Category: Points of Information

Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.

Soil bacterium from Earth can both make and repair bricks made from Moon-materials

9:36 am

Researchers in India have now discovered that the same soil bacterium from Earth they used to manufacture bricks made from Moon-materials can also act to repair cracks in those bricks.

A few years ago, researchers at the Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME), IISc developed a technique that uses a soil bacterium called Sporosarcina pasteurii to build bricks out of lunar and Martian soil simulants. The bacterium converts urea and calcium into calcium carbonate crystals that, along with guar gum, glue the soil particles together to create brick-like materials. This process is an eco-friendly and low-cost alternative to using cement.

… In a new study, they created different types of artificial defects in sintered bricks and poured a slurry made from S. pasteurii, guar gum, and lunar soil simulant into them. Over a few days, the slurry penetrated into the defects and the bacterium produced calcium carbonate, which filled them up. The bacterium also produced biopolymers which acted as adhesives that strongly bound the soil particles together with the residual brick structure, thereby recovering much of the brick’s lost strength. This process can stave off the need to replace damaged bricks with new ones, extending the lifespan of built structures.

These results are encouraging but not necessarily for space exploration. This research can likely be applied with great profit here on Earth to repair damaged materials already in place.

As for using it in space or on the Moon, great uncertainties remain, such is whether the bacteria could even survive or function in a different gravity environment. The team hopes to test this on one of India’s planned Gangayaan manned missions.

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British MP proposes his government’s vast bureaucratic skills be given the power to regulate all space

9:25 am

“We’re here to help you!” George Freeman, a British MP who was also its minister for science, research, technology and innovation under two previous Tory governments, has now proposed that Great Britain’s great skill at bureaucracy (which has done a great job bankrupting both rocket companies and spaceports) be given the job as the world’s regulatory cop.

Freeman said as space minister he had focused on UK leadership in space regulation, insurance and finance; convening the industry partnership with the UK space sector and Lloyds of London to create the Earth∞Space Sustainability Initiative (ESSI), which aims to set global standards for the sector, and securing the backing of Canada, Japan and Switzerland through the global summit at the Royal Society. “The idea of my space debris regulation and the creation of the Earth Space Sustainability Initiative was very simple,” he said.

… But it isn’t only in the field of satellite technology where regulation will be important. From crewed missions to Mars to the prospect of lunar mining and even creating data centres on the moon, the opportunities space offers are myriad. Regulations around space debris, Freeman said, could act as a gateway to rules in other areas.

“It can gradually evolve,” the MP explained. “You could imagine, say, on space traffic control, that you wouldn’t get permission to launch from aviation authorities unless you’ve got a licence to operate. Licence to operate says you must be compliant with basic standards.

This concluding quote at the link, written by the reliably naive pro-government leftist British outlet The Guardian, says it all:

Freeman added the UK is well placed to lead on such matters. “Space needs a global regulatory alliance led by and headquartered in a trusted nation. You need a country that’s got a long and distinguished history as a trusted partner, a long, 300-year role as a regulator of choice, that believes in and is respected internationally for its legal system and is connected to financial market and international courts and jurisdiction,” he said.

“This is a huge opportunity for the UK. We should seize it.”

The UK red tape this blowhard admires so much — and likely helped create — caused Virgin Orbit to go bankrupt while it waited for months to get a launch license. It has also practically destroyed the business at two UK spaceports because the paperwork makes launching there so burdensome. Rocket companies are going elsewhere for this reason.

The worst thing we could do is give Freeman and the bankrupt regulatory culture he helped create the power to establish similar regulations for the rest of the world. The entire newly-born space industry that is bursting out everywhere would choke to death almost immediately.

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Fram2: The first X-ray image taken in space

9:04 am

First X-ray taken in space
Click for original.

During the commercial and private Fram2 flight last week, the crew used equipment developed by two commercial companies, MinXray in Chicago and KA Imaging in Canada, to take the first X-ray images of a human being.

The picture to the right shows the hand of one of the crew, with a ring on one finger. From the press release:

Chicago-based MinXray is contributing its IMPACT system, a compact, battery-powered X-ray generator designed for use in remote environments, including space. Its rechargeable lithium-ion battery eliminates the need for external power sources, making it an ideal solution for microgravity applications.

