Japan Plans a Moon Base by 2020, Built by Robots for Robots

America may have eighty-sixed its moon base ambitions, but the Japanese have no plans to let perfectly good lunar real estate go to waste. An ambitious $2.2 billion project in the works at JAXA, the Japanese space agency, plans to put humanoid robots on the moon by 2015, and now official backing from the Prime Minister's office says the Japanese could have an unmanned lunar base up and running by 2020.

Key to all of this, of course, is the robots themselves, and who better than the Japanese to dream up and realize the kind of intelligent, self-repairing, multitasking bots that will be needed to fulfill such a mission.

As currently envisioned, the robots that will land on the lunar surface in 2015 will be 660-pound behemoths equipped with rolling tank-like treads, solar panels, seismographs, high-def cameras and a smattering of scientific instruments. They'll also have human-like arms for collecting rock samples that will be returned to Earth via rocket. The robots will be controlled from Earth, but they'll also be imbued with their own kind of machine intelligence, making decisions on their own and operating with a high degree of autonomy.

According to the June 14, 2010 NASA media brief Research Suggests Water Content Of Moon Interior Underestimated, “Scientists at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory in Washington, along with other scientists across the nation, determined that the water was likely present very early in the moon's formation history as hot magma started to cool and crystallize. This finding means water is native to the moon.”

Although a simple, short sentence “This finding means water is native to the moon,” the sentence is very important to the history of the Moon. This water, for the most part, did not come from impacts with asteroids, comets, and other celestial bodies. It was a part of the Moon when it first formed.

"This is the first time we've looked at the moon with Hubble's spectacular vision to understand things about the moon that today we haven't fully understood. This is why exploration's so exciting," Garvin says.

The amazing pictures were captured using ultra-violet light reflected off the moon's surface. They reveal signs of oxygen-rich soils that scientists believe can be used to power rockets and be a source of oxygen to breathe for future life on the moon.

Garvin says, "So, finding resources, learning where they are, and how much there are, and learning then how to use them for people and utilization of human beings on the moon -- women and men -- is really our long-term goal."

Space-borne protective energy systems, like the deflector shields on the fictional starship U.S.S. Voyager, are on the drawing board of real-world scientists.

These "cold plasmas" -- analogs to the sophisticated defensive grids envisioned by Star Trek's creators -- are ambient-temperature, ionized gases related to those found deep within the sun’s core.

Such plasmas are capable of shielding satellites and other spacecraft, making them invisible to radars, or both. Nor will they fry electronics or melt metal.

Invulnerable and invisible

The U.S. Air Force allocates some $10 million a year for research geared toward satellite protection. Of that amount, $2 million is dedicated to low-temperature plasma studies.

Robert Barker, program manager for plasma physics in the Air Force’s Office of Scientific Research in Arlington, Virginia is so taken with Laroussi’s approach that he thus far has funneled $250,000 into Laroussi’s research since his arrival at Old Dominion from the University of Tennessee a little over a year ago. The Air Force has supported Laroussi’s work since 1996.

Barker is drawn not just by Laroussi’s plasma-creating prowess, but his ability to make low-temperature plasma inexpensively, in bulk and without the need for hulking equipment.

"What’s intriguing about Mounir’s work is the large volumes of plasma he’s been able to generate," Barker said. "He’s making very good progress in keeping costs and weight low. His approach gives the best power figures for practical, large-volume generation of cold plasma we have to date."

Cloaking mirrors

A nearer-term application is cloaking. With the proper adjustments, a plasma can be made into a kind of energy mirror, reflecting back or away incoming electromagnetic waves, such as those emitted from ground-based radars. In essence, any spacecraft outfitted with this kind of plasma field would be completely cloaked from the probing attentions of radar operators.

"The idea is to deflect or absorb the energy completely," Laroussi said. "If you absorb the energy --- completely dissipating it within the plasma --- the radar doesn’t see anything. Nothing reflects back."

The Star Wars stuff

Less immediately space-like, but no less practical, are biological applications. Cold plasmas allow for rapid decontamination of clothing, equipment or personal gear. In disrupting the integrity of cell membranes, the plasmas appear to offer a rapid, simple and inexpensive means of destroying even the hardiest bacterial spores. At present, sterilization time can run hours; use of a cold plasma could sanitize in mere minutes.

A Senate committee on Thursday unanimously agreed to a blueprint for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration that cancels the agency’s return-to-the-moon program, starts investments in commercial companies that could build rockets to take astronauts to low Earth orbit and speeds development of a heavy-lift rocket for more distant missions.

