Global consumer electronics makers HP, Dell, Microsoft and Amazon are all exploring to shift significant production capacity out of China, joining an emerging exodus that threatens to undermine the country's position as the world's powerhouse for tech gadgets.

China's decision to completely open up foreign ownership of financial firms in 2020, a year sooner than schedule, demonstrates Beijing's concerns toward the expanding number of companies shifting out of the country to escape the fallout of the U.S.-China trade war.

Last month, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory tied up up the installation of the Mars 2020 rover’s 2.1-meter-long robot arm. This is the most strong arm ever installed on a Mars rover. Even though the Mars 2020 rover shares much of its design with Curiosity, the new arm was redesigned to be able to do much more complicated science, drilling into rocks to collect samples that can be saved for later recovery.
 
JPL is well known for growing robots that do astonishing work in unbelievably distant and hostile environments. The Opportunity Mars rover, to name just one example, had a 90-day planned mission but stayed operational for 5,498 days in a robot unfriendly place full of dust and wild temperature swings where even the most basic maintenance or repair is utterly impossible. (Its twin rover, Spirit, operated for 2,269 days.)
 
To learn more about the process behind building robotic systems that are suitable of feats like these, we talked with Matt Robinson, one of the engineers who designed the Mars 2020 rover’s new robot arm.
 
The Mars 2020 rover (which will be officially named through a public contest which opens this fall) is appointed to launch in July of 2020, landing in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021. The overall design is similar to the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover, named Curiosity, which has been exploring Gale Crater on Mars since August 2012, except Mars 2020 will be a bit bigger and capable of doing even more amazing science. It will outweigh Curiosity by about 150 kilograms, but it’s alternatively about the same size, and uses the same type of radioisotope thermoelectric generator for power. Upgraded aluminum wheels will be more durable than Curiosity’s wheels, which have suffered significant wear. Mars 2020 will land on Mars in the same way that Curiosity did, with a mildly insane descent to the surface from a rocket-powered hovering “skycrane.”
 
Mars 2020 really steps it up when it comes to science. The most intriguing new capability (besides serving as the base station for a highly experimental autonomous helicopter) is that the rover will be able to take surface samples of rock and soil, put them into tubes, seal the tubes up, and then cache the tubes on the surface for later retrieval (and potentially return to Earth for analysis). Obtaining the samples is the job of a drill on the end of the robot arm that can be prepared with a diversity of interchangeable bits, but the arm holds a number of other tools as well. A “turret” can swap between the drill, a mineral identification sensor suite called SHERLOC, and an X-ray spectrometer and camera called PIXL. Fundamentally, most of Mars 2020’s science work is going to rely on the arm and the hardware that it holds, both in terms of close-up surface investigations and collecting samples for caching.
 
Matt Robinson is the Deputy Delivery Manager for the Sample Caching System on the Mars 2020 rover, which discusses the robotic arm itself, the drill at the end of the arm, and the sample caching system within the body of the rover that manages the samples. Robinson has been at JPL since 2001, and he’s worked on the Mars Phoenix Lander mission as the robotic arm flight software designer and robotic arm test and operations engineer, as well as on Curiosity as the robotic arm test and operations lead engineer.
 
The way that I look at it is, when you’re making an arm that’s going to go to another planet earth, all the things that could go wrong… You have to build something that’s robust and that can endure all that. It’s not that we’re trying to overdesign arms so that they’ll end up lasting much, much longer, it’s that, given all the things that you can experience within a fairly unknown atmosphere, and the level of robustness of the design you have to apply, it just so happens we end up with designs that end up lasting a lot longer than they do. Which is great, but we’re not held to that, although we’re very excited when we see them last that long. Without any calibration, without any maintenance, exactly, it’s amazing. They show their wear over time, but they still operate, it’s super exciting, it’s very motivating to see.



