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Weekly Report/ Space Science Nations race to tap moon resources
04/20/2007
BY TATSURO HOSHINA THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
Humans are about to journey again to the moon, the only celestial body outside Earth that has seen human footsteps. Japan, the United States, China and India plan to send probes to orbit the moon by 2008. They share the common mission of surveying the moon's resources.
The missions are not only possible precursors to building a lunar base, they may also signal the beginning of a race to tap resources on the moon with the potential to be huge sources of energy.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to launch satellites to orbit the moon in a project called Selene, after the moon goddess in Greek mythology who rides a chariot pulled by a pair of horses through the sky. The agency explains that the Selene moon observation project is one of the largest and most accurate to probe the moon since the Apollo program run by the United States.
The main satellite will be launched this summer from Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture and will attain a moon orbit at an altitude of 100 kilometers. The satellite weighs about 3 tons and is equivalent in size to a minibus. It is the largest vehicle among probes to be launched by the four countries by the end of 2008, and its development costs have reached about 55 billion yen.
The satellite will contain 14 kinds of observation devices to thoroughly survey the moon's surface, and scan beneath it, over the course of a year.
"The Apollo project was a mission in which the main focus was how to safely send people to the surface of the moon as seen from Earth," said Shinichi Sobue, head of the JAXA Selene project development team. "Moon science is full of unknown territory."
In addition to the distribution of elements and geographical formations, Selene will study the gravitational field to examine underground structures and the distribution of iron and other heavy metals in detail. These data will not only be used to examine the yet unknown origin of the moon, but will also provide clues to find out what sorts of resources valuable to humans are buried there, and in what quantities.
Japan plans to establish a moon base in the near future, and in 2004, U.S. President George W. Bush announced the resumption of manned expeditions to the moon. The concept appears to have gained traction after a 1998 observation mission by the Lunar Prospector spacecraft from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States estimated that 6 billion tons of ice is trapped at the moon's two poles.
Water is essential to human life, and it would cost several tens of trillions of dollars just to transport that much water to the moon. In other words, a resource valued far over several tens of trillions of dollars may be there for the taking, and its existence must be confirmed before anything else is done.
Materials to construct lunar bases could eventually be procured locally by processing natural resources found on the moon. Hiroshi Kanamori of the space and robot system group at construction firm Shimizu Corp.'s Institute of Technology explains that cement can be made with lunar sand called regolith, and iron and titanium can be extracted simultaneously in a reduction process using an oxide mineral called ilmenite to make oxygen. Such construction-technology ideas have already been established, and "NASA would be able to build a base by 2030 where people can live for years," Kanamori said.
Even if people wanted to leap further into deep space, unless we first learn to make the most of lunar resources, such an ambition would be out of our depth.
While Japanese and Indian probes will be devoted to observation and the United States considers the construction of a lunar base as a step toward a manned expedition to Mars, China openly says that its lunar expedition goal is to boost national prestige as well as to gain access to the resources.
China successfully launched and retrieved the manned spaceship Shenzhou 5 in 2003, and by the end of this year the country plans to launch a lunar probe called the Chang'e 1, named after a legendary Chinese goddess who flew to the moon.
As part of the Chang'e program, a Chang'e 2 probe is planned to include a lunar rover that will land on the moon, and a Chang'e 3 vehicle will bring soil samples from the moon's surface back to Earth. China has ambitious plans to send astronauts in manned spacecraft to land on the moon by 2025 at the latest.
An official at the Chinese Academy of Sciences excitedly talked about helium-3 on the moon that can be used for nuclear fusion. The researcher said that the moon can be a source of storing resources for Earth.
The rare isotope helium-3 makes up only one-millionth of all the helium on Earth and it is produced by the nuclear fusion that fires the Sun. It is believed to travel on "solar wind"--a flow of particles released from the sun's corona--that reaches the moon and is absorbed in sand on its surface because it has no atmosphere.
Helium-3 can be retrieved if sand is heat-treated, and if it can be collected from all over the moon, it is believed that it could potentially supply energy equivalent to the world's consumption for several thousands of years. China is suspected to be drawing up a grand resource development plan that will attempt to "import" helium-3 from the moon for nuclear-fusion power generation.
However, to execute such a plan, there are mountains of challenges ahead.
According to professor Yuichi Ogawa, director at the University of Tokyo High Temperature Plasma Center, nuclear fusion using helium-3 and deuterium would achieve an ideal "advanced nuclear fusion" with dramatically reduced radioactive materials compared to nuclear fusion reactions using deuterium and tritium that are currently being studied as cutting-edge technology.
However, a reaction is not easy to attain without achieving high temperatures of over 1 billion degrees, so Ogawa explains that the road is long before attaining practical applications.
"Nuclear fusion using helium-3 from the lunar surface was proposed in the 1980s in the United States, as if stressing the accomplishments of the Apollo program," Ogawa said. "While it is worthwhile in terms of academic studies at this point, it is still at the stage of basic research."
When looking closely at China's proposed program, one can discern a hint of propaganda in which Beijing is dangling "practical benefits" to convince its public about the need for a hasty aerospace exploration program competing with the United States. FACT FILE: Who owns the moon?
International conventions govern the basic principles for surveying the moon and the planets.
One of them is the Moon Treaty, which stipulates the moon and its natural resources are the common heritage of all mankind and denies ownership by any country, organization or individual, and outlaws military uses.
