Category Archives: Space Settlement

Presence of water ice on the Moon confirmed

Deposits of water in craters on the polar regions of the Moon has been indicated since the early 1990s when the Clementine probe saw radar reflections from the surface that were consistent with water ice. The Lunar Prospector mission not long after reported neutron scattering data that also indicated large amounts of water. Evidence continued to build with further studies form missions like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. However, there were lingering doubts over the extent of the water and whether the signals were actually due more to hydroxyl (HO−) than to pure water (H2O). The water molecules might also be scattered within the dust of the lunar regolith  rather than collected into solid ice.

This week a study of sensor data from the Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission was released and it appears to confirm once and for all that there are in fact extensive deposits of water ice in the permanently shadowed floors of craters at the poles of the Moon. This water offers a tremendous boon for human activities on the Moon since it means an essential resource to support life is there and doesn’t have to be brought from earth at great expense. In addition water can be relatively easily split into hydrogen and oxygen for use as rocket fuel and for energy storage.

Ice Confirmed at the Moon’s Poles

The image shows the distribution of surface ice at the Moon’s south pole (left) and north pole (right), detected by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument. Blue represents the ice locations, plotted over an image of the lunar surface, where the gray scale corresponds to surface temperature (darker representing colder areas and lighter shades indicating warmer zones). The ice is concentrated at the darkest and coldest locations, in the shadows of craters. This is the first time scientists have directly observed definitive evidence of water ice on the Moon’s surface. Credits: NASA. › Larger view

In the darkest and coldest parts of its polar regions, a team of scientists has directly observed definitive evidence of water ice on the Moon’s surface. These ice deposits are patchily distributed and could possibly be ancient. At the southern pole, most of the ice is concentrated at lunar craters, while the northern pole’s ice is more widely, but sparsely spread.

A team of scientists, led by Shuai Li of the University of Hawaii and Brown University and including Richard Elphic from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, used data from NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument to identify three specific signatures that definitively prove there is water ice at the surface of the Moon.

M3, aboard the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, launched in 2008 by the Indian Space Research Organization, was uniquely equipped to confirm the presence of solid ice on the Moon. It collected data that not only picked up the reflective properties we’d expect from ice, but was able to directly measure the distinctive way its molecules absorb infrared light, so it can differentiate between liquid water or vapor and solid ice.

Most of the newfound water ice lies in the shadows of craters near the poles, where the warmest temperatures never reach above minus 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Because of the very small tilt of the Moon’s rotation axis, sunlight never reaches these regions.

Previous observations indirectly found possible signs of surface ice at the lunar south pole, but these could have been explained by other phenomena, such as unusually reflective lunar soil.

With enough ice sitting at the surface — within the top few millimeters — water would possibly be accessible as a resource for future expeditions to explore and even stay on the Moon, and potentially easier to access than the water detected beneath the Moon’s surface.

Learning more about this ice, how it got there, and how it interacts with the larger lunar environment will be a key mission focus for NASA and commercial partners, as we endeavor to return to and explore our closest neighbor, the Moon.

The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on August 20, 2018.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, designed and built the moon mineralogy mapper instrument and was home to its project manager.

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2211 World – “The Best of Space Philosophy”

A new website seeks to inspire philosophical discussions on the expansion of humanity into space: 2211 World | The Best of Space Philosophy

Two of the co-founders – Frank White and Rick Tumlinson – talked about the new initiative on  The Space Show on Friday:

Here is the press release:

New Website Opens Discussion of Space Philosophy

(Denver, CO, February 15, 2018): Within 20 years or less, we expect that the first humans will be living in space, from the Moon to Mars and even beyond. 2211.world is the planet’s first open source platform dedicated to creating the philosophy for the opening of the space environment to humanity. Founded by well-known space leaders Dylan Taylor, Rick Tumlinson, and Frank White, 2211 is designed to encourage conversations about the “Why?” of the human expansion beyond the Earth.

“We’ve been exploring space for over 50 years and it’s time we had a discussion about why we are doing it and how we will shape it,” said Dylan Taylor, global executive, Co-Founder of the Space Angels investment group and of Space For Humanity. “Opening space is about more than science and engineering. It’s about people, life, and our human future.”

The name 2211.world raises the question of what life will look like 250 years after the famous flight of Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in 1961. The flight, part of a Cold War “space race” between two governments, culminated with humans walking on the Moon more than 50 years ago – and once the race was won, seems to many to have led nowhere. After the explosion of the shuttle Challenger in 1986, Tom Wolfe, author of The Right Stuff appeared on television and said, “We have never had a philosophy of space exploration.”

“We need a system of fundamental principles and ideas to guide us as we migrate into the solar system,” said Frank White, author of the seminal book, The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution, in which he made an early call for a philosophy of space exploration, citing the Wolfe comment. “In this new Space Age, we need to be very clear on ‘Why’ we are going, as that will determine how we go and what the end result will be. If we are to avoid mistakes that have been made on terrestrial frontiers, this is the moment in history to have that conversation.”

The Founders of 2211 believe that humanity needs to develop a set of core principles as we begin the human expansion outward. There are scores of questions to be answered about both why we are going and how we will act when we are out there. There are high-level guiding concepts such as: What is the relationship between science, exploration, and settlement? What are the roles of the world’s governments, militaries, and the laws of Earth? Each of these opens other discussions. For example, how do we treat alien life, how do we treat each other, who has what rights and what are they?

