Die Mäuse sind los!

Vor einigen Tagen wurde der 50. Jahrestag der ersten astronautischen Mondlandung weltweit groß gefeiert. Das Thema wurde von vielen großen Medien aufgegriffen: Auch von der Sendung mit der Maus. Wir waren in der Mond-Folge dabei!

Seit Anfang der 70er-Jahre gehört die Sendung mit der Maus zum festen Sonntagsprogramm vieler Kinder und ist eine der bekanntesten generationsübergreifenden Sendungen im deutschen Fernsehen. In einen Mix aus Sach- und Lachgeschichten sowie Animationen werden alltägliche, aber auch wissenschaftliche Themen kindergerecht dargestellt.

Unser Team mit der Maus

Unsere großen Mausfans haben sich sehr über die spannenden Dreharbeiten gefreut und konnten sich so einen kleinen Kinderwunsch, einmal bei der Maus mitzuwirken, erfüllen. Die vier spannenden aber auch intensiven Drehstunden verbrachte das WDR-Team in unseren Hallen. Wir haben dem Team und den Kindern zu

hause unsere Mond Mission erklärt und die kleinen Weltraumexperimente vorgestellt, die wir am Maus-Türöffner-Tag am 3. Oktober durchführen wollen.

Wer die Folge verpasst hat oder sie sich gerne noch einmal angucken möchte – gute Nachrichten! Das Video gibt es online in der ARD Mediathek.

Siham und Margaryta basteln das Maus-Space-Shuttle

Viele Zuschauer und Fans der Show kennen den Türöffner-Tag, den die Maus jährlich am 3. Oktober organisiert. Wir werden an diesem Tag zwei Gruppen von kleinen Astronauten und Wissenschaftlern von 6 bis 15 Jahren in unseren Hallen begrüßen. Vom fahrenden Rover bis zum Fallkapselexperiment ist alles dabei. Gleichzeitig werden die Kinder die Möglichkeit haben viel zu basteln, zu lernen und Spaß zu haben – und die selbst gebastelten Space Shuttles, Landemodule und Rover natürlich mit nachhause zu nehmen.

Wir freuen uns, dass die Nachfrage so hoch war und sich die Liste schnell gefüllt hat. Obwohl wir gerne jedes Kind, dass Interesse hat einladen wollen, sind die Plätze begrenzt. Deshalb ist die Anmeldung leider schon geschlossen und wir bedauern, keinen weiteren Kindern mehr eine Zusage machen zu können. Nichtsdestotrotz haben wir eine Warteliste eröffnet in der sich jedes interessierte Kind eintragen kann. Dafür einfach eine E-Mail an media@ptscientists.com schreiben!

An dieser Stelle möchten wir uns gerne noch herzlich beim Maus-Team bedanken und freuen uns schon sehr auf den Türöffner-Tag!

“Mars” which this time does not stand for the well-known red planet but for Machine Learning, Automation, Robotics and Space. And with space and robotics in mind, PTScientists were invited by our friends at Amazon Web Services to take part as well.

At our booth in the showcase room, we demonstrated how the use of the Amazon Web Services Greengrass technology can help with overcoming the dangerous and challenging situations for mission operators caused by the signal latency between the Earth and the Moon.

With a signal travel delay of about 3 to 6 secs, various problems can occur while controlling a rover from the ground. As for example driving up a hill that all suddenly turns out to be too steep for our four-wheeled pioneers and remote-workers. At such times when the team on the ground will at first only see a lower tilt angle since it’s receiving the telemetry with a delay. Our landing module ALINA, connected to the rovers via our cellular link, gets all this data in real-time. Equipped with Amazon Web Services Greengrass, ALINA analyses the data and can take immediate action, on the ground before an operator here on earth notices that something went wrong. This sudden stop-command is meant to keep the rovers from any impairment. With this small demonstration, we showcased the strong advantage of handling data processing and control in space and on the Moon. Eliminating the delay in between action and reaction of ground-based operators is the first step towards full autonomous Earth-independent operations in Space.

