Artemis’ Next Giant Leap: Orbital Refueling

December 7, 2023 by Tom Nardi 32 Comments

By the end of the decade, NASA’s Artemis program hopes to have placed boots back on the Moon for the first time since 1972. But not for the quick sightseeing jaunts of the Apollo era — the space agency wants to send regular missions made up of international crews down to the lunar surface, where they’ll eventually have permanent living and working facilities.

The goal is to turn the Moon into a scientific outpost, and that requires a payload delivery infrastructure far more capable than the Apollo Lunar Module (LM). NASA asked their commercial partners to design crewed lunar landers that could deliver tens of tons of to the lunar surface, with SpaceX and Blue Origin ultimately being awarded contracts to build and demonstrate their vehicles over the next several years.

Starship and Blue Moon, note scale of astronauts

At a glance, the two landers would appear to have very little in common. The SpaceX Starship is a sleek, towering rocket that looks like something from a 1950s science fiction film; while the Blue Moon lander utilizes a more conventional design that’s reminiscent of a modernized Apollo LM. The dichotomy is intentional. NASA believes there’s a built-in level of operational redundancy provided by the companies using two very different approaches to solve the same goal. Should one of the landers be delayed or found deficient in some way, the other company’s parallel work would be unaffected.

But despite their differences, both landers do utilize one common technology, and it’s a pretty big one. So big, in fact, that neither lander will be able to touch the Moon until it can be perfected. What’s worse is that, to date, it’s an almost entirely unproven technology that’s never been demonstrated at anywhere near the scale required.

Continue reading “Artemis’ Next Giant Leap: Orbital Refueling” →

Italy Proposes Minimalist Lunar Outpost For Artemis

December 4, 2023 by Tom Nardi 26 Comments

When humanity first step foot on the Moon, they couldn’t stay around for very long. The Apollo program was limited by the technology of the era — given the incredible cost per kilogram to put a payload down on the lunar surface, it wasn’t feasible to bring down enough consumables for a lengthy stay. Even if they could have carried sufficient food and water to last more than a few days, the limiting factor would have become how long the crew could realistically remain cooped up in the tiny Lunar Excursion Module (LEM).

In comparison, the Artemis program is far more ambitious. NASA wants to establish a long-term, and perhaps even permanent, human presence on our nearest celestial neighbor. This will be made possible, at least in part, to the greatly reduced launch costs offered by current and near-future launch vehicles compared to legacy platforms like the Saturn V or Space Shuttle. But cheaper rides to space is only part of the equation. NASA will also be leaning heavily on the lessons learned during the International Space Program; namely, the advantages of modular design and international cooperation.

While NASA and their commercial partners will still end up providing the bulk of the hardware for the Artemis program, many modules and components are being provided by other countries. From the Orion’s European Service Module (ESM) to the Japanese life support systems to be installed on the Lunar Gateway Station, America won’t be going to the Moon alone this time.

The latest international contribution to the Artemis program comes from the Italian Space Agency (ASI), who have announced their intention to develop a lunar habitation module they’re calling the Multi-Purpose Habitat (MPH) in collaboration with Thales Alenia Space.

Continue reading “Italy Proposes Minimalist Lunar Outpost For Artemis” →

Open Source Spacecraft Avionics With NASA’s Core Flight System

November 30, 2023 by Maya Posch 17 Comments

One thing about developing satellites, spacecraft, rovers and kin is that they have a big overlap in terms of functionality. From communication, to handling sensors, propulsion, managing data storage, task scheduling and so on, the teams over at NASA have found over the years that with each project there was a lot of repetition.

Block diagram of a simplified avionics system. (Credit: NASA)

Either they were either copy-pasting code from old projects, or multiple teams were essentially writing the same code.

To resolve this inefficiency NASA developed the Core Flight System (cFS), a common software framework for spacecraft, based on code and lessons from various space missions. The framework, which the space agency has released under the Apache license, consists of an operating system abstraction layer (OSAL), the underlying OS (VxWorks, FreeRTOS, RTEMS, POSIX, etc.), and the applications that run on top of the OSAL alongside the Core Flight Executive (cFE) component. Here cFS apps can be loaded and unloaded dynamically, along with cFS libraries, as cFS supports both static and dynamic linking.

