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Recent studies of the Moon’s surface have shown that there is enough lunar ice underneath it to make extraction worthwhile. Moreover, lunar regolith contains metals and minerals in large amounts. The total value of the Moon’s extractable resources amounts to USD sixteen quadrillion, as estimated by Moon Express.
The water extracted from beneath the lunar surface can be processed into rocket fuel to feed expedition spacecraft flying to Mars and other planets in the Solar System. Interestingly, the price of this fuel will be 25 times lower than that delivered from the surface of the Earth (according to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Blue Origin). This difference in price is due to weak lunar gravity. Gravity force on the Moon is 6 times weaker than on Earth. This means that it will take much fewer rocket launches to deliver rocket fuel to outer space, which will determine the cost of fueling up in space.
The economic and strategic benefits have ensued a global space race among countries to build Moon bases, harness it’s mineral resources and helium-3, fuel for future nuclear fusion power plants. Space agencies in China, Japan, Europe, Russia, Iran , Canada and a few private companies all hope to send people to the moon by as early as 2025. They’re talking about building bases, mining for natural resources, and studying the moon in unprecedented detail. A key figure at the European Space Agency says we must look at how we exploit the moon’s resources before it is too late, as missions begin surface mapping.
The US space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration is looking at landing two Astronauts – a woman and a man to the moon by 2024 through its Artemis mission. NASA is looking at using moon as a base for its future missions to the Mars.
In Dec 2020, Chang’e-5 spacecraft gathered as much as 4.4 pounds of lunar samples from a volcanic plain known as Mons Rümker in a three-week operation that underlined China’s growing prowess and ambition in space. It was China’s most successful mission to date. While addressing a space conference, China’s Space Day, Pei had said that the Chang’e-5 lunar probe will be very complex, containing four parts: an orbiter, a returner, an ascender and a lander. Earlier, Chinese spacecraft has become the first to land on the far side of the moon in a historic moment for human space exploration. The robotic probe Chang’e 4 landed in the unexplored South Pole-Aitken basin, the biggest known impact structure in the solar system, at about 2.30am GMT in Jan 2019.
In April 2020, President Trump signed an executive order to encourage US companies to mine the Moon and other celestial bodies for resources. The order provided that commercial partners participate in an “innovative and sustainable” US-led programme to return humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilisation, followed by manned missions to Mars and beyond. Expanding the resource sector deeper into space would, the document said, require commercial entities to recover and use resources in outer space.
Worner also proposed a permanent moon station as the successor of ISS, this station should be international, “meaning that the different actors can contribute with their respective competencies and interests.” Wörner said that “the moon station can be an important stepping stone for any further exploration in deep space,” adding that a lunar outpost could help humanity learn how to use resources on-site instead of transporting them.
Moon Exploration Challenges
Astronauts will face three main sources of danger on the moon: radiation, reduced gravity and regolith. Space can kill us. Anyone who dares to venture past our world’s upper atmosphere will die painfully without a life-support system. Even with adequate life support, the sun could still kill spacefarers if it lets loose its coronal mass ejection at just the wrong instant while they are beyond the magnetosphere’s protective bubble. Astronauts on the surface of the moon would face between 200 and 1,000 times more radiation than we experience on Earth, says Robert F. Wimmer-Schweingruber of Kiel University in Germany, who co-led the new Chang’e 4 study. That is about two and a half times the radiation level on the International Space Station (ISS). Earth’s thick atmosphere and powerful magnetic field protect us. Because they can penetrate such thin shielding, galactic cosmic rays are more dangerous than run-of-the-mill solar particles. Radiation-blocking material such as lead offers little help because it still produces secondary particles that are also dangerous.
Radiation is the most recent concern, yet reduced gravity is a well-known health hazard, too. Even when offset by rigorous exercise, astronauts still lose muscle mass and bone density during extended stays in the microgravity environs of the ISS. The moon’s gravity is heftier—about one sixth of Earth’s—but long-duration visitors will still experience some of low gravity’s deleterious effects.
Even if astronauts can avoid radiation exposure and muscle degeneration, the moon’s surficial soil—called regolith—itself poses another tricky problem. Composed of jagged, microscopic shards of rock, moon dust is like a more abrasive and irritating talcum powder: it gets into everything, from astronaut lungs to tiny machine parts and structural crevices. It also flies around when a spacecraft lands or launches, turning landing zones into a buckshot-blasted scouring pad, Watkins notes.
Junkins said a moon landing involves a mixture of various disciplines. “Everything from life support, to designing the rockets themselves, all of the navigation aspects and control functions, the tremendous attention to detail, to integration of a massive human effort and many technologies, and then the discipline that is required to do this safely,” Junkins said.
In addition, Commercial moon mining is so technologically daunting that it may take decades before it can become economically viable. Enough robotic exploration moon missions are required to map the quality, quantity and distribution of these minerals. The potential mining methods, their economic viability and methods to separate the almost similar minerals from the ore need to be studied.