KA Imaging’s Reveal 35C X-ray Detector was selected for this mission due to its cutting-edge SpectralDR technology. The Reveal 35C provides dual-energy subtraction imaging in a single exposure, generating three distinct images: soft tissue, bone, and a traditional digital radiograph.

Apparently the two companies have combined their resources to develop a fully portable X-ray machine small enough to be transported in a capsule, and partnered with the Fram2 team to test it in weightlessness for the first time. With refinements a larger machine could be sold and installed in space stations for both medical research as well as simple doctoring.

Because weightlessness causes the loss of bone density in the weight-bearing bones, such technology has long been critically necessary in orbit for studying and possible mitigating that problem. That after decades NASA failed to get it built and installed in ISS, yet a private mission made it happen, illustrates once again the advantages of a free and competitive private sector in space. NASA’s complex rules for getting experiments on ISS frequently acts to block some experiments. The lack of those rules on private missions allows for things to happen quickly.

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Space Force awards SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin $13.7 billion in launch contracts

10:41 am

The Space Force yesterday awarded a combined $13.7 billion in launch contracts to SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin, covering military launches through 2032.

The contracts, announced April 4 by the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command, are part of the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 Lane 2 procurement, a cornerstone initiative designed to bolster the Pentagon’s access to space for its most sensitive and risk-averse missions.

SpaceX emerged as the leading contractor, securing $5.9 billion in anticipated awards, followed by ULA at nearly $5.4 billion and Blue Origin at nearly $2.4 billion. The three companies are expected to collectively perform 54 launches under the agreement between fiscal years 2025 and 2029.

Based on the contracts, SpaceX will do 28 launches, ULA 19, and Blue Origin 7. Since these launches include many military payloads that must go on “risk-adverse” rockets, the distribution of launches makes sense. While SpaceX’s rockets (Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy) are well proven to be reliable, both ULA and Blue Origin launch with new rockets, Vulcan and New Glenn respectively, that have barely yet left the factory. Vulcan has done only two launches, with the second having technical issues (supposedly resolved). Blue Origin has done only one successful launch, though it failed to land the first stage as planned.

The distribution however serves the needs of both the military and the American rocket industry. It gives the Pentagon redundancy, multiple launch providers. And it gives America the same, three competing rocket companies striving for business and profit.

The result is going to be a very vibrant American space effort, doing a lot of things having nothing to do with the Pentagon.

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April 4, 2025 Quick space links

2:41 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

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Another “What the heck?!” image on Mars

1:48 pm

Another
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 2, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The scientists label this “Monitoring Irregular Terrains in Western Arabia Terra.” I label it more bluntly as another one of MRO’s “What the heck?!” images. For all I know, this is nothing more than a discarded Vincent Van Gogh painting, thrown out because even he couldn’t figure out what he was painting.

The best guess I can make, just from the picture alone, is that some of the dark spots are vents from which the white stuff vented at some point, either as small lava or mud volcanoes. As the location is close to the equator, near surface ice is almost certainly not a factor in what we see.

In any case there is no way to reasonably decipher this picture, just by looking at the picture. It is necessary to take a wider view.
» Read more

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Fram2 private manned mission splashes down safely

10:29 am

The Fram2 private commercial manned mission successfully ended today when SpaceX’s Resilience capsule splashed down safely off the coast of California.

The crew spent about four days in space, circling the Earth in the first polar orbit by a human crew.

This was SpaceX’s sixth privately funded manned mission. Three docked with ISS and were paid for by Axiom. Three flew independently, with two paid by Jared Isaacman and one by Chun Weng (which landed today). Plus Axiom has scheduled its next ISS commercial flight for May, 2025, using a new SpaceX capsule (bringing the company’s manned fleet to five spacecraft).

As I noted earlier this week, SpaceX is making space exploration profitable, which in turn makes the government irrelevant. And ain’t that a kick?

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White dwarf binary discovered only 150 light years away is a major supernova candidate in about 23 billion years

9:35 am

Astronomers have discovered only 150 light years away the most massive white dwarf binary system yet detected, that they believe is a major candidate for producing one type of supernova many billions of years in the future.

White dwarf stars in binary systems are thought to produce Type 1a supernova. The dwarf sucks material from the companion star, which eventually piles up on the surface of the dwarf until the extra mass, more than 1.4 times the mass of the Sun (dubbed the Chandrasekhar mass limit), causes the supernova explosion.

