Space  

Want to fly a spacecraft around the Moon? Take this video for a spin to see how NASA operates the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Although the objectives of NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) are explorative in nature, the payload includes instruments with considerable heritage from previous planetary science missions, enabling transition, after one year, to a science phase under NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

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Nearly every day, the LRO's instruments return data, such as day-night temperature maps, a global geodetic grid, high resolution color imaging and the moon's UV albedo. However there is particular emphasis on the polar regions of the moon where continuous access to solar illumination may be possible and the prospect of water in the permanently shadowed regions at the poles may exist.

With a comprehensive data set focused on supporting the extension of human presence in the solar system, LRO helps identify sites close to potential resources with high scientific value, favorable terrain and the environment necessary for safe future robotic and human lunar missions.

The data gathered by the satellite will help the world develop a deeper understanding of the lunar environment, paving the way for a safe human return to the Moon and for future human exploration of our solar system.

SOURCE  NASA Goddard

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 Moon Base  

A Russian company has announced it is ready to build a base on the Moon at a cost of around 10 billion dollars.

A Russian company wants to build a manned base on the moon and announced recently that it has the resources and capabilities to do just that.

The privately owned company, Lin Industrial, currently developing the ultralightweight Taimyr rocket, has announced readiness to build a base on the Moon, called "Moon Seven."

The company believes they can construct the base for less than $10 billion. That includes the first stages of a lunar outpost, followed by a second facility that would be manned by two and then, later, four humans. Lin Industrial expects that constructing and deploying the base will take around 10 years.

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The company proposes that a location near the moon's south pole, known as Mons Malapert, located at 2°E and latitude 85.75°S, would be their construction site for the lunar base.

“This is a quite flat plateau with the Earth in direct sight that provides good conditions for communications and is a comfortable place for landing. The sun is shining for 89% of the day on the mount, the night which takes place there only several times a year does not last more than 3-6 days,” the company's chief designer Alexander Ilyin told TASS.

The base, actually more of a small village, will be made up of only up to four people.

According to Lin Industrial, building a lunar base is no easy feat and requires at least 37 rocket launches to carry parts to the surface of the moon. The launches alone would take probably over five years.

Lin Industrial's head is Sergei Burkatovsky, one of the creators of online game World of Tanks. He's only invested about $176,000 in the project so far. Lin Industrial states it needs around $200,000 just for the first prototype rocket and another $13.5 million just to test launch it.

According to Lin Industrial's website (translated from Russian),

People need a purpose. The purpose of inspiring, but at the same time realized. NASA is looking for "flexible path" and relies on private traders, Roscosmos is trying to keep the Soviet legacy and hard learns to create something new.
Cosmic expansion dreamed about in the '60s, has almost disappeared even from the pages of science fiction novels.
It's time not because of, but in spite of everything - take a step!

However likely Lin Industrial's Lunar Base actually is, there is at least one more lunar project with more steam behind it. Lunar Mission One, another privately-run project aimed at the moon, recently raised over $1 million for the first phase of its mission on Kickstarter. That project also has the backing of RAL Space, an organization that has helped both NASA and the ESA develop over 200 missions, including the ESA's recent history-making Rosetta mission.

Lunar Mission One's goal includes landing a rover on the moon's south pole within ten years. The idea is to drill into the moon's surface and collect samples of lunar rock we've never seen before. This is just the first mission in what the organization behind the project thinks could lead to an eventual manned base there.

Commenting on this initiative, Director of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Space Research Lev Zeleny noted that the project heralded the interest regained to the exploration and development of the Moon. “This is still early to say about construction of a settlement,” the academician noted.

Time will tell who gets there first, but all indications are that there is certainly a renewed interest in the moon, so the age-old dream of a moon base is very much alive.


SOURCE  TASS, Lin Industrial

By 33rd Square

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 Space  

The Europa Clipper may be setting sail if NASA's latest plans go ahead.  The US space agency recently announced it was allocating funds to formulate a plan to robotically explore Jupiter's ice-covered moon.

