Lifeboat Foundation

Called the Artemis lunar base, it will include a habitation unit (for up to four astronauts) and separate mining and fuel processing facilities. These facilities would be built far away from the base camp and would serve to produce rocket fuel, water, oxygen, and other materials needed for extended exploration of the lunar surface while decreasing supply needs from Earth.

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There will also be an electrical grid for the two units which will be connected during emergencies for resiliency and robustness. Sandia’s researchers note that the electrical system controller for the habitation unit will be very similar to the International Space Station (ISS)’s direct current electrical system with some notable differences.

Scientists have grown plants in soil from the moon collected by NASA’s Apollo astronauts.

For the first time ever, scientists have successfully grown plants in soil from the Moon.

Researchers from the University of Florida planted seeds from the Arabidopsis plant — commonly known as thale cress — into a few teaspoons worth of lunar soil collected in the late 60s and early 70s during the Apollo 11, 12 and 17 missions.

After about a week of watering and feeding, the seeds grew into and out of the soil, or lunar regolith, according to a paper detailing the experiment published Thursday in the scientific journal “Communications Biology.”

The complex aerodynamics around a moving car and its tires are hard to see, but not for some mechanical engineers.

Specialists in fluid dynamics at Rice University and Waseda University in Tokyo have developed their computer simulation methods to the point where it’s possible to accurately model moving cars, right down to the flow around rolling tires.

Continue reading “Sophisticated fluid mechanics model: Space–time isogeometric analysis of car and tire aerodynamics” »

Scientists have grown plants in soil from the Moon, a first in human history and a milestone in lunar and space exploration.

In a new paper published in the journal Communications Biology, University of Florida researchers showed that plants can successfully sprout and grow in lunar soil. Their study also investigated how plants respond biologically to the Moon’s soil, also known as lunar regolith, which is radically different from soil found on Earth.

This work is a first step toward one day growing plants for food and oxygen on the Moon or during space missions. More immediately, this research comes as the Artemis Program plans to return humans to the Moon.

The chemical composition and presence of metallic fragments also make lunar soil-less suitable for plant growth as compared to volcanic ash. However, the biggest takeaway from this experiment is still that scientists have somehow grown a plant in a soil sample taken from the Moon.

Emphasizing the importance of this result co-author and geologist Stephen Elardo said, from a geology standpoint, I look at this soil as being very very different from any soil you will find here on Earth. I think it’s amazing the plant still grows, right. It’s stressed, but it doesn’t die. It doesn’t fail to grow at all, it adapts.

Continue reading “Study reveals lunar soil can support plant growth” »

The nova phase can help astronomers understand what causes certain kinds of stellar explosions.

A window to life in the deep subsurface, which may resolve the mystery of methane on Mars.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS