Researchers at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the European Space Agency have published a paper in in the November 2018 Acta Astronautica demonstrating the feasibility of using solar energy to sinter lunar regolith in additive manufacturing. The in-situ resource utilization technique can be used to automate building roads and shielding lunar habitats prior to arrival of astronauts. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576518303874
Space Access Society 2019 April 19 – 21
Day 1 – The Entrepreneurial Revolution In Smallsat Launch
http://space-access.org/updates/sa2019schedule.html#Thursday
Day 2 – Reusable Rocket Transport Networks in Earth-Moon (and Mars, and Nearby Asteroids) Space
http://space-access.org/updates/sa2019schedule.html#Friday
Day 3 – After Rockets, Getting There Faster: High Energy Propulsion Possibilities
http://space-access.org/updates/sa2019schedule.html#Saturday
Stratolaunch takes flight
Scaled Composites makes aviation history by flying the worlds largest wingspan aircraft:
SpaceIL scores $1 million Moonshot award from X-PRIZE Foundation
Although crash landing after failure of its main engine, Beresheet still shines after an unplanned disassembly on the lunar surface https://www.xprize.org/prizes/google-lunar/articles/xprize-awards-1m-moonshot-award-to-spaceil
Update: President of SpaceIL Morris Khan announces on Twitter a second attempt to send a lander to the moon: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23IsraeltotheMoon&src=hashhttps://twitter.com/search?q=%23IsraeltotheMoon&src=hash
Update: Peter Diamandis reflects on the SpaceIL mission: https://www.diamandis.com/blog/reflections-on-spaceil-mission
Space debris removal company Astroscale secures $30 million
The Japanese company announced the new tranche of funding this week at the 35 Space Symposium
https://spacenews.com/astroscale-raises-30-million-opens-u-s-office-in-denver/
Lunar settlement design – engineering solutions for environmental challenges
Dr. Haym Benaroya summarizes some of the key concerns in a paper published in the journal Reviews in Human Space Exploration (REACH). For initial outposts and eventual permanent lunar settlements the important factors to be addressed for dwellings on the Moon include radiation mitigation, micrometeoroid protection, hazards from lunar dust toxicity and psychological well-being. The paper was published in December of 2017 and is provided by the author’s permission.
The paper provides an introduction to these concerns, but a more thorough treatment of all of the engineering challenges can be found in Dr. Benaroya’s book “Building Habitats on the Moon: Engineering Approaches to Lunar Settlements.”
https://www.amazon.com/Building-Habitats-Moon-Engineering-Settlements/dp/3319682423
Lunar Propellant Production Plan
A collaborative effort by a team of experts from industry, government, and academia has developed an economically viable model for a sustainable lunar propellant production infrastructure to support lunar settlement and cis-lunar operations. The team’s findings were published in the March issue of REACH (link below). To reduce costs and weight, the proposal replaces conventional mining equipment for excavating, hauling, and processing with lightweight heating enclosures to extract water by sublimation out of the regolith for subsequent electrolysis into hydrogen an oxygen. The study established feasibility and a path to commercialization. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352309318300099#aep-article-footnote-id1
New deep space exploration start-up First Mode exits stealth status, is profitable after only one year of operations
The fledgling company has a well connected multi-disciplinary team to solve engineering problems on Earth and in deep space. https://firstmode.com/blog/press-release-first-mode-exits-stealth-status
Pristine Apollo 17 lunar core sample to be finally analyzed after 47 years
To help inform lunar exploration plans set to begin in the next few years by robotic probes and then when humans return to the Moon in the 2020s, a long dormant core sample collected by astronauts in 1972 may reveal secrets of how the Taurus-Littrow Valley formed and the distribution of volatiles in the soil. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00963-8?bcmt=1