This article is originally posted on Tronserve.com

Over the last 12-18 months, FELIXprinters has experienced a transition as a business with an intentional repositioning towards industrial 3D printing. The obvious result of this is the start of the new Pro Series platforms, which consist of the Pro 3 and the Pro L/XL. This family of machines incorporate all of the current engineering know-how and expertise from the FELIXprinters team, all with engineering backgrounds that have listened to what their industrial clients have been telling them about the pain points often experienced with 3D printing.
 
Time and again, the feedback came through — reliability, consistent reliability, ease of use and a good return on investment through a practical price/performance ratio were the factors in the 3D printing equation that industrial users want and need to perform their daily tasks.
 
There is no refuting that companies deciding on 3D printing as a manufacturing tool are confronted with a dizzying array of choices and voices, particularly when it comes to desktop 3D printers, like the FELIX Pro 3. Many of them saying the same thing, along the lines of 'Our 3D printer offers the accuracy / reliability / ease of use that you are looking for.'
 
Some of them do live up to the rhetoric, but many, specially those at the lower end of the pricing scale, do not. Thus, once the 3D printer is put to work the lack of reliability, poor print output, high failure rates, and time-consuming operation become obvious and create frustration from the time and effort involved to make the system function — even at a basic level. Within an industrial environment this is just not good enough.
 
Throughout its history, FELIXprinters has achieved a strong reputation for developing and delivering robust, reliable and accurate 3D printers, at a price that is comparable with less functional alternatives. The company is conscious that these words may sound the same as other 3D printing companies out there, so here we explain what we mean by reliability, consistent accuracy, ease of use and accessible pricing with particular reference to the FELIX Pro 3 platform, part of the Pro family. Furthermore, we will provide insight into how we attain this and go on to back up our words through our post-sales service and lifetime upgrade options.
 
Reliability & Consistent Accuracy
 
The FELIXprinters Pro 3 builds on the previous generations of the system with new, novel features engineered from the ground up. The Pro 3 was the first FELIX platform to incorporate an innovative dual head printing system. It has been built from the ground up to enable a major improvement in print quality as well as consistent clarity. This claim can mostly be attributed to sensors located in the printing head for filament flow detection. If a problem, such as filament working out or a clogged nozzle, occurs the print is stopped straight away, the issue is raised and a failed print is prevented. This saves valuable time and prevents wasted filament.
 
Other key features of the Pro 3 that contribute to its reliability include the optimized extruder heater, which reduces dual head printing time by 50%. Moreover, print repeatability, that can be relied upon, is improved through obtaining temperature stability in the heater blocks. This is combined with a dual radial blower which produces three times more cooling power that is distributed homogenously and enables the extruder plastic to cool down faster and more evenly. This generates accurately defined print details, including overhangs.
 
When we say reliable, we mean reliable and invite you to challenge us.
 
Ease of Use
 
Right out of the box, the FELIX Pro 3 3D printer is straight and can be set to print within minutes. We have tested this over and over - with our team and with users. Again there are a number of feature details, specifically built into the platform by the FELIX team, that ensure the 3D printing experience with the FELIX Pro 3 is pain free.
 
This begins even before the first layer is written with the Pro 3's automatic and motorized calibration capability, enabled by the latest probe sensor included in the print-head and motorized bed. A high quality print starts with a properly calibrated machine, which involves:
 
• accurate measurement between the printhead and the print surface
• a properly aligned print surface
• correct height difference between print-head nozzles when using the dual head
• correct distance between nozzles in the XY plane when using the dual head.
 
By automating the calibration plan, users can save up to an hour contrasted with manual tweaking of the machine, to achieve much greater productivity and much less frustration.
 
Another key feature of the FELIX Pro 3 is the proprietary QuickSwap printheads. The design of the printheads on the Pro 3 mean that users can virtually swap out a printhead in 20 seconds or less. It has truly never been so simple, but it makes a huge difference to productivity, simplifies and speeds up maintenance, and gives users with the ability to switch materials quickly and definitely and use different size nozzles as required, without having the change the set-up of the machine.
 
