Two nuclear projects are among eleven international space projects selected to receive funding from the U.K. Space Agency. Rolls-Royce’s collaboration with BWXT receives one and a half million dollars to further its work on fission nuclear systems for space power missions. An international project led by the University of Leicester receives a million dollars.
     A total of sixteen million dollars of funding, the second phase of investment awarded through the Agency’s twenty five million dollar International Bilateral Fund, is being announced today at the 39th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, U.S. This follows a first phase announced last year, which provided funds of up to ninety thousand dollars each for thirty two projects which then entered into a competitive process to receive Phase 2 funding.
     The funding provided to Rolls-Royce Submarines and BWXT Advanced Technologies LLC is for a project to “identify the optimum technologies for a fission nuclear system which balances flexibility to a range of space power missions and maximizes performance whilst minimizing program and technical risk.”
     The second nuclear project to receive Phase 2 funding is a collaboration between the University of Leicester and partners from the U.K., U.S. and Japan who will collaborate to identify a range of mission opportunities for U.K. space nuclear power technologies. The collaboration also includes the development of hybrid power systems based on existing U.S. conversion technologies.
     Paul Bates is the CEO of the U.K. Space Agency. He said, “We want to draw on the best global talent to push the boundaries of new technology such as AI and space nuclear power, enhance our homegrown space capabilities and catalyze investment into the UK economy. The projects supported by our International Bilateral Fund champion the best of British innovation, while strengthening our ties with the wider space community.”
     All space missions are dependent on a power source to support systems for communications, life-support and science experiments. Nuclear power systems have the potential to dramatically increase the duration of future space missions and their scientific value. Space micro-reactors are a possible solution to meet these requirements in a sustainable and resilient way, according to Rolls-Royce.
     This latest investment follows three million six hundred thousand dollars awarded to Rolls-Royce from the U.K. Space Agency under the Lunar Surface Nuclear Power Contract and Phase 1 of the IBF in 2023. This work culminated in an initial demonstration of a U.K. lunar modular nuclear reactor. Rolls-Royce displayed its Space Micro-Reactor Concept Model to illustrate how nuclear power could be used to support a future Moon base for astronauts last December.
     The new funding award is part of a larger collaboration agreement between Rolls-Royce and BWXT Advanced Technologies LLC which facilitates business collaboration and joint developments of new and novel nuclear applications in terrestrial, space and commercial maritime domains. These developments will utilize the core nuclear design and manufacturing strengths of both companies. It will benefit both U.K. and U.S. space nuclear development programs for a range of space power missions and further strengthens U.K. and U.S. collaboration on first-of-a-kind space technology innovation set out under the Atlantic Declaration commitment by UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and US President Joe Biden last year. In the Declaration, both countries pledged to study “opportunities for co-operation on space nuclear power and propulsion.”
     Anu Ojha is the director of Championing Space at the U.K. Space Agency. He said, “This exciting research by Rolls-Royce to develop space nuclear power is an opportunity to showcase the UK as a spacefaring nation. “Innovative technologies such as this one could pave the way for continuous human presence on the Moon, whilst enhancing the wider UK space sector, creating jobs and generating further investment.”

Part 2 of 2 Parts
     The lunar night lasts approximately fourteen Earth day and night cycles. During this long night, the Moon experiences extreme cold temperatures and complete darkness. A sustainable power source is crucial to ensure the survivability and functionality of the lunar outpost. This could take the form of advanced power generation technologies such as solar panels or regenerative fuel cells to harness and store energy during the lunar day. These energy systems will provide the necessary power for life-support systems, communication, scientific experiments, and other essential operations throughout the lunar night.
     The Moon lacks the protective atmosphere and magnetic field of the Earth. This leaves its surface exposed to intense solar radiation and cosmic rays. Radiation on the lunar surface poses significant health risks to astronauts. Finding the proper materials and configurations to create robust shielding solutions is key to ensuring that astronauts’ long-term health is safeguarded during their stay on the Moon.
