MoonAnd

In June a four-person crew will enter a hangar at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and spend one year inside a 3D printed building. Made of a slurry that—before it dried—looked like neatly laid lines of soft-serve ice cream, Mars Dune Alpha has crew quarters, shared living space, and dedicated areas for administering medical care and growing food. The 1,700-square-foot space, which is the color of Martian soil, was designed by architecture firm BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group and 3D printed by Icon Technology.  …

If astronauts need to grab some lunar ice on a future Artemis mission, that won’t be a problem from a legal perspective, says Rossana Deplano, a researcher at the University of Leicester in the UK who has extensively studied the Artemis Accords’ effect on international space law. “What the Outer Space Treaty allows is using resources if it’s in support of a scientific mission. The Artemis missions are by definition scientific missions, so there is nothing unlawful for the US or other international partners taking part,”…

Sooner or later, humans will set foot on the moon again—perhaps by the middle of this decade if NASA’s Artemis program proceeds as planned. And beyond that, public or private crewed missions to Mars in the 2030s or 2040s no longer seem solely confined to science fiction. But what will astronauts be wearing when they take those steps on other worlds? Procuring giant rockets and futuristic spacecraft for Artemis has been the most well-publicized hurdle for NASA to overcome, but its efforts to design new spacesuits for the…