Tag: moon

The moon is just the beginning for this waterless concrete

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Building a home base on the moon will demand a steep supply of moon-based infrastructure: launch pads, shelter, and radiation blockers. But shipping Earth-based concrete to the lunar surface bears a hefty price tag. Sending just 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of material to the moon costs roughly $1.2 million, says Ali Kazemian, a robotic construction researcher at Louisiana State University (LSU). Instead, NASA hopes to create new materials from lunar soil and eventually adapt the same techniques for building on Mars.

Traditional concrete requires large amounts of water, a commodity that will be in short supply on the moon and critically important for life support or scientific research, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. While prior NASA projects have tested compounds that could be used to make “lunarcrete,” they’re still working to craft the right waterless material.

So LSU researchers are refining the formula, developing a new cement based on sulfur, which they heat until it’s molten to bind material without the need for water. In recent work, the team mixed their waterless cement with simulated lunar and Martian soil to create a 3D-printable concrete, which they used to assemble walls and beams. “We need automated construction, and NASA thinks 3D printing is one of the few viable technologies for building lunar infrastructure,” says Kazemian.

A curved wall is 3D printed from waterless concrete.
COURTESY OF ALI KAZEMIAN

Beyond circumventing the need for water, the cement can handle wider temperature extremes and cures faster than traditional methods. The group used a pre-made powder for their experiments, but on the moon and Mars, astronauts might extract sulfur from surface soil.

To test whether the concrete can stand up to the moon’s harsh environment, the team placed its structures in a vacuum chamber for weeks, analyzing the material’s stability at different temperatures. Originally, researchers worried that cold conditions on the dark side of the moon might cause the compound to turn into a gas through a process called sublimation, like when dry ice skips its liquid phase and evaporates directly. Ultimately, they found that the concrete can handle the lunar South Pole’s frigid forecast without losing its form.

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November 29, 2024
Moon GPS Is Coming | WIRED

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“I refer to LunaNet as the big umbrella,” Gramling says. “It is an architecture that defines the standards that are going to be used for interoperable communications and position, navigation, and timing services. There’s a large effort underway to define those standards and document those in a LunaNet interoperability specification.”

“It’s a very different paradigm than Earth, where the US has GPS, Europe has Galileo, or Russia has GLONASS,” she adds. “Because we’re at early stages, the idea is that we have to work together as three partners that are involved so far in LunaNet, and assert one system among the three of us.”

In other words, while NASA, ESA, and JAXA work away on their separate projects for now, they plan to ultimately merge those ideas into a single operating system. The detailed plans for ESA’s Moonlight Initiative are helpful for picturing how a lunar GNSS constellation might ultimately shake out.

As currently envisioned by ESA, Moonlight would consist of at least five satellites, including a large communication satellite and four smaller dedicated navigation satellites, placed in special orbits to optimize coverage at the lunar south pole. This initial setup would provide 15 reliable and predictable hours of PNT services in the coverage area every 24 hours, but Moonlight is also designed to be scalable, meaning more satellites could be added to enlarge the service area or to support more complicated missions.

“Moonlight will provide an extraordinary paradigm shift in the field of exploration,” says Javier Ventura-Traveset, who serves as Moonlight navigation manager at ESA. “Instead of each lunar mission requiring their own complex communication and navigation systems with a heavy dependence on Earth-based support, thanks to Moonlight, future missions will have access to broadband communication services and GNSS-like navigation systems directly from lunar orbit, all under a service contract with a commercial provider.”

It’s unclear the extent to which China, or any other nations, might collaborate on existing lunar navigation constellations systems, or if the moon will end up with multiple versions of GNSS, similar to Earth. Earlier this summer, a team of scientists at the China Academy of Space Technology outlined a phased plan for a GPS-style constellation in the journal Chinese Space Science and Technology.

