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Beyond space exploration, the next critical step towards living and working in space requires developing a space economy. One important challenge with this space-economy is ensuring the low-cost transport of raw materials from one…
The implementation of a feasible colony on Mars has been discussed and analyzed for some time. It is noted that Mars offers all necessary in-situ resources to allow for self-sustainability, with the most efficient techniques and systems to…
As humans venture deeper into space, the need for a lunar settlement, housing the first group of settlers, grows steadily. By means of new technologies such as in situ resource utilisation (ISRU) as well as computational design, this goal…
There is growing interest in the possibility that the resource base of the Solar System might in future be used to supplement the economic resources of our own planet. As the Earth's closest celestial neighbour, the Moon is sure to feature…
We propose using the temperature gradients between the Moon's surface and the soil at a certain depth to power an Organic Rankine Cycle that could supply a permanent installation, particularly at night, when solar power is not available.…
Future Moon bases will likely be constructed using resources mined from the surface of the Moon. The difficulty of maintaining a human workforce on the Moon and communications lag with Earth means that mining will need to be conducted using…
In Part I we recount the history of observation and laboratory measurement culminating with the excavation of water from a permanently shadowed region near the lunar South Pole by the impact of the LCROSS mission in 2009. In this…
Understanding the sources of lunar water is crucial for studying the history of lunar evolution, and also the solar wind interaction with the Moon and other airless bodies. Recent observations revealed lunar hydration is very likely a…
Carbon is one of the most essential elements to support a sustained human presence in space, and more immediately, several large-scale methalox-based transport systems will begin operating in the near future. This raises the question of…
The lunar history of water deposition, loss, and transport post-accretion has become an important consideration in relation to the possibility of a human outpost on the Moon. Very recent work has shown that a secondary primordial atmosphere…
Water ice is thought to be trapped in large permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) in the Moon's polar regions, due to their extremely low temperatures. Here, we show that many unmapped cold traps exist on small spatial scales, substantially…
Recent detections of potentially habitable exoplanets around sunlike stars demand increased exploration of the physical conditions that can sustain life, by whatever methods available. Insight into these conditions can be gained by…
A central question surrounding possible human exploration of Mars is whether crewed missions can be supported by available technologies using in situ resources. Here, we show that photovoltaics-based power systems would be adequate and…
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…
Kick-starting the space economy requires identification of critical resources that can lower the cost of space transport, sustain logistic bases and communication relay networks between major nodes in the network. One important challenge…
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…
Establishing a human settlement on Mars is an incredibly complex engineering problem. The inhospitable nature of the Martian environment requires any habitat to be largely self-sustaining. Beyond mining a few basic minerals and water, the…
For centuries some scientists have argued that there is activity on the Moon (or water, as recounted in Parts I & II), while others have thought the Moon is simply a dead, inactive world. The question comes in several forms: is there a…
Exploration is one of the attentive endeavor to mankind and a strategy for evolution. We have been incessantly reconnoitering our planet and universe from Mesopotamian era to modern era. The progression of rocketry and planetary science in…
The aim of my dissertation is to investigate habitability in extra-Solar Systems. Most of the time, only planets are considered as possible places where extraterrestrial life can emerge and evolve, however, their moons could be inhabited,…