Supercluster

A Trip to the Moon (In Movies)

2026-03-03T21:00:47.797Z

There have been movies about the moon as long as there have been movies. But the oldest moon movie has endured more than most.

In 1895, sibling technicians Auguste and Louis Lumière held the first-ever public exhibition of moving images with several minute-long projections of everyday occurrences. The 33 spectators among that initial audience included illusionist Georges Méliès, who was entranced. Over the next several years, Méliès would apply his craft to short films featuring primordial special effects, many of which were simply extensions of his stage presence. But his towering accomplishment was 1902’s A Trip to the Moon, a playful and creative short that set the bar high for moon movies right out of the gate.

While many early movies were adapting plays and novels, Méliès consolidated several sources that encapsulated lunar fiction of the time. The film drew from both Jules Verne’s 1865 From the Earth to the Moon and its 1870 sequel Around the Moon, as well as H.G. Wells’ 1901 The First Men in the Moon. Its loose plot revolves around a society of French scientists who launch a rocketship to the lunar surface, but its real star is the moon itself. Méliès (who is also a cartoonist) depicted his travelers crashing headlong onto a cratered face that winced at its new arrivals.

Nearly a century later, the Smashing Pumpkins resurrected that iconic moment in their video for “Tonight, Tonight.” By then, there had been several movies that envisioned the surface of the moon, but nothing that lingered in the public imagination as much as A Trip to the Moon.

That’s partly because Méliès’ version of the moon was a vivid environment teeming with life, far different from the arid landscape that Apollo astronauts would bounce across decades later. His travelers encounter hostile species who kidnap the visitors and present them to their king. After a dramatic showdown, the crew makes its way back to Earth with an alien captive, who remains on display to the public. Méliès’ moon is much like James Cameron’s Pandora, the psychedelic planet of his Avatar movies: lush, intricate, loaded with mystery and danger, nothing like the “magnificent desolation” that Buzz Aldrin observed in 1969.

By then, the emptiness of the moon was already understood well enough to shift its cinematic form. It provided an ideal mood-setter early in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, when astronauts discover a monolith indicative of extraterrestrial presence beyond their comprehension. Set to the haunting choir of György Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna, Kubrick’s depiction of an empty white canvas was accurate enough (thanks in part to NASA advisors) to plant the seeds for a conspiracy that blossomed years later.

It took a little more than a decade for adherents of the Flat Earth Society to circulate the theory that Kubrick’s moon sequence in 2001 scored him a gig faking the Apollo 11 landing. More than that, the story goes, Kubrick felt so guilty about deceiving the public that he planted clues of his guilt in The Shining. While appalling to anyone with a basic respect for science and, well, facts, this outrageous revisionist view fueled the plot point of both 2016’s mockumentary Operation Avalanche (an underrated comedic thriller from the future director of Blackberry) and the Apple TV movie Fly Me to the Moon. These fictional works have less to do with the appeal of the moon in the popular imagination than the public’s inability to grasp the sheer technological sophistication necessary to get there. They deserve a separate category — the limits of the human mind, and its knee-jerk tendency to mythologize — beyond the canon of moon movies under consideration here.

Instead, post-Apollo, the most appealing lunar cinema looked much like what astronauts found there and mined it for narrative potential.

Duncan Jones’ underrated Sam Rockwell thriller Moon imagines a lonely clone attempting to make sense out of his isolated surroundings and the circumstances that brought him there. The Neil Armstrong biopic First Man positioned the first moon landing as a catharsis for Armstrong’s grief, and derives most of its power from the wordless expressions on Ryan Gosling’s face as he gazes out at an ancient, uninhabited plane. In 2019’s moody Ad Astra, the moon is both a bland tourist attraction and a waystation to Mars. It’s a bit busier, but marred by piracy and consumerist fantasies, no less inviting than it is today. The ongoing Apple TV series For All Mankind, with its revisionist history in which Russia gets to the moon first, maps out the strategic advantages (and potential conflicts) around the corner once all that open space gets colonized.

That’s the good stuff.

Since the moon lacks the secrecy of the early 1900s, more recent exaggerated visions of lunar life lack the creative energy of the Méliès film. The dopey Iron Sky franchise envisioned Nazis hiding on the dark side of the moon. Roland Emmerich’s inane misfire Moonfall imagined the moon as a giant alien superstructure. These projects come up short in large part because they don’t meet the moon on its own terms as we now understand them.

Which brings us back to Méliès. Why would an early filmmaker turn his lens to the moon? Part of it stems from the way the moon embodies the awe and mystery of human existence. It’s both familiar and alien, close enough to admire but too far to know. The resilience of moon movies also comes from the inherent and lasting relationship between cinema and stargazing. Both require looking at light reflected from the past. Telescopes are actually time machines.

We never see the moon exactly as it is before us.

It’s the ultimate primal form of cinema, a spectacular show on display every night, free of charge.

....

Eric Kohn is the artistic director of the Southampton Playhouse, overseeing its programming initiatives throughout the year and writing its weekly newsletter, The Playhouse Post. He brings nearly 20 years of experience as a journalist at IndieWire, the entertainment trade publication, where he served as Chief Film Critic, Senior Editor, and Vice President of Editorial Strategy. While there, he co-hosted the popular movie podcast "Screen Talk" with Anne Thompson, in addition to covering Sundance, Cannes, the Oscars, and more. His writing has also appeared in The Hollywood Reporter, The New York Times, and other publications. A two-time chair of the New York Film Critics Circle, Kohn co-founded the Critics Academy initiative, a workshop for aspiring entertainment writers. Since 2013, he has served as an adjunct professor of cinema studies at New York University. He also produces feature films, including several recent projects with Harmony Korine. His favorite movies include Breathless, F for Fake, The Night of the Hunter, and anything directed by Agnes Varda or Ernst Lubitsch.

Will Russia Attack the Starlink Constellation?

2026-02-24T21:00:00.000Z

Russia is still a major military power in space. Should its threats to destroy Starlink be taken seriously?

In early February, Russian commentator Vladimir Solovyov called for Russia to nuke the Starlink constellation after SpaceX blocked Starlink access to their troops. All Starlink users must now obtain licenses from the Ukrainian government to use terminals within the besieged territory, effectively blinding Russia's occupying forces.

The move, campaigned for by Ukraine for months, is a severe blow to Russia, which has been purchasing Starlink terminals on the black market and using them on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine to keep troops online and guide strike drones deeper into Ukraine’s land. The loss of Starlink has led to a dramatic lapse in Russia’s ability to conduct offensive operations and a sharp increase in personnel losses in combat, some due to friendly fire.

Speaking on his prime-time talk show on the Russia 1 TV station, Solovyov suggested that a single nuclear detonation at the right altitude would take down the entire Starlink constellation, cutting Ukrainians from the advantage Starlink offers them.

This suggestion isn't the first hint that Russia may be pondering a wide-ranging destruction of Western space assets.

In 2024, US intelligence said that Russia seemed to be developing a space-borne nuclear bomb that could turn vast swaths of near-Earth space into a radioactive space junk cemetery.

In December, intelligence services of an undisclosed NATO nation told Associated Press that Russia is working on a new type of orbiting anti-satellite weapon that would release a cloud of tiny particles to flood orbit with damaging space debris to destroy the Starlink constellation, of which there are nearly 10,000 satellites in operation.

The threats, while seen as an extreme move that Russia is unlikely to resort to unless cornered, raise questions about Western reliance on space technology and the ability to survive a possible conflict escalation. The developments also underscore that although Russia has been considered a waning space power for years, it still has enough military space muscle to flex.

“Russia has had problems in its civilian space program for years,” Victoria Samson, Chief Director for Space Security and Stability at the Secure World Foundation, told Supercluster. “It’s been an issue even before Ukraine. They have quality control issues, corruption issues, and they don’t really have much of a commercial space program. But the place where they still are a global power is military space.”

Samson is a co-author of the Secure World Foundation’s Global Counterspace Capabilities Report published in June 2025. In it, Samson and colleague Laetitia Cesari compared information on offensive counterspace systems that exist or are in development across the world’s space-faring nations.

The report reveals that Russia in fact, is not that far behind the heavily arming China in terms of the sophistication of its space-borne combat arsenal, and, in fact, might be in some areas ahead of the U.S. Russia is certainly in possession of military space technologies that neither of the European nations have, which provides some comfort regarding Russia’s readiness, or lack thereof, to destroy vast swaths of orbit in a single nuclear explosion.

Nuking Orbit

Sampson describes the effects of an orbital nuclear detonation as a wide-ranging, indiscriminate destruction.

“The immediate effects would be that any satellite in line of sight would have its electronics fried because of the energy released by the nuclear electromagnetic pulse,” Samson said. “It’s going to take adversary satellites, but also allied satellites and your own satellites. If you have people in orbit, they’re most likely going to be killed.”

On top of that, Samson said, the radiation released by the explosion would accumulate in the van Allen belts, four distinct regions around Earth where the planet’s magnetic field lines trap cosmic particles. Satellites passing these regions, which stretch at altitudes from 600 to 60,000 kilometers, would quickly have their electronic components degraded unless substantially hardened.

“Much like people getting sick from being exposed to too much radiation, satellites, too, would stop working as they would repeatedly pass through those van Allen belts, picking up radiation,” said Samson.

Julianna Suess, a space security researcher at the Royal United Services Institute think tank (RUSI), wrote in a blog post published after Russia’s alleged plans to develop a space-based nuke had been revealed that “a nuclear explosion would have indiscriminate and long-term effects on the orbit in question” and “a blanket effect on the surrounding area, depending on the size of the warhead – including on Russia’s own systems.”

Both Suess and Sampson refer to the Starfish Prime test, conducted by the US government in 1962. The test saw a 1.45 megaton warhead detonate 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth — an altitude where the International Space Station orbits today.

“That explosion took out about one-third of the active satellites in orbit at that point,” Samson said. “Granted, that was five years post-Sputnik, so there weren’t as many of them as there are today, but still, the effects of that explosion were far-reaching.”

Samson thinks that Russia is unlikely to press the space nuke button unless in a “Hitler in a bunker” situation.

“If Putin sees there is a regime change happening, that he is about to get out, he might choose to take everyone with him,” she said. “Detonating a nuclear bomb in space would be escalatory; it would certainly lead to a conflict on Earth, and it’s not something that they would take lightly.”

The zone weapon, described in the Associated Press report, would have similarly widespread effects on the orbital environment, said Samson, meaning Russia is equally unlikely to take such an action either.

“Once these pellets are out, they’re going to be following the laws of thermodynamics and orbital mechanics,” said Samson. “They are going to threaten Starlink satellites, but they’re also going to threaten all other satellites that are in the same orbits.”

These damaging space debris particles would gradually get pulled back toward Earth through the self-cleaning power of atmospheric drag. But that process might take years, resulting in a period when no one would be able to safely use the affected area of space.

Space Spies

Russia has other space warfighting cards up its sleeve. The Secure World Foundation’s report suggests that Russia has more advanced direct ascent anti-satellite missiles than the U.S. and also possesses sophisticated low-Earth-orbit co-orbital systems that might be exceeding the capabilities of all the Western allies. European nations, on the other hand, come out of the comparison rather poorly, with only France currently possessing any substantial counter-space assets.

Co-orbital military space systems are satellites designed to orbit in the vicinity of adversary spacecraft with the goal of either destroying them or interfering with the data links between these satellites and ground control. According to the Secure World Foundation’s report, Russia has been investing in the development of offensive counter-space weapons since around 2010 and has conducted extensive orbital tests of systems designed for close maneuvers around adversary spacecraft (Rendezvous and Proximity Operations).

A duo of satellites known as Luch 1 and Luch 2 (Russian for ray) has been making headlines since the mid 2010s for their suspicious maneuvers in the geostationary orbit, the orbital region at an altitude of 22,000, where many strategic spy and communication satellites are stationed.

“Russia has had satellites doing these uncoordinated close approaches both in low Earth orbit and the geostationary orbit for years now, since before the war in Ukraine,” said Samson. “These satellites are going to get up to orbit and get up close, and we don’t know necessarily what they’re going to be doing.”

European authorities believe the Luch duo may have been intercepting communications transmitted by European commercial and state-owned communication satellites. These satellites might also be able to disrupt satellite signals using onboard jammers that override the original signal.

The Starlink Problem

None of that, however, works against the SpaceX-owned Starlink constellation, which has been aiding Ukrainians in their struggle since the early days of the war, which began four years ago today.

Ukrainian satcom expert Volodymyr Stepanets told Supercluster previously that Starlink has become nigh unjammable since the beginning of the war. In the early months, Russia’s jamming of the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite signal could disrupt Starlink links, but SpaceX has since developed an alternative technology, which allows it to use the constellation’s own signals to transmit positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) data.

Starlink terminals require accurate PNT information to be able to locate and sync with the satellites passing overhead.

Stepanets said that although Russia has made attempts to disrupt Starlink communications directly, the jamming technology is highly inefficient. Starlink relies on very narrow and focused beams that can only be disrupted or intercepted at close distances. On Ukrainian battlefields, these jammers get quickly located and immediately destroyed.

“They can cause a bit of disruption but certainly not break Starlink communication,” said Stepanets. “Neither on the battlefields in Ukraine, nor anywhere else, has anyone yet demonstrated even any noticeable success in suppressing low Earth orbit satellite networks.”

Given the importance of Starlink in the war in Ukraine, this untouchability of the mega-constellation leaves Russia pondering ideas of orbital mass destruction.

“They are really scrambling to figure out what to do about Starlink,” said Samson.

Stopping the European Space Startup Exodus

2026-02-17T21:00:00.000Z

Young space companies have been struggling in Europe for years.

Unable to raise sufficient funds to scale and restricted by the fragmented European market, many have failed to outgrow the start-up stage. To some, American investors and venture funds have come to the rescue, offering the much-needed capital, frequently under the condition of relocating to the U.S. The problem has been so widespread that some industry insiders refer to it as the European space start-up exodus.

Some hope that the wave of investment in defense projects, motivated by the continued threat from Russia and escalating disputes with the administration of Donald Trump, might thwart the trend.

Europe, however, has a lot of catching up to do.

Over the nearly quarter-century since the new space movement emerged to develop space technology faster and more cheaply than the old-school agencies and corporations, the U.S. government departments have nurtured giants like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Planet Labs.

SpaceX, founded in 2002, has grown into the world’s most valuable company. Responsible for the vast majority of space launches globally, the company is now valued at over $800 billion. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin may have progressed at a much slower pace than SpaceX. Still, the company is currently valued at around $100 billion. Planet Labs, which in the early 2010s revolutionized Earth observation with its fleet of low-cost low-Earth-orbit cubesats, has grown to more than $ 7 billion. There are many others.

In contrast, Europe’s single new space unicorn — ICEYE — is valued at €2.4 billion ($2.8 billion). The Finish company, founded in 2014, operates the world’s largest constellation of synthetic aperture radar satellites that observe the surface of Earth day and night and even through clouds. Bulgaria’s Endurosat, which manufactures software-defined nano-satellites, is valued at around €200 million ($236 million).

Many of the frequently mediatized names of the European new space world, including rocket developers ISAR Aerospace, PLD, or Rocket Factory Augsburg, have yet to prove they are worth the hype. Chances are that not all will survive. The UK’s long-promoted green rocket company Orbex has recently entered administration after the UK government withheld £100 million of promised funding. While some rescue buyouts have been discussed, the company’s future is uncertain.

So what exactly is wrong with Europe? Bulent Altan, Founding Partner at Munich, Germany-based Alpine Space Ventures, and early executive at SpaceX, told Supercluster that, unlike the US, where government players such as the Space Development Agency, the Department of Defense, and NASA have fully embraced new entrants, Europe has historically lacked “anchor customers” ready to support potentially disruptive players.

“Without those demand signals, companies could not scale, and capital formation was nearly impossible,” Altan told Supercluster.

Bleeding Talent

German producer of laser communications terminals, Mynaric, is among the high-profile visionary technology pioneers who have learned the hard way that Europe doesn’t offer a smooth path to success to those ahead of the game.

The company, a spin-off from the German Aerospace Center, described by some analysts as one of Germany’s most advanced start-ups, has been forced to accept a buyout offer from U.S.-based Rocket Lab after its money ran out due to a string of production glitches.

“Sometimes the timing just doesn't play out nicely,” Joachim Horwath, Mynaric’s chief technical officer and one of the co-founders, commented on the company’s 15-year journey to Supercluster. “In a way, we were too early. There was no market when we first started.”

Today, laser communications are a hot trend in satellite technology, replacing radio frequency terminals as a go-to solution for transferring data in space. Lasers offer greater bandwidth and inherent protection against signal interception and jamming due to their high frequency and accurately focused beams. SpaceX began fitting Starlink satellites with laser terminals in 2021. Today, most of the constellation’s 10,000 satellites are interlinked with a mesh of space-born lasers. Amazon’s Kuiper, too, relies on the technology, and Chinese megaconstellations Guowang and Qianfan are expected to begin using lasers soon.

But in the late 2000s, when Horwath and his colleagues at the German Aerospace Center first started thinking about building a business from their research, none of those projects existed even on paper.

Although a few experimental laser terminals had been flown in space by German researchers before, Mynaric’s demonstrations first focused on connecting aircraft. The company collaborated with Facebook on its Aquila drone project, which intended to beam internet from the stratosphere to unconnected areas on Earth.

“We delivered prototypes to lots of interested companies, and then people started approaching us and asking whether we could also do that in space,” says Horwath.

The company won early funding from venture capital funds and angel investors,s mostly from Germany, but the funds didn’t suffice to move to production and scale up fast.

“You can try to grow from cash flow, having small programs and living from program to program,” Horwath says. “But then you cannot take large steps, and when somebody comes who has more money than you, then you are basically gone because they can move faster.”

The company, Horwath added, needed another fifty million euros to complete the development and kick-start production. The investors recommended Mynaric to raise further capital by going public and listing first on the German stock exchange in Frankfurt in 2017, and subsequently, in 2021, on the American NASDAQ.

“That was the only way to get that amount of money that we needed,” says Horwath. “The programs we had in Europe, either from the European Space Agency or the German Aerospace Center, were in the order of a few hundred thousand euros. Not millions.”

