Category Archives: Space Exploration

The assembled Mars Hope probe sits in a clean room. (Credit: MBRSC/Ken Hutchison)

This month, researchers from Boulder and beyond will watch live as a slice of space exploration history launches from a pad on the Japanese island of Tanegashima.

TheEmirates Mars Mission (EMM) is slated to blast off aboard an H-IIA rocket. As soon as the weather in Japan behaves, whichit hasnt done recently, the event will mark the first step in the mission's 7-month-long journey to the red planetthe first voyage to another planet undertaken by the Arab world. The mission is led by the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) in the United Arab Emirates.

How to watch the launch

The EMM launch has been delayed due to weather. Once a new launch time is confirmed, viewers can watch it live online.

Launch the Livestream

The EMM team is waiting for a clear weather window, said Omran Sharaf, project director for the mission, which we expect daily now.

The launch of the spacecraft, called the "Mars Hope probe," will also be a big moment for the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder. Since 2014, researchers at the institute have worked side-by-side with dozens of young scientists and engineers from the UAE to help them make this mission a reality.

Hope will capture the ebbs and flows of weather on Mars to a degree that wasnt possible before," said Daniel Baker, director of LASP. "Its a showcase for how space exploration has become an increasingly international endeavor."

Read the announcement from LASP

CU Boulder Chancellor Philip DiStefano applauded the efforts of the Colorado scientists and students who worked on the mission and their colleagues overseas.

This new Mars mission shows Colorados growing leadership in the aerospace industry, both here at home and around the world, DiStefano said. That our scientists and engineers can share their knowledge with the next generation of space pioneers across borders is inspiring.

For LASP, the Emirates Mars Mission is the latest step in more than 70 years spent exploring the solar system. For example, LASP is the lead research institute for the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission, which arrived at Mars in 2014. Among other pursuits, the mission investigates how gases escape from the Martian atmosphere into space, leaving the planet with unusually thin air.

Hope science will be complementary to the science data gathered by MAVEN and a number of other orbital missions that have taken atmospheric measurements on the planet. The probe will enter into a unique orbit around Mars, allowing it to observe weather patterns at every point around the red planet and from the top to the bottom of its atmospheresomething that no mission from any country has ever done to date.

If theres a dust storm on Mars, changes in temperature, how do those impact rates of atmospheric escape? said Sarah Al Amiri, EMMs science lead, in last weeks press conference.

Designing a spacecraft to do all of that was no easy feat, said Pete Withnell, program manager for EMM at LASP.

To finish the project in just six years, the UAE partnered with LASP to assemble and test the spacecraft in facilities on the CU Boulder campus. The UAEs goal for the project was to build it not buy it, according to Sharaf.

Teams worked on both sides of the globe, both separately, and in extended trips and stays. The hands-on experience of building hardware happened primarily in Boulder, but team members experienced cultural exchanges and outdoor adventures in both locations.

The effort was a lesson in how people from different cultures can work together to complete a space mission on time and under budget. Knowledge transfer on the mission came in the form of hands-on learning through an integrated team approach with shared responsibilities.

There are multiple stories of Emirates engineers who started on the program with perhaps little experience in aerospace and ended up defending complex spacecraft subsystems and designs in front of seasoned review panels, Withnell said.

Withnell added that the team is confident that EMM will get the job done, but that wont make the next few weeks any less nerve-wracking. About an hour after the Hope Probe leaves its launch pad, the spacecraft will separate from its rocket and extend its solar panels. From there, it will begin making moves that will take it to Marsnot an easy target to hit from Earth.

Its equivalent to an archer hitting a 2-mm target 1 kilometer away, Withnell said. This is not for the faint of heart.

More here:

Emirates Mars Mission to begin journey to the red planet - CU Boulder Today

The head of the White House noted that this year a new era in space exploration has begun for the US.

US President Donald Trump made a statement on the occasion of cosmonautics Day, which is celebrated in the US on July 20.

Today, our country is celebrating the important role that American space research plays in the history and character of our country, the President said. We honor our brave astronauts and space industry professionals both former and current-and commit to continue to play a leading role in space exploration and beyond.

This years celebration of cosmonautics day coincided with the beginning of a new era in human space exploration, continued Donald Trump. After a nine-year break, American astronauts again went to space from American soil on rockets created with a sense of pride by American workers. Also, the SpaceX Demonstration Mission 2 was the first manned launch by the National Aeronautics and space administration (NASA), when for the first time in history, a commercial company sent people into orbit.

These monumental feats of the past year are a huge step forward in terms of reaching new heights in our space exploration efforts. To build on this momentum and confirm Americas position as a world leader in innovation and the worlds greatest space power, my administration has directed NASA to go to the moon again this time to stay and create a base of operators for the subsequent delivery of people to Mars, the President added.

As Trump recalled, within the framework of the NASA program Artemis, The United States will send the next man and first woman to the surface of the moon by 2024. Soon the Perseverance Rover will depart from the cosmodrome Kennedy to the Jezero crater on Mars, paving the way for our brave American astronauts who will one day fly there. Together with the Mars helicopter Ingenuity, we will try to fly to another world for the first time, discovering the secrets of the red planet, so that one day our great American flag will be installed there as a beacon of freedom and American creative spirit throughout the galaxy.

On Cosmonautics Day, we pay tribute to the legacy of national leadership in space and those who came before us, remembering those who sacrificed so much for the success of our country, and we promise to honor their achievements by continuing the noble cause of space exploration in the XXI century, the President stressed.

Read more:

President Trump congratulated the Americans on the Day of Cosmonautics - FREE NEWS

The moon is barren, but its not dry. In 2018, NASA announced scientists had found evidence of surface ice in the shadows of craters in the polar regions.

Those dark, frozen places beckon future explorers. Ice can be melted into water; water can produce hydrogen and oxygen; hydrogen and oxygen can be made into fuel for spacecraft venturing to the moon, Mars, and beyond.

Im fond of saying that water is the oil of space, just like oil and petroleum products on Earth, says George Sowers, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, who has 30 years of experience in the field of space transportation. You have diesel, you have various grades of gasoline, you can use it for creating plastics and all this other kind of stuff. In space, water can be used for all different kinds of propulsion demands, from low thrust to high thrust. It makes great radiation shielding. Its essential for life. You name it. I think the economy in space is going to run off of water.

Sowers isnt alone. A growing chorus of researchers, engineers, and entrepreneurs say the surest path to the final frontier is paved with ice harvested from the moon. The consensus is that an ice house on the moon feeding a space-based fuel depot can be set up without exotic, sci-fi equipmentmuch of the technology can be adapted from terrestrial analogs or is already in industrial use.

To be sure, the moon isnt a hospitable place for mining. A lot of its ice is in dark, cold places. And the initial tasks of confirming the precise locations of the water and then launching the mining equipment up and out of Earths gravity well are daunting. But the payoff, in the form of a self-sustaining space economy, would be tremendous.

