Spectroscopic Analysis of Asteroids

Spectroscopic Analysis of Asteroids

Gary Hughes

UC Santa Barbara

Photonic Propulsion for interstellar missions

Notes by Paul Fischer

Challenges what we can do with a laser in space

Laser array powered by Photovoltaics could be used to heat an asteroid at 10 MW per square meter

Creates melting and evaporation and ablation of substrate

Thermal radiation from the heated spot

Atomic and molecular absorption in ejected plume

Spectrometric detection can then occur to determine the composition of the asteroid

Called: Remote Laser Evaporative Molecular Absorption (R-LEMA) Spectroscopy

Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) as comparative method

Mars Science Laboratory ROver

“Chem Cam”

Differences:

1. Pulsed Laser
2. More energy, 10 TW/ m2, max distance, 8m
3. Molecular dissociation, ionization  -> plasma
4. Optical Emission (atomic Spectroscopy) ???

Laser Induced Thermal Emission (LITE) Spectroscopy

Deep Impact Mission

Comet Tempel 1

Observed from Spitzer

Space Telescope

1. Surface Impactor: 364 kg
2. Particle Emission from Impact ~10^6kg of  ~10um particles
3. Mid-, Long-Wave IR Emission Spectroscopy from Spitzer Space Telescope (from ~.75 AU) determines emissions of materials and do molecular composition

What we envision is Molecular Absorption spectroscopy (gas phase)

Why R-LEMA?

The mission scenario is to Asteroid 2014 HM187

Its orbit does not cross earth, but does cross orbit of Mars

        Between 139 to 312 m

No former spectra exists

Why choose this asteroid?

It is in a central ring of the asteroid belt

Methane, titanium, or water? What is in the asteroid, we propose going to figure out by probing it directly

The main objective is to determine the objective with a resources assay, could be a stopping place to go to Mars as an auxiliary capability (orbital outpost positioning)

An alternative idea could be to evaluate cost of moving the asteroid into a new orbit

What if Jeff Bezos wants to expand his empire into space? Amazon Asteroid

Short discussion of Orbit Alterationa s 2ndary otpion

10 MW/m2 -> 100 uN/W

-> Mars close approaches, could create a “keyhole” with the same tech.

Back to the Arlema system for spectropscopy analysis

About 10 km view of interaction, so we modeled the asteroid, and you can see that the temperature stabilized at 21k Kelvins, making a perfect background to do IR spectroscopy, this seems to suggest that the system has a good chance of working, at the end of phase 1, we made a strong argument that we had reached phase 2, with a strong chance of working

So what to do in Phase II?

We want to test the Spectrometer in the laboratory

Target must be put into a vacuum to simulate a space environment, we had to build all of the components, the laser enters through window and heats the substrate, creating a backlight for the spectrometer view

Based on a Brueger vortex 80 design for a couple of reasons, the vertex 80 has an external port allowing such remote designs

The distance in the laboratory of 1 meter would be expanded in space

Heating things up with a laser is not like an incandescent lightbulb, the heat bounces around everywhere and these 84 hour experiments allow photodiode feedback, which is fed back into the vortex 80, and corrects for any fast changes in backlight

System Validation

Provided by a measured spectra, will be different from a system spectra

We will measure our spectra and compare it to a reference or  predicted spectra

NIST has a chemistry webbook with many spectra, but the reference was difficult to find, ECOSTRESS discusses rocky materials including salt that allow the reflectance spectra and seeing what gets reflected, we hope to see some of the same absorption lines, but we need more gasphase rocky material spectra

Where to go from here? Everything in the lab seems to suggest that this will work.

Well if it works in the laboratory, we can make an argument for reaching TRL 3

We need to do something in a relevant environment, propose a formation fliying CueSat Experiment

        Two CubeSts in a low orbit environment

        One will be equipped with the laser, and the other with rocky material so we can prove the idea will be functional with deployment

        We have already asked the Federal University at Santa Cadarino

In stage II of the NIAC process, we hope to…

At TRL3 we will propose to PICASSO of NASA

That will allow it to hit TRL4 for the Matisse Program

Is there some overlap with other ideas?

