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       The International Space Station is a habitable artificial satellite in low Earth orbit. The first component for the station was launched in 1998 and the last pressurized module was incorporated in 2011. Components are still being launched to be added to the ISS. The ISS is supposed to be in use until at least 2028.
       “The ISS serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which crew members conduct experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and other fields.”
        The ISS program is a joint project among five participating space agencies: the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Russia’s Roscosmos, Japan’s Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
      The U.S. Trump Administration budget submitted last February called on NASA to end direct federal funding for the ISS by 2025 in order to free up funds for future NASA projects. At this time, NASA spends between $3 billion and $4 billion each year as its share of ISS operating expenses. Rather than cancel U.S. participating altogether, NASA proposed turning over operation of the ISS to commercial companies. A government auditor has just reported that it is unlikely that any commercial company could afford the huge operating costs of the ISS within the next six years.
        NASA’s Inspector General, Paul Martin, appeared before a Senate space subcommittee hearing on May 16th to share his concerns about the planned ISS transition. The hearing was chaired by Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Bill Nelson.  Martin said that there is just no “sufficient business case” that could be made for a space industry company to take over the ISS’s annual operating budget which is expected to reach $1.2 billion by 2024. Industries such as space research and development and space tourism have not yet taken off. The private space industry is not very interested in using the ISS for research or profit. Martin said, “Candidly, the scant commercial interest shown in the station over its nearly 20 years of operation gives us pause about the agency’s current plans.”
       Martin went on to say that transitioning the ISS to the private sector would probably not save NASA much money. NASA would still continue to launch astronauts and cargo to the ISS and return astronauts and cargo back to Earth. Launching payloads into low Earth orbit is not cheap. In fiscal year 2018, NASA spent $1.7 billion on transportation to and from the ISS. So, ending direct federal funding of the ISS will not free up $3 billion to $4 billion as might be expected.
       Martin said that there was an obvious alternative for NASA. The U.S. should extend federal funding beyond 2024 which is the year that the ISS programs budget is scheduled to end. Martin pointed out that many of NASA research goals for the ISS will not be completed by 2024. If funding is extended, then NASA will be able to finish its current research projects. Boeing built most of the ISS and says that the ISS should be able to last until 2028 without the need for major maintenance.
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       The AMF has already sent archived text into space. When Elon Musk launched his Tesla Roadster into space, the entire text of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy was inscribed on tiny digital storage devices called Archs and placed into the Roadster before launch. This series of novels inspired many readers to choose careers in the social and physical sciences.
        Space is a very harsh environment and storing data safely for the long term is difficult. There are bursts of intense radiation that could damage just about any storage media. Temperatures vary over such an extreme range that storage media could be damaged and corrupted. For the Roadster launch, the mineral quartz was chosen as the storage media. The AMF used a laser to burn tiny holes into small quartz disks about the size of a U.S. quarter to create what is called 5D optical storage. Beyond the three spatial dimensions, 5D storage also utilizes the size of the hole and its shape to encode information.
      For the Peregrine project, the AMF chose the element nickel for the storage media. Squares of pure nickel that are thinner than a human hair and about the size of a postage stamp will be used. Spivack says, “Nickel is an element that doesn’t corrode, lasts basically forever in space, and cosmic rays won’t hurt it.” Lasers will etch the information into the surfaces of the sheets of nickel. Each sheet can hold up to sixteen thousand pages of text. The text on the sheets can be read with any 1000X optical microscope. As many as fifty million pages of text will be sent on the Peregrine.
      The AMF intends to send additional archives to the Moon as time passes. They are also going to create a Mars Library and additional libraries for other locations in the Solar System. They want to distribute such archives as widely as possible to increase the chances that they will survive far into the future. Eventually, the AMF intends to connect Arch Libraries through a “decentralized read-write data sharing network that spans the Solar System.”
