The first edition of the moon odyssey had six foreign payloads and five Indian ones on board but heavy orbiter (satellite) and lander weight this time has put constraints on the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in terms of carry-load of instruments.

"One of the problems was weight consideration. Weight limitation is overall boundary within which we have to work", Prof UR Rao, who chaired the national committee of experts drawn from ISRO centres, academic institutions and R and D laboratories which finalised the payloads to be flown on board Chandrayaan-2 (orbiter and rover), told PTI.

With a heavy orbiter and lander, the weight of the payloads cannot exceed 40 kg.

Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft weighs about 2,650 kg at lift-off of which the orbiter weight is about 1,400 kg and lander's about 1,250 kg.

The mission, which will have an orbiter, a lander and a rover, is planned to be launched onboard Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, in 2013.

While the lander would be provided by Russia, the orbiter and the rover are being built by ISRO.

Prof Rao, chairman, Advisory Committee on Space Sciences (ADCOS) and former Chairman of ISRO, said there were informal discussions with players from the US and Europe on flying their payloads, even though ISRO had not issued "availability of opportunity" for foreign instruments.

"Right now, the weight problem is very serious", he said indicating that foreign payloads may not be included at all. "We just don't have the weight. We cannot select payloads which cannot go".

But Rao said one or two additional Indian payloads might be included.

"Obviously, we will give preference to Indian payloads now. We have to provide as much opportunities as possible to Indian scientists".

But he said the Russians would conduct experiments with their lander.

Rao said Chandrayaan-2 would carry out experiments based on the discoveries of its predecessor. "It will conduct extremely good experiments, try out very new ideas and new technologies."

A week ago, the committee, after detailed discussions on mission requirements, weight and power availability for scientific payloads, announced that it has recommended five payloads to be flown on the orbiter of which three are new and two are improved versions of the payloads flown earlier on Chandrayaan-1 orbiter.

It also recommended two scientific payloads on the rover of the lunar odyssey. All the seven are Indian payloads.

Rao said it is for the first time that India is carrying a lander and rover which would carry out in-situ experiments which are "always something of great importance".

He pointed to the planned landing "right at the point", carrying out in-situ experiments and transmitting from the antenna on the lander.

The US and Russia have undertaken missions involving lander and rover in the past, he said, adding, "Certainly we (India) are right there on the top".

Rao said he was sure if China, which has the capability of sending such a mission, has done lunar landing of this type.

Underlining the importance of the proposed moon mission, Rao said India has to get into the "business of landers and rovers" sooner or later.

He indicated that the mission would contribute to enhancing knowledge as and when New Delhi decides to undertake a manned mission to moon which ISRO officials maintain could be a possibility in next ten to 15 years.

"May be in future.....manned moon mission.... We don't know when...," he said.

Rao said India is seeing Chandrayaan-2 mission as an opportunity to develop new technologies in a "comprehehsive way".

ISRO officials said the five recommended payloads of the orbiter are aimed at mapping the major elements present on the lunar surface and probe the presence of water and various chemicals in the Earth's natural satellite.

It also covers mapping of lunar surface over a wide wavelength range for the study of presence of minerals, water molecules and various chemicals, and the lunar exosphere besides preparing a three-dimensional map essential for experiments relating to lunar mineralogy and geology.

Both the instruments on Chandrayaan-2 rover are expected to carry out elemental analysis of the lunar surface near the landing site, they added.

]]> Thu, 09 SEP 2010 14:55:39 AEST Bangalore, India (PTI) Sep 06, 2010 - Voluminous scientific data, including rare images of the moon, from India's maiden lunar mission Chandrayaan-1 will be made public by the year-end.

"People will have free access to the huge data obtained from our first moon mission on a web portal that will be launched by this year-end," a senior scientist of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said here.

"The data has been split into two seasons, with the first dealing from November 2008 to February 2009 and the second from March to August 2009. The first season data will be archived by year-end and the second by mid-2011," said ISRO's space application centre director B Gopala Krishna.

A total of 26 gigabytes of data and images will be uploaded after archiving the first season.

The archives will include chemical and mineral mapping, high resolution three-dimensional mapping and topographical features.

The state-run ISRO launched the 514 kg mooncraft onboard the polar satellite launch vehicle on October 22, 2008 from its spaceport Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, about 80 km northeast of Chennai.

The Rs 3.9-billion Chandrayaan was the first mooncraft to have confirmed the presence of water on the moon.

