Finding Martian Minerals In All The Right Places

Despite captivating our attention, wonder and awe of being Earth like, Mars still lacks a financial incentive for even visiting the red planet.

Although there are plenty of reasons not to go to visit this crimson world, all of these can be overcome technologically or medically if Mars displays a valuable resource for humanity to exploit.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter may change all of this as it circles the red globe analyzing the Martian surface.

(Astrobiology Magazine) "We're finding that Mars has even more compositional diversity and complicated geology than had been revealed by instruments on other Mars orbiters," says Dr. Scott Murchie, CRISM principal investigator from the Applied Physics Laboratory. "With CRISM's help, this mission is going to rewrite our understanding of the planet."

"CRISM's high spatial resolution provides the means to not only identify a greater range of minerals on Mars but also to associate them with small scale geologic features," says Dr. Sue Smrekar, deputy MRO project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The result is a tremendous leap forward in interpreting the geologic processes and volatile environments that created different rocks throughout the history of Mars."

While the satellite is providing valuable data regarding rock formation (as well as hints of ancient water ways) hopefully it can be used to find out whether there are precious metals (i.e. gold, silver or platinum), iron or titanium on the surface.

After all if we are going to eventually live on the red planet, then we are going to have to find a way to make a living while camping away from "Earthen influence." If not, then Mars may at best be a boring tourism planet, where only geologists and scientists find great joy in exploring its surface.

Colony Worlds Round Up

Note: I have not been as faithful as I desired to in posting here (as life has been fairly busy) but these are some of the stories that may catch your eye regarding our future among the stars.

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Astroprof discusses the dangers of bone loss due to the lack of gravity in space.

Despite NASA's attempts at reducing the loss, the percentage rate exceeds that of a woman with osteoporosis, leading I. Tenor (a commenter) to conclude that exile from Earth may be the price we pay for colonizing the stars.

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Jack Kennedy from Spaceports discusses Matsen Space System's attempts at winning the Lunar Landing Analog Challenge later on this year.

There main competitors are Armadillo Aerospace and Blue Origin, who may put up some fierce competition.

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The Space Review has an article about finding life in the solar system. My views of this are fairly dim (as finding microbes does not help us reach the stars).

However, since scientists are looking for life near water ice, this research should prove quite useful in helping us locate future settlements as water is the main ingredient for life (at least carbon based life forms).

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Centauri Dreams has an excellent article discussing how the sun's rays spin asteroids. Although this alone may not amaze anyone who is not a hard core space geek, this revelation does help put some weight behind the solar sail.

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Ted Semon from the Space Elevator Blog informs everyone that Germany is forming their very own space elevator competition scheduled for February of 2008.

This competition is not as ambitious as the Spaceward's Space Elevator competition, however the fact that they are organizing it may help inspire other nations to follow suit.

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Hopefully I will have some time tonight to discuss some other issues on the back burner, including NASA's paradox, Jupiter's Ganymede, and the missing ingredient to call the Moon, Mars and Europa home.

Stay tuned. ;-)

Update: Corrected spelling of Ted's last name (Semon it is! Curse the spell checkers!) Also, I should have some free time later on today (at last). :-)

Could Maglev Launches Enable Cheap Access To Space?

(Hat Tip: Lifeboat Foundation Blog)

With chemical rockets not exactly bringing down the price of space transport, one group of scientists from China have come up with a unique way of reducing the cost of space without losing the ships that bring us there.

(Physorg.com) Most recently, researchers in a group including Wenjiang Yang and his colleagues from the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have investigated the possibility of the "Maglifter," a maglev launch assist vehicle originally proposed in the 1980s. In this system, a spaceship would be magnetically levitated over a track and accelerated up an incline, lifting off when it reaches a velocity of 1,000 km/hr (620 miles/hr). The main cost-saving areas would come from reduced fuel consumption and the reduced mass of the spaceship.

"Magnetic levitation is a promising technology for future space transportation," Yang told PhysOrg.com. "The most expensive part of space missions to low-Earth orbit is the first few seconds—getting off the ground."

This technology seems very familiar to the magnetic sled (designed by Launch Point), with the only major difference being that humans will be able to ride "this pony."

Although this is not a direct "ground to orbit" launch mechanism, it may drop prices for satellite launches and the space tourism industry, not to mention make constructing a space elevator all the more feasible.

Could Plaskett Crater Be Our First Lunar Home?

If humanity ever regains the confidence to revisit the moon, one major factor in deciding where to launch a lunar base can be boiled down to one word--energy.

Since establishing a nuclear power plant upon the moon may not be that popular, we may have to settle for solar energy via the Sun. With solar energy abundant in the polar regions (due to lunar orbit), we could be calling Plaskett crater "home sweet home."

