher of the space-industry-watching The Space Review. “But when you look at both the technical and financial pedigree of the people backing these systems, you step back and say, ‘Well, maybe there’s something here.’”
Many of these new companies have experts at their helms, founded or run by former NASA engineers and veterans of the spaceflight community. Others showed off their deep entrepreneurial pockets and touted the potential profits to be made in space.
So how did 2012 turn into the year of private space? Perhaps the most important factor was the trailblazing success of SpaceX, a commercial rocket business started by entrepreneur and PayPal founder Elon Musk. This year, the company conducted two launches to the International Space Station using their Falcon 9 vehicle, with the second mission bringing supplies and helping prove that SpaceX was on the path to ferrying astronauts.
The company is already planning their next rocket, the enormous Falcon Heavy, for launch in 2013 and recently won important contracts with the U.S. military to deliver hardware to space. With all these notches on his space belt, Musk is no doubt already eyeing the perfect ridge for his retirement home on Mars.
Contributing influences to 2012’s commercial space focus include an aimless NASA. Though it saw spectacular successes such as the Mars Curiosity rover landing, the agency is still wrestling with frozen budgets and a deeply divided Congress that disagrees on its overarching mission. Alongside NASA’s existential crisis was the aftermath of the second dot-com boom, which created a crop of young, sci-fi-crazy tycoons.
“When you give these Silicon Valley guys a billion dollars,” said astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell of Harvard, who tracks rocket launches, “Their first thought is ‘Cool, now I can have my own space program.’”
Just in case you are having trouble telling the Planetary Resources apart from the Golden Spikes, Wired presents a gallery of the year's most impressive, daring, and wild business plans from commercial companies. We also talked to a small handful of spaceflight experts to get their take on which of the big dreams will pan out and which will burn out.
“I don’t expect them all to succeed, but I don’t expect them all to fail,” said space lawyer Michael Listner, founder of Space Law & Policy Solutions. Taken together, the companies’ ambitions underscore just how much times have changed. “About 10 years ago, if you presented one of these plans, people would have looked at you like you’re crazy. Now people can say, well it’s a little crazy, but considering what’s been done, it might be possible.”

 

Military Notes: Space exploration music alternatives

From PNJ.com:  Military Notes: Space exploration music alternatives

Alternative space music for the unveiling of the lunar landing module replica, the National Naval Aviation Museum’s LEM model could eventually take to the air, and complete blueprints to the original space vehicle couldn’t be found.

Space oddity

If you attended the unveiling of the National Naval Aviation Museum’s new replica of the Apollo 17 lunar excursion module last weekend and think you heard a different tune when the curtain went up than the music playing on our website’s video recording of the moment, you’re right.
At the event, 550 guests heard “Telstar,” a recording by the British group The Tornados, which was a hit on U.S. pop charts in 1962. And while the instrumental is certainly stirring, the Pensacola News Journal’s videographer Ron Stallcup decided to dub in music he thinks is more rousing and a better fit.
So those who tuned into pnj.com’s video of the unveiling on Sunday heard the theme from the 1968 Stanley Kubrick movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Neither melody is from 1972, the year that Apollo 17 landed on the moon. Stallcup and the museum could have revived a hit song about space that was actually from 1972: “Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going to Be a Long, Long Time),” composed by Bernie Taupin and Elton John.

LEM trivia

Here are some more tidbits about the museum’s new LEM replica, which is 23 feet fall, made of steel and aluminum and weighs 4,500 pounds. For all that bulk, the manufacturer, Digital Design LLC in Phoenix, constructed the life-size model so that while it now rests on the floor of Hangar Bay 1, curators could eventually hang it from the ceiling — perhaps to dramatize the presentation and clear the way for another exhibit.
Another bit of LEM trivia, the museum’s replica, even though it’s made to sell at retail price of $180,000, is a bargain compared with the ones made for NASA’s Apollo program by Grumman. Those cost about $17 million apiece. Of course they were working space vehicles, while the museum’s replica is an empty shell.

Winging it

Grumman didn’t save complete blueprints of the original LEMs, according to Jaime Johnston, general manager of Digital Design. He said his company’s engineers and designers had to visit museums that contain four of the surviving real LEMs, none of which went into space, to make accurate drawings on which to base their replica.
Johnston said that if Grumman wanted to build another real-life LEM today, “They would have to grab one of the existing ones and take it apart.”

 

New posting schedule

Now that I've got this new full-time job, I'll be posting in this blog twice a week - on Monday's and Wednesdays.

So the next post for this blog will be on Monday.

Thanks for your patience.

Who's next in line for the 'one small step' on moon?

From Alamagordo Daily News:  Who's next in line for the 'one small step' on moon?

Last week marked the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 17 mission Ð the sixth and last manned lunar landing mission.
The Apollo 17 crew included mission commander Eugene Cernan, lunar module pilot Harrison "Jack" Schmitt and command module pilot Ronald Evans.
Apollo 17 lifted off on Dec. 7, 1972 the only nighttime launch in the Apollo program and after a three-day voyage (which the onboard astronauts took the famous and iconic "blue marble" photograph of Earth) arrived in lunar orbit. Cernan and Schmitt then departed the command module America, and in the lunar module Challenger, descended toward their planned landing site, the Taurus-Littrow valley in the lunar highlands, arriving there on Dec. 11.
Cernan and Schmitt a geologist by profession and the first and only trained scientist to visit the moon Ð spent three days at Taurus-Littrow, performing three seven-hour moonwalks and conducting a variety of scientific investigations during the course of these.
Forty years ago this Friday, on Dec. 14, 1972, Schmitt, and then Cernan, ascended the ladder of Challenger from the lunar surface.
They then lifted off from the moon and met with Evans and America. Afterward, the three astronauts and America departed lunar orbit and headed toward Earth and splashed down into the Pacific Ocean on Dec. 19.
No one has visited the moon since the Apollo 17 crew departed it four decades ago.
Although there were originally three additional Apollo missions scheduled to fly after Apollo 17, these were cancelled due to budget cuts.