„Amazon Web Services is already the leading infrastructure provider for our connected world today and we are very excited to push their tools and technologies to new markets and limits. This is what private space truly is about, enabling new, cost-efficient solutions for space based on the reliable infrastructure fuelling today’s industry.” – Robert Boehme, CEO & Founder PTScientists

Besides demonstrating our showcase and talking to space experts and avid space fans from different sectors, we also had the time to attend the interesting sessions and keynotes during the event. With a variety of speakers which reached from Robert Downey Jr. to Jeff Bezos, the talks were very inspiring. We really enjoyed the event, the space sessions and would like to send out a thank you to our new found friends at Amazon Web Services for their great support!

With many greetings from Berlin, the PTScientists.

At the signing of the MOU between ArianeGroup and PTScientists on 8 May 2019 in Berlin: Thomas Jarzombek (Coordinator for Aeropspace, German Government),
David Parker (Director HRE, ESA), Robert Boehme (CEO, PTScientists)
and Pierre Godart (CEO ArianeGroup Germany)

The second era of lunar exploration – participation and diversification

The first era of lunar exploration in the 1960s and 70s, more commonly referred to as the “space race”, was dominated by two superpowers motivated by political and strategic interests. Today, we live in a time with an unprecedented number of actors wanting to go to the Moon, this time to stay. This second era of lunar exploration is characterised by participation and a diversification of actors, with several states and private entities preparing missions for the Moon, motivated by scientific and economic incentives made possible by NewSpace. 

While there is no universal definition of “NewSpace”, a common notion is that the involvement of private actors, new productions techniques and project management philosophies will drive down the cost of “doing space” and foster innovation. In this second era of lunar exploration, there is a recognition that both public and private sectors must be involved, the latter to include the benefits associated with NewSpace and reduce public spending. However, for private companies and investors to get involved, there must be a business case for the Moon.   

Europe must commit to lunar exploration now, and facilitate for a lunar economy

For the lunar business to be sustainable, it is necessary to encourage the development of a lunar economy. In very simple terms, there must be a demand to do things on or around the Moon, and an ability to provide services which facilitates for this. As for the demand, there is a spectrum of activities one can do on the Moon. For example, with the growing number of actors aiming to have a continuous presence on the Moon, there is a need to test technology and prototypes to facilitate for this (robots, habitats, transportation, communication, data processing, life support systems, navigation systems, in-situ use of space resources etc.). There is also an interest in scientific research relevant for both understanding and enhancing life on earth and facilitating for future space exploration. As for supplier services, PTScientists is using new manufacturing techniques to substantially cut the costs of lunar transportation and infrastructure, aiming to facilitate for customers from all over the world to take part in lunar exploration. 

As we are entering the second era of lunar exploration, there is a chance to spark a market where both public and private actors act as suppliers and customers. If Europe wants to position its industry to take part in this market, there is a need to commit public funding to lunar exploration missions, act to encourage the creation of a customer and supplier base and facilitate for European commercial entities to be able to compete in a global context.

As for the role of European industry, PTScientists’ first mission will be a light-house project: A technology demonstrator encouraging interest and awareness of what possibilities lie in lunar exploration. Awareness is crucial in order to get the critical mass of customers needed to spark the lunar economy, which is why PTScientists is working with Red Bull Media House to ensure global coverage and excitement.

Europe must prove it is a fertile ground for fostering European lunar companies

Over the past few years, PTScientists have evolved from one of the competitors in the Google Lunar XPRIZE, to a company aiming to offer full scale commercial lunar services. As a consequence, the initial strategy of relying only on economic support from the original partners is no longer sufficient. Therefore, PTScientists is now signing payload customers, taking part in consortiums winning contracts and signing new partners. A notable example of such a new partnership is the signing of an MoU with ArianeGroup on the 8^th of May for cooperation on future lunar missions and technology development, allowing us to offer an end-to end European service for going to the Moon with the Ariane 64 launcher.  

