Space Exploration

This presentation explores all the experiments on the Moon since the Apollo missions, regarding the detection of water, hydroxyl, HO-, and other indicators, such as neutron abundances. It also cover many space missions and also correlates lab tests on moon samples with experimental observational data.

Mars in unearthly, unchartered, unknown & yet attracts all of humanity. The hazards of the endeavor are overwhelmed by the hype & hope surrounding the enterprise. A variety of individuals, private companies, commercial firms and national space agencies are engrossed in efforts at landing & inhabiting Mars. However, these efforts are disjoint and there exists little or no coordination. The aspirations as also hazards are immense, the resources scarce & costly. Consequently, left ungoverned, the potential for conflict in space exploration is high. There exists a critical need to regulate and coordinate affairs in this area right now when the technologies and legislation are yet immature. This calls for a credible institutionalized governance structure. This paper proposes an expansion of the existing United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) to take on the mantle of space exploration governance and to continue with incremental progressions later.

MELiSSA is a bioregenerative life support system designed by the European Space Agency (ESA) for the complete recycling of gas, liquid and solid wastes during long distance space exploration. The system uses the combined activity of different living organisms: microbial cultures in bioreactors, a plant compartment and a human crew. In this minireview, the development of a short-cut ecological system for the biotransformation of organic waste is discussed from a microorganism’s perspective. The artificial ecological model—still in full development—that is inspired by Earth’s own geomicrobiological ecosystem serves as an ideal study object on microbial ecology and will become an indispensable travel
companion in manned space exploration.

Replication is an area of interest to both distributed systems and databases. The solutions developed from these two perspectives are conceptually similar but differ in many aspects: model, assumptions, mechanisms, guarantees provided, and implementation. In this paper, we provide an abstract and "neutral" framework to compare replication techniques from both communities in spite of the many subtle differences. The framework has been designed to emphasize the role played by different mechanisms and to facilitate comparisons. With this, it is possible to get a functional comparison of many ideas that is valuable for both didactic and practical purposes. The paper describes the replication techniques used in both communities, compares them, and points out ways in which they can be integrated to arrive to better, more robust replication protocols.

Archaeology might be defined simply as the study of 'the human altered world'. Until recently, traces of humanity's past could have only been found on Earth. But, as our influence continues to expand beyond, we must consider human activities and human-made objects in space and how they—as extensions of ourselves—impact other worlds and the spaces between. This is 'space archaeology'. Features interviews with five activists and innovators in the research and education of outer space from the perspective of archaeology and anthropology.

This brief paper is to explain one of my ideas relating to deep space propulsion. This paper explains what I call the "Nuclear Thermal Pulsejet Engine" and how we can use vacuum of space to cool a small nuclear reactor down for future nuclear powered spacecraft.

Chaotic simulated annealing (CSA) is a relatively new heuristic optimization technique and has been widely applied to optimization problems because of its simplicity and capability of finding fairly good solutions rapidly. However, currently only experimental results are used for verifying its superiority. In this paper, a new of chaotic simulated annealing method (CSA) is introduced and then a mathematic proof is given. It shows that the Markov Chain associated with the algorithm is weakly ergodic, which guarantees that the asymptotic behavior of the algorithm is independent of initial states. Furthermore, the theoretical analysis of the proposed CSA is very important to understand the essential features which make the algorithm work well.

Within the franmework of the International Academy of Astronautics, the present dictionary or lexicon has been prepared for a set of entries common to many languages. In the first phase, there are some 2600 entries. At the time of printing, the space dictionary has been prepared in 20 languages. countries,

Paper given at the HOTCUS Winter Symposium at the British Library's Eccles Centre for American Studies:

The “Second Cold War” that followed the breakdown of US-Soviet detente in the latter half of the 1970s led to a renewed cultural preoccupation with a potential nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union. Furthermore, advances in space exploration, computer and laser technology provided the backdrop for proponents of ballistic missile defence to outline radical new scenarios by which the nuclear stalemate might be transcended, scenarios which would coalesce around Reagan’s “Strategic Defense Initiative” announced in 1983. This paper analyses the visions of space warfare that suffuse military and cultural discourse during this period. Using Reagan administration documents and representative examples of the genre, it will explore how futuristic conflict scenarios of the US and USSR battling over the heavens were expressed in both government propaganda and the increasingly popular “techno-thriller” –best-sellers that combined traditional masculine adventure literature with an obsession with technical and engineering minutiae and were often decidedly conservative in terms of politics.

