Category Archives: In Space Infrastructure

The latest episode of the TMRO.TV Space webcast series looks at 3D Printing in micro gravity with Made In Space – TMRO –

If humanity is to have a permanent presence in the cosmos, we will need to learn how to create parts and structures in space itself. MadeInSpace is working on 3D printers that work in micro gravity and this week we have Justin Kugler, Business Development for Advanced Projects join us to talk about their vision of the future. Interview starts at 26:05

B612 Foundation update on NEO projects + Video of Rusty Schweickart talk at NASA Ames

October 3, 2014 TopSpacer

Here’s the latest newsletter from the B612 Foundation, which is dedicated to protecting earth from a the disaster of a large asteroid or comet impact on earth : Sentinel and Beyond: The Sentinel Mission Newsletter! Vol. 15.

The Sentinel Mission is their plan to fund privately a spacecraft specialized for observing and counting all the near earth asteroids.

Below is a video of a recent talk by former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart on

the status of the global efforts to protect life on the planet from the devastation of large asteroid impacts and about our prospects of avoiding the same fate as the dinosaurs.

In Space Infrastructure, Living in Space, SpaceCasts

Video: Space to Ground – report on recent ISS activities

August 22, 2014 TopSpacer

The latest weekly report from NASA on activities aboard the International Space Station:

In Space Infrastructure, Living in Space, Space Systems

Driving a robot on the ground from the ISS

August 8, 2014 TopSpacer

Telerobotics, i.e. controlling a robot from a distance, could be useful in space for, say, asteroid sampling in which an astronaut in a nearby spacecraft controls a robot on the surface of the object. A mission to Mars might initially involve astronauts remaining in orbit while controlling robots on the surface. A demonstration of a telerobotic operation was carried out this week using the Int. Space Station:

Gerst drives car-sized rover from space

8 August 2014: Looking down from orbit, ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst steered ESA’s Eurobot rover through a series of intricate manoeuvres on the ground yesterday, demonstrating a new space network that could connect astronauts to vehicles on alien worlds.

During an intense 90-minute live link on 7 August, Alex used a dedicated controller laptop on the International Space Station to operate Eurobot, relying on video and data feedback to feed commands from 400 km up, orbiting at 28 000 km/h.

The link was provided by a new network that stores commands when signals are interrupted if direct line of sight with Earth or the surface unit is lost, forwarding them once contact is re-established.

In the future, controlling robots on Mars or the Moon will require a sort of ‘space Internet’ to send telecommands and receive data. Such networks must also accommodate signal delays across vast distances, considering that astronauts and rovers on Mars will have to be linked with mission controllers on Earth.

Yesterday’s demonstration was the second in a series of experiments under the Meteron project, following the 2012 test by NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, who used an initial version of the network by steering a model rover at ESA’s ESOC operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany.

“This was the first time Eurobot was controlled from space as part of an experiment to validate communication and operations technologies that will ultimately be used for future human exploration missions,” noted Kim Nergaard, head of Advanced Mission Concepts at ESOC.

Rover driving license

During the session, which started at 16:35 GMT (18:35 CEST), Alexander Gerst commanded Eurobot to move and take pictures based on telemetry and pictures streaming to the Station from the rover.

Eurobot was inching around a test facility at ESA’s ESTEC technology centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, while ‘ground control’ was at ESOC and the disruption-tolerant network was routed via Belgium’s Station User Support and Operations Centre in Brussels, and NASA.

Ready to Rove

Simulations to prepare for yesterday’s link included live connections between Darmstadt, Noordwijk and Brussels to the Space Station throughout July.

“Today’s result is even better than the simulations we conducted,” said Daniela Taubert, Meteron’s operations coordinator. “The whole experiment ran extremely smoothly. Alex was faster and more efficient that we had expected.”

William Carey, ESA’s Meteron project engineer, agreed: “It is great to have a hands-on test of part of ESA’s long-term strategy to send humans and robots to explore our Solar System.”

Future space exploration will most likely involve sending robotic explorers to check out alien surfaces before landing humans. To prepare for this, ESA is running the Meteron human–robot exploration programme: Multi-Purpose End-To-End Robotic Operations Network.

More images of the team and activities at ESOC via Flickr.

Future space, In Space Infrastructure, Living in Space

Sci-Tech: Suspended animation for medical apps and space travel

May 27, 2014 TopSpacer

We don’t yet have self-aware robots or low cost transportation to orbit but we do have iPhones and Google search. The latter two are just as sci-fi as the former two technologies for someone who grew up in the 1960s. The future really is hard to predict. Some tech that seemed almost in hand keeps getting pushed further into the future while occasionally something that seemed extremely far-fetched turns out to be well within reach.

For example, suspended animation, also referred to as induced hibernation or extended torpor (see post here), has been a common plot device in science fiction for ages. It played a prominent role, for example, in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey where several members of a crew going to Jupiter were put into hibernation to reduce the amount of food, oxygen, etc, needed for the trip. Until recently, I thought this was no closer to reality than Hal but it looks like it might nearly be in hand : Suspended Animation Human Trials About to Begin – IFLScience.

It shouldn’t in fact be too surprising. Maintaining patients in unconscious states for days is done routinely in hospitals. Coma patients can be kept alive for months, even years. Occasionally there are reports of someone awakening from a long term coma and continuing with a normal life. So the mechanics of maintaining the vital systems appears to be well understood.

The induced torpor research is aiming to go the next step and lower body temperature to slow metabolic processes even further than in a comatose state. As mentioned in the above article, doctors are using Therapeutic Hypothermia (TH) already to deal with some traumatic injuries.

In the video below (starting at 55:30) from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Symposium held back in February (see post here), John Bradford of SpaceWorks Engineering and his collaborator Douglas Talk discussed such issues in a presentation about their proposed Torpor Inducing Transfer Habitat For Human Stasis To Mars. Here are their slides (pdf) and see also this infographic (pdf).

As with Discovery-1 expedition, they are proposing to place a crew

in inactive, low-metabolic Torpor state for mission transfer phases by leveraging evolving medical advances in Therapeutic Hypothermia and Total Parenteral Nutrition.

The benefits of this include:

– Reduction in mission consumables due to inactive crew
– Reduced pressurized volume required for living quarters
– Eliminate many ancillary crew accommodations (food galley, eating supplies, cooking, exercise equipment, entertainment, etc.)
– Minimize psychological challenges for crew

Watch live streaming video from niac2014 at livestream.com

John Bradford is posting updates on progress with their study at the blog Space Torpor. In a recent post he showed images of a proposed Artificial-Gravity Inducing Torpor Habitat!