Plus: NASA's moon base needs a new approach to software
By Dan Robitzski
Welcome back to our weekly newsletter highlighting the opinions and perspectives of the SpaceNews community.
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With the conclusion of the Artemis 2 mission, more people are paying attention to humanity's return to the moon. With these missions will come new risks and considerations for human health and safety, argues a recent opinion article by Dorit Donoviel, executive director of the Translational Research Institute for Space Health. Donoviel argued that if NASA and other agencies want to see a sustained human presence in space and on the moon, they need to pay proactive attention to keeping them healthy.
"Preparation for future crewed lunar missions draws on decades of space health research, improved monitoring, and a more integrated understanding of how multiple stressors interact. Applying that knowledge deliberately will be essential as lunar missions grow longer and more complex," Donoviel wrote.
That deliberate application could involve developing "Swiss army knife" medical tools that are flexible for multiple uses when storage space for medical kits is at a premium — a process that could be informed by missions at extreme conditions on Earth.
See the full article here |
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The moon base has a hardware plan. It needs a software strategy, too.
If NASA is going to reach its goal of an accelerated Artemis launch cadence, an established presence on the moon and continued leadership in space, it must rethink how it approaches software design and integration, according to an opinion article by Epsilon3 CEO and former SpaceX missions operations engineer Laura Crabtree.
"The software enabling this era needs to match the ambition of the hardware it supports: built for reliability under pressure, designed for the operators who actually run the mission, capable of evolving at the speed of the program," Crabtree wrote. "Not legacy systems on maintenance contracts. Not general-purpose enterprise tools retrofitted into mission-critical workflows. Missions need software development cycles measured in weeks, not years."
Read the full opinion article here |
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A concept for a later phase of NASA's proposed lunar base. Credit: NASA |
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SpaceNews is committed to publishing our community's diverse perspectives. Whether you're an academic, executive, engineer or even just a concerned citizen of the cosmos, send your arguments and viewpoints to opinion (at) spacenews.com to be considered for publication online or in our next magazine. If you have something to submit, read some of our recent opinion articles and our submission guidelines to get a sense of what we're looking for. The perspectives shared in these opinion articles are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent their employers or professional affiliations. |
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