1.1 Establishment of NASA, Oct. 1, 1958 https://www.nasa.gov/content/nasa-history-overview

NASA begins operation. The agencys passion for discovery and commitment to innovation fuel the future of space exploration.

1.2 Project Mercury, Feb. 20, 1962 https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mercury/index.html

Astronaut John Glenn, onboard Friendship 7, orbits the Earth in NASAs Mercury capsule, expanding our perception of the possible.

1.3 Apollo 11 Moon Landing, July 20, 1969 https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/apollo-11.html

With one small step, Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 crew make a giant leap for the future of human space travel.

1.4 Voyager, Sept. 5, 1977 https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/

Interstellar probe Voyager 1 launches from Cape Canaveral on a mission to explore the universe. Today, the craft is more than 13 billion miles from Earth.

1.5 Opportunity, Jan. 3, 2004 https://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/overview/

NASAs Opportunity rover sets a new standard for the future of space exploration, covering more than 28 miles of Martian surface over 15 years.

1.6 Cygnus, Sept. 2013 https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/cygnus.html#.XN2ZLshKhPZ

Closer to home, the Cygnus cargo delivery spacecraft first launched in 2013, providing a critical resupply line for the International Space Station (ISS).

1.7 Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), April 18, 2018 https://tess.mit.edu/science/

TESS will spend two years looking into the sky and deep into space to find thousands of exoplanets and help bolster the search for habitable worlds beyond our solar system.

1.8 Orion Launch Abort System (LAS), In Development https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/orion_las_fact_sheet_8.5x11_4page_11_19_15.pdf

The Orion LAS protects astronauts if something goes wrong its abort motor produces over 400,000 pounds of thrust to pull the spacecraft out of harms way.

1.9 James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Launch in 2021 https://jwst.nasa.gov/about.html

The JWST features a 6.5-meter ultra-lightweight beryllium mirror and five-layer sunshield capable of attenuating the suns heat more than a million-fold.

1.10 Space Launch System (SLS) Solid Rocket Boosters, In Development https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/sls_solid_rocket_booster_fact_sheet_final_508_june2018.pdf

SLS solid rocket boosters are the most powerful ever built for flight. Standing 17 stories tall and burning six tons of propellant per second, theyre powering the future of space exploration.

Interested in all things on the space? We are too. Take a look at our open positions and consider joining our team: NorthropGrumman.com/careers.

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Milestones to Moonshots: The Past, Present and Future of Space Exploration Now. Powered by - Now. Powered by Northrop Grumman.

Sierra Nevada Corp. opened part of its plant in Louisville on Tuesday to the public to celebrate the arrival of the primary structure of Dream Chaser, a winged craft scheduled to make its first flight to the International Space Station in 2021.

The 2,200-pound, all-composite structure is the core element of the craft. It was designed by Sierra Nevada and built by Lockheed Martin in facilities in Fort Worth, Texas, and New Orleans.

Now, Sierra Nevada Space Systems employees will start adding the mechanical, electrical and other systems theyve built and tested. Fully outfitted, Dream Chaser will weigh 24,000 pounds.

Were going to do an employee event tomorrow so that all of our team that has worked so hard on this can come together and celebrate. And then were locking the doors and were going to build, said Steven Lindsey, the companys senior vice president of space exploration systems. Its all about building this thing and getting it to flight.

Lindsey, a former astronaut who piloted two space shuttle flights for NASA and commanded another three, is among the Sierra Nevada employees who have been working on Dream Chaser for more than a decade. The company won a NASA contract for six missions through 2024.

The flight will be automated, so there will be no crew. However, Sierra Nevada has said it hopes to one day send a crew to the space station.

NASA will pay Sierra Nevada roughly $2 billion to $2.5 billion for its services, according to the agency. Dream Chaser will ferry supplies and other cargo to the space station and bring back such items as important scientific projects.

For its part, Sierra Nevada has invested more than $1 billion in the program, Lindsey said.

Another Colorado company, United Launch Alliance, is also involved with Dream Chaser. Sierra Nevada selected the Centennial-based company to provide the launch vehicle, which will be the new Vulcan Centaur rocket.

Dream Chaser will be the only winged spacecraft flying to the space station, harking back to the space shuttles design. It is about 30 feet long and 15 feet wide. While smaller than the space shuttle, the Dream Chaser was designed to hold close to the same volume, up to about 12,000 pounds.

The Dream Chasers ability to land on a runway is seen as vital to carrying out one of its primary missions, ferrying scientific materials. Kirk Shireman, the International Space Stations program manager, said a recent mission didnt make the deadline for getting time-sensitive results to scientists because of the remoteness of the touch-down and logistical problems.

RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

In contrast, the Dream Chaser will return to the Kennedy Space Center, close to the scientists who are waiting, Shireman said.

The Dream Chaser was designed with the idea of ensuring as smooth a ride as possible for the cargo, Sierra Nevada officials said. The vehicles wings arent as big as the space shuttles. Most of the lift is created by its underside, which is wide and flat. An advantage of whats called a lifting-body spacecraft is that the g-forces, or gravitational forces, are much lower during re-entry than on a capsule, according to the company.

Landing safely and softly on the runway while being close to our facilities is really, really important, Shireman said.

John Curry, Sierra Nevadas senior director and co-program manager of space exploration systems, said the company incorporated lessons learned from the design and flights of the space shuttle. I really do think we have a game-changer here.

Sierra Nevadas Dream Chaser team is made up of about 600 employees, with 400 of those in Colorado. Space Systems is one of the business divisions of Sierra Nevada, based in Sparks, Nev.

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Sierra Nevadas Dream Chaser closer to reality with production of spacecraft starting in earnest - The Denver Post

A NASA crewmember took this photo showing off the blackness of space and Earth's horizon while he was docked with the International Space Station. Space has attracted an astounding amount of creative energy over the last decade.

Photo: NASA via Getty Images

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Over the last decade, the space ecosystem has been evolving, increasingly exploring ways to create an economic sphere driven by the private sector. Space exploration was initially the provenance of governments the only entities that could afford complex, risky endeavors that had no basis in profit generation. Today, a survey of the space ecosystem shows all types of new companies, from small two-person ventures to large corporations, pursuing many different business concepts. In addition, companies that have engaged in space activities for decades are rethinking and adjusting their approaches in the context of the changes taking place.

What is driving this dynamic? Fifty years of human engagement in space has created a foundational body of knowledge about building machines to survive uniquely harsh conditions, support humans and operate in a remote and challenging environment. This broad experience base, now accessible to everyone across the globe, combined with incredible advancements in computing, electronics, materials and other technologies, has lowered the barriers to entry for engaging in space business. One particularly important development has been the emergence of smaller satellites, resulting in a surge of startup satellite companies and new investment.

While space exploration is still risky and relatively expensive, the investment profile has shifted to allow the establishment of startups with less capital (millions, not billions) that seek success through business-driven innovation as well as technology. Space businesses today face familiar issues for any sector: markets, demand, business plans, investment and regulations.

Some new space entrants are well-known, backed by billionaires inspired by the Apollo program: Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX. Surrounding these companies are hundreds of small startups, founded by space veterans and college students, eager to engage in space. Many are focused on exploiting the technology of cubesats and smallsats and some are interested in robotic servicing. Others are tackling the challenging task of human spaceflight, either by providing vehicles or platforms for private space farers to visit or do business. Ideas abound and the industry is teeming with energy and investment.

Source: Bryce Space and Technology

Much of the emerging activity is centered in the United States, an ecosystem that was fostered by U.S. policy decisions in the mid-2000s, but the rest of the globe is following close behind. Entrepreneurial activity is flourishing in many places globally, including China, where the concept of commercial may not be quite consistent with a U.S. definition.

The momentum to expand the space-based economy has challenged both national governments and international bodies to resolve new and complex issues, including: identifying appropriate regulations and standards, establishing liability and applicable tenets of space law, defining rules of conduct on orbit for both people and machines and the integration of air and space traffic into a manageable global system. Companies interested in engaging in space also must grapple with how to develop appropriate business plans and secure funding while understanding the dynamics of supply and demand in a frontier environment. It is commonplace that venture investment and a rapid startup pace result in a high proportion of failed businesses as well as dynamic successes. To complicate matters even further, all of the above issues are interwoven and cannot readily be addressed in isolation.

Source: Bryce Space and Technology

Space has attracted an astounding amount of creative energy over the last decade. Hundreds of new investors have entered the space ecosystem, proposing space hotels, human transportation systems, human-tended laboratories, in-space manufacturing, energy harvesting, asteroid mining, fueling depots, Earth imagery, small satellite constellation-based internet services and the list goes on.

Source: Bryce Space and Technology

Accompanying the proposals is a separate but related collection of companies created to offer services from communication technologies, sensor platforms, training programs, propulsion technologies, specialized launch services and so on another huge grouping of entrepreneurial activity. Long-standing space companies are also innovating, leveraging years of experience and extraordinary R&D expertise to take advantage of the broad interest that has erupted around space. Clearly not every project or idea will be successful; space exploration is hard, both technologically and financially. In the face of challenges, the momentum of human expansion is taking us into this new frontier and so we will go.

Source: Bryce Space and Technology

How can we manage the evolution of such a diverse, dynamic ecosystem of space participants to achieve our collective goals? In addition to the traditional space community of engineers, scientists, technicians and government agents, we must add lawyers, entrepreneurs, investors of all stripes, insurance companies, standards organizations, university professors and their students, small businesses, artists and entertainers, just to name a few. In the past, the space industry has been accused of talking to itself; now, we have to learn how to reach out and engage with a much more diverse community with many different agendas, concerns and motivations. Complicating the situation is the fact that the transition discussed here is taking place globally. The need for constant communication and open discourse becomes vital.

The time is ripe for a platform that convenes the entire global ecosystem, not just the traditional aerospace industry, to facilitate the necessary conversations, target outcomes and track the resolution of critical issues. Working together, coherently as a broad community of interest in space, we can succeed.

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The Space Industry Is Getting Down to Business - BRINK

The University of New Mexico and The Childrens Hour will host a live chat with astronauts from the International Space Station in December. This is a rare and out of this world opportunity for students to engage with NASA astronauts, space experts and other space enthusiasts in an interactive atmosphere.

The NASA In-Flight Education Downlink, planned for Tuesday, Dec. 10 from 9:30-11:30 a.m. at UNMs Student Union Building (SUB), is open and free to students throughout New Mexico. UNM and The Childrens Hour are extending an invitation to all of New Mexicos space enthusiasts for the live chat.

The event will be full of exciting experts from NASA and experts doing NASA work in New Mexico, as well as fun activities and information booths to get students set on a path to be stars.

Students will ask pre-submitted questions directly to astronauts about life aboard the space station, NASAs deep space exploration plans and what its like to conduct science in space. Students can prepare for the event by participating in existing NASA education/citizen science activities, reading up on the space station, astronaut biographies and about current research activities happening aboard the station. Open submission of questions for the astronauts will be accepted through Nov. 17. Questions can be submitted toThe Childrens Hour.