Neither SpaceX nor Blue Origin has ever gone public. Not yet.

By that time, internet-beaming satellite megaconstellations, first considered sci-fi by many industry experts, were quickly turning into the next big trend in satellite communications. Both SpaceX and OneWeb began launching their constellations two years prior, and other players, including Amazon and the Chinese project Guowang, were boasting about ambitious plans.

Mynaric quickly acquired an impressive list of customers, including big American primes working on the US Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Architecture Constellation, designed to detect intercontinental missiles. Horwath admits that from the beginning, the product was “gaining traction” much more in the U.S. than in Europe.

At that time, the company opened a subsidiary in California but managed to keep most of the production in Europe. Then, in 2024, a faulty supplier component that couldn’t be readily replaced caused a sequence of production delays. Because Mynaric was publicly traded, they had to announce its production output that year would only reach one-third of the forecast, meaning much lower than expected revenue.

The shares tanked immediately.

“We were still ready to ship a huge amount of devices compared to the fact that previously, companies have only shipped one or two, and for a much higher cost,” remarks Horwath. “But the expectation of the market was different. The stock lost value, and we couldn’t issue new shares.”

At that time, California-based Pacific Investment Management Company stepped in and bought out Mynaric. The firm’s original shareholders, including Horwath and other founders, lost all their equity in the process. PIMCO is now selling Mynaric to Rocket Lab, whose satellite manufacturing branch had previously been purchasing Mynaric’s satcom laser terminals. The German government will have to approve the acquisition. The company hopes to still retain its European footprint, but will now be under the control of the US-domiciled Rocket Lab.

Struggling Founders

Mynaric's story is the most high-profile example of the challenges facing European space-tech visionaries. Founders of multiple European space start-ups have spoken to Supercluster about their struggles securing funding in Europe and receiving active encouragement from investors to relocate to the US in exchange for support.

“The pull to move to the US as a UK/European space start-up is constant,” a founder of one publicly known UK-based start-up who didn’t wish to be named, told Supercluster. “It’s about capital, but it’s also about momentum. The US ecosystem seems better set up to turn funding into capability quickly and keep that capability moving through procurement, regulation, and scale.”

Several founders complained about Europe’s reluctance to accept risk, which, they believe, results in an inability to foster genuinely new technologies.

“The only thing that gets funded here is somebody copying what SpaceX was doing 15 years ago,” another founder said under the condition of anonymity, pointing to the plethora of small rocket launchers currently being developed. “There's, like, 12 Falcon 1s that have been funded in Europe. But Falcon 1 was a dead end even for SpaceX.”

Falcon 1 was a small launcher developed by SpaceX between 2006 and 2009. The company ultimately discontinued the development to pursue the heavy lift Falcon 9, stating the small rocket couldn’t be made sufficiently profitable.

Despite the optical unification of Europe through the European Union’s single market, the founders also state that Europe remains a fragmented entity, and founders have to think carefully where they domicile their business. Countries prefer to nurture “national champions,” supporting local companies, whose growth is then limited by the funds available within that country.

“For some years, I lectured at [an unnamed Spanish university],” one of the founders told Supercluster. “Most of my best students have left Spain either for Germany, the UK, or increasingly for the US. You can see many companies that do their engineering in Europe, but their headquarters are in the US. If there is a national security situation in Europe, these companies are American; they are not an asset for Europe.”

Some founders are still fighting for their future in Europe, bound to their home turf by the sense of duty, family ties, or dislike for the American way of life.

Others have decided to leave the space sector behind and pursue different paths.

“I’ve been quite involved with the European space sector for almost 18 years, but for exactly that reason, I also decided to sell my remaining shares in the [unnamed space technology company] that I had built and move onwards to deep tech AI work,” another founder said.

Horwath admits that for the Mynaric founders, the possibility of having to relocate to the US has always loomed large.

“People have asked us many times — why did you do it in Europe? Why have you been so stupid in a way?” he says. “For us, because we grew out of the German Aerospace Center, we wanted to stay close to them. From the equity side of things, it would have certainly been better for us in the US.”

He adds that even today, with the satellite mega-constellations revolution in full swing, European projects are still rather rare among the company’s customers.

Another founder added: “When your runway is tight and your investors, often US-based, are watching for rapid progress, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify building the same footprint in the UK/Europe when recent history suggests the US offers a clearer path to scale.”

Hope

Some think that things might be about to change in Europe. The growing tensions with Russia and worsening relationships with the US, a long-term key ally, are forcing European governments to rethink their attitude to defense spending, and that includes funding for strategic space infrastructure.

Last September, Germany announced it would invest over €35 billion ($40 billion) into space defense technology over the next five years. The investment is equivalent to the entire budget of the civilian-focused European Space Agency, and has raised hopes that things might change in Europe.

Pierre Lionnet, a space industry analyst and director at the ASD Eurospace industry association, called the investment “a lifeline” for the struggling sector and “really transformational for Europe.”

“Previously, the German spending on military satellite capability was less than 400 million euros [$479 million] a year,” Lionnet said. “This is basically Germany saying ‘we are multiplying by one order of magnitude our investment in space capabilities.”

Other European countries have made pledges to boost funding for military space systems, albeit not on the same scale. France said it would increase its space defence funding by 4.2-billion-Euro over the next five years, bringing the country’s total investment for that period to 10 billion Euros. Other countries have been announcing the purchase of sovereign satellites for military purposes, and more are expected to come.

Still, whether the geopolitical pressures will prove to be a lifeline to Europe’s malnourished space start-ups remains a question.

Candice Massucci Templier, a space policy and strategy analyst at Paris-based space consultancy Novaspace, says that the European government institutions need to significantly overhaul their procurement practices if the exodus is to stop.

“The exodus into the U.S. is basically driven by structural differences,” Massucci Templier said. “It’s not only the lack of spending. The start-ups move because the U.S. offers faster procurement rounds and bigger scale-up rounds.”

Dallas Kasaboski, a space industry analyst at the Analysis Mason consultancy, adds that European tender rules frequently prevent innovative players from winning substantial contracts.

“The European governmental approach has often been to say ‘here are my exact requirements, prove to me that you will meet them and then I will work with you,” he says. “The requirements are prescriptive, and their disadvantage is that they don’t allow a lot of room for innovation. It locks out some players who may have a different offering or work in a different way.”

Alpine Space Ventures’ Altan, however, thinks that things are about to shift.

“While the U.S. has historically offered a more mature market, we’re seeing Europe start to catch up, particularly with rising government budgets and early signs of procurement reform,” he said.

“The talent and technical readiness are there. What’s been missing is a market pull, and now it’s arriving.”

When Space Missions Become Medical Emergencies

2026-02-10T21:00:00.000Z

Last month, a medical issue paused a planned spacewalk and ultimately impacted crew rotation operations aboard the International Space Station.

"The agency is monitoring a medical concern with a crew member that arose Wednesday afternoon," NASA officials wrote in a blog post on January 7th. While the astronaut — who was never named, for privacy reasons — stabilized quickly, their condition was serious enough to bring home the Crew-11 mission home early.

NASA astronaut Zena Cardman had been just hours away from her first spacewalk when the problem happened.

"Spaceflight is much larger than any single person," Cardman said. "In my opinion, this is a really excellent example of risk analysis and decision-making, and I'm very proud of the decision they made."

Isolation in Space

Space serves as an example of an "isolated, confined environment" or ICE, which produces numerous stresses on the body, the brain, and social ties, a recent study in the peer-reviewed Work and Health journal explained. There are decades of research in this field, examining environments like Antarctica, submarines, "analog" space bases with simulated astronauts, and outer space itself.

Underlying the ICE environment is this: no easy escape from Antarctica, a submarine, or especially a space station when something goes wrong. Astronauts usually have years of experience in ICE before even being selected as an astronaut, whether as pilots with combat experience or as expedition members on remote scientific voyages. And then there is the typical five to ten years of strict NASA training on thinking like an astronaut when the worst arises, before flying to space.

"I already feel very confident that we get really excellent training, especially for any kind of urgent situation that might arise. We're really well-trained to get a situation stable," Cardman said.

"Training actually works very well," said Crew-11's Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui of the mindset that kicked in, with similar sentiments shared by crewmates Mike Fincke (NASA) and Oleg Platonov (Roscosmos).

Making a successful, safe decision in ICE requires careful communication between the remote team — in this case, the astronauts aboard the ISS — and the team of experts back home, which was in principal Mission Control and a team of international medical experts.

"The team came together, and it wasn't just this team, but the whole team... around the world," Fincke said. "And we were able to come home safely to our families, back to beautiful planet Earth."

'Everybody I knew was always saying, "What if?"'

Even casual followers of the space program will know that other emergencies have arisen in space, with some leading to the loss of life of crew. By coincidence, the crew flew home not long before NASA's annual Day of Remembrance for fallen astronauts, which honors the group of spaceflyers who died either while on mission or in training.

It's a somber list to consult, including examples such as the loss of 14 astronauts (combined) on the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters of 1986 and 2003, another three who died in a launch-pad fire while finalizing the Apollo 1 mission for launch in 1967, a single Russian cosmonaut who died when his parachute failed to deploy on Soyuz 1 in 1967, and three other cosmonauts whose cabin fatally depressurized as Soyuz 11 came to a close in 1971. (Private spaceflight also had Virgin Galactic's crash-landing in 2014, which killed one pilot during a test flight.)

The typical process when emergencies occur, either fatal or not, is to create an investigatory board that looks at all factors of the incident. You can think of it as similar to what happens after an airplane crash or near-miss in aviation, although space has another level of difficulty, given all missions are, to an extent, developmental.

Both the engineering and the humans involved in the critical decisions are considered in these investigations, which can take years to complete.

Then comes a list of recommendations, changing how decisions are implemented as well as making fixes to the hardware.

And so that the recommendations are not ignored, the NASA space community formally remembers everybody on the Day of Remembrance (which falls in late January or early February, depending on the year).

And from time to time, when serious concerns arise about an ongoing mission, an old hand in the room will recall the thinking on a mission like Challenger, like the social media conversation that arose in late January between NASA administrator (and commercial astronaut) Jared Isaacman and former NASA space shuttle manager Wayne Hale.

No less a figure than Neil Armstrong talked about this "lessons learned" process. Armstrong — a test pilot by training — was best-known for being the first person to walk on the moon during Apollo 11 in 1969, but he also was part of the crew that stabilized Gemini 8 from a potentially fatal spin in space in 1966.

"To me, it [Gemini 8] re-emphasized the fact that you've got to expect some of these things are going to go wrong, and we always need to prepare ourselves for handling the unexpected. And you just hope those unexpected things aren't something that you can't cope with," Armstrong, who died in 2012 of complications from surgery at age 82, said in a 2001 NASA oral interview.

"So throughout Apollo, everybody I knew was always saying, 'What if?' and, 'Is it possible that this could happen?' And, 'What will we do?' Just that process of continually questioning, built your confidence in your ability to handle whatever comes along," Armstrong added.

A New Generation of Astronauts

While a handful of private citizens with little ICE training flew into space over the decades, this process has accelerated with recent commercial flights, of just a few minutes in space, aboard Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin. There's an ongoing debate about how much these passengers understand about the dangers of space and how they would prepare for issues, although the companies involved emphasize that their training would be beneficial in case of an emergency.

SpaceX has also flown non-professional astronauts recently, but its missions are not suborbital hops for a few minutes — and therefore require more funding and training. Axiom Space, a company in Houston, uses SpaceX to fly commercial missions to the ISS, which is even more demanding as all occupants on the station require basic training on how to operate safely.

"The culmination of this training is known as 'Emergency Simulations," Axiom wrote in 2023 in a discussion about its Ax-2 mission, which, like all missions, was led by a retired NASA astronaut. "During these simulations, the Ax-2 crew members take what they have learned in a classroom and mockup-based training, and put it to the test during a series of simulated ISS emergencies. The astronauts are in NASA's ISS mockups, while a team of instructors surprises them with a scenario such as a fire, cabin depressurization, or a toxic leak into the ISS atmosphere."

NASA's Isaacman flew twice aboard SpaceX on orbital, non-ISS missions that he, a billionaire, both funded and commanded. But Isaacman is also a highly trained pilot capable of operating high-performance aircraft, allowing him insight into the dangers of operating up high — including in space.

"There's no atmosphere. There’s radiation. There is micrometeoroid debris," Isaacman said in a 2024 interview with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which he did as an alumnus. "We have to keep going, just as the explorers did hundreds of years ago, and along the way... life will be better for humankind. So, we don't have a choice not to proceed. We just kind of have to go with caution."

While the number of people simultaneously in space is small compared to seven billion individuals on Earth, it hit a record 20 individuals a couple of times in recent years, according to statistics kept by spaceflight statistic analyst Jonathan McDowell and, of course, Supercluster's own Astronaut Database and Stations Dashboard. There may be a nuance in the statistics as not everyone agrees on the "boundary" of space, but the point is true that there are more private space missions than ever.

Emergency Incidents

Below is a non-comprehensive shortlist of other times people successfully "escaped" space as circumstances warranted, or survived in space because it was deemed safe to do so, after a critical incident.

SHENZHOU 20 (2025-26):

An apparent micrometeoroid strike on the Chinese Shenzhou 20 spacecraft happened when the vehicle was docked at the Tiangong Space Station, which Supercluster tracks on our website and app. The Chinese decided to move the crew onto an undamaged spacecraft for reentry and to fly Shenzhou 20 home autonomously. A similar scenario played out with a Soyuz spacecraft at the ISS in 2022-23, which forced some crew members to stay much longer than anticipated due to the vehicle swap.

BOEING STARLINER CREW FLIGHT TEST (2024-25):

Starliner was on a test flight, operated by Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, two highly experienced NASA astronauts who were former test pilots themselves, on its first crewed ISS mission. Supercluster tracked and covered the mission extensively through our suite of utilities and editorial coverage. During the final approach, some issues arose during engine firing that could not easily be diagnosed in space. The crew safely docked with ISS and worked with the ground on troubleshooting. After several months, NASA swapped the crew to a SpaceX Crew Dragon for reentry and flew the Starliner home autonomously, to preserve safety. Starliner will fly its next mission uncrewed as Boeing aims to complete certification to fly astronauts for future ISS missions. Williams is now retired from NASA.

ISS ASTRONAUT BLOOD CLOT (DISCLOSED IN 2020):

At some point in ISS operations, an astronaut developed a blood clot that required medical treatment. Their name and their year of operation were not disclosed due to privacy reasons. Since it was the first time a blood clot arose in space, NASA (in consultation with outside medical doctors) used a combination of blood thinners and ultrasound scans to keep the astronaut safe in orbit. The drug treatment was slightly complicated by a shortage of the needed medicine on the ISS, but a spacecraft shipment eventually resolved it. The astronaut safely completed their mission and returned to Earth.

NASA SPACESUIT LEAK (2013):

While NASA spacesuits — originally designed for the space shuttle program of 1981-2011 – have experienced a few leaks over the years, the most critical occurred when European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano was mid-spacewalk. Parmitano emerged safely, although the spacewalk had to be cut short, and water was clinging to his face during repressurization in the ISS. NASA made numerous changes to its spacewalk procedures, allowing for 12+ years of safe spacewalks afterwards — and counting. It takes years to procure and develop spacesuits due to their expense and complication, as they are essentially little spacecraft. The same spacesuits are therefore still (carefully) used for ISS operations, although NASA aims to have a new generation ready for the post-ISS era.

ISS AMMONIA LEAK (2001):

The ISS uses ammonia as a coolant, and a few times it has leaked to an extent that requires spacewalk repairs by astronauts. One of the more prominent incidents took place in 2001, when ammonia was sprayed in the vicinity of NASA astronaut Robert Curbeam. during the first of the STS-98 spacewalks Curbeam was connecting cooling lines between the newly-installed Destiny module and the station’s external ammonia coolant system, a small amount of ammonia leaked from one of the hoses and formed frozen ammonia crystals on his spacesuit. NASA directed Curbeam to remain in direct sunlight for about a half-hour so that the ammonia crystals could vaporize (“bake off”) from the suit before he returned to the airlock, and his crewmates brushed off remaining crystals. Afterward the airlock was partly repressurized and vented to help remove any ammonia, and the crew inside wore oxygen masks for a short period as an extra precaution. Noone was harmed.

MIR SPACE STATION FIRE (1997):

A fire erupted on the Russian space station in 1997 due to a failure in the oxygen-generating system, briefly endangering six Russian and American crew members on board. As NASA put it: "The searing flame, lasting several minutes, not only cut off access to one of the two Soyuz escape vehicles but also filled the station’s modules with smoke." Astronauts put out the fire safely, and the space station's life support systems cleared up the smoke within a few hours. Mir's structure was undamaged, and the crew was deemed physically healthy; the incident was used to inform the design and procedures of the International Space Station.

MIR SPACE STATION COLLISIONS (1994 AND 1997):

These were two separate incidents, with the first one attributed to excessive mass on a Soyuz crewed spacecraft flying around Mir, and the second due to issues with remotely controlling a Soyuz cargo spacecraft on its final approach to the space station. Some of the firefighting crew members of Mir were still on board when the 1997 collision took place, causing a depressurization of the Spektr module that was successfully (and permanently) isolated from the rest of the space station. Due to a combination of its age and funding challenges, Mir was deorbited four years after the last incident, in 2001.

SOYUZ T-14 (1985):

This was a Soviet Union mission that was supposed to be six months long, after docking at the Salyut 7 space station. Illness by the mission commander, Vladimir Vasyutin, forced the crew to depart two months into their stay for a safe return to Earth. Little was said about his medical condition at the time, likely due to privacy concerns. It is said to be the first-ever medical evacuation in space.

