Planetary scientist Lynnae Quick decided to explore whether -- hypothetically -- ocean planets, similar to Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa, are common in the Milky Way galaxy. "Through a mathematical analysis of several dozen exoplanets, including planets in the nearby TRAPPIST-1 system, Quick and her colleagues learned something significant: More than a quarter of the exoplanets they studied could be ocean worlds, with a majority possibly harboring oceans beneath layers of surface ice, similar to Europa and Enceladus," reports Phys.Org. "Additionally, many of these planets could be releasing more energy than Europa and Enceladus." From the report: To look for possible ocean worlds, Quick's team selected 53 exoplanets with sizes most similar to Earth, though they could have up to eight times more mass. Scientists assume planets of this size are more solid than gaseous and, thus, more likely to support liquid water on or below their surfaces. At least 30 more planets that fit these parameters have been discovered since Quick and her colleagues began their study in 2017, but they were not included in the analysis, which was published on June 18 in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. With their Earth-size planets identified, Quick and her team sought to determine how much energy each one could be generating and releasing as heat. The team considered two primary sources of heat. The first, radiogenic heat, is generated over billions of years by the slow decay of radioactive materials in a planet's mantle and crust. That rate of decay depends on a planet's age and the mass of its mantle. Other scientists already had determined these relationships for Earth-size planets. So, Quick and her team applied the decay rate to their list of 53 planets, assuming each one is the same age as its star and that its mantle takes up the same proportion of the planet's volume as Earth's mantle does.

Next, the researchers calculated heat produced by something else: tidal force, which is energy generated from the gravitational tugging when one object orbits another. Planets in stretched out, or elliptical, orbits shift the distance between themselves and their stars as they circle them. This leads to changes in the gravitational force between the two objects and causes the planet to stretch, thereby generating heat. Eventually, the heat is lost to space through the surface. One exit route for the heat is through volcanoes or cryovolcanoes. Another route is through tectonics, which is a geological process responsible for the movement of the outermost rocky or icy layer of a planet or moon. Whichever way the heat is discharged, knowing how much of it a planet pushes out is important because it could make or break habitability. For instance, too much volcanic activity can turn a livable world into a molten nightmare. But too little activity can shut down the release of gases that make up an atmosphere, leaving a cold, barren surface. Just the right amount supports a livable, wet planet like Earth, or a possibly livable moon like Europa.

Some have suggested that some of these planets could be watery, and Quick's estimates support this idea. According to her team's calculations, TRAPPIST-1 e, f, g and h could be ocean worlds, which would put them among the 14 ocean worlds the scientists identified in this study. The researchers predicted that these exoplanets have oceans by considering the surface temperatures of each one. This information is revealed by the amount of stellar radiation each planet reflects into space. Quick's team also took into account each planet's density and the estimated amount of internal heating it generates compared to Earth.

Later this year, the International Space Station will receive a new and improved toilet system designed to bridge the gap between current lavatorial space tech and what humans will need to make extended visits to, say, Mars, in comfort. Space.com reports: It has a fancier name, of course; officially, the commode is NASA's Universal Waste Management System (UWMS). The launch is targeted for no earlier than the fall, a NASA spokesperson confirmed to Space.com, although the agency is still determining what spacecraft will carry the new plumbing up. The toilet currently on offer on the U.S. side of the space station was designed in the 1990s and based on its shuttle counterpart, according to a detailed review of space toiletry. But the apparatus has its flaws. It can be clunky to use, particularly for women, and it is "sensitive to crew alignment on the seat," sometimes resulting in messes, according to that review.

So NASA has tried to keep the aspects that have gotten positive reviews while trimming mass and volume and making some design changes, like adjusting the shape of the seat and replacing the apparatus that compresses the waste. Another change mimics a feature of the toilet on the Russian side of the space station, where astronauts simply hook their feet into toe bars, rather than the thigh bars used on the American equivalent to anchor the astronaut in the microgravity environment. The UWMS will remain on the space station for the rest of the orbiting laboratory's lifetime, and a second toilet of the same model will fly on the Orion capsule that astronauts use to fly around the moon on the first crewed Artemis mission in NASA's ambitious lunar return plan, according to the agency.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Vintage computing enthusiasts have recreated NASA's legendary "Apollo Guidance Computer," the 1960s-era assembly-language onboard guidance and navigation computer for the Apollo missions to the moon. Unfortunately, the software had been lost for the Apollo 10 mission (a manned "dress rehearsal" mission which flew to the moon eight weeks before Neil Armstrong's famous moonwalk mission).