This event is a great opportunity for teachers to engage students similar to an interactive mission control environment. This event is designed for students in grades 4-9 grades as well as high school students, and undergraduate students at UNM who have not discovered their passion for a career. UNM Professor Dave Hanson

International Space Station In-flight Education Downlinks support NASA's efforts to encourage K-12 students to study and pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Downlinks are facilitated by the Johnson SpaceCenter Office of STEM Engagement as part of STEM on Station, and use the unique experience of human spaceflight to promote and enhance STEM education.Astronauts living on the orbiting laboratoryare able toparticipate in these educational calls, and communicate 24 hours a day with the Mission Control Center at NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston,through the agencySpace Networks Tracking and Data Relay Satellites.

The goal is to inspire students with fields related to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM); to help teachers stimulate the interests of their classes in these subjects; and ultimately, through their students' pursuit of dreams, to advance American achievements in discovery, invention and exploration. Specific learning objectives for the event include creating interest among interested students in STEM by connecting with ordinary experience to extraordinary opportunities; demystify science by conducting real-world science; and develop community connections so youth have near-peer mentors at every stage of their education.

The event schedule also includes: an interactive jumping activity with a performance by the Albuquerque Air Jump Rope Team; Q&A/presentations by NASA contractor Jacob Torres, a New Mexico native working at NASAs Kennedy Space Center on efforts to grow New Mexico green chile in space; NASA staff member Kurt Luecht on in-situ resource utilization for exploration of the moon and Mars, current NASA interns working on plant growth (livestream from Kennedy); a presentation by UNMs Charles Chip Shearer on his new project at UNM to examine moon cores from Apollo 17and much more!

Additionally, audiences throughout New Mexico will be able to participate through the listening audience of The Childrens Hour broadcasting, Saturday at 9 a.m. on KUNM, as well as other large networks of local museums including Explora Science Center & Childrens Museum, New Mexico Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of Nuclear Sciences and History.

Learning activities will also be available and can be done anywhere across the state in classrooms, participating museums and even at home. These events will include competitions, NASA citizen science activities and ongoing space and STEM-related museum activities. For more information on the event, visit NASA In-Flight Education Downlink.

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UNM to host live chat with International Space Station astronauts - UNM Newsroom

Nearly two years after the launch of the ambitious White House Space Policy Directive 1and in the wake of this year's 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, the team at NASA appears to be on the verge of a space renaissance. The agency is busier than ever, with recent months bringing a new generation of climbing robots, confirmation of a long-planned mission to Jupiter's icy moon Europa and announcements surrounding dozens of other promising endeavors.

For science lovers, these developments inspire excitement over our long-term prospects as a space-faring civilization. However, leaders and other stakeholders in the fuel cell industry also have good reason to be excited. NASA has always been an important player in the history and advancement of hydrogen fuel cell technology, and with so many projects in the works, the agency looks poised to deliver on some revolutionary ideas in the months and years ahead.

A History Of Fuel Cell Innovation

Welsh physicist Sir William Robert Grove invented the first fuel cell in 1842, but it saw little advancement in the decades immediately following its invention. In the 1950s, NASA (then known as NACA) scientists settled on fuel cell technology as the best option for providing spacecraft with electricity and identified liquid hydrogen as the ideal fuel for achieving the launch capability necessary for space flight.

These early bets on fuel cell technology and hydrogen power kicked off years of internal research and commissioned studies that would bring fuel cell technology into the modern age. From 1950 to 1957, according to researcher and historian John L. Sloop, NASA researchers and funding drove incredible progress in the use of liquid hydrogen as a fuel source. Innovations from this period included a state-of-the-art cryogenics laboratory, improvements on hydrogen liquefaction technology and new mobile containment units for transporting hydrogen in large quantities to name just a few.

Sixty years after NASA's earliest experiments with fuel cell technology, I believe the agency's continued innovations in the field could revolutionize our use of hydrogen power.

Hydrogen Storage

In December 2018, NASA reported that it had broken ground for the world's largest liquid hydrogen storage tank. Previous iterations of the agency's storage tanks had remained essentially unchanged since the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. The report stated that despite their vacuum jacketing and three-foot-thick perlite insulation, those earlier tanks suffered from substantial "boil off" of liquid hydrogen, which is a cryogenic (i.e., super cold) substance that must be kept under -423 degrees Fahrenheit to avoid evaporation.

Now, thanks to its new Integrated Refrigeration and Storage (IRaS) system, NASA scientists can actively remove heat energy from the storage tanks. The numerous new technologies behind IRaS could lead to dramatic improvements in our ability to store hydrogen at scale. This, in turn, could facilitate the success of clean solar and wind energy farms, with hydrogen fuel being used to supplement the inconsistent energy output produced by those sources.

The All-Electric Aircraft

The University of Illinois announced in May (via New Atlas) that NASA had partnered with it to fund a three-year, $6 million project aimed at developing a hydrogen fuel cell system for an all-electric aircraft. To achieve this goal, researchers will need to design a practical cryogenic system that is capable of converting hydrogen chemical energy into electricity while maintaining the low temperatures needed to keep the fuel in its liquid state.

According to research conducted by Germany's Institute of Atmospheric Physics (via New Scientist), current aircrafts are responsible for roughly 5% of all global warming emissions. That figure is expected to rise precipitously in the years ahead. With some climate activists increasingly calling for consumers to shun air travel altogether, the new all-electric aircraft could transform flying into one of the most ethical modes of transportation and drive down ticket prices by eliminating the need for costly jet fuel making international travel more accessible than ever before.

The Regenerative Fuel Cell

According to a July report published by Energy News Network, NASA's reinvigorated plans for a return to the moon have "significantly revitalized" research on the use of fuel cells for space travel at NASA's John H. Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Researchers have already succeeded in creating many improvements to modern fuel cell technology, including creating a new and improved wicking system for carrying wastewater away from individual fuel cells.

Now, the Glenn Research Center team is working on a regenerative fuel cell that would be capable of producing electricity from hydrogen and water while also performing the reverse function using water and electricity generated by solar panels or other sources to produce hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen production has always been one of the leading obstacles preventing the widespread adoption of fuel cell technology given that the process is so costly. NASA's regenerative fuel cell could form the basis for cheap, solar-powered hydrogen production at scale, which could lead to wider adoption of fuel cell technology for transportation and other applications.

Thanks to NASA's renewed focus on space exploration, it is very likely that we will soon begin to see a pronounced acceleration of advancements in fuel cell technology. Fuel cell industry stakeholders would do well to keep a close eye on whatever comes next from the agency. If history is any indication, it could be a game-changer.

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Why NASA's Renewed Efforts In Space Exploration Are Great News For The Fuel Cell Industry - Forbes

Spacebit's moon rover on display at the New Scientist Live event in London on October 10, 2019.

Ryan Browne | CNBC

The U.K. is sending a space exploration rover to the moon, in what will be a first for the country.

The rover is a tiny four-legged robot developed by British start-up Spacebit. It has sensors that can take measurements and collect exploration data for researchers to analyze.

The robot also comes equipped with cameras one of which can take "robot selfies" and can withstand big swings in temperature, from 130 degrees Celsius (266 degrees Fahrenheit) during the day to minus 130 degrees Celsius at night.

It will also eventually be able to navigate through so-called lunar lava tubes, which are tunnels beneath the surface of the moon thought to have once been filled with lava. Spacebit says this is something that hasn't been achieved before.

The company signed an agreement with U.S. firm Astrobotic to launch its first mission in 2021 on Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander. The American lander will be launched on a Vulcan rocket from a site at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Spacebit co-founder and CEO Pavlo Tanasyuk said the launch "will carry the first lunar lander from American soil since Apollo."

Britain's rover will be the country's first to be sent to the moon, and will see it join the ranks of the U.S., China and Russia which have all previously accomplished that mission. The U.K. has built another rover, called the Rosalind Franklin, which it hopes will one day land on Mars.

India recently tried to send a rover to the moon, but it lost contact moments before it was set to touch down. The vehicle was reported to have crashed into the lunar surface.

Private companies are hoping to capitalize on the business opportunities presented by space exploration. Morgan Stanley estimates the space economy could be worth more than $1.1 trillion by 2040.

Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic announced earlier this year that it will become the first space tourism company to go public, with a stock market listing expected to take place later this year thanks to a merger with Chamath Palihapitiya's Social Capital Hedosophia.

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Britain's first moon rover is a tiny four-legged robot that will launch into space by 2021 - CNBC

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. NASA is moving up the first all-female spacewalk to this week because of a power system failure at the International Space Station.

Astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir will now venture out Thursday or Friday, instead of next Monday, to deal with the problem. It will be the first spacewalk by only women in more than a half-century of spacewalking.

A critical battery power controller failed over the weekend, prompting the change, NASA officials said Monday. The women will replace the broken component, rather than install new batteries, which was their original job.

Last week, astronauts conducted two spacewalks to replace old batteries that make up the station's solar power network. They have three more spacewalks to go to finish the battery work. The next one was supposed to be Wednesday, but it's off for now.

Each of the new lithium-ion batteries needs a device to regulate the amount of charge going in and out. One of these charge regulators did not kick in Friday night, preventing one of the three newly installed batteries from working. Replacing one of these regulators is a generic job for which all potential spacewalkers train, officials said.

The orbiting lab and its six occupants remain safe, according to NASA, and science operations are unaffected.

NASA originally planned an all-female spacewalk last spring, but had to cancel it because of a shortage of readily available medium-size suits. Koch helped assemble an extra medium suit over the summer.

"Very good that we have 4 expert spacewalkers on board to shoulder this tough task. They are the A-team!" tweeted astronaut Anne McClain, who would have gone spacewalking with Koch in March if not for the suit-sizing issue.

Since the first spacewalk in 1965, there have been 227 spacewalkers, only 14 of them women. Meir will be making her first spacewalk and become No. 15. All but one of these women has been American.

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First all-women spacewalk in over 50 years of space exploration to take place Thursday - TheSpec.com

SpaceX could be launching astronauts with its Crew Dragon spacecraft up into space as early as the start of 2020, said NASA Administrator, Jim Bridenstine. If all goes according to plan, this would be a momentous moment for American space exploration.

There has previously been some tension between Bridenstine and SpaceX founder, Elon Musk, over the very delayed Crew Dragon spacecraft. However, the duo have stated that all is well once again.

Once the spacecraft is operational it would serve as the main transportation for astronauts up to the International Space Station (ISS) for the first time for Americans since 2011.

RELATED: VALVE LEAK CAUSED SPACEX'S DRAGON CREW CAPSULE EXPLOSION

It was at a news conference that Musk and Bridenstine, alongside the two astronauts due to fly out on the Crew Dragon capsule, that Musk announced their hopes of launching into space in early 2020.

However, he strongly stressed that the astronauts' safety comes first and foremost and if there are any issues with the upcoming tests, the launch would be delayed.

Bridenstine backed these comments up by saying "If everything goes according to plan, it would be in the first quarter of next year.But rememberand this is the important thing that we have to get right on messagingthere are still things that we can learn or could learn that could be challenging that we have to resolve."

