I have posted about a number of different propulsion systems for spacecraft. Currently it can take years to carry out missions to the outer solar system. Now there is a new concept being explored that would use the mechanism behind solar flares to speed up the exploration of space.
     Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory Principal Research Physicist Fatima Ebrahimi is the concept’s inventor and author of a paper detailing the idea in the Journal of Plasma Physics. She has been working on her propulsion concept for years. In 2017, she was thinking about the PPPL National Spherical Torus Experiment. She said, “During its operation, this tokamak produces magnetic bubbles called plasmoids that move at around 20 kilometers per second, which seemed to me a lot like thrust.”
     Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the stars. It combines light elements in the form of a charge gas called a plasma to generate enormous amounts of energy. Scientists are currently researching fusion in order to create commercial nuclear fusion power generators to power our civilization.
      Researchers have developed space propulsion systems that utilize a plasma to generate thrust. Charged particles are accelerated and sent into space behind the rocket. Unfortunately, these plasma propulsion systems can only produce low speed or specific impulse. PPPL computers and computers at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science User Facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, have run simulations that show that the new plasma thruster concept should be able to generate exhausts with velocities of hundreds of miles per second. This is ten times faster that any existing operational plasma thruster. 
     This new propulsion concept would accelerate the charged particles in the plasma using magnetic reconnection. This process is very common in the universe including the surface of our Sun. Magnetic field lines converge, suddenly separate and then merge back together again, generating a lot of energy. Reconnection is also present inside the donut-shaped fusion devices called tokamaks.
    The faster velocity at the beginning of a spacecraft’s journey to the outer planets could make manned missions more practical. Ebrahimi said, “Long-distance travel takes months or years because the specific impulse of chemical rocket engines is very low, so the craft takes a while to get up to speed. But if we make thrusters based on magnetic reconnection, then we could conceivably complete long-distance missions in a shorter period of time.”
     There are three major differences between Ebrahimi thruster concept and other devices that utilize ionic propulsion. The first difference is that by changing the strength of the magnetic fields, the amount of thrust can be increased or decreased. Ebrahimi said, “By using more electromagnets and more magnetic fields, you can in effect turn a knob to fine-tune the velocity.”
     The second difference is the fact that the new thruster produces thrust by ejecting both charged particles and magnetic bubbles known as plasmoids. The plasmoids add power to the propulsion of the spacecraft and no other ionic propulsion concept makes use of plasmoids.
     The third major different is that other ionic propulsion systems use heavy atoms such as xenon in the plasma. Ebrahimi’s concept allows either light or heavy atoms in its plasma. This flexibility means that the amount of thrust generated by the new propulsion system can be tailored to the needs of the mission. Ebrahimi said, “While other thrusters require heavy gas, made of atoms like xenon, in this concept you can use any type of gas you want.” Engineers might want to use ions of lighter atoms for some missions because they can be accelerated more rapidly.
     This new propulsion concept expands the PPPL’s portfolio of space propulsion research. Their other projects include the Hall Thruster Experiment which was started in 1999 by PPPL physicists Yevgeny Raitses and Nathaniel Fisch in order to investigate the use of plasma particles for moving spacecraft. Raitses and students are also investigating the application of tiny Hall thrusters to providing small satellites called CubeSats with greater maneuverability in orbit.
     Ebrahimi says that her new thruster concept is directly related to her research into fusion energy. She said, “This work was inspired by past fusion work and this is the first time that plasmoids and reconnection have been proposed for space propulsion. The next step is building a prototype!”

     The European Space Agency has partnered with Kayser Italia to offer the Kubik facility on the International Space Station to commercial customers.  Kayser Italia is a Small Medium Enterprise private independent aerospace system engineering company. Their core business relies on the exploitation of space platforms including the ISS, satellites, sounding rockets, stratosphere balloons, by developing instruments for space research and applications. They are one of the main organizations researching microgravity.
     The collaboration of the ESA and Kayser provides the new Bioreactor Express Service to allow users to carry out experiment in zero gravity. The BES is a service intended to establish an “express” way to carry out scientific and/or technological experiments on board the ISS. It exploits the KUBIK incubator facility of ESA. Commercial customers can utilize existing experiment containers, customize existing containers to meet their needs or design an entirely new container to match their needs. The starting price is around two hundred thousand dollars. This price covers the flight using an existing experiment container from conception to launch and return of scientific data within a year.
