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The Incredible Mars Helicopter Ingenuity

Ingenuity The Ingenuity helicopter, intended to make no more than five flights, instead flew 72 times, racking up more than two hours in the air and covering 17 kilometers. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) The ingenuity of technology demos by Jeff Foust Monday, January 29, 2024 Bookmark and Share On a Friday morning last month, a small ceremony took place at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia. In one corner of the museum, in the shadow of one of the museum’s most famous artifacts—the shuttle Discovery—a much smaller flying machine sat on a table. That vehicle was a prototype of Ingenuity, the Mars helicopter that had been flying on the Red Planet for more than two and a half years. The ceremony marked the formal donation of the Ingenuity prototype by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to the museum. “The minute I heard there was going to be a helicopter on board the Perseverance mission I started talking to folks at JPL, asking, ‘Well, what else did you build along the way that maybe you could give to the Smithsonian?’” recalled Matt Shindell, space history curator at the National Air and Space Museum. “The minute I heard there was going to be a helicopter on board the Perseverance mission I started talking to folks at JPL, asking, ‘Well, what else did you build along the way that maybe you could give to the Smithsonian?’” recalled Shindell. Those discussions led to the donation of the prototype, which was used in ground tests in a chamber that simulated Martian atmospheric conditions. That prototype, he noted, represented both Ingenuity itself as well as “the work that had to be done along the way to produce something like Ingenuity that does something new for the first time on another world.” That interest, of course, only grew once Ingenuity started flying on Mars. “It has greatly exceeded our wildest dreams for the capabilities of this aircraft,” said Eric Ianson, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA headquarters. Expected to perform no more than five flights on Mars in April 2021, the helicopter made its 68th flight the day of the donation ceremony. “The longevity of Ingenuity’s flight operations remains to be seen. We know it will eventually wrap up its mission,” he said. “In the meantime, the project team continues to push the envelope to further understand the capabilities and limitations of the system. Every day on Mars is a gift, and we're looking to make the most of the remaining opportunities.” Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity project manager at JPL, echoed those comments, noting that every flight since the first “has been a gift—sprinkles on top of that original technology demonstration goal of proving that flight was possible.” But that gift has come to an end. A little more than a month after that ceremony, NASA announced that Ingenuity had made its last flight, suffering damage from a hard landing that would keep it grounded. The success of Ingenuity, though, not only demonstrated the capabilities of powered flight on Mars but also the value of technology demonstrations despite, or perhaps even because, of a constrained NASA budget. Ingenuity An image returned by Ingenuity after its January 18 flight showed damage to one ofs rotor blades, visible in the shadow the rotor cast. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) Bittersweet end The first hint of a problem with Ingenuity came on January 19, when JPL announced that it had lost contact with the helicopter during its latest flight, its 72nd. While that sparked initial alarm, a day later JPL said it has restored contact. It seemed like just a glitch, similar to those that temporarily paused flights in the past. On Thursday, though, the bad news came. “It is bittersweet that I must announce that Ingenuity, the little helicopter that could,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said in a video message, “has now taken its last flight on Mars.” “There was the initial moment, obviously, of sadness,” Tzanetos said. “That’s very quickly replaced with happiness and pride and a feeling of celebration for what we’ve pulled off.” The project reached that conclusion, Tzanetos said in a call with reporters later that day, based on an image from the helicopter returned after landing. It showed a shadow of one of Ingenuity’s rotor blades, with a chunk missing from the end, presumably damage from contacting the ground. He estimated that about 25% of the end of that blade was missing. Since most of the lift from the blades comes from that outer portion, the loss of it meant that the helicopter could not fly again. He added that the high speed of the rotors — about 2,500 rpm — meant that it was likely other blades were also damaged; engineers had not yet received images to confirm that. Even if not, having a portion of one blade mission would make Ingenuity unbalanced. “It must be perfectly balanced or any rotor system will shake itself apart.” The flight was intended to be a simple up-and-down flight after the previous flight, January 6, ended in what the project called an “emergency landing.” The intent was to pop up and see where exactly the helicopter landed in order to plan future flights. The helicopter rose to its planned altitude of 12 meters and hovered for 4.5 seconds before descending. The loss of communications occurred when Ingenuity was a meter above the ground. “Whether or not the blade strike occurred, which led to the communications loss, or there was a communications loss and a power brownout which then led to the rotor strike, we will never know,” Tzanetos said, because of a loss of data during the incident. The project team, though, was working to try and piece together what might have happened. A key factor may have been the terrain that Ingenuity was flying over, which was featureless. That, counterintuitively, may have put the helicopter in jeopardy by confusing its navigation system. “Any system where you track features in order to navigate is going to see a lot of different features, and some of them are going to be good features and some of them are going to be bad features,” explained Håvard Grip, the “pilot emeritus” for Ingenuity, on the call. “The way a system like this works is by looking at the consensus of what it sees and throwing out the things that don’t agree with the consensus.” That doesn’t work well, though, when flying over terrain with few features. “The danger is when you run out of features, you don’t have very many to navigate on. You’re not able to establish what that consensus is, and you end up tracking the wrong kinds of features,” he said. If that occurred, Ingenuity might overcorrect while trying to land when its navigation system was confused by spurious features. “It’s likely it made an aggressive maneuver to try and correct that upon landing, and that would have accounted for sideways motion and tilted the helicopter,” Grip said, either causing the rotor to hit the ground or a loss of power before landing. There is no sign of other damage to Ingenuity other than the rotor, Tzanetos said. Ingenuity remains in contact with controllers via the Perseverance rover and will remain so until Perseverance moves out of communications range at some point in the coming weeks as it climbs out of Jezero Crater. The rover might be able to take some images of the helicopter, but is not expected to get closer than a couple hundred meters to Ingenuity before heading on its way. “It’s almost an understatement to say that it has surpassed expectations,” said Glaze. Ingenuity, having long exceeded its original five-flight mission, had been repurposed into an aerial scout for Perseverance. On one flight, Tzanetos said, the helicopter took images that scientists used to create a three-dimensional map. On other flights, Ingenuity flew ahead of Perseverance to examine the path the rover was supposed to take. “Rover planners could look at it early before Perseverance got there and try to assess if path A is safe or should we go down path B.” But, he added, Ingenuity was not critical to Perseverance. “There won’t be a change to the Perseverance mission,” he said. “There was no part of Perseverance’s core science mission objectives that were dependent on Ingenuity at all.” Because of that, the mood among both the project and other NASA officials was less somber than one might think. “Definitely bittersweet, but mostly incredibly celebratory,” said Laurie Leshin, director of JPL. “It’s bittersweet for a moment there,” Tzanetos said. For the last two and a half years, “there’s always that piece in the back of your head getting ready, every downlink, that today could be the last day.” “There was the initial moment, obviously, of sadness,” he said, when the image of the broken rotor came down from Mars. “That’s very quickly replaced with happiness and pride and a feeling of celebration for what we’ve pulled off.” Mars sample retrival helicopter A version of Ingenuity designed to pick up sample tubes for Mars Sample Return is under development. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) The future of flight on Mars Before Ingenuity made its first flight in April 2021, there was skepticism that it would work at all. There was debate about including it on Perseverance; some scientists involved on the mission worried that the unproven technology demo would, at a minimum, be a distraction to rover operations as they worked on its primary mission to collect samples for later return to Earth. The success of Ingenuity turned it from a liability to an asset. “It’s almost an understatement to say that it has surpassed expectations,” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division. “It has laid a very solid groundwork for future aerial exploration on Mars and beyond.” The most concrete example of that is its potential role in Mars Sample Return. In July 2022, NASA announced changes to the future missions that would pick up the samples Perseverance cached and return them to Earth. NASA and ESA decided to drop plans to develop a “fetch rover” on the Sample Retrieval Lander that would pick up the samples and load them into the rocket to place them into orbit, where the Earth Return Orbiter would collect them for the journey to Earth. Instead, Perseverance would deliver them directly to the lander. As a backup, though, the lander would carry two helicopters similar in design to Ingenuity. They would fly to a cache Perseverance created with its first set of ten samples, picking up individual tubes and flying back to the lander. Design of those helicopters is underway at JPL, informed by the lessons from Ingenuity. Tzanetos said in December that those flights were helping engineers update aerodynamic and thermal models for the new helicopters. “We had all imagined while working on Ingenuity that our kids’ generation or our grandchildren’s generation were then going to build the second version,” he said then. “We never imagined that, while Ingenuity was still flying, we would be working on the next version of helicopters for Mars.” There is, though, no guarantee that MSR will use those helicopters. NASA is in the midst of a review of the overall MSR architecture, prompted by an independent review that concluded last September that the overall approach was behind schedule and over budget. That review is slated to be done by March. “We are in the middle right now of assessing the architecture for Mars Sample Return,” Glaze said. She said that included all aspects of it, including the helicopters, but didn’t state what that might mean for the helicopters. “As a Mars scientist myself, I dream of a helicopter exploring the canyons of Valles Marineris,” Leshin said. She added, though, that she envisioned that helicopters based on Ingenuity could work in tandem with other future rovers, or go it alone, traveling to locations like the sides of craters that are inaccessible to rovers. “As a Mars scientist myself, I dream of a helicopter exploring the canyons of Valles Marineris,” Leshin said. “This type of mobility can take us to places that we have never dreamed we’d be able to explore on Mars. The possibilities are really endless.” She and others on the call drew parallels between Ingenuity and Sojourner, the small rover that flew on the Mars Pathfinder Lander in the mid-1990s, also as a tech demo. “It led to the major successes and scientific discoveries of Spirit and Opportunity,” Leshin said. “Curiosity and now Perseverance, they all draw their lineage back to a tech demo that was Sojourner.” They hailed the value of technology demonstrations like Ingenuity. “Technology demonstrations are incredible ways of proving new capabilities and painting a picture of the future,” Leshin said. “They can lead to awe-inspiring successes even beyond their own demonstrations.” Another example she gave of such tech demos was the Deep Space Optical Communications payload on the Psyche mission, launched in October. In December, that payload showed how laser communications could work at interplanetary distances, beaming a high-resolution video at speeds of 267 megabits per second from a distance of 31 million kilometers. (It also made Taters, a cat seen in the video chasing a laser pointer, into a minor celebrity.) “We are willing to accept significantly higher risks” with tech demos, Glaze said. “The idea is to try to do what we can do in these technology demonstrations, push the boundaries and accept risk.” But technology demonstrations carry risks beyond technical ones discussed at the briefing. They are often subject to fiscal risks, first on the chopping block when budget cuts come. Many such demos are supported by NASA’s space technology directorate, but when the fiscal scapel, or hatchet, comes to NASA’s budget, that directorate often feels the brunt of it. Another tech demo mentioned in the call is the coronagraph instrument being developed at JPL for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. It is a step towards more capable coronagraph insturments proposed for the later Habitable Worlds Observatory that can precisely block the light from a star, allowing the telescope to observe any exoplanets orbiting it and see if they might be habitable, or inhabited. But that instrument became a tech demo in response to budget pressures several years ago on Roman, then called WFIRST, that put it at risk of cancellation. Ingenuity prototype The prototype of Ingenuity donated in December to the National Air and Space Museum. (credit: J. Foust) The prototype of Ingenuity donated to the National Air and Space Museum will not immediately go on display. (A few lucky museum visitors the day of the ceremony would have been able to see it, just behind Discovery, with stanchions in place to keep people from getting too close.) It will go on display later at the museum’s National Mall location. Ingenuity, though is one of those rare artifacts that represents the museum’s conjunction: air and space. How will it be put on display? “I think the emphasis that we’ll probably put will be more on the side of what this has added to the exploration of other worlds,” said Shindell, the museum curator. He envisions displaying it with items from other Mars missions, “demonstrating that lineage of how we move from flybys to orbiters to landers to rovers and now to aircraft in exploring Mars.” One day, many years from now, the prototype of Ingenuity might have company at the museum. “I look forward to the day that one of our astronauts brings home Ingenuity and we can all visit it in the Smithsonian,” Leshin said. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone. Note: we are now moderating comments. There will be a delay in posting comments and no guarantee that all submitted comments will be posted. Home Subscribe to our weekly newsletter email address