Outer space has become a contested, congested and competitive domain with an ever growing importance to life on Earth. Recently, an increasing number of new players have entered the space arena. Slovakia has also stepped up its space related activities. In March 2013, it declared its interest to become a member of European Space Agency (ESA) by 2020. Increased involvement in space sector will bring new opportunities and responsibilities for Slovakia. Is Slovakia ready to address these challenges?

Multi-robot exploration problem is generally constituted of a determination of next-best-views (NBVs), path planning, and coordination algorithm. This paper presents a unified 3D multi-robot exploration algorithm in order to solve the inefficiency that takes place when the aforementioned three components are constructed individually. The proposed algorithm is composed of two parts: an allocation of exploration regions and a determination of the best path. For the allocation of the region to explore, each robot generates a sampling-based tree, e.g. RRT, which composes a Voronoi-biased forest (VBF). A VBF, a new data structure introduced within this work, assigns a region for each robot to explore in a probabilistic manner. The amount of the space a VBF covers is quantitatively analyzed depending on its parameters. From the generated VBF, each robot determines the best path from branches of its tree based on the amount of information can be gained along with the paths of peer robots. Only the first edge of the best branch of each tree is executed in a receding horizon scheme. The overall exploration algorithm is evaluated in a computer simulated environment. The results demonstrate that our coordination algorithm allows robots to quickly and reliably explore the environment.

The scientific objective of the X-ray Advanced Concepts Testbed (XACT) is to measure the X-ray polarization properties of the Crab Nebula, the Crab pulsar, and the accreting binary Her X-1. Polarimetry is a powerful tool for astrophysical investigation that has yet to be exploited in the X-ray band, where it promises unique insights into neutron stars, black holes, and other extreme-physics environments. With powerful new enabling technologies, XACT will demonstrate X-ray polarimetry as a practical and flight-ready astronomical technique. Additional technologies that XACT will bring to flight readiness will also provide new X-ray optics and calibration capabilities for NASA missions that pursue space-based X-ray spectroscopy, timing, and photometry.

We study the problem of query optimization in federated relational database systems. The nature of federated databases explicitly decouples many aspects of the optimization process, often making it imperative for the optimizer to consult underlying data sources while doing costbased optimization. This not only increases the cost of optimization, but also changes the trade-offs involved in the optimization process significantly. The dominant cost in the decoupled optimization process is the "cost of costing" that traditionally has been considered insignificant. The optimizer can only afford a few rounds of messages to the underlying data sources and hence the optimization techniques in this environment must be geared toward gathering all the required cost information with minimal communication.

The development of an industry extracting resources from asteroids requires a means of finding and extracting these resources, and also a market willing to bear the costs of those extracted resources. The extraordinarily high costs of space travel indicate that the initial markets for such resources are unlikely to be in precious metals or other such resource needs on Earth, but, instead, for needs in space. An examination of possible markets for asteroid resources reveals that the first material to be extracted profitably is likely to be water, which is common on certain asteroids, and that the first market for that water is likely to be human missions of exploration in deep space. Extraterrestrial water would supplant water brought from Earth, allowing these mission to transport larger quantities of other needed supplies and possibly enabling features (such as radiation shielding) would just not be economically feasible otherwise. Given the very high cost to deliver a crewed mission to cislunar space or a Mars transfer orbit, this supplemental water could potentially be sold for several $ 100 million US per ton, sufficient to provide a profit to commercial asteroid mining missions. The planned crewed missions to cis-lunar space and Mars orbit are thus likely to bootstrap this industry in addition to furthering the human exploration of the solar system.

Despite the importance of social media as an inexpensive and efficient means of communication, it is not clear to what degree space advocacy groups are making a strong organized effort to use the resources available to them. Moreover, there is no previous literature that specifically examines the use of social media tools by space organizations. This study seeks to start a larger dialog regarding how the space advocacy community can make use of these tools to promote their mission. Using a case study approach, this article focuses specifically on the organization of Yuri’s Night to explore how this group is using social media to accomplish its mission of building general space awareness. In addition, this article evaluates the organization’s social media presence as well as the role social media has played in the organization’s ability to accomplish its mission. Other space advocacy groups can use the lessons learned here to improve their own social media strategies.

