Stanford researchers, in collaboration with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have designed a robotic platform that could take space exploration to new heights.
The mission proposed for the platform involves a mother spacecraft deploying one or several spiked, roughly spherical rovers to the Martian moon Phobos. Measuring about half a meter wide, each rover would hop, tumble and bound across the cratered, lopsided moon, relaying information about its origins, as well as its soil and other surface materials.
January 3rd, 2013
Stanford researchers develop acrobatic space rovers to explore moons and asteroids Stanford University
December 4th, 2012
China to Grow Veggies on Mars? Discovery
It’s no secret that China’s space program is progressing at fast rate, but could the nation leapfrog the US in the realm of human spaceflight by landing the first extraterrestrial “greenhouse” on Mars? The plan, as reported by the Chinese state media on Monday, saw a 300 cubic meter “ecological life support system” test being carried out in Beijing — an experiment that was supported by German scientists. In this trial run, four types of vegetables were grown and two people lived inside. It is not clear how long the test lasted or whether the test subjects remained healthy for the duration.
This system forms the basis of a far grander scheme that would allow astronauts to cultivate fresh fruit and vegetables, produce water and generate oxygen to breathe on the moon and Mars.
November 21st, 2012
Musk goes for methane-burning reusable rockets as step to colonise Mars Flightglobal
While speaking at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London in November, the billionaire former Paypal Internet executive, Tesla electric car entrepreneur, and current Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) CEO and self-taught lead rocket engineer, Elon Musk, described his plan to enable a self-sustaining human colony on the planet Mars. This plan is to use reusable rockets and along with Mars landing and ascent craft to take mankind to Mars within 15 years. And to do it Musk announced that liquid oxygen (Lox) and Methane would be SpaceX’s principal propellants of choice.
November 19th, 2012
NASA’s Space Launch System Using Futuristic Technology to Build the Next Generation of Rockets
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. is using a method called selective laser melting, or SLM, to create intricate metal parts for America’s next heavy-lift rocket. Using this state-of-the-art technique will benefit the agency by saving millions in manufacturing costs.
NASA is building the Space Launch System or SLS — a rocket managed at the Marshall Center and designed to take humans, equipment and experiments beyond low Earth orbit to nearby asteroids and eventually to Mars.
SLM is similar to 3-D printing and is the future of manufacturing.
November 14th, 2012
Using rust and water to store solar energy as hydrogen École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
How can solar energy be stored so that it can be available any time, day or night, when the sun shining or not? EPFL scientists are developing a technology that can transform light energy into a clean fuel that has a neutral carbon footprint: hydrogen. The basic ingredients of the recipe are water and metal oxides, such as iron oxide, better known as rust. Kevin Sivula and his colleagues purposefully limited themselves to inexpensive materials and easily scalable production processes in order to enable an economically viable method for solar hydrogen production. The device, still in the experimental stages, is described in an article published in the journal Nature Photonics.
November 6th, 2012
Making Rocket Fuel on Mars (1978) Wired
In the late 1970s, through the initiative of its director, Bruce Murray, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) studied a range of possible Mars missions, including Mars Sample Return (MSR). Murray and others at the Pasadena, California-based lab were aware that funds for new Mars missions would be hard to come by; the U.S. economy was under strain and NASA, JPL’s main customer, was devoting most of its resources to developing the Space Shuttle. In addition, equivocal data from the astrobiology experiments on the twin Vikings, the first successful Mars landers, had damped public enthusiasm for the Red Planet. Would-be Mars explorers reasoned that, if an MSR mission would stand a chance of acceptance, then they would need to find technologies and techniques that could dramatically trim its anticipated cost.
October 25th, 2012
ATK Selected to Develop MegaFlex™ Solar Array Structure ATK
MegaFlex™ solar array was recently selected by NASA’s Space Technology Program under a Game Changing Technology competition for development of the promising lightweight and compact solar array structure. ATK received a $6.4 million contract for the MegaFlex™ development.
MegaFlex™, under development by ATK’s Space Components Division in Goleta, California, is designed specifically to meet the anticipated power demands of 350kW and higher, with very low mass and small stowed volume for future space exploration missions using solar electric propulsion.
“We are honored to win this program to develop the future space exploration power platform for NASA,” said David Shanahan, vice president and general manager of ATK Aerospace Group’s Space Components Division. “This win is a result of the outstanding innovation and capabilities of our Goleta team.”
October 21st, 2012
Elon Musk’s Mission to Mars Wired
When a man tells you about the time he planned to put a vegetable garden on Mars, you worry about his mental state. But if that same man has since launched multiple rockets that are actually capable of reaching Mars—sending them into orbit, Bond-style, from a tiny island in the Pacific—you need to find another diagnosis. That’s the thing about extreme entrepreneurialism: There’s a fine line between madness and genius, and you need a little bit of both to really change the world.
All entrepreneurs have an aptitude for risk, but more important than that is their capacity for self-delusion. Indeed, psychological investigations have found that entrepreneurs aren’t more risk-tolerant than non-entrepreneurs. They just have an extraordinary ability to believe in their own visions, so much so that they think what they’re embarking on isn’t really that risky. They’re wrong, of course, but without the ability to be so wrong—to willfully ignore all those naysayers and all that evidence to the contrary—no one would possess the necessary audacity to start something radically new.
October 21st, 2012
Canada’s Space Agency Unveils New Moon and Mars Rovers The Epoch Times
The Canadian Space Agency has unveiled terrestrial rover prototypes that mark a milestone in the agency’s robotics work. The prototypes are the early generations of vehicles that will one day explore destinations like the Moon or Mars.
Steve MacLean, the president of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and Industry Minister Christian Paradis highlighted the new fleet of prototypes on Oct. 19 at the CSA headquarters in Longueuil, Quebec.
“Canada’s reputation for excellence has been carved out through decades of innovation and technological advances such as the iconic Canadarm, Canadarm2, and Dextre,” Paradis said in a statement.
October 15th, 2012
3D Printing Flies High DesignNews
3D printing techniques are reaching into space to help NASA astronauts. They’re also creating production metal and plastic parts for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), fighter jets, commercial planes, and cars. Research is underway to develop additive manufacturing (AM) techniques for making end-use parts for cars and planes from aluminum powders and other materials, including 3D printing carbon composites. Materials and processes are now pushing the edges of what’s possible in automotive and aerospace applications.
When humans get to Mars, they will drive around the surface of the Red Planet in a rover much bigger than Curiosity that incorporates AM-made parts. NASA is testing a manned Mars rover in Arizona under its Desert Research and Technology Studies (RATS) program. It’s about the size of a Humvee, has a pressurized cabin for two astronauts, and 12 wheels on six axles for navigating irregular terrain.