Right I think there is some room for integrated resource utilization, if other groups get there, we will be able to send CubeSats to asteroids very efficiently\

How does the vacuum replicate the plume that is expected space?

We calculate that 90% of the absorption occurs within on spot radius, most of the stuff comes off very rapidly, and needs to be quite close to the asteroids

Is the laser big enough, how do you get to that power

The laser is a collimated beam, so that is how you get to your maximal watts

Phil Lubens and the mission context for the NIAC, gives a 2 meter array, with a 10km beam, it would be 1cm in diameter

What is the total power of the beam?

The system would be 2 KW

That would produce a lot of outgassing because you are heating a carbonaceous material?

Right, we see that in the lab, all sorts of things coming off, so we focus on this small spot and what is going on below.

Our need to prospect before we arrive, we take an economic view of the problem, we have studied the problem very seriously, we have looked at mapping asteroid spectroscopy, and we think we can do it with just a few colors, involving a strategy, where we through out ambiguous cases. We do not want to arrive at an asteroid and not have water there. The first generation we avoid such asteroids. If you have to fly to the asteroid to find what it is made of, you have already lost the battle. Prospecting missions can take 20 years, so we need to remotely survey these.

187 by the way does launches to Mars

What Delta V?

3 meters per second

What is the somatic period

About…

Spot on the surface or wavelength?

We envision using monochromatic laser for power to heat the asteroid.

But you need a reference spectrum?

Right, to validate the approach, once the data is acquired.

That is something that has already been validated, but we have not been able to find a reliable reference spectrum.

Do mining or drilling companies have access to these records?

This sort of information is proprietary and more difficult to get in public databases.

Space Angels - NIAC 2018

The Space Angles

Justice Killian

Notes By Paul Fischer

How Entrepreneurship is being brought to space

Where money is being put to work

Where there are gaps

Work with 2 different funds:

Space Angels, 250 individuals around the world, high risk, high reward individuals with flexible time horizons

Space Capital Traditional venture capital, operates on a fixed time horizon, which constrains the opportunities we have

Investing in the final frontier of technology and growth

What is Space?

Space is the foundation of our modenr global economy

Space has enabled a 74 trillion dollar interconnected global economy

Integrating how all industries operate on a scale never before seen in the past

In addition, we create new markets

Eg. GPS

Primarily military, in 2005, GPS became widely availabel to the public

2007 to googlemaps

2008 air bnb

….

You hear alot about unicorn billion dollar plus companies

Allowing you to collect your data and unlock your opportunities, new markets

What has changed in the 60 years space has been around, why invest now

There is an incredible established legacy

Technology that has been developed and milestones allow us to stand on the shoulders of giants

Heavy lauch shuttle, saturn v, moon landing as examples

The first driver of a major change in the market is a change in the barriers to entry

The first space shuttle cost 60,000 dollars per kg to deliver, 1981

The Delta IV Heavy 12157 in 2004

Falcon heavy dropped the price by a factor of 10 last year

Miniaturization in satellites

A few very heavy satellites covered the world’s capabilities in the past

This made an inflexible approach, and now that is not the case

Moving from mainframes in satellites to essentially smartphones

From 1972 to 2007 the weight of the satellites dropped by half to 2800 kg

Planet dove in 2017 was just over 5 kg

Market drivers and launch caust has dropped from 77k to 10k per kg

[This means the price of an operational satellite has gone from 400 million to 50,000 dollars!!!!]

Projecting out means that 10,000 satellites can be reached in just decades

We are seeing exponential growth in lower earth orbit and a plateau in geospace orbit

State of the Industry

Going back to space companies

Morgan stanley has estimated that the space industry will reach 1.1 trillion by 2040, an increase of almost 300% over current levels

Space Investment Quarterly

Equity financing into space, looks at the transactions when money is deployed, allowing a fidelity for what is happening in the market

Dawn of the entrepeneurial space age

Beginning in 2009 saw the first successful launch of the Falcon I

Other attempts had burned through 800 million without a successful launch eg kissler

In 2010, spacex published the pricing to get to orbit, this allowed transparency in pricing

Conequetailly we see an exponential growth in business plans

Not only in the amount of capital flowing into the companies, but also the amount of companies

This makes now an exciting time, where we are just on the beginning of an upward curve

Lets dig into the numbers a little bit more, who are the actors providing capital?

