Category Archives: Space Exploration

When Vicky Lea started as director of aerospace and aviation for the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation (EDC) more than a decade ago, she was tasked with growing the citysand, by extension, the statesaerospace economy. It seemed like an easy enough gig. After all, the state was already home to major space defense installations, massive corporations competing for NASA contracts, and universities with storied histories of extraterrestrial research. The Space Foundation in Colorado Springs had even been hosting the annual Space Symposium, one of the largest gatherings of industry professionals in the world, since 1984. But when she headed to that event to promote the state as a significant aerospace center, the most common reaction she got from attendees from outside of Colorado was puzzlement. The recognition just wasnt there, she says. Fast-forward to the most recent symposium, and things have changed dramatically. Lea says the new message from conferencegoers is this: We are considering relocating our business, and weve been told that Colorado is where we should be looking.

That shift isnt only due to Leas tireless recruitment efforts. The industry is undergoing rapid and profound change globally, and Colorado is reaping the benefits. Aerospace has very much moved out of the era of the military and NASA, says Jeffrey Forrest, chair of Metropolitan State University of Denvers aviation and aerospace science department. Instead, the industry is rocketing into whats been dubbed NewSpace, where travel beyond Earths atmosphere is driven by private companies rather than giant Apollo-style government initiatives. Hundreds of firms, large and small, are racing to carve out an economic niche, ranging from relatively mundane endeavors such as communications infrastructure to science-fiction-worthy orbiting film studios.

The pace is reminiscent of the 1800s gold rush, experts say, and much as it was during that frenzy, Colorado is in a special position to take advantage of the predicted boom times. The state has a unique aerospace ecosystem that dates back to the late 1940sa decade before NASA was foundedwhen University of Colorado Boulder physicists slapped scientific equipment atop captured German rockets from World War II to research Earths upper atmosphere. Shortly after that, the military began establishing a strong presence in the state in part because early Soviet missiles couldnt reach the continental interior, and aerospace companies set up shop here to take advantage of both the talent being produced by nearby universities and the militarys colossal defense budgets. You have to look in amazement at how many like-minded people gravitated together, says Dan Baker, the director of CU Boulders renowned Laboratory for Atmosphere and Space Physics (LASP). You got on a positive feedback loop, and things built to an extremely strong level.

Today, there are 300 aerospace companies in the state employing some 34,750 people, according to the Metro Denver EDC. And those numbers are only growing: Lockheed Martin Space, a Colorado-based division of the giant defense contractor, had more than a thousand open positions in the state in April. All of that together means Colorado is second only to California for the size of its commercial aerospace industry and first on a per capita basis.

Yet most Coloradans outside the industry have little idea of its scope or impact. Some call this the Space Paradox. Space is more important to our daily lives than ever, says Joe Rice, director of government affairs for Lockheed Martin Space, but we tend to realize it less. Space exploration has become so commonplace, he says, that its lost the grandeur of the Apollo era. But theres a new space race happening right now, and from Earth to orbit to the moon, Mars, and beyond, Colorado has a head start.

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There's a New Commercial Space Race Happening, and Colorado Wants to Win It - 5280 - 5280 | The Denver Magazine

Russian space chief Dmitry Rogozin recently said that Moscow and Beijing were very close to signing the agreement on creating the joint Lunar Station.

We are now almost ready to sign an intergovernmental agreement on creating a lunar research base with China, Rogozin said in an interview with the state-owned Rossiya 24 TV channel.

As EurAsian Times has reported earlier, China and Russia are leading the opposition to the US-led space block, called the Artemis Accords, consisting of 19 countries, which aims to send a manned mission to the Moon by 2025 and establish a governing framework for exploring and mining for natural resources, on Moon, Mars, and beyond.

The mission intends to build a research station on the Moons south pole with a supporting research station orbiting the Moon, called the Lunar Gateway.

As part of that program, an uncrewed mission to Moon, Artemis 1, is planned to be launched as early as July 2022.

China and Russia are promoting their own International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) as an alternative to the US-led Artemis program.

This joint Sino-Russian mission aims to build a Moon base and install a space station in the lunar orbit. The station is planned to be a state-of-art experimental research facility created on the surface or in the orbit of the Moon.

Last June, Roscosmos and China National Space Administration (CNSA) presented a roadmap for the ILRS during the Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX 2021).

According to the roadmap, divided into three phases, five facilities and nine modules are planned for the station to support long and short missions to the Moons surface and orbit. The construction of the station is expected to be completed by 2035.

These facilities include a CisLunar Transport Facility to support round-trip transfer between Earth and the Moon, lunar orbiting, soft landing, a take-off on the lunar surface, and re-entry to Earth.

On the surface, a long-term support facility will feature a command center, energy and supply modules, and thermal management. The lunar transport and operation facility will help modules move the surface and support excavation or sampling.

The other two are the lunar scientific facility for in-orbit and surface experiments and the ground support and application facility.

As for the modules, the designs reportedly include a hopping robot and smart mini-rovers that would move around the Moons surface.

The station is planned to be built in three phases, with the first phase involving six missions, including Chinas Change-4, 6, and 7 missions and Russias Luna 25, 26, and 27. The first phase involves gathering data and verifying high-precision soft-landings which is supposed to last till 2025.

The Change-4 (CE-4) mission delivered a landing platform and a rover named Yutu-2 to the Moons far side in January 2019, marking the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon by any country.

Yutu-2 landed in Von Krmn crater, in the Moons South Pole-Aitken basin, in January 2019. The CE-4s purpose is to explore the areas geology. The CE-6 and CE-7 are expected to be launched around 2025.

The CE-6 is supposed to bring back to Earth lunar samples with a mass of up to 2 kilograms, and CE-7 will be tasked with landing on the lunar South Pole and detecting local natural resources.

CE-7 is comprised of five separate spacecraft, namely an orbiter, lander, rover, hopping probe, and a polar relay satellite.

Meanwhile, Russia also plans to launch its Luna-25 mission in August 2022, thereby reactivating the Soviet-era series of robotic lunar missions that ended decades ago. The last in the series was Luna 24, which sent about 6 ounces (170 grams) of moon material back to Earth in 1976.

