From returning to the Moon to establishing outposts on Mars, NASA has the need for more power than ever before. Could nuclear fission be the solution they’ve been searching for?
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This week:
🚀 A milestone for NASA’s Orion Spacecraft 🌑 A commercial lunar payload update 👩🏾🏫 More honors for a historic icon.
These are a few of the stories to tell you about on the latest episode of This Week at NASA:
Starhopper awaits its first truly flightworthy Raptor as CEO Elon Musk says SpaceX may have solved the technical bug delaying hop tests. (NASASpaceflight — bocachicagal, SpaceX)
Last week, the LightSail 2 officially made its first contact with Earth. The solar-powered spacecraft will be sailing around Earth’s orbit for the next year, all part of a mission to prove that solar sailing is a viable mode of space exploration.
If successful, the hope is that solar sailing could be used in other spacecraft going forward, something that could allow us to explore further in space at a lower cost than is currently possible.
There are other reasons to return to the moon, however. For many space enthusiasts, its exploration and exploitation is necessary if we are to make the next giant step in space: sending people to Mars. “That is the real goal for humanity,” says Parker. “However, getting humans there safely is going to be an incredibly difficult undertaking. We will have to learn first how to conquer the moon.”
As the 50th anniversary of the first Apollo landing approaches, a host of countries are undertaking lunar missions. What’s behind the new space race?
SpaceX’s Starship, the launch system designed to carry colonists to Mars, will likely have its maiden voyage in 2021, a company executive said.
A new golden age of space exploration is upon us, with growing numbers of countries and private enterprises eager to establish themselves in space for the sake of scientific inquiry, national prestige, adventurous tourism, billionaires’ bragging rights, mineral riches, and even as a hedge against any future calamity that might devastate our home planet.
Our motivations for exploration may vary, but the spaceward rush raises questions about how we will govern ourselves beyond the bonds of Earth. Cold War-era space treaties, vague notions of how legal frameworks on Earth might migrate to settlements in space, and cautionary tales from both history and science fiction offer some guidance, but we could benefit from a larger conversation about how we want to govern them.
You know that spherical ship from 2001: A Space Odyssey that generated its own gravity by spinning around in the cosmic void? We’re not there yet, but we’re getting closer.
Microgravity can be detrimental for the human body, because our species just wasn’t made to survive in space without high-tech help. Now aerospace engineer Torin Clark and his team from CU Boulder are turning the artificial gravity tech from movies like 2001 and The Martian into a reality. While an entire ship that makes its own gravity is still light-years away, the team has managed to design a revolving contraption that could save astronauts from too much zero-G exposure.
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When they aren’t investing in space shuttles and sprawling tech campuses, the super-rich are looking at mind-blowing methods to increase their lifespan.
Analysis by commercial finance experts ABC Finance has revealed some of the strangest and most extravagant approaches billionaires have turned to in their quest for immortality.