One reason that Sowers is optimistic about the prospects for lunar mining is that he has crunched the numbers. If you had a lunar propellant available, at the prices I think that it can be offered for, then the cost to go from Earth to the lunar surface would be reduced by a factor of three, he says. And thats just by refueling en route. The cost to go from Earth to the Lunar Gatewaya proposed small spacecraft that would orbit the moon and serve as living quarters and a transportation hubwould be reduced by a factor of two. Sowers saves the best for last. The cost to come back from the moon, he says, would be reduced by a factor of 70.

If a company were to set up a lunar mining operation, after 10 years of operation, Sowers estimates, it would see returns of between 10 percent and 30 percent, depending on whether government agencies kick in some of the funding.

Id love to see commercial [players] kind of take the lead, with support from NASA as a customer, says Sowers. But the very first thing that has to happen is that we have to prove that theres really ice there in the quantities that we think it is, that we need it to be. The most likely places to go ice prospecting are the permanently shadowed regions at the north and south poles that never receive direct sunlight.

Because the moon tilts very little on its spin axis (1.54 degrees, compared to the Earths 23.5 degrees), its polar regions are bathed in near-continuous sunlight, except for deep depressions, such as the bottoms of craters. Between two and three billion years ago, ice began accumulating in those cold dark pits. Some of it arrived from water-rich asteroids and comets crashing into the lunar surface. Another likely source was volcanic ventsduring the earliest years of the moons formationthat spewed gases, including water vapor. And some of it is created when hydrogen particles in the solar wind react with oxygen bound in lunar rocks, forming molecules of hydroxide and water.

Over the millennia, meteors and comets continued to bombard the moon, smashing the ice and churning up the soil, so that ice near the lunar surface now exists in the form of tiny grains mixed with regolith and sand.

At least, thats the theory. What little we know for certain about the location of lunar ice is based on just two surveys. In 2009, NASAs Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) launched an impactor that slammed into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus crater near the moons south pole, kicking up a plume of debris that contained some 26 gallons of frozen water. NASA says the missions data revealed that there is perhaps as much as hundreds of millions of tons of frozen water on the moon, enough to make it an effective oasis for future explorers. Then, in 2018, a team of researchers examined data gathered by a NASA instrument that flew aboard Indias Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft and found evidencebased, in part, on the distinct reflective properties of water and iceof frozen patches of water scattered across the surface of both polar regions.

Ice hunters will need follow-up missions to confirm how much water ice is on the moon and where its located. Unfortunately, satellite data wont do the trick, says Kevin Cannon, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Central Florida who has written a paper for non-academics titled Ice Prospecting: Your Guide to Getting Rich on the Moon. Instruments aboard a satellite that rely on ultraviolet, visible, or near-infrared light to identify ice deposits can sense to only microns or millimeters. You really dont know if its just a very thin frost or if it extends deeper, says Cannon. On the other hand, he adds, orbiting instruments that could potentially detect ice deposits beneath the lunar surfacesuch as radar and neutron spectroscopyhave much lower spatial resolutions, so you cant really constrain where exactly on the surface the ice is.

If scientists and entrepreneurs want to get serious about water prospecting, theyre going to need boots on the groundor, more precisely, wheels on the ground. After the LCROSS data revealed the presence of ice in 2009, NASA began planning a mission to send a rover therewith mining instruments. By 2014, the Resource Prospector mission had a budget for instruments and launch, and NASA invited Japan and Canada to contribute the landing vehicle and the rover. Over the next few years, support for the Resource Prospector waned as the agency focused on Mars, and Japan and Canada withdrew. With the Trump administrations push to return to the moon, in 2019 Resource Prospector became a new mission, VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover). NASA is building the rover and instruments; transportation and landing craft are to be supplied by one of the companies selected for the new Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, begun in 2018 to encourage private investment in moon exploration. VIPER is scheduled to land at the lunar south pole in late 2023. The golf-cart-size rover will survey and map ice deposits in the area, hopefully providing researchers with a larger pattern of ice distribution.

One of VIPERs instruments, originally developed for the Resource Prospector, is a one-meter drill called TRIDENT (The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain). Building a drill capable of penetrating beneath the moons surface while operating in subzero temperatures has not been an easy task. Lunar regolith is dense and unforgiving. Over the few billion years it became extremely compacted through meteorite impacts, which create shock waves, explains Kris Zacny, the vice president of exploration technologies and principal investigator of VIPERs drill at Honeybee Robotics. And, if you add ice, it can be harder than concrete.

The biggest problem Apollo encountered during drilling was not actually drilling but pulling the drill out of the hole, Zacny says. Regolith is so compacted that it jammed the auger flutes. In fact, during the Apollo 15 mission, Commander David Scott sprained his shoulder while prying out the Apollo Lunar Surface Drill to obtain a core sample.

Machinistswhen drilling a hole in metalhave the same problem; thats why they developed so-called pecking, says Zacny. Peck drilling involves plunging the drill bit into metal some short distance and then retracting it to the surface to remove chips.

TRIDENT will do the same, drilling down 10 centimeters then retracting to bring back bites of regolith to the surface for study before drilling into the next 10 centimeters. Engineers say this approach has multiple advantages. For starters, since each sample comes from a known depth interval, the subsurface stratigraphy can be more easily preserved and studied. Also, the drill has time to cool off between bites, helping to ensure that the drill doesnt get so hot that it melts ice samples before they can be extracted.

On VIPER, the entire sampling system has been significantly simplified. We are no longer delivering samples to instruments (as is done on Curiosity, for example), but instead we are placing regolith on the surface, says Zacny. The drill has a spout through which the regolith gravity-flows onto the surface forming a cone. The side of the cone is viewed by the MSolo Mass Spectrometer and NIRVSS Infrared Spectrometer. These two instruments provide volatile and mineralogical data.

Since VIPER will spend a lot of time in permanently shadowed regions, it wont be able to rely on solar energy and will have enough power for only 100 days. Future options for prospecting missions might instead use the same technology that generates electricity for NASA deep-space probes that are too far from the sun to generate solar powerfor instance, a rover fitted with a rechargeable battery and a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, which provides electrical power by using heat from the natural radioactive decay of plutonium-238.

Cannon, though, doesnt think that drilling alone will provide the necessary information. Instead, he advocates digging a trench. The trouble with a drill is that, if you drill a hole, how representative are those results in three dimensions? he says. With a trench, youre getting that three-dimensional information that I think is really whats missing so far from our knowledge of the ice.

And, yes, NASA has been developing a rover capable of that kind of work. The Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot (RASSOR) is being designed to dig and haul soil. While most rovers are mobile science labs carrying sensitive instruments, NASA describes RASSOR as its blue-collar robot because it does the hard labor.

RASSOR will excavate regolith with two counter-rotating bucket drums fitted with toothy digging scoops, each capable of holding 60 kilograms of soil. The barrels help solve a conundrum for NASA engineers. When you push a shovel into dirt on Earth, you remain on the ground since your weight acts as a counterforce. But thats trickier to pull off when excavating in lower gravity, especially since NASA wants the robot to be small and light enough to fly on a rocket from Earth. The rotating bucket drums solve that problem in a couple of ways. First, instead of pushing into the ground, the robot excavates a shallow trench as it moves along the ground. Also, since the two bucket drums are simultaneously rotating in opposite directions, each cancels out the digging force of the other. The technical term for all of this is a near-zero horizontal and minimal vertical net reaction force, and the technique keeps the robot on the surface even in low gravity.