Angels and individuals, as high-risk investors as first money to company with flexible time horizons

The next line is venture capitalists, with fixed time constraints, usually around 10 years

        Have been a persistent actor over time

Finally there are corporate venture partners eg boeing and lockheed

        Tech and innnovation and desire to keep a close watch on development

A Lot of the capital, 62%,  comes from the USA

        UK is growing, they hope that in 10 years 5% of GDP will come from space

        France has recently become active

Looking at this year, seeing the amount of investment into various industries, only 26% into investment, while satellites are receiving a much larger investment share.

Space X is the largest corporate investor, lead by Fidelity investments, with 500 million in investments

        These represent late stage investments directly from space x

Spinlaunch operates primarily in stealth, hoping to use centrifugal force to launch objects into space, we did not invest in them, but a number did 40 million, at series A round

Coming back to the venture capitalists, looking at the dawn of the venture capitalists, investors in space. Every top tier venture capital fund now has space investments.

In addition to this, a number of new actors have come in

Sovereign thinks of this from a national perspective

Philanthropists such as Bill Gates and EarthNow

Looking back at the market and debunking common misconceptions

Particularly early on, that space should require more capital than broader tech investments

The data indicates this is simply not true

The amount of capital raised at each stage of investments is marginally higher, but not double or triple as people think, so you can be entrepreneurially competitive in space.

How can space companies such as Spacex ever justify their value?

The price is not high early on, but tends to skyrocket later on

1. Venture capitalists tend to invest in other lower risk tech, the process of getting a tech into orbit and getting to work is challenging and requires risk, so many investors wait through this phase, which later pushes up the price
2. How can space companies justify their valuations? Looking at the revenue vs broader tech financing, series C and D sees space outstripping competition. With a 350 billion dollar industry already in place, there are established customers with big check sizes who can purchase tech once it is available, that is called good fundamentals.

Shows up in exit prices, requiring a company to go public, this creates a small subset that we hope will grow to attract investors engineers, scientists and money into industry

I would like to dig into the themes behind these

Starting with heavy launch, as 2017 saw the first commercial equity backed launchers launched more rockets tahn governments around the world

75% of the contracts launched they were able to secure

This means there is not a lot of opportunity in heavy launch, there are some competition, but we will not be putting money there

The opportunity to be able to launch satellites, and to provide internet from space

The value of data and the ability to connect the last several billion to the internet will change the world

Giving google access to these markets, the rockets are there to do this faster than anyone else

Our new frontier is small launch, eg. VECTOR, which took ten years to achieve a milestone, and now we have 50 small launch vehicles registered, and over the next years will deploy

Why use a small launch vehicle?

Well the data suggests these vehicles charge higher prices, but the time that it takes to integrate the payload and get onto a rideshare is significantly longer, and customers are willing to pay for the access to integrate into an existing system.

Otherwise the money is lost, like an opportunity cost, as the company must wait an extra 12 months for integration

There is a clear economic value proposition

Rail gun tech, balloons and centrifugal force are all examples of new ideas extant, and for us small-launch is quite simlar to automobile manufacturing.

Therefore our investment is in a company called VECTOR, and it should take 2.5 years to get the first rocket in orbit.

Bringing the auto manufacturers into rocket production, in terms of scale and production is critical to success

Rocket development is not a good business, high risk and difficult, one failure will destroy capability, so the reason we are excited about VECTOR is that designing, building, and manufacturing this launch will serve as a platform that allows us to view this experience as a software to the solutions, and the vehicles will be extant to allow these satellites to get into orbit

Starlight and Softbank -> several billion dollars to continue to provide internet on a global scale

        This was an enormous endeavor that venture capitalists and entrepreneurs cannot become involved in.