In January 2019, the European Commission and European Investment Bank published the report “Future of the European Space Sector”, which among other things analysed how well suited the European ecosystem is for upstream NewSpace companies. The report concludes that there is a lack of suitable funding instruments for European companies developing hardware for robotic space exploration, due to high upfront costs and long timelines on return on investment. In other regions of the world, this is not the case. For example, in Japan a public institution has invested in a Japanese lunar lander company. Still, the most prominent example is the US$ 2.6 billion NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Service (CLPS) program, where NASA will buy transportation services from selected American lunar companies. At the end of May, the first CLPS contracts were awarded to three American companies, ranging from US$ 77 to 97 million dollars per contract. 

This highlights a trend where public institutions in other regions now invest or act as anchor customers for lunar companies, providing funding for the critical development phase. Furthermore, the companies benefitting from these initiatives are now creating subsidiaries in Europe, competing for the same contracts that the European companies are – but with the advantage gained from having public money from their home regions. If Europe wants to seize the opportunity to develop the technical capability in its own industry, there is a need for a discussion on what tools Europe has or can create to level the playing field against international competition. 

The European space sector needs to have a discussion on risk and project management to maximise the benefits of NewSpace 

The 2018 Technology Strategy of the European Space Agency sets the goals of reducing both the timelines and production costs of innovative technologies and space crafts. However, recognition and decisive actions are two different things, and the European sector and decision makers seem to still favor “traditional” projects with a very, very low risk profile making it difficult to learn, implement and benefit from the possibilities of NewSpace. In the interest of being concise, it is evident that a balance must be found, as NewSpace companies also have a lot to learn from the approaches developed by the established players. 

In other regions of the world, implementation of more creative procurement and project management strategies are more mature, and they yield result in promoting innovation and lowering costs by allowing the industry to experiment in a less rigid environment. Of course, regulatory procedures still ensure the space crafts and technology produced in these environments are of an accepted standard. 

Going forward, Europe should engage in a conversation to find the best solutions to produce cheaper but still very capable and very reliable space crafts and technologies at a quicker rate. This will require dialogue and a compromise between the project management philosophies of “traditional” and NewSpace in relation to how to encourage innovation but maintaining safety, how to “fail” in a controlled manner while maximize learning, how to limit the regulatory burden but ensure adequate technical and legal requirements, and a discussion on acceptable levels of risk and burden sharing. This is not only necessary to encourage lunar missions, but to promote the competitiveness of the European space sector in a global context.

Europe must pursue both international cooperation, but also independent European lunar missions

Europe is at a crossroad, and in November the ministers of the Member States of the European Space Agency will decide on the future of the European space exploration programmes at SPACE19+. International cooperation is a crucial and core pillar of the European approach to space, and the next big project being discussed is the Lunar Gateway. However, in the preparations of future cooperation projects, ESA and its Member States should not only look at existing European capacities, but also how international cooperation can be a tool to support the development of a European lunar industry. 

In addition, independent European lunar missions are critical for a number of reasons: First, it would give Europe’s lunar exploration plans long term stability and independence from the volatilities of political decision in the domestic systems of our international partners, as exemplified by the uncertainty regarding the US commitment to the Lunar Gateway due to potential redirection of funds to support the return of American astronauts to the lunar surface by 2024. Second, independent missions are crucial to foster European industry and level the playing field against our international competition. Lastly, in the NewSpace area, there could be new ways of working together, allowing less public spending for lunar missions. For example the method  NASA is doing through CLPS could be named here, where instead of facing the full development costs for a whole mission, they simply buy a ticket with commercial companies. 

At SPACE19+ it is of central importance that Germany and other European governments will support independent European lunar surface campaign missions, including the ISRU mission. These projects are crucial for fostering a European lunar economy.  

Europe must act now or be left behind

Looking ahead, there is no meaningful race to be the first to return to the Moon, but there is a race to develop the capacities to take part in a second era of lunar exploration. To be a partner with capacities to take one of the leading roles in larger international projects. To set the agenda and drive scientific exploration. And to capture a part of the lunar economy. PTScientists wants to prove that it is possible to develop a lunar company able to position Europe to do so. But, for us to succeed on this continent, Europe must commit to lunar exploration and be willing to engage in a dialogue on how to best position its lunar industry.

