Space has been in the news as of late and while both the UAE and China had missions arrive at…
Browsing: moon
No-one has visited the Moon since 1972. But with the advent of commercial human spaceflight, the urge to return is resurgent…
Space exploration achieved several notable firsts in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic, including commercial human spaceflight and returning samples of an asteroid to Earth.…
As you drive down the road leading to Jodrell Bank Observatory, a sign asks visitors to turn off their mobile…
Nokia, back in the early days (which is around 2000 to 2003, for the real youngsters out there), was the…
Toyota’s latest robot wants to clean your kitchen for you Just as you think robots can’t possibly replace mediocre jobs, Toyota slides in with its latest innovation. The car company recently unveiled a gantry-type robot that can be mounted overhead in a kitchen and be made to clean. The prototype was revealed at the company’s
But building a moon base and actually living on the moon will require careful planning. First, we need to identify and map available lunar resources, including hydrogen and water ice. Such compounds are crucial if we are to create breathable air and rocket fuel, whether for an observatory or a launchpad to go to the outer planets in our solar system.
The entire Apollo 11 mission to the moon took just eight days. If we ever want to build permanent bases on the moon, or perhaps even Mars or beyond, then future astronauts will have to spend many more days, months and maybe even years in space without a constant lifeline to Earth. The question is how would they get hold of everything they needed. Using rockets to send all the equipment and supplies for building and maintaining long-term settlements on the moon would be hugely expensive.
Today, discussions about lunar exploration have moved away from establishment of a permanent lunar base as a preliminary for extended exploration. Instead, there has been a significant advance in planning the construction of the Deep Space Gateway – a space station in orbit around the moon. This is an international project between a number of different space agencies.
A sustainable space program requires reliable, fully autonomous robotic systems both for maintaining the existing space infrastructures and for building new ones beyond low Earth orbits. Autonomy is particularly essential to near-future space robotic systems as they must operate in harsh and partially understood environments.