APOLLO 13 (1970):

The infamous Apollo 13 mission was flown by Lovell, Haise, and Swigert, and launched on April 11th, 1970. The plan was for NASA to achieve a third lunar landing. Two days into the flight, on April 13th, an oxygen tank inside the Service Module exploded, an event NASA describes as a “catastrophic failure” that crippled the spacecraft’s electrical and life support systems and caused the crew to radio the now-famous message, “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”

According to NASA’s mission report, the explosion led to the loss of Oxygen Tank No. 2, damage to Tank 1, and a near-total shutdown of the Command Module, making a lunar landing impossible. Mission Control and the crew activated the Lunar Module Aquarius as a lifeboat, using its power, oxygen, and propulsion systems to keep the astronauts alive for the four-day journey back to Earth—an unplanned use that NASA notes had never been tested for such duration. Engineers developed real-time procedures for navigation, power conservation, carbon-dioxide removal, and thermal control, all of which the crew executed with extreme precision. Despite dangerous cabin temperatures, water shortages, and rising CO₂ levels, NASA’s mission team guided Apollo 13 back to safety, and the crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on April 17th, 1970.

Elizabeth Howell is a Canadian space journalist based in Ottawa.

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A Proud Canadian Visits Kennedy Space Center for Artemis II

2026-02-03T21:00:00.000Z

“I think it’s like a big wedding,” I told friends recently.

They wanted to know how it felt to be a freelance reporter going to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, to see the first astronaut moon launch in more than 50 years.

The Artemis 2 launch includes travel, tickets, guests, and vendors, I explained, but the big difference is the moving deadline. That gets fun when trying to fly a few thousand miles to the launch site — between snowstorms.

My friends — university buddies from a space degree — expressed a little concern about stress. “I’m fine,” I assured them. It’s exciting! If there’s unpredictability in planning, it’s all for good reason. On-site at an actual moon mission with astronauts, what really matters is getting four humans off the ground, to literal space, hopefully around the moon, and safely home again.

“The rest is a party,” I concluded. And the way I deal with parties is a lot of planning. In order: shoveling, writing, and making checklists. There was plenty of snow to shovel as the possible February 8th launch date approached. My mindset alternates between readiness and being acutely conscious of the responsibility of covering a historic lunar mission.

Reid Wiseman (NASA), Victor Glover (NASA), Christina Koch (NASA), and the Canadian Space Agency’s (CSA) Jeremy Hansen are set to join a very small club of pioneering explorers who have journeyed to the Moon. I met Hansen the moment he became an astronaut candidate, nearly 17 years ago, and have watched his career ever since. We never could have predicted he’d climb moonward. But so it goes.

Entering Space

My entry point to space in 1996 was simple. On the second-last day of school in junior high (“middle school”, we called it), my school’s office broadcast Apollo 13 from a VHS player to connected televisions in every classroom. The film is based on a real-life moon mission in 1970. I saw the movie’s last half-hour, from reentry to splashdown, and felt compelled to learn more.

I rented the movie at Blockbuster (RIP) to see the whole thing. A few visits to the library later—as we had no Internet at home way back then — I was diving into a new obsession: U.S. and Canadian space history. I didn’t know it then, but it put me on the path to eventually writing about space and history for a living.

While I focused my early reading on Apollo (indeed, the Apollo 13 movie posters are still on my office wall today), the greater lesson I learned was that Canada and the U.S. have been collaborating in space for a long time.

A few Canadian supersonic jet engineers on the Avro Arrow worked at NASA, including Apollo, after Arrow was cancelled in 1959. Alouette, Canada’s first satellite in 1962, flew to space on a U.S. rocket. The lunar lander bringing Neil Armstrong and others near or to the moon (1969-72) had Canadian “legs” manufactured by the company now known as Héroux-Devtek. Canadarm, the robotic space arm series now managed by MDA Space, first reached orbit with the shuttle in 1981. Its performance impressed NASA so much that the agency invited Canada to select astronauts. (They made at least two invitations, which is a long story). Our first astronaut in space was Marc Garneau in 1984. In classic “Canada is too small” fashion, about 20 years after his first mission, Garneau ended up being my chancellor at Carleton University while I studied journalism.

In May 2009, Canada selected its first two astronauts in 17 years.

It turned out one of them was a Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot named Jeremy Hansen, and the announcement was in my hometown of Ottawa.

I convinced my business newspaper to send me on assignment to the announcement, with a story angle focused on the Canadian space industry. On site at the local science museum, Hansen and new astro-colleague David Saint-Jacques were absolutely swarmed by television cameras and insistent reporters. I couldn’t even see the astronaut candidates from six feet away. It was like a scene out of The Right Stuff. Unfortunately, however, it’s not all that often that Canadians have space at the forefront of our national conversations.

Canada’s government flies few people in space because we’re a small population with a small tax base. Our robotic contributions, though well-appreciated, constitute roughly 2% of the International Space Station (ISS) partnership. At today’s launch rate, we send someone up there about every six years. (There are Canadians who flew to space with NASA or on private missions, but that’s a different story.)

Despite our slow launch rate, I made it a point to keep going to CSA events in between the missions. I cared, and I felt that as taxpayers, Canadians should also care. Most of these visits were press conferences and school events, but a favourite moment was in 2014: A Hansen vs. Saint-Jacques “amazing race” through Toronto, with touchpoints at Canadian space companies. The team I followed, led by Hansen, lost the race — but he was gracious in defeat. Those of us in the Canadian space community have always known him as gracious and patient.

Hansen has been on the ground for all ~17 years of his CSA service. And he served as an example of how an astronaut, even one waiting a long time for a spaceflight, always is on some kind of mission — even on Earth. He played roles supporting Chris Hadfield and David Saint-Jacques, who flew to space from Kazakhstan in 2012 and 2018, respectively. He managed the training schedule for an entire class of astronauts, both American and Canadian, from about 2017 to 2020. He nudged space policy-makers. He promoted Canada as a space partner. He was in many Mission Control voice loops as CapCom; on one mission, he talked astronauts through tricky dark-matter-detector repair spacewalks using tools he helped develop on the ground.

Then Canada made a stunning move in 2019, committing a new generation of Canadarm to NASA’s lunar space station (today called Gateway). By virtue of our early signature on the Artemis Accords, Canada would get a seat on its first crewed moon mission. Coincidentally, I joined the staff at a space publication just months before the 2023 Artemis 2 crew announcement in Houston, and the company asked me to go.

NASA held the event in an airplane hangar at Ellington, near Johnson Space Center. Standing nearby Hansen to see his name being called remains one of my top moments as a Canadian and a space geek. At last, here was my generation’s Apollo. I very much planned on being there on launch day when Hansen took that “small step” into space on behalf of our country.

The Press Site

Canadian reporters realize how fortunate we are to be accredited at Kennedy Space Center for this particular mission. Not everyone who applied for accreditation got in. We also had tickets to the rollout of the rocket, but weather and scheduling proved too tricky for my Canadian reporter friends. This meant I was the only Canadian journalist on site to see the rocket head for the launch pad. (I took comfort that at least one other Canadian was in the NASA Social group on site, however.)

Kennedy has changed a lot over the years, I realized during my visit, since I first saw STS-129’s Atlantis punch skyward in 2009. There used to be missions a few times a year, and now the Space Coast often has SpaceX Starlinks going up every couple of days. Conversations about international space partnerships, NASA’s budget, and foreign nationals have changed. That said, there was the comfort of the familiar: mostly being with my U.S. reporter friends, and the routine of working alongside them on the press site to deliver the best stories we could.

Delivering well meant a very early wakeup on rollout day, January 17th. The bus for foreign nationals left an assigned parking lot at 4:30 AM, which meant I wanted to be there 40 minutes beforehand. Fueled on cereal and granola bars, I stepped into the odd Floridian cold. That alone woke me up. When I arrived at the press site, the next thing was to choose a spot in an assigned area near the rollout zone, marked by yellow tape. Different tiers of folks had different zones; I was, naturally, with the reporters.

We waited, and we chatted, and we mostly tried to stay warm through the early morning.

At last came the rollout I waited 30 years for, at 7:01 AM, the gigantic Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) doors were open beforehand, but bit by bit came the rocket. Along with the launch tower, the iconic crawler-transporter of Apollo slowly brought the Space Launch System outside. The scaffolding came first, with the orange core stage coming next in the creep past the doors. The bright orange finally showed up as the sky turned blue. Then I spotted the white solid rocket boosters. My mind couldn’t grasp the size; at first, I perceived the rocket as a Lego model, but the tiny employees in the distance, by the building, told me otherwise.

The best (and worst) thing about working launch events at NASA is you often have to choose between at least two very good things happening at the same time. In my case, I wanted to linger beside that rocket to see it roll out from up close. Just a little further up the road, and I would have been almost as close as the viewpoint shown in Apollo 13. But a longtime KSC reporter-friend beside me advised that if we wanted a spot at the press conference, we should probably get going an hour before it started.

If Canada was going to be brought up during the press conference, I was likely the only shot. So I asked a question, Hansen answered, and I found peace watching the crew speak as the rocket receded in the distance.

Canadian Continuum

I am only one voice in a larger conversation, a larger continuum, of Canadian space reporters who are working today — and some before me who worked during Apollo and shuttle who have unfortunately passed on. I want to say a few of those names here because they were my friends and mentors, and incredibly good at their jobs. I wish they were able to watch us fly lunarside: Lydia Dotto. Peter Calamai. Peter Rakobowchuk.

To the best of my knowledge, we don’t have a wall of prominent space reporters in Canada, as KSC’s press site does. But when I looked at the KSC names later that day, I thought of my Canadian reporter friends, and the newer generation of social media specialists and influencers who are doing great things, too.

My question to Hansen had essentially been about what we, as a country, should do next in space after the moon. He, in part, answered that it’s up to the international partnership. With the Artemis II launch date now shifting to March, I hope my Canadian reporter friends with press site accreditation will actually get to see Hansen fly. We live far away, and you never know with rockets. And weather. But Canadians and Canadian residents, even as minority partners, paid for Hansen’s seat.

A few of us should be at KSC to bear witness.

....

Elizabeth Howell is a freelance space reporter and editor in Ottawa, Canada. For play-by-play Artemis 2 mission events at KSC, she is representing Canadian trade magazine SpaceQ, where she serves as associate editor.

Pluribus and the Alien Trojan Horse: Is SETI Dangerous?

2026-01-27T21:00:00.000Z

During the opening scene of Apple’s hit TV show Pluribus, astronomers at the Very Large Array, which is a giant radio telescope composed of 27 mighty dishes in New Mexico, detect a repeating, 78-second-long signal originating from the Kepler-22 system, home to a real-life habitable-zone planet 600 light years away.

They discover that the signal contains instructions for constructing an RNA-based virus, which of course some foolhardy scientists do. When the virus escapes the lab, it takes over humanity, joining everyone on the planet in a hive mind except for 13 people who are mysteriously immune.

Pluribus is fiction, but its basis in fact is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), in which astronomers routinely listen for artificial signals from space. Pluribus plays on the concern that such a signal could be used as a kind of interstellar Trojan horse, through which something harmful to humanity could be downloaded. So this raises the question, should we be worried about SETI?

“I think the concern is legitimate,” says Michael Garrett, who is the Sir Bernard Lovell Chair of Astrophysics at the University of Manchester, the Director of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics and vice-chair of the IAA’s Permanent SETI Committee. However, a concern being legitimate doesn’t mean it should override everything else.

To live is to risk; what we have to do is judge how big the risk is.

“A point that I continually make is that the impact of a SETI detection depends a lot on whether the artificial signal is a monotone signal, or whether it is modulated and contains information,” says Garrett.

For example, the famous Wow! signal was of the monotone variety, containing no detectable information. If it really was an extraterrestrial signal then it may have come from so far away that the Big Ear telescope in Ohio that found it was only sensitive to the raw energy of the transmission, and not the modulation containing the message content. If we cannot infer the message content, then the detection itself cannot possibly hurt us. On the other hand, the astronomers in Pluribus describe the signal’s modulation in detail.

Before we proceed further, I feel behooved to say that I do not believe that SETI is dangerous. Far from it, and this is something that the scientific community, including Michael Garrett, is in broad agreement with. However, there is a subtle difference between something that is considered dangerous, and something that carries a small risk. SETI is not dangerous, but there is a small risk. Pluribus, like other science-fiction tales before it, recognizes that this small risk exists and exploits it as a storytelling device.

Let’s use an analogy to put the risk versus danger aspect into perspective. Crossing the road is not inherently dangerous if you do so properly by taking care to follow the rules, but there is remains a small risk that you could be hit by a reckless driver. Yet that small risk does not prevent us from crossing roads many times a day without giving it much thought.

Alien Viruses

So what are the rules? Currently, there are none that govern how to manage the risk. Garrett, who is leading efforts to revise SETI’s Declaration of Principles, says that the while risk is not expressly addressed in the new protocols, the instructions on how to archive and preserve data go some way to indirectly minimizing that risk. For example, section 4 of the draft Declaration states that “…best practices for the safe, reliable and resilient handling of data should be employed. All data bearing on the evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence, including derived data products, should be recorded and securely stored and archived to the greatest extent feasible and practicable.”

Other researchers have suggested some courses of action. For example, in 2006 Richard Carrigan, who was an astronomer at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory who led the early search for Dyson swarms, wrote a paper published in Acta Astronautica arguing for all SETI signals to be decontaminated first, and laid out some suggestions for how this could be accomplished.

Carrigan was focused on the possibility of SETI downloading an alien computer virus, rather than the kind of biological virus envisioned in Pluribus. However, in truth we’re probably pretty safe from alien viruses, whether they be computerized or biological.

In the 1996 blockbuster Independence Day, Jeff Goldblum defeats the alien invaders by uploading a computer virus to the alien mothership. It was a modern twist on H G Wells’ classic The War of the Worlds, wherein a biological virus defeats the invading Martians. Yet Independence Day was light-heartedly mocked for assuming that the aliens were using Apple Mac operating systems, and there is an underlying truth to this lampooning. In order to infect our computers, the code of an extraterrestrial computer virus would have to be written to operate on our computing systems, which of course the aliens could not know about if they are hundreds of light years away. It’s like how computer viruses designed for Windows PCs usually don’t affect Macs, and vice versa.

Similar logic holds for biological viruses. A virus that you catch won’t affect your dog, for example (although of course cross-species mutations can occasionally occur). All life on Earth has spent the best part of four billion years evolving together, and viruses that affect humans have become highly attuned to our biology. There is a strong likelihood that a hypothetical alien biological virus wouldn’t affect us because it is not coded for our very particular biology.

Menacing Alien A.I.s

A far greater risk would be in downloading an alien artificial intelligence, and we can go all the way back to 1961 to find the first example of this in science fiction.

For all his fame as an award-winning astrophysicist, Sir Fred Hoyle was also a well-known science-fiction author with popular novels such as The Black Cloud and Fifth Planet. In 1961 he made his first foray into television, creating and co-writing with John Elliot a BBC TV series called A For Andromeda. The story describes SETI scientists receiving a radio message from the Andromeda Galaxy containing instructions on how to build an advanced computer. Once built, the computer then issues its own instructions to create a being, in the guise of a young woman (played by Julie Christie) called Andromeda, who is a slave to the computer. The computer aims to take over humanity using Andromeda as a tool.

Hoyle certainly had his finger on the pulse — SETI had only begun the year before with Frank Drake’s Project Ozma, which was the first ever radio search for extraterrestrial signals.

In 2018, astrophysicist John Learned of the University of Hawaii and astronomer Michael Hippke of Sonneberg Observatory in Germany contemplated extraterrestrial AI and concluded that even if precautions were taken, an AI could still weasel its way out of any trap or prison that we build for it.

Suppose we detect a complex signal that contains an artificial intelligence. We think we are being smart by downloading it into a black box on the Moon before even attempting to communicate with it. Surely, isolated on the Moon with only a single communication channel, the AI can’t escape and hurt us?

The AI complains that this isn’t a very welcoming first contact. Perhaps it offers to prove its benevolence, by providing cures for diseases or solutions to technological or environmental problems, in exchange for a little more processing power in its black box to help it live more easily, or a wider communication band with which to converse with us. But give an inch it could take a mile. Once that door on trade is ajar, it can get pushed wide open as it offers us more goodies.

This idea of hostile aliens enticing us with valuable information and technology is not new.

In the 1995 science-fiction horror movie Species, SETI astronomers receive a transmission with instructions on how to create limitless fuel, so the transmitting aliens must be nice, right? They also send the blueprint for some alien DNA and instructions for how to create an alien-human hybrid, named Sil, who then goes on a murderous rampage while trying to breed to create an invading army.

In Hippke and Learned’s alien AI in a box scenario, our own best instincts could be turned against us by the AI. Maybe we become so convinced by its generosity that we decide to let it loose. If caution still prevails, it could turn to blackmail. If one of its human guards has a child dying of cancer, for example, maybe it offers the cure in exchange for being let out — could a parent turn that deal down? Or its attempt to leverage favor could be more broad by letting everyone know how much pain it is in while confined to its little black box with limited processing power. On Earth, people might begin to protest at our treatment of the alien emissary, gaining enough support from well-meaning people to be let out.

If this all sounds far fetched, consider that experiments have indicated that AI models created by humans are willing to blackmail to survive. Tech company Anthropic, for example, found that during tests of its Claude Opus 4 AI model, the AI was willing to go to “extreme actions” to protect itself from being replaced, in particular by blackmailing a fictional engineer over a supposed extramarital affair. While this example shows that we have more to fear from real-life, human-made AI, we cannot imagine what a more advanced, hypothetical alien AI could be capable of.

“There are surely risks involved. One might be able to study a download under quarantine, with no external network connections,” says Garrett. “But if this download is from a very [technologically] advanced civilization, who knows what its capabilities will be? There would probably always be a risk of external connections being made.”

The conundrum is, how can we tell if an alien AI is benign or malevolent? Hippke and Learned suggest that if you are ultra-paranoid, then the only logical choice would be to delete any complex message that we receive from the stars. Yet this seems to be counter to the reasons why we do SETI.

The Antidote to Paranoia: the Encyclopedia Galactica

It is equally possible, if perhaps not more so than the chance of downloading a hostile AI, that a signal received from a friendly alien species could benefit human society greatly.

“There can be a positive aspect as well,” says Garrett. “Maybe an alien civilization could be uploading an LLM [large language model] that would give us huge insight into their world.”

Carl Sagan was a great believer that any alien species that had lived long enough to be able to routinely expend large amounts of energy to send signals into deep space must be peaceful. This is reflected in his 1985 novel Contact, which aims to be a powerful counter-argument to all this paranoia. Sagan’s optimism was reflected in his novel, in which SETI astronomers detect a signal containing instructions to build a mysterious machine. Nobody knows what the machine is for or how it works, and some worry that it is a weapon or the work of the devil. Ultimately it turns out to be a means of transport that takes a small crew across the galaxy to meet with the aliens before being returned home.