       The AMF says that there will also be a way for the public to get involved and help choose what is sent. They will allow people to make donations to have specific information included in the Archives. They have also promised that they will not exert any censorship over the information that people want to include. The AMF says that the reason that they are not emphasizing science and technology in their data sets is because they assume that any aliens with sufficiently advanced technology to get to our solar system from a planet around another star would have scientific and technical knowledge far above ours. It is also assumed that they would be most interested in our cultures.
       Alien cultures may chose to immortalize their cultures and knowledge by creating something like the Archs from the AMF. One possibility would be to create self-replicating archival spacecraft which would travel to other star systems and create more copies of themselves to spread their information further. It is estimated that such a plan could see every star in the Milky Way visited within ten million years. Perhaps such archives exist in our solar systems just waiting to be discovered.

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       Sometimes societies make a deliberate effort to collect and preserve their cultural knowledge. Once in a while, we find caches of hidden documents such as the Dead Sea scrolls left by a religious community two thousand years ago in caves in the Middle East. There are also “time capsules” left from time to time with samples of cultural artifacts. Then there are the statues, buildings, monuments, and inscriptions left from past civilizations. Now some people are concerned about preserving information from the present age for civilizations yet to come or perhaps visiting aliens.
       The Arch Mission Foundation is a non-profit organization founded in 2015 by Nova Spivack and Nick Slavin.  Its goal is to “…create multiple redundant repositories of human knowledge around the Solar System, including on Earth.” It also hopes that its effort to establish archives of our present culture in locations off Earth will stimulate interest in space exploration. Its mission statement says that it is going to create, “…multiple Arch libraries intended to preserve and disseminate humanity’s knowledge across time and space for the benefit of future generations”.
        Nova Spivack, one of the founders says, “We thought of this project to archive human civilization around the Solar System — to create a permanent off-site backup of all our cultural achievements. So, our knowledge, our art, our languages, our history — all the stuff the human mind has produced. The idea is that these archives could last for millions to billions of years in space, where they might be found and read by future humans.”
        Astrobotic Technology is a startup company in the burgeoning space industry founded in 2008 by Carnegie Mellon professor Red Whittaker and his associates. The original purpose of AT was to compete in the Google Lunar X prize contest.  AT is developing space robotics for planetary missions. They want to be the first delivery service for the Moon. AT is developing a variety of robots that will be able to land payloads on the Moon. They are also building lunar rovers for delivery and exploration. AT’s first mission will be a lunar lander called the Peregrine. Circumstances permitting, the Peregrine will be taken to the Moon by an Atlas V launch vehicle around 2025.
       The Arch Foundation will send millions of tiny sheets of metal inscribed with Wikipedia entries and other information packed into a special cylinder aboard the Peregrine. Millions of the hair-thin sheets will fit in a package about the size of a compact disk.
       John Thornton, the CEO of the AMF, said, “It’s humbling to think our mission to the Moon will deliver something that could be read millions of years from now,” John Thornton, AT’s CEO, said in a statement. “Arch’s Lunar Library will be a monument not only to human knowledge and culture, but also the first commercial mission to the Moon.”
       Spivac says that their archive will include Wikipedia articles in other languages. The Long Now’s Rosetta Project, which is a digital library of over fifteen hundred different languages will also be included. During the next year, the AMF will announce other information that will be included in the package sent to the Moon.
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       The exploration of Mars has taken place either in orbit or on the surface. So far, the vehicles that have been sent to Mars and landed on the surface have been wheeled. They have had to navigate across a rough landscape, avoiding many obstacles. Thus, they have been confined to areas which are mostly open and flat.
       NASA has announced that a Martian helicopter will be bundled with a Mars Rover that is going to be launched in July of 2020 and land on Mars in February 2021. The purpose of the Helicopter is to demonstrate the feasibility of deploying heavier than air craft to Mars.
       The Martian Helicopter project began in August of 2013 at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The team spent four years designing and testing the Helicopter. 
        Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate said, “Exploring the Red Planet with NASA’s Mars Helicopter exemplifies a successful marriage of science and technology innovation and is a unique opportunity to advance Mars exploration for the future. After the Wright Brothers proved 117 years ago that powered, sustained, and controlled flight was possible here on Earth, another group of American pioneers may prove the same can be done on another world.”