But spaceflight engineer Mike Stewart found a clever way to recreate it, according to one science show on YouTube. Stewart found a print-out of an earlier version of the program, and "with the help of a small army of volunteers, Mike hand-transcribed the source listing and all of its programs..." — all 1,735 pages of it. (Though what used to take 25 minutes to compile together on a Honeywell mainframe now takes less than a second on his modern laptop.) There were also NASA memos which described the change, later versions of the program which had implemented the changes — and most importantly, a recently-discovered NASA document giving the checksum for every version of every program run on the Apollo Guidance Computer. So Stewart was able to cut-and-paste carefully-chosen code and variables from later versions of the program — based on the clues in NASA's memos — until he'd recreated a program with the exact same checksum.

There's also a separate video about the Apollo 10 code, highlighting "lighthearted comments in very serious code." (For example, to warn off people who'd change their crucial constants, they'd actually included a Latin phrase — a play on a biblical quote which translates roughly to "Don't touch these.") The ignition routine that actually lights the descent engine for the moon landing is named BURNBABY. The comment accompanying it? "OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD."

NASA has awarded Astrobotic of Pittsburgh $199.5 million to deliver NASA's Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) to the Moon's South Pole in late 2023. From a report: The water-seeking mobile VIPER robot will help pave the way for astronaut missions to the lunar surface beginning in 2024 and will bring NASA a step closer to developing a sustainable, long-term presence on the Moon as part of the agency's Artemis program. "The VIPER rover and the commercial partnership that will deliver it to the Moon are a prime example of how the scientific community and U.S. industry are making NASA's lunar exploration vision a reality," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. "Commercial partners are changing the landscape of space exploration, and VIPER is going to be a big boost to our efforts to send the first woman and next man to the lunar surface in 2024 through the Artemis program."

VIPER's flight to the Moon is part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, which leverages the capabilities of industry partners to quickly deliver scientific instruments and technology demonstrations to the Moon. As part of its award, Astrobotic is responsible for end-to-end services for delivery of VIPER, including integration with its Griffin lander, launch from Earth, and landing on the Moon.

According to a study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the orbit of Saturn's moon Titan is expanding at a rate about 100 times faster than expected. "The research suggests that Titan was born much closer to Saturn and migrated out to its current distance of 1.2 million kilometers (about 746,000 miles) over 4.5 billion years," reports Phys.Org. From the report: In the work detailed in the Nature Astronomy paper, two teams of researchers each used a different technique to measure Titan's orbit over a period of 10 years. One technique, called astrometry, produced precise measurements of Titan's position relative to background stars in images taken by the Cassini spacecraft. The other technique, radiometry, measured Cassini's velocity as it was affected by the gravitational influence of Titan. "By using two completely independent data sets -- astrometric and radiometric -- and two different methods of analysis, we obtained results that are in full agreement," says the study's first author, Valery Lainey formerly of JPL (which Caltech manages for NASA), now of Paris Observatory, PSL University. Lainey worked with the astrometry team.

The results are also in agreement with a theory proposed in 2016 by Fuller, who predicted that Titan's migration rate would be much faster than standard tidal theories estimated. His theory notes that Titan is expected to gravitationally squeeze Saturn with a particular frequency that makes the planet oscillate strongly, similarly to how swinging your legs on a swing with the right timing can drive you higher and higher. This process of tidal forcing is called resonance locking. Fuller proposed that the high amplitude of Saturn's oscillation would dissipate a lot of energy, which in turn would cause Titan to migrate outward away from the planet at a faster rate than previously thought. Indeed, the observations both found that Titan is migrating away from Saturn at a rate of 11 centimeters per year, more than 100 times faster than previous theories predicted.

The search habits of thousands of South Korean senior citizens "are being monitored through virtual-assistant smart speaker technology," writes Slashdot reader shirappu. The AP reports that around 3,200 people across the country, "mostly older than 70 and living alone, have so far allowed the SK Telecom speakers to listen to them 24 hours a day since the service launched in April 2019."