The FELIX Pro 3 also comes with a Flex plate as standard. This saves users time — at least 2-3 minutes per print — which adds up. The Flex plate also avoids damage when removing the printed object
 
The Pro 3 Touch is also provided with an intuitive and painless to use touchscreen, which also lets multi-users, that can associate directly to print-file management capabilities and print-server.
 
Accessibility
 
The accessibility of the FELIX Pro 3 is two-fold, firstly through its ease of use, as described in the section above, making 3D printing accessible to engineering and manufacturing professionals that may not be experienced with 3D printing. However, the second way the FELIX Pro 3 is supplied for companies engaging with 3D printing is through its ideal price performance ratio, which gives superb return on investment (ROI).
 
The perception of 3D printing for industrial applications often includes high capital and running costs as well as high consumable costs. FELIXprinters has realistically leveraged its capabilities and made an wise and concerted move to provide industrial AM solutions, at a price that makes them much more accessible to many industrial customers for a range of product development, engineering and manufacturing applications.
 
The Pro 3 has been designed and manufactured by FELIXprinters to offer the highest possible price / performance ratio in its class, and is available under €3000. The emphasis is on excellence in the build to ensure quality output — a system developed by engineers for engineers.
 
The Pro series, including the Pro 3, are a serious industrial tool that dependable and upgradable. These are just words, but we can back them up with high level service and support guarantees, and invite you to challenge us on any of the points in this article.



This article is originally posted on Tronserve.com

TAMPA, FL - CIRCOR Industrial Valves, a leader in developing and production flow control technologies, introduces the convenient and cost-effective CIRCOR Aftermarket Kits Program. Trim, hardware, actuation, and soft good kits give maintenance technicians a full set of required parts for repairs on any portion of a valve.
 
A sole valve repair can cost thousands of dollars if one contains the cost of electricians, plumbers, welders, cranes, and NDT inspections, not to point out downtime. That is why efficient maintenance teams try to do the most they can whenever a valve undergoes service. Instead of a lone valve part, the CIRCOR Aftermarket Kits Program supplies complete groupings of parts for one of the four principle areas of a valve's construction. With a kit, all applicable parts will be on hand during each repair, so parts with the potential to fail, or approaching decline or end of life can be mended or replaced in one service event with the failing parts. In fact, there is no need to identify the part at issue before starting a repair; simply order a kit, and the right part will be included.
 
The CIRCOR Aftermarket Kits Program allows technicians to replace whole sections of the valve all at once instead of piecemeal. This minimizes the potential for a valve malfunction due to an incomplete repair, and the potential liability of a valve failure after not all recommended parts were cycled out.
The CIRCOR Aftermarket Kits Program offers maintenance personnel everything needed to groom valves to CIRCOR's manufacturer recommendations during each repair or maintenance cycle. Using a CIRCOR certified kit results in extended operation, which means the entire investment in repairs can often be recouped.
 
In addition to providing expert applications engineer consultations to ensure customers receive the correct parts for the repair, CIRCOR includes repairs from CIRCOR-certified technicians.



This article is originally posted on Tronserve.com

During the ’90s an overstimulated stock market and a tech boom led to strong bull market just prior to crashing. Some are drawing parallels between the ‘90s and today’s market conditions, spurring a call to remember the lessons of the past.

The first generation of robotic bees were fashioned to be very bee-like, featuring two flapping wings at bee scale. Basically, bees can do a lot with two wings, so why can’t robots? Turns out there are some reasons why little winged robots are not able to do what bees do, at least for now—things like yaw control has proved to be somewhat tricky, which is one reason why less explicitly bee-like designs that use four wings instead of two are appealing. 

There's no doubt that GPU-powerhouse Nvidia would love to have an answer for all size scales of AI — from substantial data center jobs down to the always-on, low-power neural networks that listen for wakeup words in voice assistants.

U.S. markets were up considerably Monday morning following the G20 summit this past weekend, where attention was focused on a meeting between the leaders of the United States and China, who are embroiled in a protracted trade war. Most analysts and economists anticipated many posturing and not much action. But incredibly, the two world leaders agreed to a trade truce for the moment, with Huawei even catching a break.