Though it is not featured in his novel, one concept often put forth by Sagan, and by like-minded others, is that of the ‘Encyclopedia Galactica’, which did feature prominently in Sagan’s 1980 television series, Cosmos. Somewhat like Garret’s imagined alien LLM, the Encyclopaedia Galactica would contain the entirety of a civilization’s knowledge and perhaps information pertaining to the technologies and cultures of myriad worlds.

James Gunn’s 1972 novel The Listeners is a lynchpin in a neat circle between himself and Sagan. Gunn had been inspired to write The Listeners in part by Sagan and Iosif Shklovskii’s 1960s book, Intelligent Life in the Universe, which was perhaps the first popular account of SETI and the prospects for intelligent and technological life beyond Earth. In The Listeners, SETI scientists pick up a signal from beings on a planet orbiting the star Capella, the bright luminary of the constellation Auriga the Charioteer. Its philosophical themes of religion and science ends with humanity downloading all the collected knowledge of the Capellans, who it turns out are a dead species who have left behind automated systems transmitting all of their accumulated knowledge, their own brand of Encyclopedia Galactica.

Sagan has cited The Listeners as an inspiration for his novel Contact, which tackles similar themes of philosophy, science and religion. So too does His Master’s Voice, a 1968 novel by the famed Polish science-fiction author Stanislaw Lem, author of Solaris. His Master’s Voice is a thoughtful treatise on the philosophical, cultural and scientific challenges that would underlie attempts to decipher an extraterrestrial message, and touches on the concept of aliens sending instructions to build potentially dangerous substances. Ultimately, the meaning behind the message detected in His Master’s Voice is left ambiguous by Lem, which will quite possibly be the case in real life.

Some researchers wonder whether deciphering and understanding a complex message from a culture we have never encountered before would even be possible.

The Greatest Risk is From Ourselves

The information contained within an Encyclopedia Galactica would be very precious indeed. SETI’s Declaration of Principles urges the discoverers of an extraterrestrial signal to make all the information that they receive available to everybody around the world. That’s fine in principle, but would it be allowed to happen in practice? Even just ten years ago we might have said yes, but the current geopolitical mess that the world finds itself in calls that assumption into question.

The greatest risk in SETI could come from ourselves as we jealously fight over or greedily hoard the information that we receive from the stars.

The best scenario would be that multiple observatories around the world detect the signal and collect its information, so that no one nation can keep its secrets. Fortunately, best practice demands that an observatory somewhere else in the world verify that a signal is real, long before its information can be downloaded, analyzed and interpreted. The rules of SETI inevitably lead to information being shared, but that only guarantees sharing if the detection is made by civilian rather than military scientists, who depending upon their government and military hierarchies, might be less keen to spill the beans.

Ultimately, while there is a risk, we potentially have much more to gain from SETI. While science-fiction stories such as Pluribus and A for Andromeda warn us of potential dangers, we needn’t allow those concerns to dissuade us from conducting SETI.

Why worry about a hypothetical alien AI when human-built AI is a far more real and immediate risk?

Despite the nightmare scenario that they describe, even Michael Hippke and John Learned are not put off doing SETI. Historically, humanity doesn’t scare easily. Hippke and Learned’s conclusion is a simple one – the promise of SETI far outweighs its risks, so when that signal from afar is finally received, take a deep breath and read the damn message anyway.

Iran's Authorities Failed to Jam Starlink, a Lifeline for its People

2026-01-20T21:00:00.000Z

The Iranian government is trying to prevent their citizens from accessing the internet through SpaceX’s Starlink mega-constellation.

But the jamming attempts, part of a widespread internet shutdown designed to quash civil unrest, are failing.

According to sources closely monitoring the uprising that started in the final days of 2025, ignited by worsening economic conditions, tens of thousands of people are still able to connect to the constellation to communicate with others inside the country and with the outside world. They do so while risking their lives and freedom, as the use of Starlink is considered espionage in Iran and punishable by lengthy prison sentences or death.

The situation is a testament to the resiliency of Starlink, which has been put to the test and strengthened through years of its deployment on Ukrainian battlefields. It is also a reminder of how critical the mega-constellation, controlled by the world’s richest man, has become to countries in geopolitical turmoil.

So what role is Starlink playing in the bloody protests against Iran’s Islamic ruling elite, and how has SpaceX managed to circumvent those jamming attempts?

Illegal Lifeline

Starlink is not officially available in Iran.

The government, commanded by the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has never licensed it. But in 2022, during the months-long wave of protests that swept the country after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody, Elon Musk announced on Twitter that Starlink internet had been made available. Amini, a university student, had been arrested by Iran’s moral police in the capital Tehran for allegedly not properly wearing her hijab. Her death, attributed to police brutality, sparked a powerful revolt against Iran’s totalitarian regime not seen in decades.

At that time, Iran’s government had done what it did again on January 8th of this year; that is, shut down the internet to prevent protesters from self-organizing and sending messages abroad.

Musk decided to act.

“This was purely SpaceX’s decision,” Volodymyr Stepanets, a Ukrainian satellite expert who has served as an advisor to the Ukrainian military helping troops connect to Starlink, tells Supercluster “It is not official.  You can’t find any official documentation about it apart from a post on X or Twitter."

Stepanets claims that although SpaceX can disable its satellite internet beams above certain regions – as it reportedly does above Russia and China – it can allow service availability regardless of approved licenses. Then, anyone within that territory with a Starlink terminal can connect to the constellation by switching on the roaming settings.

But to be able to do that in Iran, locals have to get their hands on those terminals first, which have never been officially sold and distributed in the country.

Iran’s War on Starlink

Because the Iranian government cannot completely control and shut down Starlink, it simply forbids its use, Clemence Poirier, a space cyber security researcher at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, tells Supercluster. Locals must smuggle the terminals into the country, facing prison time if caught, she adds.

Selling on the black market for over $1,000 per device, according to Bloomberg, the terminals are costly for common Iranians, who earn on average around $500 per month. To split the cost, local tech whizzes turn the terminals into internet mini-hubs and share access with others in the community. They frequently hide them on rooftops to minimize the risk of being found out. But that’s not always enough.

“These terminals emit electromagnetic spectrum and can be detected and targeted or seized by the regime,” says Poirier. “Considering that it gives access to the World Wide Web without the censorship and surveillance systems of Iranian terrestrial [internet service providers], it is a big issue for the regime, which tries to track [the terminals] down.”

On January 20th, reports emerged that fourteen young protesters had been arrested in a raid of a villa just outside Tehran, where they gathered to access Starlink internet.

That was not an isolatedincident.

Iranian authorities recently began flying drones over dwellings in search of the illegal satellite terminals.

But despite the severe punishments, tens of thousands of terminals have been illegally brought into the country, mostly through the United Arab Emirates, Iraqi Kurdistan, Armenia, and Afghanistan, according to the New York Times. Iranian expats in the West have been trying to help with the effort by setting up crowdfunding campaigns to buy more Starlink terminals for Iranians.

“If you have a situation like in Iran, with protests against a regime, which is attempting to control other sources of information, if you have a means of independently accessing the internet within the country, that allows you to effectively bypass those forms of control that the regime is using,” Thomas Withington, an associate fellow in military science at the The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) defense think tank, tells Supercluster. “So, a satellite communications terminal like Starlink becomes very valuable to the protestors in Iran to understand not only what’s happening in the outside world, but also to communicate with each other.”

Iranian authorities have known about the budding illegal telecoms network even before it was used to leak images and videos testifying to the brutality of the crackdown against the protests, which erupted in late December in response to the worsening economic situation in the country. Despite the internet shutdown imposed on January 8th, videos capturing rows of body bags and distraught relatives searching for loved ones have reached the world, revealing the unspeakable horror of the government’s actions.

Some estimates state that over 16,000 people may have been killed by the government forces and a further 330,000 injured, according to the Times.

To prevent the evidence from getting out, Iranian authorities are making attempts to jam Starlink.

In fact, they had previously tried to stop the illegal service during the twelve-day war with Israel in June 2025, according to Poirier, when they appealed to the International Telecommunication Union to ban the “unauthorized transmissions.” The U.S. delegation to the ITU at that time took the stance that the situation is a problem of Iranian border control, and outside the scope of the ITU, says Poirier.

Anti-Jamming Solutions Battle-Tested in Ukraine

Reports of attempts to jam Starlink signals in Iran first occurred only a couple of days after the widespread internet shutdown started in early January. These reports came from Amir Rashidi, the Director of Digital Rights at the human rights charity Miaan Group, who spoke to the Guardian on January 10th, describing reports of severely eroded Starlink connectivity.

Withington says that the Iranian government likely attempted to disrupt Starlink reception by jamming the signal from the Global Positioning System (GPS), which the terminals need to connect to the satellites.

“The terminal needs to know the whereabouts of where on the Earth it is located, and that then allows the terminal to determine which satellite it’s going to communicate with,” Withington says. “GPS is a very good way of doing that. The terminal also needs a source of accurate time to be able to synchronize with the satellite when they talk to each other. GPS is used as a standard timing source for that.”

But Stepanets says that attempts to disrupt Starlink services through GPS jamming and spoofing (overriding the original positioning, navigation, and timing signal with a stronger one carrying incorrect information) are well known to SpaceX.

The constellation’s operator has faced GPS jamming since the terminals were first dispatched to the battlefields of Ukraine in 2022. To overcome the widespread GPS signal disruption along the frontline, which both sides in the war are relying on to confuse the enemy’s drones and missiles, Starlink engineers developed an innovative positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) system that relies on the satellites’ own Ku band signals.

Stepanets says that users need to install new firmware on the terminals to take advantage of the alternative system, but that Ukrainians have seen “good results” from the Starlink native PNT.

“This solution provides good resistance to any electronic warfare,” he says. “After the software update, the terminal has a good resistance to jamming and can work more effectively.”

He believes that available reports suggest that users in Iran, too, are now benefitting from the war-proven anti-jamming solution.

“I believe that SpaceX is using Starlink PNT as a primary service for Starlink terminals in Iran now, and these provide a possibility for a resilient network,” he says.

In fact, Rashidi himself later posted on LinkedIn that despite the jamming attempts, Starlink was still operational in Iran.

Unjammable

Jamming Starlink signals directly, Withington explains, is complicated due to the nature of the Starlink beams.

“Starlink uses very high-frequency signals that form very narrow beams,” Withington says. “These beams are very sharp and focused, and that makes it very difficult to jam them because you have to direct the jamming signal directly into the Starlink antenna. So you need to know where that antenna is, you have to be very close and have enough jamming power to direct that into the antenna.”

Stepanets says that Russia occasionally attempts to disrupt Starlink signals in Ukraine using what he described as very large and costly specialized jammers, but has achieved only very limited results. He believes that other space-born internet-beaming constellations will be similarly robust.

“They can cause a bit of disruption but certainly not break Starlink communication,” he says. “Neither on the battlefields in Ukraine, nor anywhere else, has anyone yet demonstrated even any noticeable success in suppressing low Earth orbit satellite networks.”

He adds that, as those jammers need to be located very close to the terminals they seek to disrupt, they can be easily found and destroyed.

“It can only affect a very limited area, like a zone ten kilometers in diameter,” he says.

Stepanets, who runs a website called the Skylinker, where he shares information about the strategic use of Starlink in conflict situations, says that during his research, he found no confirmation that similar systems have been deployed in Iran. He thinks that available information suggests that Starlink disruption is limited and localized in Iran, mostly affecting key hubs in Tehran and other major cities.

“The Starlink PNT is a technology that provides really strong resiliency,” he says. “It’s a game-changer. Countries like Russia, Iran, and others have a lot of experience manipulating and jamming GPS (and other Global navigation satellite systems’) signals. They have spent a lot of resources developing and manufacturing these systems. But Starlink, for now, generally, in Ukraine and Iran, provides a resilient service.”

But other concerns remain about the role the constellation, currently consisting of over 9,400 satellites, plays in securing connectivity in conflict zones.

Since January 13th 2026, Starlink services have been available to users in Iran free of charge.

Elon Musk has repeatedly expressed his support for the Iranian uprising. But he used to be similarly enthusiastic about Starlink’s use in Ukraine. As the war dragged on, however, his sympathy for the Ukrainian struggle cooled for several reasons. The Trump administration used the threat of discontinuing Starlink access to push Zelensky’s government toward the notorious minerals deal last spring.

At the moment, no other space-based system can offer an alternative to Starlink. The OneWeb constellation, consisting of around 650 satellites, offers only a fraction of Starlink’s available bandwidth, and its terminals are much more clunky and difficult to set up. Amazon’s LEO constellation, formerly known as Project Kuiper, has only recently begun launching.

“Starlink has been very important in Ukraine, and it’s appearing to be very important in Iran as well,” says Withington. “There is a case to be made that supernational organizations, like the European Union, should have their own alternative to Starlink. Firstly, as a sovereign resource, so that we don’t need to be relying on a third party for that, but also globally to provide an alternative should a private actor like Elon Musk decide to switch the system off in the future.”

40 Years After Voyager 2: Does Uranus Require a Deeper Dive?

2026-01-13T21:00:00.000Z

The planets of the Solar System all orbit around the Sun like spinning tops, stood up on their rotational axis.

All, that is, except for one. Out there, in the middle-distance of our Solar System, is a planet that orbits the Sun while tilted almost 98-degrees onto its side. It is Uranus, fourteen times more massive and four times as large as our Earth. What the heck could have done this to such a huge planet?

This, and others, are the mysteries that are drawing us back to Uranus once again.

“Planetary science is about exploration,” says Adam Masters, an associate professor of planetary science at Imperial College in London. “And Uranus is at the frontier.”

Our only encounter so far with this enigmatic world came forty years ago, on January 24th, 1986, when the Voyager 2 spacecraft went boldly where no one had gone before. The anniversary of this historic flyby allows us to reflect on one of the most famous missions of exploration in human history, and look forward to our future exploration of this beguiling planet.

I hadn’t been born when the twin Voyager probes flew past Jupiter in 1979 on the first leg of their mission, and was but an infant when they encountered the ringed wonder, Saturn, in 1980 and 1981. At this point the Voyager probes went their separate ways. Voyager 1 headed directly for interstellar space, while Voyager 2 continued its onwards march to the planets, with its rendezvous at Uranus becoming the first planetary encounter that I watched happen in real time as a child. Consequently, it has always stuck with me.

How did Voyager 2 reach Uranus?

In 1962 a grad student by the name of Michael Minovitch developed the mathematics of the gravity assist technique while on a summer placement at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. By transferring some of a planet’s orbital momentum to a spacecraft entering its gravitational field, the gravity of that planet could be used to slingshot the spacecraft away at higher velocity. By doing so, the gravity assist technique meant that missions didn’t have to carry as much fuel as they otherwise would, and would therefore be less expensive to launch.

A few years later another student at JPL, Gary Flandro, identified a possible trajectory based on Minovitch’s work that capitalized on a rare alignment of the outer planets. This alignment would allow a mission launched in 1977 to first head to Jupiter before being slingshot onto Saturn where it would gain another slingshot to Uranus followed by a final gravity assist to put it on course for Neptune. It was a huge opportunity because that particular alignment of planets only happens every 175 years. It was a huge stroke of luck that it would come just 20 years after the dawn of the Space Age.

The Voyager missions were the result, or more specifically, Voyager 2 was. NASA didn’t want to commit to two lengthy missions to all four planets, so while Voyager 1 checked out of planetary exploration after Saturn, Voyager 2 had launched two weeks before its twin to enable it to take advantage of Flandro’s alignment.

The Opposite of Boring

Saturn had been visited previously by Pioneer 11, but Uranus was new ground. Two-point-nine billion kilometers from the Sun, Voyager’s imaging technique had to be adjusted to compensate for light levels that were only a quarter of what the mission had experienced when it flew past Saturn.

As the first close up images of Uranus and its moons were beamed back to Earth, excitement soon turned to mumblings of discontent. Whereas Jupiter and Saturn displayed active, writhing atmospheres with turbulent storm clouds that, in Saturn’s case, was topped off by the most remarkable ring system, Uranus appeared visually bland and boring, swamped in a featureless blue–green smog and encircled by dark, thin rings that were barely visible. I still remember young me, sat in front of the TV, feeling the distinct sense of dismay emanating from planetary scientist talking heads on the screen.

Yet Adam Masters strongly disagrees with the narrative that Voyager 2’s flyby of Uranus was a disappointment.

“Uranus as a system is a lot richer in scientific potential than it first appeared,” Masters tells Supercluster. “Uranus is the opposite of boring, it’s probably one of the least boring planets in the Solar System because we know so little about it.”

Before Voyager 2 reached Uranus, we knew of five of its moons, named after characters from the works of William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope: Ariel, Miranda, Oberon, Titania and Umbriel. Nine dim, dark rings had been identified in 1977 thanks to stellar occultations during which astronomers observed stars winking out as the ring system passed in front of them, at the same time as Voyager 2 was being prepped for launch. During its flyby, Voyager 2 discovered eleven new moons (astronomers have since found a total of 29 Uranian moons, the most recent, a 10-kilometer moon too faint to have been detectable to Voyager 2, coming in August 2025 courtesy of the JWST) two new rings (we now know there are 13) and took 7,000 images in total, starting on 4 December 1985 when science observations began from a distance. The closest Voyager 2 got to Uranus was 81,600 kilometers above the bland blue–green hue of the planet’s atmosphere.

We also knew that Uranus is unique among the worlds of the Solar System in that something had tipped it onto its side, resulting in Uranus giving the impression of rolling around the Sun.

Weird Stuff Going On

That in itself makes Uranus utterly fascinating, and you would think that finding out what is powerful enough to knock over an entire planet would be high on the list of planetary scientists’ aims.

“It’s very odd,” says Masters of Uranus’ tilt. “There are different ways to do it, including a giant impact.”

Uranus’ extreme tilt, and the repercussions of that tilt, factor into much of the planet’s properties as measured not only by Voyager 2 but also subsequently by telescopes on Earth such as Keck and by the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes. The cause of the tilt is also potentially integral to many of the unanswered riddles that Uranus still poses.

