"Anything that could be counted, I did." //

Katherine Johnson, a trailblazing mathematician best known for her contributions to NASA's human spaceflight program and who gained fame later in life due to the movie Hidden Figures, died Monday. She was 101 years old.

"At NASA, we will never forget her courage and leadership and the milestones we could not have reached without her," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. "We will continue building on her legacy and work tirelessly to increase opportunities for everyone who has something to contribute toward the ongoing work of raising the bar of human potential." //

Most notably, in 1962, she performed the critical calculations that put John Glenn into a safe orbit during the first orbital mission of a US astronaut. NASA engineers had run the calculations on electric computers, but when someone was needed to validate the calculations, Glenn and the rest of the space agency turned to Johnson. “If she says they’re good,” Johnson recalled the astronaut saying, “then I’m ready to go." //

NASA named a new building after her in 2016, the Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility //

What an amazing lady - her work will live on for centuries, as we explore further out into the solar system. RIP Katherine
From another article, but appropriate-
Quote:

Bill Barry, NASA’s chief historian:
“If we go back to the moon, or to Mars, we’ll be using her math.”

In the new children's book "How We Got to the Moon: The People, Technology and Daring Feats of Science Behind Humanity's Greatest Adventure" (Random House Children's Books, 2020), award-winning author and illustrator John Rocco beautifully recounts humanity's journey to the moon.

Although he admits the charger might not survive the trip to space. //

Fly me to the Moon, and let me... charge... among the stars

But rather than have NASA focus on getting to the Moon so soon, the bill would push the deadline to 2028. The legislation also adds another big milestone: get humans in orbit around Mars by 2033. In fact, the bill places more of a focus on that long-term goal, and rewrites NASA’s lunar plans in order to meet the objective of getting to the Red Planet sooner rather than later. Notably, it directs NASA to start working on a Mars transport vehicle ASAP, something the agency isn’t quite focused on at the moment. //

Perhaps the biggest concern revolves around the construction of Artemis’ lunar lander. Right now, NASA hopes to obtain multiple landers from commercial companies through public-private partnerships. With these collaborations, NASA would invest in the development of the landers, but the companies would create, control, and own the final products themselves. The new bill wants to instead make NASA the sole owner of this hardware, with full oversight on development. This is the same way NASA has built its biggest spacecraft for decades, and it can often be a costly way of doing business. //

The bill argues that using the Moon’s resources doesn’t make it easier to get to Mars, so any lunar prospecting and mining has to be funded through other programs outside of Artemis. In fact, the bill states that NASA shouldn’t focus on any activities on the Moon that don’t contribute to getting to Mars. //

Additionally, the bill dictates how the lander is supposed to reach the Moon. The legislation says the lander has to be integrated with the SLS and the massive upper stage of the vehicle that Boeing plans to build for it. That means whoever is assigned to build the landers must be well-versed in Boeing’s hardware, potentially giving Boeing the leg up in the competition. //

Numerous organizations have come out against the bill, including The Planetary Society and the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. Others like the Aerospace Industries Association and the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration have expressed their desire to continue to review portions of the legislation.

Can someone find the descent rate profile that Duke is referring to here? Did LMPs look at a cheat sheet during the descent, or would they memorize key altitude-versus-ROD reference points?

I think what you are looking for is on page 11 of the Apollo 16 LM Timeline Book. This is the checklist used by the crew during landing.

The numbers in the 200 ft box agree with the quote in your question.

In the 1960s, NASA commissioned Grumman Aircraft to build 15 space-worthy lunar modules, or LMs, for its Apollo program.

The fate of 14 modules is well-documented, but the last - LM-14 - is harder to account for in historical records. We attempted to track down and piece together the mystery of the seemingly missing moon lander.

Most experts we contacted weren't sure where it had gone, but we finally got a convincing answer (with documentation) from one space historian and artist.

• He believes the lander was scrapped and its aerospace-grade metal possibly reused in jet fighters.

"I am concerned that the decisions are not being driven by what is most efficient." //

Bridenstine has decided that it is best to focus efforts on getting the core stage flying as soon as possible. Three SLS rocket flights by 2024 are probably all that Boeing can handle due to "performance issues" cited several times by Bowersox during Wednesday's hearing. This third flight would culminate in the Moon landing at the lunar south pole.

