Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
The asteroid-mining industry has taken a step closer to becoming an actual thing, with the successful deployment of Planetary Resources' Arkyd 3 Reflight (A3R) spacecraft from the International Space Station Wednesday night. The A3R's three-month mission will be used to test and validate some basic technologies that the company hopes to incorporate in future spacecraft that will prospect near-Earth asteroids for potentially valuable resources.
The Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA) has outlined its early plans for putting a lander and rover on the far side of the Moon. No country has attempted such a mission before.
A presentation submitted to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (pdf) states that the robotic mission, currently named Chang’e-4, will launch in 2018 or 2019 and will include a relay satellite.
The paper notes key objectives as performing the ‘first soft landing on the lunar farside in human history’, demonstrating technologies of lunar data relay, landing and roving on complicated terrains of the lunar farside, and lunar night power generation, and a number of scientific goals.
The project will be open to cooperation with other countries and organisations, at the mission level, regarding equipment used, and telemetry, communication and data.
The new Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA) envisions the building of a lunar village at the far side of the moon.
Quite futuristic for space exploration, but that is exactly why it is called the future.
"A moon village shouldn't just mean some houses, a church and a town hall," said Professor Johann-Dietrich Woerner in his new job for a week. To Woerner, the futuristic moon village calls for the world to bring together partners contributing to the community supported by robotic and astronaut missions, as well as support communication satellites.
The former Chair of the German space agency believes that going back to the moon and building a village on its far side will further help in a deeper exploration of the solar system.
Woerner, who now looks after Europe's new observation, navigation, weather and communication satellites, the International Space Station (ISS), missions to Mercury, Mars and Jupiter and a sleepy lander on a comet shaped like a duck, notes how interesting the lunar village could be.
"The Americans are looking to go to Mars very soon - and I don't see how we can do that - before going to Mars we should test what we could do on Mars on the Moon," added Woerner.
He explained that the giant 3D printer that NASA plans to use on a base in Mars could be better tried out first on the moon. The challenges of learning to live in an alien world could be made easier, especially in an emergency and when the extraterrestrial community is just four days away.