     Lunar dust is known as regolith. It is a pervasive challenge on the Moon. The fine particles of the regolith can be abrasive, cling to surfaces, and pose risks to equipment and human health. Specialized seals, filtration systems, and surface coatings must be developed to minimize dust infiltration into living spaces and equipment.
     The Gateway will need closed-loop systems that recycle and regenerate vital resources such as air, water, and waste to reduce the reliance on resupply missions from Earth. This approach ensures that long-duration missions are feasible. It also minimizes the need for excessive resource consumption.
     Living on the Moon for extended periods of time requires careful consideration of astronauts’ physical needs and comfort. Ergonomic designs, efficient use of space, lighting systems, and temperature control mechanisms must be developed to create a living environment that supports the physical and mental well-being of astronauts.
     Astronaut comfort is also being incorporated into the design of the Lunar Gateway. Permitting astronauts to see outside the Gateway is an important design consideration. NASA learned this during the design and use of the Cupola on the ISS. The Cupola is a control center in the ISS. It has seven portholes that allow astronauts to work while enjoying a 360-degree view of the outside. This provides an exceptional observatory for studying the Earth and the entire cosmos.
     Psychologists are collaborating with astronauts who worked on the ISS to design the Gateway and other habitats in space. The Gateway needs spaces that will help them feel less claustrophobic while providing double functionality. They will have a view of what’s outside the Gateway for robotic operations and a break from the enclosed environment of the other modules.
     Participation in the Artemis program remains an immense source of pride among the company’s employees, who are keenly aware of their role in writing the latest chapter in the history of human space exploration.
     For people working in the space industry, developing this living space for astronauts is perhaps proving the greatest motivation of their professional lives. The Apollo program was a race between two players. On the other hand, today’s mission to return to the Moon is a true partnership between all those involved. It will play an important part in the journey to explore the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

Part 1 of 2 Parts
    Recently there were Congressional hearings on UFOs and India successfully landed of a lunar rover. There is much renewed public interest in what lies beyond our atmosphere. Establishing a long-term human presence on the Moon is a closer reality than many may think. NASA astronauts will soon find themselves living for extended periods on a moon-orbiting outpost and on the lunar surface itself. Mastering lunar living is key to humanity’s continued exploration of space including missions to Mars.
     To make the mission of NASA’s historic Artemis program a reality, the challenges of designing a living space for astronauts must be solved. Astronauts’ lunar home will feature spartan living quarters that will provide a sustainable, comfortable, and extensive life-support framework on the moon. The design and development of such quarters must center on safeguarding astronauts from radiation exposure and the extreme cold of the lunar nights.
     On Artemis missions, a trip to the Moon and eventually Mars will require a stopover at the Lunar Gateway. This space station will support a sustainable human presence on the Moon and provide a staging area for future missions to the red planet.
    Some of the components of the Gateway are being contributed by Thales Alenia Space. This company is working closely with NASA and the European Space Agency to design and build elements such as the International Habitat module that will provide living quarters and support systems for crew members who will live and work in space.
     The I-HAB is a pressurized module with habitability and life support functions. It also features docking capabilities for visiting space vehicles. The I-HAB represents a new generation of modules for deep space exploration which are capable of meeting requirements for lighter structures, enhanced functional and avionic architecture, efficient thermal control, and innovative accommodations for a more comfortable interior.
    The Gateway brings a new set of challenges for keeping astronauts safe, productive, and comfortable in an environment that is smaller than the International Space Station and farther away from Earth.
     Because the Gateway space station is smaller than the ISS, the design needs more functionality in less volume. It will also need more automation because it is difficult to reach. It is not permanently occupied so mission command must be able to intervene remotely when astronauts are not there.
     The Gateway must also take into account the overall well-being of the astronauts who will work and live there, even if it’s only for around 30 days. The ISS is just two hundred and fifty miles from Earth while the Gateway is one hundred and fifty thousand miles away, requiring a journey of three days to return to Earth. That distance introduces psychological challenges in addition to technological challenges.