The US space agency NASA, in its latest budget, has aside funds to robotically explore Jupiter’s moon Europa, often described as one of the solar system’s best bets for hosting alien life.

The agency's annual federal budget request of $17.5 billion (down by $1.2 billion from its 2010 peak) has set aside $15 million for “pre-formulation work” on a mission to the Jovian moon, with plans to make detailed observations and possibly sample its interior oceans.

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Scientists believe that underneath Europa’s icy exterior is a single, massive ocean that contains almost twice as much water as is found on Earth, kept liquid by the gravitational pull of Jupiter – a force that creates tidal swells 1,000 times stronger than those caused by our own Moon.

Discoveries of  diverse organisms including tube worms and shrimp found around the deep-sea hydrothermal vents known as ‘black smokers’ on Earth has led scientists to believe that sunlight may not be the prerequisite for life it was once thought to be.

Along with looking for life under the ice, observations made late last year by the Hubble telescope suggest that enormous jets of water some 200 kilometres tall (that’s twice as high as Earth’s atmosphere) are spurting from Europa’s southern pole.

This would mean that the Europa Clipper – a concept space probe that NASA been developing for just such a mission – could conceivably fly through these plumes of water vapor, collecting samples from Europa’s interior without having to face the cost and difficulty of landing on the surface.

NASA representatives stressed that all of this work is extremely preliminary.  The European Space Agency has also expressed much interest in Jupiter's moons.

"Europa is a very challenging mission operating in a really high radiation environment, and there's lots to do to prepare for it," the agency's chief financial officer Beth Robinson said to reporters on Tuesday. "We're looking for a launch some time in the mid-2020s.”

SOURCE  The Independent

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 Space  

China's Chang'e-3 lunar lander, with the Yutu (Jade Rabbit) lunar rover onboard, successfully landed on the Moon's surface this weekend. This marks the first soft landing on the moon by any nation in 37 years. Hopefully with the new commercial ventures and the X-PRIZE Lunar Lander Challenge upcoming, this marks a new common activity for us all.

Chang’e 3’s successful soft-landing on the moon was the first such landing in 37 years. The last probe to soft-land on the moon was the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission in 1976.

Now, five of the eight pieces of scientific equipment aboard the lunar probe have started to observe space, the Earth and the Moon.

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The mission has entered working mode and telescopes and cameras have produced clear images, Zou Yongliao, a scientist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said at a press conference.

Comprising a lander and rover Yutu, (Jade Rabbit) Chang'e-3 soft-landed on the Moon on Saturday evening. Yutu later separated from the lander and rolled to moon surface earlier Sunday. In ancient Chinese mythology, Yutu was the white pet rabbit of the lunar goddess Chang'e.

Photo taken on Dec. 14, 2013 shows a picture of the moon surface taken by the on-board camera of the lunar probe Chang'e-3 on the screen of the Beijing Aerospace Control Center in Beijing, capital of China. China's lunar probe Chang'e-3, with the country's first moon rover onboard, landed on the moon on Saturday night, marking the first time that China has sent a spacecraft to soft land on the surface of an extraterrestrial body. (Xinhua/Wang Jianmin)

The mission makes China the third country after the Soviet Union and the United States to soft land a spacecraft on lunar soil.

The lander and Yutu each carries four scientific instruments to conduct Moon-based observation, Zou said, adding the lander's cameras took photos of the Moon during its descent.

Yutu and the lander took photos of each other Sunday night through the lander's landform camera and Yutu's panoramic camera. The color images, transmitted live, showed the Chinese national flag on Yutu.

Yutu's radar started working Sunday night to test the structure of lunar soil, according to Zou.

"Chang'e-3 will study the Moon's landforms, geological structure, substance, and potentially exploitable resources," he said, adding, "the lander will observe the Earth's plasmasphere through telescopes."

Scientists from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan have participated in the Chang'e missions, and some of the data can be shared by scientists and tech savvy enthusiasts all over the world, Zou added.

