[1] The Artemis II crew of NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen have set the record for the farthest distance from Earth traveled by a human mission, surpassing the Apollo 13 record of 248,655 miles set in 1970.

[2] What are the goals of the Artemis II Mission? The Artemis II test flight will confirm the systems necessary to support astronauts in deep space exploration and prepare to establish a sustained presence on the Moon. The primary goal of Artemis II is a crewed test flight in lunar space. There are five main additional priorities for Artemis II:

[3]https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/artemis/ 

Artemis III: Scheduled for 2027, this new demonstration mission in low Earth orbit will test one or both commercial landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin, respectively.

Artemis IV: NASA continues to target early 2028 for the first Artemis lunar landing, a date that has remained unchanged since mid‑2025. After reaching lunar orbit, the crew will transfer from Orion to a commercial lunar lander for their descent to the Moon’s surface.

Artemis V: Using the standard SLS (Space Launch System) rocket configuration, NASA expects to launch this lunar surface mission by late 2028, with subsequent missions planned roughly once per year.

[4] NASA’s Artemis II mission is scheduled to splash down off the coast of San Diego at approximately 8:07 p.m. EDT (5:07 p.m. PDT) on Friday, April 10. Following splashdown, recovery teams will retrieve the crew using helicopters and deliver them to the USS John P. Murtha. Once aboard, the astronauts will undergo post-mission medical evaluations in the ship’s medical bay before traveling back to shore to meet with an aircraft bound for NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

[5] https://airandspace.si.edu/explore-and-learn/topics/apollo/apollo-program/landing-missions/apollo11.cfm

[6] Angel Abbud-Madrid is the Director of the Center for Space Resources at the Colorado School of Mines, where he leads a research program focused on the human and robotic exploration of space and the utilization of its resources.

[7] First moonwalk occurred at 10:56 pm EDT; Mexican Pacific Time is 2 hours earlier than EDT.

[8] ​​First men on the Moon: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

[9] NASA's annual budget, which had reached $5 billion in the mid-1960s and stood at almost $4 billion in 1969, was reduced to $3.7 billion in 1970 and just over $3 billion in 1974.

[10] Last lunar landing Dec. 11, 1972. https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo.html

[11] With Apollo 11, we had fulfilled President Kennedy's 1961 challenge and beated the Soviet Union in achieving a historic feat of exploration. By the mid-1970s the marvels of Apollo—the Saturn V rockets and the spacecraft—were set aside and the national expertise that made them possible was redirected. A successful space program now had to find a new purpose in a new era.

[12] NASA invested approximately $6 million in fiscal 1970 on space station [near Earth orbit] studies. It had $30 million to continue the work in fiscal 1971.

[13] In 2004, Pres. GW Bush announced the space program would start working on returning to the moon, in a decision that was described at the time as a "new course" for the nation's space program.  “in a speech at NASA headquarters, shifting the long-term focus from the space shuttle and the international space station to the creation of a new manned space vehicle that will be flying with a crew in 10 years and will return humans to the moon within 16 years.”...But some in Congress questioned whether the funding would be enough to achieve the president's ambitious goals. And the project drew criticism from groups who say the money would be better spent on domestic programs.

[14] US Artemis moon program was announced in December 2017.

[15] https://www.planetary.org/space-missions/change-4

[16] The Chandrayaan 2 lander crashed on the moon, but the orbiter is still operating and India is planning another mission.

[17] https://phys.org/news/2020-12-year-israel-unveils-moon.html

[18] https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=KPLO

[19] https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=SLIM 

[20] https://global.jaxa.jp/projects/sas/slim/

[21] And even more if you include private space industry: https://space.oscar.wmo.int/spaceagencies 

[22] NASA; September 2020: The United States leads in space exploration now; however, as more countries and companies take aim at the Moon, America needs the earliest possible landing to maintain and build on that leadership, as well as to prepare for a historic first human mission to Mars.

