What it will take to colonize the #Moon and #Mars @NASA

What it will take for humans to colonize the Moon and Mars

Andrew TarantolaThu, March 25, 2021, 5:00 PM

NASA's Artemis program will mark a significant milestone in US space flight history when it lifts off in late 2024. Not only will it be the first time that American astronauts have travelled further than LEO since the 1970s, and not only will it be the first opportunity for a female astronaut to step foot on the moon. The Artemis mission will perform the crucial groundwork needed for humanity to further explore and potentially colonize our nearest celestial neighbor as well as eventually serve as a jumping-off point in our quest to reach Mars. Given how inhospitable space is to human physiology and psychology, however, NASA and its partners will face a significant challenge in keeping their lunar colonists alive and well.

Back in the Apollo mission era, the notion of constructing even a semi-permanent presence on the surface of the moon was laughable — largely because the numerous lunar regolith samples collected and returned to Earth during that period were "found to be dry as a bone," Rob Mueller, Senior Technologist in Advanced Projects Development at NASA said during a SXSW 2021 panel. "That was the common wisdom, there is no water on the moon, and so for many years that was the assumption held in the [aerospace] community."

It wasn't until the late '90s that a neutron spectrometer aboard NASA's Lunar Prospector mission found telltale evidence of hydrogen atoms located at the moon's poles, suggesting the potential presence of water ice. And it wasn't until last October that the SOPHIA mission detected water on the sunlit surface of the moon, rather than only squirrelled away in deep, dark lunar craters.

"We had indications that H2O – the familiar water we know – might be present on the sunlit side of the Moon," Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, said at the time. "Now we know it is there. This discovery challenges our understanding of the lunar surface and raises intriguing questions about resources relevant for deep space exploration."

Based on this new evidence, Mueller estimates that there should be enough water ice available to "launch a vehicle like the space shuttle every day for 2,000 years. So there's a lot of water on the moon. The trick is, is we have to find it, access it, and mine it, and then economically use it."

#SpaceX smashes record with launch of 143 small #satellites – Some as small as 10 centimetres!

SpaceX smashes record with launch of 143 small satellites – Spaceflight Now

A Falcon 9 rocket lifts off Sunday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket Sunday from Cape Canaveral with 143 small satellites, a record number of spacecraft on a single mission, giving a boost to startup space companies and stressing the U.S. military’s tracking network charged with sorting out the locations of all objects in orbit.

The 143 small spacecraft, part of SpaceX’s “Transporter-1” rideshare mission, took off from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT), a day after thick cloud cover prevented the rocket from leaving Earth.

The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 rocket soared toward the southeast from the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, then vectored its thrust to fly on a coast-hugging trajectory toward South Florida, before flying over Cuba, the Caribbean Sea, and Central America.

The unusual trajectory was similar to the track followed by a Falcon 9 launch in August 2020, which was the first launch since the 1960s from Florida’s Space Coast to head into a polar orbit.

The Falcon 9’s reusable first stage booster — flying for the fifth time — landed on SpaceX’s “Of Course I Still Love You” drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean southeast of Miami nearly 10 minutes after liftoff. SpaceX said it also retrieved the rocket’s payload fairing halves after they parachuted back to Earth in the Atlantic.

The rocket’s second stage powered into orbit with its 143 satellite passengers, flew over Antarctica, then briefly reignited its engine while heading north over the Indian Ocean.

The launch Sunday carried payloads for Planet, Swarm Technologies, Kepler Communications, Spire, Capella Space, ICEYE, NASA, and a host of other customers from 11 countries. The payloads ranged in size from CubeSats to microsatellites weighing several hundred pounds.

The Falcon 9 rocket will also delivered 10 more of SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites into space, the first Starlink craft to head for a polar orbit.

Billionaires Have Been Funding #Space Travel for Decades

Billionaires Have Been Funding Space Travel for Decades

Billionaires Have Been Funding Space Travel for Decades

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