NASA has announced the details for its next annual Human Exploration Rover Challenge. The competition's registration is now open to student teams located in the US, giving budding engineers and designers the chance to build their own lightweight rover and demonstration its suitability for exploring other worlds. Some of the teams may win awards for their work.
NASA has published a new request for information that seeks lunar vehicle ideas from American companies. The space agency is specifically interested in a type of Moon-based vehicle that will be able to transport astronauts to the lunar South Pole, doing so while navigating the unique terrain and long, cold nights found on our moon.
NASA has its sights set on the Moon in a big way, but establishing a more permanent presence on the lunar surface will require a variety of new technology. One issue that must be addressed is water; though the Moon is home to icy water reserves, astronauts will need a way to harvest the substance as a useable resource. As it tends to do, NASA offered money in exchange for concepts from teams around the US -- and now it is back with the winners.
One of the significant challenges of missions to the moon is dealing with the fine and powdery lunar regolith on the moon's surface. NASA found during the Apollo era that the lunar regolith stuck to everything, and it was very difficult to remove. In preparation for putting humans back on the moon's surface in the future, NASA is conducting research looking for various methods to deal with the lunar regolith.
NASA's upcoming Dragonfly mission will send a spacecraft to Titan, the intriguing Saturn moon that researchers have described as an 'explorer's utopia.' A newly published study has detailed the broad mission objectives the Dragonfly team will focus on, noting that the planned exploration goals are broad at this time because so much about the moon remains a mystery.
Rocket Lab is a company that uses small rockets to place light payloads into orbit using the Electron launch vehicle. The company has announced that it will be launching a mission for NASA to the moon from its launch site in New Zealand. Currently, the launch is scheduled to happen sometime in Q4 2021.
All of the samples from the moon that researchers worldwide study today were gathered during the Apollo era. The lunar samples seen in the image below were gathered by Apollo 16 in 1972. The samples are of lunar glass and were tested by scientists at the University of Rochester.
Early in the development of the moon, it was covered in an ocean of magma that covered its entire surface. Over time, that magma cooled and solidified with more dense material sinking to form the mantle layer, with the less dense material floating to the top forming the crust. The moon has been subjected to intense bombardment by asteroids and comets over its lifetime, some of which were able to pierce the crust and blasts pieces of the mantle from the moon's interior, and scatter them across its surface.
Decades-old images from the Apollo missions have cast new light - or, more accurately, new shadow - on NASA's hunt for water on the Moon, potentially paving the way to Artemis astronauts being more self-sufficient in a future lunar base. Although the Moon is usually thought of as dry and desolate, patches of water ice are believed to be present at the poles. New research, however, indicates that ice may be even more widespread.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of private space company Blue Origin, has penned an open letter to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson that talks about a recent controversy involving the agency and SpaceX while offering a new proposal: it'll cover up to $2 billion to get back into the Artemis program. As well, the company is offering to take on the burden of significant costs above the $2 billion figure.
NASA is currently working on putting a new lunar rover on the moon's surface, and part of that work is developing a map of where exactly the rover will travel. Knowing where the rover will drive is critically important to help avoid obstacles and get the rover close enough to objects of interest to perform its mission. VIPER, or Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, is part of the NASA Artemis program.
NASA may be taking astronauts back to the Moon, but it's the orbiting Gateway which will act as a space AirBnB for Artemis. A newly finalized deal will see Northrop Grumman develop the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO), a home away from home for astronauts and what's expected to be an instrumental part of future missions including NASA's first crewed trip to Mars.