[23] https://trumpstruth.org/statuses/37552 

[24] NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said, for example, that harvesting rare-earth metals from the surface of the moon will be possible in “this century.” “There could be tons and tons of platinum group metals on the moon, rare-earth metals, which are tremendously valuable on Earth,” Bridenstine told CNBC’s “Squawk Alley” on Thursday.

[25] From April 2026  https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyv1q59py4go So a successful Artemis mission, sending four astronauts to the Moon on Wednesday, could give Trump's administration a boost. The potential benefits are huge - a competitive edge with China, the possibility of a lunar gold rush, and a rare moment of national unity…. “"After all these years of thinking it was nothing more than a dust bowl, we have come to realise it has a significant amount of helium 3,” … “Additionally, the moon is home to water ice, which can be used for rocket propulsion, as well as rare earth minerals such as lithium, platinum and other materials critical to electronics and clean energy technology.”

[26] "....scientists announced last year plans to begin extracting resources from the moon in five years. The mission... plans to extract waste-free nuclear energy thought to be worth trillions of dollars." https://www.mining.com/moon-richer-in-metals-than-previously-thought-nasa/ 

[27] "Experts concur that the value of these resources are in the trillions of dollars." https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/03/moon-express-and-the-trillion-dollar-race-to-harvest-the-moon.html 

[28] “The Trillion Dollar Reason To Go Back To The Moon” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ5v-_b-V8c 

[29] The president [Trump] Monday signed at the White House Space Policy Directive 1, a change in national space policy that provides for a U.S.-led, integrated program with private sector partners for a human return to the Moon, followed by missions to Mars and beyond….The effort will more effectively organize government, private industry, and international efforts toward returning humans on the Moon, and will lay the foundation that will eventually enable human exploration of Mars. [emphasis added]

[30] The moon, [astronaut Steve Lindsey] says, is the logical first step. "If we're going to ever go interplanetary, like to Mars , it sure would be a good idea to practice somewhere that's only four days away from the earth. The moon is in our future, we will go there. It's just a matter of time. And if we want to go to Mars, I think we have to go to the moon first."

[31] Playing perhaps more to our passions than our reason, in January 2004 President George W. Bush promulgated a program to return to the moon by 2020 and make it a staging area for a mission to Mars, perhaps two decades later. His father, President George H.W. Bush, had suggested essentially the same plan in 1989, but because of the enormous expense and conflicting U.S. commitments in space, it was dead on arrival.

[32] Under Artemis, NASA will send astronauts on increasingly difficult missions to explore more of the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build on our foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.""  https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/artemis/#:~:text=Under%20Artemis%2C%20NASA%20will%20send,the%20Artemis%20Accords%20in%202020.

[33] https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/the-lunar-gold-rush-how-moon-mining-could-work (from 2013)

[34] Abundances of fourteen REE (rare-earth elements), Y, Cd, In, Rb, Cs, V, Sc, Co, Zr, Hf, Th, and Ba have been determined by radiochemical and instrumental neutron activation analysis (RNAA and INAA). The chondritic normalized REE distribution patterns, REE abundance ranges, and the degrees of Eu depletion observed in Apollo 12 rock and soil samples are significantly different from each other and also from Apollo 11 rock and soil samples. Total REE + Y abundances in four Apollo 12 soils vary from 390 to 720 ppm and are higher by a factor of 4-7 compared to Apollo 12 crystalline rocks. The REE in a 15-cm deep soil 12033 (this work) are significantly more abundant and display about the same chondritic normalized distribution patterns compared to REE abundances and patterns measured in five core samples (1-37 cm) by PHILPOTTS et al. (1971).

[35] The Apollo astronauts collected lots of samples of rocks and dust, and KREEP-rich materials were returned from every one of the landing sites. Geologists concluded that that KREEP-rich late melt was present all over the Moon.

[36] KREEP, a suite of lunar lavas, relatively enriched in certain elements, that were identified in the analysis of rock samples that Apollo astronauts brought back from the Moon. The elements include potassium (chemical symbol K), rare-earth elements, and phosphorus (P), from which the acronym KREEP is derived.

[37] A single iPhone contains eight different rare-earth metals. If you examine several varieties of smart- phones, you can find 16 of the 17 rare-earth metals.

[38] For example, cerium-based catalysts are used in automotive catalytic converters

[39] https://mechanical.mines.edu/project/abbud-madrid-angel/ 

[40] https://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/65/terbium Appearance: A soft, silvery metal.

[41] Rare earths are also used in all the energy saving lighting and display technologies as light-converting materials to provide high-energy efficiency and high color rendering; for example, europium (trivalent: red, 610 nm; divalent: blue, 450 nm) and terbium (green, 550 nm) are used as emitters and cerium is used as sensitizer. The major applications are fluorescent tubes, compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), and plasma and liquid crystal (LCD) displays

[42] box 1.4, page 9:  “... neodymium, dysprosium, and terbium to reduce vibration, and dysprosium, gadolinium, europium, lanthanum, terbium, praseodymium, and yttrium to produce colors.”

[43] The rare earths and critical metals which are essential to make solar PV and wind power have a potential of become supply constrained as economically viable concentrations of elements such as neodymium, dysprosium, indium, selenium, tellurium, terbium and gallium are found in only a handful of countries.

[44] (2018) Toyota press release: Neodymium magnets are used in various types of motors such as the high-output motors found in electrified vehicles, use of which is expected to increase rapidly in the future. The new magnet uses significantly less neodymium, a rare-earth element*2 ("rare earth"), and can be used in high-temperature conditions. The newly developed magnet uses no terbium (Tb) or dysprosium (Dy), which are rare earths that are also categorized as critical materials*3 necessary for highly heat-resistant neodymium magnets. A portion of the neodymium has been replaced with lanthanum (La) and cerium (Ce), which are low-cost rare earths, reducing the amount of neodymium used in the magnet.

[45] 

With regard to wind energy and e-mobility, rare earth elements are mostly used as raw materials for the manufacturing of permanent magnets, which are used in generators for wind turbines and traction motors for electric vehicles

[46]…the production process is fairly energy and materials intensive (Peiro and Mendez 2013; Zaimes et al. 2015) and generates significant quantities of pollution that includes radioactive waste, hydrogen fluoride (HF), and acidic waste water (Hurst 2010; Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection 2009).

[47] Historically, the initial rare earth mining method used in Ganzhou was heap leaching, which was then followed by pond leaching. ... A pond burst, which resulted in acid leaching into surrounding soil and water. The operator did not take effective emergency measures and the acid infiltrated downstream water sources, where 4,000 fish died

[48] (2012) In 2011, the estimated global TREO supply was approximately 113 kt; this amount is forecasted to grow to 195 kt of TREOs by 2016 (Kingsnorth 2012). At present over 95% of global supply originates from China.

[49] In 2015 China supplied 85% of the global market with 105,000 tonnes

[50] https://rareearthexchanges.com/news/rare-earth-mining-2/?utm_source=chatgpt.com China controls 60-70% of global rare earth mining and over 85% of processing capacity.

[51] "Many plans to increase mining outside of China already: As of August 2012, 441 different exploration projects, run by 269 different companies in 37 different countries outside China, were active."

[52] Locations of rare earth element deposits worldwide known in 2002 (from US Geological Survey)

[53] Rare earth elements are found in deposits worldwide, but China currently has the largest known reserves (see pg 10)

[54] (2018) The resource amount was estimated to be 1.2Mt of rare-earth oxide for the most promising area

(105km2 × 0–10mbsf), which accounts for 62, 47, 32, and 56 years of annual global demand for Y, Eu,

Tb, and Dy, respectively...The calculated ΣREY for the entire research area is more than 16 million tons of rare-earth oxides (Mt-REO) (average ΣREY=964ppm). In addition, the mud is especially enriched in Y and HREE, which accounted for 44% (Y: 4.4Mt-REO; HREE: 2.6Mt-REO) of the total amount of REY in this region. The research area was estimated to be able to supply Y, Eu, Tb, and Dy for 780, 620, 420, and 730 years, respectively, and has the potential to supply these metals on a semi-infinite basis to the world

[55] Rare earth elements (REEs) are not actually rare on Earth

[56] Lunar Prospector was one of the NASA Discovery Program missions. It was designed to perform a low polar orbit investigation of the Moon. This included mapping the surface composition and locating lunar resources, measuring magnetic and gravity fields, and studying outgassing events.

