THE AVION
B2 Industry
NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services Jaclyn Wiley Editor-in-Chief NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine stated that one of the development goals of the NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) missions would be speed, in a briefing at NASA Headquarters on Feb. 14. To that end, NASA aims to land the first CLPS mission on the Moon in late 2019, despite the delays that the program encountered from the month-long partial government shutdown. NASA has not announced any of the payloads or scientific incidents that will fly on the CLPS missions, though Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science, stated that “If we have a ride in late 2019, we will have instruments in late 2019.” The announcement of the payloads is scheduled for the week of Feb. 18 and will include NASA-developed science and development payloads. Payloads that were developed outside of NASA are also being sought. The CLPS program is designed to
help NASA return human beings to the Moon and establish a permanent presence there. Unlike traditional NASA development programs, the CLPS program is a public-private partnership (PPP), in which NASA partners with companies to develop new spacecraft or technologies. The nine partner companies were decided in November 2018, and include traditional aerospace companies, like Lockheed Martin, and smaller start-ups, like Moon Express or Masten Space Systems. The CLPS program is a part of the NASA Moon to Mars exploration campaign. The Moon to Mars exploration campaign has four primary goals: to transition low-Earth orbit operations to the commercial sector, to enable long-term human activities in lunar orbit, to facilitate long-term exploration of Mars by robotic craft, and to explore the Moon as a means of preparation for human missions to Mars and more in-depth space missions. Under the current exploration campaign, NASA plans to land humans on the Moon again in 2028.
The acceleration in the CLPS program is partially driven by criticism from the National Space Council’s Users’ Advisory Group, which chastised NASA for lacking a sense of urgency in its lunar exploration plans. NASA created the Moon to Mars exploration campaign after President Trump released Space Policy Directive-1 (SPD-1) in Dec. of 2017, which charged NASA with returning humankind to the Moon. Other elements of the Moon to Mars exploration campaign include robotic missions to the surface of the Moon and Mars and the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway. NASA has utilized PPPs for development programs in the past. One such program, the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS), has successfully launched 14 missions to the International Space Station. The CRS program was created to help ensure consistent supply deliveries to the ISS from US soil after the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011. Though the Russian Progress and Soyuz capsules could launch materials to the ISS, NASA wanted to add
redundancy with the CRS program. Two separate spacecraft systems were developed by two independent companies, the SpaceX Dragon and the Orbital Sciences (now Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems) Cygnus. Another PPP that is expected to see returns in 2019 is the Commercial Crew Program (CCP). NASA lost the ability to launch human beings to the ISS from US soil in 2011, when the Space Shuttle was removed from service and created the CCP to help regain that capability. The first of the Commercial Crew test flight missions, which will be uncrewed, are expected in the first half of 2019. SpaceX and Boeing are the two CCP partners and are developing the Crew Dragon and CST-100 Starliner systems, respectively. The CLPS program will propel forward the United States’s exploration goals, and help eventually return human beings to the Moon. The CLPS program, though not unprecedented in the aerospace development realm, is still ambitious, and a 2019 launch date even more so.
Opinion: State of the Space Mining Industry
Michael Weinhoffer Senior Reporter
“Space mining” is one of the top buzzwords of the commercial space industry, and it could one day become a unique sector of the global space economy. The goal of prospective space miners is to extract resources from asteroids or the Moon and use them for in-space applications, such as fuel for rockets. Such operations could be quite lucrative, but a few events in the past months have invited a review of the current health of the space mining industry, which is the subject of the discussion below. Four U.S. companies have expressed interest in some degree of space mining: Planetary Resources, Moon Express, Deep Space Industries, and the Shackleton Energy Company. All of them were formed between 2007 and 2012, and Planetary Resources is the only company that has launched any proprietary spacecraft into low Earth orbit. Shackleton and Moon Express are focused on moon mining, while Planetary Resources is after asteroids. Deep Space Industries is taking an indirect approach by first developing satellite systems for Earth-bound satellites, before utilizing those technologies to go out exploring and potentially prospecting. Liquid water, gold, platinum, and helium-3 are just a few of the resources that could be extracted from either the Moon or near-Earth asteroids. And luckily, U.S. law is on the side of these companies. As of November 2015, it is legally permissible for a U.S. citizen to possess, sell, own, transport, and use a space resource after it has been extracted from a planetary surface. Under the U.S. interpretation, this right does not violate any international space laws and is becoming increasingly accepted among the international community. Space mining also
has enormous economic potential, and Earth-based mining could foreseeably be replaced by space mining in the future. Space mining companies have multiple cards in their favor, but no missions have been launched. The reason for this has recently become clearer: unlike other space endeavors (space tourism, reusable launch vehicles), it is the mining technology itself that is keeping these companies on the ground. Space mining involves the collection of rocks and soil from asteroids or the Moon and the transport of them back to Earth’s orbit. It sounds relatively straightforward, but the number of spacecraft that have successfully done this mission is surprisingly limited. The first triumphant robotic return of soil from another planetary body was done by the Soviet Union’s Luna 16 lunar lander in 1970. This was followed by the similar Luna 20 mission in 1972 and Luna 24 in 1976. NASA’s Stardust mission returned microscopic particles from the tail of a comet to Earth in 2006, and Japan’s Hayabusa spacecraft returned the first material from an asteroid in 2010. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx and Japan’s Hayabusa2 are both orbiting new asteroids with the goals of returning new and larger samples to Earth. China is also planning to conduct a lunar sample-return in the near future. The point of this list is to highlight that while there have been successful sample-return missions, the amount of material that has been collected and returned to Earth is minuscule compared to the materials intended to be gathered by space mining companies. It is a big leap from collecting a small amount of soil from an asteroid or the Moon to bringing back containers of it to Earth’s orbit for practical use. This is the primary challenge facing space mining companies today, and it will likely only be lessened by space
agencies first leading the way. The poor state of the space mining industry became clear last year when Planetary Resources announced an auction of its laboratory equipment. The sale never happened, but the company did announce on Oct. 31 that it had been acquired by “blockchain venture production studio” ConsenSys, Inc. Based on this, it seems that any space mining missions planned by Planetary Resources are on indefinite hold. Planetary Resources has made the most headway of any space mining company by developing and launching two CubeSats, so their acquisition is a bad sign for the industry. To make it even worse, on Jan. 2, Deep Space Industries announced that European-based Bradford Space, Inc acquired them. These two acquisitions should be enough for industry stakeholders to take a step back and reexamine the short-term feasibility of space mining. Any private space mining mission launching by the end of the 2020s now seems extremely unlikely, despite widespread public and government support.
However, a beacon of hope recently emerged in the U.S. Congress in the form of a bill introduced in the House of Representatives on February 6th by Representative Scott Tipton of Colorado. The bill text has not been published, but the title of the bill is the “Space Resources Institute Act.” If passed, the bill would direct NASA to conduct a study on establishing a research institute devoted to space resource extraction technology. The bill is supported by the Colorado School of Mines, which recently began offering a college degree program in space mining. Despite the lack of details, this looks like a significant step towards furthering space mining technology development without introducing burdensome regulations. The School of Mines and supporters of this bill also appear to have concluded that mining technology is holding space mining companies back, not legal issues or a lack of investors. A space resource research center could very well reinvigorate the space mining industry, which has certainly seen better days.