jump to navigation

Students Can Name NASA’s Twin Moon-Bound GRAIL Craft! October 10, 2011

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

It’s not quite getting your name on a lunar mare or mountain, but it’s a start…

Students K-12 can now enter a contest to name two moon-bound craft!

The twin craft of NASA’s lunar gravity mission, GRAIL, currently carry the thrilling names of GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B…so, NASA has opened up this essay contest to give the mission’s craft more inspiring monikers!

So, what are you waiting for—send this to your favorite budding student and give them a headstart on signing their own John Hancock onto the Moon! :)

For similar awesomeness, see the naming of NASA’s Mars craft, Curiosity :)

When One Door Closes…? July 10, 2011

Posted by Nick Azer in : NASA, poll, Simon Jester , add a comment

Glass half empty, or glass half full?

Now What?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Silver Moon: Recent LCROSS Results Show Silver, Even More Water in Cabeus Crater November 26, 2010

Posted by Nick Azer in : Cabeus, LCROSS, NASA, silver, water , add a comment

Recent results from NASA’s 2009 LCROSS mission (the famous “moon bombing”) have shown that the targeted crater continues to be full of surprises.

The mission—in which NASA crashed a spent rocket stage into a permanently-dark crater, and analyzed the resulting plume—had produced intial results indicating quite a bit of water ice, but now further results have been published showing not only more water than some parts of Earth have, but also elements like mercury and even silver.

“Where we impacted, up to 20 percent was something other than dirt. It was ices, volatiles, light metals. That was a surprise, that you had so much of this material in there.” -Tony Colaprete, LCROSS mission principal investigator, “Moon Crater Has More Water Than Parts of Earth“, Space.com

These materials probably arrived via billions of years’ worth of meteor, comet, and other impacts.

Huge quantities of water ice have been discovered elsewhere on the Moon in the past year, showing that a moon once thought to be dry has remarkable natural resources. Water can be processed for cost-effective rocket fuel (via its hydrogen and oxygen), and now with resources like silver turning up…

If there’s anything the moon has shown us in the past year, it’s that we only have an initial understanding of its resources. The prospects for lunar mining  have been increasingly steadily, and they were already pretty good to begin with (with helium-3, water ice, lunar solar power, silicon, and more).

These sort of large-scale discoveries of water ice would have been pretty unthinkable even two years ago; so what kind of other resource discoveries could be waiting around the corner? An already bright frontier continues to get more interesting by the day…

And with that, here’s a favorite song of mine which is now a lot more technically accurate than it used to be:

NASA Awards Innovative Lunar Demonstration Data (ILDD) Contracts! October 19, 2010

Posted by Nick Azer in : Google Lunar X Prize, NASA, private space , 1 comment so far

NASA has offered six contracts under its new Innovative Lunar Demonstrations Data (ILDD) program, all to Google Lunar X PRIZE competitors—including the new Moon Express team!

Each contract can be worth up to $10 million, coming from the total pool of $30.1 million.

The recipients:

NASA will essentially pay these companies for data they collect on how to operate a low-cost lunar mission. As the official Google Lunar X PRIZE site notes, each award starts as at least $10,000, and can grow as teams supply new data packages.

The idea behind this program (and others forwarded by the Obama administration) is to focus NASA on the development of the private space industry, which could therefore in turn help the American economy; all six recipients being based in the U.S. (See my feature from February on the American GLXP teams.)

Something to note is the total amount available: $30.1 million, which happens to be very close to the $30 million in prizes available from winning the X PRIZE itself. The GLXP funds are a $15-20 million (depending on completion date) main prize, a $5 million second prize, and $5 million in bonus prizes. So, the final funds these teams could have available from the ILDD could very well end up being more than they could get from the GLXP itself (all six can’t win the big bacon, after all).

So, not only are these six enterprises getting a potentially very nice boost, one of them could then (thanks in part to the boost itself) then go on to win the prize money…and bring it home to the good ol’ US of A. Seems like a pretty shrewd way for the U.S. government to support the industry many ways, with one move.

Regardless, this cements the long-term prospects of all involved (and gets the new Moon Express team, headed by former Odyssey Moon leader Bob Richards, off to a hot start). For an analysis of the teams’ standings, funding and otherwise, check out Evadot’s updated GLXP Scorecard :)

NASA Authorization Bill Passed by House September 30, 2010

Posted by Nick Azer in : Commercial Crew Development [CCDev], Constellation, NASA, National Space Policy, Obama, Space Shuttle , add a comment

The Senate version of the NASA Authorization Bill has been passed by the House!