Ultimaker, the global leader in desktop 3D printing, today declared the relocation of its global headquarters to Utrecht, in the heart of The Netherlands, and presented new branding as the company increases to reach the desire for professional 3D printing solutions around the world. In the last several years, the company has considerably extended its overall business and team to service new and present customers across every region on the planet.
 
According to the 24th edition of The Wohlers Report, revenue for the overall additive manufacturing market is likely to climb to $35.6 billion in 2024, up from $7 billion in 2018. Ultimaker's own growth supports these findings. The company, founded in January 2011, currently employs around 400 people. There are now 125,000 Ultimaker 3D printers in the field, compared to around 67,000 units in 2017. Ultimaker Cura, the company's open source software, has 500,000 amazing users per month, up 100% in one year, and processes 1.4 million print jobs per week, a 200% increase in one year.
 
'The strategic alliances we have formed over the last few years are enhancing the adoption of 3D printing within the certified environment. Compelling business cases from global enterprises such as Ford, L'Oréal, Airbus, Volkswagen Autoeuropa, and Decathlon inspire others to upload desktop 3D printing in their professional workflow,' said Jos Burger, CEO of Ultimaker. 'We picked out this brand new building as our headquarters because it is easily obtainable for our employees and will support our ongoing growing as we attract new talent to help professionals innovate every day with 3D printing.'
 
Additionally, the company revealed new corporate branding, a design that has been in the works for almost a year. 'Ultimaker evolved in to a strong and dependable brand for professional use in such a short time and I am extremely proud of the whole team of internal and external stakeholders that helped us in this journey. This is a great moment in time to also mention the rebranding of our corporate identity,' Burger added. 'The new logo and the other visual assets are designed with the fullest respect for our legacy and directed to further strengthen Ultimaker as a B2B brand. We see it as a signal to the market and customers that we serve that we are a professional company dedicated to quickening the world's transition to digital movement and local manufacturing.'
 
While the new headquarters will be located in Creative Valley at Utrecht Central Station, Ultimaker also has its production facility in Zaltbommel and additional office spaces in Geldermalsen in the Netherlands.



This article is originally posted on Tronserve.com

PTC (NASDAQ: PTC) today stated the unleash of the hottest version of its Kepware® industrial connectivity software. Kepware is foundational to the industrial connectivity capabilities of PTC's market-leading ThingWorx® Industrial IoT platform, and now the KEPServerEX® 6.7 solution makes it much easier than ever for users to associate to all industrial automation assets via a single, secure application. Enhanced connectivity for manufacturing and new features for secure server deployment allow enterprises to standardize industrial communications on KEPServerEX.
 
Connectivity to industrial automation equipment is critical to improving operational efficiency. Engineers often rely on a mix of commercial and home-grown connectivity tools to navigate advanced and heterogeneous production environments. The improved complexity, cost, and bandwidth spent retrieving industrial data, instead of interpreting and leveraging it, has provided a business need for a single, secure solution through which enterprises can connect all of their production assets. KEPServerEX 6.7's breadth of connectivity, reliability, and security features empower engineers to focus on process efficiencies and product improvement.
 
'Digital transformation requires secure, reliable, seamless connectivity to all industrial assets, which is a mandatory step in any operational improvement initiative,' according to Craig Resnick, vice president, ARC Advisory Group. 'KEPServerEX provides users with a single point-of-access solution that can be implemented quickly and easily to help empower industrial enterprises as they work to augment operational operations, enabling improved efficiencies, increased KPIs, and rapid ROIs. The advancements to the Torque Tool driver and the new security features in version 6.7 make standardization even easier.'
 
Recent updates concentrated on the manufacturing industry include new device connectivity for the most open, interoperable Torque Tool driver on the market. Torque tools are typically applied in discrete assembly operations, and KEPServerEX distinguishes itself as one of the only connectivity applications that seamlessly incorporates with these assets. KEPServerEX provides data access to torque tools, as well as all other industrial automation assets, creating a single point of access for industrial software. The integration enables enterprises to reduce time and effort expended on software implementation.
 