The Luna-25 moon probe will launch atop a Soyuz-2.1b rocket with a Fregat upper stage from the Vostochny spaceport in the far eastern region of Amur. The probes primary destination for landing is the Moons South Polar region, specifically, a spot north of the Boguslavsky Crater.

According to Russias rocket design bureau, NPO Lavochkin has constructed the Luna 25s lander. There are three main tasks for this mission: to develop soft-landing technology; study the internal structure and exploration of natural resources, including water, in the circumpolar region of the Moon; and investigate the effects of cosmic rays and electromagnetic radiation on the Moons surface.

In addition, Luna 25 is also supposed to use a suite of sensors onboard to study the lunar topside and dust particles in the Moons exosphere.

Luna 25 also had a camera called Pilot-D, a demonstrator terrain relative navigation system, developed by the European Space Agency (ESA). However, following Russias invasion of Ukraine, ESA announced its decision in April to discontinue cooperation on Russias Luna series of robotic moon missions. Now Pilot-D will not be a part of the Luna 25 mission.

While the Luna 26 and Luna 27, which were earlier scheduled to launch in 2024 and 2025, respectively, will also be postponed, announced chief of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, shortly after ESA discontinued its cooperation.

Following the completion of the first phase in 2025, which may get delayed considering the possible postponement of Luna 26 and Luna 27, phase two called the construction phase, will begin in 2026, and this is supposed to go on till 2035.

The construction phase will be divided into two sub-stages, the initial one from 2026 to 2030, which will involve technology verification, sample return, massive cargo delivery, and the start of joint operations. Two missions are planned during this period, the Chinese CE-8 and the Russian Luna-28.

Stage two of the second phase will take place from 2030 to 2035 and involve completing the in-orbit and lunar surface infrastructure for energy, communication, actual resource utilization, and other technologies.

Five joint missions are planned for this sub-stage, named ILRS-1 through 5 and Russian super heavy-lift launch vehicles are listed to launch the mission.

Phase three will see the start of crewed landings after 2036, when the ILRS has been mostly completed and humans can conduct research and exploration.

Meanwhile, China and Russia are looking to add more nations to ILRS and there have been reports of negotiations with the ESA, Thailand, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. However, as the ESA has backed out of Russias Luna series of moon missions over the Ukraine war, the project will probably be much less appealing to other nations.

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Lunar Research Station: Russia, China Almost Ready To Ink Pact On Moon Base That Will Rival Artemis Accords Rogozin - EurAsian Times

Today, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand and Vice President Kamala Harris met at the White House and jointlyreaffirmed the strong anddeeprelationshipbetween the United States and New Zealand, based on shared values, people-to-people ties, and cooperation across a wide range of bilateral, regional, and global challenges.

The Prime Minister and the Vice President welcomed the completion ofnegotiations onthe bilateral Space Framework Agreement, which will be the foundation of our already robust civil space cooperation in the years ahead. The Framework will underpin the two nations cooperation including in: space science, earth science, sustainability, education, and technology. The Prime Minister and the Vice President reviewed the growingspace partnership between the United States and New Zealand,including in supporting space exploration and taking action on climate change. They looked forward to future exchanges between the two countries.

The Prime Minister and the Vice President agreed on the importance of establishing and upholding international rules and norms to promote the peaceful, sustainable, and responsible use of outer space. They agreed that our two nations will work together to uphold and strengthen a rules-based international order for space and that we will work constructively with commercial industry, allies, and partners, and through multilateral fora to support the safety, stability, security, and long-term sustainability of space activities.

The Prime Minister and the Vice President discussedmutual efforts to combat violentextremismand radicalisation. They condemned recent mass shootings in the United States, including in Buffalo, Laguna Woods, and Uvalde, and agreed that we all must stand up against hate and violence.

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Joint Readout of Meeting Between Prime Minister Ardern and Vice President Harris - The White House

If you wouldve told me in 1972 that we wouldnt be back to the moon for 50 years, says Jack Burns, a professor of astrophysics at CU Boulder, I would have said you are full of you-know-what. Burns has a special interest in moon landings beyond being a child of the Apollo age. Hes director of the Network for Exploration and Space Science, a multiuniversity organization dedicated to developing advanced science on the moon.

Burns also served on former President Donald Trumps NASA transition team, which laid the groundwork for Artemis, the NASA mission that aims to not only return astronauts to Earths only natural satellite but also eventually establish long-term habitation there. Ive been working on this for 38 years, he says. This is the third iteration of us going back to the moon, but it looks like this one is actually going to stick. In fact, NASA hopes for boots on the groundincluding the first woman and first person of colorstarting in 2025.

What took so long? Its not just delays and red tape, although theres been plenty of both. We simply didnt have the means until recently, Burns says. Apollo-era technology barely let us poke our heads around, and its only in the past few years, thanks in large part to the NewSpace economy, that weve developed the capability to live and work on the moon, which gives us more reason to return than simply taking a few small steps.

NASA isnt the only agency planning to shop for prime lunar real estate. The Chinese government says it could land its own astronauts by 2030. Plus, plenty of private companies have their sights set on unmanned operations ranging from mining water to testing communications networks.

This renewed excitement could jump-start what industry insiders call the cislunar economy. Its beyond just visiting for visitings sake. Its looking at how you can leverage resources, says Vicky Lea, director of aerospace and aviation for the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation (EDC). It combines space exploration with commercial opportunity. More than 180 Colorado companies have a hand in Artemis, and while its practically impossible to know how many are working on private commercial missions, a few locals are playing key roles in our return to the moon.

Project: Orion spacecraft

Lockheed Martin Space designed the crew capsule for Orion, Americas new ride to the moon, which is 30 percent bigger than Apollo, fits four, features a unisex toilet and a radiation shelter, and could even include a specialized version of Amazons Alexa for voice-accessible flight data.

Project: Gateway

Orion wont land directly on the surface. Instead, it will dock in lunar orbit with Gateway, an outpost that will serve as a communication hub and staging area for surface exploration. Westminster-based Maxar is building a unique propulsion unit for the station that uses electricity to accelerate jets of ionized atoms as opposed to traditional chemical propellants.

