In 2010, President Barack Obama signed the NASA Authorization Act, which charged NASA with developing all the necessary technologies and components to allow for a crewed mission to Mars. Key to this was the development of the Space Launch System (SLS), the Orion spacecraft, and an orbiting lunar habitat (aka. the Lunar Gateway).
However, in recent years, these plans have been altered considerably to prioritize “returning to the Moon.” Formally named Project Artemis, VP Pence emphasized in March of 2019 that NASA must return to the Moon by 2024, even if it meant some shakeups were needed. In the latest news, NASA has indicated that the Lunar Gateway is no longer a priority, as part of a plan to “de-risk” the mandatory tasks associated with Artemis.
These sentiments were expressed by Doug Loverro, who replaced William Gerstenmaier in July of 2019 as part of a shakeup designed to expedite progress with the SLS and the Artemis program in general. As Loverro explained during a NASA Advisory Council science committee (held on Friday, March 13th), he has been working to “de-risk” Artemis so NASA can focus on meeting the mandatory goals of Artemis and its 2024 deadline.
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As Lovarro explained, this means focusing on technologies and activities that NASA already has experience developing. He also stated that those risks that can’t be eliminated need to be “burned down”. All of this is essential, he claimed, to creating the necessary mission architecture to land astronauts on the Moon by 2024. As he summarized:
“What are we going to do to go ahead and make that happen? And the answer is you’ve got to go ahead and remove all the things that add to program risk along the way.
“What are all of the risks that can get in our way in a four-and-a-half-year schedule and how do we go ahead and pull them all early into program, or eliminate them from the program altogether by going ahead and making wise technical or programmatic choices?”
For this reason, he said during the latter half of the session, the Lunar Gateway had to be removed as a critical element to the program. This comes on the heels of what Associate Administrator Steve Jurczyk announced back in February at the LSIC’s kickoff meeting. It was here that Jurczyk explained that the first mission (Artemis 1) would likely be delayed and would take place in “mid to late” 2021.
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Another reason cited by Lovarro for the decision was the likelihood that the Gateway will fall behind in its development schedule. This he attributed to the fact that the first module, the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE), calls for an advanced solar-electric propulsion system that will allow it to act as a sort of “space tug” for visiting spacecraft while also serving as the command and communications center of the Gateway.
In May of 2019, NASA announced that it had awarded a $375 million contract to Colorado-based aerospace company Maxar Technologies (formerly SSL) to develop the PPE. The design called for a 50-kilowatt solar electric propulsion (SEP) spacecraft that will serve as a mobile command and service module and communications relay for human and robotic expeditions to the lunar surface.
Originally, NASA hoped to have this module ready by 2022 so that it could be launched as part of the Artemis 2 mission. The creation of other elements – like the HAbitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO), the ESPRIT service module, and the International Habitation Module (iHAB) – were also recently contracted to Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems (NGIS) and Airbus and OHB, respectively.
But as we reported in a previous article, since March of 2019, there have been concerns at NASA that the expedited timeline could come at the cost of sacrificing the Lunar Gateway. As an inside source reported at the time, there had been apparent pushback from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) over continued funding for an element they considered unnecessary.
Artist’s impression of the Lunar Gateway. Credit: NASA
Of course, Loverro emphasized that NASA was not abandoning the Lunar Gateway and that removing it from the “critical path” would lead to a better Gateway program. For one, it will give NASA contractors more time to develop their modules, which were originally scheduled for completion beginning in 2026. Second, it will cut the associated costs for Project Artemis. As he said:
“We can now tell them 100% positively it will be there because we’ve changed that program to a much more what I would call solid, accomplishable schedule… Frankly, had we not done that simplification, I was going to have to cancel Gateway because I couldn’t afford it. By simplifying it and taking it out of the critical path, I can now keep it on track.”
This means that the Artemis missions will no longer rely on the Gateway and will instead use a lunar lander incorporated into the Orion spacecraft. Here too, Loverro hinted that there would be changes in order to cut costs and reduce risks. Previously, NASA had proposed a reusable three-stage lander consisting of an ascent module, descent module, and transfer module – all of which would be assembled at the Gateway.