KEPServerEX 6.7 also contains advanced security advancements to address the rising rate of cyber-attacks on operations networks. To combat the risk of IP theft, downtime, and comprised safety, among other threats, PTC has widened and enhanced its dependable remote configuration tools, reaffirming the company's devotion to its featured Responsibility Model. Version 6.7 also adds new security features to the ThingWorx Native Interface, allowing users to implement network best-practices when connecting to ThingWorx in the cloud or over a wide area network (WAN).
 
'As cybersecurity risks continue to become more sophisticated, we have continued to improve the application security of KEPServerEX,' said Abby Eon, general manager of Kepware, PTC. 'Version 6.7 enables our users to not only increase process advantages, but to do so with a solution that also helps reduce exposure to vulnerabilities and cyber-attacks.'



This article is originally posted on Tronserve.com

Building robots is a finicky procedure, needing an exhaustive amount of thought and care. It’s generally important to have a very clear idea of what you want your robot to do and how you want it to do it, and then you build a prototype, discover everything that’s wrong with it, build something different and better, and repeat until you run out of time and/or money.
 
But robots don’t normally have to be this confusing, as long as your anticipations for what they should be able to do are correspondingly low. In a paper offered at a NeurIPS workshop last December, a group of analysts from the University of Tokyo and Preferred Networks experimented with building mobile robots out of a couple of generic servos plus stuff you can find on the ground, like tree branches.
 
These robots figure out how to walk in simulation first, through deep reinforcement knowing. The way this is used in the paper is by finding up some sticks, analyzing and 3D scanning them, simulating the entire robot, and then rewarding gaits that result in the farthest movement. There’s also some hand-tuning required to eliminate behaviors that might (for example) “cause stress and wear in the real robot.”
 
Overall, this is maybe not the kind of strategy that you’d be able to use for most applications, but we can ponder about how robots like these may become a little bit more practical at some point. The idea of being able to make a mobile robot out of whatever is lying around (plus some servos and maybe a sensor or two) is a compelling one, and it appears like you could make a gait from scratch on the physical robot using trial and error and feedback from some basic sensors, since we’ve seen similar things done on other robotic platforms.
 
Found materials robots like these are not likely to be as competent as traditional robotic designs, so they’d likely only be useful under certain circumstances. Not having to hassle about transporting structural materials would be nice, as would being able to make a variety of designs as necessary using one generalized hardware set. And building a robot out of locally available materials means that anything you put together will be really easy to fix, even if you do have to teach it to move all over again.



This article is originally posted on Tronserve.com

As civilization becomes more dependent on technology, the robotics engineering job market will go through changes. Here are a few of the things that is expected this year and in the near future. 

Engineers at Georgia Tech say they have come up with a programmable prototype chip that appropriately solves a massive class of optimization problems, including those needed for neural network training, 5G network routing, and MRI image reconstruction. The chip’s architecture embodies a precise algorithm that breaks up one huge problem into many small problems, works on the subproblems, and shares the results. It does this over and over until it comes up with the best answer. Compared to a GPU running the algorithm, the prototype chip—called OPTIMO—is 4.77 times as power efficient and 4.18 times as fast.

Making biochips, an essential technology in studying disease, just got a bit easier. This new nanoprinting process uses gold-plated pyramids, an LED light, and photochemical reactions to print more organic material on the surface of one single biochip than before.

China country-specific ETFs were leading the charge Monday after President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed on a stay in the long trade war and renewed trade talks.

Springfield NJ— July 1st 2019 — Today at the Event, QEI announced the quick availability of TDMS SCADA on Open VMS, QEI provides the most protected and trusted SCADA systems on the market today. Cyber-security - attacks, hacks, viruses, worms, system patches, security management - has come to the forefront of attention to electric, water, wastewater, oil, and gas utilities throughout the world.
 