“China has expressed interest in developing lunar navigation infrastructure at several international forums and has already launched this year the Queqiao-2 satellite, a lunar communication relay satellite,” notes Ventura-Traveset. “Similar to ESA, NASA, and JAXA, it is likely that China will also develop its own lunar navigation constellation. At some of these international forums, China has also indicated an interest in pursuing international interoperability.”

The emergence of these multiple competing concepts has led some to wonder if have entered a new “space race” to establish the first lunar version of GPS. But Gramling doesn’t see it that way. “I just know that we are putting our heads down and working with our partners because we have missions that we have to support in the relatively near term,” she says. “We’re just trying to focus on making sure that, among the partners that we’re working on LunaNet, that we are assured of what services we’re trying to provide and that we work together.”

Patla pointed out that last month, the International Astronomical Union, an organization that mediates a host of astronomical issues, voted on a resolution that emphasized cooperation in establishing a lunar timescale and other elements of lunar PNT systems.

“At least at the beginning stages, collaboration would be cheaper, and it would also benefit everyone,” Patla says. “But we don’t know how this will pan out.”

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September 4, 2024
Scientists Plan ‘Doomsday’ Vault on Moon

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Thanga and his team have sketched a system that would use solar panels and batteries to provide the power to push temperatures inside a lava tube down to the deep freeze needed to create their lunar ark. This is the defining difference between Thanga’s design and Hagedorn’s thought experiment. Where Thanga’s group would aim to actively cool the ark, Hagedorn and the Smithsonian team have envisioned a repository that uses natural features of the moon to keep the samples cryogenic.

“The idea behind our proposal is that, to the extent we could make it, it would be passive,” Parenti said. She pointed out that people have long speculated about the idea of building something that stores materials on the moon, but all the ideas have required a crew to maintain them.

To passively maintain a perpetual deep freeze, they’ve proposed building the repository on the south pole of the moon where, inside some craters, coincidences of celestial geometry have aligned to create areas of permanent shadow, and temperatures can be as low as –196 degrees centigrade. Those conditions would mean that the samples could be stored without need for crew, and they could be maintained with rovers and robotics alone.

While in theory all of this makes these permanent polar shadows ideal for such a project, “we don’t know the basics of what that place is,” Thanga countered. Just last month, NASA canceled a mission that would have been the first rover to explore the pole in part because of the technical challenges posed. “This is one of the ironic things,” Thanga said. “It’s nearby Earth, but it’s perhaps one of the most extreme places in the entire solar system.”

Fitzpatrick feels confident, however, that NASA’s current lunar roadmap will provide ample opportunity to explore and understand those dark polar realms, including a mission scheduled for later this year that plans to land on a ridge overlooking a polar shadow. But as NASA looks to explore those regions, Thanga pointed out, it’s possible that we might merely learn more about how hard it is to exist and operate in that level of cold.

“Just operating in cryogenic conditions, that’s not trivial at all,” Thanga said. “Mechanical things do weird things. They may freeze up, latch up, you name it, under spacelike conditions. Even from moderately cold conditions in a vacuum, we have a phenomenon called cold welding,” where two pieces of metal fuse on contact.

Thanga argues that the more sensible thing to do, then, is to create the ark in a lava tube since his colleagues in planetary science expect those tubes to be quite similar to the ones we have on Earth, albeit much colder, which gives researchers and engineers an understanding of what to expect and how to plan for it.

Much like Hagedorn’s concept, however, price and schedule have yet to be refined. But Thanga expects that, after the design is finalized (which could yet take years), it could be built and assembled faster and cheaper than the International Space Station.

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August 31, 2024
How to See the Conjunction Between Mars, Jupiter, and the Moon

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This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.

August has delivered many spectacular sights in the night sky: a supermoon, meteor showers, and supercharged auroras. Mars and Jupiter also currently appear unusually close together in the night sky, in what’s known as a conjunction. They appeared closest during the early morning of August 14 and are now gradually moving apart, and won’t be this close again in the sky until 2033.