Bridenstine continued, "I'm not saying that's going to happen, I don't know. That's why wetest."

Testing is crucial, especially as the Crew Dragon's parachutes and propulsion system had some issues earlier this year.

"It's a pretty arduous engineering job to get the parachutes right," said Musk."Parachutes, they look easy but they are definitely not easy. We want to get at least something on the order of 10 successful tests in a row before launching astronauts."

Since closing off its space shuttle program in 2011, NASA has relied on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft to ferry its astronauts to and from the space station. Each seat costs $85 million.

It's quite understandable, then, that NASA has put SpaceX and Boeing in charge of designing and building new space shuttles.

In 2014, NASA awarded SpaceX $2.6 billion for their Crew Dragon project, and Boeing received $4.2 billion for their CST-100 Starliner. The hope is for these companies to build a functional and operational Commercial Crew Program.

Which is exactly what they've been working on, and it looks as though SpaceX may be on the cusp on finalizing their project.

We'll have to wait and see how the tests play out in the coming months, and whether or not we'll be watching the first all-American space shuttle launch in early 2020.

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NASA and SpaceX Aiming For a Manned Mission to Space in Early 2020 - Interesting Engineering

The United Kingdom is set to make its own giant leap soon, with a very small rover.

A 2.2-lb. (1 kilogram), four-legged robot built by London-based Spacebit will launch aboard Astrobotic's Peregrine moon lander in July of 2021, representatives of both companies announced recently.

It will be a flight of firsts the first mission for both Peregrine and its rocket, United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan Centaur; the first trip to the moon's surface by a UK-built craft; and the first time a legged robot has explored another world.

Related: Moon Rush: These Companies Have Big Plans for Lunar Exploration

"We could not be more excited to fly this mission with Astrobotic," Spacebit CEO Pavlo Tanasyuk said in a statement late last month. "This mission will result in the first payload from the UK to reach the moon surface and mark the beginning of a new era in commercial space exploration for Britain."

The rover will move at least 33 feet (10 meters) on the lunar surface and beam high-definition video and other data home to its handlers during its 10-Earth-day mission, Spacebit representatives said.

And this mission will be just the beginning, if all goes according to plan. Eventually, Spacebit aims to launch a fleet of these little robots to explore the lunar subsurface and near subsurface especially lava tubes that would be a good place for a human settlement, company officials have said.

Spacebit has other ambitions as well, as its website makes clear: "Our main goal is to democratize access to space by tokenizing all of our commercial space missions around the Earth, the moon and beyond. By decentralizing our missions, we also enable citizens to directly take part in or benefit from space programs."

Spacebit's walking rover won't be flying alone on the July 2021 mission; it's one of about 30 payloads that Peregrine will carry to the lunar surface for a variety of customers. Fourteen of those payloads are from NASA, which granted Astrobotic a $79.5 million award for the mission this past May via the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS.

Two other companies got similar CLPS funding: Intuitive Machines, which received $77 million, and Orbit Beyond, which snared $97 million. Intuitive Machines is still shooting for a summer 2021 mission with its Nova-C lunar lander, but Orbit Beyond recently dropped out, saying that it could not meet its ambitious September 2020 target.

The upcoming commercial landings will be historic. To date, successful moon landings have been pulled off only by the government space agencies of three superpowers the Soviet Union, the United States and China.

Two other entities attempted robotic lunar landings this year, but both were unsuccessful. Israel's SpaceIL tried to land the first private moon mission this past April, and India's Chandrayaan-2 lander attempted a touchdown near the lunar south pole last month. The Chandrayaan-2 mission includes a moon orbiter, which is still going strong.

Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

Need more space? You can get 5 issues of our partner "All About Space" Magazine for $5 for the latest amazing news from the final frontier!

(Image credit: All About Space magazine)

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UK's 1st Moon Rover to Launch in 2021 - Space.com

LAS CRUCES, N.M. NASA has yet to set a launch date for the first test flight of its long-delayed Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket, which the agency plans to use to send astronauts to the lunar surface in 2024. And it looks like more delays could be right around the corner.

Although NASA said this summer that its new rocket should finally lift off by the end of 2020, the first mission may slip to the middle of 2021, Ken Bowersox, NASA's acting associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said in a presentation here at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) on Oct. 10.

That mission, known as Artemis 1, will send an uncrewed Orion spacecraft on a trip around the moon. Following that initial test flight, NASA aims to launch Artemis 2 the first human mission of NASA's Artemis program in 2022. That mission will fly astronauts on a loop around the moon, but they won't land there just yet.

In 2024, NASA plans to land the first woman and the next man on the lunar surface for the Artemis 3 mission. And in between these two crewed Artemis missions, NASA plans to use an SLS rocket to launch the robotic Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter's moon Europa.

Related: NASA's Space Launch System for Deep Space Flights (Gallery)

NASA is still officially targeting 2020 for the launch of Artemis 1, but this timeline assumes that everything goes according to plan during the testing the agency will be conducting over the next year or so.

"The schedule that we're managing to is very, very aggressive," Bowersox said. He added that the SLS core stage will likely be finished by the end of this year, after which it will be shipped over to NASA's Stennis Space Center for testing, which in the best case scenario should take about five or six months. "But then there's risks like weather, and then we don't know how much refurbishment we might need to do to the stage after we've run those engines for a whole flight duration and a test flight, so we're conservatively thinking we could take an extra couple months to do some of that work."

"In the very best case, we have a chance to actually have a rocket on the pad and launched by the end of next year, but when you start throwing all those different uncertainties, its more likely that we will move out into 2021."

According to Bowersox, NASA will be coming up with a new official launch target after the agency hires a new associate administrator for human exploration and operations; that position was held by Bill Gerstenmaier from 2010 until about three months ago, when he was reassigned as a special advisor to NASA's Deputy Administrator Jim Morhard. While it's not clear exactly when NASA will fill Gerstenmaier's old position, Bowersox said that he expects NASA officials to make a decision within the next few weeks.

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and onFacebook.

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NASA's 1st SLS Megarocket Launch to the Moon Could Be Delayed to 2021 - Space.com

The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program gathers its fellows each year to share what theyve learned about some of the most fascinating science and engineering imaginable. Mat Kaplan visits with Program Executive Jason Derleth and seven leaders of funded studies. Astronaut Mae Jemison also attended and returns to Planetary Radio. Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov passed away last week at 85. He is remembered and praised by space historian John Logsdon. All this, headlines from The Downlink, and Bruce Betts!

A classy NIAC pin, a Planetary Society KickAsteroid rubber asteroid, and a 200-point iTelescope.net astronomy account.

What was the first star system besides our own that was discovered to have eight planets?

The winner will be revealed next week.

The two missions that are still active on the surface of the Moon are Change 3 and 4.

NOTE: This automated transcript is currently being edited by a human. Check back soon for updates.

[00:00:00] Space Innovation so crazy they just might work this week on planetary radio.

Welcome. I'm at Kaplan of the planetary Society with more of the Human Adventure across our solar system and beyond. I exaggerated not all of the concepts studies and projects presented at this year's Nayak Symposium were on the bleeding edge, but there wasn't one of them that board this Gearhead will share a sampling in minutes and you'll hear a conversation with the leader of the NASA Innovative and advanced concepts program Jason derleth.

I'll also talk with Nayak keynoter astronaut engineer and MD Mae. Cosmonaut artist and World citizen Alexei leonov passed away last week space historian and policy expert John logsdon met him a couple of times and wrote about his front and center role in the Soviet space program. John will look [00:01:00] back with us right after a few headlines from around the solar system courtesy of the downlink.

October 11th brought only the second edition of this planetary science and exploration digest courtesy of my colleague planetary Society editorial director Jason Davis, here are three of Jason's capsule stories scientists have announced the discovery of 20 new moons around Saturn the wide ringed gas giant now officially has 82 surpassing Jupiter 79 to become the Solar System's current champion.

Okay, it's not a contest both are likely to have more and Jupiter probably has more in total. Want to help name Saturn's new Moon's there's a link what else in the downlink at planetary dot-org. In other Saturn news the Hubble Space Telescope has now been in space for an entire Saturn year ten thousand seven hundred sixty four Earth days as I record this or roughly [00:02:00] 30 Earth years, you can see how Hubble's view of Saturn has changed over that time in the planetary Society image Library.

NASA's latest efforts to save the heat flow experiment on the Insight Mission appear promising that self hammering mole was supposed to bury itself in the Martian soil to record changes in temperature, but it's still stuck near the surface Engineers are now using insights scoop to apply pressure on the mole while it digs.

The rest of the downlink is online at planetary dot-org in the blog where all the stories have links for further exploration. Thanks, Jason. John logsdon was at home in Washington DC when I caught him on the morning of October 15. John I wasn't a bit surprised to hear that you had run into Alexei Lan off a couple of times at least a couple of times I and I already knew because of course I've read so a lot of your writing that you have things to say about his significance in the [00:03:00] history of space exploration.

So I thank you for taking a couple of minutes to help us pay tribute to him this morning happy to do it. Was he among the greatest of the Great's was he up there with you know, Glenn and and Armstrong and and Gagarin. Oh, I think so. I mean, he was a world citizen. He was the first first person to do an Eva of course and nearly died in the.

Process trained to be the first Russian on the moon if the Soviet Union had ever gotten the chance to attempt a landing, but they couldn't get their big N1 rocket to work and then he was selected to command the apollo-soyuz and shaken steaks mission. And I think he was regarded by the space fires of the world is kind of one of the Granddaddy's of the space Community.

He was outgoing he was easy to get along with he liked everybody [00:04:00] almost everybody. And I think he was indeed one of the great. So how did you cross paths with him? Well one incidentally was through the planetary Society. It was a meeting at the US National Academy of Sciences sometime in the 80s.

Probably the tenth anniversary of us apollo-soyuz. I showed him the US intelligence satellite pictures of the N1 launch site. So that was that was interesting. I mean, I I never had an extended. Conversation with Lee and have unfortunately, but but and then I know in Moscow in 1987, I was part of a planetary Society group that went to the 30th anniversary of Sputnik and ran into him telling him that Buzz Aldrin was looking for him.

And he had the other way now there's an interesting Insight. I he's one of these [00:05:00] guys who apparently was changed by space travel. I mean he became an artist and I just read it is it not become an artist. He was an artist first. Oh, I didn't know that he went to art school before he went to flight school.

Wow. Okay. He brought his art to space. And did some very beautiful work and I just read in his updated Wikipedia biography about some of the things he said toward the end of his life about how he thought that we had missed an opportunity the United States and the Soviet Union to to collaborate to cooperate in space.

I think that's right. I mean again little-known factoid. The US and the Soviet Union had agreed after apollo-soyuz to work together with the shuttle rendezvousing with the Soviet space station and work together on planning a space station in the 80s and then [00:06:00] we didn't follow through on that agreement.