Economically profitable resource exploitation in space is becoming increasingly feasible as more actors - national,
public and private-are engaging in space exploration. The Outer Space Treaty (OST), which serves as the
basis for the current corpus juris spatialis, declares that no government can claim sovereignty over celestial bodies
or outer space itself. Because this is generally interpreted as denying private ownership, the OST is sometimes
claimed to be an obstacle to commercial venture, particularly resource exploitation. Such claims ignore a wealth
of terrestrial models which promote profitable commercial resource exploitation independent of fee-simple
ownership. To achieve an approach to space exploration and exploitation which balances national, international,
and commercial interests and a need to prevent conflict and militarization of outer space, terrestrial approaches
to managing resource exploitation should be carefully examined for frameworks and mechanisms with potential
to serve as models in further elaborating an international regime for space resource exploitation. A previously
overlooked terrestrial example, the Alaska Permanent Fund, and its unique citizen's dividend, is explored as one
possible model for such a balanced approach that could encourage profit-driven exploration and exploitation of
extra-terrestrial resources, reduce the risk of conflict between actors in outer space and simultaneously accrue
tangible benefits to all of humanity.

Over the past decades, a number of different Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) techniques were developed for mapping the surface of the planets either from Earth or from orbiting spacecrafts. However, the idea to use radar to study the subsurface started to develop during the last 15 years. The ability of the radio waves to penetrate the ice, permafrost and arid surface was at the origins of the development of the Ground Penetrating Radars (GPR). GPRs have been widely applied on Earth with a large number of the scientific and industrial applications. The application of GPR to the space exploration relies on the same operation principle but requires the development of low power and low mass equipment. In this paper, we start by a short summary of the general electromagnetic behavior of the materials that determines the principal characteristics of ground penetrating instruments. Then we describe the GPR instrument that was developed for the Mars 1998 mission (unfortunately cancelled). Then, we discuss a general GPR design that can be implemented on future rover missions. The measurements from the surface cannot replace the global mapping from orbit using orbital radar sounders. MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding) [1]and SHARAD (SHAllow subsurface RADar) [2] radars are examples of these orbital radar sounders that are now in Mars orbit on the Mars Express (ESA) spacecraft and MRO (NASA). The Lunar radar Sounder (LRS) on the Japanese Kaguya (Selene) mission (2008 -2010) was the radar sounder on the Moon [9]

Humanity faces many important decisions about space exploration. An important but controversial decision making paradigm is cost-benefit analysis (CBA). This paper discusses some ethical considerations in CBA that are important to decision making about space exploration, including: how we define costs and benefits; space exploration's non-market value; the standing of future humans and of extraterrestrials; and the role of discounting in evaluating long-term space exploration projects.

Preorder now at: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-value-of-science-in-space-exploration-9780190069063

The Value of Science in Space Exploration provides a rigorous assessment of the value of scientific knowledge and understanding in the context of contemporary space exploration. It argues that traditional spaceflight rationales are deficient, and that the strongest defense of spaceflight comes from its potential to produce intrinsically and instrumentally valuable knowledge and understanding. It engages with contemporary epistemology to articulate an account of the intrinsic value of scientific knowledge and understanding. It also parleys with recent work in science policy and social philosophy of science to characterize the instrumental value of scientific research, identifying space research as an effective generator of new knowledge and understanding.

These values found an ethical obligation to engage in scientific examination of the space environment. This obligation has important implications for major space policy discussions, including debates surrounding planetary protection policies, space resource exploitation, and human space settlement. Whereas planetary protection policies are currently employed to prevent biological contamination only of sites of interest in the search for extraterrestrial life, it contends that all sites of interest to space science ought to be protected. Meanwhile , space resource exploitation and human space settlement would result in extensive disruption or destruction of pristine space environments. The overall ethical value of these environments in the production of new knowledge and understanding is greater than their value as commercial or real commodities, and thus, exploitation and settlement of space should be avoided until the scientific community adequately understands these environments.

In 1977 the Voyager I and Voyager II twin probes were launched into deep space on a fact-finding grand tour of the cosmos. The unmanned space probes were to make close observations of major planets including Jupiter and Saturn and their various moons. Each of the Voyager probes carried a copy of what is known as the Golden Record - a twelve-inch phonograph record made from gold-plated copper - that was conceived as a cosmic greeting card intended to introduce and educate alien life to the ways of planet Earth.

The compilation, overseen by scientist Carl Sagan, included a carefully curated collection of music including, among others, work by Bach, Mozart, Louis Armstrong and Chuck Berry. A selection of ‘the sounds of Earth’ were also represented through whale songs as well as the sound of thunder, crickets and Morse code. Greetings and well wishes were recorded in fifty-five languages, and included messages of peace and friendship from countries such as Greece, Israel, Brazil and Syria as well and more idiosyncratic messages, such as that from Sweden, whose message was a greeting ‘from a computer programmer in the little university town of Ithaca on the Planet of Earth’. The Golden Record was tantamount to a compilation of civilisation's greatest hits.