But while they are still close, at the end of the month—on August 27—they’ll be joined by a third protagonist, the moon, producing a rare triple conjunction of the three bodies close together. The moon will be in its crescent phase, and according to the constellation-tracking app Star Walk, will be 40 percent illuminated. This decrease in brightness will make it possible to see the red dot of Mars and the larger star Jupiter next to it.

The Jupiter—Mars conjunction as it appeared on August 14.

NASA

It isn’t necessary to have telescopes or binoculars to enjoy the conjunction, although it’s essential to be in a place away from light pollution. Photographers with experience viewing astronomical events recommend going to a high place to view the phenomenon, such as a mountain or the roof of a house—but if you do, make sure you are well sheltered and protected from the cold.

NASA indicates that the triangle between the moon, Mars, and Jupiter will be visible to the west, one hour before sunrise. If a viewer uses advanced observing instruments, they will also be able to see the red-giant stars Aldebaran above the triangle and Betelgeuse below in the northern hemisphere.

How the triple conjunction will appear on August 27.

NASA

Distinguishing Between Planets and Stars

Although they may look similar in the sky, planets and stars do not behave the same way. Stars maintain a fixed position that changes according only to the season of the year. The planets, on the other hand, move throughout the night along a line known as an ecliptic. In addition, the stars twinkle or appear to vary in brightness, while the planets maintain a constant luminosity.

Only five planets can be seen with the naked eye from Earth: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury. Each body appears regularly in the sky, but because they move at different speeds and their distance from Earth varies, they have unique behaviors at night. For example, Mercury and Venus can be seen only at dusk or dawn, while Mars or Jupiter shine throughout the night.

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August 16, 2024
Pooping on the Moon Is a Messy Business

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In addition to raising these legal and ethical quandaries, the Apollo waste bags have also inspired exciting scientific questions. How long did those bagged microbes last on the Moon? Did exposure to such unforgiving conditions prompt any mutations or adaptations? Since all species on Earth descend from microbes, this line of research would shed new light on the great mysteries of how and where life emerges in the universe. Answers to some of the most profound and ancient questions about our place in the cosmos may indeed be waiting in Neil Armstrong’s 55-year-old spent diapers.

“We are this multiplicity,” says Katherine Sammler, a human geographer at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, who has written about waste management in space through the lens of critical social theory. “We bring with us nonhuman passengers, like microbes and bacteria, as well as our own bodies and the things that go in and out of them. We have to think about the passengers that come with us and their experience of gravity and radiation on the moon.” The bags of waste would be rich sites for doing research, she adds. “What’s there? What’s left?”

In his mission concept, Lupisella proposes answering some of those questions by conducting biomolecular sequencing, among other experiments, on samples of Apollo astronaut poop. These efforts could potentially reveal whether the microbes experienced an altered rate of genetic mutations after being marooned on the Moon, which hypothetically could provide an adaptive advantage. Lupisella is also curious about whether any microbial spores in the bags could be revived in the right conditions.

“We already know life outside humans is robust, and can survive weird environments, but if the human microbiome can survive in those environments, like say on the Moon, that’s even more of a strong indicator of how tenacious life can be,” Lupisella says. “It would be another data point that says it’s a little bit easier to believe that life can exist in lots of places throughout the galaxy, solar system, and universe at large.”

Astronauts have often reported that the number one question they receive from schoolchildren is how they go to the bathroom in space. It’s a simple query that exposes a complex and ever-evolving set of challenges, many of which remain unresolved. It’s not clear that we will ever unlock satisfying solutions to these problems, but the ongoing effort to confront the legal, ethical, and practical obstacles of waste management in space will yield returns back here on Earth as well.

“I’m so excited about working on space issues, because we do have an opportunity to do better,” de Zwart says. “We should be going in a way that is sustainable and responsible. We should be thinking about how to minimize waste. Of course, if you can crack that nut for space, then it’s going to have massive benefits on Earth, so that we can help our game here about waste management and disposal.”