Book Review- Good Luck Have Fun

Review: Good Luck Have Fun by Jeff Foust Monday, January 29, 2024 Bookmark and Share Good Luck Have Fun: Relativity’s Journey to Launch the First 3D Printed Rocket to Space by Relativity Space Relativity Space, 2024 paperback, 224 pp., illus. ISBN 979-8-9895039-0-2 US$50 Since the beginning of last year, several rockets have made their first launches. Some have been unquestionably successful, like Vulcan Centaur’s debut earlier this month; others, not so much. Somewhere in between was the first launch of Relativity Space’s Terran 1 rocket last March. The launch, technically, was a failure: the engine in the second stage failed to ignite, keeping it from reaching orbit. Relativity celebrated the “Good Luck Have Fun” mission nonetheless: the rocket’s first stage performed as expected, with its 3D-printed structures making it through Max Q, or maximum dynamic pressure during ascent. The development and launch of Terran 1 is the subject of Good Luck Have Fun, a book published by the company. It offers a behind-the-scenes, albeit carefully curated, look at the creation of both the rocket and the company behind it. The book starts with the origin story of the company: Tim Ellis and Jordan Noone, who met as engineering students at USC and went on to work at Blue Origin and SpaceX. Ellis in particular had been working on 3D-printing technology at Blue Origin and believed it could help a company rapidly develop new launch vehicles. Like so many others, they got the entrepreneurial itch, leaving their jobs to start a company (their initial business was not sketched on a proverbial napkin but instead the back of a Starbucks receipt.) In their early years, they were perhaps best known for cold-emailing a pitch to billionaire Mark Cuban, who soon invested half a million dollars into the startup. “Terran 1 was the concept car. Terran R is the mass-market product,” Ellis states in the book. The book follows the growth of the company as it worked to mature its 3D-printing technology for producing large metal structures. It’s all about growth here: bigger printers, bigger facilities, a bigger workforce, and bigger funding rounds. Later on, we get to the rocket itself, Terran 1, and its Aeon methane-fueled engines. (The book states that Terran 1 was originally called Antoni 1, after architect Antoni Gaudí.) The vehicle’s printed structures and engines take shape and make it to the pad for its inaugural launch, all recounted in the book. The whole process, though launch, is lavishly illustrated in the book. Because this book is from the company—the book has no author but acknowledges a couple dozen contributors, including Ellis—it is something of an advertorial product, a way to highlight what it has accomplished. The book does discuss technical setbacks it had along the way, such as difficulties with developing a flight termination system and engine test failures; one page includes a set of images from one such failed engine test, showing the engine exploding and destroying the thrust chamber and nozzle. But the reader is taken behind the scenes only as much as the company wants, rather than account from a third party that might offer a more critical view. The book ends with Relativity’s future plans. Weeks after the “Good Luck Have Fun” launch, the company announced it was retiring the rocket so it could focus on the larger, reusable Terran R, a Falcon 9-class rocket expected to make its first launch as soon as 2026. “Terran 1 was the concept car. Terran R is the mass-market product,” Ellis states in the book. (The company had sold a number of those “concept cars” to customers ranging from Iridium to NASA before deciding to retire the vehicle.) Terran R, like Terran 1, will use 3D printing, although the company is turning to more traditional production methods for some components. Good Luck Have Fun is marketed as something of a collector’s item, with only 500 copies available for purchase. It may not be the complete story of the development of Terran 1 and the early years of Relativity Space, but offers enough of a look to see why the company is pleased with what it has accomplished, even if they haven’t made it all the way to orbit yet. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

