Luna 2076 – Page 9 – The Geopolitics of Lunar Colonization

Robots to Fabricate Solar Panels on the Moon

January 29, 2020

Foreseeable needs for space exploration exceed projected payroll-launch capacity, so NASA envisions the need for robotic manufacturing on the Moon. A newly funded project called The Assemblers envisions a swarm of robots fabricating solar arrays and undertaking other assembly tasks on the surface of the Moon or Mars.

A new video published on Space.com shows how the assembly would look from a robot’s point of view as it examines a structure and targets certain areas for more work. On Earth, they are functioning under the watchful eye of engineers, but in time they will work autonomously.

“The project goal is to increase the technology readiness level for the modular robot, autonomous in-space assembly, and develop a robotic prototype for ground testing,” principal investigator James Neilan, a computer engineer at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, said in a statement.

The deliverable for the $2.5 million project will be a prototype that can manipulate items and assemble components in a space environment. The assemblers will use task-management software to keep tabs on errors and address issues as they arise. Writes Space.com:

The Assembler robots are a series of stacked platforms with actuators in between the platforms, as well as sensors that help each robot figure out where its components are located. “The team is working on algorithms for software so that the robots could choose how many platforms to stack and the right tool for the task at hand,” NASA officials said in the statement.

European Lab Develops Method to Extract Oxygen from Regolith

January 19, 2020

Simulated regolith before (left) and after oxygen extraction.

A team of European Space Agency (ESA) scientists think it has found a way to produce oxygen from lunar regolith, and it has opened a “prototype oxygen plant” inside a Dutch lab to refine the process.

“Being able to acquire oxygen from resources found on the Moon would obviously be hugely useful for future lunar settlers, both for breathing and in the local production of rocket fuel,” said Beth Lomax of the University of Glasgow in a statement.

Samples of moon dust returned from the lunar surface confirm that the material is made up of 40-45% oxygen by weight. The oxygen is bound up chemically in the form of minerals and glass oxides.

The European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), based in Noordwijk, Netherlands, uses a method called “molten salt electrolysis,” in which a simulated regolith is heated to 940 degrees Centigrade in a metal basket and molten calcium chloride salt acts as an electrolyte. Passing a current through the material extracts the oxygen and causes it to migrate to an anode where it can be collected.

As a byproduct, the process creates useful metal alloys. “The production process leaves behind a tangle of different metals,” says Alexandre Meurisse, ESA research fellow, “and this is another useful line of research, to see what are the most useful alloys that could be produced from them, and what kind of applications could they be put to.”

The precise combination of metals will vary depending on where on the Moon the regolith is coming from. There would be significant regional differences.

Says Tommaso Ghidini, head of ESA’s Structures, Mechanisms and Materials Division: “We’re shifting our engineering approach to a systematic use of lunar resources in-situ. We are working with our colleagues in the Human and Robotics Exploration Directorate, European industry and academia to provide top class scientific approaches and key enabling technologies like this one, towards a sustained human presence on the Moon and maybe one day Mars.” more “European Lab Develops Method to Extract Oxygen from Regolith”

The Moon Once Had Stronger Magnetic Field than Earth

January 3, 2020

Once upon a time the Moon had a magnetic field, and it was likely stronger than Earth’s is today. That field, generated by a powerful dynamo in the Moon’s core, petered out about one billion years ago.

The latest theory, propagated by MIT scientists in the journal Science Advances, suggests that crystallization of the Moon’s inner iron core stirred the electrically charged fluid and produced the dynamo.

“The magnetic field is this nebulous thing that pervades space, like an invisible force field,” says Benjamin Weiss, professor of earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences at MIT. “We’ve shown that the dynamo that produced the moon’s magnetic field died somewhere between 1.5 and 1 billion years ago, and seems to have been powered in an Earth-like way.”

Most studies of lunar magnetism have been based on rock samples from the Apollo missions; most of the ancient rocks are estimated to be thee to four billion years old. When they were spewed out as lava, their microscopic grains aligned in the direction of the Moon’s magnetic field. Lunar rocks whose magnetic histories began less than three billion years ago do not show such alignment, which suggests that lunar vulcanism had largely ceased by that time.

The MIT scientists theorize that the early Moon was much closer to the Earth than it is today, and much more susceptible to its gravitational effects. In a phenomenon known as “precession,” the solid outer shell of the cooling Moon wobbled in response to the Earth’s gravity. The wobbling stirred up the fluid in the core, the way swishing a cup of coffee stirs up the liquid inside, explains MIT News.

As the moon moved slowly away from the Earth, the precession effect decreased, weakening the dynamo and the magnetic field. About 2.5 billion years ago, core crystallization became the dominant mechanism by which the lunar dynamo continued, producing a weaker magnetic field that continued to dissipate as the moon’s core eventually fully crystallized.

A Closeup Look at Offworld’s Autonomous Robots

January 2, 2020

Video credit: Voice of America

Indians Will Give Moonshot Another Try

January 1, 2020

Chandrayaan-2 module. Image credit: ESRO

Despite the demise of the Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft in a crash landing on the Moon, the Indian Space research Organization will attempt another soft landing in the near future. The third lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3, could launch by the end of this year, although 2021 is a possibility, reports C/Net.

The Chandrayaan-3 mission will be much cheaper, about 6.15 billion rupees ($86.2 million) compared to 9.6 billion rupees for its ill-fated predecessor. The new mission, which include a rover and lander, will aim for the same spot on the south pole where vast water deposits are believed to exist.

Chandrayaan-2 was launched July 22, 2019, and consisted of three components: a lunar orbiter, a lunar lander and a rover. Though the lander and rover were lost during the crash landing, says C/Net, the orbiter still orbits the moon and is expected to continue surveying for seven years.