While other vendors want complex IT security infrastructure to secure SCADA, QEI customers are assured in the QEI solution that is protected to cyber-security concerns without the aid of costly infrastructure.
 
QEI's SCADA system does more than monitor and control your electric, water/wastewater, or gas system. Our customers use the system to enhance the operational efficiencies and decrease the prices of their processes.
 
QEI SCADA system comprises multiple applications from Basic SCADA applications to Advanced enhancements. Because every utility is various in their surroundings and needs, QEI provides these to allow you to build as you go.
 
Whether you are starting up small and building toward your future, or you have immediate needs for Advanced robust applications, QEI also has the knowledge and skills to help you get there.



This article is originally posted on Tronserve.com

Mitsubishi Electric Automation, Inc. announces a Platinum Sponsorship of the Golden Corridor Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (GCAMP). Through this sponsorship, Mitsubishi Electric supports its customers' interests by investing in the skilled workforce involved for their business.
 
GCAMP works to connect manufacturers to their next generation workforce in the 'Golden Corridor' region of the Chicago metropolitan area. GCAMP works thoroughly with students to link programs and projects immediately to Golden Corridor manufacturers in a type of ways. It arranges open houses for students and parents to see advanced manufacturing in action, while educating those students and parents on the technologically advanced career opportunities in manufacturing. GCAMP grants manufacturing networking meetings as well as activities for area manufacturers to tour advanced manufacturing programs, learn about programs offered to students, connect with educators and meet the students. Additionally, GCAMP aids students in attending automation and manufacturing trade shows such as IMTS and FABTECH. It also works with local secondary schools and community colleges to establish manufacturing programs and support dual credit courses to help students along a STEM manufacturing career path.
 
Through GCAMP's extensive student resources, Mitsubishi Electric will have the chance to support education in manufacturing in an innovative means, by taking its CNC products, robots, and industrial automation equipment to the next generation of manufacturing employees. The sponsorship will also yield long-term benefits to other manufacturing businesses, educators, students, municipalities, and local community residents by building up the manufacturing and automation foundation in the region.
 
'Mitsubishi Electric is excited to sponsor a local organization like GCAMP,' said Derrick Jordan, mechatronics engineering group manager at Mitsubishi Electric Automation, Inc. 'So many industries gain by a strengthened manufacturing labor force, from automotive and aerospace, to medical and agriculture. We look forward to the impact this will bring to our community.'



This article is originally posted on Tronserve.com

HATFIELD, Pa. (June 28, 2019) - Brooks Instrument, a world leader in advanced flow, pressure, vacuum and vapor delivery solutions, will once again offer an engineering scholarship for undergraduate students enrolled in an engineering program at an certified college or university. The program was introduced in 2018 to reward exceptional students and help them pursue their career. The scholarship offers $2,000 to a candidate who shows potential for leadership and interest in engineering, particularly as it associates to instrumentation, fluid mechanics and flow or pressure measure.
 
To apply, students should visit https://www.brooksinstrument.com/en/about-us/scholarship. The application requires a personal essay as well as a project review, proposal, lab work or other endeavors that give a thorough description of a procedure involving some degree of instrumentation, flow or measurement. To qualify for the scholarship, the project, research or investigation must include flow, fluid mechanics and/or pressure measurement as an integral part of the process or data recording. The project can also be about the use or development of a novel pressure or flow measurement method or technique. In addition, students must upload a copy of their transcript.
 
In 2018, Brooks Instrument awarded this scholarship to Etienne Jackson, a Fire Protection Engineer studying at the University of Maryland. When recounting on his project that won him the scholarship, Jackson acknowledged his teams' successes as well as the difficulties they faced.
 
'This project has uncovered issues that engineers go through when attempting to layout a product. When a failing idea is brought up, it is crucial for the idea to be tried, so that more ideas can be tested until the best one is revealed.'
 
Students like Jackson show a dedicated interest in this field and are leading the way as the next generation of engineers.