The committee acceded on the cancellation of the Ares I rocket, which is part of the return-to-the-moon program known as Constellation, but called on NASA to start development of a larger heavy-lift rocket in 2011, likely to be based on shuttle components, that could be ready for launching by the end of 2016. The administration had proposed waiting until as late as 2015 to start work on a heavy-lift rocket, which would be needed for human missions to asteroids and Mars.

The bill also calls for development of a spacecraft capable of traveling beyond low Earth orbit — almost certainly a continuation of the Orion crew capsule that is part of Constellation. The administration had originally wanted to cancel Orion and later proposed a stripped-down version as a lifeboat for the International Space Station.

To pay for Orion and the heavy-lift rocket, the Senate authorization slices much of the money the administration proposed for developing new space technologies and cuts the amount to be spent on the commercial crew program over the next three years, to $1.3 billion from $3.3 billion in the president’s budget request. The budget request had sought $6 billion in total for commercial crew over the next five years.

Senator Nelson said the intent was that the administration would eventually get $6 billion, just spread over a longer period.

The bill, known as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2010, would also extend the life of the International Space Station to 2020 and increase financing for earth science and aeronautics as requested by Mr. Obama.

Researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, are once again turning what scientists thought they knew about the moon on its head.

Last fall, researchers, including Larry Taylor, a distinguished professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, discovered "lunar dew" on the moon's surface -- absorbed "water" in the uppermost layers of lunar soil. This discovery of water debunked beliefs held since the return of the first Apollo rocks that the moon was bone-dry.

Now, scientists, including Taylor and Yang Liu, research assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, have discovered that water on the moon is more widespread -- on the outside and inside of the moon -- with some similarities to water in volcanic systems on Earth.

Their research will be featured in the article, "Lunar Apatite with Terrestrial Volatile Abundances" in the July 22 edition of the scientific journal, Nature.

However, if scientists devise processes to easily recover this water from the lunar rocks for drinking water and fuel, a human settlement is not out of reach.

"Now we have ready sources of water that can be consumed by plants and humans but also electrolyzed into liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to develop rocket fuel," Taylor said. "Until the recent discovery of water in and on the moon, it was going to be a very energy-intensive endeavor to separate these elements from the lunar rocks and soil."

There is a lot more water on the moon than previously believed, according to an analysis of NASA data being published Friday, a finding that may bolster the case for a manned base on the lunar surface.

The discovery grew out of an audacious experiment last year, when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration slammed a spent-fuel rocket into a lunar crater at 5,600 miles an hour, and then used a pair of orbiting satellites to analyze the debris thrown off by the impact. They discovered that the crater contained water in the form of ice, plus a host of other resources, including hydrogen, ammonia, methane, mercury, sodium and silver.

NASA announced its groundbreaking discovery of lunar water last November. Now, a more detailed analysis of the data—the subject of six research papers being published in the journal Science—concludes that there is a lot more water on the moon than anyone expected, about twice the concentrations seen in the Sahara Desert.

"It's really wet," said Anthony Colaprete, co-author of one of the Science papers and a space scientist at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. He and his colleagues estimate that 5.6% of the total mass of the targeted lunar crater's soil consists of water ice. In other words, 2,200 pounds of moon dirt would yield a dozen gallons of water.

The presence of water doesn't make it more likely that there ever was life on the moon, as the location studied is among the coldest in the solar system. But the large quantity boosts the case for a manned lunar base from which to launch other interplanetary adventures. Water is crucial because its components, hydrogen and oxygen, are key ingredients for rocket fuel. Oxygen can also be extracted from water to make breathable air.

The quantity of water discovered was 50% greater than NASA's initial estimates. Other measurements suggest there's even a "lunar permafrost" covering about 30% of the southern polar region of the moon, with ice lying just below the surface.

Robots are being developed all the time to do what we wish and to go where we can’t. This week, inventor Bill Stone told attendees at NASA’s Astrobiology Science Conference in Atlanta that he intends to get an autonomous robot ready to visit the icebound sea of Jupiter’s moon Europa, cut through the icy crust, and explore the waters below. He told the participants that his goal is to send his robot Valkyrie to Europa, where it will use lasers to cut through the ice to explore the waters below, collecting samples, in search of life. His company, Stone Aerospace, has been working on the six-foot by ten inch robotic cylinder called Valkyrie.