For instance, billions of people on Earth do not have access to safe sanitation services, a situation that has galvanized campaigns to build more innovative toilets and sewage systems. Meanwhile, growing numbers of livestock worldwide, and the billions of tons of feces they produce each year, are straining waste management programs. Wastewater frequently pollutes environments and exposes humans to health risks, including respiratory illnesses or waste-related pathogens. Wastewater systems currently contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, while the effects of climate change, including extreme weather events like floods or hurricanes, impose more stress on waste infrastructure.

“Perhaps humanity can avoid the worst effects of global climate change by embracing what even the military-industrial complex determined was an absolutely necessity to any spacecraft, namely a bioregenerative life support system,” Munns and Nickelsen say in their book.

“In writing a book about what people have done with their shit in space, we have also written a book that speaks to the problem of what people have to do with their shit on Earth,” they conclude.

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June 25, 2024
Total Solar Eclipse of April 8, 2024: Watch Online, What Time, Path of Totality

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It’s shadow time, baby! Soon, people living in North America will get to experience their first solar eclipse in almost a decade.

Even though the last solar eclipse in North America happened in 2017, the next one isn’t expected until August 2044, so seizing this moment is critical. More than just a peculiar shadow, the solar eclipse is a perfect opportunity to hang out with loved ones outside and meditate on humanity’s smallness compared to the vast universe.

And even if you don’t live in the path of totality or you aren’t one of the millions of people traveling to see the major event, there are multiple ways for you to join in and watch the total solar eclipse online.

What Is a Total Solar Eclipse?

“It’s an alignment of the sun, the moon, and the earth in such a way that the moon passes directly between the sun and the Earth, blocking the sun’s rays from reaching the Earth’s surface,” says Noah Petro, an Artemis III project scientist at NASA. If you’re in the path of totality, then you will see the moon completely cover the sun. Outside of the main path? You may still see a partial eclipse, where the moon covers a slice of the sun.

Despite the involvement of the moon, a solar eclipse is not to be confused with a lunar eclipse. During those, the moon passes into the shadow of Earth and turns a dark red color. Lunar eclipses are visible for most of the entire hemisphere that’s facing the moon at the time.

When Is the Solar Eclipse?

Passing through portions of North America, the total solar eclipse will occur on Monday, April 8. Depending on where you are in the path of totality, the solar eclipse will happen in the afternoon and potentially last around four minutes. For more specifics, refer to NASA’s map detailing the exact time different US cities will experience the total eclipse.

What about a partial eclipse? For example, even though I’m based in San Francisco, far outside the path of totality, I should still see a small portion of the sun covered between 10 am and noon. Check out this handy link to see when it occurs wherever you’re located.

Where Will It Be Visible?

While the total solar eclipse is primarily happening in Mexico and the United States, a small section of eastern Canada is also along the path of totality. To see what it might look like in different locations, check out this fantastic website created by a retired mathematician that simulates the solar eclipse.

Three major Mexican cities where you can see the total solar eclipse are Mazatlán, Durango, and Torreón.

There are numerous locations across the US where you can potentially experience totality. A few of the locations include Dallas, Texas; Russellville, Arkansas; Carbondale, Illinois; Greenwood, Indiana; and Buffalo, New York.

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April 7, 2024
How to View April’s Total Solar Eclipse, Online and In Person

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It’s shadow time, baby! Soon, people living in North America will get to experience their first solar eclipse in almost a decade.

Even though the last solar eclipse in North America happened in 2017, the next one isn’t expected until August 2044, so seizing this moment is critical. More than just a peculiar shadow, the solar eclipse is a perfect opportunity to hang out with loved ones outside and meditate on humanity’s smallness compared to the vast universe.

What Is a Solar Eclipse?