Putting Navajo Ashes On The Moon

Peregrine The presence of payloads on the Peregrine carrying cremated remains prompted criticism from the Navajo Nation. (credit: ULA) The sacred Moon: Navigating diverse cultural beliefs in lunar missions by Deana L. Weibel Monday, January 29, 2024 Bookmark and Share On January 8, 2024, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket successfully lifted off into space. Among its payloads was the Peregrine lunar lander, a spacecraft built by Astrobotic Technology. This was to be the first lunar landing not sponsored by a government agency, although the lander did carry some NASA payloads (Wall 2019) as well as a number of commercial payloads. The commercial items included tiny containers of cremated human remains, including those of celebrities associated with the 1960s television show Star Trek, submitted as payload by two space memorial companies, Celestis and Elysium Space (Wattles 2024). The Vulcan Centaur’s upper stage, headed to deep space, also contained human remains as part of another Celestis mission, most notably those of Gene Roddenberry, his wife Majel Barrett, and Star Trek actors Nichelle Nichols, DeForest Kelley, and James Doohan (Chang 2024). Nygren explained in a statement that the Moon “holds a sacred place in Navajo cosmology. The suggestion of transforming it into a resting place for human remains is deeply disturbing and unacceptable to our people and many other tribal nations.” The Vulcan Centaur blasted into space without incident. Peregrine, however, which was supposed to head toward the Moon after its separation from the rocket, then achieve orbit and set down on the lunar surface by February 23, 2024, encountered difficulties. A propellant leak was discovered in the lander, preventing it from ever reaching the Moon. Although Astrobotic made multiple attempts to salvage the mission, they eventually directed the craft to return to Earth and reenter the atmosphere. Reports indicate that it burned up during re-entry, somewhere over the South Pacific (Amos 2024). This mission was of particular interest to me as an anthropologist of religion who studies religious aspects of space travel and exploration. I have previously written about the company Celestis, which, since 1994, has regularly sent symbolic portions of people’s cremated remains into outer space as a way to memorialize them, as payloads on existing missions. They offer such packages as “Earth Rise,” which sends ashes on a suborbital flight and recovers them (resembling a Virgin Galactic or Blue Origin launch, albeit without live passengers); “Earth Orbit,” which sends ashes up in a spacecraft that will orbit the Earth; “Luna,” which allows cremated remains to be sent as payload on an existing mission to the Moon; and “Voyager,” in which cremated remains are included on a flight not set to return. The Vulcan Centaur launched in January was the vehicle for both the “Tranquility” Luna mission and the “Enterprise” Voyager mission (Carney 2023). The mission I had studied previously, an Earth Rise mission called Aurora, was ultimately scrubbed (the “passengers’” cremated remains were recovered and assigned to future flights), but I was able to attend the Aurora memorial service and launch preparation in 2022 as part of my ethnographic research. The concerns of the Navajo Nation As preparations for the January 2024 launch of the Vulcan Centaur with its ill-fated Peregrine payload were underway, it became clear that the parts of Peregrine’s multiple payloads that included human remains—a very small portion of what it was carrying and far from its main reason for attempting a Moon landing—were creating controversy. The Navajo Nation, representing the Diné Natives of the American Southwest, expressed concern about the idea of human remains being left on the Moon, a celestial body considered sacred by the community. Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren explained in a statement released ahead of the launch that the Moon “holds a sacred place in Navajo cosmology. The suggestion of transforming it into a resting place for human remains is deeply disturbing and unacceptable to our people and many other tribal nations.” (Fisher 2024) Nygren further argued that the Navajo Nation had first expressed their concern back in 1998 after the launch of the NASA Lunar Prospector mission, which would go on in July 1999 to crash-land a spacecraft on the Moon containing within it a portion of ashes belonging to astronomer and geologist Eugene Shoemaker, who had helped train the Apollo astronauts. At that time, NASA’s director of public affairs, Peggy Wilhide, apologized, stating “None of the scientists on the program were aware that this would be insensitive… I give my commitment that if we ever discuss doing something like this again, we will consult more widely and we will consult with Native Americans.” (Volante 2011) Although Peregrine was not a NASA mission, given that NASA was cooperating with the agency and the lander was carrying some NASA payloads, Nygren believed the prior agreement remained relevant. The CEO of Celestis, Charles Chafer, responded to Nygren’s comments with his own statement, arguing that just “as permanent memorials for deceased are present all over planet Earth and not considered desecration, our memorial on the moon is handled with care and reverence” (Chamlee 2024). Despite a last-minute White House meeting, the disagreement remained unresolved (Fisher 2024), and the launch went off as planned. Peregrine, however, because of the fuel leak mentioned above, never made it to the Moon. The Moon as a sacred object or place It is almost certain that as soon as Homo sapiens had anything resembling religion, the Moon has been seen as sacred. Sociologist Émile Durkheim studied ideas of the sacred and argued that at its most basic, sacred things were “set apart and forbidden” (Durkheim 1915). What could be more set apart and forbidden, at least until the landing of the Soviet spacecraft Luna 1 on the Moon’s surface in 1959 (Harvey 1996)? For the vast majority of human existence, the Moon shifted from glowing orb to shining crescent, bigger and more detailed than any of the visible stars, drawing curiosity and inspiring fantasy. Do human remains “desecrate” sacred places, rendering them impure? There’s no universal answer to this question, even when it arises on Earth. It makes sense that the Diné and some other peoples would see the Moon as inherently untouchable and in need of protection, but even among the many cultures that have seen the Moon as sacred, what that sacredness means varies widely. The ancient Greeks and Romans saw the Moon as a goddess, often as Selene or Luna, and associated other goddesses, like Artemis or Diana, with the celestial body (Mheallaigh 2021). Other deifications of the Moon include Khonsu, the Egyptian god of the Moon (Redford 2003); the Aztec deity Metztli (Trejo 1994); the Inuit God Aningaat (Spalding 1979); Tu’er Ye, the Chinese rabbit deity who lives on the Moon (Stepanchuk and Wong 1993); and the Polynesian god Avatea (Craig 1989). Some religions use the Moon in sacred ways, more as a celestial timekeeper than as an entity. For instance, in both Judaism and Islam the cycles of the Moon determine the start and end dates to religious holidays. Both religions follow a lunar calendar, resulting in a year of 13 29.5-day month; like the 12-month Gregorian calendar, the lunar calendar must be adjusted periodically to make up lost days (Birth 2013). In Islam, the fasting month of Ramadan can only be broken when the new moon of the next month, Shawwal, is spotted on the 29th or 30th day, or after Ramadan’s 30th day comes to an end (“When Does Ramadan End?” n.d.). In other religions the Moon is a place where the souls of the dead go, at least temporarily. In Plutarch’s Moralia, the essay “On the Face in the Moon’s Orb” suggests that the Moon is the place where souls of the dead go on their way to the afterlife (Plutarch and Babbitt 1928). In a strikingly similar account, Mike Dixon-Kennedy’s Encyclopedia of Russian and Slavic Myth and Legend reports that the Slavic and Romany people have longstanding beliefs about the association between the Moon and the dead. In the entry about the god Dundra, Dixon-Kennedy writes, “The original name of the god of the moon, who later became known as Alako. According to legend, Dundra was sent to earth by his father, to teach the Romany people their laws and to serve as their protector. When he had finished his task on earth he ascended into the skies, where he became Alako. He watches over his people and carries their souls to live on the moon after death. One day Alako will return from the moon and lead his people back to their lost homeland.” (Dixon-Kennedy 1999) The Moon is also associated with death in another entry about the traditional Lithuanian underworld, Dausos. Dixon-Kennedy writes, “Mysterious realm of the dead—possibly the moon—governed by Dievas. It was not a heaven or a paradise but simply a world that lay beyond the slippery high hill of the sky, which the dead had to climb. To stop themselves from slipping down again, the dead needed strong fingernails or claws like those of an animal. As the journey was believed to be very long, spirits were also said to have made the trip on horseback, in the smoke of cremation fires, by traveling along the Bird’s Way (the Milky Way), or in a boat such as that used by the Sun on his return trip to the east.” (Dixon-Kennedy 1999) In Andrew Chaikin’s 1994 book A Man on the Moon, he reports in his epilogue that more contemporary beliefs about the association between the dead and the moon caused an embarrassing situation for astronaut Stu Roosa during a visit to Nepal. According to Chaikin: In 1975, during a trip to Nepal with his wife, Joan, Stu Roosa visited a school to give a talk about his flight to the moon. Afterward, there were mysterious questions: “Who did you see?” Roosa answered, “There is no one there.” A murmur went through the place. Again the students asked what he had seen. Roosa was adamant: “There is nothing there. Not even wind. There is nothing.” Later, after the Roosas had gone, a teacher told the children, “You mustn't listen to him. He's wrong.” The Roosas were distressed when they learned that some Nepalese believed the spirits of their ancestors reside on the moon. Roosa had essentially told them there was no heaven. Joan wished the American government had briefed them better for the trip. (Chaikin 1994) This account demonstrates two things. First, it gives yet another example of a culture where the Moon is associated with death. Although Chaikin does not tell us what religion the children followed, and there are quite a few distinct religions practiced in Nepal, the belief described may be linked to the religious scripture known as the Chandogya Upanishad. This scripture describes the “path of the Moon” taken by souls who are good people but not yet ready to be liberated from earthly life. They wait on the Moon to have another lifetime on Earth. The account also serves as an example of another conflict of perspective, like the Navajo Nation’s opposition to the Peregrine lander, where a particular society’s understanding of the Moon seems at odds with the goals of American space exploration. On the pollution or purity of human remains In his January 4, 2024, statement expressing concern about Peregrine, Buu Nygren explained the danger, saying, “The sacredness of the moon is deeply embedded in the spirituality and heritage of many indigenous cultures, including our own. The placement of human remains on the moon is a profound desecration of this celestial body revered by our people.” (Nygren 2024) As vandalizing a synagogue or destroying an American flag would be seen as an affront to something deserving reverence, the sacredness of the Moon, in this interpretation, would be disrespected, and perhaps even lessened, by the placement of human remains on its surface. Do human remains “desecrate” sacred places, rendering them impure? There’s no universal answer to this question, even when it arises on Earth. The fact that the Moon was unattainable has allowed it to symbolize the idea of the sacred untouchable. Anthropologist Mary Douglas, in her book Purity and Danger, talks about death as a form of symbolic impurity in many cultures, mostly because of the way it disrupts the normal social order. Mortuary rituals are a way for societies to feel a greater sense of control over death, with various practices serving to transform the recently deceased into an ancestor or assure the deceased a happier or more proper afterlife (Douglas 1966). Death happens either way, but it’s often easier to accept if it’s worked into the expectations and stories of the culture. Rules for what to do with the body of a deceased person are part of this. Certainly, the idea that human remains may be literally polluting isn’t difficult to understand, especially when certain types of death are contagious, human remains can draw scavengers, etc. The importance of limiting the potential damage a dead body can create is an important part of many ways of handling the dead, from burial to cremation and other approaches. While the Diné may see human remains as a source of lunar pollution, many Zoroastrians see human remains as a danger to the Earth. The Zoroastrian scripture known as The Avesta explains that “allowing (corpses) to touch the ground contaminates the ground for one year and that burying contaminates the ground for fifty years.” (Vendidad at 48 and 62, cited by Solanki 2016) Instead a practice known as “sky burial” is used, in which the dead are set in high locations (Towers of Silence) where natural processes can reduce the body to bones. There is a belief that a particular demon “infects the dead immediately after death and cannot be expelled” until the bones are clean of flesh (Vendidad 55 and 210, cited by Solanki 2016). If dead bodies can contaminate the ground, it’s not surprising that some groups might see them as contaminating the Moon in a similar way. Other societies, though, understand a corpse as the pure object and the ground as a source of contamination. In her study of a former practice of the Warí people of Brazil, Beth Conklin explained how cannibalism could work as an act of reverence, writing, “In contrast to Western views of eating as an act of objectification and domination of the thing consumed, eating can express respect and sympathy in Wari' culture, especially in contrast to the alternative of burial. The ground is considered ‘dirty’ and polluting.” (Conklin 1995) It’s clear that even the act of burying a body in the ground, seen as “normal” in many cultures, can sometimes be taboo, but for distinctly different reasons. To touch or not to touch? For the vast majority of human existence, the Moon has been out of reach, seeming both close and distant, irresistible, controlling the tides as it wanes into near-death and waxes back to life. It’s no wonder so many human communities find it meaningful. The fact that it was unattainable has allowed it to symbolize the idea of the sacred untouchable. For people to reach the Moon, to walk on it, was unthinkable for many, and may be part of the reason why some insistent voices on the Internet continue to deny the reality of the six crewed Moon landings (so far). Are sacred objects always untouchable? There are certainly examples of items that are both sacred and kept from human touch. The Torah, for instance, inscribed in kosher ink on parchment made from the skin of a kosher animal, and containing the biblical stories of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, is held on two wooden dowels, the atzei chayim. The parchment of the Torah itself may not be touched: readers will mark their place with a type of pointer called a yad (which means “hand”), often tipped with a small figure of a hand with an outstretched figure. The concern of the Navajo Nation’s Diné people, as expressed by Nygren, is not the presence of humans or spacecraft on the Moon but that the payloads of Peregrine would have included human remains. On the other hand, one of the most sacred items in the Catholic form of Christianity is the consecrated wafer. Devout Catholics believe the act of transubstantiation transforms the substance of the wafer to the substance of the flesh of Christ; the consecrated wafer, now called the “host,” is seen, quite literally, as the body of Jesus, even if its empirical parameters haven’t changed. The ritual of communion doesn’t just allow this sacred object to be touched, it requires that it be touched through the act of eating the host. Even if Durkheim said sacred objects are “set apart and forbidden,” there are situations where sacred objects are encountered and embraced. The contradictory understandings of the sacred described above demonstrate that human interactions with the sacred are not the same from religion to religion. In my research on pilgrimage sites, too, I’ve encountered sacred places that must be visited and others that must be left alone. Sometimes a sacred place is both required and taboo simultaneously, like the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, which is the site of an obligatory pilgrimage for Muslims but also completely forbidden to non-Muslims. The Moon and other contested sites The one constant that seems to exist when it comes to sacred places is that when a location is considered sacred by more than one group, and when the groups’ understandings of what being sacred means differ, there is the potential for conflict. The city of Jerusalem, first sacred to the Jews, then to the Christians, then to the Muslims, with each religion having its own rationale, is perhaps the most famous example of a contested site, having been battled over for centuries. A site can also be contested when it is sacred to only one side. Take, for example, the current controversy surrounding the Thirty Meter Telescope site on the extinct Mauna Kea volcano on the Big Island of Hawai’i. Although other facilities for astronomical observation already exist on Mauna Kea with indigenous support, the Thirty Meter Telescope is much larger. Given that the “dormant volcano’s peak is sacred to Native Hawaiians, home to their deities and ancestors (and in) ancient Hawaiian law, access to the summit was