Category Archives: Space Exploration

In a key advance for safely navigating future human exploration of the solar system, NASA said it is set to send its next-generation atomic clock to space in late 2017.

This clock will be smaller, lighter and magnitudes more precise than any atomic clock flown in space before, NASA said.

Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California have completed integration of the instrument, the Deep Space Atomic Clock, with the spacecraft that will take it into orbit later in 2017, the US space agency said in a statement on Tuesday.

Timekeeping plays a critical role in spacecraft navigation and will be especially important for future deep space missions.

Most spacecraft are tracked using "two-way" methods -- the ground-based antenna 'pings' the spacecraft and waits for the signal to return.

By measuring how long the signal takes to travel, the distance to the spacecraft can be calculated.

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A navigation team then processes this information to determine the spacecraft's flight path and also determine if any course corrections are required.

The next-generation atomic clock developed by NASA enables "one-way" tracking, where the spacecraft does not need to send the signal back to Earth.

The tracking measurements could be taken onboard and processed with a spacecraft-based navigation system to determine the path and whether any manoeuvre are needed to stay on course.

This will be a key advance for safely navigating future human exploration of the solar system by providing astronauts with their position and velocity when they need it, according to NASA.

It will lighten the load on the antennas in NASA's Deep Space Network, allowing more spacecraft to be tracked with a single antenna.

The Deep Space Atomic Clock would also improve the precision and quantity of the radio data used by scientists for determining a planet's gravity field and probing its atmosphere, NASA said.

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NASA Develops Next-Gen Atomic Clock For Space Exploration - News18

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NASA rovers sent to explore other worlds could have several tiny origami-inspired robots tagging along.

The Pop-Up Flat Folding Explorer Robot (PUFFER) is an origami-inspired robot capable of flattening itself out to squeeze into tight spots and climb a 45-degree slope. These robots can even survive long falls that would shut down other rovers.

NASA wants to send PUFFERS to support future missions to other planets, including the agencys planned 2020 mission to Mars.

They can do parallel science with a rover, so you can increase the amount youre doing in a day, Jaakko Karras, PUFFERs project manager at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said in a statement. We can see these being used in hard-to-reach locations squeezing under ledges, for example.

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Each PUFFER has a tiny tail for stability, a high-resolution microimager camera and solar panels on its belly. PUFFERs use their tail to flip to recharge their batteries. NASA wants to add scientific instruments to the tiny robots.

NASAs most recent Curiosity Mars rover weighed 2,000 pounds. NASA says PUFFERs will weigh about as much as a smartphone.

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Could These Tiny Origami Robots Be The Future Of Space Exploration? [VIDEO] - Daily Caller

NASA's Apollo missions brought U.S. astronauts to the moon, but back then there was concern about how both men and machines would interact with the lunar surface.

Southwest Research Institute scientist Alex Parker says they were worried about how much dust a rover would produce in low gravity.

"They were concerned that those wheels were going to kick up so much dust that they were going to poke the astronauts or blind them," says Parker.

So NASA built a vacuum chamber at the Johnson space center, filled it with moon-like dust, and ran a rover wheel over it while the chamber replicated lunar gravity in the belly of an aircraft.

They found out that the moon dust wasn't going to be a problem, and that data came in handy.

"But that chamber doesn't exist anymore. No one has one like this that any new companies or other researchers that are looking to build a device for interacting with the surface of an asteroid, they don't have access to anything like that to test their mechanism," says Parker.

Southwest Research Institute wants to build the vacuum--or airborne space environment--chamber in San Antonio. Its one of eight projects proposed by a new research consortium NASA will fund with as much as $5 million. The goal of the projects are to NASA smarter about how it picks targets for exploration and reduce risk to people or technology that they send.

The a consortium of seven institutions led by San Antonio-based Southwest Research Institute is for Project ESPRESSO (the Exploration Science Pathfinder Research for Enhancing Solar System Observations). ESPRESSO includes SwRI, the Lowell Observatory, the University of Maryland, NASA Johnson Space Center, The Planetary Science Institute, Johns Hopkins University, SETI Institue and several other collaborative institutions.

