NASA has chosen the three companies it will fund to develop a nuclear fission reactor ready to test on the Moon by the end of the decade.

This power plant is set to be a vital component of Artemis, the American space agency's most ambitious human spaceflight mission to date. This is a large-scale project to put the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, and establish a long-term presence on Earth's natural satellite.

NASA envisions [PDF] astronauts living in a lunar base camp, bombing around in rovers, and using it as a launchpad to explore further out into the Solar System. In order for this to happen, it'll need to figure out how to generate a decent amount of power somehow.

Enter fission surface power. A nuclear fission reactor harnesses the energy released from splitting apart atoms like uranium. Unlike solar panels, fission reactors can provide constant power and can be placed in dark cool corners of the lunar surface that receive little to no sunlight. NASA believes it will need 40 kilowatts of power for the first lunar inhabitants. Last year, the agency, with the US government's Dept of Energy, invited companies to send in proposals of how to build such a system.

"Plentiful energy will be key to future space exploration," Jim Reuter, associate administrator for NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, said at the time. "I expect fission surface power systems to greatly benefit our plans for power architectures for the Moon and Mars and even drive innovation for uses here on Earth."

Now, NASA and Dept of Energy officials have selected three of the best ideas. Projects led by aerospace and energy companies Lockheed Martin, Westinghouse of Cranberry Township, and IX, a joint venture between Intuitive Machines and X-Energy, have each been awarded $5 million over twelve months to build prototype designs for the future power source in a competition overseen by the Idaho National Laboratory.

"The Fission Surface Power project is a very achievable first step toward the United States establishing nuclear power on the Moon," said INL Director John Wagner. "I look forward to seeing what each of these teams will accomplish."

The first phase of the contract will focus on providing NASA with more information on how to build a "full flight-certified fission power system," which could be safely launched to the Moon for testing by 2030. The finished design should be capable of power generation for ten years.

NASA is also funding other initiatives aimed at helping future astronauts survive more than 200,000 miles away from Earth. Humans will need sustenance, and a means of communication with folks back home. 

Scientists at the University of Florida were able to grow tiny Arabidopsis thaliana plants, an edible weed related to mustard greens, and other vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts, in Moon soil for the first time. The dirt was collected during the Apollo 11, 12, and 17 missions. However, the plants were weaker and smaller than ones grown in Earth soil. NASA is also launching two instruments to drill and study ice cores beneath the lunar surface to hunt for water as part of its PRIME-1 mission expected to launch next year. 

Meanwhile, Nokia has been given $14.1 million and tasked with building a 4G Moon communications network. The system should be designed to support enough bandwidth that the future space explorers should be able to transmit data, control lunar rovers remotely, and stream videos in high definition. ®

NASA engineers had to work fast to avoid another leak affecting the latest Artemis dry run, just hours after an attempt to reboost the International Space Station (ISS) via the Cygnus freighter was aborted following a few short seconds.

The US space agency on Monday rolled the huge Artemis I stack back to its Florida launchpad having worked through the leaks and problems that had beset its previous attempt at fueling the beast in April for an earlier dress rehearsal of the final countdown.

As propellant was loaded into the rocket, controllers noted a hydrogen leak in the quick-disconnect that attaches an umbilical from the tail service mast on the mobile launcher to the core stage of the rocket.

NASA is finally ready to launch its unmanned Orion spacecraft and put it in the orbit of the Moon. Lift-off from Earth is now expected in late August using a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

This launch, a mission dubbed Artemis I, will be a vital stage in the Artemis series, which has the long-term goal of ferrying humans to the lunar surface using Orion capsules and SLS technology.

Earlier this week NASA held a wet dress rehearsal (WDR) for the SLS vehicle – fueling it and getting within 10 seconds of launch. The test uncovered 13 problems, including a hydrogen fuel leak in the main booster, though NASA has declared that everything's fine for a launch next month.

Over recent years, Uncle Sam has loosened its tight-lipped if not dismissive stance on UFOs, or "unidentified aerial phenomena", lest anyone think we're talking about aliens. Now, NASA is the latest body to get in on the act.

In a statement released June 9, the space agency announced it would be commissioning a study team, starting work in the fall, to examine unidentified aerial phenomena or UAPs, which it defined as "observations of events in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena."

NASA emphasized that the study would be from a "scientific perspective" – because "that's what we do" – and focus on "identifying available data, how best to collect future data, and how NASA can use that data to move the scientific understanding of UAPs forward."

