Just over a half hour ago, as I sit to start writing, Mrs. Graybeard and I stepped outside to watch the night's launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 from complex 39A on the Kennedy Space Center. Among a variety of rideshare payloads, the highlight of the mission was Intuitive Machines IM-2 Lunar Lander, also named Athena.
With Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander already in orbit around the moon, and ispace's Resilience lander finalizing its lunar orbit, this marks the third lander currently on the way to the moon. Blue Ghost is currently planned to land on the moon Sunday, March 2, NET 2:34 AM. CST. (NET = No Earlier Than). YouTube video coverage here is expected to go live March 2nd at 1:20 AM CST. Next will be tonight's launch, Intuitive Machine's Athena lander. Athena is on a much faster trajectory than the Blue Ghost and Resilience landers, and will reach the moon on March 6th landing "around lunchtime". ispace's Resilience simply says, "May."
There's another satellite on tonight's ridesharing mission, NASA’s JPL Lunar Trailblazer satellite, on a similar trajectory as Athena.
Lunar Trailblazer is expected to begin orbiting the Moon, mapping the quantity and location of water ice on the surface, while Athena descends to its landing site in the Mons Mouton region ~100 miles from the lunar South Pole.
During its 10 day mission closer to the south pole than any lunar lander ever, Athena will release two more payloads focused on the search for water: PRIME-1 and PLWS.
PRIME-1: NASA’s Polar Resource Ice Mining Experiment contains two instruments:
- A drill from Honeybee Robotics (The Regolith Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain, or TRIDENT)
- A mass spectrometer from NASA (Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations, or MSolo).
The meter-long drill will bore into the lunar surface in 10-cm increments, depositing the soil on the surface for MSolo to analyze. MSolo will also examine the gasses emitted during the drilling process to better understand the lunar subsurface and detect possible contamination from the Nova-C lander.
PLWS: The Puli Lunar Water Snooper from Hungary-based Puli Space Technologies is a 400-g dowsing instrument attached to Intuitive Machines’ Micro Nova Hopper that will attempt to identify and measure the concentration of water in lunar soil—both near the landing site and in a permanently shaded crater nearby.
ispace's Resilience lander is bringing water electrolyzing equipment to demonstrate the production of oxygen and hydrogen on the Moon for the first time. Of course, electrolysis equipment isn't going to do much good if Resilience doesn't have any water to electrolyze.
It's important to note that while previous sensing missions reported the presence of water, NASA’s SOFIA and China's Chang’e-5 mission say the water is "unevenly distributed" and finding it will be a challenge.
Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 Athena lander. Image: Intuitive Machines
Must be wonderful , step out on your porch and see these beautiful rockets rising to the heavens.
ReplyDeleteRead about one of these landers has two really funny autonomous probes, which are rockets combined with pogo sticks, they gently launch way below escape velocity, come back down and repeat the sequence, that way a lot of ground gets covered, detecting water ice. Pretty ingenious little guys be-bopping across the moonscape, whoever came up with the idea should get a prize for thinking outside the box.
Last thing back when we where kids up to and during during Apollo, was the thought. of water ice on the moon, to us it was like Buzz Aldrin said, "magnificent desolation".
As I gazed at the first photo on the first link by SiG, I thought the same as you. First, that is an amazing photo of the launch. Then to think how fortunate to simply step outside to watch the launch. Wow.
DeleteAlso from that first link, I see that this is the 24th launch for 2025. We're only into the 57th (now 58) day of the year!
Puli did get a prize. $225,000 from NASA for winning a competition.
https://pulispace.com/news/puli-lunar-water-snooper-nasa/
On that page they use past tense as if they've already discovered water.
As I read of the various lunar payloads, I thought Puli's water snooper to be the most ingenious.
There's only a few places in the world where you can walk out of your house and watch rockets launch and we feel lucky to live in one of them every single launch. Mrs. Graybeard worked on both sides of the Cape for about a dozen years, including on the Shuttles. Getting to see flight hardware up close, and touch it, is yet another level of privilege.
