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Written by Lucy Thompson, Planetary Geologist at University of New Brunswick Earth planning date: Friday, April 18, 2025 As the APXS operations person today, I was hopeful that we could plan a compositional measurement after brushing one of the bedrock blocks in front of the rover. However, it soon became clear that the rover was not on […]

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Following the successful launch of NASA’s SpaceX 32nd Commercial Resupply Services mission, new scientific experiments and supplies are bound for the International Space Station. The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, carrying approximately 6,700 pounds of cargo to the orbiting laboratory for NASA, lifted off at 4:15 a.m. EDT Monday, on the company’s Falcon 9 rocket from Launch […]

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NASA astronaut Don Pettit returned to Earth Saturday, accompanied by Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, concluding a seven-month science mission aboard the International Space Station. The trio departed the space station at 5:57 p.m. EDT aboard the Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft before making a safe, parachute-assisted landing at 9:20 p.m. (6:20 a.m. on Sunday, […]

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This newly reprocessed image released on April 18, 2025, provides a new view of an enormous, 9.5-light-year-tall pillar of cold gas and dust. Despite its size, it’s just one small piece of the greater Eagle Nebula, also called Messier 16. The Eagle Nebula is one of many nebulae in the Milky Way that are known […]

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Two NASA astronauts will venture outside the International Space Station, conducting U.S. spacewalk 93 on Thursday, May 1, to complete station upgrades. NASA will preview the upcoming spacewalk during a news conference at 2 p.m. EDT on Thursday, April 24, on the agency’s website from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Learn how to watch […]

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ECF 2024 Quadchart Arya.pdf Manan Arya Stanford University This grant will design and develop lightweight, low-cost modular solar reflectors that can be stowed for transport in a compact volume. These reflectors can potentially be used to reflect and concentrate sunlight into a permanently shadowed area of the Moon where it could power photovoltaics. These reflectors […]

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Back to ECF Home Transformational Advanced Energetic Propulsion Power Systems to Enable Small System Operations in Permanently Shadowed Lunar Regions

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ECF 2024 Quadchart Ilic.pdf Ognjen Ilic University of Minnesota This effort will aim to demonstrate the feasibility of directed-energy propulsion through a combination of computational simulations and prototype testing. The project will model the interactions between lightsail material and a laser beam that can be pointed at the sail to propel the spacecraft. The results […]

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ECF 2024 Quadchart Yang.pdf Shuolong Yang University of Chicago This effort will leverage the latest developments in superconductors to build a power transmission cable that can operate in the extreme cold temperatures found on the Moon with very low electrical losses. The team will use novel manufacturing techniques to grow alternating layers of FeSe SrTiO3 […]

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ECF 2024 Quadchart Beik.pdf Omid Beik Colorado School of Mines This project will design a power management and distribution (PMAD) system that can be coupled with a megawatt-scale nuclear power generation system for nuclear electric propulsion (NEP) that is suitable for a Mars mission. The system will include all needed components including a dual rotor […]