Is It Possible to Colonize Mars?
Is it possible to colonize the planet Mars? A planet that is believed to be the most clement planet in the solar system, next to Earth. Despite the fact that it is a very clement planet,...
Construction of a Lunar Base
The United States' space program has the capabilities to build a lunar base, but must build an infrastructure which allows the easy transportation of the construction materials. Once this...
Space Exploration: Getting a Handle on Why?
The two prominent economic issues facing the U.S. today are competitiveness and the huge federal deficit. Economics being the counter-intuitive science that it is, a reasonable exploration...
Habitat Configuration Evaluation Criteria for Moon/Mars
The purpose of this paper is to identify the methodology, evaluation criteria, criteria definitions for evaluating surface habitat configuration concepts for the Moon and Mars. The main...
Science Operations and Engineering Impacts to Lunar Outpost Design
Recent work by scientists and engineers at the Johnson Space Center ha led to a better understanding of the requirements and interfaces needed at an initial lunar outpost to enable scientific...
Logistics Carriers for the First Lunar Outpost
This paper describes that aspect of logistics concerned with the design parameters and operation of hardware that may be used to deliver and protect spares and resupply items for NASA's...
Utilization of Liquid Carbon Dioxide for Planetary Exploration
The major component of the atmosphere of Venus and Mars is carbon dioxide CO2. This proposal is to use this carbon dioxide for planetary exploration...
Transferring Construction Technology to the Moon and Back
This paper examines past NASA contributions to the construction industry, analyzes the challenges ahead for space-based construction, cites examples of new technologies currently used...
Kinetic Interpretations of First Reactivity Experiments on Lunar Basalt Samples
For the first time, water/oxygen production from Apollo program lunar samples has been experimentally demonstrated. The experiments gave extremely encouraging results as all ilmenite was...
Oxygen Generation from Synthetic Moon Soil Using a Plasma Reactor
A series of experiments were performed to evaluate the potential for generating oxygen from silica powder, alumina powder and a synthetic moon soil powder. A non-transferred arc plasma...
Lunar Base Aspects for Biotechnology Industry
A lunar base can provide unique services to biotechnology research, development, and production. A lunar location as well as the vacuum environment can protect experiments from contamination...
Design Criteria for Lunar Construction Equipment
It is anticipated that lunar installations will, from the beginning, require moving and assembly of components and the use of lunar regolith as a construction material. The functional...
Efficient Path Planning Strategies for Unmanned Rover Vehicles
Path planning strategies are studied using an optimization model. Four main sub-models are discussed that contribute to the computing of minimum energy vehicle path planning. These are:...
A Minimum Mars Mission Approach
The purpose of this paper is to identify the mission architecture required to perform a human exploration mission to Mars using a minimum amount of resources. This mission will send three...
Onboard Image Processing With Transputers
A transputer based onboard computer for planetary vehicles is being designed in the KFKI Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics (RMKI), Budapest, Hungary. In this paper we...
A Surface Exploration Vehicle Testbed for Real-Time Control Exerimentation
Current mission scenarios for return to the moon as well as Mars include some robotic systems; for the precursor unmanned mission, these systems will be required to operate under autonomous...
Transfer Vehicle Sizing for Missions to Mars
The purpose of this study is to analyze the interactions between mission and vehicle design parameters, and determine how the selection of a particular trajectory and transit time affects...
Deepwater Waves and Tsunami Produced by the Impacts of Small Asteroids
Studies of ocean sediments may be used to determine when coastal areas have been hit by tsunamis in the past. Tsunami debris has been found to be associated with the Cretaceous-Tertiary...
Very Low Frequency Radio Astronomy from Lunar Orbit
This paper discusses the use of very low frequency aperture synthesis as a probe of astrophysical phenomena. Specifically, the science achievable with the Lunar Observer Radio Astronomy...
The Lunar Ultraviolet Telescope Experiment (LUTE)
The Lunar Ultraviolet Telescope Experiment (LITE) is a feasible scientific payload which could initiate a unique ultraviolet (UV) sky survey from the lunar surface prior to our manned...
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