NASA’s High Performance Spaceflight Computing project aims to dramatically improve the computing power of spacecraft. Missions need processors that can withstand the harsh space environment, so they use chips developed years ago that are hardy and reliable. But upgraded chips are needed to enable the development of autonomous spacecraft, accelerate the rate of scientific discovery […]
Category: Game Changing Development Program
NASA, Industry Advance High Performance Spaceflight Computing
For decades, NASA has advanced on-board spacecraft computer processors that coordinate and execute the functions needed to support mission success. Space computing originated in the 1960s with the Apollo Guidance Computers, which were pivotal for guidance, navigation, and control computations during NASA’s first Moon missions. For decades, radiation-hardened processors have been the backbone of the […]
NASA, Industry Advance High Performance Spaceflight Computing
For decades, NASA has advanced on-board spacecraft computer processors that coordinate and execute the functions needed to support mission success. Space computing originated in the 1960s with the Apollo Guidance Computers, which were pivotal for guidance, navigation, and control computations during NASA’s first Moon missions. For decades, radiation-hardened processors have been the backbone of the […]
NASA Fuel Cell Tests Pave Way for Energy Storage on Moon
With a small blue crane, four researchers hoist a cylindrical fuel cell, which looks like a stack of flattened silver and gold soda cans bundled together, into the air and lower it into a rectangular cart on wheels. A tangle of tubes and wires spiral away from the system, where nearly 270 sensors and 1,000 […]
NASA Fosters Development of Lunar Resource-Seeking Technologies
To support long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars, NASA and industry are developing technologies that can extract resources such as hydrogen and helium-3 from lunar soil, known as regolith. This capability, known as in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), allows explorers to use what is already available on other planetary bodies, from water ice to minerals. […]
NASA Kennedy Digs Latest Robot Test
NASA’s RASSOR (Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot) undergoes testing to extract simulated regolith, or the loose, fragmental material on the Moon’s surface, inside of the Granular Mechanics and Regolith Operations Lab at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 27. Ben Burdess, mechanical engineer at NASA Kennedy, observes RASSOR’s counterrotating drums digging […]
NASA Langley Uses Height, Gravity to Test Long, Flexible Booms
Researchers at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, have developed a technique to test long, flexible, composite booms for use in space in such a way that gravity helps, rather than hinders, the process. During a recent test campaign inside a 100-foot tower at a NASA Langley lab, researchers suspended a 94-foot triangular, rollable, […]
Top Prize Awarded in Lunar Autonomy Challenge to Virtually Map Moon’s Surface
NASA named Stanford University of California winner of the Lunar Autonomy Challenge, a six-month competition for U.S. college and university student teams to virtually map and explore using a digital twin of NASA’s In-Situ Resource Utilization Pilot Excavator (IPEx). The winning team successfully demonstrated the design and functionality of their autonomous agent, or software that performs […]
NASA Kennedy Breathes Life into Moon Soil Testing
As NASA works to establish a long-term presence on the Moon, researchers have reached a breakthrough by extracting oxygen at a commercial scale from simulated lunar soil at Swamp Works at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The achievement moves NASA one step closer to its goal of utilizing resources on the Moon and beyond […]
NASA Moon Observing Instrument to Get Another Shot at Lunar Ops
A NASA-developed technology that recently proved its capabilities in the harsh environment of space will soon head back to the Moon to search for gases trapped under the lunar surface thanks to a new Cooperative Research and Development Agreement between NASA and commercial company Magna Petra Corp. The Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations (MSOLO) successfully […]