Chang'e-3 is part of the second phase of China's lunar program, which includes orbiting, landing and returning to the Earth. It follows the success of the Chang'e-1 and Chang'e-2 missions in 2007 and 2010.



SOURCE  CCTV

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 Space  

Working with technical staff at Golden Spike, Honeybee engineers will conduct trade studies for the design of configurable robotic rovers that can collect and store scientific samples from the Moon’s surface in support of Golden Spike’s expeditions.

The Golden Spike Company—the world’s first enterprise planning to undertake human lunar expeditions for countries, corporations and individuals —announced today a partnership with Honeybee Robotics—a premier provider of robotic systems for space—to design unmanned rovers capable of enhancing the next human missions to the Moon.

Working with technical staff at Golden Spike, Honeybee engineers will conduct trade studies for the design of configurable robotic rovers that can collect and store scientific samples from the Moon’s surface in support of Golden Spike’s expeditions. The results of the study will be complete by mid-2014.

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Honeybee has extensive expertise in planetary sampling and geotechnical analysis, having delivered systems for the last three of NASA’s Mars landers, including the Rock Abrasion Tool for the Mars Exploration Rovers (shown above); the “Phoenix Scoop” for the Phoenix Mars Lander; and the Dust Removal Tool and Sample Manipulation System for the Mars Science Laboratory. The company’s facilities are equipped with NASA-certified clean rooms and unique space environment simulation chambers.

“We’re very proud to be working with Honeybee, which has tremendous experience and a record of successful performance in the development of flight systems for NASA,” said Dr. S. Alan Stern, Golden Spike’s President and CEO.

“For over 25 years, Honeybee has been delivering innovative robotics for space and planetary exploration,” said Steve Gorevan, co-founder and Chairman of Honeybee Robotics. “Our team has experience developing dozens of planetary sampling, sample processing, instrumentation and mobility technologies for missions to Mars, the Moon and asteroids. It is an honor to be working with Golden Spike and helping them advance human spaceflight through lunar exploration.”

Earlier this year, an international scientific workshop led by Golden Spike proposed new concepts for lunar missions, including robotic-human expeditions. The proposal envisions sending robotic systems to the Moon to collect samples ahead of a crewed Golden Spike expedition to retrieve the robot’s cache. The concept allows the scientific return of a mission to be more extensive, since it would include samples collected by the rover many miles (kilometers) away from a landing site.

Golden Spike’s lunar science advisory board chair, Dr. Clive Neal, of Notre Dame University, applauded the partnership with Honeybee, saying it would enhance the scientific potential of Golden Spike’s human missions.

“Honeybee brings a unique body of knowledge and skills to help us augment the capabilities of human exploration missions with advanced robotics,” Dr. Neal said. “Their participation is a key step forward in helping Golden Spike change the paradigm of human space exploration, through the development of highly capable lunar exploration system architecture for customers around the world.”

The study with Honeybee is one of a number that Golden Spike is undertaking with industry partners in preparation for future flight system procurements. Market studies already conducted for the company show the possibility of 15-25 or more expeditions in the decade following a first landing.


SOURCE  Parabolic Arc

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 Space Elevators  

LiftPort, a company headed by a former NASA researcher claims it now has the fundamental technology to build a space elevator from the Moon to an orbiting station.  The venture could pave the way for economical mining of the Lunar body.

The LiftPort Group, a US-based privately-owned company, headed by former NASA researcher Michael Laine, is planning to build a space elevator to the Moon. A space elevator allows for a potential a rocket-free way to transport people and cargoes into orbit with the use of a special cable.

The idea of ​​a space elevator is not new. For the first time, it was put forward by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1895.

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The California-based company founded by former NASA engineer has developed a cheap and easy way to get to the lunar surface. The project is based on a special ribbon cable, on which transport modules and autonomous robots will travel. At first, the researchers plan to test the system on the planet: the test elevator will be two kilometers high.

The test project, has already been funded by a Kickstarter campaign. Initially, the company will use a space elevator to connect the Moon with a specially designed space station.