Each pass of the RASSOR would excavate the top five centimeters of surface regolith. And while it can help search for ice as deep as one meter by passing over the same trench repeatedly, mining operations wouldnt necessarily have to burrow very far down, at least at first.

Instead, Sowers says, it would be best to begin by harvesting the ice that is most accessibleon the lunar surface. That ice is the equivalent of gold nuggets in the streams of Colorado, Sowers says. The first people in the Gold Rush came out, and they could pick nuggets up out of the streams. After a while, theyd run out of nuggets and theyd look back upstream for where the nuggets came from, and then theyd start finding the veins. Likewise, the surface ice is the first thing you do because its cheap and you can get product out that you can sell without breaking the bank on capital investment. Then later, he says, as the mining operation expands, you can dig for deeper ice deposits.

The simplest methodwhat Sowers calls the brute force approachwould be to dig up the surface regolith and extract the water by heating it in an oven. None of thats exotic technology. You could do that in your backyard with a shovel and a wheelbarrow, he quips.

While that would be the simplest method, it would be costly since excavation equipment is on the bulky side. (While the RASSOR might be good for prospecting, it cant haul enough for full-scale mining.) If we can get the ice out without digging up the dirt, our numbers show we can save around 50 percent on the mass, says Sowers. Thats significant because mass is dollars, especially in space.

Instead of digging, Sowers has proposed a process called thermal mining and has a NASA grant to develop it. Why dig up the ice when sunlight is available? Its much more cost effective to use mirrors to redirect that sunlight onto the surface of the permanently shadowed regions. By placing a dome over the area that is being heated, you can trap the vapor then collect it for further processing. If we can make that work, then you actually have a significant amount of cost savings, and that definitely helps in making it affordable and closing the business case, says Sowers.

If a mining operation were to also use conductive rods placed in the lunar soil, the heat from the sun could melt ice as deep as 1.5 meters. Any effort to go down farther would require excavation equipment. But by that time, the miners would have built an outpost with all the necessary infrastructure, including landing and launch pads, a chemical-processing plant that turns the water into propellant, and a power source. Once youve depleted the surface ice, you come in with a few additional machines at pretty low marginal costs, and you are still leveraging that investment you made in all that other infrastructure, says Sowers.

Another possible approach to thermal mining is being developed by Joel Sercel, a 14-year veteran of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory and CEO of Trans Astronautica Corporation, which is dedicated to accelerating the process of human space exploration. Sercel and his partnersincluding Honeybee Robotics and Jeff Bezos Blue Originhave received phase two funding from NASAs Innovative Advanced Concepts program to develop plans for a lunar mining outpost that would include robotic rovers, called Beetles, which extract water through a patent-pending process called radiant gas dynamic (RGD) mining, which uses a combination of radio-frequency heaters, microwave, and infrared radiation to heat permafrost and other types of ice deposits.

According to Sercel, a fleet of Beetles would each traverse to a likely spot and lower a dome measuring five meters in diameter over an area of lunar regolith. Water ice would be extracted by means of radio-frequency heaterssimilar to those used on Earth to vaporize and remove chemicals from contaminated soil. Bombardment by microwaves would provide more focused heating while infrared radiation would heat the surface of the moon so that the water just doesnt re-condense there as the ice is melted, says Sercel.

The mining rovers would be part of a larger, self-sustaining Lunar Polar Mining Outpost in an ice-rich region of the lunar north pole that Sercel has dubbed New Mesopotamia, since he sees it as the moons equivalent of the Fertile Crescent on Earth. Power would be provided by towers a kilometer tall, called Sun Flowers, with their feet of solar arrays on the dark permafrost and their lightweight reflector heads in the sun. Since the nights there last only 100 hours per year, the towers would capture sunlight 97 percent of the year.

The Beetles would drop off the harvested water at the base, where some of it would be purified and set aside as drinking water for the astronauts managing the mining site, and some of it would be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen to provide both air and propellant. The robotic rovers would run on water fuel cells, so they would, in effect, be mining their own power sources. Fuel cells could also be used to power the base during the periodic blackouts throughout the year.

Both Sercel and Sowers see the development of fuel depots on the moon as an essential first step to Mars or beyond. In fact, wherever we go in the solar system, experts agree that we will first need to make space exploration sustainable. And that will begin with a deceptively simple-sounding task: Just add water.

Companies mining lunar ice confront a dilemma: An ideal place to extract ice is at the bottom of deep craters shrouded in perpetual darkness. But that darkness also deprives them of easy access to sunlight for solar power. Trans Astronautica CEO Joel Sercels solution is an array of towerseach a kilometer tallcalled Sun Flowers to power the outposts facilities. Their feetwhich are solar arrays that sit on the dark permafrostare bathed in sunlight reflected from lightweight disk-shaped heads high above in the sun. Robotic mining rovers, called Beetles, would run on water fuel cells.

Originally posted here:

Miners on the Moon | airspacemag.com - Air & Space Magazine

This article first appeared on Trend Investing on June 20, 2020; therefore all data is as of this date.

The space sector is undergoing rapid change and looks like undergoing a major growth trend during the 2020's decade. The invention of reusable rockets has allowed for much cheaper space travel today; thereby opening up several new possibilities. Today I look at three of them - Global satellite internet networks, space tourism, and the potential for rapid long haul earth travel ('rapid inter-continental flight'). I also look at the leading companies for each.

Forecasts for the global space industry

The space sector can benefit from being paid to launch the low earth satellites or they can benefit by owning them. Here I focus on the later.

I recently covered this area, so readers can view the linked article below. Essentially SpaceX's Starlink is leading the low earth global satellite rollout. The key to the Starlink service will be 'global reach' and 'low latency' supported by their planned 12-42,000 small low earth orbit satellites. Customers of Starlink will mostly come from low population density areas that have poor or no internet service, and Elon Musk expects this to be about 3-5% of the internet service provider market share. Elon recently quoted estimates of Starlink revenues of US$30b a year, based on gaining a 5% global market share as an internet service provider. Start up costs are estimated at ~US$10b or more.

There are some existing players (Iridium satellite constellation, Mu Space), and others with plans (SoftBank's (OTCPK:SFTBF) OneWeb, Amazon's (AMZN) Project Kuiper), and Eutelsat. For now it is looking like Space X (~54% owned by Elon Musk, ~7.5% owned by Alphabet (GOOG) (GOOGL) in 2015) will be the winner, with US services set to begin as soon as H2 2020.

Orbital space tourism

Space tourism began in the early 2000's but was very expensive and reported to cost US$2025 million per trip. This was 'orbital' space tourism and was performed only by the Russian Space Agency ('Roscosmos') brokered by Space Adventures (private). In recent years NASA has had a lower budget for space exploration, with the idea to make way for private companies. For example, Boeing (BA) has their CST-100 Starliner, which is a reusable crew capsule used to transport crew to the International Space Station (ISS). Others in the orbital space business include SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman (NOC), the Chinese and the Russians.