After a 10-month rendezvous with the earth's only natural satellite, the mission was terminated Aug 30, 2009 when the space agency's Deep Space Network (DSN) at Bylalu, about 40 km from here, lost radio contact with Chandrayaan after computers onboard became non-functional.

"Though the dedicated portal will have a catalogue of the data, specific information will be made available for students and scholars pursuing research in space exploration," Krishna said.

Indian space scientists are currently reviewing the voluminous data, including about 70,000 images relayed to DSN by the 10 scientific instruments Chandrayaan carried to the lunar orbit, about 100 km from the moon's surface and over 400,000 km from the earth.

"Our scientists from various planetary groups are beginning to peer review the data from 10 of the 11 payloads. The same will be made accessible to the public as the lock-in period for the principal investigators of the mission to analyse will end by December," Krishna said.

Of the 11 instruments, five were Indian and six were from the US and Europe.

ISRO scientists have used the planetary data system, developed by the US-based National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for preservation and utilisation of the archived information.

"We are also in the process of generating a topographical atlas and a mineralogical atlas of the moon from the data," Krishna noted.

Detailed mapping of moon's mineralogy and topography will pave way for further research possibilities.

"We will prepare an atlas of the moon with latitude, longitude, colours of areas, ice water, minerals and terrain from the sheets of topography in the data," Krishna added.

Chandrayaan accomplished 95 percent of its scientific and technological objectives before its mission was called off prematurely. It had been programmed to orbit the moon for nearly two years.

]]> Thu, 09 SEP 2010 14:55:39 AEST Beijing, China (XNA) Sep 03, 2010 - China's Ministry of Civil Affairs has published the official Chinese names for places on the earth's moon, in a first that eliminates confusion and will help the nation's lunar exploration efforts.

The ministry published the Chinese names for 468 places and will publish more at a later date.

The International Astronomical Union has given names to more than 9,000 places on the moon, said a ministry official Thursday.

The project to standardize Chinese lunar names was initiated by the ministry.

The ministry is also drafting technical regulations for the naming of places on the moon in Chinese, according to the official.

]]> Thu, 09 SEP 2010 14:55:39 AEST Mesa AZ (SPX) Sep 02, 2010 - For two weeks every year, NASA's Desert Research and Technology Studies group (Desert RATS) conducts state-of-the-art technology development tests in the Arizona desert at Black Point Lava Flow in anticipation of future human and robotic exploration. Teams of engineers and geologists from several NASA laboratories and a variety of private and academic partners are participating in this year's test, many with ties to ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration.

This year's 14-day exercise, aimed at training people and testing equipment in a simulated mission environment comparable to the surface of the Moon or Mars, officially kicked off Aug. 30, at Black Point Lava Flow near Flagstaff, Ariz.

The area was originally identified as a candidate lunar analog site during the Apollo era. With challenging topography and lunar and Martian analog geomorphology and geology, this high-elevation desert terrain is ideal for testing technologies and procedures for future human-robotic exploration in extreme extraterrestrial environments.

The mission will simulate the operational requirements of a mission to the Malapert Massif region of the Moon (located along the South Pole-Aitken Basin), which has been suggested as a site for future lunar exploration.

"Explorers are eager to trek across the surface of the Moon or Mars, but our planet offers several sites that mimic otherworldly landscapes - minus the hefty price tag and the long travel time," said Kip Hodges, a Desert RATS science team leader and the founding director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration, in ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

"We're fortunate to have an analog site nearby, not only for our students but also for the expanding aerospace industry in Arizona."

Research in astronomy, planetary sciences and space sciences is one of Arizona's core competencies, with ASU serving as a premier center for space research and education. The state's solid foundation in this sector is based on a legacy of involvement with NASA missions and bolstered by the continued collaboration amongst industry professionals, academia and private institutes in Arizona.

"The School of Earth and Space Exploration continues to play a pivotal role in this exciting era of exploration as evidenced by the involvement of many past and present members of the SESE community in the Desert RATS test," Hodges said.

Desert RATS 2010 involves field testing two space exploration vehicles (SEVs), each carrying a crew of one astronaut and one geologist, which will be traversing a series of lava flows and volcanic cones to test the integration of multiple systems, including communications, power, mission ops, robotics, human factors and science.