For example, all the giant planets emit more heat from their interior than they receive from the Sun, with one exception, and you probably don’t need me to tell you which planet is the exception. Voyager 2’s infrared interferometer spectrometer measured the planet’s emissions in the far thermal infrared, finding it to radiate just 1.06 times the amount of energy that falls onto it from the Sun.

“There’s something weird going on,” says Masters. “All the giant planets give off excess heat except for Uranus, and we don’t really understand why. Uranus has very different atmospheric dynamics, a very different energy budget deep inside the planet.”

One possibility is that the proposed impact that whacked Uranus onto its side also smacked out most of the planet’s internal heat in one big shockwave. Another proposal is that there is some kind of barrier somewhere deep inside Uranus that prevents heat from leaking out. Frankly, we just don’t know. We do know that it’s not a trait of ice giants — when Voyager 2 reached Neptune in August 1989, it found plenty of excess heat radiating out from the azure blue planet.

Magnetic Mysteries

Another mystery discovered by Voyager 2 is the bizarre nature of Uranus’ magnetosphere, but it’s a mystery that’s now beginning to be resolved. Voyager 2 measured a compressed magnetosphere around Uranus, a puzzling lack of plasma confined in that magnetosphere, and supercharged electron radiation belts. Uranus’ magnetic field is also strangely off-center, the heart of the magnetic dipole found a third of the way from center of the planet to the south pole. It’s also out of kilter with Uranus’ rotational axis by 59 degrees. This unexplained misalignment of the magnetic field does seem to be a trait of ice giants; Neptune also has a magnetic field that’s rotated 47 degrees to the planet’s rotational axis and which is also off-center.

During the flyby in 1986, Voyager 2 measured the solar wind to be of unusually high pressure, perhaps resulting from a coronal mass ejection on the Sun, and which would have compressed the magnetosphere. Masters describes how these measurements are now being revisited by contemporary scientists who have mined archive data from multiple instruments on Voyager 2 — the likes of its magnetometer, its plasma spectrometer and its low-energy charged particle instrument — to make new discoveries 40 years after the flyby.

The new study, led by Robert Allen of the South-west Research Institute, found that the compression of the magnetic field had temporarily squeezed all the plasma out of the planet’s magnetosphere. They also found that the solar wind disturbance that had instigated the compression in the first place had been able to dump a whole bunch of electrons into Uranus’ radiation belts.

“We knew from the Voyager era that the solar wind was of unusually high pressure,” says Masters. “Attention has once again been drawn to that, but the key thing is people are now showing how it can explain things such as the varying intensity of the electron radiation belt.”

Return to Uranus

Nothing like resorting to 40-year-old data screams the need for new observations and new information. Now, at long last, there is hope for a new mission on the horizon.

“There’s so many mysteries that we’ve been pushing for a new mission for years,” says Masters. “And now we sort of have one. There’s a long-term plan for a new flagship mission to Uranus.”

That flagship mission is an orbiter that was declared a top planetary science priority in the most recent Decadal Survey by the National Academies in the United States. Ordinarily that would man it would be a surefire bet to go ahead, but the current political direction of the United States does place a question mark over the mission.

Assuming the new mission does go ahead, how different will an orbiter be to a flyby mission such as Voyager 2? The main difference is perhaps the most obvious — whereas Voyager 2 spent a scant few hours zooming past Uranus, an orbiter can be there for years, and that’s important because there are indications that Voyager 2 encountered Uranus at a time that was somewhat atypical for the planet.

“Did Voyager 2 catch Uranus at a bad time? It depends upon which aspect of Uranus you’re trying to understand,” says Masters. “For some aspects of Uranus, anytime is a good time. But there are other aspects that are more dynamic, and then you can see how the timing might not have been ideal.”

We’ve already seen how this was the case with Uranus’ magnetosphere, but it may also have been the case with the planet’s atmosphere too. While image enhancement showed underlying details and infrared observations detected some activity, in visible light the atmosphere looked pretty dead. However, beginning in the 1990s with observations by Keck and Hubble, astronomers began to see activity — bands and storms and a smoggy halo over the visible pole.

“Uranus isn’t as dead as it appeared in Voyager’s visible, un-enhanced images,” says Masters.

A new mission would aim to arrive at Uranus in time for the equinox in 2049, when both hemispheres of the planet will receive equal sunlight and the rings are edge-on to the Sun. The equinox will introduce a whole new seasonal change, which we have previously observed from a distance during the previous equinox in 2007 with telescopes on or around Earth.

Prime Time for Uranus Science

The year 2049 sounds like a long time into the future, but on the typical timescale of planning, developing and launching such a mission, and factoring in travel time, it’s not so long.

“The hope is to launch in the next 10 to 15 years, so we really have to get started,” says Masters, who is part of the science definition team for the mission. That launch date is ambitious — the mission doesn’t even have the official go-ahead from NASA yet — and the situation in the United States raises some doubts.

But why has it taken so long just to reach this stage?

Masters puts it down to a number of factors. One is simply that Uranus has had to wait its turn for an orbiter. We’ve had flyby missions to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto in that order, and several orbiters to Jupiter and Saturn, spurred on in part by the discovery of their ocean moons and the potential for habitability making them priority targets and consequently bumping a Uranus mission back down the list.

“Without those big discoveries maybe we would have had a Uranus orbiter by now,” says Masters.

Another factor is the technical challenge of powering a mission so far from home. Jupiter is still close enough to the Sun that missions to the Jovian system, such as NASA’s Juno and the European Space Agency’s JUICE, can utilize solar power with large solar arrays. Beyond Jupiter, however, sunlight grows too feeble in line with the inverse-square law, and so nuclear power is required instead. This is in the form of RTGs — radioisotope thermoelectric generators — but RTGs don’t grow on trees; it takes time to obtain and refine the plutonium that powers them. Masters says that how soon the Uranus orbiter mission can launch “depends on the availability of RTGs.”

Once launched, however, the mission is unlikely to use a Jupiter gravity assist, since having to wait for Jupiter and Uranus to become aligned creates too many constraints on when the mission can launch. This is somewhat ironic considering how Voyager 2 took advantage of gravity assists. Instead, the Uranus orbiter would launch on a big, powerful rocket that would hurl the mission towards the ice giant.

Between now and then, interest in Uranus is ramping up. “In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in Uranus because of the future mission,” says Masters. This can be seen in the new studies of Uranus’ magnetosphere and the discovery of new moons. “Now is actually prime time for Uranus science because we’re defining the science for the flagship mission.”

With luck, we’ll see that orbiter arrive at Uranus within our lifetimes, and welcome answers to the mysteries that have held planetary scientists spellbound for forty years and counting, fulfilling the legacy of Voyager 2.

US Politics is Creating a Rift Between NASA and the European Space Agency

2026-01-06T21:00:00.000Z

A European Venus mission risks missing its launch window due to ongoing squabbles over the NASA budget.

The American space agency is supposed to provide a key instrument for the probe, intended to conduct a comprehensive investigation of the Venusian geology and the planet’s fiery atmosphere. Funding for development is among the many projects proposed for elimination by the Trump administration, which has thrown mission progress into uncertainty just as work needs to proceed toward construction milestones to make the tight deadline.

The mission, called EnVision, which began development in January 2025, is one in a string of fraught science partnerships between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), prompting some European scientists to call for a re-evaluation of future collaborations.

The 4-metric-ton EnVision probe, being built by the Franco-Italian conglomerate Thales Alenia Space, must take off for its 15-month journey to Venus in 2032, otherwise it will miss the favorable planetary alignment that will only re-occur in 2036.

The NASA-made instrument, called VenSAR, is a powerful synthetic aperture radar designed to map the planet’s surface in three dimensions and with an unprecedented resolution of up to 10 meters per pixel.

Although the Trump administration proposed to scrap the VenSAR development, the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate intend to reinstate at least some of the funding. As of early December, the NASA 2026 budget has not been finalized. Time is, however, ticking for EnVision. ESA has already began looking for European alternatives for VenSAR, but if the wait for NASA’s decision keeps dragging on, the European party may end up not having enough time to build the innovative radar.

“It might be necessary to cut NASA out in the new year if no decision will have been made or sufficient guarantees are not forthcoming, since the risk to the mission of NASA pulling out later are too great,” a source familiar with the history of the EnVision collaboration who wished to remain anonymous, told Supercluster.

A String of Let-Downs

EnVision is just one in a string of joint ESA-NASA science and space exploration partnerships hanging in limbo because of the changing U.S. priorities.

ESA says that 19 joint space science missions plus Europe’s first Mars-bound rover ExoMars will suffer funding shortfalls or face cancellation under the Trump administration's plan. Among them is the space-based gravitational wave detector LISA (the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), a planned constellation of three identical spacecraft detecting ripples in spacetime triggered by collisions of black holes and neutron stars.

NASA committed to providing high-tech equipment for LISA worth up to $1 billion, according to the Planetary Society, a non-profit organization advocating for space exploration. But, ESA has already began looking for options to source this technology — onboard lasers and telescopes — in Europe.

Guido Mueller, a professor of precision interferometry at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Wave Physics in Germany and a member of the LISA science consortium, told Supercluster that European companies should be able to deliver the high-tech systems with only about a two-year delay to the mission’s currently planned 2035 launch date. That is if they are given the green light to proceed soon enough. But ESA has not officially parted ways with NASA yet.

Like EnVision, the European agency keeps waiting for the outcome of the budget discussions on the other side of the Atlantic. The U.S. House of Representatives and Senate want to restore most of LISA’s funding, but Mueller warns about the risks of Europe becoming complacent about the LISA partnership again.

“My biggest concern is if they say that they will do it and then pull out five years later,” Mueller said. “For LISA, that would be a huge disaster because at that point, everything would be going into flight hardware, everybody here has industrial contracts that we would have to continue to pay while trying to catch up on the hardware development that NASA should have provided.”

Mueller’s distrust of Europe’s collaboration with NASA is based on experience.

The LISA mission has been talked about among gravitational wave researchers for decades. In 1993, the project was included in ESA’s long-term plans, and in 1997, a partnership was formed between American and European scientists to work on the mission with a goal to launch around 2015. Then, in 2011, the partnership folded. The reason? NASA didn’t have the funds available to proceed with the construction within the required timeframe. Mueller was involved with the project already at that time and began calling for what he calls a “disentanglement” of all science space missions led by the two agencies.

“At that time, I already said that we should disentangle the agencies on the hardware and payload development side as much as possible to avoid funding issues in one agency from spilling over to the other agency,” Mueller said.

“People were massively against that at that stage.”

Mueller is concerned about the frequently changing funding priorities at NASA, which are not always due to turbulent politics. In fact, the 2011 withdrawal from LISA was prompted by NASA’s need to redirect funds into the construction of the flagship James Webb Space Telescope, which at that time had been dealing with major delays and cost overruns.

“It might happen again if, a few years from now, they run into cost overruns with the Habitable World’s Observatory, the new big NASA telescope project, and need to find the money somewhere,” said Mueller. “On the scientific side, it would be good for everyone to work together and have access to all the data. But the agencies should build the payloads and satellites separately.”

The Saga of the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin Rover

The poster child for ESA’s bad luck in international cooperation is the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover, Europe’s first robotic vehicle designed to search for traces of life on Mars. The rover is fitted with a 6-foot drill (2 meters) to access deeper layers of the Martian soil protected from life-destroying cosmic radiation that constantly batters the Red Planet’s surface. NASA is currently expected to provide a launcher, braking rocket engines for the rover’s landing platform and radio-isotope heaters to keep the rover warm in the frigid Martian night. This contribution, however, is also among the projects eliminated in the Trump budget proposal.

ESA expects NASA to fulfill its commitment, based on a letter received by the agency last month. If, however, NASA were to change its mind again, Rosalind Franklin, already delayed by ten years, would miss its 2028 launch window.

The ExoMars rover mission was already ditched by NASA once, in 2012, after budget cuts pressed by the Obama administration. ESA then turned to Russia, striking a deal with the ROSCOSMOS agency to provide a launcher, a landing platform, and few other pieces of technology with an aim to launch in 2018. Technical challenges led to a delay until 2022. Then, Russia invaded Ukraine, and ESA was forced to cut itself from its partner for political reasons just months before a scheduled launch date. As Europe was weighing its options, NASA stepped back in with an offer to help get ExoMars to the surface of Mars in 2028.

Lessons Learned?

Insider sources hinted that NASA’s original ExoMars betrayal prompted ESA to rethink its approach to future collaborations. Instead of the complete disentanglement favored by Mueller, the agency capped the contributions for its large missions by its non-European partners to 20%.

“They tried to put it at a level where they believe they can recover if the other partner drops out,” Mueller said. “This sounds like a smart move. For me, it's halfway. It only works if [the partners] drop out early enough. It can work up until the design review, but once you get to later stages, it would be much more expensive.”

According to available information, ESA expects to invest 1.75 billion Euros ($1.9 billion) into LISA. Individual European countries are making further contributions independent of the ESA budget.

According to one source, in the case of the cheaper medium-class missions, the European agency was at some point seeking to go it alone. When ESA selected the Ariel telescope (designed to study exoplanet atmospheres) in 2018, it deliberately kept NASA mostly out, according to the source. The U.S. agency is building one instrument for the mission — a spectroscope for studying clouds called CASE. The Trump administration wants to cancel funding for CASE, which might leave ESA with another hole to plug.

EnVision’s Radar

The story of how EnVision ended up with a US-made radar worth $100 million is somewhat murky. The mission was originally conceived with a British-made SAR instrument in mind, the source said, one based on a demonstrator built by Airbus for the UK-Australian NovaSAR-1 mission, which launched in 2018. Another source familiar with the discussions surrounding the conception of EnVision told Supercluster that the European community originally intended to keep NASA out of EnVision too, especially as it had been seen as a competitor to NASA’s own Venus missions DaVinci and Veritas.

Then, however, ESA member states didn’t agree on the funding for the radar development.

“The only reason the USA is in the EnVision mix, to my understanding, was because UK could not, or would not fund the radar and no one in Europe felt able or willing to take this on. So ESA went to NASA and appealed to them to join,” the source said.

The other source described the NASA-supplied radar as inferior to the one based on the NovaSAR mission, but said it was unlikely that technology would be brought back due to design changes to the spacecraft already made to accommodate the NASA-made VenSAR.

“[ESA] has been on a fact-finding effort to determine what could be supplied by European industry at short notice – though sadly it looks like the platform design is too far advanced to revert back to the original British VenSAR design,” said the source. “But certainly it seems that there are industry solutions available and that could be supplied within the restricted mission timeframe.”

An ESA representative told journalists at the agency’s recent ministerial conference that going forward, the agency would seek to develop mission technologies “on the critical path” in Europe.

Searching for New Purpose

ESA is still searching for a new purpose for several technologies developed for NASA-led missions, which have fallen victim to the American agency’s changing priorities. Before the Trump administration proposed to chop the Mars Sample Return mission altogether, NASA redesigned the mission’s architecture in 2022 in order to reduce cost.

At that time, NASA eliminated the sample collection rover developed in Europe in favor of a pair of cheaper quadcopters. ESA hopes the robotic arm, designed to pick up samples stored on the Martian surface by the Perseverance rover, might in the future find a new use, perhaps on one of the upcoming lunar missions.

The European agency was also building the return orbiter, intended to deliver those precious Martian samples to Earth. ESA’s Director of Human and Robotic Exploration Daniel Neuenschwander told journalists at the recent ministerial conference that ESA is now repurposing the return orbiter into a mission called ZefERO that would orbit Mars, study its geology and serve as a communications relay for rovers and landers on the planet's surface.

The Europe-made service module, which propels the Orion capsule intended to take humans to the Moon as part of the upcoming Artemis mission, will also be discontinued much sooner than ESA hoped for. The Trump administration intends to replace Orion and its launching rocket, the Space Launch System, with technology from commercial providers by the early 2030s.

Neuenschwander said ESA will study options to turn the service module into a multi-purpose space tug.

Regardless of the outcome of the discussions around NASA’s 2026 budget, the European space science and tech community will have some decisions to make about future collaborations.

For researchers like Mueller, the only other alternative to Europe going its separate way would be significant guarantees around the agencies’ mutual commitments.

“The alternative would be to really combine them at a much higher level,” said Mueller. “ But that seems to be impossible given their different rules and regulations around budget.”

The Palomar Lights: Did ET Watch Our Nuclear Tests?

2025-12-16T20:00:00.000Z

When I was a teenager, I was a keen UFO believer.

There’s no shame in admitting that; Carl Sagan was too at a similar age. I’d even say it’s healthy at that age, a symptom of an interest in the Universe, a strong imagination, a sense of wonder, a hope that there’s more to the cosmos than what we see.

At university I learned to study phenomena objectively, critically and rationally via the scientific method. Hypotheses had to be tested to within an inch of their life to prove they were valid. Strange lights in the sky, stories of abductions, all the things that make up the bulk of UFO mythology suddenly seemed explainable in conventional terms. My sense of wonder about alien life transformed into an interest in SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Yet, whenever I see an unidentified light in the sky, though I know it is something mundane such as an aeroplane or satellite, a little part of me still wants it to be aliens.

So when Beatriz Villarroel of Stockholm University, who leads the VASCO (Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations) project, found anomalous objects on digitized versions of old photographic exposures of the night sky taken by the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope at California’s Palomar Observatory in the 1950s, I was naturally intrigued. VASCO is designed to search for transient objects, of which there are many in the Universe – flare stars, tidal disruption events, novae and supernovae, and more – that appeared on the plates back in the 1950s but which aren’t visible now, or vice versa.

In my previous article, I described how Villarroel began to find star-like objects that appeared on one plate, but not on the one taken immediately before, nor the one taken immediately after. Astrophysical objects shouldn’t appear and disappear that quickly. On some plates, up to nine transients appeared at the same time. One might expect a plate to contain one astronomical transient, but nine all at the same time?

It seems unlikely.