     Design decisions will be an important consideration for astronauts who will eventually inhabit the Moon and stay in space potentially for months at a time. This will be much longer that those who visited during the U.S. Apollo missions.
    Designing habitation systems for life on the Moon will be extremely difficult. Beyond the obvious problems such as extreme temperatures, a lack of oxygen, and the deadly vacuum of outer space, setting up shop on the lunar surface presents numerous challenges.
Please read Part 2 next

Chinese scientists are developing a giant electromagnetic rail gun to launch hypersonic planes into space. The space plane would be larger than a Boeing 747, and the tech could help reduce launch costs.
     The South China Morning Post reports that when the rail gun is in operation, the giant fifty-ton space plane will be launched at twice the speed of sound. Chinese scientists have been working on the Tengyun project since 2016. They believe they are very close to making a breakthrough.
     The Tengyun railgun is an electromagnetic launch track used to accelerate a hypersonic aircraft to Mach 1.6. The enormous space planes will exceed one hundred and thirty feet in length and weigh fifty metric tons. That length is longer than a Boeing 737.
     After launch, the space plane would leave the track and enter space upon igniting its engine. The new technology could drastically reduce launch costs. This is especially appealing to companies like NASA and SpaceX, which have not yet successfully developed an electromagnetic launch system at this scale.
     Relying solely on the space plane’s own power for lift-off from Earth would require a significant amount of fuel. The team also faced problems in finding a way to combat the dangers of a low-speed take-off.
     The Chinese engineers reportedly had to compromise on the aerodynamic design and engine layout of the space plane. This impacted the plane’s high-speed flight efficiency. Scientists working on the Tengyun project are certain that they can solve the current issues.
     Li Shaowei is the lead scientist on the Tengyun project. He said in a paper published in the journal Acta Aeronautica on February 6. “Electromagnetic launch technology provides a promising solution to overcome these challenges and has emerged as a strategic frontier technology being pursued by the world’s leading nations.”     
     To test the team’s prototype, China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation will use the one-mile long low-vacuum track high-speed maglev test facility in Datong.
     The maglev test laboratory’s original purpose was to provide a key test platform for the low-vacuum tube magnetic levitation train technology. It is now used for aerospace testing due to its ability to propel heavy objects at up to six hundred and twenty mph.
     The Datong test facility will be extended to thirty seven miles long, to achieve a maximum operating speed of three thousand one hundred mph in the future.
     According to SCMP, the laboratory is considered one of the most “ambitious electromagnetic propulsion facilities on the planet”. This is why it will now be used to gather crucial scientific data for the space electromagnetic launch project.
     NASA and the U.S. Navy have also experimented with electromagnetic space launch systems and hypersonic planes.
     In the 1990s, NASA attempted to construct a fifty-foot mini-test line but could only complete around thirty-two feet because of technical difficulties and a lack of funds.
     The military officials decided to abandon their ambitious project and instead focused on developing low-speed electromagnetic catapult technology.

     Earth’s orbit is getting so populated that the space industry is now developing technologies to remove space debris left by satellite launches from an over-crowded low Earth orbit.
     There is an untapped orbit above Earth, though. The very low Earth orbit would allow satellites to fly in a less crowded space closer to home and take more detailed pictures of our planet.
     The reason many satellite operators have ignored VLEO to date is that working at an altitude with air would require more force to propel the satellite and keep it from falling back down to Earth.
     Recently, many scientists have suggested the air in the VLEO could be used as a propellant. A team of scientists from the George Washington University and the US Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory have collaborated to develop a proof of concept for an air-breathing satellite.
     A satellite that uses air as a propellant could utilize charged particles of air-breathing plasma to propel its thrusters.