“It’s an alignment of the sun, the moon, and the earth in such a way that the moon passes directly between the sun and the earth, blocking the sun’s rays from reaching the earth’s surface,” says Noah Petro, an Artemis III project scientist at NASA. If you’re in the path of totality, then you will see the moon completely cover the sun. Outside of the main path? You may still see a partial eclipse, where the moon covers a slice of the sun.

Despite the involvement of the moon, a solar eclipse is not to be confused with a lunar eclipse. During those, the moon passes into the shadow of Earth and turns a dark red color. Lunar eclipses are visible for most of the entire hemisphere that’s facing the moon at the time.

When Is the 2024 Solar Eclipse?

Passing through portions of North America, the total solar eclipse will occur on Monday, April 8. Depending on where you are in the path of totality, the solar eclipse will happen in the afternoon and potentially last around four minutes. For more specifics, refer to NASA’s map detailing the exact time different US cities will experience the eclipse.

Where Will It Be Visible?

While the total solar eclipse is primarily happening in Mexico and the United States, a small section of eastern Canada is also along the path of totality. To see what it might look like in different locations, check out this fantastic website created by a retired mathematician that simulates the solar eclipse.

Three major Mexican cities where you can see the total solar eclipse are Mazatlán, Durango, and Torreón.

There are numerous locations across the US where you can potentially experience totality. A few of the locations include Dallas, Texas; Russellville, Arkansas; Carbondale, Illinois; Greenwood, Indiana; and Buffalo, New York.

Finding somewhere you can avoid a cloudy overcast is crucial if you want to have the best viewing experience. “Particularly in northern New England, we can have colder, cloudy weather,” says Petro. “Through Mexico and Central Texas, you might be able to find places that are more likely to get clear skies.”

Want to travel somewhere within the path of totality? You might have to get creative at this point, since many hotels and campgrounds within the core path have been fully booked for months. Maybe consider finding a place to stay overnight that’s an hour or so outside of the main route and drive in for the afternoon to see the solar eclipse.

Do I Really Need to Wear Eclipse Glasses?

The answer is yes.

“Looking at any amount of sun is really dangerous,” says Matt Bothwell, a public astronomer at Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy. “So you should be getting eclipse glasses to watch the progress of the moon over the face of the sun.” And just putting on a pair of typical sunglasses won’t do the trick—you want eye protection that is ISO-certified for direct sun observation.

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March 24, 2024
A Startup Will Try to Mine Helium-3 on the Moon

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Two of Blue Origin’s earliest employees, former president Rob Meyerson and chief architect Gary Lai, have started a company that seeks to extract helium-3 from the lunar surface, return it to Earth, and sell it for applications here.

The company has been operating in stealth since its founding in 2022, but it emerged on Wednesday by announcing it has raised $15 million, adding to previous rounds of angel investments.

This is a notable announcement because, while the funding is small, the implications are potentially large. Lately, there has been a lot of discussion of a “lunar economy” in spaceflight but precious little clarity on what that means. Most firms that have announced business plans to launch rockets to the moon, land on the moon, or perform other activities there have been doing so with the intent of selling services or lunar water to NASA or other parties fulfilling government contracts. Put another way, there has been no wealth creation, and ultimately, NASA is the customer.

The present lunar rush is rather like a California gold rush without the gold.

By harvesting helium-3, which is rare and limited in supply on Earth, Interlune could help change that calculus by deriving value from resources on the moon. But many questions about the approach remain. First of all, the company must devise a means of extracting the gas from the lunar regolith, the abrasive, rocky, and dirt-like material on the surface of the moon. Then it must return the helium-3 to Earth. There is currently no means of doing so. Finally, it must prove that there will be a large and sustained market for the stable isotope on Earth to support its business.

However, with NASA investing tens of billions of dollars in the Artemis Program to return humans to the moon, Meyerson is convinced that now is the time to piggyback on those transportation, power, and other resources to start a lunar mining company. It would not have been possible at any time before now. It may be barely possible today.