     Kubik has been running experiments for the ESA’s SciSpace program since 2004 in the European Columbus modules that is part of the ISS. The tiny laboratory is only sixteen inches across but is has room for twenty-four experiment containers and is equipped with features such as temperature control. It also includes a centrifuge that simulates a range of gravity levels by spinning the containers. These features together allow for comparison between different environments. One example is to investigate how samples of bacteria, plant seeds or human cells behave in gravity levels of Earth, Mars and the Moon.
     David Zolesi works at Kayser Italia. He says that “with Bioreactor Express Service, we want to make Kubik accessible to everyone, providing an end-to-end service from concept to implementation, for a reasonable price and within an acceptable time-frame.”
     The BES was developed within the ESA’s commercial partnership initiative of new commercial services and application using the unique conditions that exist in space.
     The first experiment that flew as part of the BES was the BioAsteroid project developed by the University of Edinburgh. The project investigated how gravity affects the interaction between microbes and rock in reduced gravity. Two bio-mining reactors allowed researcher to examine how the microbes develop a biofilm on the surface of a rock sample. Biofilms are collections of microbes that grow on a surface. One example of a biofilm is dental plaque. This experiment flew in October of 2020. The goal of the project was to investigate whether or not microbes could be cultivated to help mine resources in space. Bio-mining has great potential on Earth. In space exploration bio-mining could be used to recover economically useful elements from asteroid rock. It might also be useful in creating fertile soil from lunar dust.
     The BioAsteroid experiment has been concluded on the ISS. The samples are awaiting getting space on one of the DragonX supply shuttles to be returned to Earth for analysis.

     Sumitomo Forestry is part of the Sumitomo Group of Japan which was founded over four hundred years ago. They have joined with Kyoto University to work on developing wooden materials that are highly resistance to damage from temperatures changes and sunlight found in space. They intend to be the first to build satellites out of wood with a target date of 2023. Sumitomo has begun carrying out research on tree growth and the possible use of wooden materials in space. The partnership will start by experimenting with different types of wood subjected to extreme environments on Earth. Debris from launches and defunct satellites is an increasing problem as satellites are launched into orbit. Wooden satellites would burn up without the release of dangerous substances into the atmosphere or showing the Earth from fragments as they disintegrate on the way down.
     Most satellites contain aluminum, Kevlar and aluminum alloys which are all able to survive the temperatures extremes and the constant rain of hard radiation in the vacuum of space. This survival ability also means that they can continue in Earth orbit far longer than their intended operational lifespan. In addition, when satellites fall from orbit, aluminum disintegrates into thousands of tiny particles. These aluminum particles float in the atmosphere for many years, potentially causing an environmental problem.
     In addition to the fact that wooden satellites will burn up completely on reentry, the wood is also transparent to electromagnetic waves as opposed to aluminum. This means that antenna can be built inside the satellites and do not have to be deployed outside the satellite in order to function properly. This makes the satellites simpler to design and deploy.
     Takao Doi is a professor at Kyoto University and Japanese astronaut. He visited the International Space Station in March of 2008. One of his activities while on the ISS was throwing around a boomerang in space that had been specifically designed for use in microgravity. He said, “We are very concerned with the fact that all the satellites which re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere burn and create tiny alumina particles which will float in the upper atmosphere for many years. Eventually it will affect the environment of the Earth. The next stage will be developing the engineering model of the satellite, then we will manufacture the flight model.”
    Experts are warning that if we keep putting junk into orbit, someday we may not be able to launch any new satellites. There has been a lot of research on how to reduce junk in space and a number of approaches are being tested. The are about six thousand satellites in Earth orbit with about sixty percent of them no longer functioning. Euroconsult issued a report that estimated that almost a thousand satellite will be launched every year until 2030. By 2028 there could be over fifteen thousand satellites in Earth orbit. In addition there are many pieces of space junk generated by launch vehicles parts.
     Elon Musk’s SpaceX has already launched over nine hundred Starlink Satellites and has plans to launch thousands more in the near future. These fragments of space junk are traveling at over twenty-two thousand miles per hour which means that even small pieces can do serious damage to anything they hit. In 2006, a tiny piece of space debris hit the ISS and blew a chip out of a hardened window.