       The Martian Helicopter is the size of a softball and weights about four pounds. It has been designed to fly in the atmosphere of Mars which is one one hundredth the density of the Earth’s atmosphere.. The Helicopter has two blades that will spin at about three thousand revolutions per minute which is about ten times faster than the blades of an Earth helicopter spin. The Helicopter contains solar cells to charge lithium ion batteries and a heating mechanism to keep it warm during the Martian nights when the temperature can drop to -225 degrees Fahrenheit.
        There will be thirty days dedicated to tests for the Helicopter. The Rover will carry the Helicopter to a good place to take off and, after dropping off the Helicopter, will retreat to a safe distance. For the first flight, the Helicopter will climb to about ten feet and hover for thirty seconds. Five flights will take the Helicopter further and further up to a few hundred meters and durations of up to ninety seconds.
        NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said, “The idea of a helicopter flying the skies of another planet is thrilling. The Mars Helicopter holds much promise for our future science, discovery, and exploration missions to Mars.”
       Although the Martian Helicopter is technically a drone because no one is riding in it, it was decided to refer to it as a helicopter. The distance from Earth to Mars varies from about thirty-four million miles to about sixty-three million miles. This is two far away to control the Martian Helicopter remotely, so it will have to use artificial intelligence to guide its own flight.
       The project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said, “The altitude record for a helicopter flying here on Earth is about 40,000 feet. When our helicopter is on the Martian surface, it’s already at the Earth equivalent of 100,000 feet up.”
       NASA is referring to the Martian Helicopter mission as “high risk”. In a statement, a NASA spokesperson said, “If it does not work, the Mars 2020 mission will not be impacted. If it does work, helicopters may have a real future as low-flying scouts and aerial vehicles to access locations not reachable by ground travel.”

       Space Exploration Technologies is an private U.S.  aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the stated mission of reducing space transportation costs and enabling the colonization of Mars. SpaceX has developed the Falcon family of launch vehicles and the Dragon family of spacecraft. They have pioneered the soft landing and reuse of their launch vehicles. Currently, SpaceX is delivering supplies to the International Space Station under a contract with NASA.
       When SpaceX was developing ways to make their Falcon 9 rocket more powerful, one of the ideas they came up with was to keep the propellant at super-cold temperatures. This would reduce the volume of the propellent and allow more to be packed into the tanks on the rocket.
       Some safety experts have criticized this idea because they say that it carries major risks. In order to untilize such super-cold propellent, it would have to be loaded into the rocket just before launch. If it were a manned flight, the astronauts would already be aboard the rocket. Any accident or spark during fueling could lead to an   explosion.
       Because of these possibilities, some members of Congress and NASA safety experts have expressed concerns about SpaceX implementing their super-cold propellent concept. NASA and SpaceX are preparing to launch people into orbit on Falcon spacecraft as early as this year. A NASA advisory group said that the new fueling method was “contrary to booster safety criteria that has been in place for over 50 years.”
      NASA’s worries about astronaut safety peaked in September of 2016 when a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blew up during fueling for an engine test. No on was injured but a very expensive satellite was lost in the explosion. This pointed out the possible danger of having astronauts aboard a spacecraft while it was being fueled.
       NASA is not the only member of the space industry to be worried about SpaceX’s fuel loading plans. John Mulholland oversees Boeing’s contract to fly astronaut to the ISS. He once worked on the space shuttle. He said, that the late fuel loading plan which is called “load-and-go” was rejected by NASA because “we never could get comfortable with the safety risks that you would take with that approach. When you’re loading densified propellants, it is not an inherently stable situation.”
       Musk is a flamboyant entrepreneur who is willing to take risks in the high-stakes game of space exploration. He has problems with the bureaucratic system in place at NASA. Some people believe that the agency became too paranoid and cautious following the two shuttle disasters in which fourteen astronauts lost their lives. Those who support SpaceX and Musk’s risk taking say that tradition and old ways of thinking are the enemies of innovation and are impeding the exploration of space.