     Yevgeny Raitses is a managing principal research physicist at PPPL who is leading the Lab’s work on the project. He explained in a press statement, “There is air available at VLEOs. So, instead of launching rockets with these propellants, such as xenon, krypton, or argon, we can use what is naturally available: air. This should allow us to reduce the mass of satellites or allow them to dedicate the difference in mass to other aspects of the device. It might also extend the lifetime of the device.”
     Traditional satellites in LEO and higher orbits have limited lifespans because they can only use a limited amount of propellant to generate plasma. The thruster proposed by the GWU and PPPL team would avoid this problem by making use of the surrounding air to generate plasma. Any satellite using this system would essentially have free, unlimited propellant.
     Given the great potential of this project for low-cost satellite operations that will enable more detailed imaging, it has captured the attention of the U.S. government. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has already supplied four hundred thousand dollars of an anticipated one million dollar grant for the project.
     The GWU and PPPL teams aren’t the only organizations researching air-breathing satellite technology. Jan Mataró is the CTO of the Spanish company Kreios Space. In an interview in 2022, He explained that “right now, very low Earth orbit is an unused orbit simply because of the lack of propulsion systems capable of staying in this orbit. But it could allow for a huge increase in the resolution for both telecommunications and Earth observation.”
     That company is developing an air-breathing generator for satellites. It claims that the generator will provide a 16x increase resolution for Earth observation and telecommunications satellites.
     Of course, some challenges must be overcome before the technology is feasible. The GWU and PPPL teams are working to ensure that positive and negative particles released from their thruster leave at the same rate so that there is no net electric current in the plasma plume expelled by the satellite.
     Raitses explained that “It is important in order to avoid charging the satellites.” A charged satellite could cause charged particles to be released from the thruster. These would be attracted back to the satellite which could cause a damaging recoil effect.
     According to the team’s press statement, it is developing a thruster capable of neutralizing the particles. This will allow for smooth operation in VLEO.

Part 2 of 2 Parts
     There are other ways to create antimatter. That’s where Ryan Weed focused his work. Weed’s design involves positrons, the antimatter version of an electron.
     NASA has also proposed designs for antimatter propulsion that use magnets to separate antimatter particles from particles of regular matter as part of the process. Weed said that positrons “are several thousand times lighter than antiprotons and don’t pack quite as much punch when annihilating.” Their advantage is that they occur naturally and don’t need a giant accelerator and billions of dollars to create.
     Weed’s antimatter propulsion system is designed to use krypton-79 which is an isotope of the element krypton that naturally emits positrons.
     The Weed engine system would first gather high-energy positrons from krypton-79 and then direct them toward a layer of regular matter. This would produce annihilation energy. That energy would then produce a powerful fusion reaction to generate thrust for the spacecraft.
     While positrons may be less expensive to obtain than more powerful forms of antimatter, they are difficult to harness. They are highly energetic and need to be slowed down, or “moderated.” Building a prototype engine to test in space is still too expensive, Weed said.
     This is the case for all antimatter propulsion designs. During decades of research, scientists have proposed dozens of antimatter engine concepts, none of which have come to fruition.
     In 1953, Austrian physicist Eugen Sänger proposed a “photon rocket” design that would run on positron annihilation energy. Since the ’80s, there has been talk of thermal antimatter engines. These would use antimatter to heat liquid, gas, or plasma to provide thrust.
“It’s not sci-fi, but we aren’t going to see it flying until there is a significant ‘mission-pull,’” Weed said about his engine design.
     Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist and host of “Ask a Spaceman” podcast. To construct Weed’s antimatter engine at the scale of a starship, he said, “the devil’s in the engineering details. We’re talking about a device that harnesses truly enormous amounts of energy, requiring exquisite balance and control..
     In general, that enormous amount of energy is another obstacle preventing us from revolutionizing space travel. Steve Howe is a physicist who worked on antimatter concepts with NASA in the ’90s. He said that during testing, “if something goes wrong, these are big explosions. So we need an ability to test high energy density systems somewhere that don’t threaten the biosphere, but still allow us to develop them. He thinks the moon would make a good testing base. “And if something goes wrong, you melted a piece of the moon, and not Earth.”