     Washington State researchers are taking inspiration from the ancient art of origami to create a foldable bladder that can be used to contain rocket fuel at cryogenic temperatures. Graduate student Kjell Westra, engineering professor Jake Leachman and their colleagues at WSU’s Hydrogen Properties for Energy Research Laboratory, or HYPER Lab, describe their research in the journal Cryogenics. They are trying to figure out the best way to store and pump super-cold rocket propellants such as liquid hydrogen. Leachman said in a press release, “Folks have been trying to make bags for rocket fuel for a long time. We currently don’t do large, long-duration trips because we can’t store fuel long enough in space.”
      Early in man’s conquest of space, engineers tried to develop balloon type bladders that could be used to manage the storage and flow of liquid hydrogen. However, those early bladders had a tendency to leak or shatter when they were squeezed. The best early designs failed after only five cycles of squeezing and relaxing. Current storage systems for rocket fuel use metal plates and surface tension to manage fuels.
      The researchers at WSU carried out a literature search before they began their experimental work. One of the articles they found mentioned the development of a bladder that took advantage of origami which is the ancient Japanese art of paper-folding. The article talked about the use of n origami design for medical stents or deployable solar sails for spacecraft. Westra and his team decided to adapt the designs in the article to the manufacture of rocked fuel bladders. Westra said, “The best solutions are the ones that are already ready-made and that you can then transfer to what you’re working on.”
     After learning how to correctly fold thin sheets of plastic with origami techniques, Westra tested his origami bellows in a vat of liquid nitrogen at a temperature of three hundred and twenty degrees below zero Fahrenheit. The researchers were expecting that the origami folds would help spread out the stress on the plastic materials and lower the risk of tearing. Their experiments were successful. The origami folded bladder could be squeezed and relaxed over a hundred times at extreme temperatures without leaking or breaking. Leachman said, “We think we’ve solved a key problem that was holding everybody back.” The next phase of research will be to conduct similar experiments with liquid nitrogen at four hundred and twenty-three degrees below zero Fahrenheit.
     Westra and his team have been awarded a NASA graduate fellowship to keep working on the project. Their  work has also received funding from the Joint Center for Aerospace Technology Innovation, an economic development initiative backed by Washington State as well as the Blue Origins space venture. Leachman said, “Westra’s success is a perfect example of great WSU students studying what’s out there, and then being in the right place at the right time to make it happen.” In addition to Westra and Leachman, Francis Dunne, Stasia Kulsa and Mathew Hunt also worked on the study.

Part 2 of 2 Parts
     In the near future, the space industrial ecosystem will be dominated by the question of how to deal with data generated by satellites. The launch of constellations of small satellites will increase the amount of data coming from space whether the satellites are reporting on the Earth or space phenomena. These streams of data will require processing and result in many commercial services being offered.
      It is possible that this avalanche of space data could be disruptive. Some national governments will try to protect their satellites by creating prohibited zones often referred to as “safety zones”. Other nations will be more concerned about the privacy of their citizens or that the collection and processing of these data may limit the sovereignty of states. There is the risk of anti-competitive behavior resulting from the data collected.
      It is probable that this giant river of data will attract a broad range of industrial players who will implement techniques from Silicon Valley. One such technique is called a “minimum viable product”. This means that it is possible to market a good or a service that is not yet completely finished. Feedback from users will then make it possible to improve it.
     The increasing number of such private operators should result in a steady flow of financial transactions such as fund-raising in the different series, acquisition, and calls to finance market with or without special purpose acquisition companies. There are questions to be considered with respect to the growth strategies of different companies. These include internal growth by strengthening or diversifying their activities versus external growth by acquisition. Acquisitions are likely to prevail and market concentration will be the result. This will inevitably mean that there may be a problem with regard ot the compatibility of vertically integrated players with competition rules.
     Defense will obviously remain a major customer for the space-imagery industry and should contribute to its growth through multiple initiatives such as financing, public procurement and calls for tenders. While having a single huge customer has benefits, in the end it may reduce the prospects and durability of the global space industry.
     The market for commercial space applications will attract client who demand quality services, especially with respect to performance. The deployment of the first constellations of small satellites will offer great potential for services provided in Earth orbit including refueling, observation and maintenance of satellites. More traditional sectors of the space industry will be transformed, starting with the space-insurance industry which will be impacted by the resilience rates of the announced constellations. These resilience rates may increase the need for inspection missions.
      Terrestrial infrastructure development such as the new 5G networks should not be considered as competition but as a complement to the services that small satellite constellations provide.