The bill, approved late Wednesday, gives NASA clearer ‘marching orders’ (as Rick Tumlinson put it on the Huffington Post) going forward, and allows Congress its own modifications on (while finalizing) Obama’s new direction for the space program.

A breakdown:

It’s good to see a bill passed that doesn’t dramatically alter Obama’s vision, and it is nice to see that new heavy lift moved up four years—even if it potentially is reusing parts of the Shuttle and Ares systems. With the new plan basically bypassing the Moon (as private companies lodge it in their sights), moving up the rocket four years could mean any NASA involvement on (or benefit from) the Moon could happen that much sooner.

For great in-depth coverage of the lead-up and reactions to the bill, check out Space Politics and NASA Watch :)

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in Hot Water Over Ethics Issues? September 26, 2010

Posted by Nick Azer in : Charles Bolden, ethics, NASA, National Space Policy, Obama , add a comment

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden is starting to find himself in hot water with the Obama administration after a series of ethics issues, it seems:

“Administrator Bolden continues to be not only a distraction for the administration, but most importantly to the mission of NASA.” -Unnamed Obama administration official, “NASA Administrator draws an ethics reprimand”, The Orlando Sentinel

“The president takes the ethics pledge and the commitments made by appointees who sign it seriously, and any breach of the pledge is very disappointing.” -White House Spokesman Nick Shapiro, “NASA Administrator draws an ethics reprimand”, The Orlando Sentinel

It’s generally difficult to be reprimanded much more than that. Distraction to the mission of NASA?

As Space Politics notes, Bolden was cleared of legal violations in regards to his communication with former employer Marathon Oil, but that his actions were found to not be consistent with the administration ethics pledge (referenced by spokesman Nick Shapiro above).

Comments by Bolden earlier this summer about outreach to Muslim countries being one of his “foremost” tasks and general controversy over the new direction of NASA have not helped his cause at an important juncture for Obama’s vision for space.

With a busy year for Obama, this could well mean there’ll be a change to a less ‘distracting’ administrator in the near future, perhaps once the House and Senate compromise bills are settled one way or another. Obama seems to dictate space policy fairly closely regardless (his 2008 campaign space plan having a lot in common with the later findings of the Augustine committee), so a change in administrator may not make much of a difference in the momentum of NASA, and potentially happen that much sooner because of it.

NASA Announces $30.1 Million for Data from Innovative Lunar Demonstrations August 12, 2010

Posted by Nick Azer in : NASA, private space , 5comments

This past week, NASA announced a big boost for private space companies with their eye on the Moon: $30.1 million made available for ‘how-to’ data on lunar missions!

The Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) is a way for NASA to announce that it’s ready and looking to purchase certain data:

“The BAA asks for information about the design and demonstration of an end-to-end lunar landing mission. This includes data associated with hardware design, development and testing; ground operations and integration; launch; trajectory correction maneuvers; lunar braking, burn and landing; and enhanced capabilities.” -“NASA Seeks Data from Innovative Lunar Demonstrations”, NASA

This essentially gives smaller companies making lunar efforts (like those in the Google Lunar X PRIZE) one big new customer. There will be multiple awards, so a number of different companies could submit proposals and receive contracts, resulting in a lot of potential new federal business opportunities.

Contracts have a $10,000 minimum, and NASA’s deadline for proposals is September 8th.

This is a significant concrete step in NASA’s move towards focusing on private space; by handing the money out externally, they could in theory help support the economy while acquiring that same data.

Stay tuned as that deadline approaches; September 8th will come up pretty fast, so before long we should be seeing a lot of interesting updates on the various contracts that come out of this :)

NASA Announces New Centennial Challenges; Two Moon-Related :) July 15, 2010

Posted by Nick Azer in : Centennial Challenges, lunar night, NASA, private space, rover , add a comment

This week, NASA announced three new Centennial Challenge prizes—the first in five years :) Much like the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, these prizes set tasks to be completed for $1.5-2 million each.

Two of the new challenges are directly lunar-related:

Both prizes have a purse of $1.5 million, with the third Nano-Satellite prize having a purse of $2 million.