restricted to only the highest-ranking leaders,” continued building on the site is considered disrespectful by much of the ethnically Hawai’ian community, seen as yet another chapter in the colonization of what used to be an independent nation (Seward 2001). Mauna Kea stands as an example of a sacred site where the contest for control involves religion, but also pits scientific values against humanistic values. It is worth noting that the Navajo Nation’s concern with the Peregrine lander was not with the main goals of the mission. As Nygren wrote in his statement, “The Navajo Nation is not opposed to scientific progress or space exploration” (Nygren 2024). The conflict between the Navajo Nation and Astrobotic (NASA is involved, but mostly on the periphery) is similar to the Thirty Meter Telescope conflict in Hawai’i but is complicated by the spiritual and religious beliefs underlying the desire of Celestis’s and Elysium’s clients to send the cremated remains of numerous human beings (and one dog) to the Moon. The concern of the Navajo Nation’s Diné people, as expressed by Nygren, is not the presence of humans or spacecraft on the Moon but that the payloads of Peregrine would have included human remains. In essence, this is a spiritual or religious conflict like Jerusalem, with disagreement over how a sacred site is to be used. Space and spirituality People tend to assume that American space exploration is a purely scientific endeavor, with decisions being made using only logic and rationality. It is clear from many sources, however, including Catherine Newell’s Destined for the Stars: Faith, the future, and America’s final frontier (2017), as well as To Touch the Face of God: The Sacred, the Profane, and The American Space Program by Kendrick Oliver (2013), and the collection Touching the face of the cosmos: on the intersection of space travel and religion, edited by Paul Levinson and Michael Walthemathe (2016), that religion has always been a powerful motivator, albeit in the background, for space exploration. Even for the nominally atheistic Soviet Union, the mystical ideas of Cosmism were a factor (see Siddiqi 2016) and with the fall of communism, more overt religious expression has blossomed on the ISS (see Salmond, Walsh and Gorman 2020). Many involved in the American space program, in both the governmental and commercial sectors, are personally very religious. While there are plenty of atheists and agnostics involved in the program as well, Newell demonstrates that the age of exploration, inspired in part by Christian missionary fervor, serves as the model for the new “manifest destiny”: the urge to explore and settle space. Even the non-religious seem to be influenced by this Christian idea, defined by John Wilsey as having had its origins as “a form of Christian Nationalism.” (Wilsey 2016) As the more spiritual or religious dimensions within the space program reveal, even if they aren’t always obvious, space exploration is not just a scientific endeavor but also a profoundly human one. The spiritual side of secular memorials Spiritual traces in purportedly secular endeavors are also a mark of the Celestis missions. In 2019 I had an opportunity to interview an employee of Celestis, someone I met at a large gathering of space enthusiasts. This gentleman, whom I will refer to by the pseudonym of Edward, explained to me that because its customers come from all over the world, with a large number of them coming from Japan, it was important to the company not to take a specific religious perspective in their memorial events and flights. He described a secular-seeming memorial service to me: “It's wonderful. What we do is the day before the launch we hold a memorial service and that gives the family who have flown to us a chance to represent their family member. It gives them the opportunity to talk a little bit about whoever it is they're sending up in space.” When I attended a Celestis memorial service in 2022, however, I was struck by the spiritual elements that did make it into the program. A retired astronaut was brought in as a speaker and he mentioned during his talk that he believed when people interested in space passed on, they would have a chance to explore the universe after death. There was also a bagpiper hired for the event who played the hymn Amazing Grace. Amazing Grace is a very typical song to hear at a funeral, but is first and foremost a Christian hymn. To be able to look at the Moon and have it become a place to imagine a grandparent or child who had passed away would be unusual and likely very moving. While those spiritual themes were present, few slides shown of Celestis “passengers” during the service (personalized by their loved ones) referred explicitly to God or to themes from any particular religion (“Climbing the Stairway to Heaven” came close.) Instead they more frequently included allusions to Carl Sagan’s “We are made of star stuff” quotation or refer to the upcoming flight as an “odyssey” or something “ethereal,” demonstrating a perspective more closely linked to Scientific or Naturalistic Pantheism. The official World Pantheism website asks, “Do you feel a deep sense of peace, belonging, and gratitude in Nature? Are you blown away by a clear night sky filled with stars and galaxies? Do you say things like ‘Forests are my cathedrals’ or ‘The Universe is my “higher power”’? Then you may well be a scientific pantheis.t” (“A spirituality of nature and the universe” 2023) However it may be classified, the spiritual perspective memorial-goers tended to express saw the upcoming spaceflight as something their loved one would have enjoyed and possibly would still enjoy, with both organizers and mourners referring to the ashes as “passengers” and describing what these “passengers” would “experience.” Even if the spirituality associated with space and the universe isn't a conventional spirituality, the act of sending a deceased friend or family member’s cremated remains into space is incredibly moving and highly symbolic for those involved. If the ashes go into space and are returned, there is a link that forever connects the idea of that loved one to outer space. For a family member to keep those ashes, probably in a very significant place, is an act of devotion. When a person’s cremated remains end up orbiting the Earth, their family members are given a way to track them, so that Mom, Dad, and the kids can run outside—for a brief moment, that light in the sky is Uncle Dave or Grandma Ruth. To be able to look at the Moon and have it become a place to imagine a grandparent or child who had passed away would be unusual and likely very moving. The family members of Apollo astronauts were able to point to the moon and say, “Look up there! Your daddy’s up there!” With that in mind, the idea of being able to tell your children and your grandchildren that your mother is somehow, literally, on the Moon seems very powerful. There are currently one person’s remains on the Moon, the ashes of geologist and astronomer Eugene Shoemaker, who had wanted to be an astronaut himself but never had the opportunity. Celestis, working with NASA, transported his ashes and astronomer Carolyn Porco designed the container that held them. An epigraph on the container quoted Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” reading: And, when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun. Shoemaker’s widow, Carolyn Shoemaker, who watched the launch with her children and grandchildren, said at the time, “He’s going to be the man on the moon to us”. (Fletcher 1999) It seems likely that 25 years later, Shoemaker’s grandchildren still think that whenever they look at the Moon. What “would have…thrilled” Eugene Shoemaker, according to his widow (Fletcher 1999), was, of course, a source of dismay to the Diné people of the Navajo Nation, who contacted NASA and were reassured nothing like this would happen again without their input (Volante 2011). When Peregrine failed to reach the Moon, there was relief on one side and sorrow on the other. The disappointed family members whose loved ones’ ashes never reached the Moon were promised by Celestis that the backup ashes held in reserve (according to Celestis policy) will be “passengers” on a future Lunar mission, at which point the controversy will be renewed. Concluding thoughts Who gets to make decisions about the religious use of outer space, the Moon, and other celestial bodies in the solar system? So far it seems to come down to the doctrine that might makes right. Despite the existence of treaties and agreements and the work of many to create an equitable system for the use of space, those with the wherewithal to fund space missions are the ones making the decisions. This is why there is a Bible on the Moon, left behind by Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott (Millard 2019), why Orthodox Christian icons are displayed on the ISS, and why there are plans to construct a Buddhist temple that will orbit our planet (“Why do we Build Temples in Space?” 2023). The United States, Russia, and Japan are wealthy countries with space programs of their own and the religions in those places influence what happens in space. While we can measure the circumference of the Moon or the chemical composition of rocks from its surface, we cannot measure in any empirical way whether or not the Moon is truly sacred or determine through scientific means whose religious tradition has the most verifiable claim on our largest natural satellite. Efforts are being made at NASA to include voices beyond the majority (Rathbun et al 2021). It’s an uphill battle, with steps meant to bring about some version of Gene Roddenberry’s vision of “infinite diversity in infinite combinations” (which first appeared in the 1968 Star Trek episode “Is There in Truth No Beauty”) countered by fears of reverse discrimination (Schwartz 2004). In an ideal world, space exploration would be carried out by individuals representing a wide array of cultural perspectives and religious viewpoints who could speak for and make decisions based on Earth’s patchwork quilt of cultures. Until then, when groups feel like their concerns aren’t being heard, they have a right and responsibility to speak out. Unlike issues dealing with mineral rights or defense or self-determination, religious issues are tricky to navigate, perhaps especially so in space. While we can measure the circumference of the Moon or the chemical composition of rocks from its surface, we cannot measure in any empirical way whether or not the Moon is truly sacred or determine through scientific means whose religious tradition has the most verifiable claim on our largest natural satellite. If I say the moon is made of cheese, you can prove me wrong. If I say the moon is sacred, there’s no scientific way to dispute that. Religion and science both seek to answer the “big questions,” but generally take different approaches. An astronomer at the Vatican Observer would typically contemplate physics while writing a scientific paper, but contemplate miracles when uttering a prayer. That said, we must recognize that both ways of understanding the reality we see around us are part of human nature and are likely to appear wherever humans, dead or alive, establish any kind of foothold. There will be religious disputes about Mars and religious disputes about Proxima Centauri B if humans ever get to those places. As it stands now, no single nation or community can claim the Moon, at least in theory. Unlike sacred places on Earth, the Moon does not historically occupy the territory of any specific culture or religion, instead mattering to all of them. While pleasing everyone will never be possible—the sacred Moon is the home of the dead in some cultures and must be kept pure from the dead in others—the recent conflict suggests that space agencies and private companies alike should keep striving for continuous communication and openness to other views, especially those of communities who’ve historically had less influence on space exploration. Works Cited Amos, Jonathan. “Peregrine Lander: American Moon Mission Destroyed over Pacific Ocean.” BBC News, January 19, 2024. Birth, Kevin K. "Zmanim, Salāt, Jyotish and UTC: The articulation of religious times and the global timescale." In Requirements for UTC and Civil Timekeeping on Earth Colloquium, pp. 29-31. 2013. Carney, Emily. “Celestis’ Enterprise and Tranquility Flights: Updates and Progress towards Launch: Memorial Spaceflights.” Celestis’ Enterprise and Tranquility Flights: Updates and Progress Towards Launch | Memorial Spaceflights, 2023. Chaikin, Andrew. A Man on the Moon. New York, NY: Viking, 1994. Chamlee, Virginia. “A Rocket Launched Human Remains onto the Moon. Here’s Why the Navajo Nation Wanted the White House to Stop It.” People, January 8, 2024. Chang, Kenneth. “Vulcan Rocket Aces Its First Launch.” The New York Times, January 8, 2024. Conklin, Beth A. “‘Thus Are Our Bodies, Thus Was Our Custom’: Mortuary Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society.” American Ethnologist 22, no. 1 (February 1995): 75–101. Craig, Robert D. Dictionary of Polynesian mythology. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1989. Dixon-Kennedy, Mike. Encyclopedia of Russian & Slavic myth and legend. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 1999. Douglas, Mary. Purity and danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966. Durkheim, Émile. The elementary forms of the religious life ... a study in religious sociology .. translated from the French. New York, NY: Macmillan, 1915. Fisher, Kristin. “Navajo Nation’s Objection to Landing Human Remains on the Moon Prompts Last-Minute White House Meeting.” CNN, January 6, 2024. Fletcher, Chris. “Moonraker: Astronomer’s Ashes Headed for Lunar Resting Place.” The Associated Press, July 30, 1999. Harvey, Brian. The new Russian space programme: From competition to collaboration. Chichester: Wiley, 1996. Levinson, Paul, and Michael Waltemathe, eds. Touching the face of the cosmos: On the intersection of Space Travel and religion. New York: Connected Editions, 2016. Mheallaigh, Ni’ Karen. The moon in the greek and roman imagination: Myth, literature, Science and philosophy. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Millard, Egan. “The Only Bible on the Moon Was Left There by an Episcopalian on Behalf of His Parish.” Episcopal News Service, July 19, 2019. Newell, Catherine L. Destined for the stars: Faith, the future, and America’s final frontier. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019. Nygren, Buu. “Statement on Human Remains to Be Sent to Moon Despite Call for Consultation.” Facebook, January 4, 2024. Oliver, Kendrick. To touch the face of god: The sacred, the profane, and the American space program, 1957-1975. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. Plutarch, and Frank Cole Babbitt. Moralia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928. Rathbun, Julie, Edgard G. Rivera-Valentín, James Tuttle Keane, Kennda Lynch, Serina Diniega, Lynnae C. Quick, Christina Richey, Janet Vertesi, Orenthal J. Tucker, and Shawn M. Brooks. “Who Is Missing in Planetary Science?: Strategic Recommendations to Improve the Diversity of the Field.” Bulletin of the AAS 53, no. 4 (March 18, 2021). Redford, Donald B. The Oxford Essential Guide to Egyptian mythology. New York: Berkley Books, 2003. Salmond, Wendy, Justin Walsh, and Alice Gorman. “Eternity in Low Earth Orbit: Icons on the International Space Station.” Religions 11, no. 11 (November 17, 2020): 611. Schwartz, Nanci. "'a Man's World'?: A Study Of Female Workers At Nasa's Kennedy Space C." (2004). Seward, John E., and Army War Coll Carlisle Barracks PA. A kingdom lost: the US annexation of Hawaii. US Army War College, 2001. Siddiqi, Asif. “Tsiolkovskii and the Invention of ‘Russian Cosmism’: Science, Mysticism, and the Conquest of Nature at the Birth of Soviet Space Exploration.” Science, Religion and Communism in Cold War Europe (2016): 127-156. Solanki, Khushbu. “Buried, Cremated, Defleshed by Buzzards? Religiously Motivated Excarnatory Funeral Practices Are Not Abuse of Corpse.” Rutgers JL & Religion 18 (2016): 350. Spalding, Alex. Eight Inuit myths - Inuit unipkaaqtuat pingasuniarvinilit. Ottawa, 1979. “A Spirituality of Nature and the Universe.” World Pantheism, January 11, 2023. Stepanchuk, Carol, and Charles Choy Wong. Mooncakes and Hungry Ghosts: Festivals of China. Kuala Lumpur: S. Abdul Majeed, 1993. Trejo, Jesuús Galindo. Arqueoastronomí́a en la américa antigua. Madrid: Equipo Sirius, 1994. Volante, Enric. “Navajos Upset after Ashes Sent to Moon; NASA Apologizes.” Spokesman.com, October 8, 2011. Wall, Mike. “These Are the Private Lunar Landers Taking NASA Science to the Moon.” Space.com, June 1, 2019 Wattles, Jackie. “Peregrine Lunar Lander: First US Moon Landing Mission in Decades ... - CNN.” First US moon landing mission in decades launches with NASA science, humans remains on board. Accessed January 22, 2024. Weibel, Deana L. “Honoring and dishonoring the dead in outer space: How a Virgin Galactic spaceflight sparked a scandal in anthropology.” The Space Review, September 25, 2023. “When Does Ramadan End?” Zakat Foundation of America. Accessed January 22, 2024. “Why Do We Build Temples in Space?” SOAS, 2023. Wilsey, John. “‘Our Country Is Destined to Be the Great Nation of Futurity’: John L. O’Sullivan’s Manifest Destiny and Christian Nationalism, 1837–1846.” Religions 8, no. 4 (April 17, 2017): 68. Zastrow, Mark. “Path Forward for Thirty Meter Telescope and Mauna Kea Begins to Emerge.” Astronomy, May 18, 2023. Deana L. Weibel, Ph.D. is a Professor of Anthropology at Grand Valley State University with a joint appointment in GVSU’s Brooks College Religious Studies program. She has held a lifelong interest in voyages, studying pilgrimage, tourism, and scientific expeditions and the cultural, religious, and spiritual meanings they, and the places visited, hold for those who travel. A member of the American Anthropological Association and a Fellow of the Explorers Club (and current chair of the Chicago/Great Lakes Chapter of the latter), Weibel has conducted ethnographic field research in a number of settings, including the Black Madonna shrine of Rocamadour, France; Spaceport America; and the Vatican Observatory. Her website is http://www.deanaweibel.space.

