A new research paper is warning scientists and astronomers to watch out for “false fossils” – or pseudofossils – when looking for signs of life on Mars, Science Alert reported.
Researchers Sean McMahon and Julie Cosmidis wrote that Mars, just like Earth, could be rife with stones and minerals that look a lot like real fossils of ancient microbial life – known as microfossils.
“At some stage, a Mars rover will almost certainly find something that looks a lot like a fossil, so being able to confidently distinguish these from structures and substances made by chemical reactions is vital,” McMahon said in a statement.
The researchers explained that microfossils are particularly hard to distinguish even on Earth: Many physical processes related to the weathering and depositing of sedimentary layers can produce mundane rocks that look like ancient remains.
They also noted that even a “chemical garden” – a mechanism in which chemicals mixing can produce structures that look biological – can fool scientists.
Previously, researchers have claimed to have found evidence of mushrooms or bugs on the red planet, only to later be disappointed.
“We have been fooled by life-mimicking processes in the past,” Cosmidis noted.
The authors suggested that further analysis into the chemistry and physics of Mars could shed light on the processes that form pseudofossils.
Renowned physicists Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen theorized the existence of “wormholes,” a hypothetical shortcut that connects two separate points in space-time.
Better known as the “Einstein-Rosen bridge,” it stipulates that a person – or spacecraft – could jump into one black hole and show up in a different part of the galaxy or universe, according to Futurism.
Scientists have debated their existence and questioned whether the speculative structures are stable enough to traverse them.
Now, a new study by researcher Pascal Koiran suggested that wormholes might be more stable than previously believed, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Previous research speculated that a type of theoretical exotic matter would be needed to keep a wormhole accessible, or else the structure would close because there would be no force to keep it open.
Researchers in the past have also used the Schwarzschild metric to analyze black holes, which says that the latter collapses once an object reaches the event horizon – the crossing point into the wormhole.
However, Koiran utilized the Eddington-Finkelstein metric to mathematically model an object’s travel into a black hole and through a wormhole rather than breaking down at the event horizon.
His findings suggest that wormholes not only are stable but could be used for interstellar travel.
Even so, scientists haven’t detected a real wormhole. And even if they did, it would be very risky to dive into a black hole.
To date, astronomers have discovered more than 4,000 exoplanets – planets outside of our Solar system – in the Milky Way galaxy.
Recently, NASA scientists came across the first exoplanet located in a galaxy far, far away, NPR reported.
Using the agency’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, researchers said that the unnamed planet was found in the Messier 51 – or “Whirlpool” galaxy – which is about 28 million light-years from Earth.
The team explained that they were able to detect the exoplanet by studying its transit – when a planet passes in front of a star and blocks the latter’s light.
They described the exoplanet as being roughly the same size as Saturn and possibly having a “violent past”: The planet is currently orbiting a neutron star or a black hole with a companion star nearly 20 times the size of the Sun, according to Sky News.
“An exoplanet in the system would have had to survive a supernova explosion that created the neutron star or black hole,” NASA suggested.
There is still much to learn about the new celestial body but the space organization hopes that the find provides a beacon of hope for many looking for planets outside the Milky Way.
“We are trying to open up a whole new arena for finding other worlds by searching for planet candidates at X-ray wavelengths, a strategy that makes it possible to discover them in other galaxies,” Rosanne Di Stefano of the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said.
Starship could enable new business opportunities for SpaceX that could cause its valuation of $100 billion today to grow to $1 trillion or more. (credit: SpaceX)
Will SpaceX follow Tesla to a $1 trillion market capitalization?
by Sam Dinkin Monday, November 1, 2021
SpaceX is readying its first test of Starship and Super Heavy, where Starship will splash down about 90 minutes after takeoff 84% of the Earth’s circumference around the world to the east near Kauai. Like launching Elon Musk’s old Tesla roadster beyond Mars orbit, this may result in further proof that Starship may soon reduce the price of access to low Earth orbit substantially more than Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy already have. With its 100-tonne capacity in reusable mode according to its user guide, or 136 tonnes “when fully optimized” and 227 tonnes in expendable mode, according to Musk in a tweet, it has the potential to increase global launch capacity by a giant leap. That would be especially true if Elon Musk devotes his possibly soon-to-be trillion-plus net worth to building extra Starships to settle Mars.