What's the difference between orbital and suborbital spaceflight?

Space.com quotes:

An orbital spacecraft must achieve what is known as orbital velocity, whereas a suborbital rocket flies at a speed below that. Orbital velocity is the speed that an object must maintain to remain in orbit around a planet.

Suborbital flight requires much lower speeds. A suborbital rocket doesn't have the power to achieve orbit. Instead it will fly up to a certain height that depends on its speed, and then come back down once its engines are shut off. To reach 125 miles above Earth, a suborbital vehicle needs to fly at 3,700 mph (6,000 km/h), much faster than a commercial airplane, which flies at around 575 mph (925 km/h). At the top of their flight arc, passengers in a suborbital vehicle will still achieve a few minutes of weightlessness. They are, in fact, falling back toward earth.

Note: The Virgin Galactic spaceship flies at 3,500mph.

Suborbital space tourism

The new era of space tourism is expected to start this year with reusable rockets and 'suborbital' spaceflights. Prices will be drastically reduced from the past 'orbital' flights, leading to a greater interest in space tourism. This is the area that I expect we will see the biggest growth.

Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. (SPCE) - Price = USD 15.00

Virgin Galactic (SPCE) is offering space tourism flights for US$250,000 for a 90 minute suborbital flight that goes about 50 miles (80kms) above earth. Richard Branson stated in a 2019 CNBC video interview that as more customers use the service and Virgin Galactic takes on more space ships the economies of scale are expected to decrease the price significantly. The company now has its permanent headquarters at Spaceport America in New Mexico, where they can launch their spacecraft.

Virgin Galactic had expected to begin tourism flights by June 2020, however this has now been delayed due to COVID-19. A recent report quotes: "Virgin Galactic doesnt have a timeline for when the first passenger flights will begin" and they "remain focused on flying Richard Branson to space as soon as we can."

As of May 2020 Virgin Galactic had received 400 refundable deposits for flights, but have reportedly had 2,500 people express interest. That equates to US$100m in potential revenue. Current cash burn is ~US$60m per quarter (based on Q1, 2020). Virgin Galactic expects to be profitable about 1 year into operations (late 2021/early 2022).

Their VSS Unity reusable spacecraft can land like a normal plane, making the loading and unloading of passengers an easy process.

Back in February 2020 it was reported that: "Company backed by Richard Branson says it has secured 20 of 29 necessary approvals from FAA."

Virgin Galactic has a market cap of US$3.2b. Analyst's consensus is an 'outperform' with a price target of US$23.00 representing 53% upside.

Virgin Galactic is the current leader in suborbital space tourism with their VSS Unity reusable spacecraft shown being carried ready for launch

Source

In 2019 CNBC reported:

Credit Suisse says to buy Virgin Galactic stock for its near-term monopoly on space tourism..... Our bullish view reflects the near-term monopoly SPCE offers in an industry (commercial space tourism) where public investment opportunities are scarce, Credit Suisse says.

Virgin launches their spacecraft using a mothership - The point of release is shown

Source: video

SpaceX Exploration Technologies Corp. (Private) "SpaceX"

Space X has become a leader in aerospace since they first developed reusable rockets which dramatically undercut the costs of their competitors such as NASA. In recent times SpaceX has focused on launching satellites for Starlink (discussed earlier), and in time will no doubt enter the space tourism and perhaps the rapid long haul earth travel sector (more on that in the next section below).

Wikipedia states:

SpaceX is an American aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs to enable the colonization of Mars. SpaceX has developed several launch vehicles, the Starlink satellite constellation, and the Dragon spacecraft.

SpaceX is ~54% owned by Elon Musk and ~7.5% owned by Alphabet (GOOG) (GOOGL) (a 2015 based %), and other private shareholders.

SpaceX website summarizes the business

Source

Blue Origin (private)

Blue Origin Federation, LLC is an American privately funded aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company headquartered in Kent, Washington.

Wikipedia states:

Blue Origin is developing a variety of technologies, with a focus on rocket-powered vertical takeoff and vertical landing (VTVL) vehicles for access to suborbital and orbital space. The company's name refers to the blue planet, Earth, as the point of origin

Blue Origin is currently still testing flights of its New Shepard suborbital spacecraft. In May it was reported that Blue "aims to take people to moon by 2024." The spacecraft moon lander is known as "Blue Moon".

Blue Origin is owned by Jeff Bezos.

Blue Origin plans to take tourists to the moon by 2024 in the 'Blue Moon'

Source

The above reusable rocket technologies also have the potential (if approved and/or modified) to cater for 'rapid long haul' earth travel. That is, offering rapid speed long distance 'point to point' earth travel. For example, the SpaceX Starship could fly from New York to Shanghai in 39 minutes, rather than the 15 hours it takes currently by conventional plane. Slightly slower for the Virgin Galactic spacecraft, but still under 2 hours. Boeing has recently invested US$20 million in Virgin Galactic to design a vessel that can travel at 5 times the speed of sound.

It should be pointed out that currently the Virgin Galactic spacecraft takes off and lands like a conventional plane making passenger loading and unloading easier, and could theoretically work with existing airports. The Space X and Blue Origin spacecrafts take off land like a rocket upright, so would have some issues using existing infrastructure at airports etc.

The market would start with VIP passengers & cargoes, and in time to the mass market as prices fall. Virgin Galactic co-founder and Chairman Chamath Palihapitiya stated the long haul market represents US$300b of ticketing revenue.

An Inverse.com report quotes:

Beyond exploring planets like Mars and beyond, Musk also explained it could be used for Earth-to-Earth trips. These manned Earth trips wouldn't be pretty. Where a space-bound mission would fit 100 people in comfortable cabins, these Earth missions would pack 1,000 people into a configuration Musk compared to Space Mountain. The time savings, however, could radically transform humanity's conception of time and travel: London to New York (5,555 kilometers): From seven hours, 55 minutes by plane, to just 29 minutes by Starship.

The Verge quotes:

Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson has talked about eventually developing point-to-point travel, which entails rocket-powered vehicles taking passengers from one point on the Earth to another. Point-to-point travel has been floated by other companies, too, notably SpaceX, but such technology is far from reality. And there are concerns about the feasibility of such forms of travel.

Rapid long haul earth travel is still at the concept stage; however it makes sense that if approved it can follow on from space tourism, assuming the economics can work for both the business and the customer. The winners would likely be the same as space tourism - Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and perhaps Boeing. Other starts ups would also have a chance at success.

The Procure Space ETF (UFO) - Price = USD 20.51

The Procure UFO fund description:

The Fund has adopted an 80% policy to invest in companies that receive at least 50% of their revenue or profits from one or more segments of the space industry. Although there is no legal definition of space, a commonly accepted definition is that the edge of space begins at the Krmn line which is 100 kilometers (62 miles) above the Earths surface. This is approximately the point where there is not enough air to provide lift to a winged vehicle.

The fund seeks to track the S-Network Space Index.

Bloomberg quotes the UFO fund as having a 0.57%pa dividend yield. The expense ratio is 0.75%pa.

