NASA soon will test a circuitous route to the Moon that takes its microwave oven-sized CubeSat satellite nearly a million miles into deep space to take advantage of gravitational forces that will allow it to reach the Moon with less expenditure of energy, the space agency reports.

The route, called a “near rectilinear halo orbit” (NHRO) works well in NASA’s computer simulations. CAPSTONE, short for the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations, will provide the first real-world test of NRHO dynamics. The mission is intended to support NASA’s Gateway, a multipurpose outpost that will support long-term lunar missions under the Artemis orbit.

While the gravity-driven track will longer to reach the Moon — four months — NASA says it will “dramatically reduce the amount of fuel this pathfinder CubeSat will need to fly there.” more “The Most Fuel-Efficient Route to the Moon May Not Be a Straight Line”

Five Apollo expeditions landed spacecraft on the Moon without incident. One would think that a feat accomplished with 1969-era technology would be a cakewalk today. But landing people on the Moon remains an ambitious feat, writes Mashable.

“Just because we went there 50 years ago does not make it a trivial endeavor,” Csaba Palotai, the program chair of space sciences in the Department of Aerospace, Physics and Space Sciences at the Florida Institute of Technology, told the publication.

The article identifies three main challenges: more “Challenges to Landing Spacecraft on the Moon”

California-based Venturi Astrolab has built a working prototype, tested in the American desert, of a rover, called FLEX, that is capable of transporting astronauts and cargo in support of lunar activities and experiments.

If selected by NASA, FLEX will support the Artemis program goal of establishing a long-term base on the Moon.

“Once you get there, you’ve got to be able to move things around,” said retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield who test-drove the vehicle, as reported by VOA Learning English. “You also need to transition the equipment that keeps you alive and that enables the activities.”

“When we settle somewhere,” he added, “we don’t just need to get people from one place to another, but we need to move hardware, cargo, life support equipment and more.” more “FLEX: A Vehicle to Support Early Moon Colonization”

A congressional spending bill has added $61 million for the U.S. Space Force toward setting up a surveillance network — or “highway patrol” — to track the domain between the Earth and the Moon.

Nation-states and commercial companies will fly nearly 100 missions, both crewed and uncrewed, to the Moon by 2030. As the cislunar region fills with satellites and space junk — there are at present an estimated 27,000 piece of human-made objects larger than a softball in orbit — the Cislunar Highway Patrol System (CHPS) will track and identify all man-made objects a combination of optical and radar sensors — critical for mitigating potential collision risks.

“The responsible use of space and unfettered access to space domain awareness ensures collision avoidance, on-orbit logistics, communication, navigation and maneuvering, all critical to the United States and allied space commerce, science and exploration,” states a video produced by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory that can be viewed here.

Some critics warn that the intrusion of the armed forces into cislunar space represents a potential usurpation of NASA and militarization of space. Military strategists say the stakes are too big to leave cislunar space to the civilians, and the Pentagon will be compelled to take on a major role. China, which has plans to build a lunar base, cannot be trusted to pursue only peaceful aims, and could use its space program for both economic and military advantage, Politico says. more “The Pentagon Plans Highway Patrol for Cislunar Space”

The Moon is dotted with steep-walled holes known as pits, or skylights, which likely lead to sub-surface lava tubes that could serve as sheltered underground environments for human settlers. Engineers are developing specialized robots to explore these hard-to-access topographical features.

The trick is designing these vehicles to be compatible with small landers, making them capable of negotiating steep pit aprons, and equipping them to acquire cross-pit images. A team led by William “Red” Whittaker, a robotics professor at Carnegie Mellon University, has developed the PitRanger, a 33-pound mini-robot outfitted with a solar panel and an adjustable telephoto camera and tested it in a massive sinkhole in Utah.

Whittaker explains his challenge to Space.com:

“The scenario is to rove to a pit with a micro-rover, peer into the pit, acquire images of walls, floors, caverns, and then generate pit models,” Autonomy for fast exploration is the critical technology since the small, solar-powered rovers won’t be able to carry direct-to-Earth radio for supervision or guidance.

In addition, “the rover must succeed in a single illumination period” on the moon, because it needs the sun for energy and heating. (A lunar day lasts about 14 Earth days, and the lunar night is equally long.) “It only has 12 days, not 12 years, to complete its mission.”

The rover would circumnavigate the rim, identify the overlooks offering the required, and deploy a tiltable camera to obtain the required angles needed to create a high-fidelity, 3D-quality image, The result will be far superior to anything that a Moon-circling satellite could capture.

Not only do pits provide potential habitats, they are windows into lunar geology. Scientists expect to gain insights into volcanology, morphology and much more, Wittaker said.

BBC’s Science Focus magazine provides an interesting spin on the primary challenges behind establishing a Moon base.

Where to locate. Given the high cost of getting material to the Moon — $10,000 per kilogram just to escape the Earth’s gravity well — the idea is to use materials on hand to the greatest extent possible. That explains the keen interest in settling in the poles where abundant water ice is sequestered in craters that never see the light of day. Another advantage of a polar location is the ability to install solar panels in mountain peaks that are exposed to the sun around the clock.

Building the base. Planners expect to make extensive use of 3D printing. Experiments on Earth with imitation regolith have shown that it is possible to build large structures with the technology. However, it remains to be seen how well the process will work in the Moon’s light gravitational field. more “How to Build a Moon Base”

The Pentagon began developing work on electrically powered solid-state laser weapons two decades ago. By 2013 the Navy was testing a 30-kilowatt fiber laser on a ship. Then focus shifted to fiber lasers in the 50- to 100-kilowatt class. Now aerospace giant Boeing has teamed with General Atomics to build lasers achieving the 250-kilowatt threshold needed to defend against nuclear missiles, reports IEEE Spectrum.

The design of high-energy solid-state lasers entails a tradeoff between size, weight and power, and the problem of dissipating heat. General Atomics had the idea of developing a liquid laser, considered crazy at the time, but DARPA funded it. Liquid lasers are similar to solid-state lasers but they use a cooling liquid that flows through channels integrated into the solid-state laser material. The trick was achieving a perfect match in the refractive index between the liquid and the solid material. more “Boeing, General Atomics to Advance Work on Liquid Lasers”