Monthly Archives: June 2020

How This AI Company Is Working to Transform Space Exploration in an Age of Global Pandemic

In thisongoing series, we are sharing advice, tipsand insights fromreal entrepreneurswho are out there doingbusinessbattle on a daily basis. (Answers have been edited and condensed for clarity.)

Who are you and what is your business?

I'm Ben Lamm, a serial technology entrepreneur who builds intelligent and transformative businesses. I am currently the founder and CEO of Hypergiant, a next-gen AI and defense company.

The Air Force will be usingyour new HIVE AI software to allow them to control satellitesfrom a cell phone. What led you to that innovation?

Satellite infrastructure is antiquated. There are old systems in place that make it extremely vulnerable to attack and also challenging to maintain continuity of operations in the face of terrestrial struggles like pandemics. When we built HIVE we did it to help the US Air Force and others build internal resilience particularly for moments like a pandemic or natural disaster where there are limitations on the movement of individuals into secure facilities. Now, with increased mobility, satellite operators are better able to monitor and operate their satellites from anywhere at any time. Its about creating a more dynamic integration between the technology we need now and where we need it.

What impactdo you think the pandemic will have on our approach to business in space?

The pandemic highlights the need for more flexible infrastructure in the space industry. Most things are currently centralized on-premise. However, to ensure future resilience we need to be able to work off-premise. As a result, we are seeing an increased demand for mobile technology and remote software that allows for operations to continue running.

SpaceXs launch during the pandemic highlighted the continued advancements in space by watching a private company for the first time launch someone into space. This is good and exciting and Elon has been behind some long-term visionary work. However, we also must look at space from the lens we see the world in today. We dont have global solutions to the pandemic and we dont have global solutions to anything in space. To make space more resilient in the future, we need to figure out problems here on earth.

Related: Watch NASA Astronauts Successfully Dock SpaceX Crew Dragon at ISS

Youre a proponentof space sustainability. Can you explain what that means?

The space around the Earth is a finite resource and if we destroy it we destroy the ability to do further space research and exploration. There are a few big problems in the space sustainability category: space junk, being the primary issue, but then the question of sustainability is about the increasing complexity of space operations, the emergence of large constellations and the increased risks of collision and interference with the operation of space objects.

We are doing a number of things to look at and address questions around space sustainability. Leveraging space assets for multiple use cases and longer life will be key. For example, our Slingshot deployer leverages the Cygnus spacecraft before it deorbits to run science experiments and launch satellites above the International Space Station. This is an asset that will just burn up in the atmosphere. We are not extending the life and use of the spacecraft to get more uses out of it before its demise. We are also actively researching other technologies on Earth that will have applications in space to help create a more sustainable planet and solar system. Our EOS Bioreactor we invented to leverage algae, robotics, and AI to fight climate change on Earth is being considered for use on the International Space Station and in future space missions to sequester carbon and do CO2 scrubbing.

Related:Elon Musk and 8 OtherBillionaires Who Are Stepping Up During the Pandemic

You created an interactive simulation to show the impact that the pandemic has had on climate change what did you find and what does it tell us about the future?

Our ACES simulator helps people understand how the current quarantine is truly impacting cumulative carbon emissions. There was misleading news about the impact that the shutdown was having on climate change and the world. While we are seeing some great impact, it doesnt solve the cumulative carbon problem. We wanted to make sure that people understood that fact and also understand what is needed in the future to combat climate change and make a long-term lasting effect. The tool is a visualization that helps to represent what is possible if we make various changes. As we continue to incorporate other data sources into our modeling, we can get a much clearer view of what we must do in the future and help others understand too. This will help both legislative officials and everyday humans. I think it also shows the path forward for entrepreneurs: investing in cleantech and other fossil fuels alternatives is just the right thing for people to do. Applying AI and other emerging technologies to the equation makes understanding and evaluating the data even faster and potentially impactful.

Related:Elon Musk's Boring Company Completes Excavation of Its Las Vegas Tunnels

What do space entrepreneurs need to know about how to stand out in the market right now?