First of all because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and then. The early years of the Reagan Administration so there were missed opportunities along the way to do than what we ended up doing 20 30 years. Later. John I knew you'd be the right person to call thank you for this helping us Mark the passing of one of the greats in space exploration.

Yes, he will be missed John logsdon full disclosure a board member of a member of the board of directors of the planetary Society is also the founder. And ran the space policy Institute at George Washington University and the author of several books including John F Kennedy and the race to the moon.

The Nayak Symposium spread across three days early this month we met in Huntsville, Alabama not far from the Marshall space flight center Nayak began in [00:07:00] 1998 as the NASA Institute for advanced concepts. It went away for a few years and then returned as the NASA Innovative advanced concepts program.

Jason derleth is its program executive working out of the agency's space technology mission directorate in Washington. He joined me online a few days after the symposium. Jason thanks for joining me. And what a pleasure it was. Thank you for allowing me to be a fly on the wall at this Nayak Symposium at which we heard all of these fascinating and very exciting proposals.

Maybe some more likely to become reality than others, but. That's why you're out there doing this stuff. Right? Yes. It's wonderful that you were able to come. We really appreciated having you there. I think it adds a lot when we have folks who are generalists like yourself with a large amount of experience talking to people coming and you can ask.

Questions to the fellows and questions like that just make the the [00:08:00] studies stronger. We're really excited to have everybody there. Anyone who can come as welcome. Of course if that is pretty special as well that it is open to the public and you had some interesting members of the public there Frank Drake one of the inventors.

Talk about radically or entirely new Concepts one of the inventors of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. He wasn't a fellow he was just there to listen to your fellows make their presentations. And I know that he was very happy to be there. Yeah, Frank is a wonderful friend of the program.

He's been on our external counsel for a little while. But this was his last meeting with us so he may or may not come in the future. But if we have one nearby, I think he would just love to come he's always been able to provide helpful thoughts on astronomy and radio astronomy some Concepts in our program.

Give me give us please. The thumbnail description of of what Nayak is about and what NASA hopes to accomplish if that's not already obvious from what we've said so far [00:09:00] Nayak is. A technology development program that looks at new technologies that are 10 or more years out from final use some of these concepts are a little farther out than others, but it's amazing how excited and enthusiastic people are about their Concepts and about other people's Concepts as well.

So the basic gist of it is we provide a small amount of money in a small amount of time. Our Phase 1 studies are only a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars over nine months to do a quick turn of the analysis crank to find out if a really interesting idea that someone's had is rooted in reality.

I mean, we try and weed out anything that's beyond the laws of physics before they ever get funding but the job of the phase one fellow we call all of our winners fellows not-p eyes is to show that not only is this idea. Within the realm of feasibility, but that it's a good idea to do. [00:10:00] And that's what they have nine months and $125,000 to to show NASA that this idea is so good that we ought to implement it.

The best ones go on to a phase 2 of study phase twos are two years long and 500 thousand dollars. And we have had some people show up to the midterm review of their faith to with multiple robots ready to go that in string. These people have often students working for them and sometimes volunteering their spare time just to work for NASA.

It's really exciting to some students to be able to do. So the products that come out of the phase 2 are usually really solid. Mission analysis with sometimes some bread board brass board or or prototype robots to show that what they are thinking about doing is feasible and a full technology implementation roadmap.

So what would need to happen before something could fly in space or [00:11:00] fly in the air if it's an aeronautics? Then you have this newest phase for very few proposals make it to this but your phase 3, which I guess we heard some of the first presentations about some of these projects this year. Yes.

That's correct our phase 3 we intend to fund one per year and it's for the concepts that after a phase 2 still have too much risk left in them for a traditional. Spaceflight engineering system to accept them as a new technology. So you can't imagine for instance a new Mission a mission manager choosing to do asteroid mining for instance at the moment that's going to take a little bit more work and a little bit more investment and the idea of the phase 3 is to go all the way to a.

Stage of development or development [00:12:00] stage in software where a future Mission could pick that up and start funding it after that and and one of the requirements for a phase three is to have a customer that's interested before we would consider funding it. How many people did we hear from and how many current fellows are.

Well, there's 12 phase ones from last year. We have six phase 2's and there were eight phase twos from the year before and two phase threes. You were telling me just before we started recording that you were going through some of the new proposals that that you've got there. You must get far more than you can possibly fund.

Yes, and we get a lot of fundable. Proposals as well, but Nayak is a little bit funny and NASA. It's not your average everyday NASA program in a lot of ways and one of those is that we take proposals from non traditional Aerospace folks and from in fact non [00:13:00] Aerospace folks. We have had quite literally garage inventors in Nyack.

One of them has an Optics bench in his. Detached garage up in New York state another one was a physical therapist that came up with a method of moving people in space to create artificial gravity that was in line. We've always heard about artificial Gravity by rotating your spacecraft and you put the astronauts on the inside surface and they rotate around and have artificial Gravity from that rotation.

This gentleman came up with a sled that could be slid back and forth with a Twist in the middle. And every person that I've ever shown this concept to says that is not going to work, but I want to see the results of the study because it really interesting and it turns out in fact that well it might could work.

I'm not sure that we would do it but it's actually a reasonable idea and it provides no [00:14:00] Coriolis effect on the body when you're doing the artificial gravity, it's quite interesting. Of course, you can find that study up on. On the website which will provide a link to as well because you can find out about all of these projects that that we're hearing about from Jason.

I'm also thinking of the ones that won't become reality. And there is still value in these isn't there if they explore something that no one has ever thought about before and discover doesn't look like this will work at least with our current understanding of the challenge. That's still valuable to know I fully agree.

In fact, I've often said that Nayak and other early stage technology development programs ought to be looking at our failures as successes because we're still adding. To human knowledge and making it publicly available. I can think of one in the new program that didn't work at least as currently envisioned.

The basic idea was to [00:15:00] have a spacecraft that was in very low earth orbit deep in the atmosphere or perhaps even a plane that caused a small explosion. Up in the upper atmosphere which would then push that upper atmosphere up into space for a short period of time where orbital debris would run into the atmosphere that was suddenly thicker and it would slow the debris down because the atmosphere was thicker than it what had been before and you might be able to do our but quite a bit of debris that way and after running the analysis unfortunately it showed that.

It really didn't slow things down very much. Unless you had a very large explosion and you'd have to do it multiple times. And so that very creative and intriguing idea didn't pan out but we only spent $100,000 to find out that that wouldn't work. That wasn't very much money in the NASA world. Of course, I think it was a good use of the taxpayer dollar since the research was able to [00:16:00] be put up online for anyone to see hey.

Don't go down this path right now because it's probably not going to work unless there's something substantially different than the future. What are some of your favorites or if you don't want to favor some of your children over others. So what are what are a couple more that you know demonstrate the diversity of projects that get funded.

Let me think carefully. We had a study from Ames Research Center that took a look at what would it take to take a human spacecraft and. Line the walls with bags bags of water at first as the astronauts drank the water and made waste the bags were designed to take the waste in and chemically treat that waste to purify it back into water the obvious benefit of this is that you're increasing your radiation shielding.

Well using these bags to purify [00:17:00] waste which will reduce the amount of water that you need to bring along with you. That was a fascinating study that that showed real benefits to doing so we had a study on what would it take to reach Alpha Centauri with a spacecraft for real you take a very small spacecraft perhaps even smaller than a phone no more than a chipset you put a.

Light sail around it something that could solar sail but then instead of using the solar photons you would shine lasers at it as brightly as you could maybe 50 very high power lasers. Well, the mathematic show that you can accelerate something from essentially zero velocity to approximately 2 tenths the speed of light in about 10 minutes at to tends to the speed of light.

You reach Alpha Centauri in only 20 years and it takes about five years to get the data back which [00:18:00] would be done through miniscule lasers pointing back at the Earth. But it turns out that the laser array that you used to push. The solar sail at the beginning can be used in coherent receive mode and might in fact be able to receive a direct laser signal from five light-years away.

The mathematics works out implementing that system will of course provide many challenges what you're describing there certainly sounds like it's the Breakthrough starshot project which we have talked about before on this show. If you watch the initial Breakthrough starshot video where Pete Worden got up and introduced the three luminaries that were on the stage Mark Zuckerberg and.

Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner the Russian. Yes, millionaire who funded it Pete Worden about 35 minutes in mentions that this was an outgrowth from in fact the Nayak study that I just mentioned so breakthrough starshot was [00:19:00] was created because of a Nayak. Every one of the projects that I heard about is deserving of some conversation of sharing with our audience.

We won't be able to do all of them, but I said we will hear from some and we may hear from more over the coming weeks and months as I follow up with some others of your fellows. I'm going to bet that there are some people out there. Whether they are academics for people in a garage or people at a NASA Center or maybe with a big company who'd like to know, how do you get into this?

I mean, I already ran into one person from a University at the Starship Congress here in San Diego a few weeks ago who had never heard of Nayak and yet he is working on something that seemed like it was well within the kind of project that Nayak would consider. That's a great Point Nayak is a challenging program to get into because we are open to the public.

We receive between two and three hundred proposals every year and we're very aware [00:20:00] that we don't want to have people spending a lot of time proposing if they have only a. Five percent chance of winning and so what we do to make that a little bit better as we do a step proposal system where you provide us with a three-page white paper, and if you are in scope for our program and exciting enough, then we will invite you to provide us with an eight page proposal that will have a full peer review of expert panel review technical panel review.

We open that solicitation. Every year in August, but we're about to change the date to mesh a little bit better with the grand processing folks that work down at the NASA shared services Center. We're expecting the solicitation to come out in early June next year. But now what a lot of people don't know is that they can email us.

We have an email address that Matt can provide on the show page for any interested that [00:21:00] email address. You can send us a white paper to quickly review as long as we're not in an open competition. If we're in an open competition, we are not allowed to review somebody's white paper and give. Give them any feedback if we're not we are allowed to and so if you send an email to us with a three-page white paper, we can tell you.

Yeah, that's in scope or no. It's not in scope. It would be better. If you did the following thing the main thing that we find people doing when they proposed to Nayak as they don't understand what the c means and NASA Innovative advanced concepts because we're open to any and all technology areas.

We need a little bit of help from the proposers to tell us how good their concept is. Otherwise, we would be looking at let's just say a new material that could really revolutionize the way that we do space and we'd be comparing that to a. A new [00:22:00] architecture for just again, for example how you might get a large human-sized Lander down to the surface of Mars and we might be comparing that to a new space suit and we might be comparing that to a new instrument that could measure.

The quantities of dark matter in the universe. How do we do that? Well, we asked the proposers to put their new technologies into a mission context and we don't mean hey, this is something that's relatable to human spaceflight and so any future human space flight that's extended will use this technology know what we mean is you tell us a mission that you might do.

It doesn't have to be on NASA's books. Just a potential future mission. And then show what the impact of your technology is explain to us why your technology is better than sliced bread, right and on a good example of that might be the fusion propelled Pluto [00:23:00] Orbiter and Lander which we hold up quite frequently to talk about.