DeleteYes, you can get used to it. An hour or so after I put up this post last night, there was a second launch from the Cape that I had filed in memory as instead launching from Vandenberg. A bit after 10:30 we both heard the distinctive rumble of a launch and went into that "hey... that sounds like..." mode. Since we're around 35 miles south of the launch pads, by the time we hear the rumble there's nothing much to see besides a moving bright spot and there's no sense going outside.
So that was launch 25 on the 58th day of the year. Insert all of the usual cautions about pacing, weather, blah-blah, and you can extrapolate that to 157 launches this year.
Did you notice the common theme throughout this article?
ReplyDeleteAll are happening due to one company. SpaceX. Without Falcon 9, none of this would have happened. Just lowering launch costs itself has had a positive effect by reducing overall mission costs. But the kicker is the launch cadence. No more fighting over a few available launches a year.
Gone are the days of sniping at a space issue, one launch at a time, with only 10-30 launches a year. Now we're in the beltfed machine gun launch phase. Pretty soon we'll be in the rapid-fire cannister cannon phase, once Starship comes on line.
ESA has inked an agreement with Puli. Puli used Space X for launch. For this mission, ESA is once removed from Space X.
DeleteI did wonder about that agreement. It seems ESA is a tag along. ESA has licensing authority. Other than that authority, ESA will dedicate a team to analyse the data.
ESA can't rely on ArianeSpace. Can't. Not enough launches per year, not enough space available. Only SpaceX has available space and launch times.
DeleteCrazy. SpaceX has made space available for Not-Government players.
Nowadays when I see something like a launch from ESA or someplace like Puli, I think, "so who are you gonna go to when you need to fly something? The one with three year backlog or the one that essentially says, 'when do you wanna go? We have openings starting next month'. "
DeleteI think the next big facilitating technology will be better communications - does starlink work in space, or only from the ground?
DeleteThe ability to easily connect to an existing comms network instead of each satellite (lander, etc) going straight to the ground will be a big improvement.
Jonathan
P.S. I wonder if Starlink is looking at a lunar constellation?
This mission (Athena) is going to set up a lunar 4G phone network. From January:
DeleteOnce Athena touches down, the Micro Nova Hopper and MAPP rover will deploy to explore the lunar terrain. They will establish a connection using Nokia's Lunar Surface Communication System (LSCS), the first-ever 4G/LTE network on the moon. This is a move away from radio frequency communication and will enable real-time command and control, telemetry transmission, and even high-definition video streaming, in what could be a big step toward establishing sustainable lunar infrastructure.
I posted that up as we were rushing to go grocery shopping and left out a big, important part. Starlink was designed around the concept of minimizing response times, so that it would useful for telephone conversations as well as the internet.
DeleteThat means low orbital altitudes, which they talk about, but it also means lower transmit power can be used successfully.
Hams routinely communicate by bouncing radio signals off the moon, but the two-way round-trip time is around 2-1/2 seconds. Think one way as 250,000 miles and the speed of light being 186,000 miles per second and it's immediately obvious.
Communications on the moon, like base to base or base to remote rover, would best be served by something similar to Starlink, at relatively low orbital heights, which can be quite a bit lower than Starlink is over the Earth because there's no atmospheric drag. Communication to the networks on Earth just can't rid of that 1-1/3 second each way delay.
Interesting, though I wonder at who thought 4G doesn't use radio waves...
DeleteJonathan
SpaceX has talked about, years ago, setting up a communications link system between the Earth and the Moon. And around Mars.
DeleteI think it's one of the big reasons they went with the laser communications between Starlink satellites and the more robust 2.0 versions of said satellites. I get the feeling that everything they're doing in Earth orbit is practice for future further com systems.
Anon 10:56 PM, I read that as "move away from radio frequency communication" from Earth but you're absolutely right, it's either stupid or phenomenally bad writing.
DeleteAnd my grandkids will see "Lunar Cargo Transport, LLC" places start to pop up.