That’s the theory at least. Up to now astronomers have not yet observed this process, prior to the supernova. This newly discovered binary system however is a prime candidate, because its combined mass is already 1.55 the mass of the Sun. According to the researchers’ computer models, when these stars come close to merging the result will be a Type 1a supernova. From the peer reviewed paper:

The interaction of the accretion stream with the surface of the primary white dwarf ignites a helium detonation close to the point of interaction. The helium detonation then wraps around the primary white dwarf and sends a shock wave into its core that converges at a single point. This ignites a second detonation that completely destroys the primary white dwarf. When the shock wave of its explosion hits the secondary white dwarf, the double detonation mechanism repeats itself. The shock wave from the detonation of the primary ignites a helium detonation near the surface of the secondary which drives a shock wave into its core. It is sufficient to ignite the core detonation, destroying the secondary white dwarf as well.

These events won’t occur tomorrow however. The two stars orbit each other every 14 hours, but their high mass is causing gravitational waves to ripple outward from the system, robbing it of energy. The orbits of the stars are thus spiraling inward. In about 23 billion years they will be about to merge, which will be the moment when the above explosive events are predicted to occur.

If at that moment the binary system was still only 150 light years away, the explosion would do great harm to the Earth and likely cause a major extinction. In 23 billion years however the binary will no longer be so close, and could in fact be on the other side of the Milky Way.

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Engineers use simulated moon dust to make glass

9:06 am

Engineers have successfully manufactured glass using simulated moon dust, and found this “moonglass” works better than Earth glass in solar panels.

To test the idea, the researchers melted a substance designed to simulate Moon dust into moonglass and used it to build a new kind of solar cell. They crafted the cells by pairing moonglass with perovskite—a class of crystals that are cheaper, easier to make, and very efficient in turning sunlight into electricity. For every gram of material sent to space, the new panels produced up to 100 times more energy than traditional solar panels.

…When the team zapped the solar cells with space-grade radiation, the moonglass versions outperformed the Earth-made ones. Standard glass slowly browns in space, blocking sunlight and reducing efficiency. But moonglass has a natural brown tint from impurities in the Moon dust, which stabilizes the glass, prevents it from further darkening, and makes the cells more resistant to radiation.

Though encouraging, they are many unknowns that could become show stoppers. For one, this research was all done in Earth gravity. In the Moon’s 1/6th gravity the results might be very different. For another, all they have done is demonstrate a way to make glass using Moon dust. That is a far cry from building solar panels, as implied by the press release.

Nonetheless, the results demonstrate one more way in which a lunar base can eventually become self-sufficient, the inevitable goal.

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China: samples from the near and far sides of the Moon are different

8:53 am

Scientists studying the lunar samples brought back from China’s Chang’e-6 mission to the far side of the Moon have determined that the different environments create differences in the surface material.

The study found that the solar wind exposure time of the Chang’e-6 samples was close to the minimum observed in the Apollo 11 samples, lower than that of the other Apollo samples, and slightly shorter than that of the Chang’e-5 samples. However, surprisingly, the npFe⁰ grain sizes in the Chang’e-6 samples were larger. “This might suggest that solar wind radiation in this region leads to more pronounced segregation and aggregation of iron,” she noted. These exciting new results add to the growing evidence that space weathering on the lunar farside may differ from that on the nearside, and, contrary to previous findings from Apollo and Chang’e-5 samples, solar wind radiation plays a more dominant role in the space weathering process on the lunar farside.

There are differences in the solar wind’s influence on different regions of the Moon. During each synodic month, the near side of the Moon enters Earth’s magnetotail, where the protection afforded by Earth’s magnetic field reduces its exposure to the solar wind; in contrast, the farside is continuously exposed to direct solar wind radiation. Moreover, due to orbital dynamics, different locations on the Moon experience varying impact velocities from cometary and asteroidal meteoroids. The relative velocity between the Moon’s surface and impacting meteoroids changes with the lunar phase: during a full moon, when the Moon and meteoroids move in the same orbital direction, the relative velocity increases; the opposite occurs during a new moon.

That there are differences between samples from the Moon’s two hemisphere should not a surprise. Confirming and characterizing those differences however is good.

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