[57] The Moon contains a region of enhanced REE concentrations in the ‘KREEP’ zone of the Oceanus Procellarum [37] (the right eye of the ‘Man in the Moon’). KREEP stands for ‘potassium (chemical symbol K), rare earth elements and phosphorus (chemical symbol P)’. This KREEP Terrane province appears to have been among the last regions of the lunar surface to solidify, leading to this unusual concentration. It is not clear that REEs are sufficiently concentrated to be ore bearing [38]. More detailed mapping is needed. KREEP is generally found where thorium is found and so thorium may be a guide to high REE concentrations [37].

[58] But spacecraft data show KREEP — as measured by thorium — appears concentrated on the Moon's near side.

[59]  In 2018, the rate of selected consumer electronics recycling was 38.5 percent.

[60] overwhelming challenges in conventional RE explorations and mining make secondary RE resources, such as electric and electronic waste (e-waste) and mine tailings as promising resources in the future. Due to the supply risk of REEs and the monopoly of the REEs market, REEs recycling is currently considered as an effective method to alleviate market fluctuations. However, economical and sustainable processing techniques are yet to be established to exploit REEs via recycling. … RE extractions from secondary sources are still under development and thus RE recycling accounted only for less than 5% of the global RE supply in 2019 (Linnenkope, 2019).

[61] Popular features that consumers love – speed, sharp images, responsive touch screens and long battery life – rely on metals like cobalt, indium and rare-earth elements that require immense energy and expense to mine. Commercial recycling technology cannot yet recover them profitably, although innovations are starting to emerge.

[62] Harrison H. Schmitt: “A sample of soil from the rim of Camelot crater slid from my scoop into a Teflon bag to begin its trip to Earth with the crew of Apollo 17. Little did I know at the time, on December 13, 1972, that sample 75501, along with samples from Apollo 11 and other missions, would provide the best reason to return to the moon in the 21st century. That realization would come 13 years later. In 1985, young engineers at the University of Wisconsin discovered that lunar soil contained significant quantities of a remarkable form of helium. Known as helium-3, it is a lightweight isotope of the familiar gas that fills birthday balloons.”  

[63] The fact is that the 3He-3He reaction produces no neutrons. There are no side reactions and neither the fuel nor its direct reaction products are radioactive. In a sense, it is the perfect nuclear reaction!”

[64] Unlike Earth, which is protected by its magnetic field, the Moon has been bombarded with large quantities of Helium-3 by the solar wind.

[65] Among the solar wind-implanted volatiles present in the lunar regolith, 3 He is possibly the most valuable resource because of its potential as a fusion fuel. The abundance of 3 He in the lunar regolith at a given location depends on surface maturity, the amount of solar wind fluence, and titanium content, because ilmenite (FeTiO3) retains helium much better than other major lunar minerals.

[66] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/nuclear/nuclear-power-plants.php Nuclear power comes from nuclear fission...In nuclear fission, atoms are split apart to form smaller atoms, releasing energy.

