We just completed the 6th annual NASA Robotics Mining Competition, and like always it was awesome! This year, 46 universities from around the United States brought robots to mine the simulated Martian soil and win the coveted Joe Kosmo Award. Every year it has been an amazing success. We have learned valuable lessons that […]
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I collect sand as a hobby and for science. One of the things I love doing is going on a sand safari, a trip especially to collect sand. These trips helped my development as a scientist and they are fun. I haven’t been on a sand safari in a long time and I started realizing […]
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I am sitting in a room at at the Kennedy Space Center for the International Space Apps Challenge. It is late at night, I’m very tired, and there are eight other people in the room: all much younger than me, all college students, all writing software for a game called “Moonville“. It will be a […]
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Do you want to be a space explorer? Many internet billionaires are turning into commercial space explorers: flying as space tourists, building and launching their own rockets, and starting space mining companies. They do this because the technology to take human civilization into the solar system has arrived. Space colonization is now possible, and we […]