Top holdings by percentage

Source

Sector and industry exposure of the Procure Space ETF

Source

The three huge growth areas of space in the 2020s should be low earth global satellite internet (led by SpaceX), space tourism (led by Virgin Galactic, SpaceX and Blue origin), and potentially rapid long haul (point to point) earth travel (same companies potentially as space tourism).

All three of the above relatively new industries have potential to create multi-billion dollar (UBS says $805b space industry by 2030, Morgan Stanley say $1T space industry over the next 20 years) revenue streams for the space industry, with quite high barriers to entry.

For most investors right now the only option is Virgin Galactic, as SpaceX and Blue Origin are private. There is also the Procure Space ETF (NASDAQ:UFO) as a reasonable diversified option on the space sector that can suit more conservative investors.

Risks are always high for new industries, and space travel is inherently risky as described in the risks section of the article.

I see the opportunity as one that investors should not miss out on, but would need to invest with a decade long time horizon and with funds they can afford to lose.

As usual all comments are welcome.

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A Look At The Space Sector - Low Earth Satellite Internet, Space Tourism And Rapid Long Haul Earth Travel - Seeking Alpha

(CNN) The first powered plane flight, performed by the Wright Brothers over the windswept beach of North Carolina's Kitty Hawk in 1903, covered 120 feet. That historic flight would fit entirely in the cargo hold of the Antonov AN-225 Mriya, the world's biggest fully operational plane.

Powered by six turbofan engines and with a wingspan almost the length of a football field, this gentle giant of the skies can carry bigger and heavier cargo than any other plane, and is unique in the world of aviation, as just one was ever built.

A favorite of plane spotters around the world, the AN-225 attracts a crowd whenever it visits an airport during one of its rare -- and often spectacular -- heavy lift jobs.

Onlookers video the AN-225 Mriya from the viewing deck at Perth International airport.

Paul Kane/Getty Images

"It looks magnificent during takeoff and landing and it seems to slowly sail into the air, due to its huge size," said Ilya Grinberg, a Soviet aviation expert and a professor of engineering at Buffalo State University. "It can be easily photographed with any type of camera and it looks very impressive from any angle. I think it is indeed an engineering marvel," he said.

Recently, the plane has been used in the Covid-19 relief effort to transport record loads of protective equipment. But its original mission was very different: born out of the Cold War, the AN-225 was designed to be part of the Soviet space program.

A flying dream

The AN-225 was conceived to carry Soviet space shuttles.

GENYA SAVILOV/AFP via Getty Images

A new era in space exploration began in April 1981, when the first Space Shuttle launched into orbit from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Its large cargo bay was a design feature pushed by the Pentagon, which used the Shuttle in a handful of classified missions to send military satellites into orbit. The USSR perceived this capability as a threat, and wanted a vehicle that could do the same.

The result was the Buran ("Blizzard" in Russian), a Soviet Shuttle that looked remarkably like its American counterpart, down to the black and white paint job.

But whether it was a straight up clone or simply informed by the laws of aerodynamics, the Buran -- along with its companion rocket, the Energiya -- came with a logistical problem: how to transport the spacecraft from manufacturing facilities around Moscow to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, 1,300 miles away in today's southern Kazakhstan, from which Soviet space missions departed.

The Soviet Union's Buran shuttle looked similar to its US counterpart.

TASS / AFP via Getty Images

Rather than building a new freeway across rivers and mountains, Soviet engineers asked the Antonov Design Bureau in Kiev to create a new transporter plane capable of airlifting the shuttle and its rocket. It would also be used to haul the Buran back to Baikonur whenever it would land at a backup site rather than the Cosmodrome upon returning from orbit.

Antonov based it around an existing model, the AN-124 Ruslan (meaning "Condor"), itself already a very large plane, bigger than the Boeing 747-400.

The overall size was increased significantly, with the goal of doubling the cargo capacity. Among the visible upgrades were an extra pair of engines, bringing the total to six, and a longer landing gear, which increased the wheel count to a whopping 32. A new twin tail with an oversize vertical stabilizer was also added to allow the plane to carry the Buran on its back.

The resulting behemoth, so large that it stuck out of its hangar during the inauguration ceremony, was christened the AN-225 Mriya.

"Mriya is the Ukrainian word for 'dream.' It was the first soviet plane to be christened with a Ukrainian name," said Grinberg.

The AN-225 carrying the Buran space shuttle was the star of the 1989 Paris air show.

aviation-images.com/UIG/Getty Images

The Antonov Design Bureau worked quickly to produce the finished plane in just three and a half years, but it still couldn't keep up with the development of the Buran, so an interim solution was chosen: adapting a fleet of old 3M-T bombers to carry the spacecraft unassembled.

When the AN-225 was finally ready, it was history it couldn't catch up with: both the Buran and the AN-225 first flew in late 1988, a year before the fall of the Berlin Wall, which foreshadowed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

As a result, the Buran program was canceled after just one official mission, and the AN-225 ended up carrying the shuttle piggyback style in only about a dozen test flights.

The duo stole the show when it made an appearance at the 1989 Paris Air Show, but its primary mission had vanished. An outlandish proposal to transform it into a flying hotel, with suites and swimming pools and space for 1,500 guests never turned into reality, and the AN-225 ended up in a hangar where it was stripped for parts and rusted away for seven years.

A new life

How many wheels? The AN-225's landing gear.

Paul Kane/Getty Images

In 2001, the AN-225 was dusted off, thoroughly upgraded with modern equipment and brought back into service.

In the same year it set 124 world records, according to Antonov, including those for carrying capacity, flight altitude with cargo, and lifting record cargo to an altitude.

"This happened on the day of the tragedy of September 11, 2001, and therefore all these records went unnoticed," said Grinberg. "That day, five battle tanks, each weighing 50 tons, served as the control cargo. And they drove into the cargo cabin themselves."

The plane was resurrected because Antonov Airlines, a division of the Antonov company that operates around a dozen heavy transporter planes, was receiving orders on cargo deliveries that were beyond the capabilities of the AN-124, known as the AN-225's "little brother."

"We quickly understood that there was a growing demand for oversize or extremely heavy pieces of cargo," said Vitaliy Shost, senior deputy director of Antonov Airlines. He says that the AN-225 is able to accommodate up to 950 cubic meters of cargo, compared to 750 for the AN-124 and 650 for a Boeing 747.

The AN-225 has set numerous world records.

Simon Cooper/PA Images/Getty Images

Such capacity would allow the AN-225 to carry up to 16 shipping containers or 80 family cars. The cargo hold also has a titanium floor for added strength and its own crane system to load cargo efficiently. The maximum payload is 250 tons -- reached in 2001 when transporting the five battle tanks. The record for the heaviest single piece ever airlifted was achieved by the An-225 in 2009, when a generator was transported from Germany to Armenia. It weighed 187 tons.

The plane set other records such as the longest cargo item in the history of transportation -- two wind turbines measuring 137 feet each, delivered from China to Denmark -- and clinched a Guinness World Records entry by holding an art exhibition of 500 paintings by 120 Ukrainian artists at an altitude of 33,000 feet.