Another is the energy needed to support sustained human presence and the beginning of industrial activity. Solar energy is abundant on the surface of the Moon, but extended night hours (350 consecutive hours) and the extreme environmental temperature change from daylight to nighttime, create problems for solar power use. Earth also addresses similar issues, where demand for additional renewable energy generation, including solar, is rising, but additional power management, distribution, and energy storage solutions are needed to address issues such as intermittency and resiliency.
ISRO’s Chandrayaan-2 (Moon vehicle 2) entered the Moon’s orbit on 20 August 2019 and was due to land on the lunar surface a little after midnight India local time (1800 GMT) on 7 September – a month after it first shot into space. But contact was lost moments before the lander (named Vikram, after Isro founder Vikram Sarabhai) was expected to touch down at the lunar south pole.
When the countdown began, the lander was moving at a velocity of 1,640 metres per second. Scientists say it appeared to be moving as planned during the first two phases of deceleration, known as the rough braking and fine braking operations. It was during the final stage, known as the “hovering” stage, that the problem occurred. The problem could well have been with the lander’s central engine, according to Prof Roddam Narasimha, a former member of Isro. He said that his theory was based on the readings on the screen.
“One plausible explanation was that the lander started falling more rapidly,” he told BBC Hindi’s Imran Qureshi. “It’s supposed to come down at a velocity of two metres per second when it hits the Moon’s surface. But the gravity on the moon would have made it fall somewhat more rapidly.” He believes this could be because the central engine was not “producing the thrust that is required and, therefore, the deceleration was no longer what it was supposed to be”.
Another challenge for moon landings is moon dust. Study teams have gone back to look at Apollo lunar landing data to appraise how much moon terrain was ejected into space. Not only did Apollo landing crews get fogged out by the blown dust, making touchdowns troublesome, but substantial amounts of rock and debris were also sent flying during the rocket-powered landings. on Apollo 12, Pete Conrad ran into so much dust that he was blinded as he made his final descent to the surface. He later recounted that “the dust went as far as I could see in any direction and completely obliterated craters and anything else … I couldn’t tell what was underneath me. I knew I was in a generally good area and I was just going to have to bite the bullet and land, because I couldn’t tell whether there was a crater down there or not.” Several follow-on Apollo landing commanders noted similar concerns.
“To paraphrase an old bromide, those who forget the past are doomed to land like it,” said Chirold Epp, project manager for the Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “Having looked at the Apollo landings, I have come to two conclusions: One, those crews did a great job. Two, data from several of the landings support the idea that we must give future moon landers more information to increase the probability of mission success,” Epp added. Epp said that if a lunar module came to rest at an angle beyond 12 degrees, the astronauts might not be able to launch themselves off the surface. “So, if a crew landed on a hill or with a footpad or two on a large rock or in a crater, that could make for a bad day,” he said.
“The moon is a low-gravity and airless body, which makes the rocket plume effects very different than what we experience on Earth,” said Philip Metzger, a planetary scientist at the Florida Space Institute at the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando. “On Earth, rocks travel the farthest, while dust is stopped just a short distance away by the drag of Earth’s atmosphere,” Metzger told Space.com. “On the moon, it is the exact opposite, with the dust going the fastest and farthest. The dust can cause severe damage to the surfaces of materials if we land too close to other hardware on or orbiting the moon.” Lunar lander engine exhaust blows dust, soil, gravel and rocks at high velocity and will damage surrounding hardware — such as lunar outposts, mining operations or historic sites — unless the ejecta are properly mitigated, Metzger said.
Over the past 20 years, researchers have developed a consistent picture of the physics of rocket exhaust blowing lunar soil, “but significant gaps exist,” Metzger said. “No currently available modeling method can fully predict the effects. However, the basics are understood well enough to begin designing countermeasures.”
John Junkins, distinguished professor of aerospace engineering, said getting astronauts to the moon and back is no easy feat. “There are many many technical challenges, but the biggest one is attention to detail with a very, very large and complicated effort and to do that over a sustained period of time so that they can get there and back safely,” Junkins said.
Technology requirements
The cost of lunar access and bringing the mined ores back to earth shall need to be reduced drastically through advances in propulsion, avionics, mining robots, launchers and spacecraft design. The technologies like 3D printing could help build infrastructure on the moon, as well as missions which are beginning to map its surface ahead of bids to drill for its resources.
The Canadian space agency is asking industry to propose projects for: All instrument projects relevant to lunar science, and Space Exploration Planetary Geology, Geophysics and Prospecting (PGGP), and Planetary Space Environment (PSE) ; Lunar micro-rover missions; Scientific approaches for lunar prospecting; Lunar drilling and sample acquisition; Lunar In Situ Resource Utilization demonstration; Rover Guidance, Navigation, and Control; Rover wheels; Lunar rover power systems; and Lunar surface communications systems
Guidance, Navigation and Control
Navigation is the process of determining the current state of a system (position, velocity, attitude and angular rates, mass) in a given coordinate system, based on direct or indirect observations of the system state (measurements) and on a model of the system dynamics.