I predicted in 2006 that Musk might get a high-nine-figure payout from SpaceX via a Netscape moment; SpaceX is now capitalized at approximately $100 billion—12 figures.
Capital utilization for a Mars fleet will be much lower than for the Moon or in LEO unless the ships are put to work doing something between trips (about 8 months out of 26). The maximization of Elon Musk’s objective of settling Mars may force launch capacity well above the profit-maximizing level looking at customer demand alone. A larger fleet reduces the cost per flight and speeds the pace of Mars settlement.
The Morgan Stanley poll results were attributed to the expected value of the stream of Starlink income for Internet service. This may understate the potential for other such use of plentiful and lower-cost wholesale space-launch capacity to provide other services directly. As Casey Handmer writes in a blog post titled “Starship is still not understood”: “Annual capacity to LEO climbs from its current average of 500 T for the whole of our civilization to perhaps 500 T per week. Eventually, it could exceed 1,000,000 T/year. At the same time, launch costs drop as low as $50/kg, roughly 100x lower than the present. For the same budget in launch, supply will have increased by roughly 100x. How can the space industry saturate this increased launch supply?”
Other services
Starlink is already considering expanding from fixed broadband to mobile broadband for maritime and aviation use. Ruggedized terminals may make it possible for a truck or RV to access the system. It may make cellphone tower backhaul easier. This may mean more sources of demand for Starlink that could generate higher revenue than expected and perhaps justify an even more dense satellite network.
At 916 cubic meters, the International Space Station could be replaced with a Starship. With a 22-meter extended payload faring, the payload volume of the first 14 meters of the payload bay with an eight-meter diameter is already 704 cubic meters. In its Mars passenger configuration, Starship could have life support and power for 100 people for 9 months.
The imaging market is expected to be $7 billion/year by 2030. Like Starlink, SpaceX can orbit imaging capacity using its own wholesale launch costs and directly provide imaging much as it provides Starlink bandwidth. Increasing the competition in that market should reduce the price, which, in turn, would grow the market further. This opportunity is not necessarily as lucrative as new services. SpaceX would not be in a position to be first to market like it is with low-latency satellite home broadband, but imaging services already have a proven market.
While SpaceX can undercut other company’s launch prices by so much that its wholesale cost is well below what the retail market will bear, its excess capacity can be used in innovative ways to provide old and new space services directly.
Point-to-point suborbital flights is another potential market (see “Could suborbital point-to-point really be worth $20 billion a year in 2030?”, The Space Review, March 25, 2019). While that may be a goal that is more realistic for 2041 than 2030, it could potentially generate $20 billion per year in revenue (in 2020 dollars). Tesla only had $31.5 billion revenue in 2020. While it is unlikely for this spinoff to be worth $600 billion, it is something the flying public may pay for once the safety level is adequate (see “How safe is safe enough for point-to-point suborbital?”, The Space Review, April 22, 2019).
Offering a higher precision GPS ought to be straightforward with 30,000 satellites in orbit.
SpaceX can leverage its launch capacity into providing a LEO infrastructure, with Starships being used as:
orbital propellant depots like terrestrial gas stations
habitable volume
consumables storage for water, air and food
All of these services, along with positioning and a data network, can be created and delivered to the Moon, too, in the off season between Mars transfer opportunities. If there is demand, these services can also be provided to Europa, Titan, Venus and wherever else someone wants to place them.
As Casey Handmer notes, “As of May 2021, it looks like SpaceX has a reasonably solid lead in launch. This isn’t preordained to last forever, especially as copying a finalized Starship will be much easier for competitors, liberally salted with former SpaceX employees, than getting the design right in the first place.” Once there are a few competitors, retail prices are likely to drop to near wholesale prices, at which point such new services will be decentralized. It will not require a SpaceX internal business to monetize launch capacity at that point.
While SpaceX can undercut other company’s launch prices by so much that its wholesale cost is well below what the retail market will bear, its excess capacity can be used in innovative ways to provide old and new space services directly. I doubt I will be off by a factor of over 100 on market cap again, but the upside for SpaceX market cap reaching $1 trillion by 2030 may still be understated.