There is a ton of opportunity to innovate especially as the government increases funding and focuses on geo, lunar, and martian opportunities. This means more space options, more business opportunities and more room for innovation and invention. That includes opportunities for both software and hardware technology businesses but also everyone: food in space, trash removal in space, fabrics for space, medicine designed in space, tourism in space, and more. The more we do in space, the more opportunities there are for supporting businesses that help those activities happen.Just join the market and youll find sub-categories that are just opening up. As a friend andHypergiantadvisor Bill Nye loves to say, Space brings out the best in us.

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How This AI Company Is Working to Transform Space Exploration in an Age of Global Pandemic - Thehour.com

NASA announced last week it is hiring a private company to fly a golf cart -sized rover to the surface of the moon in 2023 that would roam the lunar South Pole in search of water.

The move comes as the space agency is ramping up its effort to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2024, a schedule that is considered a long shot by many. But the landing of NASAs Viper rover would be a significant step toward that goal, helping the space agency decide what regions astronauts should explore and how much life-sustaining water there is beneath the lunar surface, NASA officials said.

NASA awarded the contract, worth nearly $200 million to Astrobotic, to a Pittsburgh-based company, as part of a program to hire private-sector companies to deliver cargo and science experiments to the lunar surface. Unlike the Apollo missions, where astronauts visited the moon and then returned home, NASA is now working toward creating a permanent presence there under a program it calls Artemis, complete with systems that would help astronauts live off the land.

The delivery service is going to provide a steady cadence of payloads and instruments to maximize science at the moon and to advance exploration technology, said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASAs associate administrator for the science mission directorate. An important part of this work is to find out where the water is on the moon, and how much of it there is.

The contract is another sign of how the space agency is continuing to outsource major efforts of its exploration program to the private sector. For years, it has relied on a pair of private companies, SpaceX and now Northrop Grumman, to fly cargo and supplies to the International Space Station. Last month, SpaceX also launched two NASA astronauts to the station for the first flight of humans to orbit from United States soil since the space shuttle was retired in 2011.

Commercial partners are changing the landscape of space exploration, and VIPER is going to be a big boost to our efforts to send the first woman and next man to the lunar surface in 2024 through the Artemis program, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement.

For years, the moon was believed to be bone dry. But a decade ago, NASA discovered that water in the form of ice, exists, especially in the permanently shadowed craters of the south pole of the moon.

The discovery was heralded as a breakthrough that is significant for further exploration. Water not only is important to sustain life as a liquid to drink, but when broken into its components hydrogen and oxygen it also could be used as air to breathe.

Those elements could also be used as rocket fuel, allowing for exploration further into space, including to Mars, officials hope.

Viper, an acronym for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, is a 1,000-pound rover that would roam over an area of several miles for about 100 days, officials said. It would be outfitted with sensors capable of detecting ice below the surface and a drill able to excavate samples as deep a 1 km down. It also could determine the composition and concentration of the water.

Discovering water on the moon is not just a scientific breakthrough. It also could help open up economic markets in deep space by essentially turning the moon into a gas station in space.

The discovery of water ice at the poles is potentially a massive breakthrough for commercial opportunities in space because we can turn that water into rocket fuel, said John Thornton, Astrobotics CEO. The moon can become a destination for refueling our spacecraft to explore the moon and maybe even go further into space.

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NASA is sending a rover to the moon to prospect for water and help astronauts "live off the land" - The Keene Sentinel

The budding space tourism business is looking increasingly like a full-blown industry with something for everyone. Besides high-speed sub-orbital flight packages touted by companies like Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, aspiring space travelers will soon have the option to fly to the edge of Earths atmosphere in a much more relaxed way, without the discomfort of being strapped into a rocket and traveling at supersonic speed.

On Thursday, a startup named Space Perspective, launched by the founders of space exploration company World View Enterprises, unveiled a hot-balloon-like space vessel, called Spaceship Neptune, that aims to carry up to eight passengers at a time to the stratosphere for a six-hour joy ride in the next three to four years.