Guidance is the process of establishing a trajectory (for both position and attitude) that allows reaching a target state, given the initial or current state, along with the corresponding reference control action profile, needed to achieve such trajectory.
Control is the process of generating control commands that allows matching of the current or future estimated state with the desired state.
Nokia selected by NASA to build first ever cellular network on the Moon
Nokia Bell Labs’ pioneering innovations will be used to build and deploy the first ultra-compact, low-power, space-hardened, end-to-end LTE solution on the lunar surface in late 2022. Nokia is partnering with Intuitive Machines for this mission to integrate this groundbreaking network into their lunar lander and deliver it to the lunar surface. The network will self-configure upon deployment and establish the first LTE communications system on the Moon.
The network will provide critical communication capabilities for many different data transmission applications, including vital command and control functions, remote control of lunar rovers, real-time navigation and streaming of high definition video. These communication applications are all vital to long-term human presence on the lunar surface.
Nokia’s LTE network – the precursor to 5G – is ideally suited for providing wireless connectivity for any activity that astronauts need to carry out, enabling voice and video communications capabilities, telemetry and biometric data exchange, and deployment and control of robotic and sensor payloads.
Landing Capability
NASA anticipates that the initial capability for landers capable of landing around 500 kg of payload mass to the lunar surface. Such landers could support initial commercial and government activities covering lunar science, technology and human exploration objectives, the lunar surface RFI stated. Landing capability should demonstrate the technologies required to achieve a soft precise landing while avoiding the various hazards which are present on the lunar surface.
Reaching the lunar surface with a spacecraft and with the goal to deliver substantial payload to a specific surface site such as a future lunar base implies several specific features for the landing:
- Soft Landing, i.e. with relatively low velocities at touchdown, in order to land significant mass, including sensitive equipment, infrastructure etc;
- Precision, in order to land in close proximity to already emplaced infrastructure while respecting a certain safety distance to minimise risk ;
- Safety, i.e. with the capability of performing hazard (rocks, slope, and shadow) avoidance, in order to be able to land on various types of terrain and to improve mission success probability;
- Autonomy, in order to perform real-time corrections and adjustments during landing without the need for ground support
The landing may be the most critical phase of a surface exploration mission on any celestial body. It is highly dynamic and requires a timely and coordinated interaction between subsystems, such as propulsion, Navigation, Guidance and Control (GNC).
NASA Tests Autonomous Lunar Landing Technology
NASA is testing an autonomous lunar landing system in the Mojave Desert in California. The system is called a “terrain relative navigation system.” Terrain relative navigation will figure prominently in future exploration of the Moon and Mars. It gives spacecraft extremely accurate landing capabilities without the aid of GPS, which obviously is unavailable on other worlds. It needs two things to perform effectively: satellite maps of the terrain the spacecraft is travelling over, and accurate cameras.
To use a terrain relative navigation system a spacecraft must have detailed satellite maps of the area it’s landing on. It then uses cameras to image the ground underneath it. By laying the camera images over its onboard maps, it’s able to “know” where it is and to reach its designated landing spot accurately and safely.
The autonomous landing system is being developed by the non-profit Draper Laboratory of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Draper’s principal investigator for the system is Matthew Fritz. Fritz contrasts the autonomous system he’s developing with how the Apollo astronauts landed on the Moon. “Eagle’s computer didn’t have a vision-aided system to navigate relative to the lunar terrain, so Armstrong was literally looking out the window to figure out where to touch down,” said Fritz. “Now, our system could become the ‘eyes’ for the next lunar lander module to help target the desired landing location.”
“We have onboard satellite maps loaded onto the flight computer and a camera acts as our sensor,” explained Fritz in a press release. “The camera captures images as the lander flies along a trajectory and those images are overlaid onto the pre-loaded satellite maps that include unique terrain features. Then by mapping the features in the live images, we’re able to know where the vehicle is relative to the features on the map.”
The navigation system will be tested not only on a variety of rockets throughout the stages of its development, but on stratospheric balloons, too. “By testing on different platforms and at different altitudes we’re able to get the full range of the algorithm’s capabilities,” explained Fritz. “This helps us identify where we’ll need to transition between satellite maps for different periods of the flight.”
US Navy’s Railgun Help Tap Moon’s Resources
In 1974, Princeton University professor and space visionary Gerard O’Neill proposed use of an electromagnetic railgun to lob payloads from the moon. “Mass drivers” based on a coilgun design were adapted to accelerate a nonmagnetic object. One application O’Neill proposed for mass drivers: toss baseball-sized chunks of ore mined from the surface of the moon into space. Once in space, the ore could be used as raw material for building space colonies and solar-power satellites.
