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Astrobotic Issues Info-Rich Release on Regolith Management Study for NASA February 26, 2009

Posted by Nick Azer in : Astrobotic, Google Lunar X Prize, NASA , add a comment

Astrobotic Technology has issued a release, complete with the above rendering and a juicy PowerPoint presentation, detailing their report on lunar regolith management that they are presenting on Friday to the currently ongoing NASA-industry conference in Washington, D.C. on lunar surface systems.

Their NASA-sponsored study (with technical assistance from Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute) looked at the problems with lunar regolith (dust):

“NASA faces a challenge in planning the layout for its outpost, which is expected to begin operations in 2020. For efficient cargo transfer, the landing site needs to be close to the outpost’s crew quarters and laboratories. Each rocket landing and takeoff, however, will accelerate lunar grit outwards from the pad. With no atmosphere to slow it down, the dry soil would sandblast the outpost.” -Dr. William “Red” Whittaker, chairman of Astrobotic and Carnegie Mellon professor of robotics, from the release.

The study identified two options: construct a berm around the outpost to shield it, or construct the pad itself out of local materials, paving a grit-free area. Local materials have been suggested for lunar construction before–a notable example being lunar concrete.

The PDF PowerPoint presentation is great stuff–tons of renderings and info. A few highlights:

Check out the full 30-slide presentation for all the nitty-gritty details on Astrobotic’s Moon Digger and Moon Paver concepts, and stay tuned here at Luna C/I, as at least some of the other presentations at the workshop are sure to have details hitting the ‘net soon :)

Washington, D.C. Lunar Surface Systems (Landers, Architecture) Forum On Weds. Feburary 25th: Exciting New Info to Come? February 23, 2009

Posted by Nick Azer in : NASA , 2comments

feb-09-outpost-render

A NASA-Industry forum/workshop is coming up this Wednesday in Washington, D.C. on lunar architecture, which will provide a status update on a range of lunar surface exploration and architecture concepts and studies:

“The workshop will highlight recently completed lunar surface study contracts administered by the Constellation Program. Topics will include habitat designs and packaging options, innovative energy and thermal storage concepts, lunar regolith moving methods, and avionics and software solutions.”

I’d expect there’ll be some juicy new details coming out of this; it sounds like there’ll be a focus on pre-2020 work, e.g. the International Lunar Network (the workshop being on “concepts to support human and robotic exploration on the moon by 2020″).

It’s at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (map) from February 25-27th (three days’s worth? *drool*). 

The full agenda is available here from NASA—a lot of habitat design and regolith storage topics. Regolith, and its dusty nature, is a big problem on the Moon, but something I haven’t seen any specifics on–that should be particularly interesting. Of course, regolith is also where the all-important helium-3 is mined from.

I’ll see what I can dig up on the presentations as the workshop goes along this week, and bring it to ya right here at Luna C/I :)

Japan's Kaguya Captures Eclipse From the Moon February 22, 2009

Posted by Nick Azer in : Japan , add a comment

The image at left is a penumbral lunar eclipse, captured recently by JAXA ‘s ongoing Kaguya lunar orbiter project.

Though, perhaps ‘lunar’ is the wrong word, as this was taken from the Moon of Earth. A terran eclipse?

“Penumbral” refers to the fact that it is not total, e.g. theres a bit of a corona of light there peeking out. The next total lunar eclipse is on December 21st, 2010—despite that being pretty soon, it’s amazing to think that a team concievably could have won (or at least launched for) the Google Lunar X PRIZE by then.

The Kaguya has already made its mark on history with its HDTV video of the moon–check out the new English narrations of some of their more spectacular videos, as well as their wealth of additional Japanese-language videos.

The NASA Administrator Nomination Delay: Ares I Rocket's Future in the Political Balance? February 19, 2009

Posted by Nick Azer in : Ares I, Ares V, NASA, Obama , comments closed

The Houston Chronicle has an article up about how a political battle over the future of the Ares I rocket (and whether to replace it with the currently operational Atlas V and Delta IV rockets) is delaying President Obama’s nomination of a new NASA administrator to succeed Mike Griffin.

It appears there’s a pretty grand tug-of-war going on, as various elements see the change in NASA administratorship as an opportunity to change the agenda in their favor. Everyone from the United Launch Alliance to Sen. Bill Nelson has been getting into the thick of things, complicating things for Obama.

