NASA Shortlists 3 Ambitious Planetary Missions for 2016 Launch

Three ambitious space missions have made NASA's shortlist for a planned robotic planetary expedition to launch in 2016. The candidates include a mission to glimpse Mars' interior, a voyage to the extraterrestrial sea of Saturn's moon Titan, and a probe to take an unprecedented look at the surface of a comet's core. Ultimately, only one mission will win the coveted rocket launch, NASA officials said. The investigation team for each mission proposal will receive $3 million for a preliminary design stage, they added.

After NASA reviews these concept studies, the space agency will choose one to continue development leading up to launch as part of NASA's Discovery Program, whose missions have included the Messenger probe to Mercury, the asteroid-chasing Dawn spacecraft, as well as the agency's Stardust, Deep Impact and Genesis probes. The final mission will have a fixed budget of $425 million, not including the cost of its launch vehicle. Space.com

Nations and Companies Vie in New Moon Race

This illustration shows a lush green land on the moon inside a crater covered by a dome to protect and feed lunar astronauts while siphoning elements from the moon's regolith.

Humans may not revisit the moon again until possibly 2020 at the earliest, but plenty of countries and private companies have targeted Earth's rocky satellite as a prime destination for robotic explorers. The last century's moon race between the United States and Russia has since given way to a new onslaught of unmanned lunar missions launched by Europe, Japan, China, India and the United States, which have helped uncover lunar water resources. Private entrepreneurs are also racing to land a homemade robot on the moon and win the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize, which will reward the first private team to launch and land a spacecraft on the moon.

Meanwhile, China has pushed forward with a three-phase lunar exploration program involving probes and a lander. Its human spaceflight program has so far focused on launching to Earth orbit and preparing to build a Chinese space station starting this year. The country's second moon probe, Chang'e-2, entered lunar orbit at the beginning of this month after a five-day trip from Earth. Part of Chang'e-2's mission involves scouting possible landing sites for the Chang'e-3 spacecraft, which is scheduled for a lunar landing in 2013. Plenty of other countries seem eager to join in the lunar rush, even if China looks set to take a strong lead. India has begun drawing up plans for its own second lunar probe launch in 2013, after the success of its Chandrayaan 1 probe, which helped confirm the presence of water on the moon.  

Japan has targeted a research robot for the moon with a landing date around 2015. And a private Japanese consortium hopes to send along some company in the form of a two-legged humanoid robot designed to walk on the moon, even if it faces funding and engineering challenges.

Private Sector Wants Mining Bases On the Moon

The Shackleton Energy Co. wants to mine the moon's water ice and turn it into rocket fuel. Shackleton Energy Co. (SEC), which was formed in 2007, would sell the propellant from fueling stations in low-Earth orbit (LEO). Because spaceships burn so much fuel just lifting off from Earth, letting them top up in orbit could spur a huge wave of travel and discovery in space, according to SEC founder Bill Stone. And it makes sense to supply the filling stations from the moon, since it's about 15 times cheaper to launch something to LEO from there than from Earth, Stone added.

  "In our view, the moon is a stepping stone," Stone told SPACE.com. "What we extract from there will enable the exploration of the inner solar system."

SEC's mining bases would likely be at one or both lunar poles, in craters whose frigid depths have trapped lots of water over the past several billion years. Craters like Cabeus, perhaps, where water ice makes up 5.6 percent of the lunar dirt by weight. Six to eight people might oversee the mining operations in any one location, according to Stone. Initially, these crews might have to stay for a year, but future base dwellers would likely sign on for six-month stints. These crews would live in inflatable habitat modules. Human-tended robots would perform most of the mining, transportation and processing of water ice into fuel. The processing step would take place up in LEO, where huge shipments of water would be converted to rocket propellant, Stone said. 




SEC has received lots of interest from investors and is making steady progress, according to Stone. The company intends to send robotic scouting missions to both poles within four years, Stone added, with sales of propellant in LEO following shortly thereafter. "By the end of the decade, there's a high likelihood we'll be up and running," Tietz told SPACE.com. SEC may not be the only private enterprise operating on the moon in 10 years or so. Bigelow Aerospace is considering setting up lunar bases, too. Bigelow designs and builds inflatable space habitats, and SEC may well get its modules from Bigelow, Stone said. Bigelow has already deployed two prototype inflatable modules in space, and last year the company signed deals with six clients interested in using the structures. Space.com

Back to the Moon: How New Lunar Bases Will Work

Space entrepreneur Robert Bigelow (left) discusses layout plans of the company's lunar base with Eric Haakonstad, one of the Bigelow Aerospace lead engineers.
Bigelow Aerospace

Bigelow Aerospace factory here, the full-size space station mockups sitting on the warehouse floor look somewhat like puffy white watermelons. The interiors offer a hint of what spacious living in space might look like. 
 