It's part of a larger look at whether technology has become too invasive, in a country where health authorities have also "aggressively used credit-card records, surveillance videos and cellphone data to find and isolate potential virus carriers." Locations where patients went before they were diagnosed are published on websites and released through cellphone alerts. Smartphone tracking apps are used to monitor around 30,000 individuals quarantined at home... [E]ntertainment venues in Seoul, Incheon and Daejeon will be required to register customers with smartphone QR codes so they can be easily located if needed. The requirement expands nationwide on June 10. But there's a dark side. People here have often managed to trace back the online information to the unnamed virus carriers, exposing embarrassing personal details and making them targets of public contempt...

President Moon Jae-in's administration has said data-driven industries will be critical in boosting a pandemic-hit economy. Officials are preparing regulations for revised data laws that lawmakers passed in January after months of wrangling. They aim to allow businesses greater freedom in collecting and analyzing anonymous personal data without seeking individual consent. If they work as intended, optimists say the laws would allow artificial intelligence to truly take off and pave the way for highly customized financial and health care services after they start in August.

But activist Oh Byoung-il said the changes could bring excessive privacy infringements unless robust safeguards are installed. "Companies will always have an endless thirst for data, but you can't give it to them all," he said.

An anonymous reader writes: When talking about the nine year gap since America last flew astronauts with their own spacecraft, it's often said that NASA didn't have a plan in place when they retired the Space Shuttle. But the reality is a lot more complicated than that. NASA was working on a new spacecraft and rocket, and even made a successful test flight two years before the last Shuttle flight, but the program ended up getting canceled when the White House Administration changed. A review concluded that completing the program "would cost at least $150 billion dollars, and even then, a return to the Moon or a mission to Mars in the foreseeable future was unlikely," according to the article. Money was instead allocated to private alternatives like Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser spaceplane as well as Boeing's CST-100 Starliner -- though in the end it was SpaceX's Crew Dragon which would launch the next American rocket carrying American astronauts into space. "The dark horse soundly beat the entrenched giants," the article concludes, "and the democratization of space has never been closer.

"It's hard to predict what the next decade of human spaceflight will look like, but there's no question it's going to be a lot more exciting than the previous one."

"Crew Dragon's hatch is closed, securing @AstroBehnken and @Astro_Doug in the spacecraft ahead of liftoff," SpaceX tweeted an hour ago.

Livestreaming of the launch has already begun, with liftoff scheduled in about 41 minutes.

GeekWire reports: If liftoff from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida occurs today at 3:22 p.m. ET (12:22 p.m. PT), it'll be a feat that America hasn't been able to perform since NASA retired its space shuttles, nearly nine years ago. "We are going to launch American astronauts on American rockets from American soil," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine declared during a launch-eve briefing at the space center's countdown clock.

But even Bridenstine acknowledged that's not a sure bet for today. "Weather challenges remain with a 50% chance of cancellation," he tweeted this morning. A drenching rainstorm swept over Florida's Space Coast overnight, but the skies cleared up this morning... The launch can be scrubbed at any time, all the way down to the last second, if the weather doesn't cooperate or if a technical glitch arises. If the gumdrop-shaped Crew Dragon doesn't lift off today, Sunday is an option. The chances of acceptable weather are expected to improve to 60%. The weather outlook is even better for a June 2 backup opportunity...

Hurley and Behnken, who are both experienced shuttle astronauts, are scheduled to rendezvous with the space station on Sunday and move in alongside its current occupants, NASA's Chris Cassidy and Russia's Anatoly Ivanishin. NASA hasn't yet decided how long the Dragon riders will spend in orbit. Their stay could be as short as six weeks, or as long as 16 weeks, depending on how the test mission proceeds. For the return trip, Hurley and Behnken will strap themselves back inside the Dragon and descend to an Atlantic splashdown.

This whole flight serves as an initial demonstration of the Crew Dragon's capabilities with an actual crew aboard. If the mission is successful, yet another Crew Dragon will carry four different astronauts to the space station weeks after Hurley and Behnken return.
Reuters reporter Joey Roulette also spotted NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman by the side of the road as his fellow astronauts drove by. He was holding a sign that said "Take me with you."