According to the plan, paying customers will ride in a cabin featuring a bar, a bathroom and huge windows specially designed for sightseeing. The cabin will be lifted by a 650-foot-tall, hydrogen-filled balloon and slowly climb for two hours to an altitude of 100,000 feet (19 miles). It will then hover at the peak for another two hours before descending to splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean, where passengers and crew members will be picked up by a recovery ship.

See also: Virgin Galactic Just Lost Another $60 Million. Is Space Tourism Pandemic-Proof?

The two-hour stay at the top is a huge differentiator from competing space packages in the market, including the near-rollout program by Virgin Galactic, which only allow passengers to experience the peak view for a few minutes.

One of the amazing things about the design weve been able to work up is the ability to have events, things like weddings, corporate events. I cant wait to see spiritual leaders flying with political leaders The imagination runs wild, Space Perspectives founder and co-CEO, Taber MacCallum, said in an interview with Space.com on Thursday.

Riding the Spaceship Neptune will also be a lot cheaper than Virgin Galactic. The final price has yet to be determined, but the companys founders estimate ticket prices to fall in the neighborhood of $125,000 per person, about half what Virgin charges. The tradeoff is a much lower altitude; Virgins space plane can fly people to 50 miles above sea level, while Spaceship Neptune can only go up to 30 miles. At that altitude, passengers wont be able to experience total weightless, but the company noted that its still above 99 percent of Earths atmosphere.

When we take all the people that we want to take to the edge of space, we want them to really be able to experience what astronauts talk about, seeing the Earth in space (and) doing it comfortably, gently and accessibly, the startups other co-CEO Jane Poynter said during a teleconference on Thursday.

Space Perspective has signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA and leased a facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Orlando as a future launch pad. Test flights carrying science payloads are expected to begin as soon as next year, with crewed tests planned for 2023 or 2024.

The Spaceship Neptune vessel will be regulated by the Federal Aviation Administrations Office of Commercial Spaceflight like other types of spacecraft, the company said.

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This Startup Wants to Fly Humans to Space In a Hot Air Balloon For Weddings - Observer

The first woman to be in charge of NASA's human spaceflight program will oversee the first mission to land a woman on the moon, and she's expecting "really big things" to come from the next generation of young, female space enthusiasts.

Kathy Lueders, who until now led NASA's Commercial Crew Program, will take the helm of all crewed spaceflight activities at NASA as the associate administrator for the agency's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. The promotion, which NASA announced June 12, came about two weeks after Doug Loverro resigned from the position.

"When Jim asked me if I would take this role, you know, I didn't really think about being first," Lueders said during a teleconference with reporters on Thursday (June 18), referring to NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. "I was more overwhelmed with the potential tasks in front of me," she said.

Related: 'Get used to it' The women who broke Apollo's glass ceiling

Lueders said her husband was the one who pointed out to her that no other woman has ever held the job before. "That made me stop and really think about all of the other 'firsts' that have been out there that really have paved my way," she said. "In fact, today is the day that Sally Ride was the first U.S. woman in space. And so that's one of many firsts," she added.

During Thursday's teleconference, Bridenstine formally introduced the agency's new human spaceflight chief and laid out the work that lies ahead for Lueders and her team. "We have a big agenda to go back to the moon by 2024 with the next man and the first woman," Bridenstine said. "I really believe that Kathy Lueders is the type of person that we need leading here in order to achieve those outcomes."

As the manager of NASA's commercial crew program, Lueders oversaw the SpaceX Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission that launched NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station (ISS) last month. Before that, she served as the ISS program's transportation integration manager, overseeing cargo resupply missions. Her NASA career started in 1992, when she became the second woman to ever work in the propulsion lab at NASA's White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico.

"What's been amazing to me over the last few days is seeing all the tweets, Snapchats, Instagrams, all the notes from all the girls out there. That really helped me realize the power of my being first, what that means to them. They will see themselves in me," she said. "I'm very honored by that, and I'm expecting really big things from them. You better get going!"