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Southwest Research Institute Partners To Make Future Space Exploration Safer And Smarter - Texas Public Radio

NASAs human exploration and operations mission directorate will launch a flight campaign that seeks to demonstrate guidance, navigation and controltechnologies designed to facilitateprecision landing forspace exploration missions.

NASA said Saturdayit willtest the Navigation Doppler Lidar and theLander Vision Systemthrough April as part of theCo-Operative Blending of Autonomous Landing Technologies project.

Both the NDL, which offers velocity and line-of-sight range measurements, andthe LVS, which provides terrain relative navigation capacity, will be integrated and flight tested on a Masten Space Systems-built rocket-powered vertical take-off and landing system called Xodiac.

COBALT launches will help demonstrate combined LVS and NDL measurement capacities as part of NASAsefforts to develop precise soft-landing technologies for future missions.

In this first flight campaign, we plan to successfully complete the integration, flight testing and performance analysis of the COBALT payload, saidJohn Carson III, project manager of COBALT.

NASA also seeks to demonstrate COBALT as anactive navigation system for Xodiac through afollow-up flight campaign in thesummer.

NASAs Langley Research Center developed the NDL as an updated prototype of the former Autonomous Precision Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology used on the Morpheus vessel.

The space agencysJet Propulsion Laboratory created the LVS as a camera-based navigation system designed to capture images of the terrain beneath a spacecraft and cross-examine recorded data with maps to pinpoint the vehicles location.

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NASA Project Seeks to Demo GN&C Tech for Space Exploration - ExecutiveGov

NASA has always been an institute of great scientific accomplishment and innovation, but this comes with a hefty price tag. As the agency moves forward in its three-stage plan to put humans on Mars, the public agencys budget is under heavy scrutiny. Increased pressure has been put on NASA to develop more cost-effective alternatives.

In its Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 budget estimates, NASA requested $19 billion USD from the U.S. government, projected to increase to $20.4 billion USD by 2021. With such a large budget, it seems natural to assume that the 2020 Mars rover will be superior to its predecessors in every way. In 2017, $377 million USD will go to the 2020 Mars rover exploration mission alone, according the FY 2017 budget estimates.

The 2020 rover will be heavily based upon the Curiosity rover, which launched in November 2011. While the Curiosity rover has been hailed as a huge success, NASA stated that a major reason for re-implementing much of the 2011 technology in the 2020 rover is to cut costs. Considering the net cost of the 2020 rover, the fact that NASA had to reuse technology, and that the agency is largely funded by taxpayers, it is obvious why people may look for more cost-efficient solutions to space research.

In recent years, NASA has started to put significant effort into deploying nanosatellites, such as cube satellites, in order to maximize research while cutting costs. Nanosatellites have a mass between one to ten kilograms and provide a smaller, less expensive alternative to conventional satellites. One such example is the CubeSat Launch Initiative. Cube satellites are a specific type of nanosatellite measured in standard 10x10x11cm units, called Us. Started in 2008, this initiative organizes partnerships between NASA and educational institutions all over the US to launch cube satellites into space. The consistent size of cube satellites makes it easy to standardize the launch process, allowing NASA to launch 49 CubeSats into space since the beginning of the 2008 initiative.

In Fall 2016, U3 electrical engineering student Paul Albert-LeBrun founded a space club called The McGill Space Systems Group. Albert-Lebrun said his interest in space exploration has been a part of his life since he was a child, citing his fathers job in the aerospace industry as the original source of inspiration.

We have pretty much visited everything [on Earth], Albert-Lebrun said. Space is something we dont know much of and there are so many things to explore about it.

This interest in the unknown drove Albert-Lebrun to seek out aerospace internships, resulting in work placements at several different companies, including aerospace giant Lockheed Martin.

The McGill Space Systems Group is part of the wave of university groups, such as those taking part in NASAs CubeSat program, working with nanosatellites. The group is currently designing and building a nanosatellite to identify gravitational waves and other space activity. Albert-Lebrun hopes that through this process he can make the concept of space exploration and technologies more accessible to students and overall more useful and interesting.

The idea of nanosatellites is very important [], Albert-Lebrun said. You can build in a week, they are more affordable, and are built on a smaller scale [.] This is the only way that the space industry can survive. There is still the financial limitation but we have to move towards a more agile system.