The science component of the project is being led by ASU geological sciences alum Dean Eppler, and the science team includes graduate student Liz Rampe and postdoctoral scholar Brian Monteleone. Of the four geologists involved as crew, three have ASU connections: geological sciences alums Jake Bleacher and Jim Rice, and current student Kelsey Young. In addition, several ASU and University of Maryland undergraduates involved with Project RAVEN have been invited to demonstrate their award-winning astronaut assistance rover on-site Sept. 15 and 16.

Young and her crewmate Stephanie Wilson, a current NASA astronaut, will spend seven days living in the rover and completing extravehicular activity (EVA) in a mock space suit to collect samples and make observations about the landscape. Their traverses will include driving up and down steep slopes and over rough terrain at various speeds.

The crew will also demonstrate docking and undocking with the mobile charging stations for equipment known as PUPs (short for Portable Utility Pallets). Other objectives for the rovers include demonstrating the differences in productivity for crew members and their ground support that come with different communication methods, and evaluating different operational concepts for the trips the rovers make.

The astronaut crewmembers will be the primary drivers as they are more familiar with operations associated with active missions - three of the four astronaut crewmembers have flown multiple space shuttle missions.

The geologist crewmembers will act as the "mission specialists", assisting their partners with driving and logistics as much as possible, but primarily responsible for achieving the scientific goals of the test.

"Driving the rover is something I've wanted to do for a long time," Young said. "But driving it is nothing like driving a car. It's controlled with a joystick that can move the rover up, down, forward, backward and even sideways, a move called crabbing."

Young spent most of the summer at Johnson Space Center learning to drive and live in the rover. According to her, the rover drives fairly smooth, for the most part, with the exception of maneuvering across monster craters and huge boulder fields.

The rover, with its active suspension and 12-wheel chassis, has the ability to move up and down incredibly steep (~30 degree) slopes, even while carrying several thousand pounds of payload. If the cabin were to be removed, the chassis can literally "drive up" a vertical wall - it can get 8 of 12 wheels up off the ground onto a wall.

"While an important part of the test is to demonstrate the rover capabilities, a far more important task is to combine the efforts of multiple teams into one successful mission scenario," said Young, who is combining geology and engineering to explore issues associated with manned space exploration as part of her PhD dissertation research.

An important part of the test involves human factors, since conducting EVAs in the desert in the summer while wearing 45-pound packs full of cameras and electronic equipment can be taxing. In addition to reporting their calorie intake, the crew is also required to complete surveys several times per day to evaluate their physical and mental health.

"The chase team following each rover will only interfere in life-threatening situations," Young said.

"They could be standing 2 feet outside the rover when it breaks down, but we, as the crew, are the first line of defense in the event of a rover malfunction. The chase team is instructed not to give us any information in the event of a breakdown - unless it is something that would take many hours to resolve."

But that is exactly what this simulation is designed to do: test realistic exploration scenarios. Astronauts on the Moon or Mars can't wave over an engineer to fix a problem. These crew members need to be cross-trained and equipped to handle whatever is thrown at them. Hardware and concepts must be tested in a real-world environment with real geology, slopes, rocks, dust, and the unexpected; it can't be done in a controlled laboratory.

Obviously, northern Ariz. is not the Moon or Mars - there is atmosphere to breath, the temperatures are moderate compared to other planetary surfaces, and it is easy to get to - but valuable lessons are learned here on Earth.

"In short, we can test operations here in a way that makes them analogous to a human planetary surface mission, and this allows us to learn how to work on other planets before we take the risk and effort to send humans there," Eppler said. "If we test an approach that doesn't work, for instance, we know not to implement that for a real mission, and we learn that in a way that costs less, saves time in the future, and doesn't put the human crew at risk."

"For me, the most exciting part is to provide feedback to the engineers and over several seasons to see those inputs lead to improved technologies that will enable science to be conducted by astronauts on other planetary surfaces," Bleacher said. "I find it very rewarding to be involved with teams like Desert RATS to help develop protocols and hardware for future human missions."

"Being involved in the formative stages of the SEV (rover) design, development and operational field testing is remarkable experience," Rice said. "Of course conducting the geology EVA's is also a high point."

Geology is an important foundation for space exploration. According to Eppler, a good geologist is not just someone who works in the lab or an imaging facility, but has the education and experience that gets them into the field where the rocks are.

"The geologic education folks receive in SESE is really good and, equally important, it emphasizes the breadth of the geological sciences today," Eppler said. "At a time when many geology departments are placing less emphasis on field studies, ASU has been one of the consistent leaders in giving their students, both undergraduate and graduate, a firm foundation in both field and laboratory work."

