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Showing posts from July, 2012

Roving for resources on an analog Moon

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Humans history is a story of exploration and expansion, whereby we have used our resourcefulness to settle nearly every environment on Earth. To accomplish these migrations, people have had to live off the land by hunting for food, gathering building materials, and mining resources needed for survival. It just wouldn't be practical or economical to bring everything you need with you. Space is the same way. Like on Earth, we will have to learn to use materials found in the space environment to become permanent residents of the extraterrestrial realm, rather than temporary campers . As I mentioned in the last post , I went to Hawai'i Island last week to take part in NASA's in situ resource utilization (ISRU) lunar rover field testing, facilitated by the Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems ( PISCES ) on the flank of Mauna Kea . The mission simulation successfully showed that a rover arriving on the surface of the Moon can find and verify the exi

A RESOLVE to mine the Moon

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I will be on the beautiful Big Island of Hawaii next week working with the Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems (PISCES) . As I've described in previous posts , PISCES is an international research and education consortium headquartered at the University of Hawaii at Hilo that aims to develop, test, and validate technologies for use on the Moon, Mars and beyond. When humans return to the Moon and journey to Mars, they will have to live off the land. It's just too costly to bring everything we need with us. That includes rocket fuel for the return trip, water, oxygen, and other consumables. Thus, it is critical that we learn how to utilize in situ resources if we are to establish permanent presences on other worlds. As a geophysicist by profession, my interest lies with applying my terrestrial geophysical exploration knowledge to other planetary bodies. To this end, I carried out experiments at FMARS in 2009 and MDRS in 2010 to study the human f