Cutting-edge technology enabling settlement of the solar system and beyond – Art by Rick Guidice / NASA
cislunar infrastructure
The spinning dual-sphere orbital colony would house 200 settlers completely shielded by asteroid material and under 1G artificial gravity. The business case is promising if launch costs come down to $300/kg. The new paper was just posted on the NSS Space Settlement Journal, an open access journal chuck full of papers on space settlement enabling technologies.
Since the USSR launched Sputnik in 1957, the number of satellites in LEO has grown leading to an increasing threat of collisions. The Space Safety Coalition, a confederation of voluntary participants, has established a set of guidelines to mitigate the risk of interruption of vital space services that could arise if collisions occur. The SSC published the Best Practices for the Sustainability of Space Operations in September 2019 with 42 recommendations affecting not only the design of spacecraft but on-orbit procedures to ensure long term safety and sustainability.
The San Francisco based company will use the $250,000 award to test its docking system toward commercialization of satellite refueling
The University of Southern California’s Department of Astronautical Engineering has just published the final report of Dr. Madhu Thangavelu’s, course ASTE 527 Space Concepts Studio, the theme of which features the MAXIM architecture proposed for NASA’s Artemis program for return of humans to the moon. Be sure and watch the recorded presentation of the report which features the classic video “Wanderers” with commentary written and narrated by Carl Sagan. The class is held each fall and has an archive of each year’s reports, an excellent repository of creative concepts for space development.
Satellite manufacturers and launch companies are leveraging 3D printing to reduce costs enabling cheaper access to space
A nostalgic view from 1991 brought to you by my old newsletter Space Colonization Progress. Ahhhh memories!
Update: all issues of SCP are now available on the Vintage page
The latest from SatSure on the rise of Newspace over the last decade, productizing geospatial analytics, investment strategies and more
As reported in Space Daily, Orbion will deliver its Aurora Hall-effect thrusters to power Xplore’s space vehicle called Xcraft to explore the inner solar system.
Here’s how to triple the stay time on the lunar surface with no increase in cost
“Manufacturing” says Made in Space CEO Andrew Rush as quoted in the Jacksonville Daily Record. “You need a reason to go. Every frontier we’ve ever opened as a people was because there was an economic reason for us to go and live and work in that place … That’s what we think is the missing piece in space exploration, . . . that economically-focused motivator to go and innovate and do new things.”