Under NASAs budget restrictions, nanosatellites are looking to be more and more promising. The next generation of space explorers can join in the effort now to provide a more sustainable future for the space industry.

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Nanosatellites: The future of space exploration? - McGill Tribune

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Bill Nye Urges Pres. Trump To Advance Space Science & Exploration CBS Miami MILKY WAY (CBSMiami) In an open letter to President Donald Trump, the science guy has urged him to make continuing advancements in space science and exploration that will define NASA's future for generations to come a priority. In a 6-minute video ...

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Bill Nye Urges Pres. Trump To Advance Space Science & Exploration - CBS Miami

The Trump administration is proposing $19.1 billion for NASA in its fiscal 2018 budget blueprint, a 0.8 percent decrease from 2017 funding levels, focusing on deep space exploration, both human and robotic, and increased public-private partnerships to lower costs and encourage private sector innovation.

But the budget blueprint terminates four Earth-science research missions, eliminates NASAs Office of Education, discards the agencys Asteroid Redirect Mission -- the centerpiece of the Obama administrations deep space exploration plan -- and makes no mention of human missions to Mars.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is responsible for increasing understanding of the universe and our place in it, advancing Americas world-leading aerospace technology, inspiring the nation, and opening the space frontier, the Office of Management and Budget said in the proposal.

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The 2018 budget blueprint for NASA increases cooperation with industry through the use of public-private partnerships, focuses the nations efforts on deep space exploration rather than Earth-centric research, and develops technologies that would help achieve U.S. space goals and benefit the economy.

Robert Lightfoot, NASAs acting administrator, said in a statement to agency employees that the FY2018 proposal is a positive budget overall for NASA.

I know parts of the budget will create concerns for some, he said. As with any budget, we have greater aspirations than we have means, but this blueprint provides us with considerable resources to carry out our mission, and I know we will make this nation proud.

John Logsdon, a noted historian and space policy analyst, agreed, saying in an email to CBS News that the presidents budget proposal supports the agencys big-ticket human and robotic exploration programs.

Whats most noteworthy to me is that NASA received only a minuscule budget reduction when the budgets of many other government agencies were cut by double digits, he said. This validates what many have anticipated -- that NASA and its human and robotic exploratory missions will fare well in a Trump administration.

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Marcia Smith, editor of SpacePolicyOnline.com, came to a similar conclusion, writing the blueprint is good news considering the draconian cuts proposed for many other agencies.

President Obamas Asteroid Redirect Mission would be cancelled and NASAs Office of Education would be eliminated under the proposal, but other NASA programs survived relatively unscathed, she wrote. The Earth science program is cut, but not as deeply as many feared.

Increased NASA cooperation with the private sector was the top item listed in the OMBs budget blueprint, calling expanded public-private partnerships the foundation of future U.S. civilian space efforts.

The budget creates new opportunities for collaboration with industry on space station operations, supports public-private partnerships for deep-space habitation and exploration systems, funds data buys from companies operating small satellite constellations, and supports work with industry to develop and commercialize new space technologies, the OMB said.

The proposal includes $3.7 billion to continue development of NASAs Orion crew capsule and the huge Space Launch System heavy-lift booster needed for deep space missions to the moon or beyond. But to accommodate increasing development costs, the Asteroid Redirect Mission, or ARM, will be cancelled.

Instead, NASA will investigate approaches for reducing the costs of exploration missions to enable a more expansive exploration program, the OMB said.

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NASAs long-range goal for human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit has been Mars, following the Obama administrations goal of sending astronauts to the red planet in the mid 2030s using Orion, a yet-to-be-developed habitation module and the SLS booster.

More powerful than the legendary Saturn 5 booster that propelled Apollo astronauts to the moon, the SLS is scheduled for its first test flight in late 2018. The first piloted mission is targeted for the 2021 timeframe, although NASA is looking into the possibility of putting astronauts aboard the initial flight.

Following those initial SLS-Orion shakedown missions, NASA had been working on plans to robotically retrieve a large boulder from a nearby asteroid in the early 2020s. The asteroid fragment would be hauled back to the vicinity of the moon for hands-on study and sample collection by astronauts aboard an SLS-launched Orion spacecraft in the mid 2020s.