        We are able to get involved in the relay, the ground link, and other options

In a matter of 3 months we can provide the RF downlink in a matter of months

Another option is optical, allowing high throughput optical downlink using laser technology, provision of more from space

Earth Observation - has been around for a very long time, now is an exciting time to be a part of this

There are multiple layers

Data layers - existing instruments optical, SSAR, laser etc now being scaled down and being applied in different constellations creates an abundance of different types of data being generated and there are many ways to view this data

Some companies download the data, clean the data, and build products to sell into multiple industries in what is called a vertically integrated approach

        We foresee specialization coming into the industry. We have invested in a company called skywatch, accessible from 150 different data points, through API integration, allowing the data to become ubiquitous into society.

                Distribution is therefore the critical layer wer focus on, because this allows people to experiment with it.

        Then companies can leverage the data in a very powerful way

Looking ahead, we see 2019 as the year of private manned spaceflight

        SpaceX

        Virgin

        Jeff Bezos

We are seeing private spaceflight as an exciting emerging trend, and it has taken many billionaires a very long time to develope the technology

Debris Tracking and Mitigation

        We will need at better understanding of what is floating around in space and associated risk

        We invested in a company with a network of arrays planned to track meter objects in realtime across the world, comparable efforts took a long time and cost 2 billion dollars, our project will cost 1% and provide higher fidelity than the others

        The baseline is to know what is up there with a higher degree of certainty

On Orbit Manufacturing

        MadeInSpace creates products made on orbit and sold into terrestrial markets

                Eg fiberoptic cables with greater efficacy

                Continuing to take advantage of zero gravity to create monetary opportunities

                Cooperation with NASA to enhance practicality

Space Stations

        Handful Of actors worth noting

                Expandible modules, with a marginal size factor gain, no weight factor

                Axiom - hopes to 3D print habitats into space, hoping to reduce cost of space stations to 3 billion dollars, still out of our price range

                Nanoracks was our choice for investment, to deploy the first commercial airline on the international space station how can we radically reinvent what it meant to build space stations, so independence 1 hopes to capture floating booster rockets and repurpose them into the first commercial space station, could cost less than 10 billion dollars.

                        It is a radical idea, but I remind you that skylab was assembled from rocket boosters, so the idea has worked before.

Lunar Transportation

NASA has made a number of successful private partnerships, launched a competition to be able to launch a rover, land it on the moon, capture HD images and beam it back

20 million dollar prize is not a lot to reach the moon, so more capital was made available

Japanese company, iSpace raised 95 million to do this

Israel - Space IL as a non-profit that has similar plans

Our investment is into a firm from carnegie melon that dropped out quite early, and recognized a real commercial opportunity and build partnerships, resulting in winning a 3 million and 10 million dollar contract, the latter is the largest lunar based contract for these services… demand for access to the moon does not only come from governments but from the private sector

Deep Space Platforms

        JPF has produced large scale platforms

        Commercial actors has performed propulsion technology

        Smaller scale solutions, you attach your tech and we will do the rest sort of thing

        Lower earth orbit has been democratized, only five companies have been launched into deep space, we wish to push this further out

Ecosystem Development

        In-Space Resource mapping, extracting, refining, storage

                Big visions of asteroid mining, operation within a very small realm of precious metal mining, stuck at mapping phase

        Big idea of value, and process of extraction has not been developed yet

        All of these components to the value changes have been missing

        More ideas must be identified and the TRL needs to be raised

        What is the unique value on orbit manufacturing, what are the components that must be developed, form a scientific and commercial perspective?

In space fuel production, distribution and storage

        From water, fission or fusion

        There is a gap here

        We are looking for opportunities that could have a direct overlap into terrestrial applications

Helping shape what the future looks like, we are going to be part of a number of emerging industries, the policy risks and challenges we are facing

What is the work that NASA as the foundation for commercial development to happen, has been seeded and increased, great examples of how public and private partnerships can take place

        Looking at how equity financing are happening

        How governmental support has seeded, we hope to continue to foster and grow these opportunities to grow.