July 23, 2018

Georgia County's Spaceport Advocate a Finalist for Florida Job (Source: Tribune-Georgian)
Camden County manager Steve Howard is apparently looking to move on from Camden. According to Florida media reports, Howard is a top-four finalist for county manager job in the Pinellas County, Florida, the most densely populated county in the state.

The Pinellas County Commission announced its top 10 candidates for the vacant position, which pays $212,000 to $275,000 annually, earlier this month. The Tampa Bay Times reported on Thursday, July 19 that Howard had made the cut to the top four. He will travel to Pinellas in August to visit the county and interview with the commission, the article said. Editor's Note: Howard is leading the charge in Camden County for the development of a commercial spaceport in southern Georgia. (7/23)

Lockheed Martin CEO Pledges Over $100M in Workforce Training (Source: FOX Business News)
Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson joined President Trump’s pledge to American workers by investing hundreds of millions of dollars in training students and workers to prepare them for the jobs of the future. “We are very excited about the opportunity to participate in this initiative. We think it is the right strategy,” Hewson said during an interview on FOX Business’ “After the Bell” on Thursday.

Lockheed Martin is investing $100 million in employee training and educational opportunities over the next five years. In addition, the company has rolled out $50 million to support the STEM Scholarship Fund and $5 million toward apprenticeship and vocational opportunities. (7/23)

Lunar Prospecting Plans in the Works (Source: Geek.com)
While you ponder what to pack for an extended stay on the Moon, scientists are scrambling to find sustainable ways for humans to thrive on Earth’s satellite. The most obvious: Mining water ice at the poles. Last month, a team of Japanese scientists identified the mineral moganite within a lunar meteorite found in the desert of northwest Africa.

Similar to quartz, moganite is a crystal of silicon dioxide that requires water to grow. Its sheer existence, according to Tohoku University professor Masahiro Kayama, who led the recent discovery, “strongly implies that there is water activity on the Moon.”

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is reportedly planning two missions to hunt for and collect Moon water in 10 years. But before NASA, Jeff Bezos, or anyone else can colonize the planetoid, scientists and engineers need more data about lunar ice deposits—specifically their distribution, concentration, quantity, disposition, depth, geotechnical properties, and other characteristics. “We are surprisingly close to mining on the Moon,” said Philip Metzger, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida. (7/16)

Life on the Moon? It Could Have Happened Billions of Years Ago (Source: GeekWire)
The moon is one of the last places in the solar system you’d expect to find life today, but astrobiologists say life could have found a foothold there billions of years ago. The life-on-the-moon question could provide a focus for future science missions to the moon in the years ahead, and mesh with similar searches on more promising worlds such as Mars, the Jovian moon Europa and the Saturnian moon Enceladus.

In a study published online today by the journal Astrobiology, Washington State University’s Dirk Schulze-Makuch and the University of London’s Ian Crawford pinpoint two spans of time when conditions on the moon might have supported simple lifeforms. One time frame would have started about 4 billion years ago, shortly after the moon formed from a disk of debris created by a collision between Earth and a primordial Mars-sized planet. The other time frame would have come about 3.5 billion years ago, during a peak in volcanic activity on the young moon. (7/23)