Nanoracks, Voyager Space, and Lockheed Martin are cooperating on a commercial space station called Starlab that could be operational as soon as 2027. (credit: Nanoracks)
The commercial space station race
by Jeff Foust Monday, November 1, 2021
The International Astronautical Congress (IAC) returned last week after the pandemic forced last year’s event to move online. An estimated 5,000 people traveled to Dubai for the usual panel discussions and technical sessions on a wide range of space topics.
“Since the beginning, Nanoracks has sought to own and operate a private space station to fully unlock market demand,” Nanroacks CEO Manber said.
The event also served as a trigger for companies to unveil their proposals for commercial space stations. There had been plenty of signs of interest among companies in NASA’s plans to support development of commercial stations to succeed the International Space Station. Agency officials said in recent weeks that they received 10 to 12 proposals for the first phase of its Commercial LEO Destinations program, which will offer a total of $400 million to up to four companies to fund initial design studies for commercial stations. NASA is expected to make those awards later this fall.
Before IAC, though, companies said little about designs of their concepts or even whether they submitted proposals for that program. The most details came from Axiom Space, which already has a $140 million award from NASA to develop a commercial module that will be attached to the ISS. That module will serve as a core of a commercial segment on the ISS, eventually separating to become a standalone station when the ISS is retired. (Axiom, though, hasn’t confirmed if they submitted a proposal for the Commercial LEO Destinations program.)
On October 21, the Thursday before the IAC started the following Monday, the first new partnership emerged. Nanoracks announced it was working with Voyager Space Holdings, the company that owns a majority of Nanoracks, and with Lockheed Martin on a commercial space station concept called Starlab. Nanoracks will serve as the lead company on the project, with Lockheed Martin acting as the manufacturer and technical integrator and Voyager, which owns several space companies, handling strategy and investment.
Starlab features a straightforward design, with a docking module at its core. Attached to one side of the docking module is a large inflatable module, while on the other is a power and propulsion element. That core module will also host a robotic arm. The completed station would have 340 cubic meters of habitable volume, about three-eighths that of the ISS, and produce 60 kilowatts of power. It can host four people at a time.
Nanoracks had long made clear its interest in commercial space stations, although much of its earlier concepts focused on converting upper stages of rockets, left in LEO, into habitable modules. It’s made extensive commercial use of the ISS, including installing the station’s first commercial airlock, Bishop, there last December. In August, it hired a longtime NASA official, Marshall Smith, to be its senior vice president of commercial space stations.
“Since the beginning, Nanoracks has sought to own and operate a private space station to fully unlock market demand,” Jeff Manber, CEO of Nanoracks, said in a statement. “Our team has spent the last decade learning the business of space stations, understanding customer needs, charting market growth, and self-investing in private hardware on the ISS like the Bishop Airlock.”
“Orbital Reef provides world-class technical accommodations and has a futuristic space architecture with all the features we should have in space,” said Blue Origin’s Sherwood.
Lockheed brings to the table its vast experience and capabilities. “Lockheed Martin’s extensive experience in building complex spacecraft and systems, coupled with Nanoracks’ commercial business innovation and Voyager’s financial expertise, allows our team to create a customer-focused space station that will fuel our future vision,” Lisa Callahan, vice president and general manager of Commercial Civil Space at Lockheed Martin, said. “We have invested significantly in habitat technology which enables us to propose a cost-effective, mission-driven spacecraft design for Starlab.”
The companies did not disclose the cost of developing Starlab but estimated it would be ready as soon as 2027, ahead of the projected 2030 retirement of the ISS. “Voyager Space is highly confident in the Starlab business model and its ability to be commercially sustainable and well capitalized,” said Dylan Taylor, chairman and CEO of Voyager Space. “Voyager Space sees numerous synergies leveraging the capabilities across our organization’s operating businesses, as well as within the Lockheed Martin ecosystem.”