Meanwhile, even unmanned lunar exploration soon ground to a halt. At the same time, the former Soviet Union continued to launch a few more Luna missions during the subsequent years, including the Luna 21 mission, which deployed a rover in early 1973 and the Luna 24 mission, which successfully returned lunar samples to Earth in 1976, with the completion of this latter mission even that program ceased.
It wasn't until the 1990s that probes of any kind visited the moon; the earliest ones were the Japanese Hiten probe in 1991 and the American Clementine probe a Department of Defense mission in 1994. They were followed by the low-budget American Lunar Prospector mission in 1998.
Although these were not especially sophisticated missions, Clementine data indicated the possibility that ice might exist in permanently-shadowed craters near the moon's poles and data from Lunar Prospector somewhat strongly supported this.
The past few years have seen a resurgence in interest in unmanned lunar missions, both here in the U.S. and in several other countries.
In addition to the American probes, lunar-orbiting spacecraft have been launched by Japan, China, India and the European Space Agency.
The two primary American missions have been the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission, which has been photographing the moon's surface in unprecedented detail, including various images of the Apollo landing site and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) spacecraft.
The two probes were co-launched in 2009, and in October of that year, LCROSS impacted a crater near the moon's south pole, with water being definitely detected in the resulting debris plume.
A recent American effort was the Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, which consisted of two spacecraft since named Ebb and Flow that have been orbiting the moon closely in tandem with each since the beginning of this year in an effort to perform high-resolution mapping of the moon's gravity field.
According to recent results from the GRAIL mission, the moon's crust nowhere thicker than 27 miles is a crushed and pulverized "rubble pile" due to the violent and enormous impacts the moon has undergone since its original formation.
Ebb and Flow are being targeted to impact the moon's surface just before 3:30 p.m. MST Monday, Dec. 17.
So when will humans ever visit the moon again? This question cannot be easily answered.
The American Constellation program, originally proposed and initiated in 2004, had established a timetable of a flight to the moon to take place by 2020, however in reality, Constellation was never adequately funded and it was cancelled in 2010.
While potential lunar missions are presently being discussed, there are no formal American plans for a return to the moon anytime in the near- to mid-foreseeable future.
Meanwhile, the Chinese space program, which has successfully launched several manned Earth-orbital missions over the past nine years as well as two unmanned lunar orbiting missions within the past five years, has announced plans to launch an unmanned lunar rover mission late next year and to send astronauts to the moon in the 2025-2030 timeframe.
Perhaps the next lunar visitors will come from private efforts.
There is already the Google Lunar X-Prize, a $30-million prize to be awarded to the first private-developed effort to land and deploy a lunar rover, with a deadline date of the end of 2015.
The firm Space Adventures, which has facilitated several private citizen visits to the International Space Station (ISS) over the past decade, is currently marketing an around-the-moon trip, and meanwhile just last week came the announcement of a new company, Golden Spike, that is envisioning taking private visitors on lunar orbiting, and even lunar landing, journeys.
The prices for such trips are not cheap Ð the cost of a Golden Spike lunar landing mission is being estimated at $1.5 billion Ð so the next human to set foot on the moon might be one of our planet's wealthiest.
But in the precedent being set by the Space Adventures ISS flights, the costs could conceivably become more accessible to more "average" citizens within a generation or two.
The first human to walk upon the moon, Neil Armstrong, passed away earlier this year.
One can perhaps hope that the next person to do so is already alive, and may take that "one small step" sometime within the not-to-distant future.

Posts resume this Wednesday

I'm a freelance writer and I am way behind on a job I have to do, so I won't be posting here until Wednesday..

Thanks for your patience!

First piloted rocket got attention, but not success

From Alamogordo Daily News:  First piloted rocket got attention, but not success

"Germans Plan First Rocket Flight With Pilot," the New York Times headlined the Associated Press story on Dec. 18, 1932.
"In an attempt to further the practical development of rocket flying," the story reported, "the city authorities, the police and the Governor of Magdeburg district have decided to grant permission for the first ascent of a rocket device occupied by a pilot."
The city of Magdeburg would contribute half of the $4,000 needed to build the 25-foot tall rocket; the Magdeburg Bank would loan the remainder.
"The rocket, which is expected to reach an altitude of 3,000 feet, is to return to the grounds by the means of a large parachute that unfolds itself automatically, and the pilot, after leaping out of the fiery sky ship, is to be brought down by a parachute," the Times stated.
Rudolf Nebel, a World War I combat pilot, was the rocket's "inventor," but at the time, he had little experience. Hermann Oberth had hired Nebel in 1929 to work in Berlin on rocketry for Fritz Lang's film "Frau in Mond" ("Woman in the Moon"). German ex-patriate Willy Ley wrote in "Rockets, Missiles, and Space Travel" that Oberth "did not make certain whether Nebel had the qualifications," such as "in working with aluminum and magnesium alloys or at least with liquefied gases." According to Ley, Nebel later revealed "he had been graduated in a hurry during the war because he had volunteered for the air arm (of the military), and that after the war, he had never worked as a designing engineer but for some time as a salesman of mechanical kitchen gadgets."
The German Rocket Society/Society for Space Travel, or VfR, would build what was called the "Pilot Rocket"; even though Ley said the passenger wasn't really a pilot "since he did not do anything" except "jump out with his own parachute."
Nebel was secretary of the VfR; Wernher von Braun and Oberth were members. Ley, Nebel, and Jacques Valier were two of the founders. Valier, in 1928, had built the world's first rocket car, funded by automaker Fritz von Opel. On Sept. 27, 1930, the VfR had begun using the Raketenflugplatz, a former German military base, in Berlin to experiment.
"Berlin now has a rocket flying field with an area of about two square miles," the the Times reported on March 8, 1931. The story mentioned "references in the German press" regarding "discussions of the possibility of rockets," and warned of the "extraordinarily dangerous character of the experiments now being carried on at the Berlin rocket flying field."
By October 1931, the VfR had developed a water-cooled combustion chamber to feed an aluminum engine that burned 160 gallons of liquid oxygen and gasoline per second for 200 seconds. Members next designed dual tanks to separately hold, and then feed, liquid oxygen and gasoline.
The Magdeburg rocket was not Nebel's idea. One day, Fritz Mengering, an engineer with the City of Magdeburg, "showed up at Raketenflugplatz espousing a crackpot theory (dreamed up by someone else) that the apparent form of the universe was an illusion and the surface of the earth was on the inside of a sphere!" Michael Neufeld documented in "The Rocket and the Reich" (Smithsonian/1995). "By developing a large rocket one could prove this thesis."
The theory, Ley said, "began like a story by Jules Verne.
A mentally decrepit 'philosopher' had written a badly printed pamphlet about the true shape of the universe, in which he insisted that the earth is the universe, that we live inside a hollow globe of the dimensions of the earth, that there is nothing outside that globe, and that the universe of the astronomers is only an optical illusion. Since every crank can find some fellow cranks, the "hollow-earth philosophy' had found some too, among them an engineer named Mengering. É He conceived the idea of testing the hollow-earth theory by means of a rocket. If a rocket going vertically upward crashed É proof would be established."
Von Braun, among others, "emphatically rejected the theory." Nebel, however, "saw this idea as a new opportunity for raising money." They would launch during the next Pentecost.
"It looked like something in which we did not like to see the VfR involved," Ley said.
They didn't worry for long. Ley pointed out Nebel informed them the project "was to be entrusted to him personally (and) not the VfR," even though the members would be the labor.
It was Mengering who convinced Magdeburg to fund the project even though the government didn't buy the Hollow Earth theory. Ley said they did "welcome É scientific achievement," and the rocket would be "the crowning feature of a kind of city-wide holiday" during Easter 1933.
The Magdeburg Project failed. Neufeld, in "Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War" (Knopf/2008), called Nebel "more of a con man than an engineer."
"We all began to work feverishly although we knew that it would be impossible to get such rockets ready in the time interval agreed upon," Ley wrote. "But it meant an opportunity to build large rockets without being handicapped by lack of funds."
The VfR began building at Christmas 1932. A motor was tested on March 9 and "could be heard for miles," Ley said. A test three days later "exploded at the instant of ignition; the concussion was so bad that the eyeballs of the observers pained considerably." Another motor exploded on April 3.
At a June 9 launch, Ley said "the rocket began to rise slowly" up the 30-foot "launching rack É built in a cow pasture." The rocket never cleared the rack, and simply slid back down. "Another attempt two days later was spoiled by a leaky gasket." The engine "roared" for 2 minutes but never developed thrust. A June 13 launch "ended prematurely" when the rocket, rising only to six feet, "popped" a vent screw.
On June 29, because rain "had warped the wooden launching rack," the rocket caught as it came off the guide and launched "almost horizontally," making a "belly landing 1000 feet" away.
The Magdeburg government wasn't impressed.
"In return for partial fulfillment of his promises," said "To A Distant Day: The Rocket Pioneers" (University of Nebraska/2008), "Nebel received only partial payment."

