The Innovate Our World education non-profit organization has created the Moon Mission Challenge
project, with sponsorship from Astrobotic Technology, Inc.  They have a crowdfunding effort underway for it at Students … To The Moon! – Indiegogo. The Challenge is described as follows:

Student teams will design a payload that could fly on an Astrobotic mission to the Moon’s surface. Astrobotic engineers have identified three possible mission scenarios:

• Apollo Rediscovery Mission
• Lunar Polar Mission
• Lava Tube Exploration Mission

Before working together to design a payload, students will learn about the Moon’s characteristics and environment by studying the lunar surface and using scientific information from NASA experts and other sources, understand how space technology has been used to study the Moon from orbit and land humans and spacecraft on its surface, and learn about the Moon from history, economics, politics, and social sciences, all using our Common Curriculum lesson plans and resources. Educators will receive free training to lead their teams.

Teams will proceed through mission planning and design in order to present their concept to project sponsors in a presentation at our June 2014 conference. Students will learn lunar science, spacecraft technology, mission planning, and payload design as an integrated team and work directly with experts from Astrobotic, Penn State Lunar Lions, and other aerospace organizations. Teams will be expected to use STEM disciplines, project management, systems engineering, communications, and marketing skills in an integrated manner to evaluate, prepare, and present their mission publicly to a panel of judges from NASA, industry, colleges, and other professionals. Winning teams will receive cash prizes and an opportunity to work with IOW experts if they decide to enter the Conrad Foundation Spirit of Innovation Awards competition (www.conradawards.org).

Continue for more info…

Reporter Andrea Peterson gives a fun account of her days covering the Minotaur  V launch of NASA’s LADEE probe to the Moon: Here’s exactly what it’s like to cover a rocket launch – Andrea Peterson/Washington Post.

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Space historian Roger Launius writes about the sad fate of Skylab, America’s first space station: Was NASA Serious about Trying to Rescue Skylab? – Roger Launius’s Blog.

Jim Oberg points to his earlier article on Skylab: Skylab’s Untimely Fate: James Oberg tells the sad story of how the United States abandoned the largest space station ever built and spent a quarter century trying to regain the capability – Air & Space, February/March 1992, pp. 73-79.

Kristian von Bengtson at Copenhagen Suborbitals is posting updates on the work with Cameron Smith and John Haslett, who are visiting from the US, on space suit development and the design of the interior of the CS capsule:

• Space Suit Session Day 1 – Wired Science
• Getting Suited Up – Space Suit Session Day 02 – Wired Science
• Last Minutes DIY Space Suit and Seat Preparations – Wired Science

Finally working real spacesuits at Copenhagen Suborbitals.
From left: John Haslett, Peter Madsen, Kristian von Bengtson
and Cameron Smith. Image: Jesper Jev Olsen

Memory technology is reaching mind-blowing densities. The company Crossbar is making non-volatile memory chips  (i.e. like flash memory, they don’t need power to retain data) that can

store one terabyte of data (1,000 gigabytes) on a single chip 200 square millimeters, about the size of a postage stamp. By comparison, the densest flash memory chips on the market today store 16 gigabytes on a single chip. The smallest such chip, introduced by Micron in May this year, is 144 square millimeters in area.

And the speed of access to the memory is also extremely fast:

Data can be accessed and written to crossbar memory fast enough to see it also possibly compete with DRAM, used as short-term memory, in computing devices. The technology is significantly more energy efficient than both flash and DRAM.

The technology will bring yet another huge jump in smartphone capabilities:

A new type of memory chip that a startup company has just begun to test could give future smartphones and other computing devices both a speed and storage boost. The technology, known as crossbar memory, can store data about 40 times as densely as the most compact memory available today. It is also faster and more energy efficient.

For details, see

• Denser, Faster Memory Challenges Both DRAM and Flash – MIT Technology Review
• Crossbar Emerges from Stealth-Mode; Unveils Crossbar RRAM Non-Volatile Memory Technology  – Crossbar