The SOFIA aircraft has returned to New Zealand for a final time ahead of the mission's conclusion later this year.

The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) is a modified Boeing 747SP aircraft, designed to carry a 2.7-meter reflecting telescope into the stratosphere, above much of Earth's infrared-blocking atmosphere.

A collaboration between NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), development began on the project in 1996. SOFIA saw first light in 2010 and achieved full operational capability in 2014. Its prime mission was completed in 2019 and earlier this year, it was decided that SOFIA would be grounded for budgetary reasons. Operations end "no later than" September 30, 2022, followed by an "orderly shutdown."

Pondering what services to switch off to keep your laptop going just that bit longer? NASA engineers can relate, having decided the Mars InSight lander will go out on a high: they plan to burn through the remaining power to keep the science flowing until the bitter end.

The InSight lander is in a precarious position regarding power. A build-up of dust has meant the spacecraft's solar panels are no longer generating anywhere near enough power to keep the batteries charged. The result is an automatic shutdown of the payload, although there is a chance InSight might still be able to keep communicating until the end of the year.

Almost all of InSight's instruments have already been powered down, but the seismometer remains active and able to detect seismic activity on Mars (such as Marsquakes.) The seismometer was expected to be active until the end of June, at which point it too would be shut-down in order to eke out the lander's dwindling supply of power just a little longer.

The James Webb Space Telescope has barely had a chance to get to work, and it's already taken a micrometeoroid to its sensitive primary mirror.

The NASA-built space observatory reached its final destination, the L2 orbit, a million miles away from Earth, at the end of January.

In a statement, NASA said the impact happened some time at the end of May. Despite the impact being larger than any that NASA modeled and "beyond what the team could have tested on the ground," the space agency said the telescope continues to perform at higher-than-expected levels. The telescope has been hit on four previous occasions since launch.

The first of NASA's TROPICS constellation launches came to an unscheduled end over the weekend as the Astra launch vehicle it was riding failed to deliver the cubesats to orbit.

It was all going so well. The two cubesats lifted off atop an Astra Rocket 3 from Space Launch Complex 46 at approximately 1343 EDT on June 12, 2022.

The initial flight seemed go swimmingly, but things went wrong after the first stage had completed. Viewers of video streaming live from the rocket saw what appeared to be the start of some tumbling before the feed was abruptly cut off. NASA's California-based commercial rocket-making partner Astra confirmed that the upper stage had shut down early, dooming the payload to a considerably earlier than planned rendezvous with Earth.

The former director of the University of Arkansas’ High Density Electronics Center, a research facility that specialises in electronic packaging and multichip technology, has been jailed for a year for failing to disclose Chinese patents for his inventions.

Professor Simon Saw-Teong Ang was in 2020 indicted for wire fraud and passport fraud, with the charges arising from what the US Department of Justice described as a failure to disclose “ties to companies and institutions in China” to the University of Arkansas or to the US government agencies for which the High Density Electronics Center conducted research under contract.

At the time of the indictment, then assistant attorney general for national security John C. Demers described Ang’s actions as “a hallmark of the China’s targeting of research and academic collaborations within the United States in order to obtain U.S. technology illegally.” The DoJ statement about the indictment said Ang’s actions had negatively impacted NASA and the US Air Force.

The Mars Ingenuity helicopter is in need of a patch to work around a failed sensor before another flight can be attempted.

The helicopter's inclinometer failed during a recommissioning effort ahead of the 29th flight. The sensor is critical as it will reposition the craft nearer to the Perseverance rover for communication purposes.

Although not required during flight, the inclinometer (which consists of two accelerometers) is used to measure gravity prior to spin-up and takeoff. "The direction of the sensed gravity is used to determine how Ingenuity is oriented relative to the downward direction," said Håvard Grip, Ingenuity Mars Helicopter chief pilot.

Updated Mini nuclear reactors that are supposed to usher in an era of cheaper and safer nuclear power may generate up to 35 times more waste to produce the same amount of power as a regular plant, according to a study.

A team of researchers at Stanford University and the University of British Columbia came to this conclusion after studying a design from each of three small modular reactor (SMR) manufacturers: NuScale Power, Toshiba, and Terrestrial Energy.

The study, published this week, found that not only did those particular SMR approaches generate five times the spent nuclear fuel (SNF), 30 times the long-lived equivalent waste, and 35 times the low and intermediate-level waste (LILW), their waste is also more reactive, therefore more dangerous and consequently harder to dispose of.

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