Fly Me To The Moon

Going to the Moon is so 1960s I hear you say? Not anymore my friend. Space company Moon Express plan to not only go to the Moon, but mine it whilst they are there. Founded by my university's co-founder Bob Richards of the International Space University (ISU) with entrepreneurs Naveen Jain and Barney Pell, the privately-funded lunar resource company is headquartered in the NASA Ames Research Park, California. It is there, that they are using a unique blend of  the agile Silicon Valley start-up approach with aerospace engineering and planetary sciences expertise to put their plans into action.

Resources of economic value such as Yttrium, Dysprosium, Nyobium that are rare on Earth are what the rovers built by the Moon Express team will look for and extract. By providing people with such resources, they are focused on opening up the resources of the Moon for the benefit of humanity. 

With this long-term goal in mind, developing and eventually offering commercial lunar robotic transportation and data services is what the company is also working on. Most recently, MoonEx (as they are also known) announced their collaboration with the International Lunar Observatory Association (ILOA) in order to conduct the world's first mission to the Moon's South Pole. Using the Moon Express robotic lander, an International Lunar Observatory (ILA) will be delivered to the Moon's surface. There, it will be the first instrument ever to photograph and listen to the Universe from the Lunar perspective. Finally! The Moon will be lonely no more (sorry Moon).

As well as all of the incredible above plans, MoonEx are striving towards winning the Google Lunar X PRIZE, an international lunar competition with the incentive of a $20M first prize. It really is a race to the Moon. Again.

Last week, Bob hosted my ISU friends and I with lunch at MoonEx HQ where he shared fond stories of the past and inspirational dreams of the future of ISU. We then began a tradition of visiting a tree planted at NASA Ames in memory of Todd B. Hawley, ISU co-founder and space visionary. I do hope that future ISU interns at NASA Ames continue this tradition in the many years to come.

"Together we shall aspire to the stars with wisdom, vision and effort". - From the ISU Credo

-Nikita 
  

Rainbow Mansion & Space McDonald's

As our time in the Silicon Valley draws to a close, my friends and I have been making the most of what it has to offer outside of our work at NASA Ames Research Center.  First up, we visited the Rainbow Mansion. A communal house full of socially concious, international and driven people, the mansion hosted a lecture by Pascal Lee, co-founder and chairman of the Mars Institute and planetary scientist at the SETI Institute. His lecture on human settlement on Mars discussed colonisation of the red planet in a realistic and very much obvious second step for man and womankind. I mean duh..of course we're moving to Mars before we over-exploit Earth and poison our atmosphere right? Right. 

After dinner with entrepreneur Chris Kemp, CEO of cloud computing company Nebula (you may remember him from my '2013 So Far' post), we visited what can only be described as 'Space McDonalds'. It doesn't house the usual burgers and fries but instead, vintage space footage from NASA's Lunar Orbiter mission that was sent to the Moon prior to Neil Armstrong's mission in 1969. As part of the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP), previously unopened audio and video footage from the 60s is restored and digitised under Ronald McDonald's roof. As you can see from my photos, the McDonalds hasn't changed much, with Apollo era footage stored and masquerading as Strawberry Jelly and Hotcake Syrup!

The Computer History Museum held a Byte Night event for Silicon Valley interns this week. The largest museum for the preservation of artefacts from the Information Age -  basically tech-nerd heaven. In the photos you can see my friends John, David and I trying and failing to compete against the artificially-intelligent computer system, Watson. I even spotted one of my childhood favourites, Playstation 1 on display! Now if that doesn't make me feel old I don't know what will.. :(

Space company Planet Labs gave us a quick tour of their San Francisco office within which they are designing, manufacturing and testing small satellites known as CubeSats. Set to launch 28 by the end of the year, the company are dedicated to monitoring the environment . This window into the ever-evolving, beautiful Blue Marble is useful for for applications such as precision agriculture and land-use monitoring, not to mention help society as a whole better understand the planet and cater to its needs.

My step stop on the Silicon Valley tour is a social networking company that I'm pretty sure most of you guys use everyday. Look out for my next post to find out what tech company I acted like a complete tourist at next!

-Nikita