Rampe, who works as the documentarian for the Strategic Science Operations Team (SSOT), credits her educational background as preparing her for the experience - specifically ASU Professor Ron Greeley's planetary geosciences class, which helped her understand the geological context of the tests.

Rampe is responsible for recording the team members' discussions and decisions as they look at the data received from the rover, assess to what degree the science goals were met for the day, and make plans for the next day's traverses.

"Nearly every class I took while working on my Ph.D. at ASU included field work," Bleacher said. "This is a fundamental background that is not necessarily stressed in all planetary science groups in academia but which will be necessary as NASA looks towards sending humans to other Solar System bodies."

Geologists such as Bleacher, Rice and Young in the rovers, as well as folks in the backrooms like Monteleone and Rampe, have a breadth of experience and a quality of education that is a cut above the rest, making them prime candidates to help figure out how to do planetary surface operations.

"While we may not go back to the Moon or travel to Mars by 2020, humans will visit other planetary bodies and, when that happens, tests like Desert RATS will be crucial in providing the technology and mission ops procedures to get us there," Young said. "This test is a great example of a field exercise that combines science, communications, robotics, and mission operational procedures. Tests like this one not only cross disciplines, but they bridge people in the space exploration and geology communities from all across the country."

]]> Thu, 09 SEP 2010 14:55:39 AEST Bangalore, India (PTI) Sep 02, 2010 - The payloads to be carried by India's second unmanned moon mission Chandrayaan-2 targeted for launch in 2013 were announced Monday and there will be seven onboard instruments for a range of lunar experiments.

The payloads finalised by a National Committee of Experts were announced by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Three of the seven payloads are new.

The country's prestigious maiden lunar mission Chandrayaan-1 came to an abrupt end a little less than a year after it was launched in October 2008. This mission carried 11 payloads including six from abroad.

Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft, which would have an orbiter (satellite), a lander and a rover, is planned to be launched onboard Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota in 2013.

While the lander would be provided by Russia, the orbiter and rover are being built by Bangalore-headquartered ISRO.

Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft weighs about 2,650 kg at lift-off of which the orbiter's weight is about 1,400 kg and lander about 1,250 kg.

After detailed deliberations and considering the mission needs, weight and power available for scientific payloads, the committee has recommended five payloads to be flown on the orbiter, of which three are new and two are improved versions of payloads flown earlier on Chandrayaan-1 orbiter.

The committee, drawn from ISRO centres, academic institutions and R and D laboratories and Chaired by Prof U R Rao, Chairman, Advisory Committee on Space Sciences (ADCOS) and former Chairman of ISRO, has also recommended two scientific payloads on the rover of Chandrayaan-2.

"Inclusion of additional payloads, if possible within the mission constraints, will be considered at a later date following a detailed review", ISRO said in a statement.

The five recommended payloads of Chandrayaan-2 orbiter are:

1. Large Area Soft X-ray Spectrometer (CLASS) from ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC), Bangalore and Solar X-ray monitor (XSM) from Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad for mapping major elements present on the lunar surface.

2. L and S band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) from Space Applications Centre (SAC), Ahmedabad for probing the first few tens of metres of the lunar surface for the presence of different constituents, including water ice. SAR is expected to provide further evidence confirming the presence of water ice below the shadowed regions of the moon.

3. Imaging IR Spectrometer (IIRS) from SAC, Ahmedabad for mapping of lunar surface over a wide wavelength range for the study of minerals, water molecules and hydroxyl present.

4. Neutral Mass Spectrometer (ChACE-2) from Space Physics Laboratory (SPL), Thiruvananthapuram to carry out a detailed study of the lunar exosphere.

5. Terrain Mapping Camera-2 (TMC-2) from SAC, Ahmedabad for preparing a three-dimensaional map essential for studying the lunar mineralogy and geology.

The two scientific payloads on Chandrayaan-2 rover are:

1. Laser induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) from Laboratory for Electro Optic Systems (LEOS), Bangalore.

2. Alpha Particle Induced X-ray Spectroscope (APIXS) from PRL, Ahmedabad.

Both instruments are expected to carry out elemental analysis of the lunar surface near the landing site.

]]> Thu, 09 SEP 2010 14:55:39 AEST Greenbelt MD (SPX) Aug 31, 2010 - A new geologic map of the moon's Schrodinger basin paints an instant, camouflage-colored portrait of what a mash-up the moon's surface is after eons of violent events. The geologic record at Schrodinger is still relatively fresh because the basin is only about 3.8 billion years old; this makes it the moon's second-youngest large basin (it's roughly 320 kilometers, or 200 miles, in diameter).

Schrodinger is located near the moon's south pole, a region where pockets of permanent ice are thought to exist. The map will help researchers understand lunar geologic history and identify suitable landing sites for future exploration.

Scott Mest, a research scientist with the Planetary Science Institute working at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and his colleagues created this geologic map - the most detailed one to date - by combining topographic data from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter, a Goddard instrument aboard the 2009 Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, with images and spectral data from the earlier Clementine and Lunar Prospector missions.

Schrodinger is an example of an intriguing type of basin called a peak-ring. Like the basin rim (brown outer ring), the smaller and more fragmented peak ring (brown inner ring) is a mountainous region of crust that rose up after a huge object, probably measuring 35-40 kilometers, or about 21-25 miles, smacked into the moon here.

These areas of raised crust are the oldest rocks in the basin and just about the only material that wasn't melted by the heat from the object's impact. The melted material was spewed in all directions and formed the plains.

Patches of plains material can have slightly different textures and albedo (indicated by dark green and kelly green), probably because they cooled at different times. Fractures (black lines) formed in the basin floor as the material cooled.

Schrodinger Basin is one of the few areas near the moon's south pole with evidence of recent volcanic activity. This includes lava flows from volcanic activity on the surface (beige areas) as well as explosive eruptions from a vent inside the red area; this vent has brought up dark material that mantles the plains (red area, which is newer than the beige regions).

Older volcanic material is spread over a wider range (gray and lime green). More recent cratering by smaller objects has scattered material (yellow areas) near the top of the basin.

Next to that (very light green beside yellow) is a region with a knobby texture that suggests loose material that could have come from cratering outside the basin or from a landslide on the basin's rim.

]]> Thu, 09 SEP 2010 14:55:39 AEST Washington DC (SPX) Aug 30, 2010 - On 21 September 2010, the Moon Capital Competition will accept entries for the architectural design of an international and commercial lunar habitation. The prime sponsors of the competition who are putting up the prize money are: The Boston Society of Architects (American Institute of Architects) and The New England Council of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Other sponsors include: Draper Laboratory, Google Lunar X Prize, AIAA Space Architecture Technical Committee, and The Boston Center for the Arts

The competition is open to all comers, although its slant is largely toward space architects and architects who may become inspired to design in space.

Moon Capital consists of the planning and design of a Second Generation Habitation on the Moon to support a resident staff of 60 people. The groundbreaking on the Moon will occur July 20, 2069, to mark the 100th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing. Second Generation means that a prior lunar base exists that can serve as the construction camp and the assembly point for building Moon Capital.

This assumption means that the project designers do not need to address the means of delivering materials and construction equipment to the site; the technology and transportation capability exists to assure these deliveries proximate to the construction site.

The primary purpose of Moon Capital is to provide a permanent commercial, science, and technology development facility on the Moon. Up to now, scientists and engineers have conducted lunar research almost exclusively from Earth. Certainly, the Apollo Astronauts returned over 300kg of lunar materials to Earth, which have provided a subject for study for over 40 years.

However, lunar science goes far beyond picking up rocks for return to Earth; and lunar technology development has barely begun. The scientific and technological disciplines have matured to where they can be far more productive and serendipitous if these professionals can do their work directly on the Moon.

Moon Capital arises from a concept of the evolution of lunar Habitation and Space Architecture. The First Generation Habitation will take the form of a largely government-driven lunar base that currently appears on the NASA exploration timeline for a construction start in the 2030s or later.

This base will provide habitation elements that include rigid, pre-integrated modules, deployable or inflatable structures, and the reuse of lunar lander parts.

The first generation base can provide some manufacturing and assembly of modules and components for the Second Generation Habitation: Moon Capital. However, mass delivered out of the gravity well of Earth is always at a premium in space, so any design decisions that reduce landed payload-mass and mass that the construction process must move will contribute to the success of the project.

As the Second Generation Habitation, Moon Capital represents an international and commercial effort to build a permanent human community on the moon. This community intends to achieve a much broader scope of endeavor than the First Generation base. It will support an entrepreneurial and commercial activity that can become the forerunner of a true in-space economy.