The AN-225 has also transported water turbines, nuclear fuel, construction vehicles, light aircraft and maglev trains. Electric generators are its most common type of cargo.

Crew members in protective suits stand inside an Antonov An-225 Mriya cargo aeroplane during a delivery of protective masks from China.

RONNY HARTMANN/AFP via Getty Images

In April 2020, the AN-225 set yet another record by transporting 100 tons of Covid-19 protective equipment, medicines and tests from Tianjin, China, to Warsaw, Poland (with a refueling stop in Kazakhstan). The landing in Poland was livestreamed to an audience of 80,000, according to Antonov.

"We didn't expect the plane to be involved in this business, because PPE packed in boxes is not the standard type of cargo for the An-225, but due to lack of transport availability our customers requested it," said Shost. "Over two and half months we performed 10 flights from China to different points around the world."

A second one

There's a second, unfinished Antonov An-255 languishing in a Kiev factory.

Vladmir Shtanko/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

The AN-225 flies sparingly. Its high operational cost -- it uses over 20 tons of fuel per hour according to Shost, equal to $6,700 at current prices -- limits it to the most demanding of jobs.

"Last year the plane performed about 20 flights. In 2020 we are already at 10 flights, and we expect 10 more through the end of the year," Shost added.

The fact that the AN-225 is one of a kind, however, adds to its mystique.

"This airplane is our pride and joy, a business card for the Antonov company and Ukraine itself," said Shost. "I first saw it when I was a schoolboy and I was so impressed with it, I couldn't believe it could actually fly. Now I make sure it does."

Antonov is constantly upgrading the AN-225 to keep up with international flight regulations and requirements, and the company says that the plane will be in service for at least another 25 years. That's good news for aviation enthusiasts and plane spotters, who show up in droves at its every appearance.

"This aircraft ranks 10/10 on a spotter's dream list, in my opinion," said Casey Groulx, a Canadian plane spotter who photographed the An-225 when it landed in Toronto in late May to deliver Covid-19 relief equipment.

"It was an absolute dream come true as I had always wanted to see this incredible aircraft. There were a lot of other spotters. It felt very special, to have that feeling of having seen the world's biggest plane."

Read more from the original source:

The AN-225: How the Cold War created the world's largest airplane - CNN

ABU DHABI, 21st July, 2020 (WAM) -- H.H. Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak, Chairwoman of the General Women's Union, GWU, President of the Supreme Council for Motherhood and Childhood, and Supreme Chairwoman of the Family Development Foundation, FDF, stated that the dream of the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan is being realised by the will and persistence of the Emirati people.

In her statement on the occasion of the launch of the Hope Probe on Monday, which was manufactured and is being operated by Emiratis, to discover Mars, she said, "Our ambitions have always been limitless, especially in space exploration, which reflects the directives of President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, and His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, to support the space sector and scientific research."

"This Emirati achievement is a message to the entire world stating that the UAE does not believe in the impossible. Despite the exceptional circumstances facing the world caused by the coronavirus, COVID-19, pandemic, the UAE is highlighting its persistence, guided by its leadership, to excel in the area of global competitiveness," she stated.

"We have been following, with much pride, the successful launch of the Hope Probe, which carries our unlimited ambitions. Since its establishment by the Founding Father, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the UAE has proven to the world that this dream could not have been achieved without its young citizens who have the capacities and skills to succeed in the space and technology sectors," she added.

The historic launch of the probe took place after years of hard work by Emirati specialists from the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre, MBRSC, she further added, noting that it is a turning point in the list of inspiring Emirati achievements.

WAM/Tariq alfaham

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Sheikh Zayed's dream is being realised by 'will and persistence' of Emirati people: Sheikha Fatima - Emirates News Agency

June 22, 2020

When youre an astronaut, whom do you represent? Do you represent the citizens of the country whose flag is emblazoned on your suit? Or do you represent a larger group of people, all those billions of humans whose lives light up the planet below you?

That was Juan Villoros first question for Cady Coleman, ASUs Global Explorer in Residence and a former NASA astronaut, in Wednesdays virtual Convergence Lab event. ASUs Convergence Lab, a series of events usually held in person in Mexico City, brings together communities across borders to learn from each other with the ultimate goal of building a better, shared North American future.

Villoro, a renowned Mexican journalist, novelist and playwright, spoke with Coleman about her experiences in space, and together the two discussed ways to make the future of space exploration a more inclusive one.

I have my U.S. patch on my sleeve, Coleman said, pointing to the American flag on her uniform. It's hard to say this without sounding like you don't appreciate your home, or the fact that we all come from somewhere. But looking back at the Earth, we're all from the same place were all from there.

Though Mexico doesnt have a national space program equivalent to NASA (the Mexican Space Agency is focused principally on research and education and doesnt send humans to space), the country has a long history of looking toward the stars, Villoro said from Mayan astronomers to present-day visionaries like Alfonso Cuarn, director of the film Gravity, which Coleman consulted on.

Cady Coleman, ASU's Global Explorer in Residence and former NASA astronaut, and Juan Villoro, award-winning writer and journalist, discuss international collaboration and our shared future in space in a virtual Convergence Lab event June 17.Screenshot courtesy of Mia Armstrong

When Cuarn won an Oscar for Gravity,many people thought, 'Well, how come a Mexican is so deeply interested in outer space and is so accurate in his redemption of what's going on out there?' Villoro said.

The answer, he said, is because this adventure has been important for the whole human race.

Villoro was 12 when Apollo 11 reached the moon, he remembered, and for my generation that changed the whole idea of the universe.

This shared idea of the universe is a constantly shifting one, Coleman said, especially as we push existing barriers and discover new limits to our knowledge of space, and also incorporate new perspectives into our exploration of it.

What I discovered when I got to go to space was I used to think that we're here on Earth, and then space is somewhere else, and some people go, she said. But actually, Earth and the place that we call home is just bigger than we thought, and just not enough people have been to these edges yet.

Through its School of Earth and Space Exploration and Interplanetary Initiative, ASU is trying to bring more people toward those edges. The ASU-led NASA Psyche Mission, set to launch in summer 2022, for example, offers free online classes that allow people from around the world to participate in the mission.

Villoro and Coleman discussed private-sector participation in space exploration: I would go with whatever vehicle is leaving I really love these additional collaborations, Coleman said; human rights in space: Its a totally new turf, Villoro said, which needs to be solved by the whole community of the Earth; and experiments on the International Space Station: Were learning things in space that really we cant learn down here, Coleman said.

One audience member, a psychology student from Mexico, asked Coleman for her advice to endure the social and physical isolation many of us have found ourselves in over the last several months. Colemans response? Focus on the mission.

READ MORE:Bringing astronaut skills down to Earth to handle isolation

Right now, there are many different important individual and societal missions, Coleman said. One is trying to keep ourselves, our families and our communities safe in the face of a global pandemic. Another is educating ourselves about our roles in systems that perpetuate racial inequality and injustice, and working to change that.

When asked by audience members whether they would jump on the opportunity to go to space again for an important mission, or accept a one-way ticket to Mars, Coleman and Villoro had different answers.