Project: Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE)

Gateway will circle just 1,000 miles above the moons south pole before swinging more than 40,000 miles above the north pole and back again. The unique vertical orbit will provide unobstructed views ofand communications withEarth and should require minimal energy to maintain. But to make sure, NASA contracted with Westminsters Advanced Space, an astrodynamics firm specializing in designing orbits, to test it with this microwave-oven-size satellite.

Project: Moon buggy 2.0

Eventually, NASA plans to establish a basecamp near the moons south pole, and once it does, its going to need some wheels. To that end, it put out a call for candidates last year, spurring Lockheed to pair up with General Motors to compete against other teams, including partners Northrop Grumman and Lunar Outpost, a space robotics startup in Golden. The requirements? An electric moon buggy capable of carrying 1,764 pounds of payload 12 miles on a single charge across the moons pockmarked polar region. Oh, and it has to be drivable by remote control, too.

Lunar Outposts The Price Is Right bid for a NASA contract will establish how we buy and sell resources in space.

In December 2020, Golden-based Lunar Outpost made national headlines for what seemed like a really, really bad business deal. NASA announced it had signed four commercial contracts to collect moon dust from the lunar surface, but where the other three agreements were for between $5,000 and $15,000already paltry amountsLunar Outpost bid a single dollar. That was probably the smartest marketing move weve ever done, because the story got picked up all over, says co-founder and COO Julian Cyrus. The dollar isnt really anything, but it is establishing the legal and procedural framework for purchasing space resources. Which was NASAs plan all along.

Still, it currently costs more than $1 million per kilogram (thats 2.2 pounds for us Americans) to land on the moon, so Lunar Outpost paired the resource-collection mission with another it already had in the worksone that pays a lot better. Its Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP), a rover the size of a small dog, could touch down near the moons south pole as early as this winter to help test a 4G/LTE communications network. And because its a private mission instead of a public one, Lunar Outpost can make money on the side by selling any valuable data it collects to third partiesespecially companies interested in following in MAPPs wheel prints and collecting lunar resources. That will be an essential step for future exploration, Cyrus says. Throughout human history, if you want to explore a new area, you dont bring everything with you, he says. You have to live off the land, and its going to be the same in space.

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Meet the Colorado Companies Working to Get Us Back to the Moon - 5280 - 5280 | The Denver Magazine

Elon Musk, who is often in the news for his tweets and bold business moves, has again made headlines. This time for something the Tesla CEO said nearly a decade ago.

On Tuesday, a Twitter user who goes by the handle @steinkobbe shared a tweet that linked to an interview that Elon Musk gave in December 2011. In the interview, the Tesla CEO had claimed that SpaceX, his spacecraft engineering company, will be able to send humans to Mars in 10 years.

The video interview was taken by journalist Alan Murray for theWall Street Journal. While talking about SpaceX, Murray asked Musk, When are you going to put your first man or woman on other planets?. To this Musk said, We are going all the way to Mars. Best case in 10 years, worse case 10 to 15 years.

Almost a decade later, this interview is going viral. Commenting on the video, a YouTube user wrote, 10 years have passed, hows that going Elon?.

Talking about Musks ambitious time estimate, a Twitter user wrote, I guess thats just billionaires version of engineers this feature will take me 3-4 days to implement.

On social media, many people criticised Musk and other billionaires like Jeff Bezos for spending millions of dollars on space exploration projects when that money can be used to solve real-world problems. However, some defended Musk and appreciated the groundbreaking results that SpaceX has achieved in recent years.

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Elon Musk talked about putting humans on Mars in 2011, netizens ask for an update - The Indian Express

Pick of the weekMs MarvelPower of dreams Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan aka Ms Marvel. Photograph: PA Images/Alamy

In this charming new series, Kamala Khan (the excellent Iman Vellani) is a Marvel stan in love with Captain Marvel and the Avengers. What would be her dream? Acquiring superpowers of her own. But be careful what you wish for ... Kamala finds her grandmothers old bangles, which enable her to manipulate cosmic energy. Her problems are just beginning: she has to negotiate high school as a Muslim American and, of course, use her powers wisely. Its as much a show about the pleasures and pitfalls of fantasy and fandom as it is about superheroes and, as such, anyone who has ever sought refuge from reality in anything from a football team to a favourite pop star will relate. Phil HarrisonDisney+, from Wednesday 8 June

We are four uncompromised vessels for genius, says Wickie (Rene Elise Goldsberry). As Meredith Scardinos comedy returns, the titular comeback-queen girl band are in album mode. Their second lease of life continues to bear fruit but middle age threatens to spoil the party. When Gloria (Paula Pell) injures herself attempting a knee drop, she launches an extensive raid on the medicine cabinet. Cue an unusually fiery podcast appearance in which she turns into Liam Gallagher (Were the best band in the world and whoever says otherwise is jealous and senile). It overflows with zippy one-liners and comic chemistry. Peacock/Now, from Monday 6 June

Equal parts standup showcase and insight into the fevered egos of the people behind it, Katherine Ryans new show lurches between the glamour of the full house and the claustrophobia of the cramped dressing room. Or at least, this dressing room is cramped, containing at various points Sara Pascoe, Judi Love, Jimmy Carr, Jo Brand, Nish Kumar and basically everyone in modern British comedy who isnt Stewart Lee. Ryan proceeds to gently interrogates them all in her customarily friendly but snarky style. Amazon Prime Video, from Thursday 9 June

Nature is shorn of any semblance of grit and presented as a twee Instagram tableau in this new kids series. From the makers of Topsy and Tim and Teletubbies, Lovely Little Farm is precisely that a sepia-tinged homestead in which a family lives, surrounded by anthropomorphic CGI animals. Jill and Jacky are the children at the heart of the action, looking after lambs and chickens as Mum and Dad prepare for a new human arrival. Its so cutesy it becomes almost sinister. Let the nightmares about talking goats commence Apple TV+, from Friday 10 June