[67] "Producing significant net electrical power from fusion requires achieving temperatures and pressures sufficient with high fusion power density along with energy confinement… require us to make substantial progress in producing, maintaining and heating burning plasma while keeping it confined without damaging the engineered systems"

[68] I am proud to share NASA’s Artemis Plan—this is how we will go to the Moon once again. And how we will use the Moon as the stepping stone for our next greatest leap—human exploration of Mars

[69] https://www.albion.edu/bio/nicolle-zellner/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolle-zellner-27489111/ 

[70] SpaceX CEO Elon Musk remains “highly confident” that his company will land humans on Mars by 2026, saying on Tuesday that it’s an achievable goal “about six years from now.” ETA - this has shifted back https://time.com/7373155/elon-musk-mars-moon-city/ 

[71] Together the Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket create a reusable transportation system capable of on orbit refueling and leveraging Mars’ natural H2O and CO2 resources to refuel on the surface of Mars.” see diagram: fueling is in Earth orbit

[72] video from Musk from 5 months ago https://youtu.be/-hIlTgniWV4?si=OwxR5F6ZcVjL9wx-&t=1016  "Orbital refueling... it's essential for being able to send significant payload to Mars"

https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/aiaa-spacex/  "Once Starship reaches Earth orbit, the next challenge will be docking with multiple “tankers” to fill its tanks with the 933 metric tons of liquid oxygen and 267 metric tons of liquid methane required to reach Mars."

[73]NASA’s Moon-to-Mars Strategy 

[74] Pg 20. The Gateway-to-surface operational system is also analogous to how a human Mars mission may work—with the ability for crew to remain in orbit and deploy to the surface. It is important to gain operational confidence in this system at the Moon before the first human missions to Mars.  … Later sustainable surface exploration demonstration missions will make full use of the Gateway-enabled capabilities, including refueling and reuse of all or parts of the lander and conducting critical Mars mission simulations

[75] It takes about 3 days for a spacecraft to reach the Moon. During that time a spacecraft travels at least 240,000 miles (386,400 kilometers) https://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ask/174-How-long-does-it-take-to-travel-to-the-Moon- 

[76] https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/timeline/cruise/#:~:text=The%20trip%20to%20Mars%20will,at%20Jezero%20Crater%20on%20Mars. The trip to Mars will take about seven months and about 300 million miles (480 million kilometers)

[77] https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/artemis-ii-toilet-9.7153491 Until the Orion capsule's bathroom is fixed, mission control has instructed the astronauts to break out more of the backup urine collection bags.

[78] Fine like powder, but sharp like glass  … On the Moon, the dust is so abrasive that it ate away layers of spacesuit boots and destroyed the vacuum seals of Apollo sample containers.

[79]“Apollo 17 astronauts found dust particles had jammed the shoulder joints of their spacesuits” … “"Moondust penetrated into seals, causing the spacesuits to leak some air pressure”

[80] See “The Effects of Lunar Dust on EVA Systems During the Apollo Missions”: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20050160460/downloads/20050160460.pdf

[81] Pg 26 With a LunaNet architecture in place, robotic landers, rovers, and astronauts on the Moon will have network access similar to networks on Earth. …pg 23 Through the CLPS initiative, NASA will gain even more surface data through science investigations that will help identify additional areas of interest for human exploration. For instance, investigation results from VIPER, the robotic scout, may also offer valuable information for landing site decisions

p 20 " For long-term operations, the Gateway provides a staging point for human and robotic lunar missions. The orbiting outpost will support longer expeditions on the Moon, and potentially multiple trips to the surface during a single Artemis mission. The Gateway-to-surface operational system is also analogous to how a human Mars mission may work—with the ability for crew to remain in orbit and deploy to the surface."

[82] Pg 27 Artemis base camp: The additional infrastructure at the base camp will support one- to two-month expeditions on the surface to learn more about the Moon and the universe at large, and to develop new technologies that will advance our national industries while developing new resources that will help grow a new lunar economy. P 10: At the lunar South Pole, NASA and its partners will develop an Artemis Base Camp to support longer expeditions on the lunar surface. Planned Base Camp elements include a lunar terrain vehicle (LTV, or unpressurized rover), a habitable mobility platform (pressurized rover), a lunar foundation habitation module, power systems, and in-situ resource utilization systems.

