Last week on the 19th of February, Japan’s space agency, JAXA, moved their Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) program into the development phase, planning for a 2024 launch. This mission will seek to visit both Martian moons, Phobos and Deimos, and perform a sample-return of Phobos.
Read MorePlanned to land on the Moon in 2025, the Roscosmos Luna 27 will carry an ESA designed robotic drill and laboratory dedicated to collecting and processing volatiles from regolith. While we know ice exists within permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) at the lunar poles, little is known about the exact composition and structure. In-situ sampling is therefore essential for understanding this ice, allowing engineers to build better ice processing systems.
Read MoreNASA’s upcoming Restore-L mission will seek to service a low-Earth orbit satellite, bringing it closer to its original state. The spacecraft is planned to launch in 2023, where it will demonstrate autonomous rendezvous, refueling, repairing, and manufacturing tasks. NASA has used public-private partnerships to procure technology payloads for this mission in order to promote industry innovation at low cost.
Read MoreESA and their partners are pushing CubeSats further than they’ve ever been before. The M-ARGO (Miniaturised Asteroid Remote Geophysical Observer) mission is a 12U CubeSat that will be launched on a rideshare mission before using it’s own propulsion to visit a sub-100 meter wide asteroid. This mission will demonstrate a cost effective way to explore near-Earth asteroids (NEAs).
Read MoreA prototype plant for studying the extraction of oxygen from lunar regolith started operations recently in the Netherlands. The oxygen extraction method uses a molten salt electrolysis process to remove oxygen from regolith. This ESA based project is an enabling technology for a sustainable presence on the Moon. Being able to collect oxygen from the bountiful lunar regolith will provide a robust supply of rocket oxidizer, breathable air, and feedstock for industrial processes.
Read MoreImagine a future of transplant organs customized for each recipient, available on-demand. Instead of waiting for an organ from a donor, which could possibly take years and lead to your death due to rejection, a replacement organ could be 3D printed exactly for you. While we are not able to 3D print full organs yet, the 3D BioFabrication Facility (BFF) successfully printed a large volume of human heart cells while aboard the International Space Station (ISS), and had them recently returned to Earth.
Read MoreThe European Space Agency will be launching a debris cleaning robot in 2025. This test mission designed by ClearSpace, called ClearSpace-1, is the result of a recently signed debris removal contract with ESA. The mission will use four arms on a spacecraft to capture a 100 kg debris target, a Vespa adapter ring, which was left in an 800 km orbit after a 2013 Arianespace Vega launch of ESA’s Proba-V remote-sensing satellite. After successful capture, both the ClearSpace spacecraft and debris will re-enter and burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.
Read MoreThe UK Space Agency has a new plasma thruster in development, called Aquajet. It joins other water-based thrusters covered previously such as Bradford Space’s Comet, Tethers Unlimited’s HYDROS, and Momentus’ Vigor. Aquajet will utilize electrical current to positively charge and accelerate water ions which are then expelled from the thruster chamber at high velocity to generate thrust.
Read MoreThe Air Force wants to expand domain awareness beyond geosynchronous orbit as it becomes more crowded and competitive. They seek to develop additional capabilities for space-based assets that cut down on size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C). This continues the military’s overall trend away from “big, juicy targets”.
Read MoreHaving been in development for years, the Lunar IceCube spacecraft will soon be deployed in lunar orbit where it will map the distribution and dynamics of water on the lunar surface. NASA recently selected the IceCube mission to be one of the thirteen CubeSats deployed during the Artemis 1 mission in 2021. The data IceCube will collect is critical for planning future lunar ice mining missions, especially knowing where the water is on the Moon.
Read MoreBlue origin’s long-term vision is to have “millions of people living and working in space." As they test their New Shepherd capsule for space tourism and rapid reusability (NS-12 is the 6th flight of this particular booster), Blue Origin is partnering with various groups to fly fun and exciting experiments. Their NS-12 mission features Art in Space, a collaboration with the rock band OK Go to fly two student art projects.
Read MoreIn a talk at the SpaceCom Expo, Tom Cremins, the Associate Administrator for Strategy and Plans at NASA stated that NASA would be releasing a request for information (RFI) to industry for development of a crew capable lunar rover, to be developed in a public-private partnership.
Read MoreNASA recently announced that five new companies, including SpaceX and Blue Origin, are able to bid to provide payload delivery to the lunar surface via the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. The CLPS initiative is encouraging aerospace providers to develop innovative solutions to quickly deliver future payloads to the lunar surface. Although there are now 14 providers vying for only five current opportunities, the high competition will ensure the winning bidders can provide a technically robust solution at an affordable price and acceptable time-frame. Additional opportunities are planned but not guaranteed.
Read MoreAssembling habitats and structures in space is required for enabling a sustainable human presence in space. Instead of just docking finished modules together like on the ISS, we need to be able to bolt, weld, and cut individual components to build large structures too large or fragile to be launched from Earth. Nanoracks is working to demonstrate the first ever structural metal cutting in space.
Read MoreDeep Space Industries (DSI), a subsidiary of Bradford Space, recently formalized support to build a small engineering and manufacturing center in Belval, Luxembourg. The new center will continue developing technology required for an affordable deep-space spacecraft platform. Ideally, this platform will lower the barrier for sending missions throughout the inner Solar System.
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