![]() Sure, it provides the energy we need for all life on Earth. Lester envisions doing on-orbit telerobotic control of lunar surface telerobots from the Earth-moon L1 as an important near-term activity.If you’ve read enough of our articles, you know I’ve got an uneasy alliance with the Sun. "What’s pretty cool is that such a hab could, with a minimum of propellant, be restationed at Earth-moon L2, offering long-term control on the far side." ![]() "We’re thinking that a hab at Earth-moon L1 could offer long-term control of near-side telerobotics across the hemisphere," Lester said. There is increasing interest within NASA circles to start looking seriously at this approach "to getting human cognition down to exploration sites before human flesh can actually get there," he said. Modern telerobotics are becoming sophisticated enough that real avatarlike operations are getting increasingly realizable, Lester said. "This is where astronauts control surface telerobots from close enough to the exploration site that they can have some cognitive coupling with the activities there," Lester told. "We’re calling it on-orbit telerobotics or, in a more spin-worthy way, exploration telepresence," said Dan Lester, a scientist at the University of Texas in Austin. In the longer term, a low-frequency radio telescope array on the farside could be deployed to probe the "dark ages" of the universe, he said. Lockheed Martin is working on how best to navigate beyond the moon and how Orion’s communications system might be used to control rovers on the lunar farside, Hopkins added.Īstronauts at the L2 point could enhance via teleoperation a sample return mission from the moon’s South Pole-Aitken basin, Hopkins said. "Orion and some of the ISS supply vehicles would be capable of supporting missions in L2 halo orbits with straightforward modifications," Hopkins told. Hopkins said more people are recognizing that there are important lunar exploration objectives on the farside, and that Earth-moon L2 is easier to reach than L1 or low lunar orbit. The firm is building the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, NASA's next-generation spacecraft for manned deep-space exploration. "Interest in a mission to the Earth-moon L2 region is growing at NASA and among international partners,” said Josh Hopkins, space exploration architect at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. Meanwhile, more mainstream planning for exploration concentrated on, for example, a mini-colony at the lunar south pole, he noted. "The handful of us working on concepts and operations for human operations in free space beyond LEO felt for much of the past decade that we were consigned to the wilderness," Thronson said. Thronson also leads the Future In-Space Operations Working Group, which has served as a wellspring of beyond-ISS viewpoints. ![]() "In the current budget environment, we are taking the view that we can resume human space exploration beyond LEO now … with the systems that we have … or continue to wait for the lengthy development of systems that we wish we had," said Harley Thronson, senior scientist for advanced concepts at the Astrophysics Science Division of NASA Goddard’s Science and Exploration Directorate. Other L-point scenarios involve support of lunar surface exploration, but done tele-robotically creation of a refueling site and/or assembly/upgrade of future very large optical systems. Space architects contend that Lagrange point travel could sharpen human skills and technologies for even more challenging manned space sojourns. For comparison, the moon is typically about 238,000 miles (382,900 km) from Earth, and represents the farthest point from Earth humans have ever explored. The closest Earth-sun Lagrange points are L1 (between Earth and the sun) and L2 (behind Earth, as viewed from the sun), which are about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from the planet. There are five Lagrange points in near-Earth space. The Lagrange points are space places where the combined gravitational pull of two large masses roughly balance each other out, allowing spacecraft to essentially "park" there. ![]()
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