[83] Astronauts at Artemis Base Camp will test a wide set of new technologies in six priority areas encompassed by NASA’s Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative. For example, advancing ISRU technologies could lead to future production of fuel, water, and/or oxygen from local materials, decreasing supply needs from Earth.

[84] Pg 28 Prospecting, extraction and mining initiatives are advancing our capabilities to find and harness resources from the lunar regolith. Chemical and thermal process developments may provide options to

break down naturally occurring minerals and compounds found on the Moon and convert them

to human consumables or even propellant. …For example, advancing ISRU technologies could lead to future production of fuel, water, and/or oxygen from local materials, decreasing supply needs from Earth.

[85] NASA Driving outcome:  “Water Mining: Enable cis-lunar commercial markets through extraction of water resources to provide 100’s of metric tons of propellant per year for reusable landers and cis-lunar transportation systems” … [given they can find it and use it] Space Resource Challenges: What resources exist at the site of exploration that can be used? What are the uncertainties associated with these resources?

[86] Water plays a critical role for lunar exploration not only for the use in life support systems. It might also be used for in-situ generation of propellant, such as oxygen and hydrogen….Nonetheless, there are early concepts available how icy water can be decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis in order to be used by life support and propulsion technologies. Commercial lunar propellant architectures [8] are evaluated to fuel reusable landers that connect the lunar surface and the lunar orbit. It is emphasized that this can make travel to Mars more efficient, if the interplanetary spacecraft can be refueled in cislunar space prior to departure. Reusable Lunar Resupply Vehicle and Reusable TransLunar Vehicle are proposed [9] that run on LOx/LH and benefit from propellant production on Moon.

[87] Concept paper: The creation of a network of spaceports combining In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) and bioregenerative life support systems would provide an easier and more affordable access to orbital and deep space destinations … Current launch systems, while very capable, are unable to provide sufficient mass to orbit at acceptable costs. Current techniques place tons of propellant into orbit solely for raising the spacecraft to its desired destination. This technique wastes much of the launch system’s volume and energy; however, recent discoveries of large quantities water on the Moon, Mars and throughout the asteroid belt reveal new alternatives….After the extraction of water, it can be stored in extracted-form or broken down into hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis. … propellant mined and extracted from lunar regolith and/or water ice. Using resources from the Moon could drastically reduce the costs of propellant in LEO and ensure a strong and enabling business case for the network.

[88] https://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/hydrogen/hydrogen_fuel_of_choice.html Today, liquid hydrogen is the signature fuel of the American space program and is used by other countries in the business of launching satellites.

[89] The Saturn V rocket on the launch pad was 85% propellant by mass...Travelling from the surface of Earth to Earth orbit is one of the most energy intensive steps of going anywhere else.  

[90]  if we launched from the moon, we'd only need to use around 40% fuel [calculations done by physicist source]

[91]  https://pma.caltech.edu/people/gregg-w-hallinan 

[92] “ The far side of the Moon is the side that we cannot see from Earth. Because the rotation of the Moon is locked in synchronism as it revolves around Earth, its near side always faces Earth. “: Byrne C.J. (2008) The Far Side of the Moon. In: The Far Side of the Moon. Springer, New York, NY.

[93] https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/FARSIDE_FinalRpt-2019-Nov8.pdf https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.08649: This is the final report submitted to NASA for a Probe-class concept study of the "Farside Array for Radio Science Investigations of the Dark ages and Exoplanets" (FARSIDE), a low radio frequency interferometric array on the farside of the Moon

[94] NASA funded the development of the telescope -- right now it's in Phase 1, which is a design/feasibility stage. https://www.space.com/nasa-telescope-far-side-of-moon.html  

[95] This notional architecture consists of 128 dual polarization antennas deployed across a 10 km area by a rover, and tethered to a base station for central processing, power and data transmission to the Lunar Gateway

[96] https://www.convertunits.com/from/10+km/to/miles 

[97] The cosmic background radiation left over from the Big Bang approximately 14 billion years ago is the oldest of all fossils https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4020-8837-7_22 

[98] At that time, the entire Universe was inside a bubble that was thousands of times smaller than a pinhead. It was hotter and denser than anything we can imagine.Then it suddenly exploded. The Universe that we know was born. Time, space and matter all began with the Big Bang. In a fraction of a second, the Universe grew from smaller than a single atom to bigger than a galaxy. And it kept on growing at a fantastic rate. It is still expanding today.