     Antimatter tends to bring out the imagination in everyone who works with it. Sutter said, “But, we need crazy but plausible ideas to make it further into space, so it’s worth looking into.
     Weed echoes the Sutter’s sentiment, saying that “until there is a compelling reason to get to the Kuiper Belt, the Solar Gravitational Lens, or Alpha Centauri really quickly  or perhaps trying to return large asteroids for mining, progress will continue to be slow in this area.”

Part 1 of 2 Parts
     Interstellar travel is only something humanity has achieved in science fiction such as Star Trek’s USS Enterprise, which used antimatter engines to travel between star systems. However, antimatter isn’t just a sci-fi trope. Antimatter actually does exist.
     Elon Musk has called antimatter engines “the ticket for interstellar journeys,” and physicists like Ryan Weed are now exploring how to harness it.
     Antimatter is composed of particles like regular matter but with opposite electric charge. When antimatter contacts regular matter, they both annihilate and produce enormous amounts of energy. Weed said that “Annihilation of antimatter and matter converts mass directly into energy,” according to the famous equations E=MC2
     Ryan Weed is cofounder and CEO of Positron Dynamics. It is a company working to develop an antimatter propulsion system. He said that just one gram of antimatter could generate an explosion equivalent to a nuclear bomb. All that energy can be used to either accelerate or decelerate spacecraft at high velocity.
     Our nearest stellar neighbor is Proxima Centauri. It is about four light years away. An antimatter engine could theoretically accelerate a spacecraft at 1 g. This could get us to Proxima in just five years, Weed said in 2016. That’s eight thousand times faster than it would take Voyager 1 to travel about half the distance, according to NASA.
     Even within our own solar system, an antimatter-powered spacecraft could reach Pluto in three and a half weeks compared to the nine and a half years it took NASA’s New Horizons probe to arrive, Weed said.
     The main reason we don’t have antimatter engines, despite their tremendous capabilities, is a matter of cost not technology. Gerald Jackson is an accelerator physicist who worked on antimatter projects at Fermilab. He  told Forbes in 2016 that with enough funding, we could have an antimatter spacecraft prototype within a decade.
     The basic technology is already available. Physicists equipped with the world’s most powerful particle accelerators have made antiprotons and antihydrogen atoms.
     The problem is that this type of antimatter is incredibly expensive to make. It’s said to be the most expensive substance on Earth. Jackson gave an estimate of just how much an antimatter machine would cost to build and maintain.
     Jackson is the founder, president, and CEO of Hbar Technologies. His company is working on a concept for an antimatter space sail to decelerate spacecraft traveling at one to ten percent the speed of light. This would be a useful design for entering into orbit around a distant star, planet, or moon.
     Jackson said he has designed an asymmetric proton collider that could produce three quarters of an ounce of  antimatter per year.
     Jackson added that “For a twenty-two-pound scientific package traveling at two percent of the speed of light, one and a quarter ounce of antimatter is needed to decelerate the spacecraft down and inject it into orbit around Proxima Centauri.”
     He said it would take eight billion dollars to construct a solar power plant for the enormous energy needs of antimatter production and cost six hundred and seventy-million dollars per year to operate. “There is currently no serious funding for advanced space propulsion concepts,” Jackson said.
Please read Part 2 next

     After setting foot on the Moon in 1969, the next destination for humankind is obviously Mars. Traveling to Mars presents a whole new set of challenges in speedy, long-distance space travel.
     In a major step for transporting astronauts and heavy loads of cargo across the Solar System in a short time, NASA just announced another successful test of an innovative rocket engine with enough thrust for a manned mission to Mars.
     Testing the prototype Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama has set new records for the technology, achieving almost six thousand pounds of thrust for two hundred and fifty seconds.