While Lueders seems happy to serve as an inspiration to young women who are interested in pursuing space-related careers, she pointed out that women aren't the only people who have been underrepresented in the space industry.

"I think when we can see ourselves in the people that are out there, it makes us realize we can do it. And that's very, very important for not only girls out there but for all groups of people that are out there."

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

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Kathy Lueders, NASA's 1st female spaceflight chief, will guide a US return to the moon - Space.com

One result of the SpaceX Crew Dragons successful flight to NASAs International Space Station is that the Trump for President Campaign has taken on space exploration as an issue. The decision has manifested itself in the production of a campaign ad called Make Space Great Again. However, the ad went sideways when it was discovered that it violated NASA regulations against its employees, including astronauts, appearing in commercials. The ad caused several other problems. It was eventually taken down.

The ad was really inspiring stuff. It started, naturally, with JFKs We Choose to Go to the Moon speech along with scenes from the Apollo 11 moon landing. The ad even showed Walter Cronkite weeping with joy on the air when the big moment happens.

The commercial segued to scenes from the flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon. Trump is seen speaking inspiring words about space exploration. Children look up at the heavens in wonder. American flags appear lots of American flags. An astronaut carries the Stars and Stripes on the surface of Mars.

Usually when space becomes an issue in a major American political campaign it is framed in the negative. Mitt RomneyWillard (Mitt) Mitt Romney'The Senate could certainly use a pastor': Georgia Democrat seeks to seize 'moral moment' Republicans brush off Bolton's bombshells Bipartisan Senate group offers bill to strengthen watchdog law after Trump firings MORE infamously mocked Newt GingrichNewton (Newt) Leroy GingrichMORE for proposing a moon base in the 2012 presidential election.Apollo moonwalker Harrison Schmitt was limited to one term as a United States Senator for allegedly spending too much time on space policy and not enough time on the concerns of his state, asking What on Earth has he done for you lately?

The Make Space Great Again ad was perhaps the first time that space had been used as a positive issue in a presidential campaign. It is as if Richard Nixon had run in 1972 touting the Apollo program as his signature accomplishment instead of winding down the moon program.

Clearly Team Trump has some polling data suggesting that space is a winning issue for the president. The idea makes a lot of sense. Between the coronavirus pandemic and the recent civil unrest sparked by the killing of George Floyd, an African-American man, at the hands of a police officer, the flight of the Crew Dragon to the ISS shines as the only positive event to have been on the news lately.

The Crew Dragons flight has everything, combining the glories of NASA space exploration with the pluck and risk taking of SpaceX, whose CEO, Elon MuskElon Reeve MuskWhy the Trump 'Make Space Great Again' campaign ad went sideways Russia should rethink its rejection of lunar commercialization Hillicon Valley: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram remove Trump campaign tribute to George Floyd | Report details new cyber threats to elections | Reddit founder resigns from board to boost black community MORE, is an immigrant from South Africa. The idea of commercial spacecraft servicing NASA started with George W. Bush, and the Commercial Crew program was developed by Barack Obama. But Donald TrumpDonald John TrumpProtesters tear down, burn statue of Confederate general in DC US attorney in NYC who spearheaded probes of Trump allies refuses to leave as DOJ pushes ouster Trump to host 4th of July event despite pleas from lawmakers to cancel MORE was the president who watched the liftoff of the Falcon 9. The image, included in the ad, speaks more than any reminder of the role of Trumps predecessors.

The Make Space Great Again ad would have complicated NASA Administrator Jim BridenstineJames (Jim) Frederick BridenstineWhy the Trump 'Make Space Great Again' campaign ad went sideways Space dominance by way of Texas SpaceX launches first manned space flight from US in nearly a decade MOREs efforts to make space, especially the Artemis return to the moon program, nonpartisan. Democrats may resent Trumps grabbing the glory and the credit for the Crew Dragon mission. NASA depends on Democratic support to gain the funding necessary for landing the first woman and the next man on the moon by 2024.