[99] “QGP (quark-gluon plasma) is a primordial form of matter which existed only for a few microseconds after the birth of the universe” … “Hot plasma of quarks and gluons for temperatures 10^12 K” -  Yagi, Kohsuke, Tetsuo Hatsuda, and Yasuo Miake. Quark-gluon plasma: From big bang to little bang. Vol. 23. Cambridge University Press, 2005  (preface xv)

[100] For a few millionths of a second, shortly after the Big Bang, the universe was filled with an astonishingly hot, dense soup made of all kinds of particles moving at near light speed. This mixture was dominated by quarks – fundamental bits of matter – and by gluons, carriers of the strong force that normally “glue” quarks together into familiar protons and neutrons and other species. In those first evanescent moments of extreme temperature, however, quarks and gluons were bound only weakly, free to move on their own in what’s called a quark-gluon plasma.

[101] We know from models of Big Bang nucleosynthesis (which explain how the first atomic nuclei beyond hydrogen were formed and in what percentages), that for the first few hundred million years of its life, the Universe contained only hydrogen, helium, and a scant fraction of lithium.

[102] “The formation of the very first stars, Pop III.1 in the new terminology, can be understood with two basic ingredients:CDM structure formation and the atomic and molecular physics of the primordial hydrogen and helium. Here CDM refers to a Universe composed of cold dark matter (CDM), but dominated by dark energy” https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1103/RevModPhys.85.809 

[103] “We find that when the amount of molecular hydrogen in these objects reaches a critical level, cooling by rotational line emission is efficient, and dense clumps of cold gas form. We identify these "gas clouds" as sites for primordial star formation.” https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/375810/meta 

[104] After the Big Bang, the Universe was hot, dense, and nearly homogeneous. As the Universe expanded, the material cooled, condensing after ~400,000 years (z~1100) into neutral atoms, freeing the CMB photons. The baryonic content during this pre-stellar Dark Ages of the Universe consisted primarily of neutral hydrogen.

[105] “About fifty million years later, gravity propelled the formation of the first luminous objects – stars, black holes, and galaxies – which ended the Dark Ages and commenced the Cosmic Dawn—see e.g., Loeb and Furlanetto [2013]”

[106] “With the advent of the first stars—referred to historically as Population III (Pop III)—the Universe was rapidly transformed into an increasingly complex system, due to the energy and heavy element input from stellar sources and accreting black holes”

[107] Whereas dark-matter haloes can originate through the action of gravity alone, the formation of luminous objects, such as stars and galaxies, is a much more complicated process. For star formation to begin, a sufficient amount of cold dense gas must accumulate in a dark halo.

[108] “When you take a picture of any astronomical object you are going back in time. Even a pic of the Moon captures it as it was about 1.3 seconds before you took the exposure. This is because the speed of light – roughly 186,000 miles or 300,000 km per second – has a finite and not infinite speed. The farther out you go with your camera the farther back in time you are photographing” :

[109] They were the constituents of the first proto-stellar clouds. Standard Big Bang nucleosynthesis predicts the abundances of hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, and their isotopes in the early Universe. https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/abs/2009/31/aa11297-08/aa11297-08.html 

[110] The only detectable signal from these dark ages is the 21-cm spectral line of hydrogen, redshifted down to frequencies of approximately 10-100 MHz.

[111] If its frequency is less than the critical frequency the wave is refracted, if equal to its absorption takes place and if greater than the wave it passes through the layer with very little attenuation.