Potentially Icy Northern Crater Mapped By LRO July 7, 2010

Posted by Nick Azer in : lunar mining, lunar North Pole, lunar polar regions, Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter, lunar water, NASA, Rozhdestvenskiy, water , add a comment

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has mapped for the first time in high resolution a crater of interest for potential ice deposits.

A permanently-shadowed crater within the larger, northern Rozhdestvenskiy, the LRO’s advanced Mini-RF imaging technology was able to bring out the Circular Polarization Ratio (CPR) of the crater and its surroundings. A stark contrast between the two suggests thick deposits of ice, as were shown generally to exist around the north pole earlier this year.

You better get used to ‘Rozhdestvenskiy’, as deposits will surely make this an icy hotspot for future lunar missions and subsequent (lucrative) mining efforts.

Obama Gives Speech on NASA Plans at Kennedy Space Center April 15, 2010

Posted by Nick Azer in : NASA, Obama, Orion (craft) , 1 comment so far

President Obama delivered a major speech today at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on his plans for NASA:

Obama notes some important general space goals—Mars orbit by the 2030s, a new heavy lift rocket design by 2015, an asteroid mission in the 2020s—but I’m going to highlight some of the important details regarding the Moon, and NASA’s role there. (Click here for his full remarks.)

“We will ramp up robotic exploration of the solar system, including a probe of the Sun’s atmosphere, new scouting missions to Mars and other destinations, and an advanced telescope to follow Hubble, allowing us to peer deeper into the universe than ever before.”

NASA does still have some great lunar science/industry missions in the works; he does later mention them indirectly:

“At the same time, after decades of neglect, we will increase investment – right away – in other groundbreaking technologies that will allow astronauts to reach space sooner and more often, to travel farther and faster for less cost, and to live and work in space for longer periods of time more safely. That means tackling major scientific and technological challenges. How do we shield astronauts from radiation on longer missions? How do we harness resources on distant words? How do we supply spacecraft with the energy needed for these far-reaching journeys? These are questions we can and will answer.”

More general comments on the Moon as a destination were a bit unflattering:

“I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned. But the simple fact is, we have been there before. There is a lot more space to explore, and a lot more to learn when we do.”

His actual remark (at 23:05 in the video), as opposed to the prepared speech, was a little more negative:

“But, but—I just have to say, pretty bluntly here—we’ve been there before! Buzz [Aldrin, in audience] has been there. There’s a lot more to explore…”

Perhaps a touch more negative about the Moon’s possibilities than I’d like to see, but private industry does have it covered pretty well, and ideological distancing from Constellation’s general failures makes sense politically. Still, the Moon has some valuable possibilities to it, including in support of longer-range missions; while it’s not NASA’s priority anymore, in my opinion it’s more prudent to say that it’s simply not NASA’s goal, as opposed to not being a goal worth exploring at all.

He does mention the harnessing of resources, etc. indirectly, so the Moon still appears to be in his eye, even if it’s not necessarily ‘hip’ to say it right now ;)

Going back to private industry, Obama made some interesting new remarks on it’s possibilites:

“And there is potential for even more job creation as companies in Florida and across America compete to be part of a new space transportation industry. This holds the promise of generating more than 10,000 jobs nationwide over the next few years. Many of these jobs will be created in Florida, an area primed to lead in this competition.”

This is the first time I can recall seeing anyone put a number (and timeframe) on the private space industry’s impact. ‘More than 10,000 jobs’ over the ‘next few years’.

Obama also voices a strong argument in support of the wisdom of leaning on private companies, citing the history with contractors in the past:

“I recognize that some have said it is unfeasible or unwise to work with the private sector in this way. But the truth is, NASA has always relied on private industry to help design and build the vehicles that carry astronauts to space, from the Mercury capsule that carried John Glenn into orbit nearly fifty years ago, to the Space Shuttle Discovery currently orbiting overhead. By buying the service of space transportation – rather than the vehicles themselves – we can continue to ensure rigorous safety standards are met. But we will also accelerate the pace of innovation as companies – from young start-ups to established leaders – compete to design, build, and launch new means of carrying people and materials out of our atmosphere.”

A good point that’s been raised, and it’s nice to see it from the President himself. It seems like many I talk to associated with the current establishment of space dismiss private industry somewhat out of hand, and I’ve always felt that to be an underestimation.

All in all, it is an encouraging speech, and it’s good to see Obama ‘lay down the law’ a little in support of his established plans. Despite some vocal opposition, Obama’s sticking to his guns.