This article is originally posted on Tronserve.com

They were called the “dusty dozen” for good reason. The 12 Apollo astronauts who traveled on the lunar surface between 1969 and 1972 kicked up so much moondust that the powdery sediment got lodged in every nook and cranny of their space suits. Caked in the stuff, the astronauts inadvertently tracked the toxic dust into their spacecraft and even back down to Earth upon landing.
 
These NASA astronauts complained of a “lunar hay fever” that agitated their eyes, lungs, and nostrils. A doctor who aided the Apollo 11 crew members emerge from their dust-scattered space module following its ocean splashdown experienced allergic reactions of his own. “Dust is likely one of our biggest inhibitors to a nominal operation on the moon,” Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, said during a postflight debriefing. “I think we can conquer other physiological or physical or mechanical problems, except dust.”
 
Billowing clouds of dust particles—jagged and abrasive for want of weathering and atmospheric reactions—are rarely the only health hazards posed by a lunar mission, though. Galactic cosmic rays would bombard lunar inhabitants with a steady stream of high-energy radiation. The level of gravity on the moon—about 17 percent that of Earth’s—could wreak havoc on bones, muscles, and other organs. And then there are the psychological aspects of what one NASA astronaut explained as the “vast loneliness” of the moon.
 
As humanity makes to return to the moon and potentially colonize it, scientists are now actively probing these risks and beginning to devise medical countermeasures. Yet solid evidence on the health consequences of lunar living is extremely limited. “Except for the Apollo experience, we really have no data,” says Laurence Young, a space medicine scientist in MIT’s department of aeronautics and astronautics—and those Apollo missions were never designed with biomedical research goals in mind.
 
In contrast, the International Space Station (ISS) was established as a giant floating laboratory from the get-go, and nearly two decades of experiments from the regularly inhabited station do offer some clues about what it might be like for people to live on the moon for extended durations. But a zero-gravity space station orbiting within the protective halo of the Earth’s magnetic field is scarcely analogous to the moon’s surface, with its partial gravity and harsher radiation.
 
Researchers therefore have to settle for approximations of lunar conditions. They study proxy dust instead of the real thing, because moondust gathered by Apollo astronauts remains scarce. (And even those precious Apollo samples became less reactive after coming into contact with the Earth’s moist, oxygen-rich air.) The researchers recreate galactic radiation by using particle accelerators to create the kinds of energetic heavy ions found in deep space. And they have a range of tricks to fudge one-sixth gravity: They take parabolic flights that induce short bursts of moonlike conditions; use harnesses and other body-weight support systems to mimic the biomechanics expected in reduced gravity environments; and place subjects in tilted beds for weeks on end to model the effects of lunar gravity on heart function.
 
The imitations are never perfect, but they are helpful. Last year, an interdisciplinary team from Stony Brook University, in New York, revealed human lung cells and mouse brain cells to dust samples that resemble the regolith found in the lunar highlands and on the moon’s volcanic plains. Reviewed with less-reactive particulate materials, the toxic dust caused more genetic mutations and cell death, raising the specter of moondust triggering neurodegeneration and cancer in future lunar explorers. “The DNA is being destroyed, so there is a risk of those types of things happening,” says Rachel Caston, a molecular biologist who led the research. (She’s now at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis.)
 
But will the same problems happen inside of the human body? And if so, would promising the safety of future moon settlers require the equivalent of a mudroom, an expensive and logistically challenging piece of equipment to haul over to our celestial neighbor? And just how clear would that mudroom have to be to keep astronauts safe?
 
“We just don’t know, and therein lies the current conundrum,” says Kim Prisk, a pulmonary physiologist at the University of California, San Diego. “Is this just a nuisance dust, or something potentially very toxic?”
 