O’Neill worked at MIT on mass drivers, along with colleague Henry H. Kolm and a group of student volunteers to construct their first mass driver prototype. Backed by grants from the Space Studies Institute, later prototypes improved on the mass driver concept, showing that a mass driver only 520 feet (160 meters) long could launch material off the surface of the moon.
Human Health
Ensuring the long-term health of human explorers on the surface of the Moon, or any other deep space environment, during and following long duration missions is a major challenge. The primary health risk is posed by radiation of both solar and galactic origins. In addition, the properties of lunar dust may pose a significant health risk to humans. A sustainable human exploration programme requires that the effects of these threats to survival are understood and accounted for in mission design and planning.
A University of Canberra researcher presented NASA with a game-changing piece of wearable technology. Dr Gordon Waddington – Professor of Physiotherapy at the University – has designed a type of sensory sock as a wearable countermeasure to minimise the impact of weightlessness on astronauts, which disrupts their sense of balance when they return to earth. He presented the wearable technology to NASA in April 2022.
The project – VertiSense-Mitigation of Sensorimotor Effects of Simulated Weightlessness – was funded by the Australian Space Agency (ASA), and supported by Australian companies elmTEK and SRC Health. “We will be working with staff at NASA JSC and assessing methods to increase the safety and wellbeing of astronauts when they need to move about immediately following a long trip to Mars.
Lunar Spacesuit Tech
NASA is looking to the private sector to help mature and manufacture the spacesuit it will need for its future moon missions, the first of which is targeted for 2024. The space agency plans to build and certify the new spacesuit, which is known as the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU). The first few suits, made in house, will be tested on the International Space Station in 2023 and worn by the astronauts who touch down on the lunar surface in 2024 on the Artemis III mission. (Artemis is NASA’s ambitious crewed lunar-exploration program, which aims to establish a long-term, sustainable human presence on and around the moon by 2028.)
Lunar astronauts will have a lot of design changes to look forward to, compared with older types of spacesuits. One of the most famous parts of the Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s — the bunny hop astronauts used to move around on the lunar surface — will no longer be needed, because the xEMU will incorporate significant mobility improvements, NASA officials said. For example, the lower torso of the spacesuit will use bearings and other components to let astronauts walk or even kneel while doing their experiments and geology work.
NASA also plans changes to make it easier to accommodate different body sizes, an issue that cropped up on the ISS earlier this year when spacesuit fit requirements postponed the first all-female spacewalk from March to October, if all goes according to plan. There will be spacesuit changes for comfort and fit, as well as a new life-support system with easily swappable components to accommodate technology improvements. “The new exploration suit can be used in spacewalks that may vary with dust, thermal conditions, operational requirements such as walking, driving rovers, or collecting samples, or gravity,” NASA officials added in the statement.
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, aeronautics researcher Dava Newman and her graduate student Cody Paige are working on future space suits built from new advanced materials. Polyethylene—basic plastic—turns out to be a great radiation shield because it is so full of hydrogen, which absorbs the heavy neutrons in cosmic rays, Paige says. Future space suits could further boost their protective capacity by also incorporating aerogels, carbon nanotubes, boron nanotubes and boron shielding, she adds. Boron-10 is especially helpful: because of how neutrons are arrayed inside its atomic nuclei, the substance’s cosmic-ray-stopping power is some four orders of magnitude greater than that of hydrogen.
Future space suits have to be lightweight, easy to move in, and better at protecting astronauts from hazards such as micrometeorites and radiation, Newman says. The current basic space suit weighs about 300 pounds (136 kilograms), and she wants to bring that down to 90 pounds (41 kilograms).
“You’re wasting the majority of your energy if you’re in a gas-pressurized, bulky shell,” Newman says. The next space suit might look and fit more like a wet suit. Astronauts could don multiple layers like a spring skier and don a radiation-shielding overcoat when the conditions call for it. Space suits could also add shielding where it is most necessary, covering essential organs but leaving the extremities more exposed.
Habitation
Habitation as a capability encompasses the systems and technologies employed to guarantee the required living and working conditions for human explorers. This includes systems are designed to mitigate risks to human health such as dust and radiation; however they must also ensure adequate air and water supplies, power, waste management, sustainability of a suitable atmospheric pressure, and interfaces between habitable volumes, and with the outside world, in this case the lunar surface. The systems and technologies which make up a habitat must also fulfil their functions while themselves being robust to the properties of the environment.
Deep Space Food
Food is a critical component of human space exploration missions. When humans return to the lunar surface, the early missions are expected to use prepackaged foods similar to those in use on the International Space Station (ISS) today, but extending the duration of lunar missions requires reducing resupply dependency on Earth. Thus, testing a sustainable system on the Moon that meets lunar crews’ needs is a fundamental step for both lunar sustainability and will also support Mars exploration. As part of this, space agencies are focused on how to furnish crew members with a viable system that produces food for all long duration space missions
NASA launched Deep Space Food Challenge in Jan 2021 competition with a total prize purse made up of $500,000 USD, (five hundred thousand United States dollars) to be awarded to competitor teams for the design of novel technologies, systems and approaches for food production for long duration space exploration missions.