And GeekWire notes that NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine sees this event as historic. "I really think, when we look into the future, we're going to see these models of doing business with public-private partnerships apply not just to low Earth orbit... but we're taking this model to the moon and even on to Mars."

UPDATE: SpaceX just tweeted that the re-usable Falcon 9 booster rocket "has landed on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship!"

An anonymous reader shares a report: The moon visits one of the spring constellations this week by traveling through the faint constellation of Virgo, the virgin. On 1 and 2 June, our natural satellite will pass close to Virgo's only bright star, Spica. Memorise its position and then return in the days to come to pick out the constellation's other, fainter stars. Spica is one of the 20 brightest stars in the night sky, located at a distance of about 250 light years. A blue giant star, containing around 10 times the Sun's mass, it is more than 20,000 times more luminous than our star.

Linus Torvalds released Linux 5.7 rc7 today, saying it "looks very normal... none of the fixes look like there's anything particularly scary going on."

But then he added something else: [T]he biggest excitement this week for me was just that I upgraded my main machine, and for the first time in about 15 years, my desktop isn't Intel-based. No, I didn't switch to ARM yet, but I'm now rocking an AMD Threadripper 3970x. My 'allmodconfig' test builds are now three times faster than they used to be, which doesn't matter so much right now during the calming down period, but I will most definitely notice the upgrade during the next merge window.
The Register writes: Torvalds didn't divulge any further details about his new rig, but the 3970x is quite the beast, boasting 32 cores and 64 threads at 3.7GHz with the ability to burst up to 4.5GHz, all built on TSMC's 7nm FinFET process... Torvalds has probably acquired a whole new PC, as the Threadripper range requires a sTRX4 socket and those debuted on motherboards from late 2019.

Whatever he's running, it has more cores than Intel currently offers in a CPU designed for PCs. Even Chipzilla's high-end CoreX range tops out at 18 cores. AMD will be over the moon that such a high profile IT pro has adopted their kit and pointed to its performance.
Or, as long-time Slashdot reader williamyf puts it, "Good endorsement for AMD, a PR blow for Intel."

"One of the longer chapters of the International Space Station has come to a close," writes Engadget.

"NASA has sent the last of its 11 ExPRESS (Expedite the Processing of Experiments to the Space Station) science racks to the orbiting facility, 19 years after sending the first two." They don't look like much, but they provide the power, storage, climate control and communications for up to 10 small payloads — they're key to many of the experiments that run aboard the ISS and will help the station live up to its potential research capabilities. This last rack was carried aboard a Japanese cargo ship and should be installed and functioning by fall 2020. While the EXPRESS racks should be useful for a while yet, this effectively marks the end of an era for NASA's ISS work...
Originally developed by engineers at Boeing and the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, "The first two completed racks were delivered to the space station on STS-100 in 2001 and have been in continuous operation ever since," notes a NASA press release, "as have all the subsequent added racks." And since then NASA has logged more than 85 total years of combined rack operational hours. "The sheer volume of science that's been conducted using the racks up til now is just overwhelming," says Shaun Glasgow, project manager for the EXPRESS Racks at Marshall.

"And as we prepare to return human explorers to the Moon and journey on to Mars, it's even more exciting to consider all the scientific investigations still to come."

FallOutBoyTonto shares a report from Ars Technica: On Tuesday, NASA announced that its chief of human spaceflight had resigned from the space agency. The timing of Doug Loverro's departure is terrible, with NASA's first launch of humans in nearly nine years due to occur in just eight days. The space agency offered a bland statement regarding Loverro's resignation as Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) at NASA.

"Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Doug Loverro has resigned from his position effective Monday, May 18," the statement said. "Loverro hit the ground running this year and has made significant progress in his time at NASA. His leadership of HEO has moved us closer to accomplishing our goal of landing the first woman and the next man on the Moon in 2024. Loverro has dedicated more than four decades of his life in service to our country, and we thank him for his service and contributions to the agency." Loverro's resignation set off a firestorm of speculation after it was announced. He was due to chair a Flight Readiness Review meeting on Thursday to officially clear SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft for the first flight of humans to the International Space Station. The final go or no-go decision for that mission was to be his. That launch is presently scheduled for May 27.