The ARM missions were seen as a precursor to piloted missions to Mars in the 2030s. But the project never won wide support in the science community or among Republicans and President Trumps budget blueprint would end the debate once and for all.

The 2018 budget proposal includes $1.9 billion for robotic space exploration, including continued support for a probe that will repeatedly fly by Jupiters moon Europa, which may harbor a sub-surface ocean habitat, and a mission in 2020 to send another nuclear-powered rover to Mars. Work to develop a multi-billion-dollar mission to land on Europa would be terminated.

The budget also would provide $1.8 billion for NASAs Earth science directorate, cutting $102 million by eliminating four Earth science missions and reducing funding for Earth science research grants.

And the proposal would eliminate NASAs Office of Education, saving another $110 million.

The result will be a more focused education effort through NASAs Science Mission Directorate, the OMB said. The Office of Education has experienced significant challenges in implementing a NASA-wide education strategy and is performing functions that are duplicative of other parts of the agency.

Logsdon said it was not surprising that ARM was cancelled because the mission has never been a favorite of Republicans in Congress.

Also not surprising, but unfortunate, are the cancelled Earth science missions, he said. Basically, NASA has been given a go to continue on its current path, with changes at the margins. Most of those changes will meet with Congressional resistance, so the final outcome with respect to Earth science and the NASA Office of Education is still TBD. I doubt if ARM will survive.

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Trump's NASA budget supports deep space exploration - CBS News

The image flashed on the screen, a huge shadowed crater on the surface of the moon, and Charlie Duke put a hand to his jaw. He'd walked there. The next one showed a family photo lying in the moon dust, and he smiled. It was of his family.

Duke, a retired brigadier general and astronaut, became the 10th person to set foot on the moon as the lunar module pilot of Apollo 16 in 1972. He was one of three NASA veterans who talked about resilience, or overcoming adversity, at a Principled Leadership Symposium at The Citadel last week.

In a fuzzy screen grab eerily reminiscent of space transmissions, Citadel grad Col. Randy Bresnik joined them via a remote feed from Russia, where Bresnik is training to take over command of the International Space Station during a six-month deployment that lifts off in May.

Duke is genial but tough as nails, and his view is honed by his experience.

"Stay focused on your goal," he said in an interview before the symposium. His current goal is shared by the other panelists: put an astronaut on Mars. The deployment could take six months to a year or more, with the round trip covering tens of millions of miles.

If a crew stays focused, exercises mind and body diligently, "the human body seems to do OK in space and you'll be OK when you get back," Duke said. Simply the adrenaline of watching the red planet approach from the spacecraft windows ought to provide the motivation.

"I think that motivation is really important. You're really going to have to want to do that," Duke said.

The other NASA veterans taking part were planetary geologist Noah Petro and retired mission director Steve Odendahl.Among other subjects, they discussed the future of space exploration, agreeing that the emerging public-commercial partnerships might be the best way to achieve it.

"They can talk about space, what it means to us as a country, as a nation and as a culture, really," said Cadet Angelica McNerny, who recently reported on Bresnik's training and who is working to be commissioned into the space program.

Reach Bo Petersen Reporter at Facebook, @bopete on Twitter or 1-843-937-5744.

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NASA astronauts talk space exploration at The Citadel - Charleston Post Courier

NASA will set aside about $5 million per year to fund the teams' research for the next 5 years

IANS | New York March 19, 2017 Last Updated at 23:25 IST

According to a report in Engadget on Sunday, the first group from the University of Colorado will study robotics, cosmology, astrophysics and heliophysics to advance manned space exploration.

While the second group has been assigned on a project called "Toolbox for Research and Exploration", responsible for developing tools and methods for the manned exploration of celestial bodies.

"The third group from Georgia Institute of Technology will explore how radiation affects human-made composite materials. They'll also look into how real-time detectors can help minimise astronauts' exposure to harmful radiation," the report added.

With the better knowledge of hazardous events in space, disasters can be predicted and managed.

According to a report in Engadget on Sunday, the first group from the University of Colorado will study robotics, cosmology, astrophysics and heliophysics to advance manned space exploration.

While the second group has been assigned on a project called "Toolbox for Research and Exploration", responsible for developing tools and methods for the manned exploration of celestial bodies.