This Fusion is a very difficult concept and some people think that. We shouldn't be funding any Fusion at Nyack. The dollars are far too small to make any progress. Well, that might be true unless we're talking about a new method of fusion or a new way of doing it where $125,000 and nine months might actually show people.

Hey, this could be feasible sometime in the future. And that's what Stephanie Thomas did with this study of the Pluto Fusion Orbiter and Lander might be able to reach Pluto in five years orbit Pluto in five years and beam power to a Lander that could then be power rich and have more instruments on it.

That is a really exciting Mission analysis that can only be done. By her Fusion engine. Now the [00:24:00] reason why she chose Pluto is well by golly the farther you go with a Fusion engine the better it's going to look and we had just flown by Pluto and NASA had and so it was hot in the news and it was topical but it also really showed off the benefits of her technology and that's really the key if you can show us in a step a white paper that you have done a back of the envelope calculation.

And put that back of the envelope calculation into your proposal and show us that this is going to really make an impact. That's how you get into Nayak. It is a terrific opportunity and I won't be surprised if a few of our listeners out there many of them bleeding edge thinkers. If you don't hear from them at some point at least I would be wonderful.

I'd like to hear about that if anybody has those ideas Jason, I know it's a lot of work but. You seem to have an exciting job. Well, thank you. I work at NASA headquarters. And so a lot of it is paper [00:25:00] pushing, but I do get to interact with these really smart people that are doing really creative things all across all technology areas for space and that's just exciting everyday.

And it occurs to me not just the people who make the proposals but the people who help you evaluate them or are a pretty interesting group. Actually everybody who works in the program office at Nyack is a spectacular human being both professionally. And personally, I'm really fortunate to have these folks working with me.

Thanks Jason. I can't wait to see what the next batch of Nayak funded projects will put on the table for the rest of us to Marvel. I can't wait myself. It'll be a fun about eight months before we learn. Thanks. Jason dear life is the program executive. For Nayak the NASA Innovative advanced concepts program when we return we'll meet seven Nayak fellows including science fiction writer and physicist Geoffrey a Landis and we'll wrap up our Symposium coverage with the great Mae Jemison.

Bruce is [00:26:00] still ahead to this is planetary radio. Taking a minute to talk again about the Great Courses plus and about exoplanets. You know, how often we talk about exoplanets on this show. It's one of the courses not surprisingly offered by the Great Courses. Plus it's the search for exoplanets.

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Greek mythology Stress Management playing guitar you name it all kinds of personal Improvement stuff that they've wrapped into their lineup as well. Now you can expand your mind by signing up for the Great Courses plus and right now listeners to plan a to a radio get this deal. An [00:27:00] entire month for free to start your free month sign up today using my special URL.

The great course is plus.com / planetary the Great Courses plus.com / planetary. I wish I could bring you conversations about all 28 of the presentations. I enjoyed at this year's Nyack Symposium. Here are short explorations of just seven. I think they represent a pretty good range of both topics and Nayak fellows.

By the way, what deal here are mostly excerpts from the live streaming videos? I hosted on behalf of Nayak during breaks in the Symposium action will start our warp speed tour with a concept that reminds me just a little bit of the Star Trek transporter good trekkies know that the transporter scans and breaks down matter sending Ross stuff and information from the Enterprise.

To the surface of a planet and a stream of both particles and energy [00:28:00] that beam somehow stays coherent. It doesn't spread out sound crazy. Well, it turns out that particles of matter and photons may actually be able to interact with each other to do exactly this. Not to send Captain Kirk to the rescue, but just possibly to someday drive a light sail across the solar system or to the Stars Chris limbach from Texas A&M University.

Two things come to mind which set your work apart a little bit. I think this is Nayak. So we've heard from a whole bunch of fellows who are out there at the bleeding edge pushing what we understand about what is possible with technology and science. But I don't think anybody has come as close to seeming like magic as yours, except of course that it's Nobel Prize in science backed science.

Yeah, I mean you think about the the optical trapping right? That was Nobel Prize was [00:29:00] awarded recently, but that technology was actually developed by, you know, Arthur ashkan at Bell Labs back in the 1980s. They started trapping particles using that type of force and you know, Optical guiding has been around, you know, people have known of that and mirages for a long time.

So, you know, that's one of the major things to me is that the the ingredients that go into this self-guiding and the beam are actually pretty well-known and I think that the thing that gets me excited is the novelty of combining that together and then using that for propulsion and you know, it's just really exciting to be part of the night program.

And the second thing that I think May set your work apart a little bit is that unlike so many of the other projects here very worthy projects that deserve more attention generally yours has gotten some popular media coverage and I can't for the life of me remember where but I know I'd read about it before coming here to to Nayak.

It does seem to be exciting the imaginations of a lot of. Yeah, I hope so. I mean, it's one of those things that you know, you see [00:30:00] some of these the concept that we propose and you know, I think I couldn't have come up with that just as a science fiction type of concept because it came about by trying to understand the physics of how do you build a beam which does not diffract in the vacuum of space.

Just let us to something which is just so unusual. But at the same time. You know, we understand I think now after the phase 1, you know, how it's actually going to be working and I'm just so excited to get in the lab. I'm experimentalists. Oh actually building some of these things in the lab and and testing out our theories of how this is working is really going to be so exciting in the next two years and your slides gave some examples of where you're headed with this experimental work proving out this technology, but certainly from the modeling that you've done and other efforts it looks pretty good.

Well, it does look good. And you know, we didn't always think it was going to all work out. So so the modeling it actually turned out to be I think a little bit better at least the preliminary modeling then I expect it because when we started out we weren't sure whether or not these forces The [00:31:00] Guiding and then the particle trapping.

Whether that needed to be a precise balance where you're kind of, you know, standing on the tip of a needle and and if that was the case, it would be easy for some kind of perturbation to cause that to Decay but what the modeling I think is shown at least preliminarily is that the guiding is more robust under the conditions we've modeled then than I had expected.

And so that was one of those areas where you're a little surprised at a good result doesn't always happen. No fact, it's more rare the other way. Yeah usually act on the way. Do you see this as something I'm certainly not a mature technology not yet. But you can see this is reaching those higher limits of TRL as we say Readiness level.

Do you see this? Maybe someday reaching the level where it could be pushing something across our little. Neighborhood of the Galaxy. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's not I think you're not going to go directly from where we are now to the [00:32:00] Proxima be Mission. You're going to start using it for travel around the solar system.

And so we have the tools now from The Phase 1 to scope out what the parameters would be. For example a 5-megawatt. Total power budget and what we can do with that and there's a lot of interesting things you can do even with a lower power something more achievable in the next 10 20 years. And so and so I think that there's there's a lot of opportunities but then again I see all of the challenges have you thought about other uses of this self-correcting Beam for things like communication across distances, that would have been unimaginable.

We thought about it a little bit. I think that one of the things I can say is that the propagation distance of the beam. I mentioned was only about half of an AAU because of the collisions with solar wind particles actually so that attenuates the particle beam and then you lose the self-guiding. So I think that you know, we can do Communications over that distance.

Of course, you need the power to actually. Fill the whole system and so I'm I'm not sure I agree that [00:33:00] there's a case there in terms of the seti implications after that half an AAU of propagation. Then you have a you know, 1 meter. Laser beam and that then diffracts out into space and so I'm not sure that gives you a tighter Beam at the next star system than anything else.

So, okay, so we're not ready to say hello to the centurions quite quite yet. We can send something there get back. We'll send them a gift. Yeah, right. Well FedEx speaking of light sales and we do Grover Schwarzenegger of the Rochester Institute of Technology. Welcome Grover. Thank you. Nice to be here.

You know, I'm with the planetary Society. So I'm a little partial to solar sails. I also bring you greetings from our chief scientist Bruce Betts. Thanks for that. And you attended our he attended a conference you did about meta materials for solar sails. That's right. We're trying to develop the next generation of solar cells based on metamaterials.

And so I had an incubator meeting in Washington DC and Bruce was one of our invited guests for that and he enjoyed it enormously [00:34:00] and we're going to meet a couple of your students but first. We won't fully review what you presented here. But you talked about making sales out of basically diffraction gratings.

Now what? So great about a diffraction grating compared to a nice shiny piece of mylar. Well diffraction gratings are have come a long ways the last decade or so because of metamaterials. There's new ways of engineering them make them highly efficient and functional you can basically design them to accomplish things that have not been imagined before because of material constraints.

So metal is a metal it reflects and that's about it. You can put coatings on it, but it can't achieve the functionality you can with. How does this compare to the great Japanese solar sail Icarus wasn't diffraction grating, but it had those LCD panels built into it. That's right. So it grows had an ingenious approach of having a electro-optic diffuser.

So rather than diffracting their light, they just scattered it all over the place that changed the amount of force [00:35:00] on that area of the cell ours will be I think more efficient and a little bit more functional. By their they follow similar approaches. They both involve Advanced metamaterial diffraction materials and advanced look a crystal material.

And you'd like to send maybe 12 of these circling the Sun but at high inclination so we could see as you demonstrated that the poles of the sun which we've had more difficult Imaging than we can say this now since last spring then a black hole. That's right. It amazes me that no one's ever had a good picture of the North or South Pole the sun before because it's so hard to get up there takes a lot of energy Rockets won't do it.

So we need to know what kind of propulsion and a solar sailing provides us that opportunity. Hide another constant theme from many of the fellows that we've been hearing from across these three days has been not just the technology accomplishments that they're making in the exciting Concepts, but how they have been using this research.

And spreading it out to young people like the [00:36:00] two who are standing here next to you. You want to introduce them. Now? This is Lucy Choo. She's from Taiwan. She's by PhD student. And this is Amber do Bill. She's undergraduate msbs student in chemical engineering at RIT. She's my mission specialist and I'm going to cross in front of you here and I'll start with you Amber.

How's it been to be involved as an undergraduate with a project like this? Honestly, I've been very lucky with the opportunities that I've been given and people like doctor SportsCenter come up with fantastic ideas. And I just want excited people who want to do the work and there's a lot of students and young people out there that are willing to do that.

I myself am one of them. So you're a little bit ahead of Amber here. But still I'm sure an exciting opportunity. It is our starting from you know, just investigating an Optics, but it's really cool opportunity that I'm involved in the Solar sails and then also like hearing all these Faith cool Symposium in these three days.

Best of luck to both of you particularly with this [00:37:00] great start in doing real space research. It must be rewarding to be able to offer these opportunities. And as that's what makes being a professor gratifying grading exams are proposals hard, but when you see these kids get excited and take jobs and the real world following their passions.

There's nothing like it in the world. Thank you Grover very much and look forward to license for lightsail to way to go. Fantastic. I'll pass that along to my colleagues who had a lot more to do with it. But thank you so much. I look forward to seeing that diffraction grating up their grazing the sun.

Read the rest here:

Space Innovations So Incredible, They Just Might Work - The Planetary Society

Deep and shadowed Shackleton Crater, near the moons south pole, is one location where deposits of water ice have been found. This ice is of interest to scientists and potentially useful to future moon explorers. Image via NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Leonard Davids Inside Outer Space.