Moon Capital will be much more advanced in achieving self-sufficiency such as food production and regenerative life support. By placing the Habitat Core underground with all the living accommodations, Moon Capital will provide superior protection from the extreme and unforgiving lunar environment.

The habitat core will provide common labs for science and engineering that all crewmembers can use and share. On the lunar surface, the commercial modules cluster around the Surface Access Units to which they can make a pressurized connection.

Second Generation also means that Moon Capital will serve a multigenerational population; the staff can come with their families. Co-locating children with their parents at a lunar base becomes an essential step toward truly breaking the bonds of Earth and becoming a space-faring species.

The commercial activities that Moon Capital will support include:

+ Excavation and construction for the Moon Capital habitation,

+ Deployment and operation of scientific facilities such as a far-side radio telescope or a north-pole far-infrared telescope.

+ Supporting scientific surveys of the surface by providing transportation, field habitats, and operations,

+ Prospecting for minerals,

+ Extraction of resources such as water from polar ice or oxygen from regolith

+ Provision of fuel for surface rovers, lunar ascent vehicles, and interplanetary spacecraft.

+ Growing food,

+ Operating recycling processes and systems,

+ Manufacturing equipment for other commercial entities to use in their proprietary labs modules.

+ This compilation is just a start. Once people settle and live permanently on the moon, the pioneers will think of many more beneficial and profitable activities that they can undertake on Earth's only natural satellite.

]]> Thu, 09 SEP 2010 14:55:39 AEST Pittsburgh PA (SPX) Aug 24, 2010 - Astrobotic Technology, a Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) spin-off company has announced that Caterpillar will be a sponsor its first robotic expedition to the lunar surface.

The initial Astrobotic mission will revisit the Apollo 11 site in April 2013 with a five-foot tall, 160-lb. robot broadcasting 3D high-definition video. The mission will carry payloads to the Moon and convey the experience to the world via Internet video access.

The expedition also will claim a financial trifecta: up to $24 million in the Google Lunar X Prize, a $10 million data sale to NASA, and Florida's $2 million bonus for launching from that state.

In 2007 Caterpillar sponsored Carnegie Mellon's winning machine in the Urban Challenge, a competition for autonomous vehicles conducted by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The sensors and code base developed for this race of driverless cars through city traffic are evolving into the guidance and control for the spacecraft that will take Astrobotic's robot to the lunar surface.

"Caterpillar has enjoyed a successful relationship with Carnegie Mellon University over the last two decades. Our sponsorship of CMU's winning machine in the 2007 Urban Challenge has served as a technology foundation for further work to automate our large mining trucks," said Eric Reiners, Caterpillar Automation Systems Manager.

"Our customers are moving to more remote and harsh environments. This drives the need for further development of autonomous and remote operation of equipment. We look forward to applying the technology developed and lessons learned from the Astrobotic expedition toward our own Cat equipment."

Carnegie Mellon and Astrobotic have expended more than $3 million creating mission designs and prototype Moon robots engineered to operate during extreme heat - soil temperatures at the lunar equator hit 224 degrees F at noon.

"Operating during the Moon's daytime heat is the central engineering challenge for lunar robots, and we will take advantage of Caterpillar's experience with rugged electronics for harsh environments," said Dr. Red Whittaker, director of CMU's Field Robotics Center and founder of Astrobotic Technology.

Caterpillar's experience in autonomous mining and construction machinery also will assist with learning how to "live off the land" using lunar resources. For example, polar ice deposits can be transformed into propellant to refuel spacecraft for their return to Earth, doubling their productivity.

New NASA research shows that some of the polar ice (a mix of water, methane and other compounds) is covered by an insulating layer of dry soil that robotic excavators can remove to access the volatiles.

"Caterpillar makes sustainable progress possible by enabling infrastructure development and resource utilization on every continent on Earth. It only makes sense we would be involved expanding our efforts to the 8th continent, the Moon," said Reiners.

]]> Thu, 09 SEP 2010 14:55:39 AEST Washington DC (SPX) Aug 20, 2010 - Newly discovered cliffs in the lunar crust indicate the moon shrank globally in the geologically recent past and might still be shrinking today, according to a team analyzing new images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft. The results provide important clues to the moon's recent geologic and tectonic evolution.

The moon formed in a chaotic environment of intense bombardment by asteroids and meteors. These collisions, along with the decay of radioactive elements, made the moon hot.