A reader shares a report from Live Science: There's no use sugar coating it: According to one scribe in medieval England, A.D. 1110 was a "disastrous year." Torrential rainfall damaged crops, famine stalked the land -- and, as if that wasn't bad enough, on one fateful night in May, the moon simply vanished from the sky. "On the fifth night in the month of May appeared the moon shining bright in the evening, and afterwards by little and little its light diminished," the unnamed scribe wrote in the Anglo-Saxon manuscript known as the Peterborough Chronicle. "As soon as night came, it was so completely extinguished withal, that neither light, nor orb, nor anything at all of it was seen. And so it continued nearly until day, and then appeared shining full and bright."

So, what made the moon disappear in an already dismal year? According to a study published April 21 in the journal Scientific Reports, the explanation for both the moon's mysterious vanishing act and the rain-ravaged summer that followed may be one and the same -- volcanoes. "The spectacular atmospheric optical phenomena associated with high-altitude volcanic aerosols have caught the attention of chroniclers since ancient times," the study authors wrote. "Careful evaluation of ice core records points to the occurrence of several closely spaced volcanic eruptions," which may have occurred in Europe or Asia between A.D. 1108 and A.D. 1110.

Those volcanic events, which the researchers call a "forgotten cluster" of eruptions because they were sparsely documented by historians at the time, may have released towering clouds of ash that traveled far around the world for years on end. Not only could a high-altitude veil of volcanic aerosols blot out the moon while leaving many stars unobscured, as the Peterborough writer described, but a series of large eruptions could have also disrupted the global climate, the researcher wrote, causing or exacerbated the cold, wet weather that made life so miserable in A.D. 1110. One such eruption, which occurred in Japan in A.D. 1108, could be to blame, the team said.

The Trump administration is drafting a legal blueprint for mining on the moon under a new U.S.-sponsored international agreement called the Artemis Accords, Reuters reported Wednesday. From the report: The agreement would be the latest effort to cultivate allies around NASA's plan to put humans and space stations on the moon within the next decade, and comes as the civilian space agency plays a growing role in implementing American foreign policy. The draft pact has not been formally shared with U.S. allies yet.

The Trump administration and other spacefaring countries see the moon as a key strategic asset in outer space. The moon also has value for long-term scientific research that could enable future missions to Mars -- activities that fall under a regime of international space law widely viewed as outdated. The Artemis Accords, named after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's new Artemis moon programme, propose "safety zones" that would surround future moon bases to prevent damage or interference from rival countries or companies operating in close proximity.

New submitter penandpaper shares an excerpt from a NASA press release: NASA has selected three U.S. companies to design and develop human landing systems (HLS) for the agency's Artemis program, one of which will land the first woman and next man on the surface of the Moon by 2024. NASA is on track for sustainable human exploration of the Moon for the first time in history. The human landing system awards under the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP-2) Appendix H Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) are firm-fixed price, milestone-based contracts. The total combined value for all awarded contracts is $967 million for the 10-month base period. The following companies were selected to design and build human landing systems:

- Blue Origin of Kent, Washington, is developing the Integrated Lander Vehicle (ILV) -- a three-stage lander to be launched on its own New Glenn Rocket System and ULA Vulcan launch system.
- Dynetics (a Leidos company) of Huntsville, Alabama, is developing the Dynetics Human Landing System (DHLS) -- a single structure providing the ascent and descent capabilities that will launch on the ULA Vulcan launch system.
- SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, is developing the Starship -- a fully integrated lander that will use the SpaceX Super Heavy rocket. "With these contract awards, America is moving forward with the final step needed to land astronauts on the Moon by 2024, including the incredible moment when we will see the first woman set foot on the lunar surface," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. "This is the first time since the Apollo era that NASA has direct funding for a human landing system, and now we have companies on contract to do the work for the Artemis program."

Further reading: SpaceX and NASA Break Down What Their Historic First Astronaut Mission Will Look Like

schwit1 shares a report from Engadget: The USGS (with help from NASA and the Lunar Planetary Institute) has released the first complete geologic map of the Moon, providing a truly comprehensive look at our nearest cosmic neighbor. The 1:5,000,000 scale map is color-coded to help you quickly identify geological features, including multiple crater types, plains and other features. The team created the map using a mix of Apollo-era maps and data from recent satellite missions, including the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Japans SELENE. Scientists redrew the historical maps to help them line up with the present-day sets while preserving valuable notes. They also established consistent descriptions of features to prevent the confusion that could happen with past maps.