“Selection of a new administrator has taken longer than some expected, [John] Logsdon said, because “the White House knows how tricky it will be to get an independent and trustworthy judgment from a new administration given the vested interests on all sides of this issue.” – “Search for NASA Chief comes under political influence“, Stewart M. Powell, Houston Chronicle

A variety of administrator candidates (including retired generals Scott Gration and more recently, Lester L. Lyles) have been floated lately, with President Obama himself stating that the list of names was down to four.

NASA has  sunk $13.6 billion into the Ares rocket development so far–seems like it might be a shame that abandon that much development.

One angle with the Ares program that I have a somewhat strong opinion on is actually the name–while Ares makes sense in relation to Mars, Ares mythologically is the god of bloodshed. So, our rocket carrying living human colonists, to planetary bodies with other nations colonizing, is going to named after the avatar of bloodshed? To me, that’s similar to the Mayflower having been instead called, say…the Black Death:P Something of an ill omen, in my opinion, especially with all the other names they could have chosen. Might as well call the lunar base ‘Roanoke’ or ‘The Alamo’.

Regardless, I personally expect that despite all the manuevering around the Ares rockets’ future, their development will continue–the negative PR might just be too counter to Obama’s goals of inspiration and progress, and could handicap positive public interest in American space programs.

The First Luna C/I Film is Complete! "The Base Race: An Introduction to Moon Colonization, 2004-2030" February 16, 2009

Posted by Nick Azer in : Uncategorized , add a comment

That is the first ever Luna C/I Film, a new project I’m embarking on as an effort to bring knowledge and discussion of lunar colonization and integration to Youtube.

This first film is “The Base Race: An Introduction to Moon Colonization, 2004-2030.” I plan on creating numerous films, on everything from broader subjects like lunar architecture and the commercialization of the lunar surface, down to looks at more abstract topics like historical perspectives (how this lunar colonial era compares to past colonial eras, e.g. the American frontier) and whether or not the lunar surface is an environment to be conserved.

I’ll keep all the films together on the “Luna C/I Films” page here on the site, as well as in a Luna C/I Films playlist on Youtube.

I created this film using simply Picasa 3–a program from Google that’s a free and quick download.

If you have any comments, suggestions, ideas, or films of your own, feel free to share them in the comments here, on the Films page, and/or on the Youtube video itself’s comments :)

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Pushed Back a Month February 15, 2009

Posted by Nick Azer in : Lunar Reconnaissance, NASA , add a comment

NASA’s upcoming Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), originally scheduled for an April launch, has been pushed back a month until May.

A major mission and a big first foray of the Constellation program, the LRO is the latest in a long series of lunar orbiters to have come along in the past few years from various countries–including China’s Chang’e-1, Japan’s Kaguya, Europe’s SMART-1, and India’s Chandrayaan-1 (for a detailed look at the Chandrayaan-1′s scientific instruments, see my recurring feature on its payloads here). Many of these have made news, especially the Chandrayaan-1, which managed to make it as a headline story on Drudge Report.

These lunar orbiters send back important initial data, ranging from images and video to mapping (especially of all-important helium-3 content) and testing for water ice deep in craters. NASA should be pushing the LRO pretty hard as a great PR opportunity as the first mission of Constellation, and also considering  the Obama administration‘s strong space interest, we Americans should be hearing quite a bit about this LRO mission on the news over this spring and summer :) .

New Contender for NASA Administrator: Ret. USAF Gen. Lester L. Lyles February 10, 2009

Posted by Nick Azer in : African-American History, Apollo, Civil Rights, NASA, Obama, Theatre , 2comments

Despite Gen. Scott Gration having been an apparent early leader for the role of new NASA Administrator, reports have been indicating that there is a new frontrunner for the job: Retired USAF Gen. Lester L. Lyles.

Early murmurs surfaced at NASA Watch, and culminated in an article from the Wall Street Journal (with some excellent additional coverage to be found over at Space Politics).

According to the WSJ article, opposition from key Democratic leadership (including Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, an avid space supporter and congressional NASA expert, pictured above with President Obama before the November election) arose over Gen. Scott Gration’s lack of space experience.

Gen. Lyles, pictured above and at top, has a great wealth of space experience, including being a member of a 2004 Presidential commission on how to get us back to the Moon and Mars.