     Following the GPS and small-satellite revolution, the wide-spread adoption to electric vehicles will bring the challenge of being able to guide vehicles’ automatic driving and on-board services. Powerful industrial alliances similar to the Software Alliance for E-mobility, LEAF or Charge-Up Europe will be needed between space and terrestrial, modern and more traditional industries as have begun under GNSS Escape program.
      The value chain of the space industry should welcome new activities which demonstrate the growing dynamism of the global space industry.

     There has been a lot of coverage in the global media about the return of the Japanese Hayabusa-2 asteroid mission with samples from the surface of an asteroid. SpaceX has also gotten a lot of press as has the China Chang’e 5 Moon landing. Behind all this publicity however, there are major changes coming to the global space industry. These changes began in the 2010s and should play out over the next ten years.
     During the next ten years, constellations of small satellites will have a major impact on the space industry. The miniaturization of satellites is a disruptive innovation which signals a major paradigm shift. These small satellites will continue to reduce the cost of access to space and it will result in the mass production of satellites which will reduce the cost of the space infrastructure itself.
     For decades, the space industry was organized in hierarchical industrial supply chains around prime contractors. Most of this activity was under public leadership such as NASA in the U.S. However, recently the space business operates with regular industrial ecosystems appearing upstream or downstream around private space infrastructure.
      This change in the global space industry is occurring in an institutional context that is dominated by a lasting crisis in international management of space activities. While the creation of an international civil space organization is not currently possible, the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on January 20th should mark the return of the United States to a more consensual international diplomacy. However, the U.S. will probably continue to lead the international space industry with projects such as the Artemis Agreements. These Agreements are based on the principles of the Outer Space Treaty which was signed at the end of the 1960s, but they have been reinterpreted to favor U.S. interests and the current U.S. industrial supremacy.
     Only nine nations have signed the Artemis Agreements so far but this could significantly increase if the European Union collectively takes a position and suggests an alternative international space treaty which could lead to a reciprocity agreement. The concept of a Space Market Act should be encouraged and supported. It could be patterned after two recently announced EU programs; the Digital Services Act and the Digital Market Act.
     In the meantime, international attention should be focused on the important issue of space debris. Considering the problems attending such space debris, international action will have to quickly move far beyond the current efforts to manage space junk. It would be productive to take inspiration from the current experience of the salvage clauses in maritime insurance.
     There are hundreds of thousands of pieces of space junk over four inches in size being track by Earth-based radar. There are millions more smaller pieces of junk in orbit. There is so much space junk currently in orbit around the Earth that the risk to launch vehicles is increasing rapidly. Unless something is done very soon, it may not be possible to launch anything into orbit. Cleaner launches with recoverable components, better management of dead satellites and a broad effort to actually remove existing junk from orbit will be necessary.
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Part 3 of 3 Parts
     “The Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative is a European Space Agency initiative with the aim to develop the technology for a future regenerative life support system for long term human space missions. Initiated in 1989, the design is inspired by a terrestrial ecosystem.” Wikipedia   
      The SOM habitat combines traditional life support systems with the regenerative close-loop MELiSSA system. An added feature will be the ability to grow food in the habitat.
     With respect to the need for electricity and heat in the habitat, power to the habitat will be supplied by external solar power arrays or a nuclear fission reactor on the lunar surface outside the habitat. Waste heat will need to be dumped in order to maintain an comfortable internal temperature of seventy two degree Fahrenheit. The CDF proposed adding closable ‘louvres’ to control radiator emissivity.
     Another problem that affected the habitat design was the need to reduce contact with clingy, abrasive lunar dust. Daniel Inocente said, “We would actually land the habitat quite some distance away from its final destination and transport it into place overland, because the lander touchdown will drive up a lot of dust, which is harmful to both people and equipment. And the habitat would interface with separate airlock shells devoted to dusting off spacesuits and equipment, to really mitigate the amount of dust into the habitat.”
     One of the greatest challenges encountered by the ESA CDF is getting the habitat to the Moon. The fifty-eight-ton habitat package includes all of the internal equipment that is required. This mass is beyond the current generation of launch vehicles. Daniel Inocente said, “Looking beyond the near term, we considered two options, one of which is NASA’s forthcoming Space Launch System launcher, and the other is SpaceX’s Starship, which would have no trouble with our mass requirements but is still at an early stage of development.”
