Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
In September of 2017, NASA and Roscomos, the Russian counterpart to NASA, signed a joint cooperation agreement. This agreement called for collaboration on exploration of the Moon and deep space, including the development and use of the Gateway.
Part 1 of 2 Parts
I have blogged before about the NASA Gateway project to build a space station that would share the orbit of the moon and serve as a platform to the support of deep space exploration. Today I will go into more details about the NASA lunar Gateway project.
We tend to think of steam powered transportation as an antiquated technology. While we still heat water to steam and generate electricity, we have moved on to liquid fuels, electricity and even compressed air to power our vehicles. However, steam is making a comeback as a propulsion system for spacecraft.
Planetary Resources (PR) was founded in 2012. The original mission of PR was to find and mine near-Earth asteroids for valuable resources. As I mentioned in a recent post, both water and platinum group metals are thought to exist in large quantities on asteroids. Larry Page, Eric Smidt, Ross Perot Jr. and Charles Simonyi all contributed a portion of their billions of dollars to the start up.
Moon Express is a private company that was formed in the U.S. in 2010 to compete for the Lunar X Prize and eventually mine the Moon for natural resources with economic value. Last month, Moon Express was awarded a Commercial Lunar Payload Services contract by NASA. The company is now eligible to bid on delivering science and technology payload to the Moon for NASA.
The International Outer Space Treaty of 1967 states that no country can claim to have ownership of extraterrestrial territory. The treaty also said that any materials returned from space were the common property of humanity and would need to be shared with other nations.
Recently I wrote about the shortage of plutonium-238 which is used to provide power to U.S. satellites on deep space missions. Today, I am going to write about a different use of nuclear isotopes for space exploration.
Potential contamination carried by space vehicles is a major concern to the public and private space industry. Satellites and space craft components are manufactured in clear rooms to prevent the possibility of biological contamination of astronomical bodies. However, recently a new type of contamination was discovered.
There has been a lot of discussion in the media lately with respect to whether we should create a colony on the Moon first or send missions to explore and colonize Mars first. We have billionaires such as Elon Musk who are dedicated to getting human beings to Mars. National space programs have sent a lot of robot probes to Mars with a U.S. probe landing just a few days ago.
NASA is considering selling seats on the launch vehicles that will be used to ferry passengers to the International Space Station (ISS). NASA would like to have additional sources of funding beyond that provided by the U.S. government for government missions.