There are a few sample applications to get started with, and documentation is available, should you wish to use cFS for your own projects. Admittedly, it’s a more complex framework than you’d need for a backyard rover. But who knows? As access to space gets cheaper and cheaper, you might actually get the chance to put together a DIY CubeSat someday — might as well start practicing now.

That Time NASA Built A Tiny Tank To Pop Shuttle Tires

November 17, 2023 by Tom Nardi 64 Comments

The Space Shuttle has often been called the most complex pieces of machinery ever built, an underhanded compliment if there ever was one. But it’s a claim not strictly limited to the final spacecraft. With a project as far ahead of the technological curve as the Shuttle was in the 1970s, nearly every component and system of the legendary spaceplane required extensive research and development to realize.

A case in point is that the speed and mass of the Shuttle at touchdown required tires that could survive forces far beyond that of a normal airplane. Pumped up to an incredible 350 psi, the space agency estimated each tire had the explosive potential of two and one-half sticks of dynamite. So while testing landing gear upgrades in the 1990s, they cobbled together an RC tank that could “defuse” a damaged tire remotely by drilling holes into it and letting off the pressure. Continue reading “That Time NASA Built A Tiny Tank To Pop Shuttle Tires” →

Need A Low-Mass Antenna In Space? Just Blow It Up!

October 31, 2023 by Jenny List 28 Comments

A parabolic antenna is a simple enough device, a curved reflector designed to focus all the radiation from the direction it’s pointed into a waveguide or antenna at its feedpoint. They’re easy enough to make for a radio amateur, but imagine making one for a spacecraft. It must fold into a minimal space and weigh almost nothing, both difficult to achieve. An engineering academic doing work for NASA, [Christopher Walker], has a new way to make the parabolic surface that solves the spacecraft designer’s problems at a stroke, it forms its parabolic reflector on the inside of an inflatable structure. In this way relatively huge reflectors can be built in space, with easy folding and very little weight. Continue reading “Need A Low-Mass Antenna In Space? Just Blow It Up!” →

Hackaday Links: October 29, 2023

October 29, 2023 by Dan Maloney 22 Comments

“As California goes, so goes the nation.” That adage has been true on and off for the last 100 years or so, and it’s true again now that GM’s Cruise self-driving car unit has halted operations across the United States, just a couple of days after California’s DMV suspended its license to conduct driverless tests on state roadways. The nationwide shutdown of testing was undertaken voluntarily by the company and takes their sore beset self-driving taxi fleet off the road in Phoenix, Houston, Austin, Dallas, and Miami, in addition to the California ban, which seemed to be mainly happening in San Francisco. Cruise’s fleet has suffered all manner of indignities over the last few months, from vandalism to “coning” pranks to even being used as rolling hookup spots, and that’s not to mention all the trouble they caused by brigading to the same address or losing games of chicken with a semi and a firetruck. We’re not sure what to make of all this; despite our somewhat snarky commentary on the company’s woes, we take little pleasure in this development other than to the degree it probably increases roadway safety in the former test cities. We really do want to see self-driving cars succeed, at least for certain use cases, but it seems like this is a case of too much, too soon for the technology we currently have at our disposal.

Continue reading “Hackaday Links: October 29, 2023” →

Hackaday Links: October 8, 2023

October 8, 2023 by Dan Maloney 17 Comments

Too much of a good thing is generally a bad thing, but a surfeit of asteroid material is probably a valid exception to that rule. Such was NASA’s plight as it started to unpack the sample return capsule recently dropped off by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft as it flew by Earth, only to discover it was packed to overflowing with samples of asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft, which arrived at Bennu in 2018 and spent a good long time mapping the near-Earth asteroid, apparently approached its carefully selected landing site a bit too energetically and really packed the sample container full of BennuBits™ — so much so that they could actually see sample shedding off into space before stowing it for the long trip back to Earth. The container is now safely in the hands of the sample analysis team, who noted that everything in the TAGSAM (Touch and Go Sample Acquisition Module), even the avionics deck, is covered with black particles, each precious one of which needs to be collected and cataloged. The black stuff is especially interesting to planetary scientists, as it might be exactly what they were after when they selected Bennu, which may have broken off a much larger carbon-rich asteroid a billion or so years ago. It’ll be interesting to see if these interplanetary hitchhikers have anything to tell us about the origin of life in the solar system.

Continue reading “Hackaday Links: October 8, 2023” →