We tend to think of the moon as a dusty, bone-dry place, and for the most part, that is true. But the moon does have ice, in particular at the south pole, hidden in shadowed craters. Just how the ice got there has been a bit of a mystery, but now a new study suggests it may have various sources, both ancient and more recent.

The new peer-reviewed findings were published in Icarus on September 30, 2019.

This water ice has much value, both to scientists and future human explorers. According to Ariel Deutsch, lead author of the study and a graduate student at Brown University:

The ages of these deposits can potentially tell us something about the origin of the ice, which helps us understand the sources and distribution of water in the inner solar system. For exploration purposes, we need to understand the lateral and vertical distributions of these deposits to figure out how best to access them. These distributions evolve with time, so having an idea of the age is important.

EarthSky 2020 lunar calendars are available! They make great gifts. Order now. Going fast!

Map of known water ice deposits near the lunar south pole, from NASAs Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). Image via NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/AmericaSpace.

The findings suggest that not only is some of the ice much older than the rest, but that there are probably different sources, as well. Older ice could have come from water-bearing comets and asteroids or ancient volcanism. More recent ice deposits might be the result of pea-sized micrometeorites or implantation by solar wind.

So how did the researchers come to these conclusions?

Using data from NASAs Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), they looked at the ages of large craters near the moons south pole such as Shackleton Crater in which ice deposits have been found. The age of the craters can be estimated by counting the number of smaller craters inside the larger ones. Since scientists have a pretty good idea of the rate of impacts over time, they can estimate the ages of different kinds of terrain.

Indias Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft also found evidence for ice deposits on the moon back in 2009. Image via Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)/Discover.

Most of the ice is found in very old craters, formed about 3.1 billion years ago or more. The ice cant be any older than the craters themselves, or it would have been vaporized during the impacts. This doesnt mean the ice must be as old as the craters, either, but it must be old since the distribution of the ice deposits on the crater floors is patchy, suggesting that it has been subjected to impacts by micrometeorites over a long period of time.

Deutsch added:

There have been models of bombardment through time showing that ice starts to concentrate with depth. So if you have a surface layer thats old, youd expect more underneath.

What was most surprising was ice in smaller, younger craters. This would imply that those ice deposits are also younger, and were created by a different process than the ice in the older, larger craters. As Deutsch noted:

That was a surprise. There hadnt really been any observations of ice in younger cold traps before.

While spacecraft like LRO have confirmed the ice deposits and others, like Indias Chandrayaan-1 mission as well figuring out how different deposits actually formed will probably require return missions. Additional robotic missions will come first, followed, hopefully, by new crewed missions such as NASAs planned Artemis mission. Knowing exactly where the ice deposits are located, and how much ice there is, will be important for planning future human missions back to the moon.

Future human missions to the moon, like NASAs planned Artemis mission, will need resources such as the water ice deposits to help sustain a long-term presence. Image via NASA.

Jim Head, a professor at Brown University, explained:

When we think about sending humans back to the moon for long-term exploration, we need to know what resources are there that we can count on, and we currently dont know. Studies like this one help us make predictions about where we need to go to answer those questions.

Ice on the moon may seem surprising, but it shouldnt be; Mars has lots of ice, comets and some asteroids have abundant ice, there are many moons in the outer solar system completely covered in an ice crust with oceans below! and even Mercury has ice deposits near its north pole, in regions with permanent shadow (since there is no atmosphere to distribute heat from the sunlit areas). Scientists will now be able to compare the origins of the moons ice with that of other bodies in the solar system, and for future explorers, it will be a much-needed resource.

Bottom line: Water ice deposits near the moons south pole appear to be of different ages and have different sources, according to a new study from Brown University.

Source: Analyzing the ages of south polar craters on the Moon: Implications for the sources and evolution of surface water ice

Via Brown University

See more here:

Whats the source of the ice at the moons south pole? - EarthSky

A new lunar rover which will explore the moon in 2021, is seen unveiled in London, Britain October 10, 2019. REUTERS/Stuart McDill

LONDON (Reuters) - A lunar rover which will explore the moon on foot in 2021 was unveiled in London on Thursday.

The new concept, with four legs rather than wheels, will send data back to a larger mothership, which will transmit it back to Earth.

UK startup Spacebit signed a contract with U.S. space robotics company Astrobotic to get the rover on board their Peregrine lander, which will carry 14 NASA instruments to the moon.

Once the lander reaches the moons surface, the rover will drop from beneath it to the surface and attempt to explore a lava tube. Its very important to explore the lunar tubes to know the environment that we have there so potentially humans can live in those lunar tubes when they go back to the moon, SpaceBit founder and CEO Pavlo Tanasyuk told Reuters.

The rover is the smallest lunar rover ever and incorporates some off-the-shelf parts which drastically reduces the cost, according to SpaceBit. We believe that in space exploration what is important is to have low-cost missions and this rover provides potential for very low-cost missions. Its many, many times cheaper than any competition on the market, Tanasyuk said.

The first mission will see just one rover explore the surface for only one day, until the solar night falls and it ceases to operate. Spacebit says the plan is for subsequent missions to deploy swarms of rovers connected to motherships which protect them at night and relay the data back to Earth. In the future were going to commercialize this robot by selling the data we get from the moons surface... very valuable data for the future human missions on the moon. And also we are planning to potentially go into mass production of this rover so we can explore our solar system and run low-cost missions to the moon and beyond, Tanasyuk said.

British astronaut Tim Peake welcomed the Spacebit project and also said the UKs plans to develop its space industry would not be affected by Brexit. The European Space Agency is not part of the EU so Britains membership of ESA post-Brexit will still be confirmed, Peake said.

Spacebit plans to run a competition to allow the public to choose the name for the new rover - despite a recent poll to name a new British research ship being won by Boaty McBoatface.

Reporting by Stuart McDill; Editing by Susan Fenton

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Tiny walking rover bound for the moon - Reuters

A team of planetary researchers from the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) and elsewhere has found that a volcanic flow on Venus Ovda Regio highlands plateau is made of basaltic lava and isnt silica-rich. This discovery weakens the notion that Venus might once have been Earth-like with an ocean of liquid water.

Venus in real colors, processed from Mariner 10 images. Image credit: Mattias Malmer / NASA.

Venus is one the most hostile places in the Solar System. Its atmosphere is composed almost entirely of carbon dioxide (96.5%), with very little water vapor. It also has significant amounts of corrosive sulfur-bearing gases and rapidly moving clouds of sulfuric acid droplets.

Despite only 10% of the solar flux reaching the planets surface, enough energy is trapped by gases and particles present in the lower atmosphere, to raise the temperature at the surface dramatically. This extreme greenhouse effect heats the surface to temperatures as high as 864 degrees Fahrenheit (462 degrees Celsius).

Walking on the Venusian surface would be difficult, like walking under water at 900 m (2,950 feet) depth the atmospheric pressure is 90 times higher than on Earth at sea level.

Previous studies suggested that early Venus was once warm and wet based on the chemistry of its atmosphere and the presence of highlands.

These highlands were thought to be formed of granitic rock, like Earths continents, which required oceans of water to form.

Ovda Fluctus region (outlined), in the meter-scale roughness map from NASAs Magellan Venus orbiter Mission; darker tone is lower roughness; the flow is distinctly smoother than the surrounding tessera. Image spans 3-10 S, 91-100 E (950 km across); north to top. Image credit: Wroblewski et al.

In the new study, LPI researcher Dr. Allan Treiman and colleagues found that Ovda Fluctus, a lava flow complex on the equatorial highlands of Ovda Regio, is composed of basaltic lava, calling into question the idea that the planet might once have been Earth-like with an ocean of liquid water.

The team re-mapped Ovda Fluctus using radar data and discovered that the flow is not granitic as was expected from its location, but is more likely made up of basalt rock which can form with or without water.

The result has potentially significant implications for the evolutionary history of Venus.

We know so little about Venus surface, Dr. Treiman said.

If the Ovda Regio highlands are made of basaltic rock as is most of Venus, they were likely squeezed up to their current heights by internal forces, possibly like mountains which result from plate tectonics on Earth.

The research was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

_____

Frank B. Wroblewski et al. Ovda Fluctus, the Festoon Lava Flow on Ovda Regio, Venus: Not Silica-Rich. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, published online August 9, 2019; doi: 10.1029/2019JE006039

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Venus May Never Have Been Wet and Warm World | Planetary Science, Space Exploration - Sci-News.com

Full Speed Ahead

Warp drive is, arguably, the holy grail of space exploration. With a propulsion system capable of faster-than-light-speed travel, humanity could reach distant corners of the galaxy and beyond.

Unfortunately, warp drives have long been relegated to the realm of science fiction but according to aerospace engineering professor Jason Cassibry, scientists are getting closer to cracking the physics of a warp drive straight out of Star Trek.

Cassibry teaches at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, where he advises undergraduate student Joseph Agnew, author of a recently published warp drive study that got the scientific world buzzing.

In a recent interview with Motherboard, Cassibry noted that theoretical progress toward building warp drives has been enormous thanks to the efforts of Agnew and other researchers.

Theoretical progress is one thing, though physically building a warp drive is another, and as Cassibry noted in his interview with Motherboard, scientists still have a long way to go before they reach that latter goal.

Still, the first step toward building anything is making it work on paper, and the increasing scientific interest in warp drives could lead to the creation of a system that actually lets us zip around space at a speed faster than light. Some day, anyway.

READ MORE: This Student Is One of the Top Scientists Studying Faster-Than-Light Warp Drives [Motherboard]

More on warp drive: The US Secretly Funded Research on UFOs, Wormholes, and Warp Drives

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Professor: Progress Toward Warp Drive Has Been "Enormous" - Futurism

MONACO, Oct. 15, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The organizers of DAY ONE EVENTS, a summit for the digital age designed for global decision makers and "doers," and the Embassy of Monaco in Washington, D.C., have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to incorporate the Embassy's highly successful space initiative, "Pioneers & Innovators of Our Time" (PIOT), into the framework of future DAY ONE EVENTS.

Mr. Eric Stallmer, the president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, the world's largest trade organization dedicated to promoting the development of commercial spaceflight, made the announcement during the 2019 DAY ONE EVENTS program on behalf of Monaco's ambassador to the United States and Canada, Her Excellency Maguy Maccario Doyle and Mr. Denis Jacquet, founder of DAY ONE EVENTS.

Ambassador Maccario Doyle is the convener of the biennial PIOT event which focuses on the future of space exploration, and which underscores the Principality's historical interest in aviation, aerospace technology and earth sciences. In announcing the partnership, Mr. Stallmer outlined topics to be covered in future sessions including the new space economy, the role of public-private partnerships in low-Earth orbit space stations, space tourism and related industries, and the future of healthcare in space and how satellite technology and space exploration could be the key to addressing climate change.

Dr. Ilhami Aygun, president of Space Systems International Monaco and a panelist in the 2016 and 2018 PIOT events, also addressed the gathering to speak about MonacoSAT2, the second Monaco satellite to be launched in 2022-2023, in follow up to the successful launch in April 2015 of Monaco's first telecommunications satellite.