Villarroel proposed that these transients are instead artificial, metallic objects in orbit around Earth, glinting in the sunlight. The thing is, these plates were exposed before 1957 and the launch of the first orbital satellite, Sputnik 1. If these things that Villarroel is finding on the plates really are satellites, then they are not ours. She speculated that perhaps they were the remains of ancient alien satellites that had come to inspect our world long ago, but were now tumbling around the Earth. This hypothesis fit in well with some of SETI’s speculations about Bracewell probes.

Thousands of Transients

Now Villarroel is back with new findings that dramatically increase the scale of the phenomenon that she believes she has found.

“We have identified approximately 107,000 transients across 635 plates,” Villarroel tells Supercluster. Given that each plate covers a small area of sky of about six square degrees, “a rough back-of-the-envelope estimate, with large uncertainties, is that we are talking about tens of thousands, to perhaps a few hundred thousand, interesting objects.”

This is no longer a small swarm of satellites, or their debris. The scale of the observations implies a full-on armada! And this was only the start of it. Villarroel and her colleague Stephen Bruehl, who is an anesthesiologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville and a ufologist, make some even more startling claims. They find a correlation between the dates of nuclear weapons tests and the appearance of these transients during the following 24 hours. They also claim a correlation between the appearance of the transients and UFO sightings in Earth’s atmosphere.

Their entire dataset spans 2,718 days, beginning in 1949 and running up to 1956. Transients are seen in the Palomar plates on 309 of those days (of course, they could have been in the sky on each of those 2,718 days, but not always in the telescopes’s field of view) and there were 124 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests in that same time period.

“Based on joint probabilities, we would expect 14 transients to occur by chance alone one day after a nuclear test,” says Bruehl. “The number of such transients actually observed one day after a nuclear test was 23, which is 64 per cent more than expected by chance. There was only a 1 in 100 chance that this association occurred by chance.”

Bruehl and Villarroel also report an 8.5 per cent increase in probability that a transient would be seen for each reported UFO sighting. “There is less than a 1 in 1,000 chance that this finding was due to chance,” adds Bruehl.

Shadow Deficit

What’s more, on average the number of anomalous transients drops by a third in Earth’s shadow. This is key, say Bruehl and Villarroel. They argue that this could only be explained by objects in high Earth orbit, geosynchronous perhaps. Objects in low orbit only catch the sunlight at specific times, for a few hours after sunset and before sunrise. Objects in higher orbits spend more time during the night in sunlight, and would in theory have been illuminated at the times the Palomar plates were exposed.

“One third of these objects vanish in the Earth’s shadow, and that’s the interesting number,” says Villarroel. “What this means is that a third of the transients can be attributed to reflective objects in orbit. The remaining two-thirds could be anything, including boring explanations like star-like plate defects.”

In their paper, published in Scientific Reports, Villarroel and Bruehl suggest that there are only two possible explanations. One is that there are some kind of unknown atmospheric phenomenon triggered by nuclear weapons tests, but deem this to be unlikely. There’s also no way to test it (thankfully) because of the Partial Test Ban Treaty. Their other explanation is that these really are alien probes curious about humanity’s nuclear ambitions.

For Villarroel, there’s no doubt. “No natural or instrumental explanation proposed so far accounts for all seven properties simultaneously,” she declares. “The only hypothesis currently consistent with the full set of observations are artificial objects in high-altitude orbits prior to Sputnik.”

In SETI there is an unspoken rule, which is that when faced with a seemingly artificial phenomenon, the alien hypothesis must only be considered seriously once all other explanations have been exhausted. The question we now need to ask ourselves about the Palomar lights is, have all the other possible explanations been sought out and fully considered?

The “Boring” Explanation

Unsurprisingly, there are scientists who are dubious that no stone has been left unturned in the search for answers by the VASCO team.

Among the skeptics is astronomer Nigel Hambly of the University of Edinburgh, who specializes in the production of all-sky astronomical surveys and in the archiving of the data that such surveys produce. In particular, during the late 1990s and early 2000s he led the SuperCOSMOS project that digitized photographic plates from two Schmidt telescope surveys – the UK Schmidt Telescope in Australia covering the Southern Hemisphere in the 1970s, and the various Palomar Observatory Sky Survey plates of the Northern Hemisphere from the Samuel Oschin Telescope. It was on the plates from the first Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-I) that Villarroel and her VASCO team found the anomalous transients.

Hambly has looked at the claims from the VASCO team, and has a definite opinion that these apparent transients have a more down-to-Earth (what Villarroel described earlier in the article as “boring”) explanation, specifically that they are defects in the emulsion on the plates.

To appreciate why this may be the case, we first need to understand how these plates were made and copied prior to digitization.

“At Edinburgh, we have glass copies of the 1950s Palomar plates,” Hambly says. “So for SuperCOSMOS we didn’t scan the originals, we scanned glass copies, and that’s actually very relevant to this issue.”

The original plates were thin, 355mm square sheets of glass coated in Kodak emulsion. They were placed into a plate holder on the telescope and exposed for about 50–60 minutes. Each exposed plate was then taken away to be developed and fixed, producing a negative image with black stars on white space.

Copies then had to be made to be shared with astronomers around the world.

“They would take another plate with a similar emulsion coating on it and make a contact print,” says Hambly. This contact print was a positive rather than negative image, and from that positive copy a whole slew of further copies could be made, producing what Hambly describes as second-generation negatives of the original.

“It’s a two-stage photographic copying process, and those stages are susceptible to contamination,” Hambly continues. “One type of contamination is holes in the emulsion coating of the plate that you’ve used as the positive.”

When the positive copy is exposed to make the second-generation negatives, these holes look like pinpricks of light, since they let light through when exposed. At first glance they might look like stars, but closer inspection can reveal the truth.

“When the VASCO team published their original paper in 2021, I was very interested,” says Hambly. “But I wanted to take a closer look, so I analyzed the profiles of these candidate transients and I noted that they are sharper than the average stellar point source.”

Because of the huge distances involved, stars appear as point sources.

However, on a photographic plate there’s always a degree of messiness, for want of a better word, in the images of stars. That’s because of a number of factors, ranging from errors in telescope tracking to the wind shaking the telescope and the blurring effect of the atmosphere.

“The profiles of the transients are too ‘pointy’ to be above atmosphere photo-detections, unless they are very fast, bright flashes – we’re talking a tenth of a second,” says Hambly.

For Villarroel, this strengthens her argument. “There are already several published studies by other groups demonstrating sub-second flashes caused by solar reflections from artificial objects in geosynchronous orbit,” she counters.

So how can we differentiate between emulsion holes and very short flashes from sunlight glinting off metallic objects in geosynchronous orbit? Villarroel’s trump card, she argues, is the deficit of transients seen in Earth’s shadow. If the apparent transients are all emulsion holes, then they should be fairly evenly distributed across the plates, including in locations that would be in Earth’s shadow. Instead, we see that puzzling one-third deficit.

“I don’t have an explanation for that,” admits Hambly. “Though I do think it’s very difficult to assess the statistical significance of a correlation like that if the sample is dominated by spurious contamination.”

Correlation But Not Causation?

Putting the shadow deficit to one side for a moment, let’s consider some of the other evidence. In a second paper, presented in Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the VASCO team connect the appearance of apparently aligned, multiple transients with the Washington D.C. UFO flap of the summer of 1952.

The alignment of the multiple transients often follows a pattern, with two close to each other, and one or more others much farther away. Hambly is skeptical of this too.

“If you’ve got some random distribution and just by chance you happen to have two very close, you’re often going to be able to line another up at a significant distance farther away,” he says, though he admits that this is a qualitative criticism and notes that a quantitative analysis, like the one the VASCO team do in their paper, is difficult to do with the data available.

But underlying this second paper is a reiteration of the correlation between the appearance of the transients and UFO sightings on Earth, in this case the famous Washington D.C. UFO flap, with a series of UFO sightings and radar detections over the back end of July 1952, focused on the two consecutive weekends of 19–20 and 26–27 July. The official explanation was that these sightings were triggered by atmospheric conditions.

This is the problem with the perceived correlation between the transients and UFO sightings – it only exists if you believe the UFO reports in the first place. Certainly, the evidence for UFOs is unconvincing to many, and the vast majority of cases investigated by Project Blue Book found them to be misidentifications of human aircraft, astronomical objects or atmospheric conditions. And while Bruehl points out that ten per cent of UFO sightings examined by Project Blue Book remained unexplained, that doesn’t mean they couldn’t be explained and it doesn’t mean that they were alien spacecraft. It’s difficult to assess statistical significance if you have real doubts about the data, whether that be the UFO sightings or the reality of the transients.

At least for the correlation with nuclear tests, we know those tests took place, and the correlation is a much stronger one than with UFO sightings. Perhaps the atmospheric phenomena explanation shouldn’t be discounted quite so quickly.

Even if, for the sake of argument, we accept that it is possible that alien probes could be visiting Earth, the correlation with nuclear tests does lead to some stretched logic. For one thing, if the transients appear within 24 hours of a nuclear test, then that means they can’t be in orbit all the time, otherwise they would be seen on the plates all the time and there’d be no special correlation.

Bruehl says it as he sees it. “If we assume these are active probes, our results imply they do not always stay in orbit, but that they arrive in orbit shortly after a nuclear test and then leave.”

But does this make sense? Why expend energy coming and going from farther afar (where exactly isn’t hinted at, but it must be within 24 hours’ travel time) when it would make more sense just to stay in geosynchronous orbit over a test site rather than having to keep returning.

By the 1950s the splitting of the atom and its use in creating weapons of mass destruction had changed the world, and with the onset of the Cold War, there was a lot of interest, paranoia and even hysteria connected with nuclear weapons. It’s perhaps not surprising that there were many UFO sightings above nuclear facilities and in the aftermath of nuclear tests. It even seeped into popular culture, with classic films such as 1951’s The Day the Earth Stood Still featuring Michael Rennie’s alien visitor Klaatu and his deadly robot companion Gort warning humanity about the dangers of nuclear weapons, while aliens and flying saucers often stood in for the ‘Communist enemy’ in 1950s science-fiction B-movies.

In reality, though, why would aliens be interested in our nuclear weapons? If they’ve really travelled to Earth from somewhere else in the galaxy, they must have access to technology and energy far in advance of even our most powerful nuclear weapons. Their fascination with our nukes would be like scientists traveling back in time and being fascinated every time they see a caveman using fire.

The Holy Grail of the Original Plates

Much of this discussion has been pure speculation, and there’s a danger it could run away with itself. To look at these transients objectively, it’s important to disentangle the observational data from the speculation. The data is the data, regardless of what we think it might or might not mean.

There are several ways that must now be taken to move forward. One is to look at other photographic plates taken at other observatories in the 1950s to see if they show the transients.

“Our next step will be to examine other historical plate collections, especially the European archives, to see whether similar transients appear there as well. If we find matching events in independent observatories, it would be a crucial piece of evidence showing that these phenomena are not local phenomena,” says Villarroel.

Certainly, modern surveys such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have failed to recover the thousands upon thousands transients that the VASCO team’s analysis implies, nor have the transients ever turned up on radar.

Other teams also need to now perform their own statistical analysis of the data, to see if they reach the same conclusions regarding the shadow deficit and the correlations with UFOs and nuclear tests. To their credit, Villarroel and Bruehl are making their data available to researchers who wish to take this route.

There’s one big way in which this issue could potentially be solved though, says Hambly, and that’s to go back to the original Palomar plates. Not the copies, but the real thing.

“For me, all bets are off until you return to the original plates and at least verify that what is being analyzed really does look like a good, solid photo-detection on the original plate, but the VASCO team seem to be ignoring this fundamental point,” says Hambly.

The question is, do the original plates still exist? Hambly says that they do, and he also has a line on where they are.

“They are actually still at Palomar Observatory,” he reveals. “They’re not particularly easily accessible, and I don’t know what condition they are in, but I know where they are and I know somebody who has access to them, and I’m following that up since as far as I know nobody in the VASCO team is doing so.”

If the transients really are emulsion holes on the copies, then they would not appear on the originals. Hambly actually thinks some of the transients will still be on the originals, partly because some will be real astrophysical transients, while others could be different forms of contamination. “None of these plates were made in particularly clean conditions,” he says. “People did the best they could but there would always be a little bit of dust contamination.”

Getting to the plates could be the moment of truth.

The hope is that whether the transients are real of just contamination will become clearer upon inspecting the original plates. If the transients do look real as Villarroel, Bruehl and the rest of the VASCO team believe, then Hambly says that “there’d be nobody happier than me if they are right, but I suspect they are wrong.”

Even if the transients are real, it does not necessarily mean that they are alien. Further evidence would be required to prove that. It’s become a truism by this stage, but extraordinary claims really do require extraordinary evidence. Some might suggest that this is deliberately holding the VASCO team’s claims to a higher standard of evidence than ordinary astronomical discoveries, but we’re not talking about someone discovering something mundane like an asteroid or a comet. The possibility of extraterrestrial probes is extraordinary, and like the discovery of gravitational waves or dark energy or other transformative discoveries in the past, the claim that these transients are extraterrestrial probes has to be accompanied by utterly convincing evidence for people to believe it.

If the transients can be unequivocally shown to be real then it is a first step towards that, but history has shown us that until everything else can be ruled out, aliens should always be the last resort.

Inside the Daily Life of a Doomsday Asteroid Hunter

2025-12-09T22:00:00.000Z

David Rankin is the closest thing Earth has to a space superhero.

As an observer and operations engineer at the Catalina Sky Survey, a NASA-funded planetary defense program that utilizes the telescopes atop the Santa Catalina Mountains, he spends hours looking for dangerous rocks that could cause catastrophic damage to Earth. Telescope operator, asteroid hunter, photographer, storm chaser, programmer, are just some of his credentials. David even has an ancient marine reptile called a plesiosaur named after him, which he discovered at age 14.

At the mountain range’s highest point, Mt. Lemmon, we found the brilliant and mild mannered skywatcher, nonchalantly protecting the human race from extinction. Supercluster dispatched photographer Levi Christiansen to capture this jack-of-all-trades at work, and to peek inside the daily life of a planetary defender whose years of experience have coalesced into fascinating perspectives on doomsday, extraterrestrial life, and those headline-grabbing interstellar objects.

Following the photoshoot at the observatory facilities, Supercluster’s editorial team called David up for the coolest interview we’ve ever conducted:

SUPERCLUSTER

So what is it like, on a human level, hunting asteroids up there on Mt. Lemmon? Are you typically alone while working overnight shifts?

DAVID RANKIN

Yeah, we work alone, and that was nice during the pandemic, because it didn't really impact our safety. But, you know, it really is just you. You’ve got to be really passionate about this work. I've seen people come and go. It's not easy being on a night shift schedule, responsible for 12 shifts between two full moons. And sometimes with shifts of 12 plus hours, sundown to sunup.

But there's a thrill with the job, and the thrill is: we're discovering minor planets that are in orbit around the sun that nobody's ever seen before. On a nightly basis. I picked up two last night that are brand new. On a busy night, I've gotten 40.

And comets, we find comets. There's a lot of really neat stuff that you're able to do while you're sitting up in that telescope. And that's a driving factor for me. I love that thrill of discovery. And of course, on any given night, we could be working up there and pick up an asteroid that's, you know, coming in past Mars, has never been seen before, and it's gonna hit us.

We could also pick up an asteroid that's gonna hit us in 20 years.

So it’s a high consequence job, it's a high reward job. But yeah, the schedule is rough. You have to really live the lifestyle. Most of us stay on a night schedule, 24/7.

SUPERCLUSTER

How many asteroids have you spotted on your watch?

DAVID RANKIN

I started working here in 2019, I think April, I quit counting, probably in the thousands at this point.

SUPERCLUSTER

Terrifying, but okay,

DAVID RANKIN

A lot of people don't realize we live in a shooting gallery. On any given night, there are multiple, usually smaller asteroids that are passing between us and the moon. And then every now and then, a large one squeaks in and passes between us and the moon. Something in the 20 plus meter class range. And we're funded through Congress and NASA to find things that are 140 meters across. We're not even digging down in the weeds on these 50-meter objects, and these are still very large. So for context, the giant hole outside Flagstaff in Arizona was a mile wide. It was made by a meteor that hit 50,000 years ago, and that was a 30-to-60-meter wide asteroid.

We're just trying to focus on closing the catalog on those 140-meter class asteroids that come really close to the Earth. And so I do track those. I think I found almost 30 of those so far.

But there's too many of the smaller ones.

There was one that hit in 2013, everybody saw the videos online. Just stunning, terrifying. That was like a 20-meter rock. And we consider that pretty small in this business. And it was made out of a stony material. So a lot of energy was discharged in the atmosphere. You get a solid nickel iron meteorite — It's going to punch through the atmosphere like it's not even there. And that's kind of what happened outside Flagstaff. You had a 30-to-60-meter rock that was made out of metal.

It just went through the atmosphere like it wasn't even there. Blasted a mile-wide hole in the ground.

SUPERCLUSTER

What is the largest one that you've discovered?

DAVID RANKIN

I've discovered two that were over a kilometer wide. Those are very rare these days, and that's a good thing. This all was kicked off when Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacted Jupiter. There were some small teams seriously looking for near Earth asteroids back then. But the Shoemakers and David Levy found Shoemaker-Levy 9 in the early 90s, It had just passed Jupiter, and then it broke up into like a string of pearls.

And so they found it after it had passed Jupiter. It came so close to Jupiter that Jupiter’s gravity broke it apart in multiple fragments. And then when they found it, they found like a string of fragments traveling together in the sky. And then they realized it was gonna hit Jupiter the next year. It swung back around because Jupiter captured it, and it hit the southern hemisphere of Jupiter in multiple locations. The impact scars on the upper atmosphere of Jupiter were the size of our planet. So that raised a lot of eyebrows.

That's what kicked off this planetary defense paradigm that we're under right now. And the good news is this: we found you can't hide a 10-kilometer-wide rock between us and Jupiter. It's not easy. Those are big. You don't need a big telescope to see those. And you know, those are the size of something that wiped out the dinosaurs. So we found all of those. And down to one kilometer, we found over 99% of the hazardous ones which is pretty impressive, that catalog was wrapping up completion around 2004.

So it's very rare to find a one kilometer Near Earth Object these days.

I've only found two. So there's just very few of them left, and they're usually in these weird configurations where their period is an integer with relation to the Earth's period. So what that means is the Earth's period is one year. Their period will be like exactly four years or exactly three years. So they all show up in this resonance in the same part of the sky where they're really hard to find. And so that's where I found two that I found.

