UTSA Invests in Space Research, Seeks SpaceX Partnership – Government Technology

(TNS) Aaron Morrison wants to know if moon settlers in the near future can use rocks that litter the lunar surface to build a base camp, roads, and landing and launch pads.

The postdoctoral fellow in earth and planetary sciences at the University of Texas at San Antonio is studying gray, volcanic basalt, which is similar to rocks found on the moon. Among other things, he wants to know how much heat it would take to melt them.

His aim is to learn "how we could use those as construction materials," said Morrison, 29, who tests basaltic rocks at the university's NASA MIRO Center for Advanced Measurements in Extreme Environments.

The space agency is looking to return astronauts to the moon in 2025 for the first time since the Apollo 17 mission half a century ago through its Artemis program and to eventually establish a lunar settlement. And it's drawing on an army of outside experts.

UTSA is one of the higher-education institutions that NASA and other federal agencies are turning to for assistance. Since 2015, the university has won 10 research grants worth a total of $3.89 million to help advance NASA programs.

Still, UTSA had no NASA funding a decade ago.

CAMEE has received two of the awards for work tied to the Artemis program.

"This is undeniably cool, what we're doing," said Morrison, whose research is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an arm of the Defense Department, not NASA. "This is our generation's Apollo. I am intimately involved in that process that has implications for humanity and moving forward as a species."

NASA is relying on the private sector more than ever for space exploration. For the next moonshot, NASA selected Elon Musk's SpaceX to build the first commercial lander.

The close public-private collaboration has convinced UTSA to begin reaching out to SpaceX in hopes that the new neighbor it's developing the Starship vehicle in South Texas will support academic research and open doors for students seeking internships and jobs.

Morrison said the fact that NASA, SpaceX and a host of other government and industry partners are heading back to the moon "is definitely a motivator" for CAMEE researchers.

The center pulls together dozens of academics from several departments to research a broad range of issues, including polar ice and ocean warming, hurricanes, forest fires and droughts. They also investigate how NASA space vehicles traveling at hypersonic speeds would fare when re-entering Earth's atmosphere.

"The knowledge that we gain from these extreme events is what we could use later on in space problems," said CAMEE director Kiran Bhaganagar, a professor of mechanical engineering at UTSA. "Everything in space is an uncertain, but we'll have this knowledge. Eventually, our goal, our vision, our dream is to expand to answer questions in space."

In recent months, CAMEE requested $2 million in NASA grants to continue research for the Artemis program named after the goddess of the hunt and twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology.

While awaiting NASA's funding decision, Bhaganagar has been trying to make connections with SpaceX, which is building the Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket at its Starbase space port in Boca Chica, near Brownsville.

So far, she's had no luck making contact with Musk's privately held company. But she's hopeful SpaceX will see the benefits of partnering with her team.

"The time has come," she said. "I'm very confident our research can help them. We have a common vision."

For years, NASA has recruited UTSA students in its search for technical talent. At least 30 UTSA students or alumni are currently interning or holding jobs at the agency.

As part of the CAMEE funding, NASA offers summer internships to researchers at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and the Langley Research Center in Virginia.

Academics hunger to see their research applied to solve problems on Earth and in space. That is why Bhaganagar said she's excited about SpaceX's ability to set aggressive, far-reaching goals namely, developing Starship, returning astronauts to the moon and eventually landing them on Mars and to move fast.

"The advantage of the fast-paced private industry is that they're putting the technology out there, so now the university is trying to figure out the science behind it," Bhaganagar said.

After the last Apollo moon landing, in 1972, NASA spent three decades building space shuttles and the International Space Station, while relying on robots to explore Mars and deep space.

But there's been a renewed push for human space exploration in recent years, thanks in part to Musk's efforts to spark interest in building a human settlement on Mars.

The Trump administration directed NASA to get to the moon by 2024, but Congress didn't come up with enough funding for the bullish goal.

President Joe Biden also wants to deliver astronauts to the moon and beyond.

Last week, he requested $26 billion for NASA's 2023 budget, including $7.5 billion for space exploration that would help the Artemis program reach the moon in 2025. NASA also wants to return astronauts to the lunar surface once a year throughout the following decade and send humans to Mars by 2040.

The White House budget request includes $1.5 billion for commercially owned and operated human landing systems that would lower astronauts onto the moon. After selecting SpaceX for the lunar mission in 2021, NASA announced last week that SpaceX and a yet-to-be-selected company would develop landers that could be used for subsequent missions.

"It's the largest request for science in NASA history," agency administrator Bill Nelson said during his recent State of NASA address. "But greater than any number or statistic or fact is what this budget request represents. It's a signal of support of our missions in a new era of exploration and discovery."

Of course, Congress will decide how much the space agency will receive for its big plans.

Back at CAMEE, San Antonio native Iyare Oseghae, 23, is researching hyperspectral imaging. Think about a drone flying over the moon's surface and sending images to computers showing how objects look in ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths.

"It's basically your eyes before you make a touchdown onto planetary bodies," he said.

Oseghae believes his research could help NASA and SpaceX on future missions to Mars.

He's interned for NASA twice. For one of his projects, at the Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, he studied the roughness of lava flows on Mars.

"That project had implications for someday having a Mars habitat," he said. "You use remote sensing to study the landscape and determine which areas would be possibly good for a landing spot and which areas are made of this type of rock that could be used to make housing and structures."

Bhaganagar, the CAMEE director, said she's "very optimistic" that NASA will approve the requested renewal grant to carry on with Artemis-related research.

If UTSA wins the renewal, some of the NASA funding also could go toward building a lunar test facility in San Antonio a site that mimics the moon's environment. CAMEE has completed enough related research over the last three years, Bhaganagar said, to pursue donors and additional federal funding needed to build the site.

"We hope that NASA and SpaceX could use the facility," she said.

The lunar facility is in the preplanning stage. Bhaganagar said CAMEE is talking with Port San Antonio about possibly housing it on the 1,900-acre campus on the Southwest Side.

A Port San Antonio spokesperson confirmed ongoing discussions with UTSA "to explore ways in which we could host such an endeavor."

Bhaganagar said San Antonio "is an exhilarating city" where CAMEE has garnered a lot of support from the public and private sectors. She hopes the rush of interest in space exploration leads to more funding and more options for student internships and jobs for graduates.

In addition to NASA funding, CAMEE has received grants from the Air Force and the National Science Foundation.

"It's a good time for us to leverage," she said. "We have a good edge of moving from extreme events to space."

2022 the San Antonio Express-News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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UTSA Invests in Space Research, Seeks SpaceX Partnership - Government Technology