Saturday, February 25, 2023

3887 - MOON - plans for a moonbase?

 

-  3887  -   MOON  -  plans for a moonbase?   Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' private spaceflight company, claims it has made major progress in developing a way to make solar panels using materials from the lunar surface.


-------------------  3887  -   MOON  -  plans for a moonbase?

-   The breakthrough could have big implications for future lunar habitation by providing a means of producing electricity-generating panels right there on the moon instead of needing to transport equipment from Earth.

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-    The process starts with making regolith simulants chemically and mineralogically equivalent to lunar regolith (dust, dirt and gravel), before melting and moving the molten regolith using a reactor. Iron, silicon and aluminum are extracted from the regolith by passing an electric current through the molten material.

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-    The process allows a team to then make solar panels, a protective glass to cover them and wiring. Furthermore, the byproduct from the process is oxygen, which can be used for life support or for propulsion for rockets.

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-    Blue Origin said it has been making solar cells and transmission wires from regolith simulant since 2021.  Space agencies and private firms are also looking at ways of making use of lunar regolith, including making bricks for construction and producing oxygen.

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-    NASA aims to set up a crewed outpost near the moon's south pole.  The ingredients for that encampment, known as Artemis Base Camp, are an unpressurized rover to transport suited astronauts around the site; a pressurized rover to enable long-duration treks away from the outpost; and the surface habitat itself, which will be capable of housing four humans at a time.

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-    This home demands a lot of infrastructure such as communications, power, radiation shielding, waste disposal and storage space, too. All of these domicile niceties are requirements for a sustained human presence on the moon that can be revisited and built upon over the coming decades.

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-    The search for desirable property on the moon is complicated.  The Shackleton-de Gerlache Ridge area is valuable real estate. While no location on the moon stays continuously illuminated, three points on the rim remain collectively sunlit for more than 90% of the year. These points are surrounded by topographic depressions that never receive sunlight, creating cold traps that can capture ices.

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-    Mission planners are looking for spots that feature easy access to solar energy, good communication linkage with Earth and modest slopes that allow access to nearby permanently shadowed regions. These regions (PSRs) likely contain water ice deposits. That resource could be extracted and processed into usable items, such as oxygen, water and rocket propellant.

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-    PSRs are areas near the north and south poles of the moon that never receive direct sunlight and thus are exceedingly cold, ranging from about minus 415 degrees Fahrenheit to minus 334 degrees Fahrenheit.

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-    There has been stimulating work done recently on finding an address for Artemis Base Camp, but researchers are trying to home in on sites that offer the best combination of attributes.

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-     Water on the moon is more common than we thought.  The lunar south pole is one of the most compelling places in the entire solar system.  The moon's south pole is one of the most compelling places in the entire solar system.

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-    Scientists compiled observations indicating the presence of water and other "volatile" molecules from 10 remotely sensed datasets in 65 PSRs to estimate the locations and mass of water ice deposits.  Since 1998, four lunar orbiting spacecraft — NASA's Lunar Prospector, LRO, India's Chandrayaan 1 and Japan's Kaguya — have acquired data characterizing the hydrogen, hydroxyl and water distribution near the lunar poles.

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-     NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Spacecraft (LCROSS) impact experiment in 2009 provided direct evidence for cold-trapped volatiles in the southern lunar crater Cabeus.

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-  The team identified eight PSRs with the highest resource potential. They determined that Faustini Crater, an impact feature that lies near the south pole of the moon, shows the strongest indication of water ice based on the research team's criteria.

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-   The group also estimated that Haworth Crater at the lunar south pole has the greatest tonnage of surface frost. Cabeus Crater, located about 62 miles from the south pole, has the greatest estimated tonnage of subsurface hydrogen deposits.

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-    Ideal exploration conditions for sustained surface activities involve relatively flat surfaces, sunlight for power and line-of-sight communication with Earth and all of these criteria need to be met within a practical distance of water ice deposits.

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-     The Shackleton-de Gerlache Ridge area is a prime target.  This ridge is a highly illuminated region that has been identified as a potential landing area for future crewed and robotic landings by NASA, such as Artemis 3, the first crewed moon landing mission of the agency's Artemis program. This touchdown, targeted for 2025 or 2026, will be the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972.

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-    The de Gerlache Crater rim is the most promising area when considering a landing site. This site has access to two PSRs with high potential grades, has adequate access to communication and nearby solar resources, and modest slopes traversing from illuminated terrain to presumed water ice deposits.

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            February 23, 2023          MOON  -  plans for a moonbase?                            3887                                                                                                                        

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--------------------- ---  Saturday, February 25, 2023  ---------------------------

 

 

 

 

         

 

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