Yes and yes, Coleman said immediately.

I will write about going to Mars, and I will write about somebody who has a single ticket to Mars, but I will never go there, Villoro said, laughing.

The truth is, Villoro, the storyteller, and Coleman, the astronaut, both have equally important roles to fill. Art and storytelling, Coleman said, are crucial to building our future in space.

When people see themselves in a story, in problem solving, then they think, Oh, maybe this could be me, she said.

So whether youre writing a book or directing a commercial or illustrating a cartoon, Coleman urged, Please, please, please include other people that really don't look or feel like you, because they're part of the equation. And by them seeing themselves in your story, it makes all the difference.

In space, said Coleman, the thing that links everyone to each other, despite different government positions or priorities, is the passion for exploration. That passion is what spurred collaboration on the International Space Station, she remembered.

It's always the people between each other that build those bridges, Coleman said.

Those are bridges we can build from anywhere in the universe.

Watch the full event.

Written by Mia Armstrong.

Top image:Cady Coleman, ASU's Global Explorer in Residence and former NASA astronaut, shares a photo from the International Space Station and talks about the time she spent there during a binational Convergence Lab event June 17. Through two Space Shuttle missions and an almost six-month stint on the ISS, Coleman has logged a cumulative180 days in space. Images courtesy of Cady Coleman and Mia Armstrong.

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Making the future of space exploration a more inclusive one - Arizona State University

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., June 23, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Redwire, a new leader in mission critical space solutions and high reliability components for the next generation space economy, announced today that it has acquired Made In Space, Inc. ("MIS"), an innovative provider of industry-leading on-orbit space manufacturing technologies. The acquisition also includes Made In Space Europe, based in Luxembourg and a sister company to the U.S. organization, which provides space-capable robotic systems to the global space industry. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Founded in 2010, MIS was the first company to perform additive manufacturing in space and specializes in on-orbit manufacturing and assembly, zero gravity materials development, and human space exploration manufacturing solutions. Over the last 10 years, MIS has teamed with NASA on several space manufacturing projects including the Archinaut program, an in-space robotic manufacturing and assembly capability that builds large scale space assets on-orbit. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, MIS has additional offices in California, Alabama, and Ohio.

The acquisition demonstrates Redwire's continued investment in differentiated space technology that enables next generation space infrastructure and exploration solutions. MIS products and technologies will enhance Redwire's existing technology portfolio which includes space sensors and payloads, flight hardware, and exploration spacecraft.

AE Industrial Partners, LP ("AEI"), a private equity firm specializing in Aerospace, Defense & Government Services, Power Generation, and Specialty Industrial markets, launched Redwire in June 2020 through the combination of portfolio companies Adcole Space and Deep Space Systems. Both companies were acquired by AEI earlier this year.

"To truly realize the full potential for space exploration, innovation must change the economics," said Peter Cannito, CEO of Redwire. "Made In Space has been driving these innovations and is now positioned to revolutionize the industry."

"Joining Redwire is an exciting opportunity to be part of a new company taking an innovative approach to address the needs of today's space industry," said Andrew Rush, President and CEO of MIS. "Redwire provides us with the scale and space heritage we need to take our technology to the next level."

"We share Redwire's vision to push the boundaries of technological innovation in space to enable greater opportunities for positive economic impact on Earth and advance exploration," said Michael Snyder, MIS Chief Engineer. "With strong support from Redwire and AEI, we look forward to accelerating our efforts and delivering new capabilities to the market."

"Combining the game-changing innovations of Made In Space with the unmatched flight heritage of Adcole Space and Deep Space Systems creates a truly unique space platform," said Kirk Konert, Partner at AEI. "Additionally, gaining a European presence through Made In Space Europe will allow us to better serve the global space community. We look forward to working with Andrew, Mike and the MIS team."

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP served as the financial advisor and Kirkland & Ellis LLP served as the legal advisor to Redwire. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP was the legal advisor to MIS.

About Redwire

Redwire is a new leader in mission critical space solutions and high reliability components for the next generation space economy. With decades of flight heritage combined with the agile and innovative culture of a commercial space platform, Redwire is uniquely positioned to assist its customers in solving the complex challenges of future space missions. For more information, please visit http://www.redwire.space.

About Made In Space, Inc. ("MIS")

MIS is the industry leader for space manufacturing technologies, delivering next-generation capabilities on-orbit to support exploration objectives and national security priorities. As the first commercial company to additively manufacture in space, MIS is advancing the commercial space economy through its expansive technology portfolio. With a focus on industrializing the space environment, MIS specializes in on-orbit manufacturing, space-enabled materials development and exploration manufacturing technology. With offices in Florida, California, Alabama, and Ohio in the United States and Luxembourg, Europe, MIS is empowering a highly talented workforce to realize the Company vision of sustainably building off-Earth manufacturing capabilities to enable the future of space exploration. For more information, visitwww.madeinspace.us.

About AE Industrial Partners

AE Industrial Partners is a private equity firm specializing in Aerospace, Defense & Government Services, Power Generation, and Specialty Industrial markets. AE Industrial Partners invests in market-leading companies that can benefit from its deep industry knowledge, operating experience, and relationships throughout its target markets. Learn more at http://www.aeroequity.com.

CONTACT:

For Redwire/AE Industrial Partners:Lambert & Co.Jennifer Hurson(845) 507-0571[emailprotected]orKristin Celauro(732) 433-5200[emailprotected]

For Made in Space:Austin Jordan321-536-8632[emailprotected]

SOURCE Redwire

http://www.redwire.space

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Redwire Acquires Made In Space, the Leader in On-orbit Space Manufacturing Technologies - PRNewswire

Last year, NASA set itself an ambitious goal: Send astronauts to walk on the moon in 2024. Now, the agency is busy planning what astronauts will do during those excursions.

NASA hasn't landed humans on another world in nearly 50 years, not since 1972's Apollo 17 mission to the moon. But that's the agency's goal for its Artemis program. So, the agency is combining that Apollo experience with what it has learned during decades of living and working on the International Space Station, and sprinkling in some challenges it wants to tackle in preparation for the next major exploration milestone, a human mission to Mars.

Science isn't the limiting factor, of course: Scientists have been itching to get back to the moon's surface for ages. But discussions surrounding the Artemis program have tended to focus on the challenges that need to be tackled before the first crewed landing in 2024 or on the agency's long-term vision for the moon, rather than on the practical details of taking advantage of early moonwalk opportunities.

Related: NASA sees inspiration parallels between Apollo and Artemis moonshots

In a series of presentations made last month, NASA personnel described some of the details of the agency's vision for a new era of moonwalks. In particular, representatives offered a sense of how extravehicular activities, or EVAs, during the first landed mission, Artemis 3 in 2024, could unfold.

First, the basics: During the mission, two astronauts will spend up to about 6.5 days on the lunar surface, Lindsay Aitchison, a spacesuit engineer at NASA, said during the Lunar Surface Science Virtual Workshop held on May 28.

