October 3, 2018 | International, Aerospace
DENVER, Oct. 3, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Bremen, Germany, Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) experts revealed the company's crewed lunar lander concept and showed how the reusable lander aligns with NASA's lunar Gateway and future Mars missions.
Concept video: https://vimeo.com/293133933
Lockheed Martin Crewed-Lunar-Lander
The crewed lunar lander is a single stage, fully reusable system that incorporates flight-proven technologies and systems from NASA's Orion spacecraft. In its initial configuration, the lander would accommodate a crew of four and 2,000 lbs. of cargo payload on the surface for up to two weeks before returning to the Gateway without refueling on the surface.
"NASA asked industry for innovative and new approaches to advance America's goal of returning humans to the Moon, and establishing a sustainable, enduring presence there," said Lisa Callahan, vice president and general manager of Commercial Civil Space at Lockheed Martin Space. "This is a concept that takes full advantage of both the Gateway and existing technologies to create a versatile, powerful lander that can be built quickly and affordably. This lander could be used to establish a surface base, deliver scientific or commercial cargo, and conduct extraordinary exploration of the Moon."
The unique orbit of the lunar Gateway provides global lunar access for a lander. Having the ability to visit multiple sites with a reusable lander supports many international, commercial, and scientific communities, in addition to NASA's sustainable exploration of the Moon. After a surface mission, it would return to the Gateway, where it can be refueled, serviced, and then kept in orbit until the next surface sortie mission.
"The Gateway is key to full, frequent and fast reusability of this lander," said Tim Cichan, space exploration architect at Lockheed Martin Space, who presented the lander concept at IAC. "Because this lander doesn't have to endure the punishment of re-entering Earth's atmosphere, it can be re-flown many times over without needing significant and costly refurbishment. That's a major advantage of the Gateway and of a modular, flexible, reusable approach to deep space exploration."
The investments made in technology developed for Orion can be re-used to reduce the cost, complexity and development timeline. Some of the human-rated, flight-proven systems used in the design include avionics, life support, communications and navigation systems, and a light-weight version of its crew module pressure vessel.
Reusable landers are enabled by the lunar Gateway and are important for sustainable exploration. Additionally, landed human lunar missions and a lunar orbiting outpost are valuable to prepare for sending humans to Mars. While the Moon doesn't have an atmosphere, there are still many lessons that apply to a future crewed Mars lander, such as: operations experience in a challenging and dynamic environment, operating and refueling out of orbit, long-duration cryogenic propulsion, and terminal descent navigation, guidance and control.
To learn more about the Lockheed Martin's crewed reusable lunar lander concept, visit:
About Lockheed Martin
Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 100,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. This year the company received three Edison Awards for ground-breaking innovations in autonomy, satellite technology and directed energy.
SOURCE Lockheed Martin
https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2018-10-03-Lockheed-Martin-Reveals-New-Human-Lunar-Lander-Concept
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The MoU was signed in the presence of Alexander Kamyshin, the Ukrainian Minister for Strategic Industries, during the Munich Security Conference.