Instead, Loverro proposed taking the time-tested and proven approach. This likely means that the Artemis lander will be a two-stage spacecraft, like the lunar module that took the Apollo astronauts to the Moon, consisting of a descent stage and an ascent stage. In Sept. of 2019, when NASA announced the decision to fast-track the development of the lunar lander, contractors were given the option of suggesting non-reusable alternatives as well.
Artist’s concept of a possible Project Artemis lunar lander. Credit: NASA
“Program risk is driven by which things haven’t you done in space before that you would now have to do in this mission,” said Loverro. “We’ve never done that before, so we’d like to try to avoid doing things we’ve never done before.” In the meantime, the finalized plan for Artemis is expected in the near future, though Loverro could not provide a more concrete idea of when it would be unveiled.
In effect, this means that Artemis will be a “boots and flags” operation like the Apollo missions, something that NASA was originally hoping to avoid. On top of that, there have been severely mixed messages coming from this administration. Whereas VP Pence has remained resolute in his stated commitment to Artemis, President Trump has publicly criticized the project for retreading on old ground.
“NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon – We did that 50 years ago. They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars…” he tweeted on June 7th, 2019. This was followed by similar statements made in September during the visit of Australian PM Scott Morrison, where he stated to press that were in attendance:
“We’re going to Mars. We’re stopping at the moon. The moon is actually a launching pad. That’s why we’re stopping at the moon. I said, ‘Hey, we’ve done the moon. That’s not so exciting.’ So we’ll be doing the moon. But we’ll really be doing Mars.”
Artist’s impression of the SLS taking off. Credit: NASA
Still, all signs point toward NASA still being committed to establishing a “sustainable lunar exploration” program on the Moon, which is intended to include the creation of a permanent lunar outpost. Examples of this include the ESA’s proposed International Moon Village and China’s plan for building an outpost in the South Pole-Aitken Basin.
Nevertheless, the decision to make a lunar landing happen by 2024 “by any means necessary” (not to mention conflicting statements from the White House) has caused its fair share of confusion and chaos around NASA. With the “Moon to Mars” framework, the creation of the Lunar Gateway and a crewed mission to the lunar surface by 2028 were interdependent.
But if there’s one thing that space exploration has taught us, it is that budgets and priorities change regularly, which is why it is important to be flexible and adapt. One way or another, we’re going back to the Moon and we intend to stay there! The means to do so may just take a little longer than expected.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
The European Space Agency is fast-tracking a new mission called Ramses, which will fly to near-Earth asteroid 99942 Apophis and join the space rock in 2029 when it comes very close to our planet — closer even than the region where geosynchronous satellites sit.
Ramses is short for Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety and, as its name suggests, is the next phase in humanity’s efforts to learn more about near-Earth asteroids (NEOs) and how we might deflect them should one ever be discovered on a collision course with planet Earth.
In order to launch in time to rendezvous with Apophis in February 2029, scientists at the European Space Agency have been given permission to start planning Ramses even before the multinational space agency officially adopts the mission. The sanctioning and appropriation of funding for the Ramses mission will hopefully take place at ESA’s Ministerial Council meeting (involving representatives from each of ESA’s member states) in November of 2025. To arrive at Apophis in February 2029, launch would have to take place in April 2028, the agency says.
This is a big deal because large asteroids don’t come this close to Earth very often. It is thus scientifically precious that, on April 13, 2029, Apophis will pass within 19,794 miles (31,860 kilometers) of Earth. For comparison, geosynchronous orbit is 22,236 miles (35,786 km) above Earth’s surface. Such close fly-bys by asteroids hundreds of meters across (Apophis is about 1,230 feet, or 375 meters, across) only occur on average once every 5,000 to 10,000 years. Miss this one, and we’ve got a long time to wait for the next.