The NASA chief has also defended development of the Gateway as a critical component of a "sustainable" return to the Moon. Instead of emulating Apollo's "flags and footprints" missions from half a century ago, NASA would instead like to return to the Moon to stay and eventually send humans to Mars, using the Gateway as a staging point. //

added, "I am concerned that the decisions are not being driven by what is most efficient or effective and what is most cost efficient.”

This is an interesting viewpoint given that commercial rockets cost $100 to $200 million, at most, versus the $1 billion to $2 billion cost of a single SLS rocket—not including the hundreds of millions of dollars, at a minimum, the agency would have to invest in Exploration Upper Stage development contracts with Boeing. Moreover, one of the commercial rockets—the Falcon Heavy—already exists and has flown three successful missions. //

An SLS rocket with the better upper stage almost certainly wouldn't be ready by 2024, and NASA knows this.

"At this point, there is no path by which the Exploration Upper Stage will be ready for Artemis 3 in 2024," the NASA administration source told Ars. "Hence, it is not in the critical path (for the Moon landing)."

Here on Earth, the ability to generate electricity is something we take for granted. We can count on the sun to illuminate solar panels, and the movement of air and water to spin turbines. //

Since 2015, NASA and the United States Department of Energy have been working on the Kilopower project, which aims to develop a small, lightweight, and extremely reliable nuclear reactor that they believe will fulfill this critical role in future off-world exploration. Following a series of highly successful test runs on the prototype hardware in 2017 and 2018, the team believes the miniaturized power plant could be ready for a test flight as early as 2022. Once fully operational, this nearly complete re-imagining of the classic thermal reactor could usher in a whole new era of space exploration. //

it’s more like an evolved version of the radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) which NASA has used to power everything from the Voyager missions to the Curiosity rover. There’s no dangerous high pressure steam, finicky turbines to spin, or coolant pumps to fail. Thermal energy is passively carried away from the reactor core using sodium-filled heat pipes, which lead to the “hot” side of a Stirling engine array. With a large deployable radiator on the other side, the Stirling engines would use the temperature differential to produce reciprocal motion that can drive a small generator.

The Kilopower has been designed as a self-regulating system where everything happens automatically and without the need for external control. There would naturally be sensors for basic diagnostics, for example checking temperatures at key points in the system, the RPMs of the Stirling engines, and the output of the generators. But outside of monitoring for these possible signs of trouble, the human crew could largely ignore the Kilopower and go about their mission.

Japanese commercial space company iSpace has provided an updated schedule for its first private missions to the Moon, both set to launch on Falcon 9 rockets and land on the Moon as early as 2021 and 2023. iSpace’s goal is to understand and map lunar resources (particularly water ice) and eventually gather and process those […] //

Despite the death of the Lunar XPRIZE, iSpace managed to not only survive but thrive in a more entrepreneurial environment. The company managed to convince several major investors of the potential value of commercial space exploration and became one of a select few spaceflight startups – certainly the only space resources startup – that has raised almost $100 million.

We are pleased to announce 3 new Corporate Partners! Suzuki Motor Corporation, Citizen Watch and Sumitomo Corporation will support and sponsor the HAKUTO-R program with their professional and technological expertise.

We also announced an updated mission schedule for the HAKUTO-R Program. We will perform a lunar landing in 2021 and a lunar landing and rover deployment in 2023.

One could likely climb to the Moon with nothing more than a printed stack of all the studies, analyses, white papers, and hollow promises ever published on the utilization of space-based resources, an ode to the simultaneous promise and pitfalls the idea poses. As many have discovered, developing the ability to acquire, refine, and sell space resources is one of the most long-lead problems in existence. Put another way, funding a space exploration company on the promise of (or income from) space resources is a bit like paying for a solid-gold ladder by selling the fruit you needed it to reach. //

The need to secure funding via investors – investors expecting some sort of return – is the biggest roadblock to space resource utilization. Really, the only conceivable way to sustainably raise funding for space resource acquisition is to already have a functional and sustainable company as a base. SpaceX is a prime example: the company hopes to fund the development of a sustainable city on Mars with income from its launch business and Starlink internet constellation.