     Once the SOM habitat is on site, the SOM team is considering adding more modules that would be dedicated to different purposes such as research, manufacturing, food culture and tourism. The lunar base would be expanded to a village and, eventually, a city.
     Inocente concluded, “We were only working on the Moon Village part time, but the project has informed our thinking on large terrestrial buildings like skyscrapers and airports in both a qualitative and quantitative way. On Earth the demands aren’t so absolute as space, but the experience offers ways to improve our design methodologies, such as selecting materials, integrated building technologies and minimizing environmental impacts.”
     “And the effort of designing this habitat is useful in its own right. It would be extremely costly to build, technically challenging but it is conceivable given the rate of improvement in technology and engineering and provides us with a goal to aspire towards—just like planning to build the next, tallest skyscraper or planning a terrestrial city of the future.”
      Lunar habitation has been theme in science fiction for decades. The work of SOM will help that dream come true.

Part 2 of 3 Parts
     “The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module is an experimental expandable space station module developed by Bigelow Aerospace, under contract to NASA, for testing as a temporary module on the International Space Station from 2016 to at least 2020.” Wikipedia
     Starting with the BEAM module attached to the ISS as inspiration, SOM has developed the design for a semi-inflatable shell which offers the greatest possible volume to mass ratio. Once it has been inflated on the lunar surface, it will about twice its original volume.
     Daniel Inocente said, “On the inside we thought hard about the human experience, in terms of lighting conditions, flexible architecture that can be reconfigured as needed, and also high floor to ceiling space—lunar one-sixth G means crew members can reach up much higher, and we encourage that using grabbing bars and other simple aids. Retired NASA astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman, Professor at MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, gave us feedback on improving the living and working space from his personal experience.”
     The site chosen for erecting and inflating the SOM module is the rim of the Shackleton crater beside the lunar South Pole. This particular site has a lot of desirable features for a lunar habitation including the fact that because it is at the lunar South Pole, it does not experience the two weeks of sunlight and two weeks to darkness found on non-polar regions of the Moon. This also means that it continuously experiences direct sunlight for solar power. This location is close to deposits of lunar ice in nearby craters that experience permanent shadow.
      The habitat is four stories high. It would be inflated by astronauts or by rover robots teleoperated from the Gateway station that will be in orbit around the Moon. It can provide life support and comfortable living space for four people for up to three hundred days. The habitat will be constructed, inflated, and thoroughly tested on Earth before it is deflated and launched. It weighs over fifty-eight tons. A heavy lift launcher will be necessary to send it to the Moon. This launch vehicle may be a future version of the NASA’s Space Launch System or a SpaceX Starship.
      Originally it was intended that the SOM habitat could be used for a five hundred day stay on the Moon. However, it turned out that radiation would an insurmountable problem for that long a mission, so it was shortened to three hundred days. The Earth is shielded by its magnetic field from ionizing radiation from the Sun, but the Moon is outside the Earth’s shield and subjected to heavy radiation.
     Inocente commented that “The CDF radiation analysis gave us a better indication of exposure and duration limits, so we had to change our baseline goal. Similarly, initially we planned to have the crew quarters on an upper floor, but shifted it to a lower level, to double as the crew shelter against solar storms. This level would also store our life support system, affording extra radiation shielding. There’s also the possibility of lining the structure with lunar material or else locally-sourced water, to boost crew protection still further.”
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Part 1 of 3 Parts
     Decades after the end of space missions to land men on the moon, major spacefaring nations are now drafting plans for the return of manned lunar missions. One of the new goals is the creation of a permanent manned settlement on the Moon.
     “Skidmore, Owings & Merri is a global architectural, urban planning and engineering firm. It is one of the most significant architectural firms in the world. SOM has designed some of the world’s most significant architectural and urban projects including several of the tallest buildings in the world. SOM’s multidisciplinary practice works across a range of scales and project types, providing services in Architecture, Building Services/MEP Engineering, Digital Design, Graphics, Interior Design, Structural Engineering, Civil Engineering, Sustainable Design and Urban Design & Planning.” Wikipedia
     SOM is currently working on a design for a habitat for a future Moon Village. The European Space Agency has thoroughly reviewed the SOM proposal at their mission-evaluating Concurrent Design Facility. Some issues were raised with the design but none of them were serious enough to call the whole project into question. This means that the SOM four-person semi-inflatable habitat may be built on the lunar surface someday.