"The third group from Georgia Institute of Technology will explore how radiation affects human-made composite materials. They'll also look into how real-time detectors can help minimise astronauts' exposure to harmful radiation," the report added.

With the better knowledge of hazardous events in space, disasters can be predicted and managed.

IANS

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NASA picks 4 teams to study solar system, manned space exploration - Business Standard

Might humans take a cue from bears and other hibernating animals and go to sleep for months or years at a time? While the technology is still in its infancy, a paper from the aerospace engineering company SpaceWorks Enterprises suggests that it could be possible in the next 10 to 20 years.

If a hibernation system can be made to work, it could potentially cut down on some of the risks of long-term space travel. We know from long-term missions on the International Space Station that bones and muscles weaken over time, although exercise has been shown to be a partial countermeasure. But there are other issues to consider, such as bringing along enough food, or keeping astronauts mentally engaged in a small space for months at a time.

If possible, hibernation would reduce these needs and keep astronauts healthy ahead of arriving to a destination like Mars, which would require a one-way journey of at least six months. Some science fiction stories suggest that hibernation could be used to prolong life on even longer voyages, such as the fictional voyage shown in the movie Passengers last year.

"Our concept is really inspired from a variety of sources, ranging from common depictions of long-term space travel in science fiction, to rare stories of human survival under extreme conditions (cold weather exposure, underwater submersion, airplane stowaways, etc.), and animal hibernation," said John Bradford, president and chief operating officer of SpaceWorks Enterprises and a co-author of the paper, in an e-mail to Seeker.

"In looking further into the question of hibernation, we identified a current medical practice of therapeutic hypothermia (or targeted temperature management, TTM) as a possible approach to sustaining long-term metabolic suppression and human stasis," he continued. "While we can't make humans actually hibernate, we believe we can mimic hibernation which is all we need."

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SpaceWorks has secured early-stage funding for hibernation under the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, which aims to nurture "visionary ideas that could transform future NASA missions with the creation of breakthroughs." NIAC offers funding for ideas that are beyond the reach of today's space technology but could be realized in a few decades.

SpaceWorks is creating the "technology roadmap" to figure out how to make hibernation possible, Bradford said. The first steps will be finding more funding for medical testing to do at home, potentially from foundations, private investors or government investors, such as NASA, the US Department of Defense, or the National Institutes of Health.

"Our technology is leveraging current medical treatments using mild hypothermia therapy and we plan to advance this capability to support prolonged metabolic suppression," Bradford said. "With only minor reductions in core body temperature, we can achieve significant reductions in metabolic rate."

"This approach opens up a variety of new options that can be introduced and applied that address major human spaceflight medical challenges and risk areas such as bone loss, muscle atrophy, increased intracranial pressure, and radiation damage," he added. "These new options range from enabling the habitat to carry additional radiation shielding due to other mass reductions, permitting the use of neuromuscular electrical stimulation to reduce muscle atrophy, and new approaches and configurations for inducing artificial gravity."

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The drawback is that we don't really understand how the human body responds to hibernation in space let alone to other known problems such as radiation. SpaceWorks is considering a range of other issues, including the increased risk of infection at catheter sites and the impact of long-term sedative use to suppress shivering as the body is being cooled.

SpaceWorks suggests that with the proper technology development and focus, the first human missions to Mars could employ some form of hibernation as soon as the early or mid-2030s. The company is considering a scenario where the passengers rotate between a few days of activity and a few weeks of hibernation during their 200-day voyage to Mars, with automated systems helping to monitor the spacecraft while the astronauts are out of commission.

The astronauts would work as usual on the Red Planet's surface, assuming a 500-day stay. Then they would again rotate between hibernation and activity during the 200-day voyage home.

"We believe human stasis represents one of the most promising approaches to solving the engineering and medical challenges of long-duration spaceflight," Bradford remarked. "System-level engineering analysis has indicated significant mass savings for both the space habitat and propulsive transfer stages. These savings are due to reductions in the pressurized volume, consumables, power, structures, and ancillary systems for the space habitat. The reduced mass then requires significantly less propellant to send the spacecraft to Mars (and back)."

The paper was presented at the 67 th International Astronautical Congress in Mexico last year.

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Hibernation for Deep-Space Exploration Could Happen Sooner Than You Imagined - Seeker