Some congressional Democrats suspect that the 2024 date for Americas return to the moon is politically motivated, to provide a capstone to a hypothetical second Trump term. The ad would tend to validate that suspicion.

On the other hand, the ad applied a great deal of pressure on Joe BidenJoe BidenSusan Rice calls Trump administration 'racist to its core,' says Senate backers belong in 'trash heap of history' Trump mocks Biden event that practiced social distancing Trump to visit Arizona, Wisconsin next week MORE, the former vice president who is running to replace Trump, to develop his own space policy. Biden has already tried to grab his own share of the credit for the Crew Dragon flight. Team Biden has to develop a space policy that is not only distinct from Trumps but also from Obamas. It cannot be a flat rejection of the Artemis program. Otherwise Trump would hammer him for opposing American exceptionalism.

Unfortunately, whatever positive effect the Make Space Great Again would have had was diluted by the social media firestorm generated by the depiction of the Crew Dragon astronauts and their relatives without their knowledge or consent. Karen Nyberg, wife of one of the Crew Dragon astronauts and a former astronaut herself, was particularly offended and said so on Twitter.

Team Trump will doubtless rework the ad and upload a revised version that complies with NASA regulations. They might consider acknowledging the contributions of both the Bush 43 and Obama administrations to the Commercial Crew program. The acknowledgment would demonstrate a rare example of statesmanship and will provide a selling point for Trump as uncharacteristically magnanimous.

Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space and politics, has published a political study of space exploration entitled Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? as well as The Moon, Mars and Beyond. He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner. He is published in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Hill, USA Today, the LA Times, and the Washington Post, among other venues.

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Why the Trump 'Make Space Great Again' campaign ad went sideways | TheHill - The Hill

Only 566 people have ever travelled to space. Sixty-five of them, or about 11.5%, were women.

NASA recently proclaimed it will put the first woman and next man on the Moon by 2024. Despite nearly 60 years of human spaceflight, women are still in the territory of firsts.

The first woman in space was cosmonaut Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova, who orbited Earth 48 times from June 16 to 18, 1963.

Her flight became Cold War propaganda to demonstrate the superiority of communism. At the 1963 World Congress of Women, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev used Tereshkovas voyage to declare the USSR had achieved equality for women.

Women across the world took heart and dreamed they too might travel to space. Ekaterina Ergardt, a Soviet state farm worker, wrote to Tereshkova:

I am eighty years old. I started to live in the years of the beginning of womens struggle for a life of freedom and equality now the road to space is open for women.

Despite this optimism, it was 19 years before another woman was allowed to venture beyond Earth.

In the United States, women were excluded from space by the restriction that astronauts had to be military test pilots a profession barred to them.

While the first American astronauts known as the Mercury 7 were training in the 1960s, aerospace doctor Randy Lovelace recruited 13 women pilots and put them through the same paces as the male astronauts. The Mercury 13 outperformed the men on many tests, particularly in how they handled isolation.

But NASA wasnt convinced. A congressional hearing was held to investigate whether women should qualify to be astronauts. In her testimony, Mercury 13 astronaut candidate Jerrie Cob said:

I find it a little ridiculous when I read in a newspaper that there is a place called Chimp College in New Mexico where they are training chimpanzees for space flight, one a female named Glenda. I think it would be at least as important to let the women undergo this training for space flight.

She was prepared to take the place of a chimp, if that was the only way to get into space.

Historically, even those like Lovelace who believed women should go to space have seen their role as helping men, acting as a civilising influence, or providing sex.

In one sense the first women on the Moon were Playboy playmates, in the form of pictures jokingly included in the Apollo 12 astronauts checklists. Their names were Cynthia Myers, Angela Dorian, Reagan Wilson, and Leslie Bianchini. The womens bodies were likened to the lunar landscape: both the object of male conquest.

In popular culture in the 1960s, women were often associated with magic and emotion rather than science and technology.