The food system will need to be an integrated solution that:
– Provides all daily nutritional needs
– Provides a variety of palatable and safe food choices
– Enables acceptable, safe, and quick preparation methods
– Limits resource requirements with no dependency on direct periodic resupply from Earth over durations increasing from months to years
In short, space agencies will need to provide their future crew members with nutritious foods they will enjoy eating within all of the constraints of current technology for life away from Earth. They must also ensure that the process to create, grow, and/or prepare the food is not time consuming and not unpleasant. Although there are many food systems on Earth that may offer benefits to space travelers, the ability of these systems to meet spaceflight demands has not yet been established.
Additionally, food insecurity is a significant chronic problem on Earth in urban, rural and harsh environments and communities. In places like the Arctic and Canada’s North, the cost of providing fresh produce on the shelves can be incredibly high. This can also support greater food production in other milder environments, including major urban centers where vertical farming, urban agriculture and other novel food production techniques can play a more significant role.
Disasters can also disrupt supply chains, on which all people depend, and further aggravate food shortages. Developing compact and innovative advanced food system solutions can further enhance local production and reduce food supply chain challenges, providing new solutions for humanitarian responses to floods and droughts, and new technologies for rapid deployment following disasters.
The Deep Space Food Challenge will identify technology solutions that can:
– Help fill food gaps for a three-year round-trip mission with no resupply
– Feed a crew of four (4)
– Improve the accessibility of food on Earth, in particular, via production directly in urban centers and in remote and harsh environments
– Achieve the greatest amount of food output with minimal inputs and minimal waste
– Create a variety of palatable, nutritious, and safe foods that requires little processing time for crew members
This Challenge seeks to incentivize Teams to develop novel technologies, systems and/or approaches for food production that need not meet the full nutritional requirements of future crews, but can contribute significantly to and be integrated into a comprehensive food system.
In Situ Resources and their Utilisation
The sustainable future of lunar exploration is likely to depend upon the effective use of in situ resources to generate products such as oxygen, water and other used consumables. The use of In Situ Resource Utilisation (ISRU) may provide a means of reducing the ultimate cost and risk of operation on the moon and provide a means for commercial contributions to lunar exploration. Potential products include O2 and H2O for life support or H2 and O2 for fuel and propellant (also potentially by hydrazine production from N2, NH3 and H2O2).
The presence of large quantities of water on the surface of the Moon has major implications for ISRU as a potential source of water and oxygen for life support and hydrogen for fuel. In this case the major challenge for ISRU technologies will be the extraction of ice from such cold and dark environments. As a first step however the extent, quantity, distribution and nature of this ice must be identified.
Airbus Space announced in Oct 2020 the technology breakthrough for producing oxygen on the Moon
Airbus Defence and Space, a subsidiary of the Europe-based global Airbus group, has announced that an international team under its leadership has achieved an important technological breakthrough. They have successfully demonstrated a process invented by Airbus by producing oxygen and metals from simulated lunar regolith (or dust). The process is named Roxy, an acronym for Regolith to OXYgen and metals conversion).
Although this is only a first step, and a small one, it has clarified the way to develop an operational system. As oxygen is essential to all human activities in space, the ability to produce oxygen from regolith promises to revolutionise space exploration. Almost no details of the Roxy system have been revealed, except that it is a reactor fitted with an inert anode (and so, by implication, also with a cathode). There is no indication of what materials the reactor and anode are made of.
“This breakthrough is a massive leap forward – taking us one step closer to the holy grail of being able to sustain long term living on the Moon,” enthused Airbus Space Systems head Jean-Marc Nasr. “Roxy is proof positive that collaboration between industry and world leading scientists can bring huge tangible benefits that will continue to push the boundaries of future exploration.”
The team was composed of researchers at Airbus Defence and Space’s Friedrichshafen facility in Germany, the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials IFAM in Dresden, Germany, Boston University in the US, and Abengoa Innovación in Seville, Spain. The process has been under development for two years and the breakthrough was achieved in September at Fraunhofer IFAM when, during laboratory tests, oxygen was extracted from the simulated regolith.
“Roxy enables the design of a small, simple, compact and cost-efficient regolith to oxygen and metals conversion facility, and is therefore ideally suited to support a wide range of future exploration missions,” affirmed Airbus Defence and Space. “Not requiring additional materials or consumables from Earth – except the Roxy reactor itself – this could be the heart of an integrated value chain using additive layer manufacturing to produce a wide range of products ‘Made on the Moon’. These could include metals, alloys and oxygen. Combined with lunar ice, it would even be possible to produce rocket fuel from Roxy metal powder.”
