Settlements on non-Earth bodies
SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk on Tuesday outlined an ambition to send humans to Mars with methane-fueled reusable spaceships and the largest rocket ever built, an effort he said will likely require government support and initially cost billions of dollars to develop and test. Musk’s rollout of his Mars colonization vision, a glitzy reveal years [...]
The U.S. Government has made a historic ruling to allow the first private enterprise, Moon Express, Inc. (MoonEx), permission to travel beyond Earth’s orbit and land on the Moon in 2017. This breakthrough U.S. policy decision provides authorization to Moon Express for a maiden flight of its robotic spacecraft onto the Moon’s surface, beginning a [...]
The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, is beginning a two-year test campaign at the International Space Station to prove the innovative habitat’s technology is compatible with the stringent guidelines for human spaceflight. Packed into a depressurized configuration less than 8 feet (2.4 meters) in diameter and 5.7 feet (1.7 meters) long, BEAM will grow [...]
