Tag: European Space Agency

Categories
GeekWire

FAA suggests a marketplace for Moon Village

Moon Village
An artist’s conception shows a permanent lunar base that’s part of the European Space Agency’s “Moon Village” vision. (Credit: ESA)

GUADALAJARA, Mexico – If the world wants to create a village on the moon, the Federal Aviation Administration is willing to start up an online trading post for lunar services.

George Nield, the FAA’s associate administrator for commercial space transportation, says he doesn’t even need to wait for the village to be built.

Nield offered to set up what he called LMASS – the Lunar Marketplace and Swap Shop – during one of today’s sessions at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara.

“Think of it as a corkboard,” Nield said. The potential traders could include businesses that are working on ways to move cargo from low Earth orbit to lunar orbit, or on moon landers, or on habitats, or surface transportation, or communication services, or other technologies that will eventually be needed for lunar operations.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Long-lost lander located in a comet’s crack

Image: Philae lander
A close-up shows the 3-foot-wide Philae lander from a distance of 1.7 miles. (Credit: ESA / Rosetta / MPS for OSIRIS Team / UPD / LAM / IAA / SSO / INTA / UPM / DASP / IDA)

After almost two years’ of searching, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft has shown scientists what happened to the Philae lander when itbounced onto the surface of a comet – and why it went out of contact.

The answer to the mystery comes less than a month before the $1.4 billion Rosetta mission’s end.

Rosetta’s OSIRIS camera spotted the boxy, 3-foot-wide Philae lander stuck in a dark crack on Comet 67/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, more than 420 million miles from Earth.

The comet has been the object of Rosetta’s study since August 2014. Philae was pushed out from the main spacecraft and descended to the surface that November. The lander was supposed to beam up a stream of data about the comet’s composition. It did provide three days’ worth of data, but then the solar-powered probe fell silent.

Rosetta’s scientists determined that the lander had bounced on the surface, and spent months analyzing radio data and imagery from the main spacecraft in an attempt to figure out where it ended up. They assumed that Philae had fallen someplace dark where it couldn’t recharge its batteries.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Moon or Mars: Which will next president pick?

Image: Moon Village
An artist’s conception shows a permanent lunar base that’s part of the European Space Agency’s “Moon Village” vision. (Credit: ESA)

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Over the past eight years, the focus of NASA’s space vision has shifted from the moon, to a near-Earth asteroid, to the journey to Mars. The European Space Agency’s director-general, meanwhile, has been talking up the prospect of building a Moon Village. And one of the latest buzzwords for commercial space ventures is “cislunar” – that is, space operations in the vicinity of the moon.

What’s a future president to do?

Space policy ranks among the least prominent issues on the campaign agenda: GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump, for example, says he loves space exploration but thinks it’s more important to fix potholes on Earth. Nevertheless, leaders of the space industry say the next president will play a key role in determining the world’s future course on the final frontier.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

British astronaut gets set to run space marathon

Image: Tim Peake
British astronaut Tim Peake, shown here at the European Astronaut Center in Cologne, Germany, says he’ll run a marathon distance on the International Space Station’s T2 treadmill while thousands of others run the London Marathon on April 24. (Credit: ESA)

British astronaut Tim Peake says he’ll follow in the footsteps of NASA’s Sunita Williams by running a marathon in orbit on the International Space Station.

Peake is due to ride a Russian Soyuz craft to the station for a six-month stint on Dec. 15, which should give him plenty of zero-G training time for the London Marathon on April 24. While more than 30,000 runners make their way through the course’s 26 miles and 385 yards on Earth, Peake will run the same distance on the station’s treadmill, held down by a harness to keep him on track.

He’s running the race to raise awareness for the Prince’s Trust, a youth charity co-founded by Britain’s Prince Charles.

Get the full story on GeekWire.