The moon cooled off as it aged, and scientists have long thought the moon shrank over time as it cooled, especially in its early history. The new research reveals relatively recent tectonic activity connected to the long-lived cooling and associated contraction of the lunar interior.

"We estimate these cliffs, called lobate scarps, formed less than a billion years ago, and they could be as young as a hundred million years," said Dr. Thomas Watters of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, Washington. While ancient in human terms, it is less than 25 percent of the moon's current age of more than four billion years.

"Based on the size of the scarps, we estimate the distance between the moon's center and its surface shrank by about 300 feet," said Watters, lead author of a paper on this research appearing in Science.

"These exciting results highlight the importance of global observations for understanding global processes," said Dr. John Keller, Deputy Project Scientist for LRO at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

"As the LRO mission continues in to a new phase, with emphasis on science measurements, our ability to create inventories of lunar geologic features will be a powerful tool for understanding the history of the moon and the solar system."

The scarps are relatively small; the largest is about 300 feet high and extends for several miles or so, but typical lengths are shorter and heights are more in the tens of yards (meters) range. The team believes they are among the freshest features on the moon, in part because they cut across small craters.

Since the moon is constantly bombarded by meteors, features like small craters (those less than about 1,200 feet across) are likely to be young because they are quickly destroyed by other impacts and don't last long. So, if a small crater has been disrupted by a scarp, the scarp formed after the crater and is even younger.

Even more compelling evidence is that large craters, which are likely to be old, don't appear on top any of the scarps, and the scarps look crisp and relatively undegraded.

Lobate scarps on the moon were discovered during the Apollo missions with analysis of pictures from the high-resolution Panoramic Camera installed on Apollo 15, 16, and 17.

However, these missions orbited over regions near the lunar equator, and were only able to photograph some 20 percent of the lunar surface, so researchers couldn't be sure the scarps were not just the result of local activity around the equator. The team found 14 previously undetected scarps in the LRO images, seven of which are at high latitudes (more than 60 degrees).

This confirms that the scarps are a global phenomenon, making a shrinking moon the most likely explanation for their wide distribution, according to the team.

As the moon contracted, the mantle and surface crust were forced to respond, forming thrust faults where a section of the crust cracks and juts out over another. Many of the resulting cliffs, or scarps, have a semi-circular or lobe-shaped appearance, giving rise to the term "lobate scarps".

Scientists aren't sure why they look this way; perhaps it's the way the lunar soil (regolith) expresses thrust faults, according to Watters.

Lobate scarps are found on other worlds in our solar system, including Mercury, where they are much larger. "Lobate scarps on Mercury can be over a mile high and run for hundreds of miles," said Watters. Massive scarps like these lead scientists to believe that Mercury was completely molten as it formed.

If so, Mercury would be expected to shrink more as it cooled, and thus form larger scarps, than a world that may have been only partially molten with a relatively small core. Our moon has more than a third of the volume of Mercury, but since the moon's scarps are typically much smaller, the team believes the moon shrank less.

Because the scarps are so young, the moon could have been cooling and shrinking very recently, according to the team. Seismometers emplaced by the Apollo missions have recorded moonquakes.

While most can be attributed to things like meteorite strikes, the Earth's gravitational tides, and day/night temperature changes, it's remotely possible that some moonquakes might be associated with ongoing scarp formation, according to Watters. The team plans to compare photographs of scarps by the Apollo Panoramic Cameras to new images from LRO to see if any have changed over the decades, possibly indicating recent activity.

While Earth's tides are most likely not strong enough to create the scarps, they could contribute to their appearance, perhaps influencing their orientation, according to Watters.

During the next few years, the team hopes to use LRO's high-resolution Narrow Angle Cameras (NACs) to build up a global, highly detailed map of the moon. This could identify additional scarps and allow the team to see if some have a preferred orientation or other features that might be associated with Earth's gravitational pull.

"The ultrahigh resolution images from the NACs are changing our view of the moon," said Dr. Mark Robinson of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, Tempe, Ariz., a coauthor and Principal Investigator of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera.

"We've not only detected many previously unknown lunar scarps; we're also seeing much greater detail on the scarps identified in the Apollo photographs."

The research was funded by NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, Washington. The team includes researchers from the Smithsonian, Arizona State, the SETI Institute, Mountain View, Calif., NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., Institut fur Planetologie, Westfalische Wilhelms-Universitat, Munster, Germany, Brown University, Providence, R.I., and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.