The Starship SN4, a prototype of a SpaceX ship meant to one day take humans to the moon and Mars, has remained intact during pressure testing. ExtremeTech reports: Last year, SpaceX successfully tested the "Starhopper" prototype with one of the company's new Raptor engines. However, the full-scale prototypes haven't fared well in pressure testing. SN1 blew its top in February, and both SN2 and SN3 suffered similar fates during the "cryo" testing phase, which simulates a full-pressure tank in the vacuum of space. SN4 is the first version of the rocket to survive that test.

The success of the SN4 prototype is a big step forward for the Starship program. The next step is to set up a static fire test with a single Raptor engine on the SN4. That could happen as soon as next week. Assuming it's still in one piece, SpaceX will then conduct a brief flight up to 500 feet (150 meters) before setting down. Elon Musk says that the next variant (predictably called SN5) will feature the full-scale tank and a trio of Raptor engines. The final design calls for six Raptor engines on the Starship and a further 37 of them on the Super Heavy stage.

Marcia Dunn from The Associated Press remembers the Apollo 13 mission 50 years later: Apollo 13âs astronauts never gave a thought to their mission number as they blasted off for the moon 50 years ago. Even when their oxygen tank ruptured two days later â" on April 13. Jim Lovell and Fred Haise insist they're not superstitious. They even use 13 in their email addresses. As mission commander Lovell sees it, he's incredibly lucky. Not only did he survive NASA's most harrowing moonshot, he's around to mark its golden anniversary. "I'm still alive. As long as I can keep breathing, I'm good," Lovell, 92, said in an interview with The Associated Press from his Lake Forest, Illinois, home. A half-century later, Apollo 13 is still considered Mission Control's finest hour. Lovell calls it "a miraculous recovery." Haise, like so many others, regards it as NASA's most successful failure. "It was a great mission," Haise, 86, said. It showed "what can be done if people use their minds and a little ingenuity."

NASA has selected a lunar-crater radio telescope idea to receive funding through its NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, the agency announced on Tuesday. The Phase I award goes to projects in very early stages of development. CNET reports: Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay, a robotics technologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is the mind behind the moon dream. Making it happen would require sending robots to the far side of the moon and using the machines to deploy a wire mesh over a crater. Bandyopadhyay's proposal lists the benefits of locating a telescope on the far side of the moon, including that "the moon acts as a physical shield that isolates the lunar-surface telescope from radio interferences/noises from Earth-based sources, ionosphere, Earth-orbiting satellites, and sun's radio-noise during the lunar night."

The moon telescope project is one of 23 concepts that received part of a $7 million investment through NIAC. The Phase I award consists of $125,000 to fund a nine-month study of the idea. Other concepts include investigating solar sails, lunar landing pads and a robotic explorer for Saturn's moon Enceladus. NASA pointed out that these projects will mostly require a decade or more of technology development, and that they are not official NASA missions.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: President Donald Trump signed an executive order today (April 6) establishing U.S. policy on the exploitation of off-Earth resources. That policy stresses that the current regulatory regime -- notably, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty -- allows the use of such resources. This view has long held sway in U.S. government circles. For example, the United States, like the other major spacefaring nations, has not signed the 1979 Moon Treaty, which stipulates that non-scientific use of space resources be governed by an international regulatory framework. And in 2015, Congress passed a law explicitly allowing American companies and citizens to use moon and asteroid resources.

The new executive order makes things even more official, stressing that the United States does not view space as a "global commons" and sees a clear path to off-Earth mining, without the need for further international treaty-level agreements. The executive order, called "Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources," has been in the works for about a year, a senior administration official said during a teleconference with reporters today. The order was prompted, at least in part, by a desire to clarify the United States' position as it negotiates with international partners to help advance NASA's Artemis program for crewed lunar exploration, the official added. (Engagement with international partners remains important, the official said.) "As America prepares to return humans to the moon and journey on to Mars, this executive order establishes U.S. policy toward the recovery and use of space resources, such as water and certain minerals, in order to encourage the commercial development of space," Scott Pace, deputy assistant to the president and executive secretary of the U.S. National Space Council, said in a statement today.