“Helium-3 is the only resource out there that is priced high enough to support going to the moon and bringing it back to Earth,” Meyerson said in an interview. “There are customers that want to buy it today.”

A Useful Helium Isotope

Helium-3 is a stable isotope of helium with two protons and one neutron. It is produced by fusion in the sun and transported by the solar wind. However, Earth’s magnetosphere deflects this stream of particles away from the planet.

The material does not occur naturally on Earth, and it exists in only very limited quantities from nuclear weapons tests, nuclear reactors, and radioactive decay. A single liter costs a few thousand dollars, and there are efforts to recycle it by the US Department of Energy. Because there is no magnetosphere around the moon, it’s believed there are large quantities of helium-3 gas trapped in pockets of the lunar regolith.

Meyerson said that in the near term, there is considerable demand for helium-3 in the superconducting quantum computing industry and for medical imaging. Longer term, there is potential for operating a fusion reactor with helium-3 as a fuel. This is something that has long been advocated by people like Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, a geologist who flew on Apollo 17 to the moon. However, there are serious questions in the scientific community about the viability of this approach.

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March 15, 2024
Odysseus Marks the First US Moon Landing in More Than 50 Years

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For the first time in more than half a century, a US-built spacecraft has made a soft landing on the moon.

There was high drama and plenty of intrigue on Thursday evening as Intuitive Machines attempted to land its Odysseus spacecraft in a small crater not all that far from the south pole of the moon. About 20 minutes after touchdown, NASA declared success, but some questions remained about the health of the lander and its orientation. Why? Because while Odysseus was phoning home, its signal was weak.

But after what the spacecraft and its developer, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, went through earlier on Thursday, it was a miracle that Odysseus made it at all.

Losing Your Way

The landing attempt was delayed by about two hours after mission controllers had to send a hastily cobbled together, last-minute software patch up to the lander while it was still in orbit around the moon. Patching your spacecraft’s software shortly before it makes its most critical move is just about the last thing a vehicle operator wants to do. But Intuitive Machines was desperate.

Earlier on Thursday, the company realized that its navigation lasers and cameras were not operational. These rangefinders are essential for two functions during landing: terrain-relative navigation and hazard-relative navigation. These two modes help the flight computer on Odysseus to determine precisely where it is during descent—by snapping lots of images and comparing them to known moon topography—and to identify hazards below, such as boulders, in order to find a safe landing site.

Without these rangefinders, Odysseus was going to face-plant into the moon. Fortunately, this mission carried a bunch of science payloads. As part of its commercial lunar program, NASA is paying about $118 million for the delivery of six scientific payloads to the lunar surface.

One of these payloads just happened to be the Navigation Doppler Lidar experiment, a 15-kilogram package that contains three small cameras. With this NDL payload, NASA sought to test out technologies that might be used to improve navigation systems in future landing attempts on the moon.

The only chance Odysseus had was if it could somehow tap into two of the NDL experiment’s three cameras and use one for terrain-relative navigation and the other for hazard-relative navigation. So software was hastily written and shipped up to the lander. This was some true MacGyver stuff. But would it work?

A New Home

The Odysseus lander started its descent from a circular orbit 57 miles (92 kilometers) above the surface of the moon, an hour and 13 minutes before its planned landing time. The lander began a powered descent, using its main engine powered by liquid oxygen and methane, 11 minutes before touchdown on this timeline. During these final, crucial minutes, Odysseus’ improvised terrain-relative navigation camera scanned the surface for hazards, such as boulders, to ensure a safe landing site.

After the touchdown, the mission controllers knew it might take a minute or two to get a good signal back from the lander, which was relaying signals back to large satellite dishes on Earth. First one, then two, and then five minutes passed with an increasingly uncomfortable silence in the mission control room for Intuitive Machines. Nothing.

Finally, after 10 minutes, mission director Tim Crain called out that the lander was sending a faint signal back to Earth.

“We’re not dead yet,” said Crain, who is a cofounder of the company.

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February 24, 2024