Tag: nasa

We made oxygen on Mars

An experiment on board the Mars Perseverance rover designed to produce breathable oxygen from carbon dioxide has been switched on and is working! On April 20 it produced 5 grams of oxygen — not a huge amount, but it’s designed to make as much as 10 grams per hour, and this is the very first time oxygen has been converted from native air on another planet. MOXIE by itself can’t produce that much, but again it’s not designed to actually do that, it’s just to make sure the tech works. Still, just 4 MOXIEs could keep a human breathing on Mars. That first amount it made, 5 grams, is enough for ~10 minutes worth of breathing for a single person.

Crew Dragon reuse

Both Booster and Dragon spacecraft are flight proven for today’s Crew-2 flight to the ISS. NΛSΛ chooses flight-proven spacecraft and booster for its most precious missions. Dragon Pilot Megan McArthur is sitting in the very same seat that her husband Bob Behnken sat for the SpaceX DM-2 mission 11 months ago. Thank you for helping humanity raise its aspirations and dreams!

P.S. many years ago, when reusable boosters were an audacious dream, I heard them described as “used”, as in a used car. No, no, we should call them “flight proven” and I wagered that the long term data would show them to be safer than a first flight. “Would you want to be on the very first flight of a new airplane coming off the line?” I asked. The moniker became a meme.

Europa mission

NASA’s Europa Clipper mission will conduct detailed reconnaissance of Jupiter’s moon Europa to see whether the icy moon could harbor conditions suitable for life. The mission will carry a highly capable, radiation-tolerant spacecraft that will perform repeated close flybys of the icy moon from a long, looping orbit around Jupiter. The payload of selected science instruments includes cameras and spectrometers to produce high-resolution images of Europa’s surface and determine its composition. An ice penetrating radar will determine the thickness of the moon’s icy shell and search for subsurface lakes similar to those beneath Antarctica. The mission also will carry a magnetometer to measure strength and direction of the moon’s magnetic field, which will allow scientists to determine the depth and salinity of its ocean.

The Case for Space

A vibrant Space Program will inspire millions of children

2019-06-04: Robert Zubrin on the Case for Space

The author surveys the resources available on the Moon, Mars, near-Earth and main belt asteroids, and, looking farther into the future, the outer solar system where, once humans have mastered controlled nuclear fusion, sufficient Helium-3 is available for the taking to power a solar system wide human civilization of trillions of people for billions of years and, eventually, the interstellar ships they will use to expand out into the galaxy. Detailed plans are presented for near-term human missions to the Moon and Mars, both achievable within the decade of the 2020s, which will begin the process of surveying the resources available there and building the infrastructure for permanent settlement. These mission plans, unlike those of NASA, do not rely on paper rockets which have yet to fly, costly expendable boosters, or detours to “gateways” and other diversions which seem a prime example of (to paraphrase the author in chapter 14), “doing things in order to spend money as opposed to spending money in order to do things.”

2019-09-09: Why we should go to space.

When I share enthusiasm for some new space exploration or colonization initiative, I occasionally hear the retort that we should focus on saving Earth first, often with climate change in mind as the imminent existential threat. A recent articulate example from Facebook: “It seems to me that we are in such a significant emergency (really interrelated emergencies) that we need to focus all of our ingenuity and resources on transforming our energy systems, infrastructure, agriculture, transportation, political systems, etc. right here on this planet. I am afraid that we will end up exporting our exploitative culture to space and not make the changes here that we need to restore the life support systems of our planet.” And my reply: When I have heard these concerns in the past, I have dashed off a retort about the false dichotomy, but the concerns persist, so let me try to be a bit more thoughtful, and please let me know if you find any of this to be persuasive: 1) Positive inspiration: living in space is the ultimate recycling and sustainability challenge. A fair number of people like to dream of something grand as they simultaneously solve the problems of today. You mention transforming energy, ag and transportation. Think of the advances that some of the “space people” have made in this area. Tesla came after SpaceX. Some of my most recent investments have been in fusion power and animal-free meat manufacturing. They are both HUGE priorities to save the Earth (we have to stem the growth of hundreds of new coal power plants in China and meat manufacturing globally, both major sources of GHG). But they are also essential for off-world colonies — energy and food production challenges are more acute when imagining a lunar or Mars base. For a breakthrough solution, you often have to imagine a challenge greater than the creeping incrementalism of “problem fixing.” 2) Direct synergy: where would the environmental movement and the climate change science be without space? From the whole-Earth image of our pale blue dot to the Earth observation satellites, one could argue that space initiatives have been the greatest advance for the environmental movement (Sierra Club). The founders of Open Lunar are the founders of Planet; like me, they still have their day jobs where they image the entire Earth every day from space. Other space entrepreneurs are putting up GPS-RO satellites to measure upper atmosphere weather (essential to climate models and weather prediction) and this data cannot be gathered from the ground. These satellite constellations are now cost-effective because of the lowering launch costs from SpaceX and some of their competitors. 3) Differential advantage: not everyone on the planet should be focused on the same thing. You provide a partial list of priorities, but should a domain expert on poverty or the diseases of the poor shift entirely to something on your list of emergencies? Do you want to argue that climate change trumps other priorities, and even if it does, do you have a rank list of what to prioritize within that domain? This climate-change prioritization list surprised me as to the space-synergies. 4) Experimentation zones: this is a new opportunity. If we want to perform experiments in geoengineering, Mars and Venus might be better places to start as we hone our skills and verify our simulations. And if we can make one habitable, and humanity becomes multi-planetary, it would be one of the greatest accomplishments for our civilization. These experimentation zones could include the “political systems” you mention and go beyond the “charter cites” that Paul Romer espouses to “charter civilizations” with experiments in better governance among the off-world colonies. In short, exploring the final frontier and saving the Earth are not mutually exclusive; rather, they are deeply synergistic, inspirational and focused on the ultimate sustainability challenge. And the entrepreneurial drive to forge a future that inspires future generations with the potential of progress is a worthy endeavor in its own right.

Mars wheel

Imagine you’re sending a rover to Mars. The rover’s tires need to be light, durable, and also flexible enough to tackle a variety of terrain. NASA has spent decades trying to craft the perfect rover wheels, but something always comes up short in the pick-2 situation…typically durability. Now researchers at the NASA Glenn Research Center have come up with a promising new rover wheel for the next generation of rovers.