The technology also has terrestrial applications. It could allow the production of metals while drastically reducing the levels of greenhouse-gas emissions that result from current metal production technologies, which have serious environmental impacts. Steelmaking alone is responsible for about 5% of global carbon dioxide emissions. And many metal-producing processes release important amounts of perfluorocarbons, which are harmful to the environment. The Roxy process is effectively emission-free, and so would greatly reduce the environmental impacts of metals production. “[A]nother example of how space technologies can improve life on Earth,” highlighted the company.
NASA, ICON Advance Lunar Construction Technology
NASA has awarded ICON, located in Austin, a contract to develop construction technologies that could help build infrastructure such as landing pads, habitats, and roads on the lunar surface.
“In order to explore other worlds, we need innovative new technologies adapted to those environments and our exploration needs,” said Niki Werkheiser, director of technology maturation in NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD). “Pushing this development forward with our commercial partners will create the capabilities we need for future missions.”
The award is a continuation of ICON’s work under a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) dual-use contract with the U.S. Air Force, partly funded by NASA. The new NASA SBIR Phase III award will support the development of ICON’s Olympus construction system, which is designed to use local resources on the Moon and Mars as building materials. The contract runs through 2028 and has a value of $57.2 million.
ICON will work with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, under STMD’s Moon to Mars Planetary Autonomous Construction Technologies (MMPACT) project. NASA is partnering with industry, government, and academic institutions under the MMPACT project.
The award will build on ICON’s commercial activities and other work with NASA. ICON 3D printed a 1,700-square-foot simulated Martian habitat, called Mars Dune Alpha, that will be used during NASA’s Crew Health and Performance Analog, or CHAPEA, analog mission starting in 2023.
ICON also competed in NASA’s 3D Printed Habitat Challenge. The company partnered with the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, and the team won a prize for 3D printing a structure sample that was tested for its ability to hold a seal, for strength, and for durability in temperature extremes.
Robotics and mobility
Key enabling capabilities for the exploration of the Moon are to be able to traverse over the surface between points of interest, gain access to sites of scientific importance, manipulate payloads and other hardware elements and to have the operational flexibility to perform these safely and efficiently.
In this regard robotics and mobility are important elements operating on the surface either in support to autonomous missions or to human activities, as well as for mobile systems intended to transport humans over the surface. Mobile systems also represent only a subset of robotics which also includes dedicated manipulation systems such as deployment and manipulation arms.
Each of the applications mentioned, from small scale rovers and robotics, up to human and cargo transportation systems imply specific technologies and concepts from locomotion systems, surface navigation systems, intelligent manipulation robotics, varying degrees of autonomy etc. Such systems are by nature complex in the interaction of many components and elements, as well as their direct interaction with the planetary environment, and in particular the surface terrain.
New Ways To Mine On The Moon
University of Central Florida planetary scientist Phillip Metzger and his team at the Florida Space Institute have received a $125,000 NASA grant to develop a cost-effective and logistically feasible way to mine minerals on the moon. Metzger says the method could change the future of space travel and have long-range benefits for Earth, such as reducing our carbon footprint.
Many universities and private groups are researching ways to mine the moon. Methods under consideration require heavy machinery be transported to the moon or asteroids. Getting the heavy machines there would be expensive and the extreme conditions on the moon and in space present other challenges. Many proposed thermal extraction methods require heating up the ice along with soil around it and forcing a phase change to turn the ice into steam in order to extract the ice from the soil. But because there is no atmosphere to keep the moon warm, the craters are extremely cold, making it difficult to generate the changes needed to turn ice to vapor while the ice is still in the crater. This method would require tremendous amounts of energy.
UCF’s patent-pending method skips this procedure altogether, foregoing the unnecessary energy by separating the ice from the other material after extraction. Through the incorporation of various scientific methods, the goal is to conduct beneficiation, a process of separating the nonessential materials from the ice. At the end of this well-established process there will be separated ice, mineral and metal piles.
“Planet Earth is a unique place in the solar system,” Metzger says. “As far as we know it is the only place in the solar system that can support advanced life. With this knowledge it is pertinent to reduce the machine damage on Earth and make aims to reduce our carbon footprint as soon as possible.” For starters, the extracted ice could be used to refuel space tugs, vehicles which pull spacecraft, such as telecommunication satellites, into orbit at an extremely fast rate. In a normal satellite launch it would take a satellite anywhere from 6-12 months to get into the right orbit in order to begin operations. With the help of a space tug, the satellite would be brought into orbit in one day. Saving that time also means saving money, hundreds of millions of dollars, Metzger says. And with those millions of dollars saved, the telecommunications companies would be able to decrease the price we pay for internet, radio, and other forms of data, he says.
The overarching implication of this type of method makes space mining much more viable. Currently we use countless machines to extract the resources on earth, but these resources are not unlimited. “I believe that by the end of the century we can move more than half of the machinery off of the planet which would be extremely beneficial for biodiversity,” says Metzger. “This kind of endeavor is only possible through economically feasible methods of extraction.”
