David Willis claims that SpaceX is iterating on the design of the Lunar Human Landing system Starship with large solar panels. The solar panels would fold out and deploy from within the Starship. The moon has 1400 watts per square meter of solar power. Solar energy collection on the moon would be about 25% efficient. …
The Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1) will help scientists search for water at the lunar South Pole, and will be the first in-situ resource utilization demonstration on the Moon. PRIME-1, which will be mounted to a lunar lander, is made up of two components – The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain …
Critical challenges and technology development for colonizing and developing the moon are being performed. This includes getting oxygen, water, and metals like Aluminum from the lunar soil. There is In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) related to water-ice and other materials in lunar Permanent Shadowed Regions (PSRs) and extracting O2 and metals (or metalloids) from regolith in …
What became DARPA helped create the Internet standards that become the commercial internet and ecommerce and now DARPA is coordinating standards and efforts to commercialize the moon. A robust lunar economy within the next decade is coming quickly into focus. It’s clear that many shareable, scalable commercial systems will be needed to support a future …
The suspended dust generated when lunar rovers move across the lunar soil is a significant risk for lunar missions as it can affect the systems of the exploration vehicles. One solution to mitigate this problem is the construction of roads and landing pads on the Moon. 12 kilowatt laser(s) have melted simulated regolith in the …
The NY Times discussed the NASA funding of Icon to send 3D printers to the moon for the construction of buildings. NASA scientists are currently working to perfect a replica of lunar concrete. In the first half of 2024, NASA plans to test ICON’s printers. “If you can survive our [vacuum] chambers, then you’re very …
Rolls Royce has made nuclear reactors for submarines and is in the second year of a micro nuclear fission reactor design effort. They will use encapsulated uranium fuel aka a pebble bed nuclear reactor. It will have heat pipes to move the heat from the core. The full sized reactor model and design will be …
Hypertelescope capable of direct high-resolution imaging with a high limiting magnitude have been built and tested on Earth. The Hypertelescope group have proposed giant telescopes 10-25 kilometers across in lunar impact craters. Many small mirrors can be dilutely arrayed in a lunar impact crater spanning 10 to 25km. The light from two Keck telescopes were …
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa planetary scientist Shuai Li, led research that high energy electrons in Earth’s plasma sheet (part of the magnetosphere) are contributing to weathering processes on the Moon’s surface and the electrons may have aided the formation of water on the lunar surface. “To my surprise, the remote sensing observations showed that …
Here is a video of the Indian rover on the south pole of the moon. Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, …
One hour into Angry Astronauts livestream there was a readout of a successful touchdown of the Indian lunar lander. It successfully landed at the moon’s south pole. Congratulations to India which joins the USA, China and Soviet Union as countries that had successful unmanned lunar landing missions to the moon. The Chandrayaan programme (Indian Lunar …