[112] [FARSIDE] This would enable near-continuous monitoring of the nearest stellar systems in the search for the radio signatures of coronal mass ejections and energetic particle events, and would also detect the magnetospheres for the nearest candidate habitable exoplanets.  

[113] “ A stable atmosphere, which is necessary to regulate surface temperatures, could be eroded away by sufficiently strong stellar winds (Khodachenko et al. 2007; Zendejas et al. 2010; Vidotto et al. 2011; Lammer et al. 2012) rendering a planet uninhabitable. Earth has retained its atmosphere thanks to the shielding provided by its magnetosphere. In contrast, Mars and Venus both lack a substantial intrinsic magnetic field. As a result, both suffer significant atmospheric losses with Mars having a much thinner

atmosphere (Wood 2006; Edberg et al. 2010, 2011).”

[114] “However, Mars does not generate a magnetic field on its own, outside of relatively small patches of magnetized crust. Something different from what we observe on Earth must be happening on the Red Planet…. “These currents play a fundamental role in the atmospheric loss that transformed Mars from a world that could have supported life into an inhospitable desert,” said experimental physicist Robin Ramstad of the University of Colorado, Boulder. “We are now currently working on using the currents to determine the precise amount of energy that is drawn from the solar wind and powers atmospheric escape.  

[115] “our magnetosphere shields us from erosion of our atmosphere by the solar wind (charged particles our Sun continually spews at us), erosion and particle radiation from coronal mass ejections (massive clouds of energetic and magnetized solar plasma and radiation), and cosmic rays from deep space.”:/ 

[116] Digital cameras: https://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/home/tech_life_aptina.html the first to actually develop the concept of the digital camera was Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) engineer Eugene Lally,

[117] This details some of the science objectives for the artemis missions https://assets.science.nasa.gov/content/dam/science/psd/planetary-science-division/2025/implementation-plan-lunar-science-strategy-disclaimer-11202024pdf.pdf 

[118] The need to miniaturize computers for space exploration in the 1960s motivated the entire industry to design smaller, faster and more energy-efficient computers, which have affected practically every facet of life today, from communications to health and from manufacturing to transportation.

[119] GPS has its origins in the Sputnik era when scientists were able to track the satellite with shifts in its radio signal, known as the “Doppler Effect,” which became the foundational idea for modern GPS. Today the GPS satellite constellation (the space segment) consists of over 30 operational satellites, each equipped with redundant atomic clocks and tracked by a ground control network (the control segment).

[120] https://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/40-years-of-nasa-spinoff/memory-foam: Perhaps the most widely recognized NASA spinoff, memory foam was invented by NASA-funded researchers looking for ways to keep test pilots cushioned during flights. Today, memory foam makes for more comfortable beds, couches and chairs, not to mention better shoes, movie theater seats and even football helmets.

[121] https://www.astronomy.com/space-exploration/how-artemis-2s-easter-message-echoes-apollo-history/ 

[122] https://spacenews.com/interlune-plans-to-gather-scarce-lunar-helium-3-for-quantum-computing-on-earth/ Interlune is sharply focused near-term on extracting Helium-3 for superconducting quantum computing applications.

[123] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3058806/ During the past several years there has been extensive development and application of hyperpolarized helium-3 (HP 3He) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)

[124] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/black-moon-energy-signs-contract-with-department-of-energy-for-purchase-of-lunar-helium-3-302716516.html BMEC is among a very limited number of companies holding a contract to supply newly sourced Helium-3 to the DOE IP….BMEC's commercial roadmap targets Helium-3 production at scale within the next eight years, establishing a supply capable of supporting a substantial portion of future U.S. electric demand.

[125] https://www.interlune.space/press-release/u-s-department-of-energy-buys-helium-3-from-u-s-space-resources-company-interlune-in-historic-agreement - Interlune, a natural resources company, today announced that the U.S. Department of Energy Isotope Program (DOE IP) has agreed to purchase three liters of helium-3 harvested from the Moon for delivery on Earth at approximately today’s commercial market price…. The delivery date is no later than April 2029.

[126]