Column: Obama's free market space exploration success

From USA Today:  Column: Obama's free market space exploration success

Innovation in space exploration shows how far capitalism can take us.

So a while back, I noted here that one of the Obama administration's policy successes involves the increasing commercialization of space. And (some would say in a marked contrast to the Obama administration's approach elsewhere) this has been a considerable success.
But one criticism has been that while we've seen some interesting approaches to getting objects, and people, into orbit, we haven't done anything big. Heck, it's been just about 40 years since the last human being walked on the Moon.
Now we have a new commercial venture aimed at doing something about that. It's called "Golden Spike" -- after the final spike that connected the Transcontinental Railroad -- and it's a commercial venture aimed at taking missions to the Moon.
As founder Alan Stern told an interviewer:
"When [NASA's] Constellation [project] was canceled, I wanted to look at the private sector. We talked to a number of private experts; about 20 accepted, and over a period of four months, we put together proposals. This culminated in a meeting in Telluride, Colorado, where we concluded it really was possible to make Moon travel commercial. . . .
Our business line is simple: selling lunar expeditions to any country. In the '80s and '90s, the Soviets were selling countries trips to the Mir space station. Japan, Austria. … France bought six trips! We think that trips to the Moon will be at least as popular. One and a half billion for two people to the surface of the Moon — countries already spend that much on robot exploration."
Will this venture work? Maybe. On the one hand, a major reason that countries might want to launch a Moon mission is to demonstrate homegrown technical prowess, something that outsourcing to an American company may not exactly underscore. On the other hand, not that many people have walked on the Moon -- and nobody has for almost 40 years -- so sending your astronauts there, by whatever means, is still pretty cool. And, of course, the science is just as good no matter how you get there.
Then there's Elon Musk's plan to take people to Mars, and in large numbers: "For $500,000 each. At a rate of 80,000 a year." Though Elton John says that Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids, if we send that many people to Mars, we'll be colonizing and raising a lot of kids. That would be cool.
Will these dreams pan out? Maybe, maybe not. But they are serious efforts, by serious people, at doing the kinds of exciting things in space that NASA hasn't seriously thought about in 40 years. That they're bearing fruit now is a testament to Obama's space policy and its endorsement of free markets.
With free markets, you don't have to convince government bureaucrats and Congressional appropriators that your idea is a good one -- you just have to convince customers and investors. And though government bureaucrats and Congressional appropriators are deathly afraid of failure for political reasons, entrepreneurs succeed by courting -- and, sometimes, learning from -- failure. That's something government programs can't do.
By endorsing free markets, Obama has created an environment for dramatic innovation in space. It would be nice if he took the lesson and tried the same thing here on Earth.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is professor of law at the University of Tennessee. He blogs at InstaPundit.com.