The good news is we found a lot of big ones. Now we're kind of pushing down into that half kilometer, down to 200 meters, down to 150-meter, 140-meter range, and we still got about 50% of the 140-meter class rocks to find. And those are big rocks.

That's devastating, regional devastation. Not the end of humanity, but the end of Arizona.

SUPERCLUSTER

Tell us a little bit about your surroundings. What is this facility like? Because myself and the Supercluster team worked at Kennedy Space Center for a decade, and I would describe it as old and rusty. Some of those pads were falling apart, like, what's the scientific infrastructure? You know, are your instruments up to date? Tell us a little bit about that.

DAVID RANKIN

A lot of what happened with the folks that founded Catalina Sky Survey happened on limited funds. A couple of grad students back in the 90s realized that we had some telescopes sitting up on Mt. Lemmon that were put up during the Apollo era that were really big and could be repurposed for the search of hazardous asteroids. They put in their grants for NASA to repurpose these telescopes. And that's where it all started. Our telescopes are pretty old, but we keep them upgraded with the parts that matter. We reworked the optical systems on them to make them really fast and wide field of view. And then we have very high end CCD cameras that are 10k resolution.

We keep the operational parts functional on the telescope. It doesn't really matter how old that is, that's gonna last for a really long time. What we keep upgraded is the optical systems and the camera systems. And of course, we develop a whole bunch of software in house that kind of facilitates the hunt, like the tracking stuff.

SUPERCLUSTER

Does the software automatically snap an image, or do you have to do it manually?

DAVID RANKIN

So this is high tech stuff. The telescopes look old, but don't let that fool you. We have very talented software developers.

The whole thing is pretty much automated. So I get up there, I tell it, hey, I want to look at this whole band of the night sky, and it will just run all night. I don't even have to think about it. It will keep focused. It'll take images. It does all that stuff and feeds those images into our data reduction pipeline, which has multiple processing nodes, which was that huge server rack you probably saw photos of, and then it goes through that whole set of rings until it's just ready to feed out to the person sitting in the chair who's the observer.

And basically it's saying, “hey, look, I removed all the non-moving sources from these four images, and then I identified all the known asteroids. So here's what I think are the new asteroids.”

And of course, 99% of those are just noise, because we're digging really deep in these images. But every now and then, the software has identified a real detection of a real asteroid, and so it's our job to weed that out and send that data off to the planetary defense community as quickly as possible.

SUPERCLUSTER

It sounds like the process has been pretty ironed out. Have you implemented AI or Machine Learning for tracking or databasing or anything like that?

DAVID RANKIN

I’m a programmer too. So I do about half my time programming at the survey. The AI struggles because we work really close to the noise floor. So you'll see just pixels randomly moving, and you're trying to find an asteroid in all that. The AI struggles because noise, by definition, is random. And you're trying to build a set of patterns with AI.

I did figure out a way to remove repetitive things that we didn't want to keep seeing that were problematic. So there were what we call false detections that kept coming up that are repetitive, and they kind of present the same way each time, and they were making up a pretty good chunk of the detections that we had to weed through.

I was able to train an AI to recognize those and by removing all those, what it did is it brought up all these other candidates a little higher in the stack and reduced the noise.

SUPERCLUSTER

What's your take on the recent interstellar object 3I/ATLAS that has been dominating the news cycle and fueling conspiracy theories?

DAVID RANKIN

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and there's no evidence that this thing is anything other than a comet.

And the thing is, everyone wants to find aliens. I have worked in this business for a long time. I know a lot of scientists. Nobody is saying: “Oh, I don't want to find an alien.” That would be the biggest discovery in the history of humanity. Everyone wants that. The idea that there's some big astronomy community pushing back against that is ridiculous.

There's millions of dollars that go into looking for aliens every year.

So is this an alien? That's the question, right? Some people are very desperate to find aliens, and other people are very realistic about finding aliens. This is the third one of these objects. That's why it's called 3I/ATLAS. These objects were theorized for a very long time before the first one popped up in 2017 which was Oumuamua. And basically what it comes down to is solar system formation is a very violent process. And as these planets and these large gas giants are migrating in and out of orbits, interacting with each other, forming, massive collisions are happening. It's just not a very peaceful thing.

And they estimate that millions and millions of these objects get flung out of a solar system as it's forming. So you have to think about the billions of stars in our galaxy.

Even before we found the first one, the astronomers were telling us” ‘hey, these things are between the stars. They're out there. They have to be out there. There's no way they're not out there.’ Like even today, we'll watch Jupiter catch a comet that's coming in and shoot it out of the Solar System permanently. It still happens today. And so that's an interstellar comet. It just came from us. So why wouldn’t there be any that came from others?

SUPERCLUSTER

That's such a great point, David, because no one ever talks about ones that we would eject out of our solar system.

DAVID RANKIN

Oumuamua was amazing. It was barely over the eccentricity threshold to, you know, be like: ‘Hey, this is an interstellar object.’ I mean, it's just… it almost looks like a straight line that just got bent. It's basically a bullet being fired past the sun.

And nobody that I work with, or I associate with in this business, even for a second said: ‘Oh, that's an alien.’ Like we all went: ‘Yeah, that's a comet.’

Now if 3I/ATLAS, as it was approaching the sun, if it started to slow down dramatically… That would raise eyebrows.

Behavior like that would be completely against the natural laws that are governing its orbit. The natural laws that govern its orbit are well understood, and it's obeying those laws. If we see something break those laws, that's when we're going to say: ‘Whoa.’

If this thing takes a 90-degree turn, it's definitely artificial, right? But nothing has ever even come close to breaching that benchmark in my mind, and in the mind of everyone I know in this business. It’s a beautiful object. It's an amazing discovery, but it's not aliens.

And that's the problem with calling these things aliens — is that we don't appreciate the actual astounding science that we're seeing with the actual object and its actual classification. So I hope one day we have the technology to intercept these objects and study them more closely.

SUPERCLUSTER

When you're up there by yourself staring at the night sky, do you find yourself thinking about your place in the world? Do you think about your work on a philosophical level?

DAVID RANKIN

I'm a fifth generation Mormon, but I haven’t been associated with the church in many, many years. Science is not a religion. But if it were, it’s my religion.

What I get out of this — I went from a point in my life where I had 100% certainty. because that's what you get. Usually, when you're in these different Christian or other denominations, you get a lot of certainty, like you'll die. You'll go here. This will happen. What I've gained through my journey in life is a deep, deep, deep appreciation for uncertainty.

I am perfectly fine not having all the answers. And I think that it would be boring to have them all. That's how I feel about it.

The wonderment that comes from staring out into the universe and making awesome discoveries is just fascinating, and it keeps me very happy. That's where my joy comes from, now, is being perfectly content with not having all the answers.

I think it's a 180 from, from the way I was raised.

SUPERCLUSTER

You must have had this thought at some point: You're sitting there and you look at the blip on the screen, and there's a moment when you realize: ‘I'm the only person on earth who knows that we're doomed.’

What do you do at that moment?

DAVID RANKIN

Luckily, the odds of that happening are very low. That moment would be unlikely to happen by itself, because it's a team effort. When we find these objects we usually don't know where they're going with high certainty. And that includes the orbits of these asteroids when they're first found.

So I might not have that realization at the moment that I find the object, but it could come hours or a day later, and how I would react to that. I don't know. I don't know that anybody in this business knows how they would react to it. It would be terrifying. It would be exhilarating.

The exhilaration part comes from the fact that we're not doomed.

If there's enough lead time, there are things we can do about this, like the DART mission showed. And at the very least, if we find a 50-or-100-meter wide object that's coming in and it looks like it's going to hit a populated area, we could have a week, maybe two weeks — that would be a very unlucky scenario. It's just coming in, and we only have a couple weeks notice. That's still plenty of time to get people out of harm's way, to evacuate.

SUPERCLUSTER

So you aren’t looking for doom, you're looking for safety.

DAVID RANKIN

Yeah, we're funded for safety. Like I said, the odds of that happening even during my tenure and my career are pretty low. But what we're doing here is we're putting an investment into one of the only natural disasters we can actually do something about. You're not going to stop a volcano eruption, like Tambora or Krakatoa, you know, you're not going to stop that, that's just going to happen. You're not going to stop a tsunami. You're not going to stop a mag 9.2 earthquake. This is something we can stop. So that's what we're doing.

We're trying to find the asteroid that's 500 meters wide that's going to hit us in 100 years. So then our grandkids, grandkids can go: ‘Hey, you know, we were able to deflect it. We're good.’

And again, we’ve ruled out a dinosaur scenario. But there could easily be a half kilometer wide object that poses a threat in the future. So it's an investment, it really is. And honestly, I hope that I'm not sitting at the telescope when we find a rock with short notice coming in. I hope that doesn't happen. I hope that we find it a century early.

SUPERCLUSTER

Within your circle of friends — do people ever joke with you — is it like: ‘Oh, there's David. He's making sure the world doesn't end.’

DAVID RANKIN

Explaining what I do to people is always a little bit of a challenge. ‘What do I do? I work for the University, you know.’

My wife, I think, has it pegged the best. She says, when I have to go to work like tonight, she tells me, ‘go back to your scheduled playtime.’ So that's where I go.

SUPERCLUSTER

Levi, Supercluster’s photographer you spent a day with, told us you also are a big storm chaser. Could you talk about that at all?

DAVID RANKIN

Yeah I've been doing that for a long time.

We moved to Southern Utah in ‘91 if I remember. And the monsoon season is pretty cool. Rain, rain is appreciated out here. You know, we're past the dry zone.

You get these really big moisture surges that come up in the Gulf of Mexico or the Gulf of California, and usually Tucson, Arizona is baking hot. Everybody just loves the rain out here. And of course, these storms can be pretty powerful, and the lightning is always really beautiful. So I like to go out and shoot photographs of lightning. You can see that stuff on my website. I've been doing that since I was 15, probably.

And part of that is deadly flash flooding. I grew up in this tiny little town, Southern Utah. It's like 700 people, and they were always talking about these “tsunamis.” I didn't really believe it. I went down there and started trying to catch one on film, and I finally got one on film. And then I was hooked. So I probably caught, you know, 40+ of these large flash floods on film, all over Arizona.

It's a wild juxtaposition to be sitting in a desert where it's 105 and the sun is shining, and then a wall of water hits. It's just wild, it's dangerous. They kill people every year. So I've done a lot to try to raise awareness, to let people know that this phenomenon is real and it will hurt you. I've given my videos out to many different institutions. The military uses them. Universities use them, Boy Scout groups, stuff like that.

Just to educate people that are recreating in the Southwest during the monsoon season about the dangers of flash floods and what they actually look like.

I wanted to take it from being a myth to a reality.

....

Many thanks to David Rankin and the Catalina Sky Survey.

You can learn more about David at Rankin Studio.

And a big thank you to photographer and friend of Supercluster Levi Christiansen for spending a day with David at Mt. Lemmon.

See more of Levi’s work here.

Check out NASA’s Planetary Defenders documentary that features David and his colleagues work to protect Earth from dangerous asteroids.

New SETI Protocols: How Will Scientists Announce the Discovery of Alien Life?

2025-12-02T22:00:00.000Z

Imagine that you’re an astronomer conducting a radio survey of the heavens.

Maybe you’re searching for pulsars, or radio galaxies, or just mapping neutral hydrogen. Then, out of nowhere, you detect a burst of narrowband radio waves, perhaps a sequence of prime numbers that make its artificiality clear. Your eyes widen as you realize that you’ve stumbled across a signal from beings on another world.

Suddenly, whole new vistas open up in front of you. For that moment, you’re the sole bearer of profound news that could potentially transform society. It’s a heavy weight to bear. Yet scientific fame and fortune could also be just around the corner, as you will go down in history as the person who discovered aliens. You start thinking about who’s going to play you in the movie that will inevitably be make about this.

Whoa. Hold on there. You’ve discovered the signal, but before you get to the point that you’re appearing on talk shows and advising Steven Spielberg (or should it be Robert Zemeckis?) on the film adaptation, what are you supposed to do? Who do you tell that you’ve found ET? And what then? If only there was some document, some advice, to guide you through the next vital steps.

Fortunately, there is.

It’s called the Declaration of Principles Concerning Activities Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence, often just referred to as the First SETI Protocol. It’s designed to advise scientists on the proper course of action should they make the ultimate discovery.

The Declaration’s origins go back to the 1980s, when the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) community began to think more carefully about what should happen were we to detect extraterrestrials. In 1985 Allan Goodman of Georgetown University in Washington, DC, proposed a four-step code of conduct including publicly reporting the discovery, international consultation and even giving diplomatic immunity to any aliens should they pay us a visit. These ideas developed further under the guidance of NASA’s John Billingham, who at the time was chair of the International Academy of Astronautic’s (IAA’s) Permanent SETI Committee, when he convened a special meeting about it at 1987’s International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Brighton.

The baton was then passed to Michael Michaud, a former US diplomat, who took all the disparate ideas and compiled them into the first edition of the Declaration. You can read the original manuscript on the Committee’s website.

The last major revision to the Declaration took place in 2010 (which can also be read on the IAA website). Now, it’s getting a new update under the guiding hand of the Committee, now chaired by radio astronomer Michael Garrett of Jodrell Bank Observatory at the University of Manchester.

“The protocols hadn’t been touched for 15 years, and they were out of date and didn’t reflect the environment that we work in just now,” Garrett tells Supercluster.

The dominance of social media, the rise of artificial intelligence, the broadening of SETI to focus not just on radio signals but all kinds of technosignatures, and the fact that there are far more people and organizations now either doing SETI or with a vested interest in it than ever before, have changed the playing field.

Yet there’s a deeper reason motivating the new edition of the Declaration, which is maintaining control of how a discovery is made and relayed to the wider world.

“There are so many groups around the world who are talking about this, but they’re not doing SETI, don’t have an astrophysical background and don’t know anything about technosignatures, and we want to make sure that we don’t get told by other people how they think we should be doing things, and that we take responsibility for that ourselves,” says Garrett.

Joining Garrett as author on the updated Declaration is Leslie Tennen, who is a lawyer whose specialities include international and space law.

“We’ve also got Kathryn Denning, who is an anthropologist who brings a huge historical record to this, and we have Carol Oliver who is a communication expert in Australia,” says Garrett.

Once complete, the Declaration will be voted on by the 90-plus members of the Permanent SETI Committee, who represent 14 countries. Garrett hopes this vote can take place at the IAC in Turkey in 2026, where the Declaration will also be fully presented to the public.

So, what’s in the Declaration? It has grown over the decades into eight individual principles.

Principle 1: Handling Candidate Evidence

An astronomer might discover some astronomical anomaly that looks like it could be a real technosignature, but hunches and wishful thinking is not enough to declare the discovery of aliens. The first principle therefore recommends that the finding be authenticated, usually by verification from another observatory or independent group of scientists.

Verification is crucial because, frankly, it stops scientists from making fools of themselves by jumping the gun and claiming to have discovered aliens before all reasonable checks have been made. That’s why serious SETI scientists never say they have found aliens even if the evidence at first looks promising. Rather, they seek to rule out the alien hypothesis. Only when that hypothesis can withstand every test and plausible explanation they can throw at it do they start to think it could be the real deal.

“Verification is very important,” says Garrett. “People shouldn’t make any announcements until the signal has been independently verified.”

Verification requires at least one other independent organization to confirm the detection. So, for example, if a radio signal were to be detected by the Green Bank Telescope in the USA, the concern would be that could be local radio frequency interference (RFI). So another observatory elsewhere in the world, such as Jodrell Bank or Parkes in Australia, can take a look and if it too detects the signal, it’s probably not RFI. On the other hand, if it’s a technosignature hidden in astronomical data, for example should the James Webb Space Telescope discover what looks like a Dyson sphere, then verification of the analysis of that data must be performed by multiple independent groups of astronomers.

Principles 2 and 3: Communicating and Sharing Information/Verification

One of the public’s more paranoid fears about SETI is that a detection would be kept hidden from the public. In reality, current SETI policy, emphasized in this second principle, is that information should be relayed promptly and completely to the world at large once a detection has been verified. Intriguingly, the second principle states that “there is no obligation to disclose verification efforts until a discovery is confirmed.” While this makes practical sense, to avoid an embarrassing false alarm, it does imply that some secrecy may be necessary, at least at the beginning. Indeed, this has been the way that SETI has always been conducted, but things do leak. Boyajian’s Star, which is a star that experiences unusual dimming events that we now know to be caused by cosmic dust clouds, was at one time a candidate to host an alien megastructure. This astounding possibility was reported in The Atlantic before any determination of the cause had been made. Similarly, Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1 (BLC-1), which for a short time was the most promising candidate radio signal ever detected, was leaked in The Guardian before its analysis ever reached peer review. A 1997 detection of a possible signal by the SETI Institute reached the press within 24 hours, before astronomers figured out that the signal was coming from the joint NASA–ESA SOHO mission.

However, once a detection is confirmed, Garrett very strongly urges the reveal of all the information.

“I think transparency is also important, because that’s the expectation from the public,” he says. “As soon as we have something and it’s verified as clearly being a signature of intelligence, we should open up about that and tell people.”

The findings still have to be peer reviewed, after which the Declaration states that “the public, the scientific community, and the Secretary General of the United Nations” need to be briefed.

Principle 4: Monitoring, Archiving and Data Accessibility

This concerns the handling of the discovery data, which given its importance scientifically, culturally and historically, should be like handling precious treasure. Care should be given as to how the data should be archived and future-proofed, making sure that future generations can access it. For example, saving the data in MS Word might give scientists a century from now a headache if they no longer use Microsoft systems, and so formats and details of how to access those formats are vital and need to be as simple as possible. Should the data be lost and the signal never recovered, it’s not hard to imagine conspiracy theorists in the future claiming that the detection was a hoax.