Early Moon Had More Water than We Thought

December 24, 2019

The early Moon likely contained significant volumes of water mixed into its global ocean of molten rock, theorize scientists from VU Amsterdam.

According to the conventional view, the Moon was formed by a collision of a small planetary-sized body with the young Earth that created a swirling mass of debris from which the Earth and the Moon condensed. In a process parallel to Earth’s, the Moon started as a mass of molten rock that slowly cooled over the ages. As it cooled, different minerals solidified at different temperatures and depths.

The Dutch scientists began asking how various mineral mixes behaved under extreme temperatures and pressures. Their models indicate that the Moon must have started with water mixed with the magma. Explains Ars Technica:

“How do you model an entire ocean of molten rock? You start with the known composition of the Moon and use that to create a mix of the appropriate minerals. Then you expose those minerals to extreme pressures and temperatures well beyond the melting point of rock. For these experiments, the temperatures ranged up to 1,550 degrees Celsius. Since the magma ocean was potentially hundreds of kilometers deep (current estimates range from 400 to 1,000 kilometers), pressures ranged up to 3 GigaPascals, which is nearly 30,000 atmospheres.” more “Early Moon Had More Water than We Thought”

Russians Plan Robotic Post to Track Asteroids

December 21, 2019

Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, plans to install a nuclear-powered observatory on the south pole of the Moon to help spot meteorites on a collision course with Earth, reports the U.K.’s Express.

The base will operate in conjunction with asteroid-hunting telescopes to survey potentially hazardous space rocks.Said Alexander Bloshenko, executive director for science and long-term programs, “There are plans to install equipment on this base to study deep space — and special telescopes to track asteroids and comets that pose a danger of colliding with Earth.”

The base, he said, also will be used for Russia to test space-faring equipment. Cosmonauts will be sent only “to do the tasks that the robots are incapable of doing.”

A South Pole location has been selected for its favorable conditions, in particular sufficient light to power solar panels and craters containing ice reserves for fuel and raw material.

Video Overview of NASA’s Artemis Project in Five Short Minutes

December 21, 2019

It’s encouraging to see how far NASA has come in its thinking.

My only gripe: NASA still sees planting an outpost on the Moon primarily as a stepping stone to Mars rather than the first stage in full-scale lunar colonization as an adjunct to exploiting cislunar space. Mars may have scientific value, but it has no strategic value. The Moon offers both.

Geologic Mystery: How Old Is Mare Crisium?

December 14, 2019

After the solar system formed 4.6 billion year ago, an object slammed into the Moon and formed a 620-mile-wide indentation now known as the Crisium basin. Scientists examining the region say they’ve spotted a crater within the basin that appears to contain pristine impact melt of volcanic rock, reports National Geographic.

Not only might the geologic feature yield clues about the frenzied meteor bombardment during the early history of the Earth and Moon, the basin holds a geologic blister the size of Washington, D.C., unlike any other feature seen in the the solar system. The volcanic lump appears to have been cracked open by underground magmatic activity.

Rocks recovered by U.S. Apollo missions and Russian robotic missions are estimated to be between 3.8 and 4.0 billion years old, leading scientists to theorize that there was spike in the number of impacts on the Moon during a period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment. But that conventional wisdom has come into question. Why was there a 700-million-year quiet period before then?

The Crisium basin could shed light on that mystery. The original impact that formed the basin was so powerful that it created a melt sheet up to 9.3 miles thick. Later, profuse eruptions of lava flooded the basin beginning about 3.6 billion years ago, forming a volcanic sea known as Mare Crisium that covered up much of the original melt. But “islands” of rock within the basin, known as Kipukas, survived the lava inundation. As lunar scientists examined the region, one Kipuka stuck out. Close examination showed that much of it was made of frozen volcanic rock. The research team conjectures that the lump was pushed upward by subsurface volcanic activity, but the origin remains a mystery. more “Geologic Mystery: How Old Is Mare Crisium?”

NASA SLS Rockets Could Cost $800 Million to $1.6 Billion a Pop

December 13, 2019

The Space Launch System (SLS) will be the most powerful rocket NASA has ever built. When completed, it will be able to take astronauts to the Moon and beyond. Indeed, according to NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, it will be the only rocket “qualified” to take astronauts to the Moon.

NASA is under contract with Boeing to build two SLS rockets with the goal of putting astronauts back on the Moon by 2024: specifically, landing the next man and woman on the south pole of the Moon, after which it will need a third rocket, and perhaps more.

CNN Business asked a pertinent question: How much will the rockets cost?

Said Bridenstine:

When we think about the cost of an SLS rocket per launch, it really, quite frankly, depends upon how many we buy in a certain package. If you buy one SLS rocket, it’s going to be very expensive. I’d say on the order of $1.6 billion. If we buy multiple SLS rockets, say as many as ten, or twelve, it can get down under a billion dollars, $800 million per copy. But, look, these are all estimates at this point. NASA needs to sit down with its prime contractor Boeing to negotiate the best solution to the right mix to the number of rockets and the cost per rocket.

Bridenstine added that he would like to have a cadre of astronauts dedicated to the Artemis project. “I want the astronauts that we send to the Moon this time to be like the Mercury Seven where the astronauts have names and faces and backgrounds and histories and personalities.”

According to Science Alert, the SLS is the tallest rocket stage NASA has built since the Saturn V stages for the Apollo missions. It is also the most powerful, designed to reach a speed of Mach 23 before separating from its upper stage, the Orion crew capsule.

The project has suffered by delays and cost overruns. The first flight was scheduled for November 2018, and the price tag has risen from $6.2 billion to $8 billion. NASA has spent roughly $34 billion on the SLS, Orion, and the Exploration Ground Systems Program through 2018, a sum that is projected to increase to more than $50 billion by 2024.