 

 

50th Anniversary Of First Step Of Planetary Exploration

From RedOrbit:  50th Anniversary Of First Step Of Planetary Exploration

Image Caption: Mariner 2 was the world's first successful interplanetary spacecraft. Launched August 27, 1962, on an Atlas-Agena rocket, Mariner 2 passed within about 34,000 kilometers (21,000 miles) of Venus, sending back valuable new information about interplanetary space and the Venusian atmosphere. Image Credit: NASA/JPL

Fifty years ago today (14 Dec 2012) , America’s space exploration ushered in a new era when NASA’s Mariner 2 spacecraft became the first ever to study a planet other than our own.
On December 14, 1962, Mariner 2 became the first spacecraft to successfully make a close-up study of another planet. The event took place about 36 million miles away from Earth.
To celebrate the occasion, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which built the spacecraft, released an interactive presentation highlighting 50 years of planetary exploration.
JPL said the first Mariners were built on a demanding schedule, and had three probes in less than a year.
The Soviet Union first tried to get a spacecraft to Venus, but failed in their attempts in 1961. The rocket carrying NASA’s first attempt, Mariner 1, was self-destructed four minutes and 53 seconds into flight.
Mariner 2 launched August 27, 1962 from Cape Canaveral, but the lift off was not at all smooth. During its launch, the rocket began to roll, and it was unable to accept guidance commands. The electrical short causing the issue was mysteriously fixed after about a minute and all was okay.
While Mariner 2 was on its way towards Venus, NASA said it encountered many problems that nearly ended the mission.
“Among these were a solar panel that twice stopped working, a balky sensor designed to locate Earth and gyros that mysteriously misbehaved,” NASA said in a press statement remembering the spacecraft. “Most troubling of all, temperatures on the spacecraft climbed to alarming levels as Mariner 2 drew closer to Venus. Mission controllers worried the spacecraft might cook itself before reaching its destination.”
After traveling for a few months in the abyss, Mariner 2 glided within just 21,564 miles of Venus, during which the spacecraft produced the first close-up measurements of Venus’ scorching surface temperature.
This science mission helped confirm scientists’ hypothesis of a “greenhouse” effect that trapped heat from the sun under an atmospheric blanket. The spacecraft’s tracking also enabled navigators to use radio signals to measure the effect of Venus’ gravity on the spacecraft and calculate the most precise figure ever of the planet’s mass.
During Mariner 2′s cruise phase, it was the first to confirm the existence of the solar wind, which is the steam of charged particles flowing outward from the sun.
Data from the mission also enabled scientists to refine the value for the average distance between Earth and the sun. Mariner 2 also showed that micrometeorites and the radiation environment were not significant threats in that part of the solar system.
“There will be other missions to Venus, but there will never be another first mission to Venus,” Mariner 2′s project manager Jack James of JPL reflected before his death in 2001.
Mariner 2 was the stepping stone for NASA’s exploration beyond our own planet, including rovers on Mars, probes around Saturn, and the Viking twin spacecraft, which are in the process of leaving our Solar System, 37 years later.

 

Secret shuttle in orbit after Atlas V launch

From WFTV.com: Secret shuttle in orbit after Atlas V launch

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. —

For a time on Tuesday it appeared the X-37b Space Plane would remain on the ground at Cape Canaveral air Force Station. But, just before the launch window closed, the clouds parted for the military's mini-shuttle and its top secret mission.

The unmanned shuttle was carried into orbit aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

The rocket launched from launch complex 41. Launch commentary ended 17 minutes into the undisclosed mission.

This is the second flight for this particular Air Force mini-shuttle, making it a milestone of sorts for the X-37b.

"A space vehicle has launched, returned to Earth and then launched again," said Christa Bell, a representative from United Space Alliance.

Jim Hale is an Air Force veteran and volunteer.

"We're so used to seeing the big shuttle and we thought these reusable vehicles were over and done with, and now we have a whole new generation of reusable vehicles," said Hale.

Unlike two previous mini-shuttle missions that touched down at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, this one may end where it started: on the space coast and with a landing on the shuttle runway at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

Space exploration is Canadians’ ‘birthright’

From Montreal Gazette: Space exploration is Canadians’ ‘birthright

Canada, the third nation to get to space, can and must claim rightful ownership to extraterrestrial technology – and achievements.

Iain Christie, president of Kanata-based space technology firm Neptec Design Group Ltd., told delegates at the Canadian Aerospace Summit that “being a space-faring nation is a birthright of Canadians” – as befits the third country, after the Soviet Union and the U.S., to launch a satellite into orbit in the 1960s.

The aviation and space industry is still digesting – and praising – the comprehensive aerospace review for the Canadian government released last week by David Emerson, a former cabinet minister.

The report urges Ottawa to place space and aerospace at the top of the government’s national priorities – including personal involvement by the prime minister at the key priorities and planning committee meetings.

Emerson said the space sector had been “drifting” in the federal government’s priorities for several years, and that it regularly fell “into a black hole” in terms of the direction and importance it was accorded.

Industry Minister Christian Paradis said that before commenting and acting on the report’s 25 main recommendations, cabinet colleagues must discuss them at length. He did not say when a decision could be made.

But industry executives, including Steve MacLean, a former astronaut and the president of St-Hubert’s Canadian Space Agency, almost universally hailed Emerson’s report at the summit, organized by the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada.

MacLean and Christie, whose firm makes spaceflight sensors, among other things, emphasized the disproportionate importance Canada and Canadians hold in space exploration.

Christie recalled a space-shuttle mission on which he worked as a junior engineer in Houston in 1995 – STS-74 in NASA parlance.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who will launch into space again on Dec. 19, “had to take the Canadarm to pull a Russian module out of the space-shuttle bay, attach it to the shuttle, which then flew up and attached it to the Russian Mir space station,” Christie said.

“It was symbolically and physically a Canadian who, a few short years after the Cold War, took the Russians in one hand, the Americans in the other, and brought them together.

“That is emblematic of the role Canada has always played,” he said.

MacLean also recalled how awed he was during a stint at NASA to discover that John Hodge was a Canadian.

When Neil Armstrong’s Gemini capsule – pre-Apollo – suddenly gyrated out of control, Hodge calmly talked him though to recovery “literally seconds away” from spacecraft disintegration.

MacLean said he was “incredibly pleased” by Emerson’s report.

“And when I heard Minister Paradis say that space is important to the country, this stabilizes us,” he said.

“Just that one observation stabilizes things – it tells Canadians what the space program can do for Canada.”