According to the campaign:

Before we can build Earth’s Elevator, we’ll need to build one on the Moon. It is significantly easier, and much much cheaper. Importantly - we can build it with current technology – in about eight years.

The station will then be connected to a platform on Earth. While the project was essentially mothballed during the recent economic recession, he claims there has been a fundamental technological breakthrough that has made the feasibility more likely than ever.

The construction will require only a single launch of a spacecraft that would technically resemble the famous Soviet Sputnik-1. It is assumed that such an elevator can already become a part of modern-day reality taking into consideration the current level of the technological development.

The space elevator, scientists say, will help people build manned bases on the Earth's natural satellite and organize the extraction of helium-3 there - a raw material that will potentially solve global problems of the shortage of energy resources.  According to most pessimistic estimates, the reserves of helium-3 on the Moon will be enough for Earth's population for at least 1,000 years.




SOURCE  My Science Academy

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 Space Exploration  

Researchers report that data gathered by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) show lighter materials like plastics provide effective shielding against the radiation hazards faced by astronauts during extended space travel. The finding could help reduce health risks to humans on future missions into deep space.

On the heels of evidence that a trip to Mars would presently include potentially lethal doses of radiation for accompanying astronauts, space scientists from the University of New Hampshire (UNH) and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) report that data gathered by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) show lighter materials like plastics provide effective shielding against the radiation hazards faced by astronauts during extended space travel. The finding could help reduce health risks to humans on future missions into deep space.

Aluminum has always been the primary material in spacecraft construction, but it provides relatively little protection against high-energy cosmic rays and can add so much mass to spacecraft that they become cost-prohibitive to launch.

The scientists have published their findings online in the American Geophysical Union journal Space Weather. Titled "Measurements of Galactic Cosmic Ray Shielding with the CRaTER Instrument," the work is based on observations made by the Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER) on board the LRO spacecraft.

CRaTER Spacecraft - Image Source: NASA

Lead author of the paper is Cary Zeitlin of the SwRI Earth, Oceans, and Space Department at UNH. Co-author Nathan Schwadron of the UNH Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space is the principal investigator for CRaTER.

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Says Zeitlin, "This is the first study using observations from space to confirm what has been thought for some time—that plastics and other lightweight materials are pound-for-pound more effective for shielding against cosmic radiation than aluminum. Shielding can't entirely solve the radiation exposure problem in deep space, but there are clear differences in effectiveness of different materials."

The plastic-aluminum comparison was made in earlier ground-based tests using beams of heavy particles to simulate cosmic rays. "The shielding effectiveness of the plastic in space is very much in line with what we discovered from the beam experiments, so we've gained a lot of confidence in the conclusions we drew from that work," says Zeitlin. "Anything with high hydrogen content, including water, would work well."

The space-based results were a product of CRaTER's ability to accurately gauge the radiation dose of cosmic rays after passing through a material known as "tissue-equivalent plastic," which simulates human muscle tissue. Prior to CRaTER and recent measurements by the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) on the Mars rover Curiosity, the effects of thick shielding on cosmic rays had only been simulated in computer models and in particle accelerators, with little observational data from deep space.

The CRaTER observations have validated the models and the ground-based measurements, meaning that lightweight shielding materials could safely be used for long missions, provided their structural properties can be made adequate to withstand the rigors of spaceflight.

Since LRO's launch in 2009, the CRaTER instrument has been measuring energetic charged particles—particles that can travel at nearly the speed of light and may cause detrimental health effects—from galactic cosmic rays and solar particle events. Fortunately, Earth's thick atmosphere and strong magnetic field provide adequate shielding against these dangerous high-energy particles.

SOURCE  University of New Hampshire

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 Return To The Moon

Space blog Parabolic Arc reports that a stealthy enterprise, called the Golden Spike Company, is going to make an announcement about its future plans at a press conference at the National Press Club on December 6. Golden Spike is reported to be the commercial space company that plans to undertake a private expedition to the moon by 2020.