The sitcom I Dream of Jeannie depicted the relationship between a US astronaut and a magical djinn or genie, imaginatively named Jeannie. NASA was an advisor for the series, which mirrored real space events. Jeannie represented seductive oriental femininity in opposition to the strait-laced, masculine, all-American astronauts.

(In the similar sitcom Bewitched, the witch Samantha travelled to the Moon for picnics before she renounced her craft to be a regular housewife.)

The message was clear in popular culture: women needed to stay in the kitchen or the boudoir. These sitcoms are still aired around the world.

By the 1970s, the womens movement had made great strides and NASA had to adapt. The first women were admitted to astronaut training in 1978. Not to be outdone, the USSR rushed more women into its own program.

In 1982 Svetlana Savitskaya visited the Salyut 7 space station, becoming the second woman in space and the first to perform a spacewalk. But she wasnt allowed to forget the nature of womens work: when she arrived, her male colleagues presented her with an apron.

The following year, Sally Ride flew as a mission specialist on the Space Shuttle Challenger, becoming the first US woman in space. The first American woman to spacewalk was Kathryn Sullivan in 1995.

In the 21st century, there are still barriers to womens equal participation in space. In March 2019 the first all-woman spacewalk was cancelled because there were not enough medium-sized spacesuits. Astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir subsequently accomplished the feat in October 2019.

Discussing the cancellation, NASA administrator Ken Bowersox made clear the ideal astronaut body is still male. He blamed womens smaller average stature, saying they were less able to reach in and do things a little bit more easily.

Is it womens bodies that are the problem, or a space world built for men? What would space technology designed by and for women look like?

There is a massive gender data gap in space. There has been much less research on the effects of microgravity on womens bodies than there has been for men.

However, women in many ways are ideal astronauts. Physical strength and height are not advantages in microgravity.

Women use less food and oxygen, maintain their weight better on restricted diets, and create less waste. In the words of Sally Ride, weightlessness is a great equaliser.

Womens access to space, not just as astronauts but as users and creators of space services like Earth observation and satellite telecommunications, is still far from equal. But there are signs of progress.

One is the Space4Women program run by the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), which aims to ensure the benefits of space reach women and girls and that women and girls play an active and equal role in space science, technology, innovation, and exploration.

As UNOOSA director Simonetta di Pippo has noted, 40% of the targets of the UNs sustainable development goals rely on the use of space science and technology.

NASAs plan to land a woman on the Moon is another positive sign. On her post-orbit world tour in 1964, Valentina Tereshkova expressed her own desire to go to the Moon, but she never made another spaceflight.

Now aged 83, Dr Tereshkova has had a distinguished career in science and politics and remains a sitting member of the Russian parliament. To see a woman set foot on the lunar surface within her lifetime would truly be a ground-breaking moment.

Alice Gorman, Associate Professor in Archaeology and Space Studies, Flinders University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The future of space may be female - Cosmos

The recent discovery of a 1940s weather balloon radiosonde wreckage has promoted interest in the little-known realm of space archeology. To learn more about this interesting topic and heritage, Design News reached out to two well-known experts in the field: Dr. Beth O'Leary, Anthropology Professor Emeritus at New Mexico State University (NMSU) and, Dr Alice Gorman, Associate Professor, Flinders University, Adelaide SA. What follows is a portion of that interview.

Design News: What is space archeology? What artifacts do you typically seek?

Researcher retrieves instruments from the remains of early V-2 rockets.(Image Source: NASA V2 WSNM)

Beth O'Leary: Archaeology is the study of the relationships between patterns of material culture (e.g., artifacts, sites and features) and patterns of human behavior. We can study material culture at all times and in all places where humans have been. It can be done on the Earth and off the Earth. My work has focused on the archaeological sites on the Moon, especially Tranquility Base, the Apollo 11 first lunar landing site. As archaeologists in this field, our gaze is mostly focused off Earth, looking into space and on other celestial bodies.