Chang’e 5 lunar probe that would Return Samples back to Earth to get boost from AI
While addressing a space conference, China’s Space Day, Pei said that the Chang’e-5 lunar probe will be very complex, containing four parts: an orbiter, a returner, an ascender and a lander.
The lander will put moon samples in a vessel in the ascender after the Moon landing. In addition to various scientific instruments, the lander has a robotic arm, intended to grab up to 2 kilograms of lunar rock and soil samples. Those samples will be placed inside a capsule that is then launched into orbit around the moon. That capsule will dock with the orbiter part of the spacecraft, which will then boost it out of lunar orbit and back to Earth, landing in Inner Mongolia.
Artificial intelligence technologies will make the Chang’e 5 lunar probe smart enough in soft landings, collecting samples, ascending and docking at the lunar orbit, and returning to the Earth, according to its chief scientist. Ouyang Ziyuan, first chief scientist of China’s lunar probe project, said on Friday at a satellite forum in Rizhao, Shandong province, that Chinese scientists have made technological breakthroughs in the 12 phases of the Chang’e 5 mission.
The technological breakthroughs cover launching, earth-moon transfers, final braking, orbiting, descending, sampling, ascending, docking, orbiting, moon-earth transfers, separating, and reentry and recovery.
Ouyang said the total payload of the Chang’e 5 mission will be 8.2 tons and will be launched by a new carrier rocket from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in South China’s Hainan province. The mission will feature China’s first automated moon surface sampling, first moon takeoff, first unmanned docking at a lunar orbit about 380,000 kilometers from Earth, and first return flight at a speed close to second cosmic velocity, he said.
The landing site in the mission will be at the side facing Earth, about 1,000 kilometers away from the sites of the United States’ Apollo Plan, where it is expected to have new phenomena and new findings, the scientist said. The probe will be smart enough to take photos during the descent to find a safe place, photographing, calculating, selecting, and making judgments and the final decision, he said. “If the four points are not at a horizontal surface, it will turn over.”
Sending the photos back to Earth for people to judge and decide would cost too much time, since each photo transfer would require 1.3 seconds to reach the planet, several seconds to make decisions, and then another 1.3 seconds to send commands up, he said.
After landing, the probe, which has a shovel-type sampler and deep-hole drilling sampler, will take lunar soil and also drill deep to take rock cores automatically, he said. Scientists have repeatedly tested the samplers in labs to help verify their working functions under different conditions such as hard rock, soft soil and other minerals, since the landing site situation is still unknown.
After taking samples, the ascender could not return itself to Earth directly as it will not carry enough fuel, but it will lift off from the moon and fly a short distance, Ouyang said. “After entering the lunar orbit, there will be a spacecraft waiting for it to dock and then transfer the samples,” he said. The docking will be like a needle-to-needle exchange and will happen automatically, with no available data and monitoring from the Earth required, he said.
The return capsule might burn up in the air due to the high speed and temperature, so China will approach the reentry like skimming on a water surface. The capsule will bounce out while contacting the upper atmosphere and then reenter again, he said. China’s three-phase lunar missions will help accumulate technology and experience for the future manned mission and lunar base, opening up a new chapter of returning to the moon and lunar exploration, according to him.
China has built an artificial moon like facility to test tech made for lunar surface, reported in Jan 2022
China has built an artificial moon research facility that is capable of lowering the gravity level using magnetism. The idea is to make gravity “disappear” by using powerful magnetic fields inside a 60cm vacuum chamber. The research facility is scheduled to officially launch later this year.
To make the artificial moon facility feel more like the lunar surface, it will be filled with rocks and dust. China plans to use this research facility to test out instruments and technology in a low-gravity environment similar to that of the moon, and see whether its experiments can be successful on the lunar surface. The research facility is also expected to help in determining the possibility of human settlement on the moon.
China has an ongoing moon mission called the “Chinese Lunar Exploration Program” under which its current rover and lander Chang’e 4 is exploring the lunar surface. The rover recently made history by detecting water in real time on the moon. China also plans to launch a lunar research station on the moon’s south pole by 2029.
NASA lunar technologies
The funding is spread across three different categories: Increase Access to Planetary Surfaces, Enable Efficient and Safe Transportation Into and Through Space and Expand Utilisation of Space.
Blue Origin’s selected Moon landing tech proposal is one of two high-precision landing projects presented to NASA. The company aims to integrate Terrain Relative Navigation (TRN), navigation doppler lidar and altimetry sensors to conduct tests before a lunar approach. The resulting sensor technology could ensure smooth and precise landings anywhere on the bumpy surface of the Moon. Blue Origin was also presented with £7.8 million ($10 million) to develop a novel cryogenic liquid propulsion system for lunar lander-scaled systems. SSL is delivering methods of refuelling satellites by transferring xenon in space from a tanker to an active spacecraft.And ULA is looking to demonstrate mid-air retrieval technologies capable of lifting up to 8,000 pounds for a vehicle returning from low-Earth orbit.