By Mari Eldholm, Governmental Affairs Officer at PTScientists

Got questions? Write us via Twitter using the hashtag #PTSAG

Agenda

16:00 Welcome

Robert Boehme, PTScientists

Pierre Godart, ArianeGroup Germany

16:10 Statements

Thomas Jarzombek, MdB

16:20 Signing of Memorandum of Understanding

16:25 Sparking a lunar economy

Mari Eldholm, PTScientists

16:30   ESA’s perspective on commercial partnerships and ISRU

David Parker, ESA

16:35 Expert Panel on ISRU and future Lunar missions

Joost Van Tooren, ArianeGroup

Jürgen Brandner, PTScientists

16:45 Q&A

17:00 End

As some of you might know, our chief strategy officer Rolf Erdmann is a trained astronaut. On Friday, he surprised us with a visit to our office together with his friend and colleague – Russian Cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev.

Oleg has spent 365 days and 23 hours in space during a total of 2 missions (ISS Expeditions 39/40 and 55/56) and went on three spacewalks. He had a short meet and greet with everyone, answered some questions and talked about his life in space, daily routines, preparation to fly, and future plans of Roscosmos.

One question was if Oleg perceived the launch or the landing of his missions as harder. He described that “the landing is way harder because it is more dangerous. During the start, it is no problem to use the emergency system where you will get out of the spacecraft with 20G, which even saves you in case of an explosion or other unfortunate events. The chance of surviving is drastically lower if something goes wrong because you are only equipped with a parachute while you’re surrounded by plasma and other dangerous materials.”, Oleg chuckles. “The launch is similar to the one of a plane, you go full throttle – but when coming back you have to land on a specific, small place and make sure not to land on a mountain or in the sea.”

Someone asked if the start and landing are more enjoyable or if they require full concentration and dedication. Oleg explained that for his first mission, he was a board engineer and seated on the left side. He jokingly described the right seat as being first class because the person sitting on the left has more technical jobs to do.

A further question was if Oleg felt isolated and alone during his time in space. He described how the crew spent most of their time working out, playing soccer, chess and table tennis. A burst of laughter within the room came up at his answer, considering how absurd it would look to play table tennis in space.

As the last big discussion topic, Oleg also gave us some information on Roscosmos’ future plans. He explained that

Russia plans to have a lunar base station by 2030.

He also brought his space suit (the Sokol suit) and some of our employees had the chance to try it on and then gave away personalized autographs to everyone. Oleg was also interested in our ALQ, since he had seen it in the movie “Alien:Covenant” on the ISS, and had speculated with his colleagues whether it was a real rover.

In case of a capsule depressurization during the launch or landing, the suit can give enough life support in terms of heat regulation and oxygen flow in a vacuum for roughly 125 minutes. At the same time – due to its’ lighter weight compared to other suits – it can be inflated and used as a floatation device for possible water landings.

If you want to have an insight on Oleg’s life during his ISS missions, have a look at his YouTube channel.

Dear Space Community,

We want to welcome you to the first edition of our new event series, the Berlin Space Cafe. Each event will thematize various space-related projects, policies, technologies and more while providing the opportunity to network with likeminded people. You can join the global Space Café team and create a further platform to have exciting conversations within the growing New Space community.

For each event we will invite different guest speakers from space-related fields to do short presentations, which will be followed by Q&A’s and some drinks to meet new people.

Our first event will be held on May 7^th. The topic “Moon 2019 – Hype or Reality?” will be moderated by our very own Torsten Kriening in his role as Publisher of SpaceWatch.Global. On the exciting panel Prof. Dr Ralf Jaumann (DLR), Mari Eldholm (PTScientists GmbH) and Andreas Hörkens (ArianeGroup) will discuss the topic.