]]> Thu, 09 SEP 2010 14:55:39 AEST Boston MA (SPX) Aug 19, 2010 - Although unmanned, wheeled rovers have explored the surfaces of the moon and Mars for decades, these vehicles have limits - they can't crawl inside craters, scale cliffs or travel long distances.

For more than two years, a team of students led by Professor of the Practice of Astronautics and former NASA astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman in MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics has been collaborating with engineers from the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory to design and build a prototype for a new type of robotic explorer that would hop over, rather than traverse, a planetary surface.

Hopping, they believe, would make it easier for an explorer to access tricky sites and travel greater distances, and thus collect more data during a mission.

Known as the Terrestrial Artificial Lunar and Reduced Gravity Simulator, or Talaris, the three-foot-wide vehicle is a prototype of a larger hopper that would be used in space. The team that built it wants to use Talaris on Earth to test guidance, navigation and control (GNC) software developed by Draper that would then be used to navigate the space-based hopper autonomously.

Several graduate students involved with the project will present the latest details about the prototype later this month at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Space 2010 conference in California.

The prototype is an outgrowth of MIT's effort to win the Google Lunar X Prize, a $20 million competition to become the first team to send a privately funded spacecraft to the moon, travel 500 meters across its surface, and transmit video and images back to Earth. Both MIT and Draper are members of Next Giant Leap, one of about 20 teams registered in the competition.

Building Talaris to test the hopper waters
Talaris uses two propulsion systems. The main system consists of four downward-pointing electric ducted fans that provide lift to counter the vehicle's weight and simulate the gravity environments of different planetary bodies.

The second system uses compressed nitrogen gas to maneuver the vehicle as it operates in the simulated gravity conditions. With this setup, the researchers can repeatedly test different navigation algorithms on Earth to perfect the control software.

What distinguishes Talaris from other explorer prototypes is its ability to test how a hopper functions in different gravity scenarios before sending one into space, according to Seamus Tuohy, director of space systems at Draper, which is funding Talaris.

"Other organizations had developed little lander prototypes, but the drawback was that they were essentially Earth landers," Tuohy says. "MIT and Draper wanted to do better - to be able to say that we have the GNC expertise to do hopping in other environments, and that we have demonstrated it with Talaris."

Although Talaris began with the goal of hopping across the moon, the Talaris team is pushing for hoppers to be used to explore any body in the solar system that has enough gravity to make hopping feasible, including asteroids.

"There are limits to the terrain you can access on wheels, and with a hopper, you simply hop in, collect data and hop out," Hoffman says, noting that hoppers can be used to explore deep craters on the moon that are thought to contain water, measure the magnetism of steep cliffs or set up a network of seismometers by placing sensors at multiple locations.

The ability of hoppers to travel long distances and visit multiple sites is also valuable. Whereas the rovers that have been used to explore Mars since the late 1990s traveled several kilometers over several years, hoppers could travel hundreds of kilometers per hop, depending on their size.

Hopper technology could even enable a human mission to Mars where astronauts orbiting the planet could use a high-bandwidth signal to tele-operate hoppers on the Martian surface, according to Phillip Cunio, an AeroAstro doctorate student who is working with Hoffman to lead the student group working on Talaris.

"This would enable direct human oversight of exploration - with all the decision-making capability and flexibility that implies - without the risks of sending human bodies to the surface of Mars," he says.

Filling the toolkit of planetary exploration
But hoppers do have one drawback: their engines require fuel. Electric rovers, in contrast, only need to recharge their batteries to run their wheels.

Given that a hopper is limited to a certain number of hops, the Talaris researchers stress that hoppers should be thought of as an additional tool to complement rovers. Even so, Cunio says, engineers could design hoppers that could be useful even after their fuel runs out. For instance, they might act as solar array-powered rovers, or make fuel from local materials.

For now, the Talaris team is focused on finalizing the construction of Talaris. Although each component has been built and tested individually, the group has yet to test the entire system, which Cunio estimates will weigh about 110 pounds. The team hopes to complete a test hop - Talaris will hop about 20 meters by hovering, moving horizontally and descending - by the end of the calendar year.

The researchers predict that if Next Giant Leap is able to secure funding, a large-scale planetary surface hopper explorer could take flight by the end of 2014, the deadline for contestants in the Google Lunar X Prize competition to complete a trip to the moon.

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