NASA Space Technology Roadmaps and Priorities: Restoring NASA's Technological Edge and Paving the Way for a New Era in Space. Overview Authors Steering Committee for NASA Technology Roadmaps; National Research Council of the National Academies.
In-orbit refueling tests begin at International Space Station. On March 9, NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station quietly began learning the space exploration equivalent of how to remove and replace a gas cap.
It's the first in a series of small demonstrations that are intended to have big future consequences, an attempt to learn how to refuel a spacecraft in space instead of on the ground. The experiments have been hotly anticipated in the space community. Resources from space. Planetary Resources set to begin hunt for asteroids to mine in 18-24 months. Some time in the next 18 to 24 months, Planetary Resources, Inc. will launch a series of mass-produced 9" space telescopes, dubbed Arkyd Series 100 spacecraft.
They're specifically designed to identify which of the roughly 8,900 near-Earth asteroids are both smaller than 50 meters and suitable targets for retrieval back to Earth orbit. These small near-Earth asteroids represent a transient population, with life spans in the millions of years, typically cut short by running into a planet or being thrown out of the solar system by Jupiter. The Space Economy: A Modern Day Gold Rush.