 

Coalition for Space Exploration Announces New Leadership for 2013

From Parabolic Arc:  Coalition for Space Exploration Announces New Leadership for 2013

WASHINGTON, D.C. –The Coalition for Space Exploration (Coalition) today announced veteran aerospace communicators George Torres of ATK and Mary Engola of Ball Aerospace will lead the Coalition in 2013. Torres will serve as the new chair and Engola will continue her role as the deputy chair. Each will serve a one-year term, effective January through December 2013.
Torres works as the vice president of communications for ATK’s Aerospace Group. He has broad experience in communications across the aerospace industry, and previously led communications organizations at Rockwell International, Boeing, Hughes Space and Communications Company, and The Aerospace Corporation. A published author, Torres has written two books on the space program and was the recipient of the Journalism Award of Excellence from the Aviation/Space Writers Association for these efforts.
Lon Rains, chair for 2012, congratulated Torres on his appointment and praised the continued success of the Coalition.
“The space industry has seen a lot of change in the past year and I’m proud that the Coalition has been there to help keep space as an important issue for our country,” Rains said. “I’m confident that with George and Mary leading the charge this momentum will continue to build next year.”
Torres has been an active member of the Coalition throughout its eight year duration and led membership efforts for the latter part of 2012.
“These are dynamic times for the space industry, and much progress has been made,” Torres said. “Yet, economic uncertainties pose a serious threat to our growing momentum and I look forward to working with Mary to lead the Coalition as we continue to advance the dialogue surrounding the importance of space exploration to our country.”
Engola, Coalition 2013 deputy chair, has been an active member since the Coalition’s inception in 2004. She served as the Coalition’s 2012 deputy chair and as chair in 2008. She is currently the manager of customer and industry relations at Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.
“I am honored to continue serving as a member of the Coalition’s leadership team,” Engola said. “I hope my experience helps to bridge our past success with the future as we do what we can to ensure space exploration remains a national imperative.”
Through effective outreach, the Coalition fosters a national conversation about space exploration among the leadership of member organizations, with other space-related organizations, NASA, legislators and the general public.
About the Coalition for Space Exploration
The Coalition for Space Exploration for Space Exploration is a group of space industry businesses and organizations collaborating to ensure that the United States remains the leader in space, science and technology.  By reinforcing the value and benefits of space exploration with the nation’s leaders, the Coalition intends to build lasting support for a long-term, sustainable, strategic direction for space exploration.

 

Voyager 1 finds unknown region at edge of solar system

From USA Today:  Voyager 1 finds unknown region at edge of solar system

8:18PM EST December 3. 2012 - The Voyager 1 spacecraft is traveling through a previously unknown region of deep space as it heads out of our solar system, which might happen soon, scientists reported Monday.
Voyage and its twin, Voyager 2, were launched in 1977 and will become the first man-made objects to exit our celestial neighborhood -- relatively soon.
"We don't know exactly how long it will take," Edward Stone, a project scientist, told reporters during a teleconference, Space.com reports. "It may take two months, it may take two years."
"We do believe this may be the very last layer between us and interstellar space," he said. "This region was not anticipated, was not predicted."
Both spacecraft, which continue to send data back to Earth, are in the heliosheath, the outermost layer of the heliosphere. That's where the force of interstellar cosmic ray particles slows the solar wind generated by the sun.
Scientists, meeting Monday in San Francisco, dubbed the new region a "magnetic highway," where charged particles from inside and outside the heliosphere flow out and in. NASA posted animations imagining what the Voyagers are experiencing, if the naked-to-the-eye ions could be seen.
The twin probes explored Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus between 1979 and 1989.

 

Malware Swipes Rocket Data From Japanese Space Agency

From RedOrbit:  Malware Swipes Rocket Data From Japanese Space Agency

Information about one of the Japanese space program’s newest rockets was stolen from a desktop computer that had been infected with malware, officials from the organization revealed on Friday.
A computer housed at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Tsukuba Space Center northeast of Tokyo had been discovered compiling data and transmitting it to computers outside of the agency, according to Ars Technica’s Dan Goodin.
The computer was found to be infected and was cleaned on November 21, and no other computers were found to contain malware, Martin Fackler of the New York Times added.
JAXA officials said that it was not clear if the virus was a cyberattack, Fackler said, but Japanese defense firms had been targeted by similar information-stealing programs, including some that had been linked to China.
“The data stolen from the space agency included information about the Epsilon, a solid-fuel rocket still under development,” Fackler said. “While the Epsilon is intended to launch satellite and space probes, solid-fuel rockets of that size can also have a military use as intercontinental ballistic missiles.”
“The Epsilon, whose first launching is scheduled for next autumn, will also feature new technology that will allow it to be remotely controlled by a personal computer,” he added.
Computer-based espionage attacks have become more and more common in recent years, with a vast array of international targets – including private companies, government organizations, and human rights advocacy groups – becoming frequent targets of such cybercrime efforts, Goodin said. In many cases, evidence linking the attacks to Chinese government officials has been uncovered.
“Highly sophisticated malware dubbed Flame, which reportedly was jointly developed by the US and Israeli governments, has also been used to spy on Iran,” he added. “On Friday, researchers from antivirus provider Kaspersky Lab, published details on a targeted attack on Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

Astronauts Criticize US Space Program

From Voice of America:  Astronauts Criticize US Space Program

CHICAGO — NASA Astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt explored the surface of the moon during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, the last time anyone has left earth's orbit or set foot on the moon.  During a 40th anniversary celebration of Apollo 17 in Chicago, the astronauts said they had expected their mission would  start a path toward space travel, not become a history lesson.

Retired Astronaut Eugene Cernan is one of just twelve men who walked on the moon.  He currently holds the distinction of being the last man there.

"It is tremendously disappointing that I am here 40 years later and still hold that title or have that yoke on my shoulders," said Cernan.

Cernan, along with fellow Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, celebrated the 40th anniversary of the December 1972 mission with fellow astronaut Jim Lovell at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.

As they returned to Earth on that long-ago December 19, Schmitt and Cernan didn't expect that 40 years later they would be commemorating it as the end of an era.

"To say that I thought it would be 40 years, or what is really going to turn out to be 50 or 60 years before Americans are back on the moon, I would not have guessed that at all," Schmitt noted.

"A half century ago, we went 250,000 miles, cracked the door open, and never walked through it into the future. The future is still out there," added Cernan.

A plan to return to the moon, which President George W. Bush proposed, was scrapped by President Barack Obama.

Amid deep budget deficits and an economy slowly recovering, U.S. lawmakers are not keen to spend more money on space exploration, something Cernan says is still only a small part of the overall U.S. budget

"We spend one half of one penny of every one of our tax dollars on space, all of space," Cernan noted.