"This new partnership, along with the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation-USA and Monaco's "space agency," SSI-MonacoSat, will focus on the relationship between humanity and space, the economics and commercial opportunities of space travel, as well as its challenges for the protection of our planet. We hope to elaborate on, and answer, the age-old question, does the future of our planet depend on space? Our goal is also to inspire young people to follow careers in science and technology and will feature an informative educational component for our youth," said Mme. Maccario Doyle.

For information about DAY ONE EVENTS, visit http://www.dayone-event.com.

For information about PIONEERS & INNOVATORS OF OUR TIME, visit https://www.monacoeventsusa.com.

SOURCE Embassy of Monaco

Originally posted here:

DAY ONE EVENTS & the Embassy of Monaco in Washington, DC Join Forces to Bring Annual High-Level Space Forum to the Principality - PRNewswire

Generous Gift Reinvigorates SETI Search

A generous gift from Qualcomm co-founder Franklin Antonio has brought new promise to the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), a radio telescope array dedicated to astronomical observations and simultaneous searches for extraterrestrial technology. Forbes reported the story, speaking to Andrew Siemion, the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI Research at SETI Institute:

We are looking for a needle in the proverbial haystack, says Andrew Siemion of the venerable SETI Institute, the nonprofit that oversees the search.

But finding that otherworldly needle is now slightly less formidable. A $1.2 million gift from Qualcomm co-founder and chief scientist Franklin Antonio will "revitalize" the array, says the Institute.

This commitment is truly transformative, says Siemion. Its extraordinarily exciting.

Siemion told Forbes, a whole new set of SETI experiments are now possible, thanks to the upgrades Antonios gift will fund. With the knowledge that our galaxy alone contains billions of exoplanets are out there, SETI research has never been more promising. The possible real estate where life could exist elsewhere is truly enormous, says Siemion.

Air & Space Magazine highlighted SETI Institute's Reaching for the Stars: NASA Science for Girl Scouts, a program funded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The program provides Girl Scouts with opportunities to engage in space exploration and astronomy, earning STEM-focused badges developed by the SETI Institute. Pamela Harman, director of education at the SETI Institute, spoke to Air & Space Magazine about the importance of Reaching for the Stars:

Pamela Harman, the director of education at the SETI Institute and principal investigator on the Girl Scouts Stars program (designed to foster girls interest in STEM through space science), says that space plays a significant role in the broader STEM initiatives, because part of science literacy is understanding our place in the big world, in the solar system, in the universe. And, once we realize that, I think its easier to think about protecting our planet.

Girl Scout Cadettes can earn a badge by studying the properties of light; Seniors learn to classify stars, and Ambassadors do research projects and learn about women who work in NASAs Science Mission Directorate.

When humans boldly go to Mars, they won't be alone. The microbes we are surrounded (and inhabited) by will come along for the ride. These microbes raise the vital question of planetary protection. How do we keep astronauts safe from microscopic threats, and how do we prevent harm to the indigenous microbial life we might encounter? Popular Science spoke to John Rummel, SETI Institute senior scientist, and former planetary protection officer for NASA:

Rummel sees planetary protection as an essential first step toward living on Mars, not necessarily an obstacle to it. Before future farmers enrich the soil for potato farming, they'd want to know how the soil might react. Waking up dormant local bugs that produce toxic gases, for instance, would come as an unwelcome surprise. "If you want to push the Martian environment using microbes, etc.," Rummel says, are there Martian microbes there that will push back?

Margaret Race is a senior research scientist at SETI Institute specializing in planetary protection. She points out that preparation and compromise can allow for robust exploration that limits contamination:

"If you stop and think ahead," Race says, "maybe you can't do everything you want, but it doesn't mean you stop."

Recommendations from the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) were created to avoid harmful contamination, but these guidelines are voluntary, and only the beginning of more in-depth discussion and debate.

In the spring of 2019, Jason Wright received the Frank Drake Award from the SETI Institute. Frank Drake is the creator of the Drake equation, which provided a framework for the SETI field and continues to guide technosignature searches. Wright is a Penn State professor whos passionate about teaching the next generation of SETI researchers. He spoke to The New Yorker about his work from SETI Institutes Mountain View headquarters:

Wright, a cheerful, apple-cheeked, forty-two-year-old professor with wispy brown hair, is at the vanguard of a new movement in SETI. Its goal is the rationalization of a speculative endeavor. Were trying to formalize it, he told me. Were trying to get a canon of papers that my peers have read and understood.

Wright shared some of his thoughts about searching for intelligent life, and challenging anthropic assumptions:

Were looking for technology like our own, and so we presume the engineers of that technology will share our principles, he said. Were looking for kindred spirits that will find interesting what weve found interesting.

Jill Tarter appeared on Wired Videos to talk about the search for extraterrestrial technology. Tarter is Chair Emeritus for SETI Research at the SETI Institute and is popularly known as the inspiration for Jodie Fosters character in Contact, film based on the novel by Carl Sagan. Tarter spoke about why searching for life elsewhere in the universe is important for life here on Earth:

looking for life and intelligent life beyond this planet has the effect of holding up a mirror, and that mirror shows all of us on this planet, shows us all as the same. When compared to something else out there, we are all the same, and I think that this is incredibly important for our long-term future, because the challenges on this planet that we face do not recognize national boundaries. They are challenges that are going to have to be worked on globally in a cooperative fashion the more that we see ourselves as Earthlings, as humans, the more likely we are to be able to find a way to manage these global challenges.

Watch the video to see more of Tarters vision for a "cosmic perspective."

Big Picture Science

In last weeks episode, new surprises await at Easter Island in Headed for Trouble. In our previous weeks episode, explore the good and bad ways technology is increasingly encroaching into our lives in an encore of Keeping Humans in the Loop.

Facebook Live

Last time on Facebook Live, Simon Steel, Senior Director of Education and STEM Programs, interviews senior research scientist Janice Bishop about Mars rocks! Videos of all past Facebook Live events are on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SETIInstitute/

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SETI Institute in the news September 26 - October 2, 2019 - SETI Institute

Naser Alrashedi, Director, National Space Policy and Regulation, UAE Space Agency Image Credit: Clint Egbert Highlights

As the UAE Space Strategy is officially launched today at a special event inAbu Dhabi, Eng. Naser Alrashedi, Director, National Space Policy and Regulation, UAE Space Agency, speaks to GN Focus about why national pride is so important in building upon the nations successful space programme

From prioritising programmes to following up on trends, how do you quantify the initiatives and R&D undertaken by the UAEs space programme?

One of the challenges we sought to address while formulating the UAE Space Policy was looking at how the space sector value chain is sliced. Based on the analysis we structured around 23 segments within the space sector, from R&D all the way to data application, types of manufacturing and operation, to those providing added value services. On top of that we did 736 calculations to help us factor the sort of segments that need to be focused upon, taking into account feasibility as well as trends, attractiveness, priorities, baseline, benchmark, legalities, scope of interest and more.

There are 32 such criteria that we should be focusing on between now and 2030, for each of the 23 segments that I mentioned. This was one of the tools to make sure that our strategy is effective and is really responding to the nations needs given the trends and the capabilities that exist today, and those that are in the pipeline.

A good national policy for any sector is essentially influenced by international policies implemented by the worlds progressive economies. How does this translate for the UAE Space Policy?

I cant emphasise this enough, to have a proper policy and regulatory framework for the space programme what you need is coordination, coordination, coordination. It involves intra-sector coordination, collaborating with different players within the space sector, with R&D organisations, active academies as well as operators who are into space.

There is inter-sector coordination, involving working with other sectors such as the environment sector, aviation, telecommunications, energy, education and transportation, and gauging their needs and expectations and the projects they are currently working on, and where space research can be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Internationally, be it a UN organisation or other players, coordination is an effective tool in being able to provide a proper policy, strategy, or a regulatory law, to understand how one is contributing to meet expectation, as well as maximising benefits accrued from research and in ensuring sustainable growth.

What kind of policy groundwork needs to be initiated for the UAEs future projects in space?

Space exploration and research has largely got to do with things that have never been tried before. For satellite communications or earth observation, a large percentage of the task at hand is repeating what has already been done, while also advancing the technology. But space exploration requires landing for the first time in an alien environment, going where no one has gone before, this requires a different type of research, and investment.

To understand and gauge, for example a moon landing or landing on Mars, requires mirroring the environment out there back here on Earth. This means a considerable investment of resources. The Mars Science City, for example mirrors the Mars environment right here on Earth and will allow scientists and researchers to experiment on various topics aiding in space exploration.

However, I feel what is most important in terms of groundwork for future space programmes is to develop a sense of space culture among the UAE youth, instilling a sense of achievement in them and that rigid belief that nothing, if you work hard enough is impossible to achieve.

There is so much that this nation of ours has achieved in such a short time that I am justifiably proud that I am Emirati, and if I wasnt one already, I would love to be born an Emirati.

How important is it for the space programme to constantly stay ahead of the curve?

Space research is all about exploring and pioneering initiatives for a more secure and safe future for generations to come, reason why the vision for the UAE space programme is to be among the most pioneering and advanced countries in space. It is therefore critical that we commit to constant future foresight exercises with the experts, with global space leaders.

In this regard, the UAE Space Agency has an advisory committee representing space leaders from various parts of the world, from the US and China to Russia, India, Japan, Korea and Saudi Arabia, offering very diverse and rich experiences, with whom we conduct regular foresight exercises that look at predicting future issues and offering solutions. The big picture of course is to integrate all this activity into our policy framework.

How do you monitor if the UAE space sector is working towards its goals proactively? Does the sector set KPIs for itself?

To answer that question, we need to look at how aligned the UAE space programme is to the nations overall vision, towards which several strategies contribute. Hence, we looked at 29 separate strategies implemented by the UAE and put a process in place to closely monitor and track how space research can contribute to these strategies.

The strategies include everything from the UAE Centennial 2071 plan, the UAE Science Technology and Innovation Policy, the UAE Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, all the way to the UAE Water Security Strategy 2036, and the National Food Security Strategy 2051. We even looked at the UAE Soft Power Strategy, the nations aviation policy as well as the Plan Abu Dhabi 2030 strategy and the nations Youth Empowerment Strategy.

Besides, to ensure that space has enough to offer these strategies to provide the desired impact, we needed a communications and governance plan in place for which we identified key stakeholders. Discussions are now ongoing about establishing a committee to oversee the progress, implementation and later on impact of the communications and governance plan. And this obviously meant setting proper sector KPIs that would be monitored.

Under the directives of His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, the UAE Space Agency worked closely with the Prime Ministers Office to put a space sector health check in place, which involved KPIs and targets between now and 2030 that we will monitor frequently. With it, we also attached a risk management plan to gain awareness on the key risks we faced in the coming period and how we ought to react to them.