Orbital Reef is designed to be “infinitely scalable” by adding more core modules and power systems, allowing additional habitation and lab modules to be installed. (credit: Blue Origin)
The second announcement came four days later, at the end of the first day of the IAC in Dubai. In an online presentation from Dubai—even journalists in attendance at the conference had to participate via Zoom rather than in person—representatives of Blue Origin, Boeing, Redwire, and Sierra Space announced their partnership to develop a commercial space station called Orbital Reef.
Under that partnership, Blue Origin will take the lead, including developing large core modules and providing launch services using its New Glenn rocket. Sierra Space, the “principal partner,” will offer its LIFE inflatable habitat module, as well as its Dream Chaser vehicle for transporting cargo and crew to and from Orbital Reef. Boeing will produce a science module and provide its CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle. Redwire will be responsible for microgravity research and manufacturing, as well as payload operations and deployable structures such as the station’s solar panels.
“Orbital Reef provides world-class technical accommodations and has a futuristic space architecture with all the features we should have in space,” said Brent Sherwood, senior vice president of advanced development programs at Blue Origin, ranging from large volumes to a “sky canopy” with large windows facing Earth. “Our services and amenities are inspiring, practical, and safe.”
A video played at the online briefing showed a very large station, with a long core module with several habitats and solar arrays attached to it, serviced by both Dram Chaser and Starliner spacecraft. That, however, is not what the companies expect to have in orbit later this decade. Instead, what Sherwood called a “baseline configuration” that would be ready in the second half of the 2020s would include a core module, LIFE habitat, science module, and a “energy mast” consisting of solar arrays and radiators.
That configuration would still offer about 90% of the habitable volume of the ISS with 100 kilowatts of power and the ability to host ten people. The station can be scaled up from there, he said, by adding copies of those modules. “The architecture is designed so that it is infinitely scalable by ganging together additional core modules and energy masts, and attach modules on the sides.”
The companies also said that while the team was vertically integrated and could provide everything needed to operate Orbital Reef, it would be open to bringing on components from other companies using standard interfaces. “This is open vertical integration,” said Sherwood. While Blue Origin and others would be willing to work with customers with specific technical needs, those sophisticated enough to develop their own modules can use those standards “to allow your module to simply be attached.”
One surprising elements of the partnership is the inclusion of Sierra Space. That company, established earlier this year as a subsidiary of Sierra Nevada Corporation, had expressed an interest in developing space stations on its own, using LIFE modules and Dream Chaser vehicles.
“What we determined is that, by working together here, it allows us to merge our capabilities, our very complementary capabilities,” said Janet Kavandi, president of Sierra Space. “Everyone comes together to build a very complete capability in space. It helps relieve the cost, so all the burden isn’t placed on one company.”
“If Congress does this, capital markets and entrepreneurs will respond in a way that establishes America as preeminent in LEO human spaceflight at a cost significantly less than the ISS,” said Bridenstine, calling for at least $2 billion a year in NASA funding for commercial stations.
How much of a burden isn’t clear. As with the Starlab team, the Orbital Reef consortium declined to estimate the cost of developing the station, other than Sherwood estimating it would be “at least an order of magnitude less” than the ISS’s nominal $100 billion cost. The companies didn’t disclose how much they were investing on their own for Orbital Reef beyond Kavandi noting that Sierra Nevada has invested more than $1 billion into Dream Chaser for its initial use ferrying cargo to the ISS, as well as an unspecified amount into LIFE.
The companies, though, recognize they will need to make significant internal investments to make the station a reality. The initial NASA Commercial LEO Destinations awards will run through mid-decade, after which NASA plans a second phase to certify stations for hosting NASA astronauts. The size of those later awards are uncertain, but the timing means that companies can’t wait for NASA funding to start development.
“You can’t start in the middle part of the decade and have a station ready to be operating so that you can have an overlap in operational capability before the ISS is retired, if it’s retired in 2030,” said Sherwood. “That requires investment in these systems prior to any award by NASA.”
That NASA effort seeks to have one or more commercial space stations ready by the late 2020s, enabling an orderly transfer from the ISS before that station is retired around 2030. That date still requires approval from the ISS partners, who so far have only endorsed operations through 2024, as well as Congress, which has formally authorized station operations through 2024 but has, on several occasions, included legislative language in various bills to extend that authorization to 2030.