September 26, 2019 | International, C4ISR
By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR. GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY: “You will find no stronger proponent of integration of AI capabilities writ large into the Department of Defense,” Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan said here, “but there is one area where I pause, and it has to do with nuclear command and control.” In movies like WarGames and Terminator, nuclear launch controls are the first thing fictional generals hand over to AI. In real life, the director of the Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center says, that's the last thing he would integrate AI with. The military is beginning a massive multi-billion dollar modernization of its aging system for Nuclear Command, Control, & Communications (NC3), much of which dates to the Cold War. But the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center is not involved with it. A recent article on the iconoclastic website War on the Rocks argued “America Needs A ‘Dead Hand',” a reference to the Soviet system designed to automatically order a nuclear launch if the human leadership was wiped out. “I read that,” Shanahan told the Kalaris Intelligence Conference here this afternoon. “My immediate answer is ‘No. We do not.'” Instead, the JAIC is very deliberately starting with relatively low-risk, non-lethal projects — predicting breakdowns in helicopter engines and mapping natural disasters — before moving on to combat-related functions such as intelligence analysis and targeting next year. On the Pentagon's timeline, AI will be coming to command posts before it is embedded in actual weapons, and even then the final decision to use lethal force will always remain in human hands. The standard term in the Pentagon now for human involvement with AI and weapons now is “human on the loop,” a shift from human IN the loop. That reflects greater stress on the advisory function of humans with AI and a recognition that domains like cyber require almost instantaneous responses that can't wait for a human. Hawkish skeptics say slowing down to ask human permission could cripple US robots against their less-restrained Russian or Chinese counterparts. Dovish skeptics say this kind of human control would be too easily bypassed. Shanahan does see a role for AI in applying lethal force once that human decision is made. “I'm not going to go straight to ‘lethal autonomous weapons systems,'” he said, “but I do want to say we will use artificial intelligence in our weapons systems... to give us a competitive advantage. It's to save lives and help deter war from happening in the first place.” The term “lethal autonomous weapons systems” was popularized by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, which seeks a global ban on all AI weapons. Shanahan made clear his discomfort with formal arms control measures, as opposed to policies and international norms, which don't bind the US in the same way. “I'll be honest with you,” Shanahan said. “I don't like the term, and I do not use the term, ‘arms control' when it comes to AI. I think that's unhelpful when it comes to artificial intelligence: It's largely a commercial technology,” albeit with military applications. “I'm much more interested, at least as a starting point, in international rules and norms and behavior,” he continued. (Aside from the space is governed almost exclusively “It's extremely important to have those discussions.” “This is the ultimate human decision that needs to be made....nuclear command and control,” he said. “We have to be very careful. Knowing ...the immaturity of technology today, give us a lot of time to test and evaluate.” “Can we use artificial intelligence to make better decisions, to make more informed judgments about what might be happening, to reduce the potential for civilian casualties or collateral damage?” Shanahan said. “I'm an optimist. I believe you can. It will not eliminate it, never. It's war; bad things are going to happen.” While Shanahan has no illusions about AI enabling some kind of cleanly surgical future conflict, he doesn't expect a robo-dystopia, either. “The hype is a little dangerous, because it's uninformed most of the time, and sometimes it's a Hollywood-driven killer robots/Terminator/SkyNet worst case scenario,” he said. “I don't see that worst case scenario any time in my immediate future.” “I'm very comfortable saying our approach — even though it is emerging technology, even though it unfolds very quickly before our eyes — it will still be done in a deliberate and rigorous way so we know what we get when we field it,” Shanahan said. “As the JAIC director, I'm focused on really getting to the fielding,” he said, moving AI out of the lab into the real world — but one step at a time. “We're always going to start with limited narrow use cases. Say, can we take some AI capability and put it in a small quadcopter drone that will make it easier to clear out a cave, [and] really prove that it works before we ever get it to a [large] scale production.” “We will have a very clear understanding of what it can do and what it can't do,” he said. “That will be through experimentation, that will be through modeling and simulation, and that will be in wargames. We've done that with every piece of technology we've ever used, and I don't expect this to be any different.” The JAIC is even looking to hire an in-house ethicist of sorts, a position Shanahan has mentioned earlier but sought to clarify today. “It'll be someone who's a technical standards [expert] / ethicist,” he said. “As we develop the models and algorithms... they can look at that make sure the process is abiding by our rules of the road.” “I'm also interested in, down the road, getting some help from the outside on sort of those deeper philosophical questions,” he continued. “I don't focus on them day to day, because of my charter to field now, but it's clear we have to be careful about this.” “I do not see that same approach in Russia or China,” Shanahan said. “What sets us apart is... our focus on real rigor in test and evaluation, validation and verification, before we field capability that could have lives at stake.” https://breakingdefense.com/2019/09/no-ai-for-nuclear-command-control-jaics-shanahan