ReplyDeleteLunar freight forwarders? The sky's the limit!
Even now there are several companies from around the world planning to soon launch for mining of asteroids.
DeleteLockheed Martin is already planning a water-based lunar economy.
I see that NASA promotes various missions as if appealing to children. That is a good thing.
I think back when me and brothers and friends all built models of rockets and crew modules. One of my models was a large lunar module. It stood about 12" tall.
Promotions such as clip this coupon, tape a dime to it, send it back through the mail to get a very detailed model of a KSC launch complex you can build. The model once completed was about two feet or longer and stood quite tall.
Kids today are gonna have an exciting future.
Jim, don't just sit there, file for that UPS forwarding office. From Earth to the moon and vice versa! ;-)
Delete:-)
DeleteGood thinking. Spraying the interior surfaces should be relatively easy for a low pressure gas seal, using aluminum alloy for equipment builds should be same, they make armored personal carriers like the tracked M110 series, some light tanks, so the plant exists just change up toling and assembly lines, though for the miners ir long wallers at least part of them sure, save a lot of mass penalties that way, definitely build the cars with light weight materials, though for wear and tear probably need certain parts using steel alloys.
DeleteWas thinking what can the mined regolith be used for, first could be heating it to release what water it contains. Hey maybe they hit sections of water ice, that would be like solid gold for the moonies. Instant pay off of investment right there. Then from word around there is supposed to be Helium 3 in abundance, though how deep remains to be seen i guess. Worst case regolith is claimed to be decent material for forming structural block, so it seems regardless, every way you look at it, sloe mining is a win-win cause your building living space, which is super critical, safe with rock between you and solar flares and other forms of space hazards.
Have to develop industry manufacturing air lock systems. Hopefully what your mining there's metals for that industry, gonna need lots of airlocks, or air lock systems per say.
Jerry Pournell and Larry Niven both wrote about boring long tunnels for linear accelerators as launch systems, aim them with moons orbit, saves quite a bit on rocket fuel, and its down hill if its earth return, once in earths gravity influence, makes your shipping cheaper, another stage zero kind of, you can aim at the asteroid belt miners too, they need stuff, and vice versa. Maybe an entire civilization between the moonies and belters pops up, lot of similar , though the belters face steep delta v penalties going out, they have a big free ride gravity return, maybe it works out well, cause mining gets you enough supply of water ice for your rocket juice.
ReplyDeleteMakes a lot of sense they are sending all these missions looking for water ice, if there are quantities in reasonably accessible forms, everything changes dramatically, big time. That means oxygen for atmosphere, fuels, raising food, of course it makes manufacturing, with unlimited free sun's energy, a veritable paradise, then who knows what can be commercially mineable in the moons crust, which adds another plus, say if horizontal shaft mining is employed like as with coal mining, once the products are mined out you have sections suitable for living space, killing a couple birds in one shot, particularly if its manned mining operations even robotic, if your not mining in vacuum you need air conditioning systems because of dusts and gases produced during mining processes, which get used for human habitation. Things really add up, trick is getting started. One would be having to get mining equipment at least in the start up phases, and this is where SuperHeavy lift capabilities come in, rather crucially as say a Joy Miner, which is a tracked remote control cutter head, its got a lift belt on it that dumps what is picked up from the rotating cutter head, either as a rift on the floor or into whats calked shuttle cars, they are long low machines with a walled bed that has"elevators", essentially steal chain driven cross paddles, forward and revers dumping shuttle floors, with these you follow the miner, when your loaded up from the belt on the miner you drive those to where your gonna either process or belt that material where you want it, the shuttle cars come in three styles, left right and center drive, so each car can follow the miner and pass each other not getting in each others way so in practical terms its pretty close to system. Commonly used for coal, salt, gypsum etc mining under ground horizontal shaft mines. Mentioned all this, because it has to get to the moon, got to start somehow, so why re-invent the wheel, everything is either high voltage cable, or employs large high voltage wet lead acid cell batteries, its extremely durable proven tech, at its peak right now, again, no need to invest in creating new moon tech, use what already works, only thing is bulk and mass, this equipment is heavy stuff, but reading the tonnage to moon numbers, SpaceX can haul it. Another thing due to the way this coal mining equipment is made it has to be gas tight due to dangers from methane explosions, extremely powerful explosions, without equal, but the thing is it will run in a vacuum, and people in space suits either sit or walk aside operating it with remote control boxes for walkers. Its about as rugged durable reliable proven mining equipment that is made. Has to be. But its totally perfect, except the weight part. You literally set the miner where you want to begin a shaft, the miner stands there, starts the miner and you first dig a sloped shaft, wide as is feasible with what the regilith can be safely mined without the roof falling in, the cuter swings vertically 10-11 ft, and down couple feet, thats more enough hieght wise for living space, the slope as long as you like, depends how deep you want your entrance where it levels off. And another nifty bit here, in coal mining, whats called curtain walls are used to close of our separate sections, and this process is literally air tight, again due to methane explosion mitigation, its stupid serious stuff, so again another proven tech, might need a little alteration for the moons conditions but thats easy stuff...