(Universe Today) Crater Plaskett sits very close to the Moon's north pole. This means it's bathed in eternal sunlight. This would provide plenty of solar energy for future explorers, and creates a predictable temperature - it's only hot, not hot and cold. Nearby craters bathed in eternal darkness might contain large stores of water ice that could be used for air, fuel and drinking water.

Crater Plaskett might provide a good first step for exploration of the Solar System. It's close enough that astronauts would still be able to see the Earth. Help could arrive within days, if necessary, and communications would be almost instantaneous. But it's remote enough to help mission planners understand what would be involved for future, longer duration missions on the Moon, and eventually to Mars.

Although scientists have identified ideal spots for a base, they still have to validate whether or not the area is protected by a mini-magnetic field. Doing so will insure that future colonists can view the cosmos without worrying about their minds being melted by cosmic radiation.

Germany is preparing to send a probe in order to detail the lunar surface, which may reveal more favorable locations for moon bases on our distant neighbor.

Article: Why Humans Need To Revisit The Moon

(Hat Tip: Orlando Sentinel Blog)

Note: Charles Krauthammer has written an excellent article in the Washington Post detailing why we need to place humans back on the Moon. Although Martian fans will not like his analysis of traveling to the red planet (which he estimates is a century away at best), his rationale for visiting the moon can not be easily refuted.

Here is a snippet:

(Washington Post) Moreover, the moon base is not pointless. The shuttles were on an endless trip to the nowhere of low Earth orbit. The moon is a destination. The idea this time is not to go to plant a flag, take a golf shot and leave, but to stay and form a real self-sustaining, extraterrestrial human colony. [...]

A century ago there seemed to be nothing in Antarctica, either. We went there first for adventure, then for discovery. The concrete scientific advances Antarctica has yielded (regarding climate change and the ozone layer, for example) have been as important as they were unexpected. [...]

And then there's the glory. If you find any value, any lift of the spirit in a beautiful mathematical proof, in an elegant balletic turn, in any of the myriad human endeavors that have no utility but only breathtaking beauty, then you should feel something when our little species succeeds in establishing new life in a void that for all eternity had been the province of the gods. If you don't feel that, you are -- don't take this personally -- deaf to the music of our time.

You may want to consider reading the rest of the article, and any space bloggers worth their salt may want to consider reposting their thoughts on their digital cybernetic diaries.

A Giant Leap For Solar Panels

(Hat Tip: Centauri Dreams)

It looks like several scientists have developed a new film coating that produces almost no reflection of light! Although this material has obvious uses in telescopes, LED's and the study of dark matter, what makes this film material very valuable is its application towards solar panels.

(ScienceNow) Narcissus beware! Scientists have created the world's first film that casts practically no reflection. A vast improvement over current nonreflective materials, the new technology could revolutionize solar cells, intensify light-emitting diodes, and possibly help solve mysteries in quantum mechanics by mimicking a "black body," an object that absorbs all light.

For years, scientists have been seeking ways to make certain materials less reflective. Solar cells, for example, would be far more efficient if they reflected less light and absorbed more of it as energy. To achieve this goal, researchers have concentrated on reducing a material's refractive index--a measure of its ability of to reflect light. Ice has a refractive index of 1.31, for example; air has an index of 1. But making low-reflective materials, which are also thin enough to serve as coatings, has proven tricky.

The current material has a reflectivity of 1.05, which will definitely improve how much energy solar panels will be able to absorb. This technology could easily translate into more energetic solar panels for satellites and lunar colonies as well as more distant projects such as space elevator climbers and solar powered satellites (SPS).

Note: For a more indepth reading, please click here.

Germany To Provide Us With "Google Moon?"

Despite the fact that Germany has no serious plans on putting a man in space (let alone on the moon) they are seriously considering launching robots into the heavens by 2013 in an attempt to understand Earth's closest neighbor.

(Earth Times) "We aim to launch a national moon mission," DLR Director Walter Doellinger said, adding that there was no intention to launch a manned mission.

The aim is to put a probe into orbit around the moon for four years with the aim of charting the entire surface for the first time. The survey is to be three-dimensional and in colour.

"The probe will examine the moon's surface and provide indications of significant geological formations that could later be of interest for drilling," Doellinger said.

There is no word yet on whether or not Germany's lunar survey will be publicly available, or released commercially although they will hopefully consider the former.

Germany plans on using the probe to examine minerals upon the lunar surface, locate ice water (if any exists) and investigate the moons mysterious magnetic field which may enable us to actually build habitats above ground.