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Semi Trucks In Space

Scientists Are Building Space Transport Vehicles for the Beyond-Earth Economy An animation of Firefly Aerospace’s Elytra vehicle. CREDIT: FIREFLY AEROSPACE In the expanding economy of space, rockets often steal the spotlight. The stars of the show are SpaceX’s Starship, Blue Origin’s New Glenn and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur, which blasted off for the first time earlier this month. These massive craft are designed to carry large amounts of cargo and deliver it into low-Earth orbit. But blasting off is just the beginning of building a beyond-Earth economy. Once satellites and other types of cargo reach space, they’ll need to be moved around. This week, we look at orbital-transfer vehicles, the “semi trucks of space” that are being designed to move space-cargo between orbits or even transport it deeper into space. "We should view the rocket as like the cargo ship regularly coming to port, and then we should have a semi truck that lives in space and takes that cargo everywhere else.” — Robert Carlisle, co-founder of startup Argo Space Transit is a crucial topic for a new lunar economy, according to scientists, entrepreneurs and policymakers. And orbital-transfer vehicles could ultimately open the door for other sectors of the emerging space economy on the moon and beyond, such as space tourism or extraterrestrial mining. Several large companies are working to develop orbital-transfer vehicles. Blue Ring, a vehicle made by Blue Origin, will offer transportation, refueling and more. And Northrop Grumman is building what it calls Mission Robotic Vehicles, which offer services such as equipping satellites with propulsion “pods” to extend their use. Startups are also getting involved: Calif.-based Impulse Space in November launched its first transport vehicle—a craft called Mira, about the size of a washing machine—into low-Earth orbit on a SpaceX rocket. The company is planning more missions and developing another transport vehicle, called Helios. Texas-based Firefly Aerospace is developing a space-transport and service craft called Elytra and plans to launch the vehicle on one of its rockets for the first time in 2024. Representatives of the company said the craft could shift around vehicles in low-Earth orbit, where numerous companies are building up large fleets of satellites. Still, much remains to be done before orbital-transfer vehicles transform the space economy. Engineers working on these vehicles still need to demonstrate their craft can fly as designed, and several large rockets that would blast payloads into space to begin with aren’t proven yet. More on this topic: 🎥 This startup aims to rival SpaceX with reusable rockets. (Watch) 🎧 How scientists aim to build an economy beyond Earth. (Listen) Some space companies are struggling to meet lofty goals. (Read) 🤔 What prospects do you see for the growth of a beyond-Earth economy in the future? Send me your thoughts, questions and predictions by hitting "reply" to this email.

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Earth To Mars In 45 Days

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/01/spacex-starship-can-reach-mars-in-just-45-days.html

Water Ice Buries At Mars Equator Over 2 Miles Thick

Major News: Water Ice Buried at Mars’ Equator is Over 2 Miles Thick January 21, 2024 ESA, Human Settlement, Humans To Mars, Mars, Mars Exploration, Science, Water ice News & Announcements Large deposits of subsurface water ice two miles thick have been found near the Martian equator by the European Space Agency – ESA orbiter. This discovery could improve future prospects for human Mars settlement.​ Water Ice Buried at Mars’ Equator is Over 2 Miles Thick By Keith Cooper, Space.com, 01.19.24 A European Space Agency (ESA) probe has found enough water to cover Mars in an ocean between 4.9 and 8.9 feet (1.5 and 2.7 meters) deep, buried in the form of dusty ice beneath the planet’s equator. The finding was made by ESA’s Mars Express mission, a veteran spacecraft that has been engaged in science operations around Mars for 20 years now. While it’s not the first time that evidence for ice has been found near the Red Planet’s equator, this new discovery is by far the largest amount of water ice detected there so far and appears to match previous discoveries of frozen water on Mars. “Excitingly, the radar signals match what we expect to see from layered ice and are similar to the signals we see from Mars’ polar caps, which we know to be very ice rich,” said lead researcher Thomas Watters of the Smithsonian Institution in the United States in an ESA statement. The deposits are thick, extended 3.7km (2.3) miles underground, and topped by a crust of hardened ash and dry dust hundreds of meters thick. The ice is not a pure block but is heavily contaminated by dust. While its presence near the equator is a location more easily accessible to future crewed missions, being buried so deep means that accessing the water-ice would be difficult. To read the full article on Space.com, please click here.