That's nearly twice the duration of the longest astronaut stays during the Apollo missions. During that stay, the astronauts will conduct about four extravehicular activities, each of which could last about six hours, Aitchison said, matching the duration of typical excursions outside the International Space Station.

On the first crewed landing mission, astronauts will have to use their own two feet to get around the lunar surface. NASA isn't expecting to have a large rover on the surface and ready to assist exploration until the second crewed landing at the earliest. "We will be limited to just the crew and how far they can walk on their own two feet," Aitchison said. "That's still a fairly wide distance, but it is somewhat limited until we get to the further phases of exploration."

Given that constraint, Aitchison said, NASA has calculated that during each EVA, the crew should be able to cover about 10 miles (16 kilometers) round-trip. (For comparison, during their single milestone lunar excursion on Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin covered about 3,300 feet, or 1 km, in 2.5 hours.)

The astronauts' explorations will also be limited in terms of where their suits can keep them safe. The Apollo missions all landed in the equatorial region of the moon, but the Artemis missions will go someplace entirely new, the south pole region, where extremely cold temperatures may pose problems for spacesuits.

That's a calculated decision on NASA's part. The south pole is tantalizing because scientists have confirmed that water ice lurks frozen below the moon's surface in deep southern craters that never see direct sunlight. Would-be explorers hope that such ice could be mined and processed into drinking water or rocket fuel, facilitating more ambitious missions.

But the same conditions that would foster such ice would make direct exploration by astronauts difficult. The spacesuits on the first landed mission won't be able to withstand such cold temperatures, Jake Bleacher, a geologist and chief exploration scientist at NASA, confirmed during the same meeting. Even on subsequent missions, astronauts may still need to stay in warmer, sunlit areas and leave direct work in the permanently shadowed regions to robotic assistants.

The first Artemis spacesuit will be a model called the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or xEMU, which is based on the EMU suits astronauts currently use during spacewalks on the International Space Station while incorporating some moon-specific lessons from the Apollo program.

"This is where we're going to test out technologies, utilize lessons learned from EMU and obviously Apollo, in order to get to 2024," Natalie Mary, an EVA systems engineer at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, said during a Committee on Space Research meeting held virtually on May 20 focusing on human missions to Mars. "We do have some things that we are holding off [on] for sustained lunar [exploration]."

In particular, throughout the xEMU design process, spacesuit engineers have focused on fit and mobility in order to facilitate exploration. Unlike Apollo and space station suits, the xEMU suits emphasize lower-body movement, meant to ensure that astronauts can walk around the surface with relative ease.

However, the xEMU will be an evolving technology, and NASA already plans to make certain changes to support longer lunar stays for later Artemis missions, including beefing up the suit's protection against vicious moon dust. Later suits could also be programmed to verify their condition, rather than requiring precious astronaut time for a detailed inspection to ensure safety.

One of the components of the xEMU suits that NASA is most carefully analyzing is the gloves, Tamra George, a tools specialist at Johnson Space Center, said during the Lunar Surface Science Virtual Workshop.

"One of the biggest things that limits our designs of EVA instruments and tools is the gloved hand," George said.

Suit gloves must navigate a tricky balance, George said, since they need to be flexible to facilitate astronaut activities but also tough enough to keep astronauts isolated from the harsh lunar environment. And between the bulk of the gloves themselves and the pressure of the suit, space handiwork can be both difficult and draining.

And, of course, the lack of transportation on the lunar surface affects the kinds of instruments astronauts can bring on the moonwalks just as it limits the ground they can cover. Because astronauts on the Artemis 3 mission will need to carry their toolkits themselves, heavy or bulky equipment won't be an option until later missions.

Those constraints, plus moonwalk experience during the Apollo era, have led to NASA settling on an initial set of eight basic science instruments for astronauts to bring on these excursions, Adam Naids, a hardware development engineer at Johnson Space Center, said at the same meeting. Those tools include geology staples like a hammer, rake, scoop and tongs.

Of course, the Artemis 3 mission is still more than four years away, so NASA is still early in the planning process of every aspect of its spacewalks.

"The idea here was just to get us started on developing some of the tools that had a high probability of flying based on what was done in Apollo," Naids said. "This isn't meant to be an all-inclusive list. There's going to be dozens and dozens of other tools and equipment that's going to be made, but it got us started."

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

More:

Don't expect NASA's 1st Artemis astronauts to drive on the moon in a fancy lunar car - Space.com

There are still many of you reading this who are old enough to remember 1968, perhaps one of the most important years in the nations history. Its striking resemblance to this year is hard to ignore the protests, the riots, the war and space exploration its all there.

Could it be that 2020 is an incarnation of that seminal year? There may be no way to know just yet because 2020 is only about halfway finished. A long view of 1968 can offer this lesson perspective can shape attitude because when viewed from a distance, the events of 1968 provided combustion for great change that helped the nation tremendously, and that perspective came from events on Earth and in space.

Nineteen sixty-eight was an election year, the same as this year. Sen. Robert Kennedy was on his way to winning the Democratic Presidential nomination. He was killed in June. Chicago was the site of the Democratic National Convention, scheduled for August of that same year. Police and war protesters fought each other outside the convention.

It was a violent time. Two months later came the decision to increase the number of troops in Vietnam, to more than half a million. Todays war in Afghanistan currently involves 14,000 troops, down more than 100,000 in 2012, but war was a feature of American life during both those years.

Then theres the chaos that comes with a pandemic. The coronavirus has killed more than 120,000 Americans. The H3N2 virus in 1968 killed 100,000 Americans.

The year came to a close while Apollo 8 astronauts were soaring through space to become the first men to orbit the moon. Anyone who was alive with access to a television set had the opportunity to witness spectacular images, impossible for human eyes to see prior to the mission. One of those images was the sight of the Earth, rising from the moons horizon. It was Christmas time and on Christmas Eve each of the astronauts read a passage from the book of Genesis, then-Commander Frank Borman ended the transmission with these words, And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a merry Christmas and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.

The world looks differently from space than from where the rest of us stand. Astronauts see a blue pearl, dotted with white clouds and continents, surrounded by water. Life at ground level is full of more grit. Whats the difference? Perspective.

The S&P 500 index first crossed the 100-point barrier in June 1968 despite all that was happening, and the same index has recovered from much of the decline that happened at the outbreak of coronavirus. When viewed as daily, weekly or even monthly trends, the recent stock market volatility can be jarring, even frightening. When viewed from a longer lens, it can be less so, because over time, markets tend to reward investors.

This not meant to be a primer on investing, but rather a note about perspective and context.

Trends typically do not move in a straight line, at least not in the realm of economics and maybe so too in greater society. There are fits and starts, ups and downs, ebb and flow, and sometimes severe gyration. The optimistic among us will say that Americans will find ways to overcome new diseases, improve race relations and build roads that lead to economic fairness. But even the most optimistic might say that there will be missteps and setbacks along the way. Theres no getting around that, but we humans can achieve great things with enough determination from everyone here, on the good Earth.

Harlan is a financial planner who lives in Little Italy.

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Byron Harlan: How 2020 is 1968 all over again protests, riots, war and space exploration - The San Diego Union-Tribune