Winston
Lorenzo von Matterhorn
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Finding Alien Life May Require Giant Telescopes Built in Orbit
Influential astrophysicists, roboticists and astronauts say that orbital construction could spark a renaissance in space science and exploration
December 12, 2018
https://www.scientificamerican.com/...-may-require-giant-telescopes-built-in-orbit/
In some respects, building and repairing spacecraft in space is a revolution that has already arrived, merely kept under the radar by a near-flawless track record that makes it seem deceptively routine. Two of NASA’s pinnacle projects—the International Space Station (ISS) and the Hubble Space Telescope—owe their existence to orbital construction work. Assembled and resupplied in orbit over two decades, the ISS is now roughly as big as a football field and has more living space than a standard six-bedroom house. And only space-based repairs allowed Hubble to become the world’s most iconic and successful telescope, after a space shuttle crew on a first-of-its-kind servicing mission in 1993 fixed a crippling defect in the observatory’s primary mirror. Astronauts have since conducted four more Hubble servicing missions, replacing equipment and upgrading instruments to leave behind an observatory reborn.
Today multiple projects are carrying the momentum forward from those pioneering efforts, cultivating powerful new capabilities. Already NASA and the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as well as private-sector companies such as Northrop Grumman and Space Systems Loral (SSL) are building robotic spacecraft for launch in the next few years on lengthy missions to refuel, repair, re-position and upgrade governmental and commercial satellites. Those spacecraft—or at least the technologies they demonstrate—could also be used to assemble telescopes and other large structures in space such as those associated with NASA’s perennial planning for human missions to the moon and Mars. Last year—under the auspices of a “partnership forum” between NASA, the U.S. Air Force and National Reconnaissance Office—the space agency took the lead on crafting a national strategy for further public and private development of in-space assembly in the 2020s and beyond.
The fundamental reality behind the push for in-space assembly is easy to understand: Anything going to space must fit within the rocket taking it there. Even the very biggest—the mammoth 10-meter rocket fairing of NASA’s still-in-development Space Launch System (SLS)—would be unable to hold something like the ISS or even the space agency’s smaller “Gateway,” a moon-orbiting space station proposed for the 2020s. Launching such megaprojects piece by piece, for orbital assembly by astronauts or robots, is literally the only way to get them off the ground. And coincidentally, even though massive “heavy lift” rockets such as the SLS remain ruinously expensive, the midsize rockets that could support orbital assembly with multiple launches are getting cheaper all the time.
The Case for In-Space Assembly of Telescopes to Advance Exoplanet Science
A Whitepaper in support of the Exoplanet Science Strategy
https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/internal_resources/839/
3.1 Robotics: The last decade has seen a revolution in the field of robotics with significant investments made by NASA, the Department of Defense, the commercial sector, and academic institutions worldwide[14-15]. Consider the following examples.
Robots on Mars: The Mars Rovers[5-6] and the Phoenix Lander[16] are a huge success story for semi-autonomous robotic systems developed and deployed by NASA. For more than a decade, the rovers have travelled dozens of miles on the surface of Mars, taken revealing images of the Martian landscape, drilled into scientifically interesting rocks, and taken geological samples that have enabled breakthrough science. The supervised autonomous robotic capabilities demonstrated by these missions have grown with every mission. While these are examples of planetary surface exploration, the core algorithms and robotic autonomy developed for these systems are cross-cutting and applicable to robotic assembly of telescopes and other assets (see [17] as e.g. of applying these to robotically assemble a 3m back plane truss from modular elements).
Robotic Servicing Missions: DARPA, NASA and commercial contractors have demonstrated rendezvous, docking and servicing of avionics on the Orbital Express Mission[12,18], including a robotic arm and autonomous operations. DARPA’s Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) mission[19] is developing technologies for in-space servicing. This includes close inspection of a spacecraft, rendezvous and berthing, robotic manipulation for anomaly resolution (e.g., failed deployment) on the spacecraft being serviced, and the attachment of an external payload on the spacecraft. RSGS is developing a sophisticated robotic payload consisting of force-torque sensors equipped on two seven-DOF arms(Front-end Robotics Enabling Near-Term Demonstration arms[20-21]), a perception sensor suite (LIDAR and cameras), a tool change-out mechanism, different robot end-effector tools, and an ability to berth secondary payloads. NASA’s Restore-L mission[22-23] is developing technologies to refuel Landsat-7[24] in LEO using a servicer analogous to the RSGS servicer. Restore-L is developing tools for refueling spacecraft and relevant robotic and sensing capabilities for in-space servicing. The technologies being matured by these missions pave the way for future ISA missions.