At any given time theres always a window for at least one steamy, vampire-themed TV melodrama. This one trades in multiple archetypes: a forbidden relationship that is biracial and same-sex, but also between a teenage vampire Juliette (Sarah Catherine Hook) and the daughter of a vampire hunter Calliope (Imani Lewis). Juliette whose parents are steering her towards her first kill, much as we might coax children towards GCSEs has fallen for the girl theyd earmarked as a likely victim. Basically, Romeo and Juliet with added fangs. Netflix, from Friday 10 June

Season one of this brash, warm comedy in which jaded Vegas comic Deborah Vance is forced to work with young writer Ava Daniels was a sleeper hit thanks to the witty writing and obvious chemistry between leads Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder. This time, god help them, they have to go on the road. Hilarious culture clashes ensue, over everything from the meaning of comedy to the correct storage of kombucha. And, at the heart of it all, one of the funniest and most convincing odd-couple friendships in recent TV history. Amazon Prime Video, from Friday 10 June

Some say private citizens have no business in space exploration. I emphatically disagree. Two decades on from the moon landings, this counterfactual space-race drama has reached the era of entrepreneurialism. As series three begins, Edi Gathegi joins the cast as Dev Ayesa a sort of prototype Elon Musk with his sights set very high indeed. And so, a three-way race to Mars begins. Ronald D Moores (Battlestar Galactica, Helix) show was among Apples first slate of dramas even if its been slightly eclipsed by their output since then, its still solid enough fare. Apple TV+, from Friday 10 June

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Ms Marvel to Hacks: the seven best shows to stream this week - The Guardian

Ever since astronomers found that Earth and the Solar System are not unique in the cosmos, humanity has dreamed of the day when we might explore nearby stars and settle extrasolar planets. Unfortunately, the laws of physics impose strict limitations on how fast things can travel in our Universe, otherwise known as Einsteins General Theory of Relativity. Per this theory, the speed of light is constant and absolute, and objects approaching it will experience an increase in their inertial mass (thereby requiring more mass to accelerate further).

While no object can ever reach or exceed the speed of light, there may be a loophole that allows for Faster-Than-Light (FTL) travel. Its known as the Alcubierre Warp Metric, which describes a warp field that contracts spacetime in front of a spacecraft and expands it behind. This would allow the spacecraft to effectively travel faster than the speed of light while not violating Relativity or causality. For more than a decade, Dr. Harold Sonny White has been investigating this theory in the hopes of bringing it closer to reality.

Previously, Dr. White pursued the development of an Alcubierre Warp Drive with his colleagues at the Advanced Propulsion Physics Research Laboratory (NASA Eagleworks) at NASAs Johnson Space Center. In 2020, he began working with engineers and scientists at the Limitless Space Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to education, outreach, research grants, and the development of advanced propulsion methods which they hope will culminate in the creation of the first warp drive!

While the idea of warp drives and FTL have been with us for decades, these concepts have overwhelmingly been the stuff of science fiction and pure speculation. It was not until 1994 that an actual proposal was made to explain how FTL could work within the realm of known physics. The credit for this goes to Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre, who proposed what would come to be known as the Alcubierre Drive as part of his Ph.D. study at Cardiff University, Wales.

In his research paper, The warp drive: hyper-fast travel within general relativity, he offered a possible solution to Einsteins field equations that considered how a spacecraft could achieve apparent Faster-Than-Light (FTL) travel without violating Relativity. Alcubierre concluded that it was possible, provided a field could be created with a lower energy density than the vacuum of space (aka. negative mass or exotic matter).

According to Alcubierre, quantum field theory allows for the existence of regions of spacetime that have negative energy densities. This is known as the Casimir Effect, which describes the attractive force between two surfaces in a vacuum. If a ring of negative mass could be created around a spacecraft, spacetime could theoretically be contracted in front of the ship and expanded behind. This would allow the spacecraft to effectively travel faster than the speed of light.

By a purely local expansion of spacetime behind the spaceship and an opposite contraction in front of it, motion faster than the speed of light as seen by observers outside the disturbed region is possible, he wrote. The resulting distortion is reminiscent of the warp drive of science fiction. However, just as it happens with wormholes, exotic matter will be needed in order to generate a distortion of spacetime.

Dr. White explained the concept to Universe Today via Zoom using an everyday metaphor. Basically, he said, its like using (what he refers to as) a travelator, those horizontal conveyor belts at major airports:

Normally, you walk along at about three miles an hour going from one gate to another. But in some locations, you have these horizontal travelators, and you step on top of them. So youre still walking at three miles an hour, but the belt is moving as well. Conceptually speaking, the belt is contracting space in front of you and expanding space behind you, so that it augments your apparent speed. But locally, youre still going at the same speed.

This way, an object would not be violating Relativity since it is merely riding a wave generated by the expansion and contraction of local spacetime. This would allow spacecraft to circumvent the problems of time dilation (where time slows down as objects approach the speed of light), the massive increase in inertial mass, and the extreme energy required to keep accelerating. Ah, but there was a snag, and it was a doozy!

According to Alcubierres original paper, the amount of negative mass required to achieve a warp field was beyond anything humanity could achieve. However, his work has been revisited in the nearly thirty years since he first proposed it, and some of the strict energy requirements that he outlined have been reconsidered. In essence, revised calculations have shown that the amount of exotic matter required to generate a warp field might be within the realm of possibility.

Dr. Whites own revised take on the Alcubierre Metric came in 2011 while he was preparing to deliver a speech at the first 100 Year Starship symposium, a joint project hosted by NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA):

I was asked to give a talk about space works at the inaugural NASA-DARPA 100 Year Starship symposium. I didnt just want to rehash what I had already talked about in the past, so I went through and did some sensitivity analysis with the field equations. I was looking at what happens when you change some of the input parameters to the preliminary requirement for the phenomena just because I wanted to have something new to talk about.

In the process of that, it became very clear that you could significantly reduce the amount of negative vacuum energy density thats necessary to make the trick work, non-trivially so. The stuff I published in 11, 12, and 13 three different conferences back to back- I was able to duplicate the best prediction that had been done prior to that by my colleague.