"To look forward to the Moon, we need to learn from the past." //

The reality is that, even with a healthy budget increase, NASA can barely afford a human landing program on the Moon in the 2020s—at least using its Space Launch System rocket and usual ways of doing business, as it appears set on doing. This is more than enough for a space agency that has not flown a human into deep space for 47 years.

Talk of Mars is historically unsupportable with current budgets or NASA's existing technology. (As just one example, NASA at best can build one SLS rocket a year, and a single human mission to Mars would require six to eight SLS rocket launches). Past efforts to go to the Moon, Mars, or both have all ended in cancellation. So by talking about an all-of-the-above Moon-to-Mars exploration plan now, NASA's administration seems to be moving from the edge of the possible into the realm of the impossible

The Beresheet lunar lander carried thousands of books, DNA samples, and a few thousand water bears to the moon. But did any of it survive the crash?

Technology, People, Equipment, Missions

Here's how they did it.

How did a prototype keyboard earn its wings?

NASA and the engineers at the MIT Instrumentation Lab were tasked with creating a guidance computer that would help guide the spacecraft to the moon and back. They decided to go with a completely digital system—something that had never been done before. The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) became the central computer for the Apollo missions. But astronauts still needed an interface, something sturdy enough to withstand the rigors of space travel and simple enough for the astronauts to understand.

This was the birth of the DSKY, a leap forward in computer science. Standing for display/keyboard and pronounced “diskey,” the world’s first computer keyboard was developed by Ramon Alonso and his team. The DSKY “was simply a keyboard you find on any computer.” It had a digital display with big buttons and communicated with the AGC via a verb-noun interface. Software engineer Alan Green and his team developed the program that would support the astronauts communications with the computer. Astronauts would punch in the numbers for the action they wanted to take and the program they wanted to affect. This interaction “took the form of a grammatical conversation,” easy enough to use for people in the 60s who had never seen a computer before.

Though it eventually became the interface for the Apollo missions, the DSKY was just a prototype. Alonso and his team never expected it to stick. “And a funny thing began to happen,” Alonso said in an interview, “as we demonstrated ‘Fire Rocket,’ or ‘Display Time,’ or ‘Align Platform,’ some of the big shots would ask, ‘this Verb and Noun, is it going to stay, and fly to the moon?’” Some remarked that it wasn’t scientific or mathematical enough. Despite the odds stacked against it, the DSKY proved to be a reliable tool and contributed to every manned mission to the moon. From humble, linguistic origins to a memorial in the stars, the DSKY is responsible for the success of the Apollo missions.

A space race reading list

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has revealed why Apollo-era technology from the 1960s is no longer good enough to land on the Moon today. ///

Not reusable, limited orbital trajectory (~10° of lunar equator), incompatible with partner nations' systems.

Elon Musk says SpaceX may land cargo on the moon in two years, then people a year or two after that, using the company's forthcoming Starship rocket system . //

More power to him. I hope he does it," DeWit said of Musk. "If he can do it, we'll partner with them, and we'll get there faster."

He added: "This isn't about us doing it - it's about America doing it. He's [got] an American company. I'd love to partner with him and get that done."

Reflecting on humanity’s first steps on the lunar surface, fifty years after the epochal event.

Between the high-stakes maneuvers, the crew joked around, listened to music, and drank way too much coffee.

When, exactly, did the astronaut set foot on the moon? No one knows. //

And yet for all that precision, no one can say with absolute certainty when, exactly, Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon. //

The night of the moon landing, NASA told the press that Armstrong had stepped onto the lunar surface at 10:56:20 p.m., and The New York Times reported that same time stamp on its front page the next morning. The real-time transcription of the mission’s air-to-ground voice transmission suggests that Armstrong took the step sometime between 10:56:43 and 10:56:48. And when NASA’s official Apollo 11 mission report went public in November 1969, it pinpointed first contact at five seconds earlier, at 10:56:15. //

Heiko Küffen, a German software engineer and space enthusiast, first came across this discrepancy in 2009, while trying to design a homemade real-time tracker that he could use to relive the moon landing for its 40th anniversary. //

To synchronize the transcripts and the recordings, Küffen made what he calls “reasonable assumptions,” which nearly a decade later he has yet to see contradicted. Armstrong, he found, first set foot on the moon at 10:56:25—closer, in other words, to the almost universally dismissed time given to the press that night than to the time produced by the mission report’s months-long analysis.