You can get the tickets for our first event on Eventbrite for free here:

https://www.eventbrite.de/e/space-cafe-berlin-edition-1-tickets-58370021305

Reminder: There are no immediate parking spaces at the VW Digi:Lab. We recommend to use public transportation.

ves on the approach towards combining technology and energy related topics. For a broader context, the tour combines classic European sights – such as the Swiss Alps and Mercedes-Benz Museum – with modern start-up culture to capture some innovative sustainability efforts. To find out more of the workshops around Berlin, Stuttgart, Freiburg and the Lucerne region see here.

Until now, two groups have already visited us on March 9^th and April 4^th, with a third group lined up on April 17^th. To give a quick introduction to the students on who PTScientists is, we gave a brief overview on our company history and talked about or planned missions.

After giving a foundation of what we do, we presented the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Explaining some of the goals in more detail, we gave examples on how space can be used to achieve those goals efficiently. Then, the workshop evolved around splitting the students into three groups, where each of them had to come up with ideas to tackle a specific SDG by including space technologies and exploration in their solutions.

After presenting their findings, the students had time left for a Q&A and taking pictures, too. In the end, we will digitalize all posters that the students made and take them as a payload with us on our first mission.

Today we want to introduce you to the Sanctuary Project, which will accompany us on our mission to the moon. The idea is to send a time capsule with engraved sapphire discs to space. The discs will have almost eternal durability to ensure that our heritage and achievements is kept alive forever. In form of art and imagery, three billion pixels per disc will be encoded through the microlithography technique. For now, ten discs are in production. Five out of them enclose female and male human genomes while the remaining discs form a combination of human knowledge from a wide spectrum of fields.

Involved in the making of the discs is a variety of people from different backgrounds, including filmmakers, engineers and scientists. The creators describe the project as “a love poem to the universe”, “modern interpretation of the Universal Elements and Platonic geometry”, and “an attempt to break the barrier of time”.

How do PTScientists work together with Sanctuary?

While Sanctuary is providing the valuable sapphire discs, PTScientists is responsible for the designing and development of the disc box. This includes all necessary testing of the final product before being flown out to the Moon by our lunar lander ALINA. Testing areas include vibration, vacuum and heat resistance.

The project holds workshops to inform about on-going ideas and progresses, while also using the opportunity to meet with their partners, interested people and make announcements. Recently the 14th workshop of the Sanctuary Project was held, focusing on presenting current achievements to French media. The workshop took place at the IRINA in Paris, France. Not only is INRIA allowing the usage of their location, but also the 6 x 2m WILDER data visualization platform wall screen for presentations and demonstrations. This proves to be especially beneficial due to the incredibly high resolution of up to 100 pixels per inch.

How you can get involved

If you want to take part in this amazing project, all you need to do is to submit your selfie here and your picture will be eternalized on one of the Sanctuary discs. To find out more, you can visit the official website or get in touch directly with the Sanctuary Project here:
info@sanctuaryproject.eu

PTScientists wish their former competitors in the Google LunarX Prize good luck and success for the launch of their lunar lander “Beresheet”. The Israeli lander is due to launch piggyback tomorrow at 02:45 CET with other payloads aboard a Falcon 9 launch vehicle from SpaceX.

“We wish our colleagues at SpaceIL good luck and much success for the launch of ‘Beresheet’” said Robert Boehme, founder and CEO of PTScientists GmbH from Berlin. “The hopefully successful landing will prove that privately financed lunar missions are possible. SpaceIL thus opens the door for private missions to the Moon.”

On board the ‘Beresheet’ lander is a very special payload: a time capsule from the Arch Mission Foundation. This first instalment of the “Lunar Library” contains the English version of Wikipedia (approx. 7.5 million printed pages) as well as 25,000 books of the Gutenberg project – stored in a novel, extremely durable nanotechnology medium.

PTScientists are partner of the Arch Mission Foundation and have supported the production of this instalment of the Lunar Library.  On their first mission, they will also deliver a part of the “Lunar Library” to the Moon.

PTScientists are preparing their first lunar mission. It is expected to launch not earlier than the first quarter of 2020. The aim of the mission is to visit the landing site of the last astronautical mission to the Moon, Apollo 17, with two moon rovers.