In addition to these sound recordings, the Golden Record was encoded with 118 images that were chosen to represent the richness and diversity of life on Earth. Among these were a number of images of the built environment and specific works of architecture ranging from images of vernacular buildings in Africa through to views of towns, cities and highways. It also included a series of images of landmark buildings and structures, including the Great Wall of China, the Golden Gate Bridge, the United Nations Building, and the Sydney Opera House. The Golden Record, in effect established the first canon of human architecture and endeavour intended for the unknown residents of the universe. This paper will chronicle and critically consider the architectural content of the Golden Record.

Although an interest in space exploration may be understood by some evangelicals as demonstrating a lack of faith, there do exist outliers for whom exploration of space is C u s t o m S e a r c h Apollo astronaut Jim Irwin was one of several astronauts who had their evangelical beliefs reinforced by flying in space. (credit: NASA)

Human spaceflight is likely to change in character over the 21st century, shifting from a military/governmental enterprise to one that is more firmly tied to private industry, including businesses devoted to space tourism. For space tourism to become a reality, however, many obstacles have to be overcome, particularly those in finance, technology, and medicine. Ethnographic interviews with astronauts, engineers, NASA doctors, and NewSpace workers reveal that absolute faith in the eventual human occupation of space, based in religious conviction or taking secular forms, is a common source of motivation across different populations working to promote human spaceflight. This paper examines the way faith is expressed in these different contexts and its role in developing a future where space tourism may become commonplace.

This Impact Report identifies and summarises the diverse impacts, resulting from the £500m of UK funding of Science and Technology in 2013, using numerous quantitative metrics and short case study extracts.  It shows how the varied impacts of a national science and technology organization and its many funded programmes can be annually identified, captured, tracked, and summarised in a public document.

The report was produced for, and by, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) -  the UK Research Council responsible for funding: (1) all UK astronomy, particle and nuclear physics research, (2) related UK science and technology facilities (e.g. as Harwell and Daresbury), (3) the UK contribution to international science (e.g. CERN, international telescopes and space missions), (4) innovation and business spin-off programmes, and (5) UK public engagement activities.

The Report was co-researched and co-authored by the STFC Impact Team, including myself while Impact Evaluation Manager in 2013, with Dr. Claire Dougan-McCallie (lead author/Head of Impact) and Jenny Beard, with additional input from senior managers, and many data and case study contributions from other key managers across STFC.

Varied key impacts are identified and reported including:

• Research amongst the best (by citation impact) in astronomy, nuclear and particle physics.
• Supported research of 226 Principal Investigators in 70 universities, led to 1,100 peer-reviewed papers in 2012.
• Facilities (the Diamond Light Source, ISIS and CLF) were used in 2012/13 by over 4,200 unique users , in over 2,400 experiments, producing over 1,000 papers in peer-reviewed journals.

• Technology from CERN benefited the UK economy by over £100 billion every year.
• Funding the development of the UK’s space, internet and computer animation industries, returned over £500 billion to the UK economy per annum.
• Funded Innovation Campuses hosted over 230 enterprises and supported over 5,000 jobs.
• UK industry won £43 million in contracts from the international subscriptions funded, and had accumulated a total of £150 million since 2005.

• Funded research inspired future generations to study STEM subjects, attracting 90% of UK undergraduates to study physics, funded 782 PhD students  and 16,800 student training days.
• Between 2009 to 2012 public engagement programmes engaged people on 58 million occasions, with 2 million people engaged in face-to-face activities in 2013 alone.

