Tag Archives: space exploration

To Travel on The Moon

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NASA Awards $57M Contract to Build Roads on the Moon

NASA awarded a $57.2 million contract to develop construction technologies to build infrastructure on the moon.

NASA awarded a $57.2 million contract to develop construction technologies to build infrastructure on the moon. PHOTO BY CARLOS FERNANDEZ

By Kirsten Errick,

Staff Reporter, Nextgov

The award will go toward developing technologies to build infrastructure like landing pads and roads on the surface of the moon.

As NASA continues its exploration under Artemis, it needs new technology to improve infrastructure on the moon.

In an effort to meet this need, NASA awarded ICON—an advanced construction technology company best known for 3-D printed homes—a $57.2 million contract to develop construction technologies to build infrastructure on the moon—including landing pads, habitats and roads. The contract goes through 2028.

Tuesday’s contract is under Phase III of NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research program. It is a continuation of a prior SBIR dual-use contract with the Air Force, which NASA partially funded. The award will fund ICON’s Project Olympus to engage in research and development for space-based construction systems to support further space exploration.

“In order to explore other worlds, we need innovative new technologies adapted to those environments and our exploration needs,” Niki Werkheiser, director of technology maturation in NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, said. “Pushing this development forward with our commercial partners will create the capabilities we need for future missions.”

The new award will help ICON’s Olympus construction system, “which is designed to use local resources on the moon and Mars as building materials,” according to the announcement.

ICON will use a lunar gravity simulation flight to bring its technology into space. The company will also utilize samples of lunar regolith—a layer of debris covering the moon’s surface—to examine their behavior in simulated lunar gravity; this will help inform construction approaches. ICON noted that the technology “will help establish the critical infrastructure necessary for a sustainable lunar economy including, eventually, longer term lunar habitation.”

“To change the space exploration paradigm from ‘there and back again’ to ‘there to stay,’ we’re going to need robust, resilient and broadly capable systems that can use the local resources of the moon and other planetary bodies,” Jason Ballard, ICON co-founder and CEO, said. “The final deliverable of this contract will be humanity’s first construction on another world, and that is going to be a pretty special achievement.”

ICON will work with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center under NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate’s Moon to Mars Planetary Autonomous Construction Technologies project.

The award will expand ICON’s commercial activities and its work with NASA. For example, ICON 3-D printed a 1,700-square-foot Martian habitat simulation—the Mars Dune Alpha—that will be used for NASA’s Crew Health and Performance Analog mission in 2023.

As NASA looks to have astronauts return to the moon and eventually travel to Mars, the agency is also looking at creating a sustainable presence in outer space and establishing a long-term presence on the moon. As a result, building infrastructure on the moon is a necessary component towards that goal.

from:  https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2022/11/nasa-awards-57m-contract-build-roads-moon/380291/

Metal Object on Mars?

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Well, NASA scientists say no way!  Do your research.

Metal On Mars? Shiny Object Seen By Curiosity Rover Explained By NASA Scientists (PHOTOS)

Posted: 02/12/2013

Mars Metal

By: Mike Wall
Published: 02/12/2013 02:13 PM EST on SPACE.com

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has photographed a shiny, metallic-looking object that bears a passing resemblance to a door handle or a hood ornament.

The Curiosity rover has not stumbled onto evidence of an ancient civilization that took the family van to Olympus Mons for vacation, however. The object is simply a rock that the wind has sculpted into an interesting shape, scientists said.

mars metal

NASA’s original image, with the object at top-center.
“The shiny surface suggests that this rock has a fine grain and is relatively hard,” Curiosity scientists wrote Monday (Feb. 11) in an explainer blurb accompanying the image, which was taken on Jan. 30. “Hard, fine-grained rocks can be polished by the wind to form very smooth surfaces.”

Similar “ventifacted” (wind-eroded) rocks can be found here on Earth, notably on the dry, gusty plains of Antarctica, they added.

The newfound rock is not the first shiny object Curiosity has photographed on the Red Planet.

In October, the car-size rover paused its first soil-scooping activities to investigate a bright sliver lying on the ground nearby. Scientists think the scrap is a piece of plastic debris that shook loose during the robot’s dramatic sky-crane landing on the night of Aug. 5.

Later in October, Curiosity spotted bright flecks in one of the holes it dug out while scooping. That material appears to be some sort of native Martian mineral, as does the so-called “Mars flower,” which garnered a lot of attention after Curiosity photographed it in December.

While such finds may be be interesting to laypeople and researchers alike, Curiosity has bigger fish to fry. The rover’s main task is to determine whether its landing site — a huge crater called Gale — could ever have supported microbial life.

Curiosity carries 10 different scientific instruments and 17 cameras to aid in this quest, along with other tools such as a rock-boring drill. Curiosity used this drill to collect samples for the first time over the weekend, boring 2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters) into a Red Planet rock in a move that had never been done before on another planet.

from:    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/12/mars-metal-shiny-object-nasa-curiosity-rover_n_2671432.html