Schmitt, once a U.S. Senator, says there is also a lack of willpower on the part of NASA.

"And from a fiscal point of view, it falls victim to being very small, and to not having a mission based on geopolitical reality, of the importance of the United States being the dominant space faring nation," Schmitt explained.

With the Space Shuttle now retired, the U.S.- based corporation Space X is developing a vehicle that can transport people to and from earth's orbit. A manned crew capsule could be ready in the next few years.

But for veterans of the Apollo program, that's not enough. They believe NASA should prioritize a return to the moon with Mars the ultimate destination. 

 

Who's Killing the Space Program?

From Space Daily: Who's Killing the Space Program?
This past August the U.S. landed a one-ton spacecraft on the surface of Mars. Sending a spacecraft to Mars is not unique in itself, since we have sent several exploration vehicles to the Red Planet over the past five decades.
The latest such mission placed Curiosity Rover on Aeolis Palus in Gale Crater.
This very advanced rover system carries instruments that will look for conditions relevant to the past or present habitability of the planet. Over the next few years, Curiosity will explore its landing site while searching for evidence that Mars was once capable of supporting life. Of course, the other question is whether Mars could support life in the future.
About two weeks after Curiosity arrived at Mars, NASA selected InSight as its 12th mission in its Discovery Program. InSight (Interior exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) will carry out a unique geophysical investigation of Mars, looking into its deep interior to see why the Red Planet evolved so differently from Earth.
The mission involves placing instruments on the Martian surface to investigate whether the core of Mars is solid or liquid, and why Mars' crust is not divided into tectonic plates that drift like those of Earth.
Knowledge gained about the interior of Mars in comparison to Earth will help scientists better understand how terrestrial planets form and evolve.
However, Curiosity is certainly far and away the most complex vehicle to reach Mars, and it may be the last of the rovers for decades to come. Given the trend in space exploration budgets and the economy in general, it is unlikely NASA will be able to afford any future missions of this scale until such time that astronauts are sent to the planet. Since there is no urgency to do this, it will be at least decades before the U.S. will mount a human expedition to Mars.
NASA does have one other Mars mission planned to occur between Curiosity and InSight. It is a modest orbiter called MAVEN, slated for launch next year to study the planet's atmosphere.
Other modest missions may be funded in the interim decades ahead, but budget cuts and ongoing indecision at NASA regarding future missions suggests it could be a decade or more before any NASA mission touches down on the Red Planet's surface beyond InSight.
NASA had agreed to work with the European Space Agency (ESA) on a joint series of missions called ExoMars. However, when the Obama administration released its fiscal year 2013 budget proposal last February, there were no funds for NASA participation in ExoMars. That decision also included a proposed 20-percent cut in NASA's overall planetary sciences program.
Surely, part of the reason for the proposed cuts is the fact that the Curiosity Rover mission saw its costs increase from initial estimates of about $1.6 billion in 2006 to $2.5 billion by 2012.
In addition the original 2009 launch slipped to 2011. NASA's science program has also been squeezed by the increasing costs of other complex missions, such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which now has an estimated cost of $8 billion.
So, who is killing the space program? The answer seems to be: everyone involved. Program managers and contractors underestimate program costs. Politicians don't have a mandate to spend large amounts of money on space exploration in the current budget environment.
NASA is not creating enough public excitement and interest in these programs to demand that congress fund them. The space community is not innovating new, low-cost missions of importance. There seems to be a general malaise among the space "movers and shakers."
The simple truth seems to be that space exploration has matured to the point where public interest levels have fallen while costs have risen to extreme heights.

Project Orion: Why Space Exploration Should Go Nuclear

From Urban Times:  Project Orion: Why Space Exploration Should Go Nuclear

The Orion spacecraft. Via Wikipedia

The human race, as it has always been, is on course for extinction. The Sun will lumber through its life cycle and, in the process of this, will engulf the Earth and destroy everything on it. This isn’t exactly new information and it’s one of the reasons why the continuing development of space exploration is essential to the survival of our species (and all others bound to this planet for that matter). One day, for whatever reason, without the creation of an invulnerable shield and a way to get energy without the Sun, we will have to leave this Solar System.

A design for Orion Pulse Unit. Via Wikipedia

This idea was slightly covered in xkcd’s “What If” weekly post entitled Everybody Out. This piece attempted to answer the question of whether or not there is enough energy to remove the entire population off of Earth. After some calculations in regards to the use of chemical propulsion (ie the same technology we use now to launch satellites and spaceships), just to move the weight of all the people (not including the rocket, fuel or anything else) we would need 8 petawatt-hours, or 5% of the world’s annual energy consumption.

. One of the fundamental issues surrounding [rocket science] is the fact that rockets need to carry the weight of the fuel itself.

Rocket science, as you probably know, is not exactly simple. One of the fundamental issues surrounding it is the fact that rockets need to carry the weight of the fuel itself. This suggest the creation of a never ending loop of increasing the necessary amount of fuel to carry the increasing overall weight due to extra fuel. This problem is solved using calculations based on the fact that the weight of the ship will decrease as fuel is burnt. As you can imagine, it is not the most efficient of methods.
At the end of the “What If” piece, we are given an estimation for the amount of fuel necessary to lift the entire weight of the population (roughly 400 million tons of flesh, bones and hair) would amount to tens of trillions of tons of fuel.It would take up a huge proportion of all hydrocarbon fuels on the planet. Of course, you could suggest we could use alternative fuels, but we still have to consider the weight for the ship, water, food and anything else we’d like to bring (xkcd’s article points out that there are about a million tons of pet dog just in the US). The article sums its verdict up with this sentence, “It’s not necessarily completely impossible, but it’s certainly outside the realm of plausibility.”
Obviously, the above example is taking things to the extreme, but it highlights the point that current propulsion systems are generally not that great. In the event of a global exodus, we would have to leave a hell of a lot of people behind without some new technology or, in this case, the revival of an old one.  In my opinion, the most viable alternative is also the one that sounds the most insane. It is the idea that we should launch ourselves into space by riding the shock waves of nuclear bombs.
Led by physicists Ted Taylor and Freeman Dyson, Project Orion began in 1958 and is a perfect example of how close madness and genius become. The idea of nuclear propulsion was first proposed by Stanislaw Ulam way back in 1946. A year later, Ulam and F. Reines made the first calculations. The project came to end in 1963 in response to a lack of political support due to fears of nuclear fallout and the introduction of the Partial Test Ban Treaty. Admittedly, in a world continuously in fear of all-out nuclear war, the idea of propelling spaceships with radioactive bombs was hard for people to get behind.
So how does it work? You would expect anything within the vicinity of a nuclear explosion would be destroyed, but not in this case. Project Orion designed a shield that would be able to harness the propulsion of the shockwave and thus keep itself ahead of the explosion itself. On the face of it, it is a pretty simple concept. Of course meticulous calculations had to be done to get a viable design completed. Dyson was very hopeful about this project saying, “…a Saturn V bears the same relation to an Orion ship as the majestic airships of the 1930’s bore to the Boeing 707”.
Why would an Orion spaceship be so much better? Well, it is the fact that it can combine a high exhaust velocity with massive levels of thrust, which is something rocket propulsions cannot do easily. This means a nuclear propulsion system is by far much more efficient and requires significantly less fuel as seen in this table looking at possible payload weights demonstrates:
:

As you can see, as the journey length increases the Saturn V rocket becomes more and more laughable. Of course, you might say that the Saturn V is out of date and that surely more modern rockets perform better. Well, in fact,  to this day, the Saturn V holds the record for the heaviest launch vehicle payload. If ever tested, an Orion spaceship would have blown it out of the water.

Governments should be investing more and more in viable interplanetary technology

It is a shame the project was discontinued when it was. It was clearly a visionary idea that would have revolutionised space travel for the future. What’s the problem with a bit of fallout when the Earth is going to be destroyed? Dyson managed to work out the essentials for lifting 8,000,000 tons (easily the weight of a city) into space using Orion methods. This could easily be achieved considering the stockpiles of nuclear weapons around the world. Carl Sagan himself made the point that it would be a good way to use them up.
The solution to saving mankind is the thing that came closest to ending it. Governments should be investing more and more in viable interplanetary technology and I would wager that nuclear propulsion is our best shot. Paranoid fears about radiation should be dismissed can considered in a more reasoned way. We should not be eschewing technology because of outdated Cold War fears.

The Orion spacecraft. Via Wikipedia

The human race, as it has always been, is on course for extinction. The Sun will lumber through its life cycle and, in the process of this, will engulf the Earth and destroy everything on it. This isn’t exactly new information and it’s one of the reasons why the continuing development of space exploration is essential to the survival of our species (and all others bound to this planet for that matter). One day, for whatever reason, without the creation of an invulnerable shield and a way to get energy without the Sun, we will have to leave this Solar System.

A design for Orion Pulse Unit. Via Wikipedia

This idea was slightly covered in xkcd’s “What If” weekly post entitled Everybody Out. This piece attempted to answer the question of whether or not there is enough energy to remove the entire population off of Earth. After some calculations in regards to the use of chemical propulsion (ie the same technology we use now to launch satellites and spaceships), just to move the weight of all the people (not including the rocket, fuel or anything else) we would need 8 petawatt-hours, or 5% of the world’s annual energy consumption.

. One of the fundamental issues surrounding [rocket science] is the fact that rockets need to carry the weight of the fuel itself.

Rocket science, as you probably know, is not exactly simple. One of the fundamental issues surrounding it is the fact that rockets need to carry the weight of the fuel itself. This suggest the creation of a never ending loop of increasing the necessary amount of fuel to carry the increasing overall weight due to extra fuel. This problem is solved using calculations based on the fact that the weight of the ship will decrease as fuel is burnt. As you can imagine, it is not the most efficient of methods.
At the end of the “What If” piece, we are given an estimation for the amount of fuel necessary to lift the entire weight of the population (roughly 400 million tons of flesh, bones and hair) would amount to tens of trillions of tons of fuel.It would take up a huge proportion of all hydrocarbon fuels on the planet. Of course, you could suggest we could use alternative fuels, but we still have to consider the weight for the ship, water, food and anything else we’d like to bring (xkcd’s article points out that there are about a million tons of pet dog just in the US). The article sums its verdict up with this sentence, “It’s not necessarily completely impossible, but it’s certainly outside the realm of plausibility.”
Obviously, the above example is taking things to the extreme, but it highlights the point that current propulsion systems are generally not that great. In the event of a global exodus, we would have to leave a hell of a lot of people behind without some new technology or, in this case, the revival of an old one.  In my opinion, the most viable alternative is also the one that sounds the most insane. It is the idea that we should launch ourselves into space by riding the shock waves of nuclear bombs.
Led by physicists Ted Taylor and Freeman Dyson, Project Orion began in 1958 and is a perfect example of how close madness and genius become. The idea of nuclear propulsion was first proposed by Stanislaw Ulam way back in 1946. A year later, Ulam and F. Reines made the first calculations. The project came to end in 1963 in response to a lack of political support due to fears of nuclear fallout and the introduction of the Partial Test Ban Treaty. Admittedly, in a world continuously in fear of all-out nuclear war, the idea of propelling spaceships with radioactive bombs was hard for people to get behind.
So how does it work? You would expect anything within the vicinity of a nuclear explosion would be destroyed, but not in this case. Project Orion designed a shield that would be able to harness the propulsion of the shockwave and thus keep itself ahead of the explosion itself. On the face of it, it is a pretty simple concept. Of course meticulous calculations had to be done to get a viable design completed. Dyson was very hopeful about this project saying, “…a Saturn V bears the same relation to an Orion ship as the majestic airships of the 1930’s bore to the Boeing 707”.
Why would an Orion spaceship be so much better? Well, it is the fact that it can combine a high exhaust velocity with massive levels of thrust, which is something rocket propulsions cannot do easily. This means a nuclear propulsion system is by far much more efficient and requires significantly less fuel as seen in this table looking at possible payload weights demonstrates:
:

As you can see, as the journey length increases the Saturn V rocket becomes more and more laughable. Of course, you might say that the Saturn V is out of date and that surely more modern rockets perform better. Well, in fact,  to this day, the Saturn V holds the record for the heaviest launch vehicle payload. If ever tested, an Orion spaceship would have blown it out of the water.