That colleague was none other than astrophysicist Richard Obousy, who co-founded Project Icarus with starship engineer Kevin Long in 2009. In a study released that same year (Casimir energy and the possibility of higher dimensional manipulation), Obousy and co-author Aram Saharian considered how next-generation particle accelerations could produce Standard Model fields that could adjust the density of dark energy locally and change the expansion of spacetime.

Their calculations further indicated that this could be done with a negative vacuum energy density roughly equivalent to the size of Jupiter (1.8981024 kg; 4.181024 lbs). While mathematically possible, this energy requirement is beyond anything we can currently conceive, let alone accomplish! However, Dr. White found that reconsidering the shell-thickness parameter of the warp bubble would further reduce that energy requirement.

As he explained, a thicker warp shell would reduce the strain on spacetime, thus allowing a spacecraft to achieve speeds of up to 10 times the speed of light (10 c) using only two metric tons (2.2 U.S. tons) of exotic matter:

I went through the process and showed that allowing the shell of the warp bubble to get thicker reduces the magnitude of the York time field. Think of that as the strain that you put on spacetime. And so, by making the warp bubble thicker, you could reduce the magnitude of the York time [field]. And its non-linear. And so, by doing that, we were able to reduce the amount of exotic matter from Jupiter down to two metric tons about the size of the Voyager 1 spacecraft.

Based on these findings, which were outlined in his seminal paper (Warp Field Mechanics 101), Dr. White concluded that an Alcubierre Warp Drive was not just mathematically possible but plausible. As for feasibility, that still requires that scientists find a way to generate negative vacuum energy, which will require a significant breakthrough in physics.

Between 2012 and 2019, Dr. White and his colleagues at NASA investigated the possibility of achieving this breakthrough at NASA Eagleworks, along with other advanced propulsion concepts (like the E.M. Drive). Since then, he has continued to pursue these efforts through the Limitless Space Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to developing the science and technology that will allow humanity to Go Incredibly Fast!

The LSI was founded in 2020 by astronaut Brian K. (B.K.) Kelly, the former Director of Flight Operations at NASAs Johnson Space Center before retiring in 2019. This non-profit was founded with the vision of advancing human space exploration beyond the Solar System by the end of the 21st century. To this end, the LSI is committed to education and outreach efforts that will inspire the next generation and the research and development of enabling technologies.

To help him realize this vision, Kelly turned to Dr. Harold Sonny White, his one-time colleague at the Johnson Space Center. As Dr. White recounted, his involvement with the Institute began in 2019 after his former colleague reached out to him:

He wanted to talk to me about some education outreach topics. In the process of talking with him, he [asked if I would] potentially leave NASA and come help him stand up and define Limitless Space Institute. After a lot of thought and prayer, it just felt like I could be a little bit more effective at trying to make progress in this domain of advanced power and propulsion. So I made the decision to pull the D-ring at the end of 2019 and join the Limitless Space Institute as the Director of Advanced Research and Development.

In addition to Kelly and Dr. White, many former astronauts and commercial space heavyweights have joined LSI to realize the goal of interstellar FTL travel. These include its Board of Directors, which consists of such luminaries as Gregory Ray J Johnson (Secretary of the Board). Johnson is a retired NASA astronaut who piloted the final Space Shuttle mission (STS-135), which took place on July 8th, 2011, and saw the Space Shuttle Atlantis make its final trip to International Space Station (ISS).

Theres also Kam Ghaffarian (Chairman of the Board), an engineer and entrepreneur who is the co-founder and Executive Chairman of X-energy, Intuitive Machines, Axiom Space, and the CEO of the innovation and investment firm IBX. And then theres Gwynne Shotwell (Independent Advisor to the Board), whom fans of commercial space will immediately recognize as the President and Chief Operations Officer (COO) of SpaceX, and a member of their Board of Directors.

The goal of realizing interstellar spaceflight, said Dr. White, is an extremely tall order and will require some revolutionary breakthroughs:

When people think of space travel today, they might think of sending human beings back to the surface of the Moon or neat rovers on the surface of Mars doing interesting things. And those are amazing examples of space exploration, but those are all possible using chemical propulsion. If we want to send human beings to the outer Solar System, if we want to get a crew from the Earth to Saturn in 200 days, the amount of energy thats necessary to make something like that possible is an entire order of magnitude larger than it takes to get a payload from the surface of Earth to Low Earth Orbit.

Simply put, theres no way long-distance missions can be done in a reasonable amount of time using chemical propulsion. For that to happen, says Dr. White, we need to think beyond the realm of known physics. To that end, he and his colleagues have adopted a research plan based on three broad categories of theoretical propulsion, each one more advanced than the last. The first (Fission) is dedicated to advancing the technology of Nuclear Electric Propulsion (NEP), which NASA and other space agencies are investigating for their future exploration goals.

This time-honored concept uses nuclear reactors to power Hall-effect thrusters (aka. ion engines) that ionize inert gases (like xenon) to create a charged plasma used to generate propulsion. The benefits of this method include the fact that it is within the realm of known physics and has been validated by past experiments by both NASA and the Soviet space programs. This includes NASAs Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power-10A (SNAP-10A) nuclear satellite, tested in 1965 and flew in space for 43 days.

The Soviets, meanwhile, sent about 40 nuclear-electric satellites into space, the most powerful of which was the TOPAZ-II reactor that produced 10 kilowatts of electricity. Theres also the ground-tested Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application (NERVA), a nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) concept developed by NASA in 1968-69. Compared to NEP, this method uses a nuclear reactor to heat hydrogen propellant and the resulting plasma to generate propulsion. This remains the only concept capable of generating power in the megawatt (MW) range, which is absolutely required for crewed missions.

Specifically, Dr. White and his team are working towards a NEP engine that could generate 2-50 MW power that would allow for rapid transit to Saturn and other locations in the outer Solar System about ~1,000 AU (149.6 billion km; 92.9 billion mi) from our Sun. However, these NEP spacecraft would still take a few thousand years to get to Proxima Centauri. Going faster, said Dr. White, requires pushing beyond fission and moving a little bit into the unknown.