NASA, though, has struggled to win support from Congress for that strategy where it really counts: funding. NASA asked for $150 million for commercial LEO development in its fiscal year 2020 and 2021 spending bills, but got only $15 million and $17 million, respectively. In its 2022 request, NASA sought a smaller amount, $101.1 million. A House bill would provide a little less than half that amount, while a Senate bill released last month would, for the first time, fully fund the program.
“After several years, NASA has finally provided the Committee with a rationale for this funding and a roadmap that seeks to ensure continued NASA access to LEO on new, commercial, free-flying platforms,” Senate appropriators said in the report accompanying the bill.
But that amount isn’t enough in the opinion of advocates of commercial space stations. “It is still not enough,” former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said at a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee’s space subcommittee October 21, at almost the same time Nanoracks and Lockheed were announcing Starlab. “The Senate should absolutely declare that NASA needs to tell it when is the objective to have that new station, and the Senate needs to fund the requirements to achieve that.”
In his written testimony, Bridenstine argued that NASA’s commercial LEO development efforts should get at least $2 billion a year. “If Congress does this, capital markets and entrepreneurs will respond in a way that establishes America as preeminent in LEO human spaceflight at a cost significantly less than the ISS,” he wrote. (Bridenstine, among is various post-NASA roles, chairs the advisory board for Voyager Space Holdings.)
Also at the hearing was Mary Lynne Dittmar, executive vice president for government affairs at Axiom Space. “That $101 million that Jim is talking about, when you look at how NASA is planning to allocate it, does not meet the commitment to Axiom for 2022,” she said, referring to its $140 million award to allow Axiom to dock a commercial module to the ISS. “The work that needs to go to the space station side of it, for the station to do the analysis that’s needed to ensure that Axiom can reach orbit and dock by 2024, is not funded completely in that amount.”
“I think we need to be thoughtful about all this, and not just think that, whatever we’re doing today, we’re going to do more of that,” Melroy said. “It’s more about, if we started over again, what do we want to do?”
The witnesses at the hearing also called for a new NASA authorization bill that would, among other attributes, include that extension of the ISS to 2030 and perhaps other support for LEO commercialization. Doing so would avoid a gap in US space station access that they argued China, with its new space station, would be eager to take advantage of.
“What we need is to demonstrate a bipartisan commitment to preventing an American gap in LEO,” said Mike Gold, executive vice president for civil space and external affairs at Redwire, at the Orbital Reef briefing. “There’s simply no better way to send that message, both domestically and internationally, than in a bipartisan authorization bill.”
Companies also said at the hearing they need more details from NASA about its requirements for post-ISS microgravity research, to aid them both in the technical designs of their stations as well as their business cases. “NASA has yet to clearly define its needs for services after the ISS ends, nor does it plan to do so for some time,” Dittmar said.
In an interview at the IAC last week, NASA deputy administrator Pam Melroy acknowledged that NASA needs to provide more information about its requirements for research and development of exploration technologies, like closed-loop life support systems, that could be done on commercial stations after the ISS is retired.
“It’s clear to me that we’re going to have microgravity research for a while, and our requirements should be shaped by that,” she said. One option she mentioned was a study or workshop by the National Academies to bring together potential users and determine their needs. “We need to talk with our international partners about what their requirements are and what’s the framework for cooperation in that kind of environment.”
“I think we need to be thoughtful about all this, and not just think that, whatever we’re doing today, we’re going to do more of that,” she added. “It’s more about, if we started over again, what do we want to do?”
To achieve the goal of one or more stations by the end of the decade, though, the time for starting over, and starting in earnest, is now.
Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.
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Starship could enable new business opportunities for SpaceX that could cause its valuation of $100 billion today to grow to $1 trillion or more. (credit: SpaceX)
Nanoracks, Voyager Space, and Lockheed Martin are cooperating on a commercial space station called Starlab that could be operational as soon as 2027. (credit: Nanoracks)
Orbital Reef is designed to be “infinitely scalable” by adding more core modules and power systems, allowing additional habitation and lab modules to be installed. (credit: Blue Origin)
jacksmars 