When Apophis was discovered in 2004, it was for a short time the most dangerous asteroid known, being classified as having the potential to impact with Earth possibly in 2029, 2036, or 2068. Should an asteroid of its size strike Earth, it could gouge out a crater several kilometers across and devastate a country with shock waves, flash heating and earth tremors. If it crashed down in the ocean, it could send a towering tsunami to devastate coastlines in multiple countries.
Over time, as our knowledge of Apophis’ orbit became more refined, however, the risk of impact greatly went down. Radar observations of the asteroid in March of 2021 reduced the uncertainty in Apophis’ orbit from hundreds of kilometers to just a few kilometers, finally removing any lingering worries about an impact — at least for the next 100 years. (Beyond 100 years, asteroid orbits can become too unpredictable to plot with any accuracy, but there’s currently no suggestion that an impact will occur after 100 years.) So, Earth is expected to be perfectly safe in 2029 when Apophis comes through. Still, scientists want to see how Apophis responds by coming so close to Earth and entering our planet’s gravitational field.
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“There is still so much we have yet to learn about asteroids but, until now, we have had to travel deep into the solar system to study them and perform experiments ourselves to interact with their surface,” said Patrick Michel, who is the Director of Research at CNRS at Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in Nice, France, in a statement. “Nature is bringing one to us and conducting the experiment itself. All we need to do is watch as Apophis is stretched and squeezed by strong tidal forces that may trigger landslides and other disturbances and reveal new material from beneath the surface.”
The Goldstone radar’s imagery of asteroid 99942 Apophis as it made its closest approach to Earth, in March 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL–Caltech/NSF/AUI/GBO)
By arriving at Apophis before the asteroid’s close encounter with Earth, and sticking with it throughout the flyby and beyond, Ramses will be in prime position to conduct before-and-after surveys to see how Apophis reacts to Earth. By looking for disturbances Earth’s gravitational tidal forces trigger on the asteroid’s surface, Ramses will be able to learn about Apophis’ internal structure, density, porosity and composition, all of which are characteristics that we would need to first understand before considering how best to deflect a similar asteroid were one ever found to be on a collision course with our world.
Besides assisting in protecting Earth, learning about Apophis will give scientists further insights into how similar asteroids formed in the early solar system, and, in the process, how planets (including Earth) formed out of the same material.
One way we already know Earth will affect Apophis is by changing its orbit. Currently, Apophis is categorized as an Aten-type asteroid, which is what we call the class of near-Earth objects that have a shorter orbit around the sun than Earth does. Apophis currently gets as far as 0.92 astronomical units (137.6 million km, or 85.5 million miles) from the sun. However, our planet will give Apophis a gravitational nudge that will enlarge its orbit to 1.1 astronomical units (164.6 million km, or 102 million miles), such that its orbital period becomes longer than Earth’s.
It will then be classed as an Apollo-type asteroid.
Ramses won’t be alone in tracking Apophis. NASA has repurposed their OSIRIS-REx mission, which returned a sample from another near-Earth asteroid, 101955 Bennu, in 2023. However, the spacecraft, renamed OSIRIS-APEX (Apophis Explorer), won’t arrive at the asteroid until April 23, 2029, ten days after the close encounter with Earth. OSIRIS-APEX will initially perform a flyby of Apophis at a distance of about 2,500 miles (4,000 km) from the object, then return in June that year to settle into orbit around Apophis for an 18-month mission.
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Furthermore, the European Space Agency still plans on launching its Hera spacecraft in October 2024 to follow-up on the DART mission to the double asteroid Didymos and Dimorphos. DART impacted the latter in a test of kinetic impactor capabilities for potentially changing a hazardous asteroid’s orbit around our planet. Hera will survey the binary asteroid system and observe the crater made by DART’s sacrifice to gain a better understanding of Dimorphos’ structure and composition post-impact, so that we can place the results in context.
The more near-Earth asteroids like Dimorphos and Apophis that we study, the greater that context becomes. Perhaps, one day, the understanding that we have gained from these missions will indeed save our planet.