...I say all this from having been a coal miner, mostly a equipment maintenance welder fitter, but in coal mining everyone works and you can have to go anywhere anytime and perform every task. Oh, and the shoring timbering and roof bolting aspects, again all highly proven safe systems and techniques. Coal mining appears to require the most stringent safety requirements, looking at it, I can say pretty sure pretty much all the tech is directly transferable to moon mining with some unique caveats. Just getting it there is the big trick. But again it is equipment you can break down somewhat due to hauling it over-road/overweight hauling. So it gets to the moon in smalker pieces, another thing its equipment designed with maintenance and repair in the most austere rugged inhospitable conditions imaginable, I know, used to do that. And accomplish it all using only tools and hand held equipment you carry in a tool chest or bucket of a "mucker", its a really low slung front end loader, battery operated, a really BIG battery, its got a "bonder" on it, an electrical tap with huge resisters, to give out any voltage AC and DC, has capacity to run stick welding right off the battery, (finest weld current, its pure DC sine wave, welds like a dream, any position, looks like tig welds its so smooth, no sparks no spitting either, i've welded straight non stop for 11-12 hours, at 135-150 amps DC, and the batter guage has not moved, its a huge battery, 4 ft tall, 9 wide and 12 long. Its a big baby. They are used as a battery bank to run everything can plug into it, the mucker scoop is mostly used as a cargo hold, dont need the mucker except when moving over once or so a shift say, and only like ten twenty minutes, but thats to show the practicality of all this mining stuff and my arguement that with some simple mods, its vacuum usable. bought the only thing I can think of is the need for special one way valves for the fill ports on the battery sets. I believe everything could run in vacuum as it is. Might need a special heat exchanger for the miner, as its all water cooled internally, i dint think thats anything difficult to adapt with minor ingenuity. Oh and welding in a vacuum works very well too. At least stick, (aka SMAW), ned gas for unshielded mig, but you need it anyway in an atmosphere, because different gases transmit the plasma of the arc differently, some as resistors some gases like helium are like super conductors. No big deal any of that. Just try and see what works best. I'm just trying to point out how at keast i believe that aspect of getting things in motion on the moon are possible. Again, just thought again, solar cells produce an excellent kind of current for wet lead acid cell battery charging. Right there, free energy from the sun, set up your solar arat, run cables into your mine. Done and done. All this is off the shelf proven technology ready right now. And there are thousands of experienced miners out there. Again, for the mining operations no training time expense and investment, only suit and space safety training requirements. Your in gravity so even that is a lit more basic than say orbital zero grav training.
DeleteConsidering lunar gravity, seems the use of Mag/Al alloy could reduce weight needed for structure of that equipment. Road header, long wallers and shuttles will get you the openings, but all of that will require sealant. You got to get out of those suits on some regular basis.
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