“Every astronaut we have come in here just says, ‘Wow,’ ” said Robert T. Bigelow, the company founder. “They can’t believe the size of this thing.”

Four years from now, the company plans for real modules to be launched and assembled into the solar system’s first private space station. Paying customers — primarily nations that do not have the money or expertise to build a space program from scratch — would arrive a year later. In 2016, a second, larger station would follow. The two Bigelow stations would then be home to 36 people at a time — six times as many as currently live on the International Space Station.

It's been nearly 40 years since people last set foot on the moon, but momentum is building for a return to Earth's nearest neighbor — and for the establishment of a permanent manned presence on lunar soil.

The moon harbors large amounts of water ice, along with lots of other potentially useful compounds. These resources could theoretically support manned lunar bases, which could serve as staging grounds for further exploration of the solar system, and as proving grounds for outposts on Mars. Space.com

Russia Wants Nuclear-Powered Spaceships and Space Debris Shields

Russia has begun some ambitious space projects, including a new system to protect spacecraft from space junk and a nuclear-powered engine for future spaceships, according to Russian news reports. 

Space junk is such a risk that Russia is also reportedly developing a $2 billion spacecraft that would sweep the orbital space around Earth from satellite debris, according to China's state-run Xinhua news service and Russia's Interfax news agency.

Another project to develop nuclear-powered spaceships will also be a complex undertaking.

Officials from Russia's main space contractor, RSC Energia, said on Tuesday the company is planning to start working on space modules with nuclear-powered propulsion systems next year, and the first launches of such modules could come in 2020, according to Ria Novosti. Russia is also reportedly targeting a moon- or Mars-based nuclear power station, according to the newspaper. That station could operate for 10 to 15 years, Russian space officials said. Space.com

Mission Proposed to Send Astronauts to the Moon's Far Side

 

While NASA has officially given up its plans to send humans back to the surface of the moon anytime soon, a contractor is proposing a mission to send a crew to a stationary spot in orbit over the far side of Earth's neighbor.

The L2-Farside Mission, a mission to the moon's far side depicted here, is being championed by builder of the Orion spacecraft, Lockheed Martin Space Systems. It is seen as an intermediate step toward more challenging missions beyond low Earth orbit. Shown here is how an astronaut crew would teleoperate robots on the lunar surface.

The company says such an endeavor could sharpen skills and technologies needed for a trip to an asteroid – as well as showcase techniques useful for exploring Mars by teleoperation as astronauts orbit the red planet. Both are stated goals under the new direction for NASA outlined by President Obama. Space.com

Moon Crater Has More Water Than Parts of Earth

A frigid crater at the moon's south pole is jam-packed with water ice, with some spots wetter than Earth's Sahara desert, boosting hopes for future lunar bases. 
That's the picture painted by six new studies that analyzed the intentional moon crash of a NASA spacecraft on Oct. 9, 2009. The agency's LCROSS probe was looking for signs of water when it smashed into Cabeus crater at the moon's south pole last year, and the spacecraft found plenty of it, as scientists announced last year. 

Water ice makes up about 5.6 percent of the total mass on the floor of Cabeus — making the crater about twice as wet as Sahara Desert soil, according to LCROSS mission principal investigator Tony Colaprete.

The high concentration of water ice came as a bit of a shock to mission scientists. This moon water ice is also relatively pure, the researchers found. The original source of much of the material is likely asteroid or comet impacts, scientists said. Once they arrived, the compounds could have moved all over the lunar surface — liberated from the dirt by micrometeorite strikes or solar heating — until they hit a cold trap like Cabeus. The high concentration of water ice at the bottom of Cabeus is good news for anyone pushing for bases at the moon's poles.

Future moon-dwellers could conceivably mine such large quantities of ice efficiently. They could it process it into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen, prime ingredients of rocket fuel. And they could melt the ice down and drink it — provided they remove some of the nasty stuff, like mercury. Space.com

India Plans Moon Mission Sequel, Like China

China's second lunar spacecraft reached the moon this week, but another Asian country has moon plans of its own: India.

Like China, India is hoping to build on the success of its first moon probe — called Chandrayaan 1 — with a robotic sequel, Chandrayaan 2. The probe is slated to launch in 2013, long after China's current Chang'e 2 moon mission ends.

China launched the Chang'e 2 probe on Oct. 1. It reached the moon Wednesday (Oct. 5).

India, meanwhile, approved plans for its Chandrayaan 2 mission in August. But unlike China's new probe, which is an orbiter, Chandrayaan 2 actually includes three vehicles: an orbiter, lander and rover, the Indian Space Research Organisation said.

Russia will provide the lander, but ISRO will build the orbiter and rover, both of which will be packed with instruments, Indian space officials have said.

Chandrayaan means "moon craft" in Sanskrit. Chandrayaan 1 launched in 2008 and shut down unexpectedly in 2009, but only after playing a key role in confirming the presence of water and water ice on the moon. Space.com