NASA has identified 12 payload projects that would undergo experiments and demonstrations on the moon by the end of 2019.

The space agency said Friday its Science Mission Directorate sourced for proposals to support a number of experiment-reliant science and technology goals.

“The Moon has unique scientific value and the potential to yield resources such as water and oxygen,” said Jim Bridenstine, NASA administrator.

“Its proximity to Earth makes it especially valuable as a proving ground for deeper space exploration,” he added.

Participants for the effort include nine U.S. companies and various NASA facilities including Glenn Research Center and Marshall Space Flight Center.

The space agency’s centers will work to build payloads, while the industry firms will build corresponding delivery landers.

The Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer, among selected projects, is designed to measure the moon’s radiation environment.

The Near-Infrared Volatile Spectrometer System, an imaging instrument, would work to quantify the composition of the moon’s surface.

The effort would also include technology demonstrations such as the Lunar Node 1 Navigation Demonstrator that would generate a beacon to help orbiting spacecraft and landers navigate through the moon.

A Sandia National Laboratory-built robotic system is helping the U.S. Army deactivate submunitions of the Multiple Launch Rocket System.

The automated system consists of nine robots and has so far demilitarized over 700K submunition units, the laboratory said Thursday.

The system, located in Alabama, is part of an MLRS recycle facility that works to help the Army dismantle unused ammunition and rockets under the Department of Defense’s demilitarization program.

The service branch uses the system to recycle aluminum warhead skin, steel and copper at accelerated rates.

“We were able to remove people from a potentially very dangerous situation and created something that allowed products to be recycled and reused, which is what the DOD demilitarization program is about,” said Walt Wapman, a mechanical engineer who serves as project lead at Sandia.

James Geurts, assistant secretary of the U.S. Navy for research, development and acquisition, said during his WEST 2019 speech that artificial intelligence must be leveraged for training operations, USNI reported Thursday.

“I think an area we don’t talk enough about where I think there’s also very interesting opportunities is in training, and how do we speed up our training cycles,” he noted.

Previously, the Navy launched the Aegis Virtual Twin program enabling sailors to train using the AI-driven Aegis Combat System onboard a ship at sea without interfering with navigation and operational functions. The system is intended to provide sailors with realistic training and real-time assessments through a virtual platform aboard a vessel. Alan Shaffer, deputy under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, also spoke at WEST 2019 about the DoD’s plans to deploy AI to improve decision-making.

“It’s not a panacea, it’s not perfect, it’s not everything, but the concept of turning data into the right decision more quickly – or more importantly, pointing out when something is going south – is incredibly important,” he said.

The Defense Information Systems Agency has started addressing the five concerns raised by mission partners with regard to the implementation of Joint Regional Security Stacks. DISA said Wednesday that those five challenges are performance reliability, latency, multi-tenancy, synchronization with base infrastructure and cost. 

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Joe Edwards, JRSS chief engineer, said the agency updated all CONUS Intrusion Prevention System appliances, implemented governance processes and standard operating procedures to address latency and multi-tenancy issues.

“We continually stress that going forward, vendors must demonstrate an ability to safeguard processing resources to avoid inadvertent impacts among mission partner traffic,” said Edwards.

He offered updates on the JRSS Security Information and Event Manager and mentioned the improvements the program management office made to Tier 3 operations and engineering support. JRSS are regional suites of systems designed to help Department of Defense cyber professionals to continuously track, analyze and protect the DOD Information Network from cyber threats.

Courtney Winship, head of digital services division at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, mentioned during a GovLoop webinar that the USCIS is taking measures to implement a new law to improve the accessibility and security of government websites, Federal News Network reported Thursday. Winship said USCIS plans to adopt a mobile-first approach to comply with the 21st-Century Integrated Digital Experience Act and has merged some of the departments that deal with public-facing digital platforms in the past six to eight months.

“We are now one unit. And now we can really focus on how we build a unified experience that includes things like content and design, as well as how we look to integrate with our live-help services,” she said at the webinar held Thursday. “We are really aiming to create a 360-[degree] view, and help people navigate more smoothly through their interactions with USCIS.”

The report noted that the agency has begun examining the case for machine learning and artificial intelligence to facilitate the delivery of services to the public.