Governments should be investing more and more in viable interplanetary technology

It is a shame the project was discontinued when it was. It was clearly a visionary idea that would have revolutionised space travel for the future. What’s the problem with a bit of fallout when the Earth is going to be destroyed? Dyson managed to work out the essentials for lifting 8,000,000 tons (easily the weight of a city) into space using Orion methods. This could easily be achieved considering the stockpiles of nuclear weapons around the world. Carl Sagan himself made the point that it would be a good way to use them up.
The solution to saving mankind is the thing that came closest to ending it. Governments should be investing more and more in viable interplanetary technology and I would wager that nuclear propulsion is our best shot. Paranoid fears about radiation should be dismissed can considered in a more reasoned way. We should not be eschewing technology because of outdated Cold War fears.

 

Dark matter detector nearing activation in SD mine

From Yahoo News:  Dark matter detector nearing activation in SD mine

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Scientists hoping to detect dark matter deep in a former South Dakota gold mine have taken the last major step before flipping the switch on their delicate experiment and say they may be ready to begin collecting data as early as February.

What's regarded as the world's most sensitive dark matter detector was lowered earlier this month into a 70,000-gallon water tank nearly a mile beneath the earth's surface, shrouding it in enough insulation to hopefully isolate dark matter from the cosmic radiation that makes it impossible to detect above ground.

And if all goes as planned, the data that begins flowing could answer age-old questions about the universe and its origins, scientists said Monday.

"We might well uncover something fantastic," said Harry Nelson, a professor of physics at University of California, Santa Barbara and a principal investigator on the Large Underground Xenon experiment. "One thing about our field is that it's kind of brutal in that we know it's expensive and we work hard to only do experiments that are really important."

This one hasn't been cheap, at about $10 million, but like the discovery of the Higgs boson — dubbed the "God particle" by some — earlier this year in Switzerland, the detection of dark matter would be a seismic occurrence in the scientific community.

Scientists know dark matter exists by its gravitational pull but, unlike regular matter and antimatter, it's so far been undetectable. Regular matter accounts for about 4 percent of the universe's mass, and dark matter makes up about 25 percent. The rest is dark energy, which is also a mystery.

The search in South Dakota began in 2003 after the Homestake Gold Mine in the Black Hills' Lead, S.D., shuttered for good. Scientists called dibs on the site, and in July, after years of fundraising and planning, the LUX detector moved into the Sanford Underground Research Facility, 4,850 feet below the earth's surface. It took two days to ease the phone booth-sized detector down the once-filthy shaft and walkways that originally opened for mining in 1876 during the Black Hills Gold Rush.

There, the device was further insulated from cosmic radiation by being submerged in water that's run through reverse osmosis filters to deionize and clean it.
"The construction phase is winding down, and now we're starting the commissioning phase, meaning we start to operate the systems underground," said Jeremy Mock, a graduate student at the University of California, Davis who has worked on the LUX experiment for five years.
Carefully submerging the delicate detector into its final home — a water-filled vat that's 20 feet tall and 25 feet in diameter — took more than two months, Mock said.
Scientists are currently working to finish the plumbing needed to keep the xenon as clean as possible. The xenon, in both liquid and gas form, will fill the detector and be continuously circulated through a purifier that works much like a dialysis machine, pulling the substance out to remove impurities before pushing it back into the detector.
Keeping the water and xenon pristine will help remove what Nelson called "fake sources" — or stuff that scientists have seen before, such as radiation, that could serve as false alarms in their efforts to detect dark matter.
Nelson likens the experiment to Sherlock Holmes' approach to discovering the unknown by eliminating the known.

Once the data start to flow, it'll take a month or two before the detector is sensitive enough to claim the "most-sensitive" title, Nelson said.

After that, the scientists involved hope to start seeing what they covet most: something they've never seen before.

 

Lunar ‘Water Rush’: Robots May Search For Water On The Moon

From Red Orbit:  Lunar ‘Water Rush’: Robots May Search For Water On The Moon

The prospect of finding frozen water on the moon has several companies scrambling to stake a claim in “them thar lunar hills.”
“This is like the gold rush that led to the settlement of California,” said Phil Metzger, a physicist who leads the Granular Mechanics and Regolith Operations Lab, part of Kennedy Space Center’s Surface Systems Office. “This is the water rush.”
Water has already been found on asteroids and its discovery on the moon represents a top prize for NASA’s exploration plans because the resource has so many potential uses for wayfaring astronauts. Comprised of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, water can be turned into everything from rocket fuel to a source of fresh air and water.
One of the companies leading the charge to mine the moon is the Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology. The company is currently in the midst of developing a solar-powered rover designed to search and drill for the frozen water.
“Our intent is to land on the surface of the moon in October 2015 and find water,” said the president of Astrobotic, John Thornton, alluding to his company’s recent deal with SpaceX to launch a lander and rover on a Falcon 9 rocket.
Thornton added that a number of competitors have sprung up and this shows the potential for landing a robotic explorer is real.
“If we were doing something really big and no one else was trying to do it, then it might not be that big,” he said.
Human visitors to the lunar surface never found signs of frozen water as they walked along the moon’s equator between 1969 and 1972. Water has never been found in any rock or soil samples ever collected from the moon. Within the past 15 years, several probes found signs frozen water not only exists on the moon, but that it is quite pervasive.
Scientists are also curious to find out if any frozen water is in the form of a powder, like the type skiers plow through as they swish down a mountainside, or if it’s completely solid ice. Some scientists expect to find evidence of water seeping down between granules of soil and freezing to create rocks as hard as granite.
“Our best guess is it’s going to be the ice,” Thornton said. “Probably small little pieces of ice mixed in with the regolith.”
According to an official statement on the NASA website, the agency is excited about the chances to use a new resource for deep space exploration.
For its part, Astrobotic said it wants to use the robotic prospector to map where the largest deposits of water and other helpful chemicals are located. The company could then use the information to efficiently extract the materials from the moon. According to Thornton, there are no plans to send water or other lunar samples back to the Earth.
“The beauty of sending a robot is they don’t demand a return ticket,” Thornton said. “Once we know where the water is and what form it is in, we can develop systems to produce it in useable quantities. Water is a critical resource because you can drink it, breathe it and use it for rocket fuel.”