     That beats the four thousand pounds of thrust for nearly a minute that the rocket engine managed in 2022, with the results validated early in 2023.
      The eventual aim is to construct a fully reusable thousand-pound class RDRE to improve on traditional liquid rocket engines.
     Thomas Teasley is leading the RDRE project at the Marshall Space Flight Center. He said that “The RDRE enables a huge leap in design efficiency.”
     What makes the RDRE so revolutionary is that it utilizes a sustained detonation circling around a ring-shaped channel. It is fed by a mix of fuel and oxygen which is ignited by each passing explosion.
     The RDRE technology has been under development for years, and in lab-based testing since 2020. Scientists are now showing that it is stable and manageable enough to be used in actual rockets to take us to space.
     Crucially, the RDRE uses much less fuel than conventional rocket engines. It is also simpler in terms of its machinery and mechanisms. That means that launching payloads into space becomes cheaper, and traveling further distances becomes possible.
     It costs an enormous amount of money to explore space. This may be one reason why we haven’t had any alien visitors come to Earth yet. It would require a substantial increase in terms of how much fuel would be needed to cross the long distances between stars.
      NASA has used 3D printing techniques to produce custom machine parts that are strong enough to withstand the extreme heat and pressure involved in the RDRE design.
     The engineers conducting the RDRE test say that they now have a better understanding of how the combustor could be scaled and adapted to support different levels of thrust, different types of engine systems, and different classes of space missions.
     NASA is hoping that the first manned mission to Mars might arrive there sometimes in the 2030s. There are still many serious challenges to overcome in terms of getting to Mars and surviving once the astronauts land. However, having an efficient means of propulsion certainly helps solve one of the more significant obstacles.
     Tomas Teasley said, “It demonstrates we are closer to making lightweight propulsion systems that will allow us to send more mass and payload further into deep space, a critical component to NASA’s Moon to Mars.”

     Tiny gram-scale interstellar probes pushed by laser light are probably the only technology capable of reaching another star in this century. A laser beamer powerful enough to boost a few grams to relativistic speed will probably be available by 2050 as well as laser sails robust enough to survive launch, and terrestrial light buckets big enough to catch the optical signals. The proposed representative mission, around the third quarter of this century, will be to fly a large autonomous swarm of 1000s of tiny probes past the potentially habitable world Proxima b, our nearest stellar neighbor.
     Given the extreme constraints on launch mass, onboard power, and coms aperture, only a large swarm of many probes acting in unison can generate an optical signal strong enough to cross the immense distance back to Earth. The 8-year round-trip time lag eliminates any practical control by Earth. The swarm must possess an extraordinary degree of autonomy in order to prioritize which data is returned to Earth. Coordinating the swarming of individuals into an effective whole is the dominant challenge for the representative mission. Coordination in turn rests on establishing a mesh network via low-power optical links. Probes’ on-board clocks must be synchronized with Earth and with each other to support accurate position-navigation-timing.
     The representative mission will begin with a long string of probes launched one at a time to two tenths of the speed of light. Following launch, the drive laser is used for signaling and clock synchronization, providing a continual time signal like a metronome. Initial boost is modulated so the tail of the string of probes catches up with the head. Exploiting drag imparted by the interstellar medium over the 20-year cruise will keep the group of probes together once assembled. An initial string of 100s to 1000s probes spread out over hundreds of millions of kilometers dynamically coalesces itself over time into a lens-shaped mesh network about 100,000 km across. This is sufficient to account for ephemeris errors at Proxima, ensuring at least some probes pass close to the target.
     A swarm of probes whose members are in known spatial positions relative to each other, having state-of-the-art microminiaturized clocks to keep synchrony, can utilize its entire population to communicate with Earth. The swarm will periodically build up a single short but extremely bright contemporaneous laser pulse from all of them. Operational coherence means each probe sends the same data but adjusts its emission time according to its relative position. This will result in all pulses arriving simultaneously at the receiving arrays on Earth. This effectively multiplies the power from any one probe by the number of probes in the swarm. Thus there will be orders of magnitude greater data return.
