NASA Advanced Concepts has funded research for a high performance spacesuit for future Mars Astronauts. Dr. Bonnie Dunbar is a former NASA astronaut and is now a professor of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M. Some of her fellow astronauts couldn’t fit in an Extra Vehicular Activity suit – more commonly known as a spacesuit. Her …
Elon Musk had a Starship and Heavy Booster update. The SpaceX Super Heavy Booster will be eventually flown every hour. It will boost for two minutes and return in four minutes and refuel in 30 minutes. The SpaceX Starships that go to orbit will be flown every 6 to 8 hours. They will have to …
China is developing a megawatt nuclear reactor for moon and Mars missions according to the South China Morning Post. Jiang Jieqiong, a professor with the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Nuclear Safety Technology, has suggested that the nuclear reactor could use a foldable structure – similar to an umbrella – to increase the surface …
Tesla had an employee all hands meetings. It had several interesting leaks. Elon Musk said he may go to Mars in 10 years. • Elon is maybe going to Mars in about 10 years he said — Sawyer Merritt 📈🚀 (@SawyerMerritt) September 3, 2021 Gigafactory Berlin is getting approval for production in October. I'm just …
Rocket Labs will launch a NASA mission to Mars. The Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission will orbit two Rocket Lab-built Photon spacecraft around Mars to understand the structure, composition, variability, and dynamics of Mars’ unique hybrid magnetosphere. The mission will also support crewed exploration programs like Artemis through improved solar storm …
Elon Musk has said each SpaceX Starship should last for 25-30 years which mean they would be able to make about 12 missions between Earth and Mars. When will Starship production become cost effective? Booster 20? Booster 200? — SPEXcast (@SPEXcast) August 14, 2021 Starship will be crushingly cost-effective for Earth orbit or moon missions …
UC Riverside engineers have developed a catalyst to remove a dangerous chemical from water on Earth that could also make Martian soil safer for agriculture and help produce oxygen for human Mars explorers. Perchlorate, a negative ion consisting of one chlorine atom bonded to four oxygen atoms, occurs naturally in some soils on Earth, and …
China has become the third country in the world to safely land a rover on Mars. The United States and the former Soviet Union were the first two countries to land rovers and Mars mission. “The scientific research team confirmed via the telemetry signal sent by the Zhu Rong Mars rover that on May 15, …
There appears to be are images that researchers claim is life on Mars. Images taken by NASA’s Opportunity and Curiosity rovers as well as the agency’s HiRISE high-resolution camera attached to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter look a lot like Fungi on Earth. Fungi can live in extreme radiation. The researchers cannot completely rule out minerals, …
Elon Musk is getting a lot of media coverage when he repeated his statement that it will be very risky for the first people who go to Mars. This is an obvious statement of fact. I heard radio hosts at KGO 810 radio talking about this statement with great surprise. The hosts were disparaging of …
A turtle carries its own habitat. While reliable, it costs energy in transporting mass. NASA makes the same trade-off when it transports habitats and other structures needed for human and other applications on lunar and planetary surfaces “on the back” of its missions. During Phase 1, NASA Ames Research Center identified a novel biology-based solution …