However, since the treaty came into effect in 1984, almost no countries involved in space exploration, including Japan, have ratified it. The provisions have been mostly in name only.(IHT/Asahi: April 20,2007)
Quoted from www.asahi.com/english
04/20/2007
BY TATSURO HOSHINA THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
Humans are about to journey again to the moon, the only celestial body outside Earth that has seen human footsteps. Japan, the United States, China and India plan to send probes to orbit the moon by 2008. They share the common mission of surveying the moon's resources.
The missions are not only possible precursors to building a lunar base, they may also signal the beginning of a race to tap resources on the moon with the potential to be huge sources of energy.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to launch satellites to orbit the moon in a project called Selene, after the moon goddess in Greek mythology who rides a chariot pulled by a pair of horses through the sky. The agency explains that the Selene moon observation project is one of the largest and most accurate to probe the moon since the Apollo program run by the United States.
The main satellite will be launched this summer from Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture and will attain a moon orbit at an altitude of 100 kilometers. The satellite weighs about 3 tons and is equivalent in size to a minibus. It is the largest vehicle among probes to be launched by the four countries by the end of 2008, and its development costs have reached about 55 billion yen.
The satellite will contain 14 kinds of observation devices to thoroughly survey the moon's surface, and scan beneath it, over the course of a year.
"The Apollo project was a mission in which the main focus was how to safely send people to the surface of the moon as seen from Earth," said Shinichi Sobue, head of the JAXA Selene project development team. "Moon science is full of unknown territory."
In addition to the distribution of elements and geographical formations, Selene will study the gravitational field to examine underground structures and the distribution of iron and other heavy metals in detail. These data will not only be used to examine the yet unknown origin of the moon, but will also provide clues to find out what sorts of resources valuable to humans are buried there, and in what quantities.
Japan plans to establish a moon base in the near future, and in 2004, U.S. President George W. Bush announced the resumption of manned expeditions to the moon. The concept appears to have gained traction after a 1998 observation mission by the Lunar Prospector spacecraft from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States estimated that 6 billion tons of ice is trapped at the moon's two poles.
Water is essential to human life, and it would cost several tens of trillions of dollars just to transport that much water to the moon. In other words, a resource valued far over several tens of trillions of dollars may be there for the taking, and its existence must be confirmed before anything else is done.
Materials to construct lunar bases could eventually be procured locally by processing natural resources found on the moon. Hiroshi Kanamori of the space and robot system group at construction firm Shimizu Corp.'s Institute of Technology explains that cement can be made with lunar sand called regolith, and iron and titanium can be extracted simultaneously in a reduction process using an oxide mineral called ilmenite to make oxygen. Such construction-technology ideas have already been established, and "NASA would be able to build a base by 2030 where people can live for years," Kanamori said.
Even if people wanted to leap further into deep space, unless we first learn to make the most of lunar resources, such an ambition would be out of our depth.
While Japanese and Indian probes will be devoted to observation and the United States considers the construction of a lunar base as a step toward a manned expedition to Mars, China openly says that its lunar expedition goal is to boost national prestige as well as to gain access to the resources.
China successfully launched and retrieved the manned spaceship Shenzhou 5 in 2003, and by the end of this year the country plans to launch a lunar probe called the Chang'e 1, named after a legendary Chinese goddess who flew to the moon.
As part of the Chang'e program, a Chang'e 2 probe is planned to include a lunar rover that will land on the moon, and a Chang'e 3 vehicle will bring soil samples from the moon's surface back to Earth. China has ambitious plans to send astronauts in manned spacecraft to land on the moon by 2025 at the latest.
An official at the Chinese Academy of Sciences excitedly talked about helium-3 on the moon that can be used for nuclear fusion. The researcher said that the moon can be a source of storing resources for Earth.
The rare isotope helium-3 makes up only one-millionth of all the helium on Earth and it is produced by the nuclear fusion that fires the Sun. It is believed to travel on "solar wind"--a flow of particles released from the sun's corona--that reaches the moon and is absorbed in sand on its surface because it has no atmosphere.
Helium-3 can be retrieved if sand is heat-treated, and if it can be collected from all over the moon, it is believed that it could potentially supply energy equivalent to the world's consumption for several thousands of years. China is suspected to be drawing up a grand resource development plan that will attempt to "import" helium-3 from the moon for nuclear-fusion power generation.
However, to execute such a plan, there are mountains of challenges ahead.
According to professor Yuichi Ogawa, director at the University of Tokyo High Temperature Plasma Center, nuclear fusion using helium-3 and deuterium would achieve an ideal "advanced nuclear fusion" with dramatically reduced radioactive materials compared to nuclear fusion reactions using deuterium and tritium that are currently being studied as cutting-edge technology.
However, a reaction is not easy to attain without achieving high temperatures of over 1 billion degrees, so Ogawa explains that the road is long before attaining practical applications.
"Nuclear fusion using helium-3 from the lunar surface was proposed in the 1980s in the United States, as if stressing the accomplishments of the Apollo program," Ogawa said. "While it is worthwhile in terms of academic studies at this point, it is still at the stage of basic research."
When looking closely at China's proposed program, one can discern a hint of propaganda in which Beijing is dangling "practical benefits" to convince its public about the need for a hasty aerospace exploration program competing with the United States. FACT FILE: Who owns the moon?
International conventions govern the basic principles for surveying the moon and the planets.
One of them is the Moon Treaty, which stipulates the moon and its natural resources are the common heritage of all mankind and denies ownership by any country, organization or individual, and outlaws military uses.
However, since the treaty came into effect in 1984, almost no countries involved in space exploration, including Japan, have ratified it. The provisions have been mostly in name only.(IHT/Asahi: April 20,2007)
Quoted from www.asahi.com/english