     A swarm of probes could tolerate significant attrition during their trip, mitigating the risk of “putting all your eggs in one basket.” This will enable close observation of Proxima b from multiple vantage points. It is not necessary to wait until mid-century to make practical progress. Exploring and testing swarming techniques can now take place in a simulated environment. It is anticipated that resulting innovations would have a profound effect on space exploration. They will complement existing techniques and enable entirely new types of missions. For example, picospacecraft swarms covering all of cislunar space, or instrumenting an entire planetary magnetosphere. Well before mid-century there should be a number of such missions, starting in Earth or lunar orbit, eventually extending deep into the outer Solar system. Such a swarm of tiny probes could explore the rapidly receding interstellar object 1I/’Oumuamua or the solar gravitational lens. These missions would both be precursors to the ultimate interstellar mission, but also scientifically valuable in their own right.

     The use of non-model organisms in medical research is an expanding field. It has already made a significant impact on human health. Insights obtained from the study of unique mammalian traits are being used to develop novel therapeutic agents.
     The phenotype of mammalian hibernation supplies unique physiologic and metabolic benefits that are being actively investigated for potential human health applications on Earth. These benefits may also mitigate many of the physical and mental health risks of space travel. The important feature of hibernation is an energy-conserving state called torpor, which involves an active and often deep reduction in metabolic rate from baseline homeostasis. Additional possible benefits include the preservation of muscle tissue and bones despite prolonged immobilization and protection against radiation injury.
     Despite this remarkable potential, the space-based infrastructure needed to study torpor in laboratory rodents does not currently exist. Hibernation in microgravity has never been studied. This is an important gap in the understanding of hibernation and its potential applications for human spaceflight. This Phase 1 NAIC grant proposes to remedy this situation through the design and implementation of STASH, a novel microgravity hibernation laboratory for use aboard the International Space Station. Some unique and critical design features include the ability to maintain STASH at temperatures as low as 4°C, adjustable recirculation of animal chamber air enabling the measurement of metabolism via oxygen consumption, and measurement of real-time total ventilation, body temperature, and heart rate.
     The STASH unit will also feature animal chamber sizes that will accommodate the expected variety of future hibernating and non-hibernating species. This will boost its applicability to a variety of studies on the ISS by enabling real-time physiological measurements.
     The STASH system is being designed in collaboration with BioServe Space Technologies to be integrated into the Space Automated Biological Laboratory unit. This will allow the achievable and practical application of this research to enhance our understanding of both hibernation and mammalian physiology in space.
     The short-term goals of the STASH project are investigations into the basic science of hibernation in a microgravity environment. This will lay the foundation for the application of its potential benefits to human health. These benefits include determining whether hibernation provides the expected protection against bone and muscle loss.
     The medium-term goals of the project are to begin developing translational applications of hibernation research. These applications include using STASH both for testing bioactive molecules that mimic the transcriptional signatures of hibernation and for evaluating methods of inducing synthetic torpor for their ability to provide similar protection.
     As a long-term goal, during a crewed mission to Mars, human synthetic torpor could function as a relevant countermeasure that would change everything for space exploration. It will mitigate or eliminate every hazard included in NASA’s RIDGE acronym for the hazards of space travel. The RIDGE acronym stands for Space Radiation, Isolation and Confinement, Distance from Earth, Gravity Fields, and Hostile/Closed Environments.
     Research performed using STASH will be a critical first step toward acquiring fundamental knowledge about the ability of hibernation to lessen the health risks of space. This knowledge will support the development of both biomimetic drug countermeasures and the future infrastructure needed to support torpor-enabled human astronauts engaged in interplanetary missions. The researchers working on STASH consider it to be the epitome of the high-risk, high-reward projects for which NIAC was established.