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Space Companies Are Desperately Seeking New Talent

SpaceX Starbase staff As space companies scale up, they are often chasing the same small number of “unicorn” workers while missing out on talent in adjacent industries. (credit: SpaceX) Turnover and retention: an unspoken cost center affecting space companies by Joseph Horvath Monday, January 22, 2024 Bookmark and Share The space industry has two major pain points, and they are not related to systems, capabilities, or public excitement about the future. The biggest hurdles facing companies today are workforce availability and capital resources. While slightly different challenges, they are related in how they impact a space company’s ability to grow and remain competitive. Companies and agencies are all vying for the same, limited piece of the talent pie. Everybody wants a unicorn, regardless of whether they can afford it or even find it. In the current environment, smart choices made in hiring and workforce development can aid the capital crunch by supporting affordable talent acquisition, decreasing turnover, motivating employees, and retaining experienced problems solvers. The bottom line is that people are the greatest strength to the space industry, yet overlooked in comparison to technology or systems. Source. Train. Retain. Upskill. Those four words that should be a mantra of the growing space industry looking to solve the workforce challenge. Yet, companies and agencies are all vying for the same, limited piece of the talent pie. Everybody wants a unicorn, regardless of whether they can afford it or even find it. Today’s space workforce conditions make reducing turnover and retraining of adjacent industry talent top priorities: As of 2021, there were about 2.1 million people in the aerospace and defense workforce in the US alone. Only 17% of the space agency’s workforce is under 35. The “great resignation” is seeing a disproportionate loss of Boomers leaving the workforce, along with their extensive knowledge and experience. At four-year universities and colleges, engineering student enrollments have dropped by about 100,000 from 2017 to 2022. Turnover can cost US organizations upwards of 213% of the lost employee’s salary. 87% of US employers said that improving retention is a critical priority for their organization. The loss of Boomers is not being met by Millennials or Gen Z because of a few reasons: Lack of interest in STEM careers and studies; Higher frequency of job changes throughout working years; and Lack of individual employee investment in training and upskilling by organizations. What is the true cost of turnover or lack of retention? Studies show that the costs to replace an employee range from one to two times the annual average salary. The average salary for the space industry is $125,000, which equates to $125,000 to $250,000 per employee lost. This is compounded by the fact that most companies are searching for “unicorns”: people with levels of skill and experience that rarely exist, causing them to focus on a tiny pool of candidates. That is a wonderful position for seasoned space professionals who are open to being poached back and forth across the community, but not a model that can be sustained, or one that adds talent to the industry. The cost in time and resources spent chasing the “perfect hire” is significant. There is a better way. A new paradigm for training and sourcing: expand the pie To expand the talent pool, the space industry should be looking at other industries to find new talent. There exist large groups of untapped talent across the aviation, auto, software and other well-developed industries. This skilled talent in adjacent industries, ripe for a transition to space, brings with them experience and knowledge to help streamline and improve company performance. pie chart The key is providing the necessary outreach, pathways for entry, and baseline training on space operations and astronautics during onboarding. This allows them to quickly add value, enabling them to best communicate within and between teams, understand the organization’s mission and goals, and the needs and requirements of users and customers. Continuous, properly spaced professional development through upskilling creates a long-term pathway of success within the organization. Continual professional development: onboarding and upskill training Regardless of where talent comes from, there is a lack of onboarding and upskill training being offered by companies. One reason for this is that until the past decade, space was largely dominated by government organizations and their supporting prime contractors. It was a largely static industry from a workforce perspective, with a slow, predictable growth rate. There exist large groups of untapped talent across the aviation, auto, software and other well-developed industries. This skilled talent in adjacent industries, ripe for a transition to space, brings with them experience and knowledge to help streamline and improve company performance. The commercial space boom has changed the environment drastically and requires companies to continuously work to develop and evolve the knowledge and skills of their staff to remain competitive. Organizations that invest in their people will remain at the cutting edge of best practices, technology, policy, law, and other important areas. Simply put, a small investment in training improves communication, performance, creativity, and, most importantly, business outcomes. The cost of turnover can be significantly reduced through better sourcing models and the addition of professional development within your space company. The best part is that by utilizing this method, simply preventing just one employee from departing pays for an entire year of a training program for the whole company—the return on investment is substantial. Stop spending time chasing unicorns. Expand your talent pool through more efficient sourcing. Keep your top talent by investing in their future from onboarding and beyond. These are simple measures that reduce overall cost, increase performance, and improve your competitive position. Technology is great, but people are the strength that sets a company apart from the pack over the long term. Joseph Horvath is president and CEO of Nova Space. He has two decades of experience in space and astronautics with an extensive network across industry and DoD. While serving as a Marine Corps officer, he was the Service’s Senior Space Operations Officer, leading professional development, training, education, policy, and exercise design. His educational background includes a BS in Astrophysics and MS in Space Systems Operations, as well as being a former DARPA Fellow. Joseph brings to his role extensive leadership and management experience with a focus on agile practices and developing successful teams.

The Phases Of Lunar Lander Success

SLIM landing JAXA’s SLIM spacecraft did land on the Moon last week, but likely not the orientation depicted in this illustration. (credit: JAXA) The phases of lunar lander success by Jeff Foust Monday, January 22, 2024 Bookmark and Share The launch industry has gotten comfortable with—or at least grudgingly accepted—the concept of partial success and the importance of setting expectations. It acknowledges there is a gray area between total mission success and failure, like on last month’s launch of an Alpha rocket by Firefly Aerospace that placed its payload into orbit, but not the desired orbit because of an upper stage malfunction. It also allows companies like Relativity Space to celebrate last year the first launch of its Terran 1 rocket, even though the rocket failed to reach orbit and, weeks later, was cancelled by the company so it could focus on a larger rocket. “Now you see on the left-hand side ‘MLM’. That means it has landed,” one of the hosts of the webcast said. There were no scenes of cheering flight controllers or others, though. The growing community of agencies and companies developing lunar landers is also grappling with similar issues. Is a mission a success if a spacecraft lands on the lunar surface, only to shut down hours later because of a problem with how it landed? Can a company celebrate and build upon the accomplishments of a mission that fell far short of its goal of landing on the Moon? The first question arose from Friday’s landing of Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) mission. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched SLIM in September, sending it on a low-energy trajectory to minimize propellant consumption. SLIM entered orbit around the Moon on Christmas Day and adjusted that orbit in the following weeks leading up to the landing attempt. SLIM featured an unconventional design for a lunar lander, a class of spacecraft typified by landing legs extending from a base that has one or more main engines. SLIM has its main engines at one end, but rather than landing legs it had five “shock absorbers,” structures made of an aluminum lattice designed to crush and absorb the force of landing, on one side of the spacecraft. That required SLIM, making its final descent with the main engines pointing down, to carefully tip over to the side with those absorbers just before touching down on the slopes of Shioli Crater. JAXA’s webcast of the landing showed a telemetry screen rich in detail about the vehicle’s position during its terminal descent, including performance of its thrusters and remaining propellant supplies. The lander appeared to be following its intended path as it swooped up slightly before descending the final few kilometers to the surface, hovering 50 meters above the surface as planned to select a landing site before heading to the surface. The landing itself was strangely anticlimactic. “Now you see on the left-hand side ‘MLM’. That means it has landed,” one of the hosts of the webcast said through a translator, referring to the telemetry screen. There were no scenes of cheering flight controllers or others, though, and no images or other data from the lander. “It looks like SLIM is on the surface of the Moon,” one of the hosts said a few minutes later. “We are now checking the status.” That checking of the status continued for several minutes, after which JAXA decided to end the webcast, saying it would provide more information in a press conference. The lack of updates was odd: amateur radio operators reported detecting a signal from SLIM after landing, and NASA’s Deep Space Network was also in contact with the lander. SLIM was on the surface, and appeared to be able to communicate: it seemed like a success. One hint of a problem was displayed on that telemetry screen: the icons of SLIM on the screen, intended to show its position during its descent, showed it after landing not resting on its five shock absorbers on its side but instead on what might be considered its nose: the side of the lander opposite the main engines. It was as if a tail-dragger plane had been tipped forward so it was resting on its nose and main wheels, rather than main wheels and tail wheel. But with no updates from JAXA, it was unclear of those icons showed an accurate representation of its position or instead were a data artifact. SLIM landing A screenshot of telemetry from SLIM after landing suggested it landed in a nose-down orientation. (credit: JAXA) Nearly two hours later—well after two in the morning Saturday Japan time—JAXA convened the press conference. Hitoshi Kuninaka, director general of JAXA’s Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), offered the good and bad news. “SLIM has been communicating to earth stations and is receiving commands from the Earth accurately, and is responding to these in a normal way,” he said through an interpreter. “However, it seems that the solar cells are not generating electricity at this point in time.” “So if sunlight begins to shine on the lunar surface from the west, there is a possibility of generating power, and we are preparing for recovery,” JAXA stated. He and other officials said it was unlikely that the solar panels were damaged during landing, since other systems on the spacecraft were working well and showing no signs of damage. Instead, something appeared to be preventing sunlight from reaching the panels, perhaps because the spacecraft had landed in the wrong orientation. But at the press conference officials had few additional details to share. In social media posts early Monday, the first updates provided by the mission since that press conference, JAXA said telemetry showed that the solar panels were facing west, away from the sun. “So if sunlight begins to shine on the lunar surface from the west, there is a possibility of generating power, and we are preparing for recovery,” it stated. The spacecraft stopped transmitting about two and a half hours after landing, JAXA said, to conserve its batteries, which were down to 12% at that time. The agency said it was analyzing images and data that SLIM returned during that time, and promised an update on the mission on Thursday. The landing was hailed as a success by many, with congratulations rolling in from around the world. “Congratulations @JAXA_en on being the historic 5th country to land successfully on the Moon! We value our partnership in the cosmos and continued collaboration with @NASAArtemis,” posted NASA administrator Bill Nelson. Japan was indeed the fifth nation to softly land a spacecraft on the Moon, after the former Soviet Union, United States, China, and India. But since the spacecraft landed in the wrong orientation, depriving it of power after just a couple hours, some questioned whether the mission should truly qualify as a success. One guide comes from the press kit JAXA distributed for SLIM, which set out “success criteria” for the mission. What is calls “minimum” success is to “realize a soft landing on the Moon” and verifying the navigation system as well as performance of the spacecraft in orbit before landing. Unless there were problems with the navigation system, SLIM appears to have achieved minimum success despite the orientation problem (akin to the line about any airplane landing you can walk away from being a good landing.) The press kit also specifies “full” success for the mission, which requires a landing with an accuracy of within 100 meters. SLIM is primarily a technology demonstrator for precision landing, with few scientific instruments on board. As of Monday, JAXA had not disclosed details about the landing precision. There is ann additional “extra” category of mission success, which includes operating the lander through the end of the two-week lunar day as well as perform unspecified “missions that operate on the lunar surface to obtain knowledge for lunar and planetary surface exploration in the future.” Achieving that extra success now appears doubtful, depending on if and when the solar panels become illuminated. Also uncertain is the status of two small probes dropped off the lander during its final descent. Peregrine One of the final images returned by Peregrine showed the crescent Earth as the lander sped towards reentry. (credit: Astrobotic) “Victory after victory” for a failed lander Even as the JAXA briefing about SLIM was continuing, another media teleconference was getting underway halfway around the world. Astrobotic executives, along with NASA, were providing a postmortem on the Peregrine lander mission. It had launched January 8 but suffered a propellant leak hours after liftoff that ultimately doomed the mission (see “Success and setbacks”, The Space Review, January 8, 2024.) At the time of that earlier article, it appeared Peregrine’s life would be short: less than a day into the mission, Astrobotic thought there was only enough propellant left to maintain the spacecraft’s attitude for 40 hours. Once the propellant ran out, the spacecraft could no longer keep its solar panels oriented towards the Sun, ending the mission. “We were faced with a very difficult decision on what to do with the spacecraft,” Thornton said. But engineers at Astrobotic’s Pittsburgh headquarters managed to nurse the mission along, and the company, in a series of refreshingly frequent updates, extended the life of the mission. Three days after launch, the company announced it had turned on power to payloads on the lander, which were returning data. While those payloads were intended to operate on the surface of the Moon, getting some in-flight data was better than nothing. By the weekend, the propellant leak had slowed and was a diminishing concern. Peregrine has reached lunar distances, although the Moon was not in the vicinity. The mission’s original plan called for Peregrine to swing back around the Earth and then head out to the Moon, going into lunar orbit ahead of a Febeuary 23 landing attempt. The propellant leak, though, had affected the lander’s orbit, slowing it down and veering it off course slightly, recalled John Thornton, Astrobotic’s CEO. “It changed our trajectory to indicate that, if we did nothing from that point forward, we were very likely to return back to Earth,” he said, burning up in the atmosphere. Astrobotic then had a choice: try to maneuver the spacecraft to avoid reentry and perhaps keep the mission going a bit longer, including possibly attempt going into lunar orbit (although the company had already ruled out any attempt to land because of the lost propellant) or allow it to reenter and end the mission. “We were faced with a very difficult decision on what to do with the spacecraft,” he said. Astrobotic decided to take the latter course and allow it to reenter. “It’s important that we all act as responsible parties and make sure that we are keeping space available and accessible for all,” he said, out of concern that performing additional maneuvers to, for example, target a lunar flyby or orbit insertion using its damaged propulsion system “could have possibly caused a catastrophic situation that would potentially create more debris.” He said Astrobotic consulted with NASA, the biggest customer of Peregrine through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, on what to do, suggesting that it agreed with allowing it to reenter. “Peregrine Mission One was Astrobotic’s mission and Astrobotic’s spacecraft, but as one of their big customers, we shared with them our view of the information,” said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Even with the decision to reenter, Astrobotic had to perform additional maneuvers to target that reentry for a region of the South Pacific south of Fiji, minimizing any risk of debris surviving that reentry. That reentry took place around 4 pm EST on Thursday January 18, with no public sightings of the reentry or reports of falling debris. Peregrine ultimately failed in its mission to land on the Moon, but Astrobotic and NASA did see some value in the flight out to lunar distance and back. The company gained flight experience on other spacecraft systems while NASA collected data from its payloads, such as radiation measurements in cislunar space. “The data collected in flight sets the stage for understanding how some of our instruments may behave in the harsh environment of space when some of the duplicates fly on future CLPS flights,” said Nicola Fox, NASA associate administrator for science, in a statement. In the case of Peregrine, NASA and Astrobotic will be able to quantify, financially, the level of partial success of the mission. Thornton said 10% of the overall $108 million NASA CLPS award for the mission was reserved for meeting various mission criteria. “We did not achieve all of the criteria to get all of that 10%, though we did achieve some of those milestones,” such as activating the payloads and demonstrating stable flight in space. “We’re going to continue the conversation with NASA on that one.” Astrobotic plans to convene a review board, with participation from NASA and outside experts, to investigate the failure. Thornton said the leading hypothesis is that a valve malfunctioned in a helium pressurization system shortly after launch. “It sent a rush of helium down into the oxidizer side,” he said, rupturing the oxidizer tank in a little more than a minute. That investigation is critical not just for Astrobotic but also for NASA. The agency’s next CLPS mission with the company involves a much larger lander, called Griffin. It will carry NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission to the south polar region of the Moon. “We want to make sure we really understand the root cause and contributing factors of what happened on Peregrine” before launching VIPER on Griffin, Kearns said. VIPER is a key part of NASA’s efforts to understand the extent and accessibility of water ice at the lunar poles that could support later Artemis missions. It’s also an expensive part of the effort, relatively speaking: while Kearns estimated that the NASA payloads on Peregrine cost the agency about $9 million, VIPER has a cost estimate, excluding launch, of $433 million. Even before Peregrine launched, NASA said it planned to do “enhanced lander testing” on Griffin to give it greater confidence that it would land safely. In Friday’s media call, Kearns said NASA remained committed to keeping VIPER on Griffin, but would proceed with caution. “VIPER is a very visible, very sophisticated and costly payload,” he said. “We want to make sure we really understand the root cause and contributing factors of what happened on Peregrine.” That will likely delay the launch, which had been scheduled for November. Thornton said Astrobotic was continuing work on Griffin while awaiting the findings of the Peregrine review board and any changes that they might mean for Griffin. “We do expect some [impact], we just don’t know how much yet,” he said. Despite not landing on the Moon, Thornton was upbeat about what the company was able to accomplish on Peregrine, saying that customers other than NASA on the mission thanked him for getting the payloads running on the mission. One example he offered was DLR, the German aerospace center, which had a radiation detector on the lander that was able to collect more than 90 hours of what DLR called “extremely valuable” data during the flight. “We did not achieve the primary objective of landing on the surface of the Moon,” he said. “We had an anomaly, and after that anomaly we just had victory after victory after victory, showing the spacecraft was working in space, showing that the payloads can operate and getting data back from those payloads.” The space community won’t have long to wait to judge the success, failure, or something in-between for the next lunar lander mission. Intuitive Machines is planning to launch its first lander mission, IM-1, as soon as the middle of February. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. 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Book Review: Things That Go Bump In The Universe