NASA’s Flight Opportunities program within the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate has selected 25 promising space technologies for testing aboard aircraft, high-altitude balloons and suborbital rockets. These flights will expose the payloads to the rigors and characteristics of spaceflight at lower cost and risk than orbital missions. They also give researchers the data they need to refine and mature their innovations for possible infusion into NASA missions to the Moon and beyond.
Some of the technologies are:
Honeybee Robotics Ltd. in Pasadena, California will develop a planetary sample capture device featuring a footpad-integrated sampling tube and sample sorting station. The device is designed to collect surface soil, or regolith, on another world that could be returned to Earth for analysis. This technology is planned to fly on the Masten Space Systems rocket powered lander vehicle.
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore for a complete lunar radiation hazard characterization and monitoring system. This technology is planned to fly on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.
JHU for deployment and re-entry of miniaturized satellites, known as ChipSats, to evaluate the capability of the technology to enable inexpensive study of difficult-to-explore regions of Earth’s upper atmosphere as well as the atmospheres and surfaces of other planets or moons. These two technologies are planned to fly on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.
University of Central Florida in Orlando for an experiment to characterize the charging behavior of dust in lunar-like environments to understand how dust interacts with other particles and surfaces. This technology is planned to fly on Blue Origin’s New Shepard.
Washington State University Conquers Lunar Dust with BIG Idea Dust Mitigation Concept, reported in Nov 2021
Lunar dust is highly abrasive, and the Moon’s weak gravity doesn’t quickly pull those particles back to the surface. Lunar dust particles pose a danger to astronaut health, and mixing this dust with technology is like running coarse sandpaper over billion-dollar instrumentation and equipment. With a clear risk to equipment and missions, it’s vital that NASA engineers overcome the challenges presented by lunar dust in the quest to land the first woman and first person of color at the Moon’s South Pole in the Artemis program.
Enter NASA’s 2021 Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-Changing (BIG) Idea Challenge, where teams of college students developed novel dust mitigation (or dust tolerant) concepts to aid NASA in engineering technologies that could be used for crewed or uncrewed Moon exploration applications. On Nov. 18, at the 2021 BIG Idea Virtual Forum, Washington State University with “Leidenfrost dusting as a novel tool for lunar dust mitigation,” advised by Jacob Leachman, scored highest across evaluation criteria among the seven finalist teams to take the top honor – the Artemis Award, presented by NASA’s associate administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate Jim Reuter.
Washington State University’s concept uses a liquid cryogen spray bar and a handheld sprayer to clean dust from spacesuits. The team proposed a spray bar that uses cryogenic liquid droplets to lift and transport lunar dust from spacesuit materials.
NASA TechLeap Winners Advance Technology to Aid Lunar Landings
In July 2022, NASA named three winners in the agency’s second TechLeap Prize competition, whose results could have important implications for future space exploration missions.
NASA’s Flight Opportunities program conducted the challenge, Nighttime Precision Landing Challenge No. 1, with the aim of enabling the agency to identify low-cost sensing systems that can map terrain in the dark from an altitude of 250 meters or higher. Such technology will be critical for future space exploration, which will require spacecraft of various sizes to land routinely and precisely in challenging terrain, such as the rocky and often dark or shadowed areas of the Moon’s cratered surface. Many of these areas are of great scientific interest as they may contain water ice – one of the Moon’s most valuable resources. Through the TechLeap Prize, NASA seeks to optimize precision landing capabilities with affordable, energy efficient technologies that deliver spacecraft to safe landing locations for lunar and planetary missions.
The winners of the competition are:
The Bronco Space Club at Cal Poly Pomona (Pomona, California): The team’s technology leverages a light projector to project a grid of reflective points visible to a camera, creating an initial geometry map. The system then uses light detection and ranging (lidar) along with advances in computer vision, machine learning, robotics, and computing to generate a map that reconstructs lunar terrain.
Falcon ExoDynamics Inc. (El Segundo, California): The company’s integrated sensing system leverages a high-resolution camera, a floodlight, a small gimbal, and a graphics processing unit to perform sensing of terrain in the dark.
University of South Florida Institute of Applied Engineering Inc. (Tampa, Florida): The institute’s solution uses commercial-off-the-shelf lidar sensors and simultaneous mapping algorithms to form a complete topographical map of a given search area.
“Sensor approaches that enable mapping of dark and/or shadowed locations of moons or planets are critical to several envisioned future NASA missions,” said Dr. John M. Carson III, who serves as technology integration manager for precision landing within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and is based at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “The incubation of concepts across industry and academia provides a valuable means for NASA to identify and mature the best technologies that could be infused into these missions. We are very excited about the diversity of approaches that have been selected from the three winners, and we look forward to monitoring the progress of each one through the Nighttime Precision Landing Challenge No. 1.”
References and Resources also include:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-a-moon-base-be-safe-for-astronauts/