       A professor at the University of Southern California who served on the Trump transition team said that “NASA is supposed to be a risk-taking organization. But every time we would mention accepting risk in human spaceflight, the NASA people would say, ‘But, oh, you have to remember the scar tissue’ — and they were talking about the two shuttle disasters. They seemed to have become victims of the past and unwilling to try anything new, because of that scar tissue.”
       A former NASA acting administrator said that NASA and the whole society in the U.S. has become too risk adverse. He recently said “I worry, to be perfectly honest, if we would have ever launched Apollo in our environment here today if Buzz [Aldrin] and Neil [Armstrong] would have ever been able to go to the moon in the risk environment we have today.”

       One of the big problems for spacecraft in the coldness of space is heat. Whatever parts of the spacecraft are exposed to the direct light of the Sun will begin to heat up. There is also the problem of heat in the spacecraft that needs to be radiated away.
       Spacecraft are protected from overheating by metamaterial optical solar reflectors. The meta-OSRs are the outermost layer of the coating on the outside of the spacecraft. They are designed to efficiently radiate away infrared heat generated by the spacecraft while also reflecting most of the optical part of the solar spectrum.
      The meta-OSRs are very important to the spacecrafts ability to control heat. They are glued to the external skin of the radiators. The current meta-OSRs are usually quartz tiles that effectively combine thermos-optical properties with the ability to survive in the harsh environment of space. Unfortunately, quartz tiles are both fragile and heavy. They increase assembly and launch costs substantially. They also cannot be added to a curved surface. 
       Other commercial solutions to deal with heat on spacecraft have been based on polymer foils which quickly degrade. They do not usually last more than five years and are thus unsuitable for long missions.
      Now a team from the University of Southampton in the U.K. has developed a new meta-OSR. They employ a metal oxide which is commonly used for transparent electrical contacts. In the new meta-OSRs, the metal oxide is formed into a metamaterial pattern with a strong infrared emissivity and a low absorption of the optical solar spectrum. The team has also developed a “smart” radiator based on their new metamaterial design. This smart radiator permits the radiative cooling of the spacecraft to be tuned. It utilizes a different metal oxide.
        Professor Otto Muskens, from the University of Southampton and principal investigator of the study, said: “The meta-OSR technology is entirely based on durable and space-approved inorganic coatings, which can be applied onto flexible thin-film substances with the potential to be developed as a new technology solution.  Since the assembly and launch costs of OSRs is several tens of thousands of US dollars per square meter, even small improvements in weight reduction can make a significant change to the space industry.”
       The study was part of a two-year Horizon 2020 space technology project. The University of Southampton is a member of the META-REFLECTOR consortium. The Italian Centro Ricerche Elettro-Ottiche, the Danish nanoimprint developer NIL Technology and Thales Alenia Space are also members of the consortium.
       The journal ACS Photonics published two reports on the work of the consortium. They are ‘VO2 Thermochromic Metamaterial-Based Smart Optical Solar Reflector’ and ‘Metasurface optical solar reflectors using AZO transparent conducting oxides for radiative cooling of spacecraft’.
       Doctor Kai Sun from the University of Southampton said, “All of the partners have actively worked together to ensure the design and fabrication are suitable for its transfer to mass-production. It is an exceptional research experience to transfer the cutting-edge research idea to a commercial product.”
      The Southampton team is currently working on expanding the prototypes to larger areas through the use of processes developed by NIL Technology. First space tests of the new meta-OSR are in preparation.
       Doctor Sandro Mengali at CREO said: “Passive control of the thermal emissivity is important to preserve precious heat during start-up and eclipses and to maintain the temperature stability of the spacecraft. Currently, thermal emissivity control requires bulky mechanical components such as louvers, which are extremely expensive and prone to failure, posing significant risk to missions. The smart meta-OSR technology will offer a valuable new tool for thermal engineers of spacecraft, of particular importance for the lightweight segment of the satellite market.”