This is where the next step in LSIs comes into play (Fusion), which calls for the development of fusion electric propulsion (FEP) which is in the 50 to 500 MW range. As Dr. White described it:

[I]nstead of fission and uranium, were using deuterium and tritium or some combination of gases that we could fuse of very high temperatures when theyre in the form of a plasma. Fusion propulsion is a little more capable than nuclear-electric propulsion. The one caveat is [that] we dont have fusion reactors all over the planet. So the engineering of a fusion reactor, we still have to work that out. But that may actually be a little closer than most people think.

But fusion propulsion would enable us to send large payloads to Proxima Centauri in 100 years. Maybe less, if you want to get aggressive with the delta-v (acceleration). But if we want to do an interstellar mission to Proxima Centauri, and we want to get there in 20 years or less, thats where we have to look to the frontiers of physics move firmly into the unknown.

This is where the third step (Breakthrough) comes into play, where significant progress needs to be made in our understanding of physics. This step requires that we find an answer to how the four fundamental forces that govern the Universe fit together. This includes Relativity, which describes how gravity governs interactions on a large scale, and quantum mechanics, which describes how matter behaves on the smallest scales (the atomic and subatomic levels).

Basically, we need a Theory of Everything (or a theory of quantum gravity), which has eluded scientists for about a century. This is why Dr. White and LSI are taking an incremental approach that includes future innovations and discoveries. These may be coming sooner than expected, said Dr. White, due to the introduction of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced computing. In the meantime, theres plenty of research to be done thats within the realm of known physics.

With Limitless Space, Dr. White and his colleagues are currently studying custom Casimir cavities, which consist of two plates in a vacuum chamber with pillars in between. These tests aim to measure how the quantum vacuum responds to the shapes inside these cavities, and the predicted characteristics of these cavities could be measured. Recently, Dr. White and his team performed work for DARPA, where these custom cavities were used to explore the possible existence of a vacuum polarization field.

But in the process of looking at how the vacuum responds to these shapes, he and his team noticed something completely unexpected:

The custom Casimir cavities consist of two plates, and in between the two plates, we have pillars. When we were looking at how the models we have predicted how the quantum vacuum responds to those pillar-plate geometries when we looked at a two-dimensional section cut of the vacuum energy distribution, it looked like a two-dimensional section cut of the energy density distribution needed for the Alcubierre Warp Metric.

The one provision to this quantitative similarity was that the custom Casimir cavities had these lenticular energy distributions prismatic in shape. In contrast, the Alcubierre Warp Metric requires this toroidal ring of negative vacuum energy density. Feeling that they were close, Dr. White and his team chose to implement a different approach.

So we looked at creating a mathematical model where it consisted of a one-micron diameter sphere centered inside a four-micron diameter cylinder, he said. We looked at how the quantum vacuum would respond to such a nanostructures shape, and that nanostructure is predicted to manifest a negative vacuum energy density that would meet the Alcubierre Warp Metric.

These numerical analysis results were presented in a paper published in the European Physics Journal C (EPJ C) in 2021. This paper indicated to the general public that an object built with a specific geometry would manifest a nanoscale warp bubble. While this is a far cry from spacecraft capable of FTL travel, it is a significant precedent and a step in that direction. According to Dr. White, the next step is to create an experiment for measuring any optical properties that this apparatus could manifest.

As always, the work continues. Step-by-step!

Another important aspect of LSI is its partnerships with other scientific organizations and educational institutions. In particular, LSI continues to conduct research and development in the Eagleworks laboratory facilities to explore the dynamic vacuum model. The LSI is also in partnership with Texas A&M and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who lend their nanomanufacturing capabilities to make the devices LSI uses in their lab experiments.

In addition, the Institute started a grant program designed to foster scientific research that could lead to major breakthroughs. This program is overseen by the Interstellar Initiatives (I2) grants program, which awards universities and organizations worldwide for theoretical work (tactical grant) and empirical work (strategic grant) that helps advance space exploration. The program conducted its first biannual round of grants and awards in 2020. This year, said Dr. White, the Institute will be expanding its focus:

This year, were doing our second biannual grant cycle and were augmenting the original call to also fund graduate and postdoc fellowships. So thats a new addition to the 2022-2024 cycle. We have LSI scholarships, where we give undergraduate students scholarships. We have a program called LSI Lab Boosters. That is a program that we started to address K-12 so thats where we provide small seed awards of 3 to 7k to worthy organizations that work with kids in elementary, middle school, and high school. We also have classes, we commissioned the Institute for Interstellar Studies (I4IS) to do a week-long summer class.

The focus of last years summer class was Human Exploration of the Far Solar System and on to the Stars, which provided an overview of the spacecraft systems and technology needed for interstellar flight (with an emphasis on power and propulsion). This summer, the Institute will be holding a series of online events with featured guests that address a wide range of topics, from space medicine and diversity in the space industry to coding and languages.

They also partner with universities to fund research, including their current partnership with Texas A&Ms nuclear engineering department to conduct a detailed white paper study on a portable nuclear reactor that meets the program requirements of Project Pele. This is a program by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to create microreactors to provide power at forward bases for a growing fleet of electrical vessels.

Another interesting example is the support LSI has given to its sister institution, Breakthrough Starshot, which is currently investigating directed-energy propulsion (DEP) to accelerate lightsails to relativistic speeds (a fraction of the speed of light). This research is overseen by Prof. Philip Lubin, head of the Experimental Cosmology Group at U.C. Santa Barbara. This group specializes in directed-energy (laser) technology, with applications ranging from space exploration (NASAs Starlight program) to planetary defense against asteroids (DE-STAR).

We awarded Phil Lubins group an Interstellar Initiatives grant as part of our inaugural grant cycle of 2020, said Dr. White. We paid for some work for him to mature his laser design, have multiple lasers work in cooperation in the field with a cooperative target. This combination of inspire, educate, and research (the three pillars of LSIs efforts) allows for the mutually-beneficial advancement of technologies and the promotion of future leaders and innovators in the space industry.