"Lead an innovative and sustainable program of exploration with commercial and international partners to enable human expansion across the solar system and to bring back to Earth new knowledge and opportunities. Beginning with missions beyond low-Earth orbit, the United States will lead the return of humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations;".-White House Space Policy Directive #1 Abstract The US administration has laid out, in the clearest terms yet in many years, what the nation expects NASA to do in the immediate term: Return people to the Moon asap(2020s timeframe) with the goal of building the technological and operational infrastructure to conduct a safe human Mars expedition within the next two decades(2030s). A fresh new space policy outlook drives an invigorated agency impetus to incorporate homegrown private space companies, that are chomping at the bit with creativity and new visions for utilizing human spaceflight for commerce and profit, and NASA is already showing signs of nurturing many more partners, both commercial and international entities into the core of this vital civilian endeavor, particularly in human space activity. How to jumpstart a self-sustainable cislunar economy that does not wither and fade with each administration cycle and be victim yet again to the on-again off-again visions for human space activity ? Robotic precursor missions to both Moon and Mars have been underway for some years now, with the aim of gauging in-situ resources for extended human activities, eventually leading to permanent settlements. Following the Apollo missions nearly half a century ago, several reports have presented the case that the Moon is the most proximal celestial body where much of the hard engineering data and experience needed for more ambitious missions may be tested, evolved and certified. Commerce is the lifeblood of modern civilization. Commerce is a pillar of national security. Open-ended government funded space exploration, by itself, is not sustainable for future long duration missions. Hence the role of commerce and international partners in human space activity. An effort to expand the International Space Station model to include more partners on a global scale is also proceeding in parallel. The goal to develop and field the next generation of human occupied space station, one that can safely keep her crew and reliably operate beyond the protective cocoon of the Earth's magnetic field is logically the next step along the critical path for evolving a Mars expedition vehicle, one that has to withstand the interplanetary environment, before crew can be delivered to the surface of Mars. While large, heavy lift launch vehicles and planetary landers are being developed, integrated and tested, are there ways to speed up human spaceflight activity ? What projects can we do with existing human spaceflight assets that are aligned with administration space policy directives ? The ADAM Project attempts to explore options available in the immediate term, to satisfy the national space policy goals set forth by the current administration, while encouraging new visions for human space activity, utilizing existing space technology to accelerate real space commerce for the immediate benefit of all society. The USC 2018 ADAM Project continues in a long line of past lunar projects that make the case for speedy lunar return. The ADAM project concepts and earlier works of the ASTE527 Studio may be accessed at : https://sites.google.com/a/usc.edu/aste527/home

The purpose of this study is to (1) demonstrate the viability of detecting terrestrial caves at thermal-infrared wavelengths, (2) improve our understanding of terrestrial cavethermal behavior, (3) identify times of day when cave openings have the maximum thermal contrast with the surrounding surface regolith, and (4) further our understanding of how to detect caves on Earth, the Moon and Mars. We monitored the thermal behavior of two caves in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. Through this work, we identified times when temperature contrasts between entrance and surface were greatest, thus enabling us to suggest optimal overflight times. The largest thermal contrast for both caves occurred during mid-day. One cave demonstrated thermal behavior at the entrance suggestive of cold-trapping, while the second cave demonstrated temperature shifts suggestive of airflow. We also collected thermograms without knowing optimal detection times; these images suggest both caves may also be detectable during off-peak times. We suggest cavedetection using thermal remote sensing on Earth and other planetary objects will be limited by (1) capturing imagery in the appropriate thermal wavelength, (2) the size of cave entrance vs. the sensor's spatial resolution, (3) the viewing angle of the platform in relation to the slope trajectory of the cave entrance, (4) the strength of the thermal signal associated with the cave entrance, and (5) the time of day and season of thermal image capture. Through this and other studies, we will begin to identify the range of conditions under which caves are detectable in the thermal infrared and thus improve our detection capabilities of these features on Earth, the Moon and Mars.

An overview of the project history of the first remotely-manned exploration of the Jovian system by scientists and engineers at Pasadena, California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  Special emphasis is given to the redesign of the mission due to damage aboard the spacecraft and to the unexpected appearance of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.

Paper given at the 2016 Royal Geographical Society Conference session "Geographies of Outer Space",

This paper examines the early 1980s dispute between space colonisation advocate Professor Gerard K. O'Neill and Lt Gen. Daniel O. Graham over the term "High Frontier", using the argument between these two farsighted astrofuturists to explore tensions over space militarisation within the American pro-Space Movement and the importance of Frederick Jackson Turner's "Frontier Thesis" to space exploration advocate discourses.

Places in space: initial challenges for exogeography as human activities develop outside planet Earth Over  fifty  years  after  the  first  Lunar  landing,  the  present-day  developments  in  as-tronautics are presenting humankind with the perspective of expanding its presence and  activity  beyond  the  boundaries  of  planet  Earth.  If  it  is  true  that  such  presence  and activity have been the traditional cores of attention for geography as a scientific discourse, it is reasonable to assume that they will remain so even outside of their orig-inary spatial boundaries. A possible evolution of geography might therefore be what has begun to be called exogeography i.e. the study of dynamics and processes which, after being developed on Earth during the past centuries, are likely to be developed in outer space or other celestial bodies in the future as well. This appears to be the case, since  human  territorialization  processes  appear  to  follow  the  same  general  patterns  even though their scope and areas of action evolve with time. A reflection on this topic is being started in Italy and some initial steps were taken in recent years. This paper briefly summarizes some perspectives in this field. By reviewing some epistemological statements about geography in classical academic formulations, this work asserts that there is a definite potential of continuity between geographical studies, regardless of their being focused on Earth as a physical context or on other planets or interplanetary space. This is due to the fact that their ultimate objects remain, consistently, human presence and activity in the spaces where they occur.