“The last wave of exploration of the new worlds of Earth was about government and commercial exploitation, and while these will be involved, we have the chance right now to change the context in which it occurs, and to define what we want the outcome to be.” said Tumlinson, founder of the Space Frontier Foundation, Deep Space Industries, and one of the leaders of the commercial space revolution. “We are engaged in an act of creation. We can make this next chapter of human life about anything we want. For example, imagine if our motivation was to spread life to the dead worlds of space. How would it feel to be part of a culture with that as its driving goal?”

While the Founders of 2211 believe government bodies are important in setting the rules and laws that manage our interactions, they feel that philosophical principles need to be in place that guide those governments, ideas that transcend governments and that have not been set for the space environment. At this moment in time, space has no borders, no governments, and only a minimal legal order. In the past, the voices of Voltaire, Jefferson, and the others whose ideas helped inform policies and the creation of new forms of government and the culture of today were easily available to thinkers and decision makers, but in today’s world such ideas are scattered across a thousand platforms and publications. 2211.world hopes to give them a home.

From Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos building their own spacecraft, to NASA, ESA, and the Chinese planning settlements and villages on the Moon, to private space station and asteroid mining companies planning their first missions and facilities, the human expansion into the solar system is already underway. The founders of 2211.World believe that this marks the beginning of a spacefaring civilization. The new website offers all of us a place to think and talk through how we are going to shape this historic moment. Like 2211.world , space is a blank slate where new ideas and concepts can be tested and tried and old ideas can evolve in novel ways.

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Mars: Building a Martian house + A play about a Martian beekeeper + Curiosity’s scenic overlook of Gale Crater

An overview of technologies and designs for Building on Mars: The Construction Industry Space Race:

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This March in Dublin, Niamh Shaw, “one of Ireland’s leading science communicators”, will present her theater work about a Mars base: Diary of a Martian Beekeeper – Niamh Shaw – Mar 2018

It’s now 2036.

Niamh is on Mars and a member of Crew 173, on a long duration mission to investigate new ways of growing food in this arid foreign land. As their 2 year mission comes to an end, one crucial experiment remains for Niamh. But will she overcome her personal struggles or put the whole crew and the mission in danger?

A highly visual exploration of future interplanetary human exploration, Shaw and her creative team create a new world order, reminding us of the power of the collective, the fragility of the solitary human and the united will behind all major breakthroughs. Because we may one day leave the cradle of Earth, but we will always be human.

The show about Niamh’s dream to go to Space has been inspired by Elon Musk’s grand design for a future interplanetary civilisation, testimonies of ESA employees, and Niamh’s personal space journey.

Created by Niamh Shaw & Sarah Baxter in collaboration with CIT Blackrock Castle Observatory, ESERO Ireland, European Space Agency & ESA Astronaut Centre. Funded by Science Foundation Ireland Discover Programme 2017.

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Check out this marvelous panorama taken by the Curiosity rover as it takes a break from the trek up Mount Sharp and looks back from “Vera Rubin Ridge” at the route it has taken since landing in Gale Crater in August of 2012:

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Videos: TMRO Orbit 10.39 – Colonizing our solar system in one lifetime

The latest TMRO.tv live webcast episode is now available in the archive: Colonizing our solar system in one lifetime – Orbit 10.39 – TMRO

We are joined by John Amabile author of, “Changing the Worlds” to talk about his plan to colonize the solar system in one lifetime. More than just colonization, also terraforming plants like Venus and Mars.

Launches and space news topics covered:

Atlas V Launches NROL-52
Huge Lunar Lavatube Found
Blue Origin Test Fires Largest Methane Rocket Engine
A New Round of Results From Cassini

TMRO is viewer supported:

TMRO:Space is a crowd funded show. If you like this episode consider contributing to help us to continue to improve. Head over to http://www.patreon.com/tmro for information plus our all new goals and reward levels.

A couple of recent TMRO short video reports:

** SpacePod: 2 EVA’s in 5 days

US Astronauts at the International Space Station recently conducted 2 spacewalks within 5 days to perform repairs on the stations robotic arm and do several other maintenance tasks.

** SpacePod: We Found Some of the Missing Universe

Computer modeling we do of our Universe suggested that half of the visible matter in the Universe was “missing”, we couldn’t account for the discrepancy between what’s observed in our Universe and what’s modeled in computers using the laws of physics our Universe is governed by. Does that mean that our physics is incorrect, or were we just looking in all the wrong places? Turns out, we were looking in the wrong places.

 

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Video: SpaceX plans to build a huge new rocket vehicle for low cost space travel

Elon Musk gave a talk today at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC 2017) in Adelaide, Australia in which he described the design of a new SpaceX rocket system, informally called the BFR (e.g. “Big Freaking Rocket”). The company will soon start building the BFR with the goal of uncrewed flights to Mars by 2022 and crewed flights in 2024. The system can also be used to launch satellites, take crews and cargo to the International Space Station, and carry out missions to the lunar surface. He even talked about using it for 30 minute passenger flights between any two points on earth.

Here is Elon’s talk, which he titled, “Making Life Multiplanetary“:

An artist’s view of a BFR spaceship module on the Moon:

Here is a video showing how the vehicle could be used for point-to-point commercial transport on earth.

“Fly to most places on Earth in under 30 mins and anywhere in under 60. Cost per seat should be about the same as full fare economy in an aircraft. Forgot to mention that.” – Elon Musk

A brief clip showing a Mars base enabled by the BFR growing into a city:

SpaceX has credibility for such aspirations because the company has proven it can do things that were not considered feasible by many in the space industry even just a few years ago. Here, for example, is a compilation of clips showing the 16 successful landings so far of the SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage boosters:

Update: Astronomer Scott Manley of the Kerbal Space Program rocket simulator gives his view of the BFR:

And here is the Everyday Astronaut‘s take on the plan:

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