Related papers: Concentrated Lunar Resources: Imminent Implication…
The lunar South pole likely contains significant amounts of water in the permanently shadowed craters there. Extracting this water for life support at a lunar base or to make rocket fuel would take large amounts of power, of order…
Issues for transport facilities on the lunar surface related to science, engineering, architecture, and human-factors are discussed. Logistic decisions made in the next decade may be crucial to financial success. In addition to outlining…
To-date, all human economic activity has depended on the resources of a single planet, and it has long been recognized that developments in space exploration could in principle open our closed planetary economy to external resources of…
The observed presence of water molecules in the dayside lunar regolith was an unexpected discovery and remains poorly understood. Standard thermophysical models predict temperatures that are too high for adsorbed water to be stable. We…
The high frequency of satellite launches, particularly over the last few years, has been a subject of significant concern, particularly relating to the future of observational astronomy, the stability of low Earth orbits, and environmental…
The human presence in outer space is undergoing a transition from one in which nation states are the dominant actors to an emerging status quo in which states merely supervise the activities of private entities. Such largely commercial…
The most pragmatic first step in the all-but-inevitable 3rd-millennium V\"olkerwanderung of humanity throughout the Solar System is the establishment of a permanent human presence on the Moon. This research examines: 1. the human,…
The Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOP-Gateway, or simply Gateway) is a crewed platform that will be assembled and operated in the vicinity of the Moon by NASA and international partner organizations, including ESA, starting from the…
Current lunar origin scenarios suggest that Earth's Moon may have resulted from the merger of two (or more) smaller moonlets. Dynamical studies of multiple moons find that these satellite systems are not stable, resulting in moonlet…
The circumplanetary environments in our Solar System host a stunning array of moon and ring systems. Study of these environs has yielded valuable insights into planetary system formation and evolution, and there is every reason to believe…
The lunar surface has been exposed to the space environment for billions of years and during this time has accumulated records of a wide range of astrophysical phenomena. These include solar wind particles and the cosmogenic products of…
This paper shows how the exposure of the Moon to the Earth's plasmasheet is subject to decadal variations due to lunar precession. The latter is a key property of the Moon's apparent orbit around the Earth - the nodes of that orbit precess…
There are many indications that anthropogenic global warming poses a serious threat to our civilization and its ecological support systems. Ideally this problem will be overcome by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Various space-based…
Aims. Particles ejected from the lunar surface via hypervelocity impacts form a torus between the Earth and the Moon. According to our previous study (Yang et al., A\&A, 659, A120), among them about $2.3\times10^{-4}\,\mathrm{kg/s}$…
Several lunar missions are planned ahead and there is an increasing demand for efficient photovoltaic power generation in the moon. The knowledge of solar cell operation in the lunar surface obtained during early seventies need to be…
The discovery of ice deposits in the permanently shadowed craters of the lunar North and South Pole Moon presents an important opportunity for In-Situ Resource Utilization. These ice deposits maybe the source for sustaining a lunar base or…
Characterised by a surface bound exosphere and localised crustal magnetic fields, the Moon was considered as a passive object when solar wind interacts with it. However, the neutral particle and plasma measurements around the Moon by recent…
The frequency and the characteristics of lunar impacting meteorites are reconsidered under the general assumption of belonging to the sporadic meteoroids. We develop the model for evaluating the luminous energy detected in the visual band…
As asteroid mining moves toward reality, the high bar to entering the business may limit participation and increase inequality, reducing or eliminating any benefit gained by marginalized people or developing nations. Consideration of…
A significant opportunity for synergy between pure research and asteroid resource research exists. We provide an overview of the state of the art in asteroid resource utilization, and highlight where we can accelerate the closing of…