A team from Thales Alenia, a Franco-Italian aerospace company, is developing the design for an electric-powered lunar space tug. The reusable vehicle would fly back and forth between Earth and the Moon, transporting cargo and passengers. It would be refueled at a low Earth orbit fuel depot and maintained by astronauts on the Moon and International Space Station. Reports NBC News.

The greatest advantage of the tug is that it would run off Hall Effect Thrusters, which use electric propulsion. In this sense, the tug would be powered much like NASA’s Dawn spacecraft and Japan’s Hayabuse 2.

The space-tug concept is described in an Acta Astronautica paper, “The Lunar Space Tug: a sustainable bridge between low Earth orbits and the Cislunar Habitat.” more “Thales Alenia Develops Space Tug Concept”

Moon Express, a Cape Canaveral, Fla.-based company promoting lunar colonization, has found a rocket to get its lander to the lunar surface, reports The Verge. The company views the Moon as an untapped source of minerals to mine and real estate to settle.

A participant in the Google Lunar X Prize, a competition that will reward the first company to land a privately funded rover on the Moon, Moon Express will launch its MX-1E micro-lander on top of the experimental Electron rocket. The Electron is manufactured by Los Angeles-based Rocket Lab.

The launch contract was accepted by the X Prize Foundation. The expected launch date was sometime in 2017.

“At X Prize, we believe that the spirit of competition brings about breakthroughs that once seemed unimaginable or impossible, and so it thrills us to now have two Google Lunar X Prize teams with verified launch contracts attempting missions to the moon in 2017,” Chanda Gonzales, senior director of the Google Lunar X Prize, said in a statement. “The new space race is truly on!”

more “Moon Express Teams with Rocket Lab in X Prize Competition”

Is the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) the future of outer space habitation? Bigelow Aerospace hopes to demonstrate that it is with the launch of BEAM on the next launch of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, reports Space.com.

“This will give us the opportunity to demonstrate expandable-habitat technology as part of a crewed system for the very first time,” said Michael Gold, director of Washington, D.C., operations and business growth for Bigelow Aerospace. “This will be a very big step.”

The inflatable habitat is launched in a tightly packed configuration, taking up less room in a rocket than traditional metal habitats. When expanded, they offer much more living space when they reach their destinations. They also offer greater protection against space radiation and debris strikes than metal modules do, Bigelow contends.

The idea of inflatable habitats has been around for more than 50 years but the earliest model, made of rubber, would have been destroyed by any meteoroid or piece of space junk. The concept had to be shelved until materials science advanced to the point where Kevlar-like weaves were strong enough to withstand the space environment. more “Bigelow Touts Benefits of Inflatable Habitats”