Today, many research and non-profit groups are dedicated to making interstellar spaceflight a reality. Examples include Icarus Interstellar, the British Interplanetary Society (BIS), and their spinoff, Tau Zero Foundation. There are also predecessor projects like the previously-mentioned Breakthrough Starshot, which is committed to creating lightsail spacecraft that could reach nearby star systems in our lifetimes and confirm if there are any habitable planets there (and possibly life).

While the aim is to go faster and reach farther, the true purpose is to grow humanity as a species and improve our understanding of life and the cosmos. This will invariably have applications for improving life on Earth, which will emerge far sooner than any FTL concepts. Dr. White, who considers himself a very practical thinker (concerned with whats under the hood, as he put it), still has some philosophical thoughts on how reaching farther out into space will have implications here at home:

Establishing the capability to send human beings to every destination in the Solar System think about that. Having an entire Solar System of materials and resources would change the very concept of scarcity. Diamond is rare, but if you have a whole Solar System at your disposal, maybe that changes the definition of what that is. Second, in order to allow and facilitate human beings to go throughout all the destinations in our Solar System, we have to have compact light and very energetic forms of power.

As we know from life here on Earth, the quality of life is directly tied to how many watts each citizen has at their disposal. Having that capability will also mean that planet Earth will [be in] a much different position when it comes to generating and utilizing power. In a future where we can Go Incredibly Fast within the context of our Solar System or nearby stars the argument is still similar. It changes the whole concept of scarcity and prosperity.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the attempts to realize FTL and interstellar travel is the way it inspires people. Knowing that the science behind it is sound and that humanity could one day realize the dream of interstellar travel (within an individuals lifetime) brings hope to people today. Amid all the bad news of wars, pandemics, insurrections, and climate change, there are many who believe that human civilization will not survive the 21st century. Its little wonder why many look to space as the solution and the means to our long-term survival.

And for those who would say we should fix Earth first, the idea of FTL and interstellar spaceflight offers a counter-argument. What better way to fix Earth than by reducing our impact and dependence on it? If and when the entire Solar System is accessible, and nearby stars can be reached in a matter of years (instead of millennia), humanity will have the means to ensure that Earth and our civilization will survive any calamity.

In the immortal words of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky: Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever. Nuff said?

Further Reading: Limitless Space

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The Dream of Faster-than-Light (FTL) Travel: Dr. Harold "Sonny" White and Limitless Space - Universe Today

It might be hard to fathom now, but the human exploration of the solar system isnt going to stop at the Moon and Mars. Eventually, our descendants will spread throughout the solar system for those interested in space exploration, the question is only of when rather than if. Answering that question is the focus of a new paper released on arXiv by a group of researchers from the US, China, and the Netherlands. Their approach is highly theoretical, but it is likely more accurate than previous estimates, and it gives a reasonable idea of when we could expect to see humans in the outer solar system. The latest they think we could reach the Saturnian system is 2153.

How to even start such a calculation is complicated, so its best to start at the basics, which in this case involves a bit of calculus. To understand when humans will reach further out in the solar system, the authors needed two variables distance and time. In this case, distance is defined as the distance from Earth that humans have traveled, and time is defined as having started at the beginning of the Space Race in 1957 when no human had yet left Earth.

Another critical data point is when humans made it to the Moon in 1969. At a distance of .0026 AU, it wasnt very far into the solar system but was a start. The next step in exploration is still speculative at this point, but the authors set up two different scenarios for when humanity will reach Mars. Given the launch windows, they estimate that the first humans will realistically set foot on the Red Planet in 2038, which is when NASAs Artemis program is planning for. But they also recognize that, given the history of delays in the human space exploration program of late, it could be as late as 2048. Using this separate starting point, they develop a delayed timeline of the rest of the exploration steps, and, as it is exponential, it has a correspondingly big impact on the dates of other milestones.

Reaching Mars certainly isnt the only factor impacting the exploration of the rest of the solar system. The authors use two other variables NASAs budget and the level of space exploration technologies.

Using NASAs budget might seem relatively biased, as the agency only represents one country, even if that country does have the worlds most extensive space program. However, it can act as a proxy for space exploration funding more generally, though the private sector has been gaining more attention recently. There is undoubtedly debate within the space community about whether the first person on Mars will even be from a governmental agency. Either way, using NASAs budget as a variable in the equation unlocks a relatively simple linear relationship between time and a non-inflation-adjusted budget.

Technological advancement is harder to quantify, but the authors use a model of the number of papers published in a given year that mention deep space exploration as a proxy for the level of technology necessary to complete those missions. The relationship they found for that metric of the number of papers over time is exponential, reaching a high of almost 2,000 papers per year recently.

This combination of linear and exponential relationships results in an equation that can be solved by plugging in the data points for distance and time of the beginning of the space race, the first crewed landing on the Moon, and the (still hypothetical) first crewed landing on Mars. From that model, dates of milestones begin to tumble out. Humanity could reach the Asteroid Belt in 2073, Jupiters system in 2103, and finally Saturn as early as 2132. As discussed above, there are some significant potential differences based on the uncertainty of the planned Mars landing. Still, the general trend is one of exponential exploration, as long as we continue with our current level of technological progress and budgetary levels. That would be music to any space fans ears.

Learn More:Rosen et al. Impact of Economic Constraints on the Projected Timeframe for Human-Crewed Deep Space ExplorationUT The Value of Space ExplorationUT Artemis 1 Probably wont Launch Until August

Lead Image:Image of Saturn taken by CassiniCredit NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute

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Forget About Mars, When Will Humans be Flying to Saturn? - Universe Today

A cubesat mission has a big objective to verify a keystone of NASA's future lunar operations.

CAPSTONE, short for "Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment," will occupy an orbit around the moon that has never been used before, to test out the Gateway space station's path to support future Artemis astronauts on the lunar surface.

NASA officials held a press conference and status update on the mission Wednesday (May 25) following news that the CAPSTONE mission will launch no earlier than June 6. The window extends through June 22. (It's not CAPSTONE's first delay; the cubesat was originally supposed to launch in 2021, but COVID-related issues pushed back the schedule to 2022, and it has also been delayed slightly a few times this year.)

CAPSTONE is scheduled to launch from New Zealand aboard aRocket LabElectron rocket equipped with a Lunar Photon upper stage.The microwave-oven-sized spacecraft's mission is to settle into a near rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) around the moon.

