Space and astronomy news
In the summer of ’69, Apollo 11 delivered humans to the surface of the Moon for the first time. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent just over two hours exploring the area near their landing site on foot. Only during Apollo 15, 16, and 17 did astronauts have a vehicle to move around in.
Artemis astronauts on the Moon will have access to a vehicle right away, and NASA is starting to test a prototype.
Continue reading “Artemis V Astronauts Will be Driving on the Moon”
As humanity returns to the Moon in the next few years, they’re going to need water to survive. While resupplies from Earth would work for a time, eventually the lunar base would have to become self-sustaining? So, how much water would be required to make this happen? This is what a recently submitted study hopes to address as a team of researchers from Baylor University explored water management scenarios for a self-sustaining moonbase, including the appropriate location of the base and how the water would be extracted and treated for safe consumption using appropriate personnel.
Continue reading “How Much Water Would a Self-Sustaining Moonbase Need?”
Some of the biggest names in aerospace — and the automotive industry — will play roles in putting NASA astronauts in the driver’s seat for roving around on the moon.
The space agency today selected three teams to develop the capabilities for a lunar terrain vehicle, or LTV, which astronauts could use during Artemis missions to the moon starting with Artemis 5. That mission is currently scheduled for 2029, three years after the projected date for Artemis’ first crewed lunar landing.
The teams’ leading companies may not yet be household names outside the space community: Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost and Venturi Astrolab. But each of those ventures has more established companies as their teammates.
Continue reading “Start Your Engines: NASA Picks 3 Teams to Work on Lunar Terrain Vehicle”
Multiple space agencies plan to send astronauts, cosmonauts, and taikonauts to the Moon in the coming years, with the long-term goal of establishing a permanent human presence there. This includes the NASA-led Artemis Program, which aims to create a “sustained program of lunar exploration and development” by the decade’s end. There’s also the competing Russo-Chinese International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) effort to create a series of facilities “on the surface and/or in orbit of the Moon” that will enable lucrative research.
Beyond these government-agency-led programs, there are many companies and non-government organizations (NGOs) hoping to conduct regular trips to the Moon, either for the sake of “lunar tourism” and mining or to build an “International Moon Village” that would act as a spiritual successor to the International Space Station (ISS). These plans will require a lot of cargo and freight moving between Earth and the Moon well into the next decade, which is no easy task. To address this, a team of U.S./UK researchers recently released a research paper on the optimum trajectories for traveling between Earth and the Moon.
Continue reading “Spacecraft Could Shuttle Astronauts and Supplies to and From the Moon on a Regular Basis”
The Moon is not just Earth’s closest celestial neighbor. It’s also a natural waypoint for any mission that will be going to Mars or beyond in the coming years. It’s little wonder then why space agencies like NASA, Roscosmos, the ESA and China are hoping to send crewed missions there in the near future and construct bases that could be used to resupply and refuel missions headed to deep space.
So far, all the proposals made for a lunar base have centered on in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) and 3D printing – where robots will manufacture the base out of lunar regolith. For this purpose, the Laser Zentrum Hannover (LZH) and the Institute of Space Systems (IRAS) at the Technical University of Braunschweig came together to develop a laser system capable of turning moon dust into building materials.
Continue reading “MOONRISE: Melting lunar regolith with lasers to build structures on the Moon”
Space technology company Lunar Outpost has unveiled their new Lunar Prospector rover that will explore the surface of the Moon to search for and map resources. The Lunar Prospector is designed to drill for and analyze sub-surface samples. The first of the smallish robots was recently demonstrated on simulated Lunar regolith at the Colorado School of Mines.
Continue reading “Lunar Outpost Shows off their New Rover that will Crawl the Moon, Searching for Resources”