Further information on the Arch Mission Foundation: https://www.archmission.org

PTScientists media contact

Andreas Schepers
PTScientists GmbH
Head of Communications
andreas.schepers@ptscientists.com

T: +49 30 916 048 06

IAC can be a bit overwhelming, so we’ve been sharing some top tips on social media in the countdown to the event to make sure you’re all set. Just in case you’ve missed any, here’s our list of things to remember…

Bring your travel adapters

Travelling from afar? Don’t forget to bring the right plug adaptors with you! European plugs look like this… bring an extra one and make friends with the desperate person at the hotel who suddenly realises that they’ve forgotten theirs!

Check the technical programme

There is so much going on at IAC that you are going to have to get used to the feeling that you want to clone yourself and attend all the talks that overlap. Make sure you check out the technical programme and highlight the things you’re interested in before you get to Bremen. Make yourself a daily programme with session names, times and – importantly – room numbers. Bonus – once you’ve got your schedule sorted, you won’t need to carry the super-heavy programme with you all week!

You can find the full IAC18 technical programme here or try out the IAC2018 mobile app!
 

Print your business cards

Got enough business cards? Check and print some more if you need to. The IAC is a great place to meet new people, make contacts and develop lasting friendships, so don’t get caught without cards!

Finalise your presentation

Make sure you’ve created your presentation in good time and uploaded it to the system if you’re presenting a paper this year. Time slots are always short, so try not to have 100s of slides, and do everyone a favour and don’t have slides that are just crammed full of unreadable text! Here’s an extra tip – ensure your contact details are on your final “Thank you/any questions?” slide – that way people can get in touch even if they don’t get chance to ask you a question in the session. (You can thank us later!)

 

Check your suit fits

If you’re not an every-day suit-wearer and your outfit only comes out for weddings and interviews, check that it still fits. You don’t want to get to Bremen and find it’s shrunk in the wash!

Credit: ESA/NASA

Stay comfortable

You’re likely to spend a long time on your feet, getting to the conference venue, walking from room to room, searching for coffee etc. Smart shoes aren’t always comfortable shoes, so if you’re getting new shoes for the conference try to break them in first, or at least come prepared with blister plasters! (Even if you don’t need them yourself, this is again an excellent way to make friends with someone else who is suffering with conference blisters!)
 

Stay energised

Make sure you’ve got an extra battery for your phone, at some point you’re bound to need an extra boost and plug-sockets at conferences tend to be much sought after (as well as scarce!).

Bonus tip: Be sure to check out where the coffee is in the exhibition hall so that you can be ready as soon as it is served!
 

Polish your CV

Since there will be people from just about every space agency, space company and space research institute from all around the globe, this is an excellent opportunity to check out the opportunities on offer. Make sure your CV is up-to-date and ready to go in case you meet someone who is interested in finding out more about you. And if you are looking for something new, don’t forget to visit PTScientists in the exhibition hall, or keep checking our careers page for relevant openings.

Get a good night’s sleep

Try to get some rest in the days before the conference so that you are ready for the huge amount of information, activity and networking that is about to take place. You don’t want to be falling asleep in sessions, or too tired to make it to that important dinner, so rest up before it all starts.

 

Be lucky!

You’ve made it to Bremen, welcome to Germany! Now it’s time to find out about the curious tower of animals that forms part of Bremen’s identity, and with a visit to the famous sculpture, get yourself some luck for the conference. The animals are actually the Bremen town musicians, and are from a fairy-tale by the brothers Grimm. It is said that rubbing the leg of the donkey will bring you some luck – and you can see that plenty of people before you have done the same, since the bronze is shiniest where everyone has touched it for luck! You can find the Bremen musicians to the west of the town hall.
 

Come and say hello!

We hope these tips will help you have an excellent time at IAC18. Do come to say hello to the PTScientists team (we’ll be the ones with the lunar lander and rovers in the exhibition hall, booth 5E 25!) and feel free to invite us to any interesting events you hear of. Ad astra!