Related:Rocket Lab and its Electron booster (photos)

CAPSTONE will verify the stability of the orbit, which can be affected by mass concentrations (mascons) near the moon's surface and other factors. NASA is keen to get such information before launching the the high-profile Gateway space station to a lunar NRHO later in the 2020s.

"Beyond our support of the Artemis program, part of what makes this mission compelling from from my perspective is how it is pushing forward our desire to increase the pace of space exploration," Christopher Baker, small spacecraft technology program executive at NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, said during Wednesday's press conference.

Baker noted that CAPSTONE is built and managed by commercial partners; the nearly $14 million mission's project management is led by Colorado company Advanced Space. He said that involving commercial space in a lunar-class mission is "helping support not just our major human exploration program but also helping us expand the capability of small missions to reach new destinations."

CAPSTONE's NRHO will take the cubesat within 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) of the lunar surface near the south pole at its lowest point, and as high up as 43,500 miles (70,000 km).

The low approach to the moon will eventually allow access for astronauts to land on the surface and to return to Gateway, provided that the orbit is verified as desired. An NHRO also allows for efficient fuel usage, which is useful for a tiny cubesat, along with eclipse-free operations allowing the solar-powered Gateway to receive continual sunlight, Bradley Cheetham, Advanced Space CEO and principal investigator of CAPSTONE, said during the press conference.

The only other projects to attempt any three-body orbits around the moon include China's Chang'e 4 mission to the moon's far side and a previous robotic NASA mission called (somewhat confusingly, as Cheetham noted) ARTEMIS.

The older ARTEMIS stands for "Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon's Interaction with the Sun." The mission was repurposed from two of five spacecraft used for a NASA heliophysics constellation of satellites called THEMIS, which operated between 2007 and 2010.

Two spacecraft, renamed ARTEMIS-P1 and ARTEMIS-P2, tested out station-keeping (opens in new tab) around Lagrange points (gravitationally stable points between bodies) near the moon. Cheetham was working at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland during that period and said that the mission inspired him to enter graduate school for a Ph.D.

"That mission started the passion that I had for these unique orbits, that really led to the growth of these ideas and, ultimately, the CAPSTONE mission," Cheetham said.

CAPSTONE mission team members aim to verify predicted fuel usage in the NRHO, as well as how well ground navigation does in terms of tracking the cubesat, he noted.

"We have a great idea how that works in a lab here in Denver. We need to figure out how it works on a spacecraft at the moon, and there's a lot of nuance of those signals," Cheetham said.

CAPSTONE also aims to test spacecraft-to-spacecraft navigation and communications systems with NASA'sLunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which has been circling the moon since 2009. This is no small challenge, given that LRO was not designed to do such communications when it was launched.

Cheetham said he has been talking with NASA Goddard to learn how to make this happen, which has yielded "tremendous learning on what those future systems will need to be like, so that we can have spacecraft at the moon talking to each other."

These future "peer-to-peer networks" would allow spacecraft to exchange vital information on positions and status and grow their capabilities from there, he said.

Whenever it launches next month, orbital dynamics dictate that CAPSTONE will arrive at the moon on Oct. 15, with more or less time spent in transit depending on its departure date from Earth.

The cubesat is scheduled to operate in its orbit for at least six months, although opportunities are available for extensions assuming the spacecraft remains healthy and it produces viable science or engineering to allow for extra funding for a mission extension.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) and on Facebook (opens in new tab).

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NASA-funded CAPSTONE moon mission seeks to go where no cubesat has gone before - Space.com

Astra CEO Chris Kemp said the space industry is on the verge of becoming as ubiquitous as the internet.

"Space will be the next big platform," Kemp told Insider in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "There is a tremendous amount of opportunity to solve problems here on Earth in space," he added.

Kemp, who cofounded the aerospace company in 2016, highlighted several practical uses for space technology, like satellites, including tracking anything from water levels and energy to weather on Earth.

As space travel in the US has become more privatized, thousands of companies have stepped into the sector. The Astra CEO compared the recent interest in the space industry to the internet boom in the 90s.

In December, Space Tech Analytics found that there are over 10,000 private space tech companies collectively valued at over $4 trillion in the world. Earlier this month, Citigroup reported the space industry should reach $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2040.

Space exploration isn't just about colonizing Mars or putting boots back on the Moon. Tech entrepreneurs like SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have long presented space travel as a solution to climate change by moving people or industrial work off Earth, but Kemp sees its potential for everyday commercial use.

"The thing about Astra is we are a space tech company, we aren't a space travel company, space tourism, space solutions company," he said. "There are a bunch of companies out there that are focused on rockets. We are focused on space services that can be consumed by our customers."

Astra is breaking into the satellite launch market and competing for contracts with companies building broadband satellite constellations like OneWeb and Amazon's Kuiper competitors to SpaceX's Starlink service. In March, Astra successfully deployed its first group of satellites after failing its very first operational payload launch the month before, Space.com reported.

But as interest in space continues to grow, Kemp said it cannot go unregulated, pointing to laws like the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 which have gone decades without scrutiny. The CEO said satellite data could quickly raise ethical concerns or issues related to national security.

Over the past few years, the number of satellites that have been launched into Earth's lower orbit (LEO) have skyrocketed. In 2021, there were over 7,000 satellites in LEO, according to the United Nation's Outer Space Objects Index.

And the number is expected to grow exponentially in coming years. SpaceX has said it plans to create a megaconstellation of over 42,000 Starlink satellites. NASA and astronomers have expressed concern over the growing number of satellites.

In February, the federal agency said the satellites could increase the potential for collisions in outer space and potentially interfere with future NASA missions. Astronomers have said the satellites could negatively impact astronomical research.

"We are trying to find this balance," Kemp said, speaking of regulations. "It could be chaos, but with the appropriate level of governance we could have a global network of networks that connects every single billions devices on the planet."

"We have to create an economy that in order to participate you have to conform to the norms and somebody has to find the norms," Kemp added.

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Astra CEO: space is next big platform, we need regulations - Business Insider