None of the Apollo astronauts suffered any long-term ill effects from dust exposure, only acute respiratory problems—which suggests the lunar schmutz might not be too horrible. But the longest stay on the moon so far was the Apollo 17 astronauts’ 75-hour mission, the equivalent of a long weekend getaway. Plus, with only 12 human data points to draw from, many uncertainties remain. To be on the safe side, when it comes to lunar dust, “a mitigation strategy must be in place before we establish habitats on the lunar surface,” says Andrea Hanson, an aerospace engineer at NASA who formerly managed the Exercise Physiology & Countermeasures Lab at Johnson Space Center.
 
But Hanson sees a bigger worry than lunar dust: exposure to cosmic rays, the high-energy particles from beyond our solar system that continually pummel the moon. She worries in certain about what a large shower of these reactive ions might do to an astronaut’s sensitive organs, such as the brain and heart.
 
To study that kind of scenario, in 2003 NASA built a Space Radiation Laboratory at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York state. It’s the first and only facility in the United States capable of producing heavy ions of the kind found in outer space. There, professionals blast mice with cosmiclike rays to show, for example, how space radiation can seriously harm the gastrointestinal tract or how a potential prophylactic drug treatment could protect the brain from radiation-induced cognitive decline.
 
Mouse experiments also underpin Mary Bouxsein’s investigations into the effects of partial gravity on musculoskeletal health. Her research will take place aboard the ISS in a spinning cage contraption built by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. This counterbalanced centrifuge will allow Bouxsein, a biomechanical engineer at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston, to monitor mice living at a variety of gravity levels for weeks at a time in order to determine whether lunarlike gravity is enough to safeguard proper bone and muscle function. “It’s difficult on Earth to do a true artificial gravity experiment,” Bouxsein says, whereas on the ISS “we can even, undoubtedly look at the protective effects of artificial gravity.”
 
Ben Levine, director of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine, a joint program of the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, states that the moon’s one-sixth gravity will not put sufficient weight on our bodies to protect against loss of bone mass, muscle strength, and heart pumping capacity. But fortunately, he points out, effective exercise regimes already exist that can be used for life on the moon. “If you do what they do on the space station now,” Levine says, “you should be able to completely prevent ongoing atrophy.”
 
The daily cardio and strength training now common for ISS astronauts might be hard to attain in future moon explorations, though—their 2.5-hour workouts include weightlifting, running, and biking on machines that use bungee cords to pull at them. That’s why Tobias Weber and his colleagues at the European Space Agency’s European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, have been studying streamlined alternatives. As part of the Movement in Low Gravity Study, ESA’s Space Medicine Team recently used a particularly designed treadmill that allows people to run, walk, and hop while suspended horizontally by a series of cables.
 
Modifying the force by which pulleys bring users laterally back toward the treadmill allows the system to supply various levels of gravity. With this “verticalized” treadmill setup, the researchers revealed that just a few minutes of daily hopping, in a simple up-and-down movement akin to skipping rope, could exert enough force on the bones, muscles, and tendons in lunar gravity to eliminate the physiological degradation expected to occur on the moon.
 
“Jumping may be a really potent multisystem countermeasure,” says aerospace physiologist David Green, a member of the ESA team. As an added added bonus, the short bouts of hopping may be more efficient—and less boring—than running on a treadmill, he adds. “At least at the start,” Green says, “it is hard not to smile when you’re hopping.”
 
Ultimately, it’s likely that lunar missions will proceed just as they did in the Apollo era: with many health questions unanswered and few protective medical methods fully worked out. That situation may sound horrifying to some would-be moon-trotters, but the uncertainties don’t faze Bill Paloski, director of NASA’s Human Research Program.
 
“I’m really not terribly stressed about health and physiology issues,” he says. “We’ll be able to observe accurately adequate the overall health and performance of crew members and then give near-real-time support from Earth for most things.” In the worst-case situation, astronauts could fly home in a matter of days—a rescue plan that won’t be possible as the mission steps on to Mars and beyond.
 
That’s what makes the moon such an “interesting stepping stone,” Paloski says. “It’s a way of testing a lot of the concepts we have for how to do things on the Mars surface.”



This article is originally posted on Tronserve.com