     SOM consulted with staff at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the ESA as they developed their habitat design. ESA Director General Jan Wörner provided the original idea of an international Moon Village that would be designed and constructed by a consortium of private and public, space and non-space partners.
     SOM began working on their design study in 2018. This year the habitat’s design blueprint was subjected to a six-session study at the ESA’s CDF. The Facility is located in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. It brings together a network of space specialists tasked with evaluation of novel space mission concepts to create workable blueprints.
      Daniel Inocente is the study leader at SOM. He said, “The value of these CDF sessions is that they can run our design past every expert that’s needed in real time,” says Daniel Inocente, study leader at SOM. “It’s been a great experience because we’ve been able to discover the limiting factors involved in designing for the moon within a short time, take those on board and identify potential responses.”
      Advenit Makaya is the study leader at ESA. He said, “This study is clearly looking into the future, beyond the horizon of currently planned lunar exploration activities,” explains Advenit Makaya, study leader at ESA. “But it has been a very interesting exercise for the various ESA experts, to collaborate with architecture experts, to identify and address the drivers and ways in which this innovative design could be deployed on the moon.”
      Isabelle Duvaux-Béchon is with the ESA’s Policy and Programs Coordination Department. She said, “The collaboration on this project, combining best ideas and expertise from the SOM and the ESA experts, is a very good example of how ESA wishes not only to develop future programs, but also to be an enabler for other initiatives contributing to the common good.”
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     Mining experiments are being conducted in space. They may pave the way for new technologies which could assist human exploration of space and establishment of settlements on other worlds. Astronauts on the International Space Station found that bacteria could be used to extract useful materials from rocks on the Moon and Mars. The findings of this research could help efforts to develop methods of sourcing metals and other minerals such as iron and magnesium which are essential for human survival in space. Bacteria could be used to break down rocks to form soil for growing crops or to provide minerals for life support systems that would produce air and water.
     Scientists at the UK Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh spent ten years developing tiny devices called biomining reactors. Eighteen of these matchbox sized devices were sent to the ISS aboard a SpaceX rocket launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida in July of 2019. The project is named BioRock.
      Basalt is a common rock found on the Moon and Mars. Small pieces of basalt were placed into each device and then the devices were submerged in a bacterial solution. The experiment was run for three weeks in conditions that mimicked the low gravity on the Moon and Mars. The team found that the bacteria in the solution could increase the removal of rare earth elements from basal in lunar and Martian landscapes by up to four hundred percent. Rare earth elements are very important to many technologies in use today including mobile phones, computers and magnets.
      Microbes are currently in common use on Earth in the process called biomining to extract economically useful elements such as copper and gold from ore. The new experiments on the ISS are also providing data on how gravity influences the growth of communities of microbes here on Earth.
      The microbe study on the ISS was published in Nature Communications and it received funding from the UK Space Agency and the European Space Agency. The research also received support from the Science and Technology Facilities Council which is part of UK Research and Innovation. Kayser Italia is the engineering company who built the miniature bioreactors used in the research.
     Professor Charles Cockell, of the University of Edinburgh’s School of Physics and Astronomy, led the project. He said, “Our experiments lend support to the scientific and technical feasibility of biologically enhanced elemental mining across the Solar System. While it is not economically viable to mine these elements in space and bring them to Earth, space biomining could potentially support a self-sustaining human presence in space.”
     “For example, our results suggest that the construction of robotic and human-tended mines in the Oceanus Procellarum region of the Moon, which has rocks with enriched concentrations of rare earth elements, could be one fruitful direction of human scientific and economic development beyond Earth.”
      Dr. Rosa Santomartino is a postdoctoral scientist in the University’s School of Physics and Astronomy who worked on the project. She said, “Microorganisms are very versatile and as we move into space, they can be used to accomplish a diversity of processes. Elemental mining is potentially one of them.”
       Libby Jackson is the Human Exploration Program Manager at the UK Space Agency. She said, “It is wonderful to see the scientific findings of BioRock published. Experiments like this is show how the UK, through the UK Space Agency, is playing a pivotal role in the European Space Agency’s exploration program. Findings from experiments like BioRock will not only help develop technology that will allow humans to explore our Solar System further, but also helps scientists from a wide range of disciplines gain knowledge that can benefit all of us on Earth.”