book cover Review: Things That Go Bump in the Universe by Jeff Foust Monday, January 22, 2024 Bookmark and Share Things That Go Bump in the Universe: How Astronomers Decode Cosmic Chaos by C. Renée James Johns Hopkins University Press hardcover, 304 pp., illus. ISBN 978-1-4214-4693-6 US$29.95 Astronomers have, over the last several years, shown a growing interest in a topic known professionally as time domain and multimessenger astrophysics, or TDAMM. The topic has emerged as astronomers grapple with a universe that is far more dynamic than once thought. Rather than nicely periodic variable stars and the occasional supernova, the universe is filled with gamma-ray bursts, fast radio bursts, and other transient phenomena. That is driving work on efforts to rapidly detect and observe such events (the “time domain” of TDAMM) and make observations outside of the electromagnetic spectrum, such as gravitational waves and neutrinos (the “multimessenger” part of TDAMM.) That particular acronym, jargon for those in the field, doesn’t make it into Things That Go Bump in the Universe, but it is at the heart of the book. C. Renée James, an astronomer, takes the reader on a tour of the universe, showing, as the book’s subtitle suggests, that the cosmos is far more chaotic than astronomers thought a century or even a few decades ago. One astronomer, she writes, “had that kid-in-a-candy-shop enthusiasm characteristic of every researcher I ever encountered” as he contemplated the end of the universe. The book tackles a wide range of phenomena, starting with supernova explosions, the one such event witnessed by people before the modern era of astronomy. A familiar cast of astrophysical players fills the pages that follows: quasars, pulsars, black holes, gamma-ray bursts, and more. It’s a travelogue both cosmic and terrestrial, as James travels to observatories from Australia to Louisiana where astronomers study the universe from radio waves to gravitational waves. One challenge is describing the scale of these events, something that is difficult even for astronomers. James describes how, several decades ago, some astronomers “almost jokingly” developed one unit of energy that they called the foe, an acronym for “fifty-one ergs.” Not 51 ergs, a miniscule amount of energy, but instead 1051 ergs, roughly the amount of energy produced by the average supernova. In other words, a lot of energy. And yet one quasar, described in the book as an “ultramassive” black hole in the heart of a distant galaxy, generates 100 foes of energy a day. The book can seem dense and bewildering at times, if only because the universe it is trying to describe also seems bewildering. But James does convey the excitement astronomers have in trying to make sense out of that chaos. One astronomer, she writes, “had that kid-in-a-candy-shop enthusiasm characteristic of every researcher I ever encountered.” (This particular astronomer was hypothesizing the end of the universe, some 1032000 years from now, give or take. Hope you’re patient.) While Things That Go Bump in the Universe conveys that the universe is very dynamic, it is perhaps not dynamic enough for some. James describes in the introduction her desire to see a naked-eye supernova, the last of which was SN 1987a more than 35 years ago, when she was taking an introductory astronomy class. “The prospect of witnessing a supernova with my own eyes is so appealing that in every class I have ever taught, I have promised that I will give an automatic A to every student if a visible supernova occurs during the semester,” she writes. Alas, for both her and her students, no such supernova has appeared yet, “but one can hope.” Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

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Twenty Years Of Chasing The Moon

