Author Archives: Mark Ciotola

eXploration Habitat (X-Hab) Academic Innovation Challenge 2015

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xhab1

xhab1 ( photo credit: Space Grant)

The eXploration Habitat (X-Hab) 2015 Academic Innovation Challenge is a university-level competition involving hands-on design, research, development, and manufacture of functional prototypical subsystems  for space habitats and deep space exploration missions. The Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Exploration Augmentation Module (EAM) project will offer multiple X-Hab awards of $10k – $20k each.

NASA will  benefit from the challenge by sponsoring the development of innovative concepts and technologies from universities, which will result in innovative ideas and solutions that could be applied to exploration.

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Sub-Arctic Biodome: Prototype for Space Settlement?

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EOS logoThe Earth Organisation for Sustainability (EOS) is building a geodesic biodome near the edge of the Arctic Circle, with the goal of self-sufficient food production. EOS has received an European Union grant of 34,000 €  delivered by URnära, for construction materials and initial wages, and is working with Green Free Will.

Galileo Ground Station Inaugurated in the Arctic 2

Galileo Ground Station, Esrange Space Centre, Kiruna, Sweden

The EOS is developing both technology and social systems for self-sufficent communities of the future. So the Biodome can provide lessons for developing space settlements, such as on Mars. Umeå is in Northern Sweden, just a few hundred kilometres from the Esrange Space Center in Kiruna. Though Umeå is not as far north as the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station near Resolute, Canada, sunlight is in short supply much of the year, and temperatures can get as cold as -38C (-36 F).

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NASA Ames Sustainability Base wins 2013 GEELA Award

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NASA Sustainability Base Scene3 CourtYard B

NASA Sustainability Base courtyard

NASA Ames Sustainability Base wins a 2013 GEELA Award for the category of Sustainable Practices or Facilities. The GEELA Program, which stands for Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Awards, is run by the California Environmental Protection Agency (Cal/EPA).

Introduction

NASA’s first sustainable space “settlement” is located in the heart of Silicon Valley, at the NASA Ames Research Center in California. “Using NASA innovations originally engineered for space travel and exploration, the 50,000 square-foot, lunar-shaped Sustainability Base is simultaneously a working office space, a showcase for NASA technology and an evolving exemplar for the future of buildings.” (Ames website). Through a combination of NASA innovations and commercial technologies, Sustainability Base leaves virtually no footprint.

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Project Possum at the Edge of Space

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noctilucent cloud nlc31

Noctilucent clouds (credit: Project PoSSUM)

Project PoSSUM (Polar Suborbital Science in the Upper Mesosphere) seeks nearly invisible clouds at the literal edge of space. These noctilucent clouds may be important indicators of climate change. Yet to get a good look at them requires getting up close, and that requires a spacecraft.

Noctilucent clouds are of interest within the climate science community as sensitive indicators for what goes on in the upper-mid atmosphere. “If we can understand more about this, we can understand more about global changes,” according principle investigator Dr. Jason Reimuller, “how the upper atmosphere is coupled with the lower atmosphere.”

 

According to the Project’s website, the extremely cold temperatures and very low density of the mesosphere creates an environment where very small changes in the atmosphere can drive large changes in observed noctilucent cloud properties.  So by observing noctilucent clouds, we can learn a lot about the atmosphere as a whole.

Possum observatory

PoSSUMCam

PoSSUM uses imaging and remote sensing techniques from commercial, reusable suborbital space vehicles to address critical questions about the climate, and has developed its own instrumentation. PoSSUM Observatory obtains high-altitude imagery and remote sensing data, and capture mesoscale phenomena in the atmosphere or on the ground. It also includes LiDAR and thermal mapping capabilities and can be readily integrated on-board suborbital spacecraft. The PoSSUM Aeronomy Laboratory contains Mesospheric Aerosol Sampling Spectrometer (MASS), Mesosphere Clear Air Turbulence (MCAT) and wind probe components.

Sounding rockets aren’t good enough. They aren’t in the neighborhood for long enough, and it is difficult to get high quality images as well as collateral atmospheric measurements such as temperature and pressure. So PoSSUM is designing its 2015 campaign experiment around the XCOR Lynx for a delpoyment to either Fairbanks, AK or Kiruna, Sweden

PoSSUM-Aeronomy-Laboratory

If you are interested in flying an experiment on a PoSSUM flight, they also have a Possum Guest Experiment facility.

Website: Project PoSSUM

NASA Presentation: Planetary Sustainability for Survival and Profit

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NRP event

Rose Grymes, Rama Nemani,  Stanley Herwitz,

The NASA Research Park (NRP) held “Planetary Sustainability for Survival and Profit”, a presentation and audience Q & A on the evening of December 3 at Moffett Field as part of its Exploration Lecture Series.

Speakers presented on several sustainability-related start-ups at the NASA Research Park, including Bloom Energy, Bio-Vessel (in stealth mode), and Oyokits. Panalists spoke about other endeavors such as the Space Portal,  NEX, a warehouse and collaboration platform for Earth data, the UAV Collaborative, and the Smart Energy Enterprise Development Zone (SEEDZ).

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Clearing the Air with inXitu

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Mars Science Laboratory rover

Mars Science Laboratory

inXitu develops clean-tech air purifiers and portable material analyzers. The technology used in inXitu’s portable rock and mineral analyzer was chosen to fly on the Mars Science Laboratory rover (upper left). inXitu has been developing a low-power, passively-cooled, grounded-anode miniature x-ray source to be deployed in miniaturized instruments for surface and subsurface exploration of the solar system. inXitu is also developing solutions targeted for identification and analysis in the areas of explosives, pharmaceuticals, forensics, art and archaeological materials.

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ESA Closed Loop Life Support

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new melissa loop

MELIiSSA loop

The European Space Agency’s MELIiSSA (Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative) research program “aims to develop the technology required for a future biological life support system for long term manned space missions.” In fact, MELISSA claims to go “further than other recycling systems used on Mir or the International Space Station which purify water and recycle exhaled carbon dioxide”, by attempting to “recycle organic waste for food production.”

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