Now that one rumor mill concerning space exploration has been put to rest, the space blog, Parabolic Arc has kicked up another.

The mysterious Golden Spike Company — which is said to be planning a privately-funded landing on the moon by 2020 — will hold a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Dec. 6 at 2 p.m. EST.

They have a Facebook page and a Twitter account, but other than that, the company has been operating in stealth mode, but tidbits are trickling out.

The Golden Spike Facebook profile reads, "Established 2010, became public 2012, aiming for bigger things in the future. Oh yeah, we're over the Moon about space exploration!"

NASASpaceflight.com, which first broke the news, reports that “the effort is led by a group of high profile individuals from the aerospace industry and backed by some big money and foreign investors.”

A Tumblr account run by an anonymous writer is providing additional details apparently swiped from NASASpaceflight.com’s subscription-only L-2 website. According to the information, Warren Buffet, Richard Branson and Guy Laliberte are reported to be among the investors.  Branson has since been dropped from this list of investors.

Also from the site, it is reported that the company has signed a $120 million deal for a Falcon Heavy rocket with expeditions to be moon will cost about $2 billion apiece.
NASA chief science officer, S. Alan Stern, who now works for the Southwest Research Institute, is the registered agent for the company, which is located in Colorado and incorporated in Delaware.

NASASpaceflight.com has also reported that:

The company intends to use “existing or soon to be existing launch vehicles, spacecraft, upper stages, and technologies” to start their commercial manned lunar campaign. 

The details point to the specific use of US vehicles, with a basic architecture to utilize multiple launches to assemble spacecraft in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The details make direct reference to the potential use of propellant depots and fuel transfer technology. 

Additional notes include a plan to park elements in lunar orbit, staging a small lunar lander that would transport two commercial astronauts to the surface for short stays. 

The architecture would then grow into the company’s long-term ambitions to establish a man-tended outpost using inflatable modules. It is also understood that the company has already begun the design process for the Lunar Lander.

The plan apparently has been circulating for some time among advocates of private exploration and commercial exploitation of the moon. A brief mention of the plan was included in a description of a conference held in Hawaii in May titled, “Independent Human Moon Mission: Prospects Emerging From Rising Tide of 21st Century Exploration.”

A privately circulated proposal, known as “Golden Spike” and backed by respected scientific and astronautical entities, envisions the development of a reliable “Cislunar Superhighway”.

Hisorically, the Golden Spike was a ceremonial final spike driven by Leland Stanford to join the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads on May 10, 1869 at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory. This act completed America’s first transcontinental railroad, uniting the nation from coast to coast.

SOURCE  Parabolic Arc

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The second of NASA's two Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft has successfully completed its planned main engine burn and is now in lunar orbit. Working together, GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B will study the moon as never before.

http://www.33rdsquare.com/2011/12/nasas-grail-mission-24-hours-away-from.html

More information about GRAIL

In an official white paper published here, the Chinese government has laid out its intentions to launch a manned mission to the moon by 2020.

The whitepaper cites

Accordance with the "around, down, back to the" three-step development of ideas, to promote lunar exploration project construction, launch lunar soft landing and lunar Surveyor, to achieve a soft landing on the moon and the inspection probe, the second step to complete lunar exploration mission . Start the implementation of the lunar sample return as the goal of lunar exploration mission the third step.  [Translation by Google]

In 2003 China became only the third country to send one of its citizens into space independently. Yang Liwei's mission aboard Shenzhou 5 was followed by another substantial milestone when Zhai Zhigang conducted the first Chinese spacewalk five years later.

China has mapped the moon from two orbiting spacecraft and has plans for an unmanned lander, a lunar rover, and a mission to return 2kg of moon rock to Earth by 2020. The space agency this year demonstrated in-orbit rendezvous and docking tests between two spacecraft, laying the foundations for the construction of a future space station.

The emergence of China as a space-faring nation has the potential to threaten US and Russian prestige in space, by inspiring a new generation with headline-grabbing crewed missions.