I recently saw an excellent play, written by Nancy Keystone, called “Apollo” (at the Portland Center Stage), about some of the societal and ethical costs of the birth of the American space program–the third part of the play exploring African-Americans, our country’s slave history, and the relation of those to the Huntsville, Alabama location of the Marshall Space Flight Center (key to Apollo development) during the 1960′s, height of both the Civil Rights Movement and the space race (with the first two parts exploring ethical considerations of the history of Nazi engineers with rocketry and NASA).

While the play currently doesn’t include anything on the recent election of President Obama (and his space dreams), I found it interesting in context that it’s, in fact, an African-American President that will be carrying the significance of space in America (both private and government) forward into bold new territory. If Lester L. Lyles were to become the NASA administrator under President Obama in this central and historical stage of mankind’s space development, this poignant shift becomes even more marked as we progress into a promising new era.

For some video of Gen. Lyles, below is a Youtube video of him recieving an Engineering award (his speech beginning at 6:00):

New English Narration on Japan's Spectacular HDTV Kaguya Footage February 8, 2009

Posted by Nick Azer in : Google Lunar X Prize, Japan, Youtube , 2comments

Japan’s space agency, JAXA, has posted on one of their Youtube channels two HD videos from their Kaguya lunar orbiter’s mission, with new English narration.

The videos are not embeddable, but can be found linked below:

The Kaguya lunar orbiter (also known as SELENE) took the footage in 2007, with these new narrations posted just last week.

These videos were a significant first drop in the pond for lunar HD video—a key element of the Google Lunar X PRIZE‘s $20 million payout is successful broadcast of HD video from the surface (a “mooncast”), and HD streams and other video could become both common and in-demand within 3-6 years. JAXA’s videos are an opening act for what should be an avalanche of astounding imagery over the next decade that’ll have each of us feeling that much closer to standing on the Moon, just as everyone from Armstrong and Aldrin to Schmitt and beyond has done :)

NASA Video Tour of Altair Lander February 4, 2009

Posted by Nick Azer in : Altair, NASA , add a comment

NASA’s Constellation blog has an feature up where you can take a 360-degree tour of a concept rendering of the inside of the Altair lunar lander.

Check out the quick video in Windows Media Player here and in Realplayer here.

For more detailed video on the lander, embedded below is an educational video from NASA geared towards kids, but that is surprisingly interesting and informative in general about the Altair:

Chandrayaan-1 Payload Feature #5: X-Ray Spectrometer (C1XS) February 2, 2009

Posted by Nick Azer in : Chandrayaan, Chandrayaan-1, Chandrayaan-1 Payload Features, Indian Space Research Organization , add a comment

Today is the fifth in a series of features on each of the Indian lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-1’s scientific payloads. The Chandrayaan-1 has 11 scientific instruments onboard to complete an array of measurements: five Indian instruments, and six from other nations and organizations (including the ESA and NASA).

For this edition, we look at one of the international payloads that made news last month– the ESA‘s Chandrayaan-1 X-ray Spectrometer (C1XS).

Chandrayaan-1 X-ray Spectrometer (C1XS)

The C1XS (pronounced like “kicks”) is, as a spectrometer, a device to measure the electronic structure of materials—in this case, the lunar surface.

This kind of imaging helps determine what the Moon is composed of. Nancy Atkinson at UniverseToday.com provided an excellent description of the above chart in her great article on the device’s first results:

“The red curve shows the combined signal from all 24 C1XS X-ray detectors during the solar flare at 02:35-02:38 UT on Dec. 12th. The black dashed line shows the normal background signal detected by C1XS. The three “fingers” sticking up between 1 and 2 keV are due to the presence of the elements magnesium, aluminium and silicon (left to right) on the Moon. ” -Nancy Atkinson, UniverseToday.com, “Chandrayaan-1 Instrument Detects First X-ray Signature from Moon“

Silicon, while not as high-profile as helium-3 in regards to the Moon, is a substance seen as having some lunar mining potential. It’s used most notably for solar panels, which are (of course) critical to lunar colonies.

These kinds of results over time will go a long way towards figuring out how the Moon was formed, and more about its selenographic nature in general.

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Keep checking back here for more payload features, Chandrayaan-1 news, and a complete wealth of updates and information about the base race, private space boom, and everything else under the Moon :)