Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin acknowledges that the change in tone on his Twitter account has “unfortunately resulted in an exchange or two.” (Buzz Aldrin via Twitter)
Buzz Aldrin wants people to know that he has some cool new ideas about how to get to the moon — not just because they’re cool, but also because they show his mind is working.
“That’s not an inactive, incapacitated, dependent mind,” the 88-year-old Aldrin, who became one of the first humans to walk on the moon during 1969’s Apollo 11 mission, told me today during a wide-ranging telephone interview.
That’s an issue nowadays, due to a legal fight that’s pitting Aldrin and his new business managers against two of his children and his former business manager.
An artist’s conception shows a spacecraft that incorporates a solar electric propulsion system. (NASA Illustration)
NASA has laid out its plan for acquiring the first piece of its successor to the International Space Station, an outpost known as the Gateway that will be stationed in lunar orbit.
A draft solicitation, published today, calls for commercial partners to build one or more candidates to serve as the Gateway’s power and propulsion element, with launch set for 2022.
The Power and Propulsion Element would have a high-power, 50-kilowatt solar electric propulsion system capable of maintaining the Gateway’s position and moving it between different lunar orbits as needed. The spacecraft would also serve as the Gateway’s communications hub.
There’s be an in-space flight demonstration of the commercial spacecraft, lasting for up to a year. Then NASA could exercise an option to acquire one spacecraft for use as the first element of the Gateway.
The moon passes right across Earth’s disk in an image captured on July 16, 2015, by the DSCOVR satellite from its observation point, a million miles out in space. DSCOVR’s Earth-observing mission had been threatened with cancellation, but NASA’s chief has signaled that it will continue. (NASA / NOAA Photo)
A newly released survey from Pew Research Center suggests that Americans still strongly support the space program, 60 years after NASA’s founding, but that they’re more interested in Earth science than exploration beyond Earth orbit.
That’s a turnabout from the broad strokes of White House policy, which has tried to downplay Earth observation and talk up the idea of sending Americans to the moon and Mars.
Despite that dissonance, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine welcomed the findings from Pew Research Center’s survey. When reporters told him that 63 percent said monitoring key parts of Earth’s climate system should be a top priority for NASA, Bridenstine reportedly answered, “Good.”
An artist’s conception shows Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar lander. (Blue Origin Illustration)
Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is among 10 teams that will share about $10 million in NASA funding to look into techniques for using resources from the moon and Mars.
The studies are aimed at advancing technologies for in-situ resource utilization, or ISRU.
Such technologies could, for example, make use of ice in lunar soil to produce drinkable water, breathable oxygen and rocket propellants for refueling spacecraft. To cite another example, carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere could contribute to the production of methane fuel.
Relying on ISRU resource processing would reduce the amount of fuel and supplies that’d have to be launched from Earth for missions heading to the moon, Mars or other space destinations.
An artist’s conception shows Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar lander. (Blue Origin Illustration)
LOS ANGELES — Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos says his Blue Origin space venture will work with NASA as well as the European Space Agency to create a settlement on the moon.
And even if Blue Origin can’t strike public-private partnerships, Bezos will do what needs to be done to make it so, he said here at the International Space Development Conference on May 25.
Bezos laid out his vision for lunar settlement during a fireside chat with yours truly, which took place just after he received the National Space Society’s Gerard K. O’Neill Memorial Award.
Astronaut Alan Bean poses for a portrait in front of a mockup of NASA’s lunar module in advance of his Apollo 12 moon mission in 1969. (NASA Photo)
Artist-astronaut Alan Bean, the moonwalker who saw himself as different from the rest, died today at the age of 86 at Houston Medical Hospital.
Bean’s death followed a sudden illness that befell him two weeks earlier during a trip to Fort Wayne, Ind., for a school fundraising event.
He became the fourth human to walk on the moon during the Apollo 12 mission in November 1969, exploring Oceanus Procellarum alongside the late astronaut Pete Conrad. Bean also commanded the second crewed flight to Skylab, America’s first space station, in 1973.
“Alan was the strongest and kindest man I ever knew. He was the love of my life, and I miss him dearly,” Leslie Bean, his wife of 40 years, said in a statement released by NASA and the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. “A native Texan, Alan died peacefully in Houston surrounded by those who loved him.”
China today launched a satellite that will serve as the communications relay for a future probe on the moon’s far side. The satellite, dubbed Queqiao(Chinese for “Magpie Bridge”), lifted off from the Xichang Launch Center in southwest China atop a Long March 4C rocket at 5:28 a.m. local time May 21 (2:28 p.m. PT today).
The Lunar Library will be stored as microfiche images etched on stamp-sized squares of nickel. A dime is set among the squares to provide a sense of scale. (Arch Mission Foundation Photo)
The Arch Mission Foundation is partnering with Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic to have a miniaturized library sent to the moon’s surface aboard a lunar lander in 2020.
The Lunar Library will include a wide range of works — including the contents of Wikipedia and the Long Now Foundation’s Rosetta Project, a library of the world’s languages. The text will be printed on 20-micron-thick, stamp-sized sheets of nickel, using a laser etching technique that can produce letters as small as bacteria. (You’d need a 1000x optical microscope to read the pages, but you wouldn’t need a computer.)
“We’re thrilled the Arch Mission Foundation has selected Astrobotic. It’s humbling to think our mission to the moon will deliver something that could be read millions of years from now,” Astrobotic CEO John Thornton said today in a news release. “Arch’s Lunar Library will be a monument not only to human knowledge and culture, but also the first commercial mission to the moon.”
In response, NASA pledged today that “selected instruments from Resource Prospector will be landed and flown on the moon” as part of an expanded robotic campaign that will make use of commercial landers and rovers.
The tumult over the $250 million mission comes as Bridenstine and the White House’s National Space Council are ramping up their back-to-the-moon campaign. Resource Prospector appears to have been caught up in that campaign’s fast-moving paradigm shifts.
Less than a week after the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize officially expired, its organizers say they’re relaunching it as a non-cash competition to put a privately funded lander on the moon.
They’re also looking for a new sponsor to lend its name, and a fresh promise of pecuniary rewards, to what’s currently known as the Lunar XPRIZE.
XPRIZE’s founder and executive chairman Peter Diamandis said he was “extraordinarily grateful to Google” for funding the original competition between September 2007 and March 31, 2018.
“While that competition is now over, there are at least five teams with launch contracts that hope to land on the lunar surface in the next two years,” he said today in a news release. “Because of this tremendous progress, and near-term potential, XPRIZE is now looking for our next visionary title sponsor who wants to put their logo on these teams and on the lunar surface.”
The new sponsor would be responsible for putting up one or more contingent purses for the competition’s winners, XPRIZE said. In the meantime, XPRIZE will define new parameters for companies to compete for the prize.