Space Archaeology is the study of material cultural that includes all the material culture in the aerospace and aeronautical realms that relate to the development and support of exoatmospheric realms. It is a huge cultural landscape of materials which are on Earth or have originated there and are now off Earth. Examples can be Voyager 1, now in interstellar space; Vanguard a satellite predicted to be in Earth orbit for another 600 years; and Launch Complex 33 at White Sands Missile Range. So it is a huge range or assemblage of mostly technological components including the radiosonde that was found in Cloudcroft.

Alice Gorman: Space archaeologists are interested in all material culture relating to space exploration. Everything in space at the moment - until there is spacecraft made and launched off-Earth - is connected to places on Earth, like launch sites, tracking antennas, research and test facilities. So, there is an enormous amount to be learnt by studying space sites and artifacts on Earth.

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Space Archeologists Uncover Past and Project Future - DesignNews

Space Park Leicester has won 500,000 towards building a new centre dedicated to exploring deep space.

The new Wolfson Deep Space Centre will foster collaboration between business and universities to look into some of the biggest challenges in space exploration - such as powering longer missions without solar power and getting more spacecrafts into low orbit.

The funding has come from the Wolfson Foundation, set up to support education, science & medicine, the arts & humanities and health & disability.

Work is well underway on the 100 million Space Park Leicester, which is going up close to the National Space Centre.

Estimates suggest it could contribute 750 million a year to the economy, lowering the cost of the manufacturer and launch of satellites and a centre for processing the data they provide.

Led by the University of Leicester, it could eventually lead to 2,500 jobs and attract other high tech businesses to the city.

Dr Nigel Bannister, Associate Professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy, said: Missions to explore the planets are expensive, so they dont happen very often.

For example, our knowledge of the ice giants Uranus and Neptune is based on just a few hours of data taken as the Voyager-2 spacecraft flew past in the 1980s, carrying technology developed in the 1970s.

The Wolfson Deep Space Centre will develop new technologies and methods, and adapt existing ones, to enable smaller, lower cost spacecraft to be used in deep space - to expand our exploration of the solar system, to visit planets more often and in ways not possible before, and provide an opportunity for the UK to become a leader in a new generation of space exploration mission.

Professor Richard Ambrosi, Professor of Space Instrumentation and Space Nuclear Power Systems in the Universitys School of Physics and Astronomy, said: The Wolfson Centre has the potential to transform how we access space for scientific missions.

Through our close links with industry, agencies and international partners, it has the potential to open new paths to low earth orbit, the lunar surface and deeper into the solar system.

We are incredibly grateful to the Wolfson Foundation for their recognition of the world-leading research taking place at the University of Leicester.

Their support, along with that of other partners, will enable us to develop innovative technologies and methods to transform the way we explore space in the future.

Paul Ramsbottom, chief executive of the Wolfson Foundation said: The Wolfson Foundation is a charity that funds buildings and equipment that support the highest quality research.

This is a particularly impressive and intriguing research centre - a leader both nationally and internationally.

We are delighted to be involved and to continue our funding in Leicester.

The first stages of Space Park Leicester will open in 2021, and will bring together academia and industry.

Partners include Leicester City Council and the Leicester and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership.

The new Deep Space Centre will also work with the National Space Centre and National Space Academy partners in Space Park Leicester to support students and teachers of science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects at GCSE and A-level, inspiring the next new generation of scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs.

Grant Bourhill, chief executive of Science Parks and Interim Director Research & Enterprise at the University of Leicester said: Receiving the award from the Wolfson Foundation is a huge boost and adds to the growing high profile names associated with the Space Park.

The Wolfson funds will allow us to increase our reach within space exploration specifically deep space and foster all-important collaborations between businesses and universities. Crucially it will further boost our activities in lowering the cost to access space.

Since 1955 The Wolfson Foundation has awarded almost 900 million (1.9 billion in real terms) to almost 11,000 projects and individuals across the UK.

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New Deep Space Centre will help business and academia work together to explore the universe - BusinessLive