2004 Bush speech Twenty years after President George W. Bush set a goal of a human lunar return by 2020, NASA has yet to return to the lunar surface, but is making progress. (credit: NASA) Twenty years of chasing the Moon by Jeff Foust Monday, January 15, 2024 Bookmark and Share On January 14, 2004, President George W. Bush went to NASA Headquarters and delivered a speech outlining what would become known as the Vision for Space Exploration. That strategy called for retiring the Space Shuttle after it completed assembly of the International Space Station at the end of the decade, restarting robotic exploration of the Moon by 2008, and returning astronauts to the lunar surface as soon as 2015, and no later than 2020 (see “Looking beyond vision”, The Space Review, January 19, 2004). While the shuttle has been retired, the station completed, and spacecraft are exploring the Moon, that last goal remains unfulfilled 20 years later. NASA’s plans, and presidential backing, have fluctuated over the last two decades, pushing a human return to the Moon into the second half of this decade. Just last week, NASA delayed Artemis 3, its first crewed mission to the lunar surface since Apollo 17 more than a half-century ago, by nearly a year, a shift that is unlikely to be the final delay. Yet, arguably, plans to return humans to the Moon are more secure now than they have been since Bush’s speech 20 years ago. Orion Technicians examine the heat shields on the Orion spacecraft after the Artemis 1 issue. Concerns about erosion of the heat shield is one reason NASA gave for delaying Artemis 2. (credit: NASA/Skip Williams ) Orion problems The latest change in NASA’s schedule for sending humans back to the Moon came in a media telecon last Tuesday, one that NASA announced at the end of the day the previous Friday—itself a bit of an ominous sign. There was speculation that NASA would announce delays in upcoming Artemis missions, including some who thought NASA would shift the lunar landing mission from Artemis 3 to Artemis 4. “As we prepare to send our friends and colleagues on this mission, we’re committed to launching as safely as possible, and we will launch when we’re ready,” said NASA’s Free. What NASA did reveal in that call with reporters was both surprising and expected. NASA said that Artemis 2, the first crewed flight of Orion and the Space Launch System that will send four astronauts around the Moon, had been scheduled to launch at the end of this year. Instead, NASA said it will launch no earlier than September 2025, a delay longer than most anticipated. “Safety is our number one priority,” said Jim Free, who until last month was NASA associate administrator for exploration systems development. (He moved up to the post of NASA associate administrator, the top civil-service position at the agency, upon the retirement of Bob Cabana at the end of 2023.) “As we prepare to send our friends and colleagues on this mission, we’re committed to launching as safely as possible, and we will launch when we’re ready.” Amit Kshatriya, deputy associate administrator for the Moon to Mars program in the exploration systems development mission directorate, said three issues, all involving Orion, led to the delay. One has been previously discussed by agency officials: unexpected erosion of heat shield material known as Avcoat noticed after Artemis 1’s uncrewed test flight in late 2022. That erosion did not jeopardize the safety of Orion, but NASA wants to better understand what happened and, if necessary, make changes before flying Orion with astronauts on board. Kshatriya said analysis of the erosion was ongoing and NASA expected to determine a root cause by the spring, the same timeline that his deputy, Lakiesha Hawkins, gave at a meeting of an advisory committee in November. “We have to synthesize that data and update the overall thermal, mechanical, and material models of that heat shield to make sure that, before we attempt reentry from a circumlunar return mission,” he said, “that we’re 100% confident that we understand the performance of that heat shield.” Two other issues, not previously reported, also contributed to the delay. Kshatriya said that motor valve circuitry used to run valves in Orion’s life support system failed acceptance testing for the spacecraft that will fly the Artemis 3 mission. Subsequent examination found a design flaw in a circuit in those electronics, even though the same component passed acceptance testing for Artemis 2. Managers decided the best course of action was to redesign and replace the components on both Artemis 2 and 3. “It became clear it was unacceptable for us to accept that hardware and we have to replace it,” he said. That replacement process will be a time-consuming process given the technical challenges in accessing the components in the spacecraft’s current configuration, and he said later that this work drove the schedule to move the launch to next September. “Even if we could fly Artemis 2 on the timeframe that we had planned originally, we would still need the extra time to fly Artemis 3,” said Kshatriya. A third issue involves the effects of the launch abort system on the spacecraft’s power system. Kshatriya said there were cases where, if the launch abort system was activated, there would be “deficiencies” in the electrical system, particularly with batteries. “The concern would be not that the vehicle wouldn’t be able to abort safely off of SLS, but that it would be able to maintain all of the power margin that we need from that separation all the way to landing,” he said, noting work on that was still in its early stages, with “multiple parallel options” to fix the issue. HLS Starship Even without the delat in Artemis 2, NASA says the Artemis 3 launch would have slipped to 2026 because of development delays in the HLS version of Starship. (credit: NASA) Artemis 3 and Starship The slip in Artemis 2 means that Artemis 3, the first crewed landing, is also delayed. That mission was scheduled to launch in late 2025, but NASA said it was now targeted for September 2026, a year after Artemis 2. (Artemis 4, meanwhile, is sticking to its September 2028 launch date.) However, NASA officials acknowledged that even if Artemis 2 stuck to its earlier schedule, Artemis 3 would still have faced delays. “We need more time on the landing system development and on the suit development,” Kshatriya said. “Even if we could fly Artemis 2 on the timeframe that we had planned originally, we would still need the extra time to fly Artemis 3.” He noted that the new September 2026 date for Artemis 3 “is still very aggressive.” There is a particular focus on the Human Landing System (HLS) version SpaceX’s Starship, which will take Artemis 3 astronauts down to the lunar surface and back. Starship has flown twice so far, and blown up both times. Moreover, once it starts flying, SpaceX has to demonstrate the ability to fly the vehicle frequently and perform in-space cryogenic propellant transfer, essential for fueling the lunar lander Starship for its journey to the Moon. Jessica Jensen, vice president of customer operations and integration at SpaceX, played down some of the challenges involved in propellant transfer in particular. “It sounds complex and scary, and it seems like this big, nebulous thing,” she said. “But, when you break it down into its various pieces, we’ve actually achieved almost all of the complex parts already on our operational programs.” She argued that the company has already demonstrated docking in orbit with its Dragon vehicles delivering cargo and crews to the space station. The high flight rate needed for launching tanker Starships that will transfer propellant is being demonstrated now with Falcon 9, she argued, with launches from different pads hours apart and launches from the same pad just a few days apart. Just how many launches will be needed has been a subject of debate. At that November committee meeting, NASA’s Hawkins said that the agency believed that number to be in the “high teens,” far higher than what SpaceX had previously stated (see “Starship flies again”, The Space Review, November 20, 2023). Asked about this in last week’s briefing, Kshatriya said that SpaceX had been “extremely transparent” about the development of Starship, but that a specific number would likely come after flight tests. He deferred to SpaceX’s Jensen, who made the arguments that propellant transfer was not as challenging as it might seem. She did not provide a number. NASA administrator Bill Nelson then stepped in. “The question was, how many fuel transfers?” He seemed as curious as the reporters on the call for a number. “Hi Bill,” Jensen responded. “I will say it will roughly be ten-ish.” That number, she added, could go up or down depending on how well the initial flight tests go. She also noted that Starship will be flying again soon. The hardware for the third integrated test flight will be ready this month, with an updated launch license from the FAA expected by February, once SpaceX completes corrective actions from November’s test flight. “We’re expecting that license to come in February. So, it’s looking like Flight 3 will occur in February.” Jensen did not disclose what those corrective actions were or other details about what caused the Starship upper stage to explode late in its burn. But in a presentation at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the vehicle caught fire and exploded when it vented liquid oxygen propellant late in the burn. “It sounds complex and scary, and it seems like this big, nebulous thing,” Jensen said of in-space refueling. “But, when you break it down into its various pieces, we’ve actually achieved almost all of the complex parts already on our operational programs.” “Flight 2 actually almost made it to orbit,” he said in a video the company posted Friday. “If it had a payload, it would have made it to orbit because the reason that it actually didn’t quite make it to orbit was we vented the liquid oxygen, and the liquid oxygen ultimately led to a fire and an explosion.” While he didn’t elaborate on the issue, he appeared to suggest that the liquid oxygen would have been consumed if the vehicle was carrying a payload and needed the additional performance to reach orbit. That explanation, he said, gave him confidence about the next launch. “I think we’ve got a really good shot of reaching orbit with Flight 3,” he said. That mission will, besides demonstrating the performance of Starship, conduct an in-space burn of its engines to show it can make a controlled deorbit. It will also test transferring from a header tank at the top of the vehicle to the main tanks. That is a step towards ship-to-ship propellant transfer, he explained. The first ship-to-ship propellant transfer test is expected “hopefully by the end of this year, but certainly by next year.” Altair NASA has arguably made more progress with Artemis than the Constellation program, some of whose elements, like the Altair lander, never got beyond the drawing board. (credit: NASA) A long-term commitment at long last The latest delay can be seen, in one context, as another setback for Artemis. Yet it is also a sign of how much NASA’s plans for returning to the Moon have evolved in the last two decades and, in the process, become more secure. When Bush announced the Vision for Space Exploration in his speech at NASA Headquarters in 2004, he provided milestones and dates but no technical details. He directed NASA to develop a Crew Exploration Vehicle by 2014, but said nothing about it capabilities or requirements. The Constellation program that emerged from NASA under the leadership of administrator Mike Griffin more than a year and a half later looked remarkably conventional, in retrospect. The Crew Exploration Vehicle became Orion, a modernized version of an Apollo capsule, relying on heavy-lift rockets, Ares I and V, based on shuttle technologies. Development of the Altair lunar lander never got far, but it would have looked much more like the Apollo-era lunar module than Starship or Blue Moon. It was, as Griffin infamously put it, “Apollo on steroids.” It might well have succeeded in getting humans to the Moon by now given sufficient funding. That funding never materialized and the Obama Administration, acting on the Augustine Commission’s report, decided to give up on Constellation. Orion and the heavy-lift rocket, now SLS, were preserved through a compromise with Congress, but with a focus on asteroids. One can argue whether the current Artemis architecture is the best from a technical standpoint, but it shows promise of being sustainable in a way that neither Apollo was nor Constellation could be. The Trump Administration directed NASA back to the Moon, but did not revive Constellation. It developed an architecture that gave us the lunar Gateway—keeping ISS partners involved—and commercially developed landers through HLS. NASA originally projected a human lunar return in 2028, after completing the Gateway, only to have the White House move that up to 2024. Perhaps the biggest step forward in securing NASA’s human return to the Moon is something that didn’t happen. When the Biden Administration took office in 2021, if effectively left what NASA now called Artemis untouched: no change in destinations, dates, or development plans. While the date of the first Artemis crewed landing has slipped from 2024 to now late 2026 (and inevitably, into 2027 or later), that comes from the inexorable creep in any large program, not from major shifts in policy or programmatics. That is likely to continue: a second Biden term, if he wins reelection in November, will almost certainly keep Artemis on course. If Trump, on the other hand, returns to the White House, he will see a program that looks a lot like the one in place in his first term (and space seems likely to be low on his list of priorities.) One can argue whether the current Artemis architecture is the best from a technical standpoint. SLS is expensive, Orion continues to have technical problems after more than 15 years of development, and Starship is still unproven. But it shows promise of being sustainable in a way that neither Apollo was nor Constellation could be, an approach that can survive political and technical difficulties. It may also benefit from perceived competition with China, as that country talks about sending its astronauts to the Moon, possibly as soon as the end of the decade. Nelson, in last week’s call, said he was not worried about China landing astronauts on the Moon before NASA returns: “With us landing in September of ’26, that will be the first landing.” He has, though, used the concept of a new space race with China as an argument with Congress for funding. “Achieving these goals requires a long-term commitment,” Bush said near the end of his speech at NASA Headquarters 20 years ago. Getting that commitment has long been a challenge for NASA and its advocates, but it may finally be in place when it comes to returning humans to the Moon. The question is less about if it will happen than when. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.