July 2019
Developing life support systems for human exploration missions beyond Earth
... vented overboard to be processed with hydrogen from the oxygen generation unit to produce water and methane. The water is recycled and the methane is vented overboard. With this process in place, nearly 50 percent of that oxygen is now being...
January 2020
Small body missions unveil interplanetary secrets
... that it is composed largely of frozen volatiles, such as methane, ammonia and water. What we see today is the remnant...showed that it is composed largely of frozen volatiles, such as methane, ammonia and water. KBOs like Ultima Thule are the building ...
November 2020
The alien hunter’s field manual
... matter into useful organic molecules and gaseous by-products. Detecting methane, for example, on a planet where it is unstable,...but could search for signs of chemical disequilibrium in methane and carbon dioxide. During this decade several gigantic ...
January 2021
Taking out the trash in space
... also seeks to recover water and convert it to a useful commodity, namely methane (CH4) gas, that can be stored and later converted into a fuel.... year and produce between 800 and 1500 kg of methane (CH4) per year. According to the mission architecture...
June 2022
Protecting crews in interplanetary ships and space colonies from the space environment
... living compartments can be effectively protected by multi-metre layers of fuel in the tanks. The low molecular weight of methane and oxygen increases the shielding efficiency. The optimal configuration of the construction for 1000 ships is a sphere...
February 2023
The scientific basis for lunar helium-3 production
..., an increase in temperature by 70C leads to a decrease in the sorption capacity of coal by 10-15 percent - in other words, an increase in the degree of methane recovery from coal matter. The physical reason for this process is the fact that the heat...