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"If I wasn't Emirati, I would have loved to be born as one" - Gulf News

The Potomac Institute for Policy Studies cordially invites you to attend a panel discussion on the exciting work being done in the exploration of deep space. The Institutes Center for Enterprise, Exploration, and Defense in Space (CEEDS) has called together a group of experts from across relevant government organizations and private industry to discuss what is being done today and what more can be done tomorrow to explore the cosmos.

For decades, the US has led the charge in space exploration. American astronauts were the first to land on the moon. NASAs Pioneer, Galileo, Voyager, NEAR, and Cassini-Huygens missions continued to forge ahead: first to fly by Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; first to orbit Jupiter and Saturn; first to land on an asteroid and first to land on Titan. These are but a few of the achievements of American deep space exploration over the last five decades. So what efforts are continuing today, and what does the future look like?

The panelists will discuss the current plans of their organizations, how they envision the future of deep space exploration, what new problems will that future face, what benefits this will continue to provide for the American public, and how policymakers can support these efforts.

Opening Remarks:Dr. Jennifer Buss, President, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies

Moderator:Sonya Gavankar, Director of Public Relations, Newseum

Panelists:Steve Clarke, Deputy Associate Administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASAMary Lynn Dittmar, President and CEO, Coalition for Deep Space ExplorationRyan Whitley, Director of Civil Space Policy, National Space Council, The White HouseLon Levin, President and CEO, GEOshare

Attendees are encouraged to join us in person.RSVP is required. Please send your name and affiliation to Luke Koslosky at [emailprotected]

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The Future of Deep Space Exploration - SpaceNews

Starship and Super Heavy are the biggest, most important pieces of Elon Musk's grand plan for SpaceX, his private spaceflight company.

Musk has repeatedly stressed that he founded SpaceX back in 2002 primarily to help humanity colonize Mars. It's vital that we become a multiplanet species, the billionaire entrepreneur has said, citing both a much-reduced probability of extinction and the thrill that meaningful space exploration will deliver to billions of people around the world.

SpaceX is now actively trying to turn this sci-fi dream into reality. The company is developing a 100-passenger spaceship called Starship and a giant rocket known as Super Heavy, which together constitute the transportation system that Musk thinks will bring Mars settlement within reach at long last.

"This is the fastest path to a self-sustaining city on Mars," Musk said in September 2019, during a webcast update about the Starship-Super Heavy architecture.

Related: SpaceX's Starship and Super Heavy Rocket in Pictures

These updates have become a highly anticipated annual tradition; Musk has given one every September since 2016.

During that first presentation, he laid out the basic idea: A large spacecraft and a huge rocket, both of which will be completely and rapidly reusable. The rocket will launch the spacecraft into Earth orbit, then come back down to Earth for a vertical, propulsive landing.

The spaceship, meanwhile, will make its own way from Earth orbit to Mars (or the moon, or any other desired destination). The craft will touch down on such alien worlds and take off from them as well, without the need for any additional landing craft or ascent vehicles. (The separate rocket is needed just to get out of Earth's substantial gravity well.)

Off-Earth refueling of the ship is therefore key to Musk's vision. For example, spacecraft coming home from Mars or the moon will need to be topped up on those worlds, using locally produced propellant.

In 2016, Musk called this architecture the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS). The name was new, as the billionaire had previously referred to his envisioned concept (though much more vaguely) as the Mars Colonial Transporter.

The ITS architecture isnt supposed to be Mars-specific; the system could help establish a base on the moon, Musk said.

(Image credit: SpaceX)

The ITS will stand 400 feet (122 meters) tall when stacked, Musk said back then. The rocket will contribute most of that height, measuring 254 feet (77 m) tall to the ship's 162 feet (49 m). There will be some overlap of the two vehicles during stacking, which explains why the total height isn't 416 feet.

Both vehicles will be powered by SpaceX's next-generation Raptor engine, which is more powerful than the Merlin that propels the company's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. The ITS ship will sport nine Raptors and the 40-foot-wide (12 m) booster will boast a whopping 42, allowing the rocket to produce 13,033 tons of thrust at liftoff 3.6 times more than NASA's Saturn V moon rocket was able to generate, Musk said. (For comparison, the Falcon 9 has nine first-stage engines and the Falcon Heavy has 27.)

Related: See Stunning Photos of SpaceX Falcon Heavy's First Night Launch

And there won't just be one ITS ship and booster. The ultimate plan involves sending 1,000 or more people-packed spaceships to Mars every 26 months, helping to establish a million-person city on the Red Planet within 50 to 100 years, Musk said. (Earth and Mars align favorably for interplanetary missions just once every 26 months.)

Musk did not lay out plans for building this city. That will happen organically as more and more people arrive on Mars, he said, comparing the ITS to the transcontinental railroad that helped open the American West to settlement from the East and Midwest in the 19th century.

And these pioneers won't just be the super-rich, if all goes according to plan. The ITS's reusability could eventually bring the price of a Mars trip down enough to make it affordable for large numbers of people, Musk said.

"The architecture allows for a cost per ticket of less than $200,000," Musk said during the 2016 presentation. "We think that the cost of moving to Mars ultimately could drop below $100,000."

This overall vision has held firm over the past three years, but Musk has repeatedly tweaked the design and the system's name.

In 2017, for example, he announced that ITS was now the BFR, which stood for "Big Falcon Rocket" (or "Big F***ing Rocket;" SpaceX representatives have invoked both variants). The BFR was shorter, slimmer and less powerful than its design predecessor, measuring 348 feet (106 m) tall by 30 feet (9 m) wide when stacked and featuring "only" 31 Raptor engines on the booster and six on the spaceship.

But the biggest change concerned use of the spaceship-rocket duo. Musk announced that SpaceX eventually planned to employ the BFR for all of its spaceflight needs, from launching satellites to ferrying people to and from Mars to cleaning up space junk in Earth orbit. The Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy therefore will be phased out over the long haul, as will both the crew and cargo variants of SpaceX's Dragon capsule.

Expanding the BFR's role in this manner will make the system much more affordable for SpaceX to develop and manufacture, Musk said at the time.

"If we can do that, then all the resources that are used for Falcon 9, Heavy and Dragon can be applied to this system. That's really fundamental," he said in September 2017. "We believe that we can do this with the revenue we receive for launching satellites and for servicing the space station."

Related: See the Evolution of SpaceX's Rockets in Pictures

The BFR design then experienced a growth spurt that nearly took the system back to its original height. In September 2018, Musk told us that the rocket-spaceship duo will now stand 387 feet (118 m) tall when stacked. The BFR ship will also sport seven Raptors instead of six, Musk added, and the vehicle will now sport four movable fins two near its nose and two bigger ones near the tail.

These fins will help the ship maneuver its way to safe landings on worlds with significant atmospheres, such as Mars and Earth. The two rear fins will also serve as landing pads, as will a leg that's stylized to look like a fin, Musk said.

The ship's overall aesthetic will therefore resemble that of the rocket used by the cartoon character Tintin in the 1954 adventure "Explorers on the Moon." And that tidbit pleases Musk.

"I love the Tintin rocket design, so I kind of wanted to bias it towards that," he said at the time. "If in doubt, go with Tintin."

Other big news came out of the September 2018 update as well: SpaceX had signed its first BFR customer. Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa booked a round-the-moon trip on the BFR, with a target launch date of 2023. Maezawa said he planned to take a handful of artists with him on the mission, which he calls DearMoon. Neither SpaceX nor Maezawa has revealed how much the flight will cost.

Related: How SpaceX's 1st Passenger Flight Around the Moon with Yusaku Maezawa Will Work

Two months later, the BFR was no more: Musk told us that the system will now be called Starship. That will also be the spaceship's name, whereas the huge rocket will be called Super Heavy.

At that point, SpaceX still planned to build the Starship vehicle out of carbon fiber. But in January 2019, Musk announced that he was switching to stainless steel. Steel is a bit heavier than carbon fiber but has great thermal properties and is far, far cheaper, Musk said. He has since called the material switch the best design decision yet made on the ITS/BFR/Starship project.

In May 2019, Musk said the current plan calls for six Raptors on the Starship vehicle rather than seven. And a few months later, he tweeted that Super Heavy will now sport 35 Raptors instead of 31.

That brings us to the latest design update, which Musk presented on Sept. 28, 2019, from SpaceX's South Texas facility, near the tiny village of Boca Chica. The billionaire didn't announce any huge changes, though there was some more engine news: Super Heavy will now have space for 37 Raptors, though not all of those slots will be filled on every flight. Each mission will probably require at least 24 Raptors on the booster, Musk said.

Musk had previously estimated the total development cost of the Starship project to be between $2 billion and $10 billion. On Sept. 28, he said he now believes the price tag for SpaceX will be toward the lower end of that range "probably closer to two or three [billion] than it is to 10," Musk told CNN Business during an interview shortly after the design update.

SpaceX's Super Heavy rocket booster launches the Starship interplanetary spacecraft in this still from a SpaceX animation.

(Image credit: SpaceX)

The September 2019 update was more dramatic than those of previous years, because Musk had an eye-catching visual aid nearby a 165-foot-tall (50 m) Starship prototype called the Mk1.

SpaceX had already built and flown a Starship prototype a stubby, one-engine vehicle dubbed Starhopper that aced two brief, untethered test flights at Boca Chica before being retired in late August.

But the Mk1 is a big step forward. It's the first full-size Starship test vehicle, and it's scheduled to fly high soon. During his presentation, Musk said that SpaceX aims to fly the three-engine Mk1 on an uncrewed test mission in October or November that will take the vehicle to an altitude of about 12 miles (20 km).

SpaceX is building a similar vehicle called the Mk2 at its Florida facilities, reasoning that some intracompany competition will improve the design of the final Starship vehicle. And more iterations of the spaceship should hit the skies in short order as well.

During the September 2019 presentation, Musk said that SpaceX wants to launch an orbital test flight with Starship in less than six months so, by early spring of 2020. The vehicle that flies that landmark uncrewed mission will likely be the Starship Mk4 or Mk5, he said.

Related: Why NASA's Annoyed About Elon Musk's Giant Rocket

If the development and testing campaigns continue to go well, Musk added, people could start flying aboard Starship for the first time next year. (The first operational Starship missions, by the way, could happen as soon as 2021, company representatives have said. Those early commercial flights will be uncrewed and probably loft communications satellites.)

There's a fair amount of work to do in the interim, of course, and it's not all about optimizing fin design. For example, there's the not-insignificant issue of keeping Starship's passengers happy and healthy during their flights to the moon, Mars and beyond.

We know little about Starship's life-support system. But Musk did say during the September 2019 update that he envisions a "regenerative" system, which recycles water vapor and carbon dioxide, processing this latter gas to provide oxygen. And he doesn't think implementing this tech will be all that difficult.

"I don't think it's actually superhard to do that," he said. "Relative to the spacecraft itself, the life-support system is pretty straightforward."

Musk is famous for his "aspirational" timelines, so the above target dates are far from set in stone. But big things are definitely happening on the Starship project; stay tuned!

Additional resources:

Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall.

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Starship and Super Heavy - Space.com