Influential astrophysicists, roboticists and astronauts say that orbital construction could spark a renaissance in space science and exploration
December 12, 2018
https://www.scientificamerican.com/...-may-require-giant-telescopes-built-in-orbit/
In some respects, building and repairing spacecraft in space is a revolution that has already arrived, merely kept under the radar by a near-flawless track record that makes it seem deceptively routine. Two of NASA’s pinnacle projects—the International Space Station (ISS) and the Hubble Space Telescope—owe their existence to orbital construction work. Assembled and resupplied in orbit over two decades, the ISS is now roughly as big as a football field and has more living space than a standard six-bedroom house. And only space-based repairs allowed Hubble to become the world’s most iconic and successful telescope, after a space shuttle crew on a first-of-its-kind servicing mission in 1993 fixed a crippling defect in the observatory’s primary mirror. Astronauts have since conducted four more Hubble servicing missions, replacing equipment and upgrading instruments to leave behind an observatory reborn.
Today multiple projects are carrying the momentum forward from those pioneering efforts, cultivating powerful new capabilities. Already NASA and the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as well as private-sector companies such as Northrop Grumman and Space Systems Loral (SSL) are building robotic spacecraft for launch in the next few years on lengthy missions to refuel, repair, re-position and upgrade governmental and commercial satellites. Those spacecraft—or at least the technologies they demonstrate—could also be used to assemble telescopes and other large structures in space such as those associated with NASA’s perennial planning for human missions to the moon and Mars. Last year—under the auspices of a “partnership forum” between NASA, the U.S. Air Force and National Reconnaissance Office—the space agency took the lead on crafting a national strategy for further public and private development of in-space assembly in the 2020s and beyond.
The fundamental reality behind the push for in-space assembly is easy to understand: Anything going to space must fit within the rocket taking it there. Even the very biggest—the mammoth 10-meter rocket fairing of NASA’s still-in-development Space Launch System (SLS)—would be unable to hold something like the ISS or even the space agency’s smaller “Gateway,” a moon-orbiting space station proposed for the 2020s. Launching such megaprojects piece by piece, for orbital assembly by astronauts or robots, is literally the only way to get them off the ground. And coincidentally, even though massive “heavy lift” rockets such as the SLS remain ruinously expensive, the midsize rockets that could support orbital assembly with multiple launches are getting cheaper all the time.
The Case for In-Space Assembly of Telescopes to Advance Exoplanet Science
A Whitepaper in support of the Exoplanet Science Strategy
https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/internal_resources/839/
3.1 Robotics: The last decade has seen a revolution in the field of robotics with significant investments made by NASA, the Department of Defense, the commercial sector, and academic institutions worldwide[14-15]. Consider the following examples.
Robots on Mars: The Mars Rovers[5-6] and the Phoenix Lander[16] are a huge success story for semi-autonomous robotic systems developed and deployed by NASA. For more than a decade, the rovers have travelled dozens of miles on the surface of Mars, taken revealing images of the Martian landscape, drilled into scientifically interesting rocks, and taken geological samples that have enabled breakthrough science. The supervised autonomous robotic capabilities demonstrated by these missions have grown with every mission. While these are examples of planetary surface exploration, the core algorithms and robotic autonomy developed for these systems are cross-cutting and applicable to robotic assembly of telescopes and other assets (see [17] as e.g. of applying these to robotically assemble a 3m back plane truss from modular elements).
Robotic Servicing Missions: DARPA, NASA and commercial contractors have demonstrated rendezvous, docking and servicing of avionics on the Orbital Express Mission[12,18], including a robotic arm and autonomous operations. DARPA’s Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) mission[19] is developing technologies for in-space servicing. This includes close inspection of a spacecraft, rendezvous and berthing, robotic manipulation for anomaly resolution (e.g., failed deployment) on the spacecraft being serviced, and the attachment of an external payload on the spacecraft. RSGS is developing a sophisticated robotic payload consisting of force-torque sensors equipped on two seven-DOF arms(Front-end Robotics Enabling Near-Term Demonstration arms[20-21]), a perception sensor suite (LIDAR and cameras), a tool change-out mechanism, different robot end-effector tools, and an ability to berth secondary payloads. NASA’s Restore-L mission[22-23] is developing technologies to refuel Landsat-7[24] in LEO using a servicer analogous to the RSGS servicer. Restore-L is developing tools for refueling spacecraft and relevant robotic and sensing capabilities for in-space servicing. The technologies being matured by these missions pave the way for future ISA missions.