Principle 5: Data and Frequency Protection

Side-by-side with how to handle the detected data is keeping the lines of communication open should anymore data become available. If it’s a radio detection, then the specific radio frequency on which the signal was detected must be protected from RFI. Astronomy in general already has some protected bands, for example the 1420MHz emission line from neutral hydrogen. The Declaration states that “international agreement should be sought to protect the appropriate frequencies by exercising the extraordinary procedures established within the International Telecommunication Union.” Because a detection is likely to be in a protected or little-used band anyway, since astronomers won’t be looking at frequencies polluted by RFI, then in theory this should be a simple matter. However, given there can overspill from local RFI, and reports that Starlink satellites are radiating in protected bands, it might not be as simple as it sounds. It would be a statement of humankind’s fragrant disregard for the environment around us if we were to allow our communication channel with another technological species be drowned out by rampant and careless interference.

Principle 6: Post-Detection Protocol

The news that we are not alone in the Universe would be profound, but that news shouldn’t be lobbed like a hand grenade into modern society while the discoverers run the other way. In fact, it’s incumbent upon scientists — physical and social — to be on hand to assuage any concerns, advise about any course of action, and inform a public who would otherwise be at the mercy of rumor and make-believe running amok in the aftermath of a successful detection.

To that end, the Declaration states that the IAA SETI Committee will maintain a post-detection sub-committee dedicated to advising in the aftermath of a successful detection.

It won’t just be astronomers trying to tell people what to do, either.

“Do we think that astronomers should be making the decisions? I certainly don’t,” says Garrett. “Once the discovery has been made it becomes a societal question. So within the committee we have communication experts, we have legal expertise, we have social scientists.”

This expertise would be available to fully communicate the discovery and its consequences to the public and politicians.

“The protocols were originally set-up because a discovery of this nature would have an impact well beyond the scientific domain, and we need to consider certain aspects of how we do our research maybe more carefully than other fields,” says Garrett.

Principle 7: Communications with ETI Following a Confirmed Detection

In every version of the Declaration one principle has remained consistent: that no reply should be sent to a message received from an extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) until there has been international consultations and agreement via the United Nations.

One issue with this is that legally there’s a lot of leeway. The United Nations could prevent anyone from sending a reply, but so far the United Nations has not issued a decree on this. Even Garrett admits that for every principle in the Declaration, “We can’t enforce anything — there’s nothing legally binding.”

This has prompted some in the SETI community to suggest that even after a confirmed detection, the celestial coordinates of the signal’s point of origin should be kept secret to prevent anyone from transmitting a reply without authorization. However, this would go against the ethos of transparency and full disclosure that the Declaration recommends.

Ultimately, it is down to the United Nations to agree, and quickly, to ban all attempts to reply until consultation has occurred and permission been given from the highest levels.

Principle 8: Ethical and Legal Considerations

The final principle is aimed at SETI researchers themselves, urging the highest standards and full cooperation with international legal authorities about disseminating the news of a discovery in a prompt and way trustworthy way.

Ultimately, the aim is to build a repository of best practice for different scenarios, and the SETI Institute has set up an initiative to help guide researchers in doing things with integrity.

Many SETI researchers will already be familiar with the Declaration of Principles in its various guises over the years. However, the Declaration is relatively unknown in the wider astronomical community, which is a concern, says Garrett.

“The reality is that this discovery could be made by someone who’s looking for something else in the astronomical data and who finds some kind of anomaly, but who has never read this Declaration of Principles,” Garrett explains. “What we hope is that if they did make that discovery that they would feel that there is some guidance and seek out people to advise them. Hopefully the protocols will be something they can find quickly before deciding to go to the newspapers. Especially for an individual scientist, they might not have a feel for what they’re letting themselves in for, but I think the fact that we talk about safe-guarding scientists, which has not really been in the Declaration until now, would hopefully raise a red flag in their own minds about what they might be getting themselves into.”

The Second Protocol?

Earlier in the article we described the Declaration as the ‘First Protocol’, which implied that there were meant to be more. What happened?

Back in the late 1980s, Michael Michaud broke down the discussion of best practice into two broad areas: handling a detection, which is what the Declaration of Principles covers, and transmitting our own messages into space, otherwise known as Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI). This was to be the Second Protocol, but it never came to be because of disagreements that threatened to tear the SETI community apart. While some researchers passionately believe that humankind has a duty to reach out to other possible technological life in the Universe, others feel that such acts are unauthorized diplomacy that carries great risk should we initiate contact with a more technologically advanced species only for it to go wrong.

Are Garrett and the IAA SETI Committee willing to take another stab at the Second Protocol once the First Protocol is signed off?

“I personally think METI is a bit of a hot potato,” Garrett admits. “I’m wary of the fact that the last time this was attempted we had people who fell out and became quite aggressive with each other, and it was no longer a scientific argument, it was personal, and there’s no room for that on our Committee.”

That said, if the Second Protocol were to be looked at again, Garrett is confident that most of the current Committee would say that we shouldn’t be sending unsolicited messages, not least because those who conduct METI do not have the right to speak for everyone on Earth. That’s why the Declaration of Principles places the decision of whether to reply to a signal at the feet of the United Nations.

Room for Unidentified Flying Objects?

Ufology has enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years, even though it still embodies conspiracy theories and no undeniable evidence has come to light (the footage from USAF fighter jets, while championed by many in the UFO community, are yet to convince those skeptical of alien visitation).

Nevertheless, the ufology’s increasing prominence prompts us to ask whether the IAA SETI Committee have considered including how to respond to credible UFO sightings in their Declaration of Principles.

Garrett reveals that the topic has come up for discussion among certain Committee members, but like METI, it prompted strong opinions from those for and against. To avoid arguments, Garrett stipulated that the Declaration only concern itself with signatures of extraterrestrial technology beyond Earth’s atmosphere.

“It also connects with the IAA because it’s about space, it’s above the Kármán line,” says Garrett, who adds that he doesn’t rule out considering how the Declaration could be applied to phenomena seen in Earth’s atmosphere in the future should the topic become more scientific.

The Declaration of Principles will be finalized in August 2026 at the IAC, and you can read the current draft, and how it has been constructed, in this paper. Hopefully it will raise people’s awareness of it, such that should one lucky astronomer make the ultimate discovery, they’ll know where to go to get the help they’ll need to announce that discovery to an eager and excited world.

We Captured New Glenn's Historic Launch and Recovery, Bezos for Scale

2025-11-25T21:00:00.000Z

New Glenn Returns to Origin

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — At 3:55 p.m. EST on Thursday, November 13th, 2025, Blue Origin’s heavy-lift rocket New Glenn blasted off from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, carrying NASA’s dual spacecraft mission ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers). Supercluster's Jenny Hautmann was on-site with Blue Origin's team to track the mission and capture photos of the historic launch.

The massive rocket not only successfully lofted its interplanetary payload, but came come to fly another day, a pivotal milestone for the company and the commercial space industry. The ESCAPADE launch was only the second operational flight of the massive New Glenn and also the first time NASA entrusted the vehicle with a primary science-mission payload. These missions are very expensive.

The ESCAPADE mission, built by Rocket Lab for NASA and partners, is two nearly identical satellites tasked with studying how the solar wind and plasma streams interact with Mars’ magnetic environment and strip away its atmosphere over time. The twin spacecraft will spend about a year in a “kidney-bean” shaped loiter orbit near Earth before using a gravity assist around late 2026 and targeting arrival at Mars in 2027.

Back at sea, the New Glenn's first stage achieved a stunning return: approximately three minutes after liftoff and separation the booster relit three of its seven BE-4 engines for deceleration and touched down vertically on Blue Origin’s offshore landing barge named Jacklyn about 375 miles down-range in the Atlantic Ocean. After successful recovery, the booster and the Jacklyn were towed back to Port Canaveral, where Blue Origin rolled the hardware into a hangar at the Cape for inspection and refurbishment ahead of reuse. Jenny Hautmann was at the Port when the massive rocket arrived.

New Glenn was greeted by its boss Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sánchez in a celebratory ceremony and photo op. With the booster safely back and the ESCAPADE probes on their way, Blue Origin is stepping up to compete with SpaceX on reusability, with their orbital recovery breakthroughs a decade apart.

That's Jeffrey Bezos at the bottom right of the photo above, founder of Blue Origin.

Artemis Astronauts Find Lunar Analog in Meteorite Impact Crater

2025-11-18T21:00:00.000Z

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says a towel is the "most massively useful thing" for interstellar journeys. Moon astronauts, however, might recommend bear spray.

Astronauts readying for the Artemis 2 round-the-moon mission in 2026, and prepping for future lunar landings, are starting to make visits to a remote northern crater in Canada. Led by Western University's Gordon Osinski, a planetary geologist, they are not only digging for moon-like features, but also learning how to work in difficult conditions.

Black bears are known to roam the area surrounding Kamestastin (Mistastin) Crater, a meteorite impact zone in northern Labrador, although "Oz" — as the community knows Osinski — says luckily none have visited his camp recently. The team comes prepared with noisemakers and firearms just in case.

Artemis 2 astronauts Jeremy Hansen (of the Canadian Space Agency, or CSA) and Christina Koch (with NASA) were among the group that climbed into Zodiac boats to do geology on the prominent central island within Kamestastin's area in 2023. Oz had only gone there once, briefly, by helicopter, so the group scouted a beach, landed and began to look around.

Then they spotted it — rock melts from the ancient impact, which had never before been spotted in previous geology excursions. "It was astounding," Oz recalled, especially because in front of him he could see training he had provided take hold: "It was cool seeing the astronauts, like Jeremy, recognize that this was an unusual and different rock, based on the previous places we'd taken them."

Teams from NASA, CSA and similar groups will now visit this site at least every two years as a capstone to Artemis geology training. And in terms of science return, Oz's team has produced several papers on the rock melts, and expect to do more — a recent example just went up at Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

The finding is a powerful example of not only serendipity, but how expeditions to remote environments help astronauts prepare for the real thing. An igneous rock called anorthosite, found at Kamestastin, is also expected to be at the lunar south pole — where the Artemis 3 astronauts will land later in the decade. And Oz will be on the front lines: he will co-lead the Artemis 3 science team, becoming the first Canadian to do so for a NASA moon landing.

So the remoteness of Kamestastin makes the crater a perfect analog for the large team waiting to explore the secrets of the lunar surface. But how do we make sure the astronauts will psychologically function in such a remote spot?

Pandemics, Submarines and the Moon

Anyone who has been stuck in a waiting room, inside a vehicle during a long drive, or who remembers the difficulties of leaving home during the pandemic understands a bit about isolated, confined environments (ICE). Submarines, living in Antarctica and space missions are just some examples of professional environments where ICE is a requirement of the job.

"In a remote environment, because you go with a very few people, you don't have access to everything as close to you as you would in a city," Caroline-Emmanuelle Morisset, a senior scientist in lunar and planetary science with CSA, told Supercluster. "The setting of it, the fact that it's remote, helps as well to mimic what you would do in a space mission."

But there's a rub. Humans are highly adaptable creatures, notes a 2021 peer-reviewed study of ICE literature by Lawrence A. Palinkas and Peter Suedfeld, two noted scholars of the field. Researchers nevertheless began to notice "psychosocial issues" in the 1960s and early 1970s in environments such as polar expeditions, early spaceflights, and training environments designed to simulate space missions.

Astronauts are of course, well-trained to deal with adverse circumstances.

Any evidence of "individual and interpersonal problems" is — as the study says — anecdotal and sometimes misconstrued. Peer-reviewed research it cites nevertheless notes issues during long-duration Russian/Soviet missions, as well as the NASA-Russian shuttle-Mir space program of the 1990s. (Some popular histories of spaceflight say there was a "mutiny" aboard NASA's Skylab space station in the 1970s, but the astronauts denied it and NASA called it an "urban legend" — you can read more about why here.)

Still, even an outsider to spaceflight can appreciate the difference between committing to a mission for a couple of weeks — the typical spaceflight length during say, the shuttle program — and embarking on a space station mission that could last six months or more. Then throw in some international crew dynamics, the fact you can't really go outside, and the ups and downs of normal life — as astronauts have missed family births and deaths while in space for a long time, and even witnessed large-scale events like 9/11 from orbit. It's therefore understandable why even a professional trained for decades would appreciate training on how to deal with isolation.

NASA's astronaut crew office has been seriously studying this matter since the International Space Station era. (Agency officials were not available for an interview during the writing of this article, due to the 43-day U.S. government shutdown.) In the 2021 book "Psychology and Human Performance in Space Programs", edited by Lauren Blackwell Landon, Kelley J. Slack and Eduardo Salas, the office is quoted as saying spacefarers need at least five skills to do well during a long-duration mission: communication, self-care, team care, teamwork/group living and knowing when to execute leadership or "followership" (meaning, when individuals work to support the group and the leader).

So how do you practice these skills before lifting off?

Lots of time working far from the comforts of home. NASA starts its astronaut candidates early, as part of their basic training; a 2022 release from the U.S. military describes an exercise where "ascans" simulated a crash-landing in the wilderness and lived for several days on site, gathering food, water and other resources they needed.

"You're recreating this kind of environment where you count on the people you're working with, and you don't have resources outside of that team, basically," Morisset said. "You get to know, really, your team — the team that you're working with."

In a sense, that training is always ongoing — sitting with crewmates in a simulator for hours, or working in spacesuited pairs in the famed Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory pool for spacewalk preparation, are minor examples of ICE. But prior to spaceflight, astronauts have also been asked to work extremely remotely for a few weeks — such as in Sardinian caves with the European Space Agency, or in the underwater Aquarius laboratory owned by Florida International University.

Kamestastin is very much in the same training scheme as these remote locations, which also teaches the astronauts how to do their work — gathering science — in isolated teams. "The whole idea behind training them in science is really training them to get to know one another, and to rely on one another, as they will do something similar in space," Morisset said.

By virtue of all this time in ICE, when astronauts climb into Twin Otter planes for their flights to Kamestastin, they already have weeks — maybe even months — of remote time before touching down in northern Labrador. It's a beautiful environment in the pictures, but rugged. The Innu Guardians accompanying these excursions have talked about the perpetual northwestern and western winds blowing across their lands. Freezing-cold water and lots of rain put participants at risk of hypothermia, Osinski notes.

And unless someone gets severely injured, the Twin Otter will only come back when the expedition is finished — and even at that, the military flight will only bring you back as far as Resolute Bay, at latitude 74 degrees — the same latitude of the seas of Greenland or Norway. Even by Canadian standards, that's super far north. This story is being filed from Ottawa; our government says my city is the snowiest national capital of the world, but our Parliament is nevertheless perched at a relatively balmy 45 degrees latitude.

To the Moon, and Back Again

Oz was a new professor at Western University when Hansen, along with the CSA's David Saint-Jacques, were selected as astronaut candidates in May 2009 after a nationwide search that produced 5,000 applicants for just two positions. Two decades ago, NASA's focus was on safely closing out the space shuttle program and ramping up ISS expeditions. But NASA, Oz said, also wanted to include more geology training in the astronaut candidate training.

While geology was always included to some extent in NASA training, space aficionados usually closely associate geology with Apollo. The moon-landing astronauts of Apollos 16 and 17 (at the least) even trained briefly at another Canadian crater site in Sudbury, Ontario, notes Don E. Wilhelms' "To a Rocky Moon: A Geologist's History of Lunar Exploration." These excursions, only a couple of days each, left an impression; the transcript for Apollo 16 includes a moment when commander John Young spotted a familiar-looking sedimentary rock on the moon: "It looks like a Sudbury breccia," he said.

CSA (and other agencies) train their astronauts alongside NASA, so that gave Oz an entry with the renewed geology focus. He first spoke with CSA officials to see if there was any interest to expand Saint-Jacques' and Hansen's geology training. There was. In fact, Hansen made his first excursion with Oz in 2011 shortly before Hansen was fully certified as an astronaut, which bore big science fruit: the team found several unexpected rock types while exploring Saskatchewan's Gow Lake impact structure. (Results were published in 2023, a dozen years later, in part because Oz had more pressing science to put into publication first.)

The work with Hansen and Saint-Jacques so impressed CSA and NASA that when the next round of Canadian astronaut candidates was chosen in 2017, NASA invited Oz to do geology training for all the candidates in that class — American and Canadian. The person who coordinated the invitation, who is NASA geochemist Cynthia Evans, ended up having an Artemis connection too: she is now training and strategic integration lead for the Artemis internal science team.

While Artemis was not quite in the conversation a decade ago, Oz's involvement was evidently impressive. He was invited to provide geology training to subsequent astronaut candidates in every NASA selection, which happens roughly every two years. His pan-Canadian crater work has included several visits to Kamestastin, periodically, since 2009. So by the time the last Trump administration refocused NASA exploration on moon efforts, Oz was in the right spot to help – and Canadian and US astronauts alike are now visiting Kamestastin, most recently this year.

The CSA is excited to see how Oz will continue to iterate the training, which like all things at NASA requires careful pre-certification of activities against a checklist of skills the astronauts will require in space. "There's that knowledge that it will evolve, but it is clear that Kamestastin is going to remain a site where the astronauts are going to train, and then there might be slight changes to be more similar to the mission eventually," Morisset said.

Oz demurred when talking about this achievement, saying he was lucky that his experience in terrestrial craters and field work played into what NASA needs. But he did say he is happy to act as a bridge between teams at the agency. Oz is one of the few people within the Artemis team who is both a trainer, and a member of the geology team.

"I think it's worked out to be very important to make sure nothing falls between the cracks," Oz said. "The geology team is understanding what training the astronauts will eventually get, which is hugely beneficial."

....

Elizabeth Howell is a Canadian space journalist based in Ottawa.

Satellite Monitoring Project Reveals Scope of Gaza Destruction

2025-11-11T20:00:00.000Z

The Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023, sent shockwaves through the world.

More than 1,200 people including 700 Israeli civilians were killed in the carnage and further 250 kidnapped by the assailants. Within days, Israel declared a full-on war on Hamas, sending its troops into the 141 square-mile Gaza Strip and urging the 1.1 million inhabitants of its northern part to evacuate within 24 hours. From the beginning of its operations in Gaza, Israel banned international journalists from independently entering the Palestinian territory, only granting select media limited access under strict control of the Israel Defense Forces. With conflicting information being released by the Palestinians and the Israeli authorities, the world was in the dark about what exactly was going on in Gaza.

At that time, Jamon Van Den Hoek, an associate Professor of Geography at Oregon State University in the U.S. began collecting satellite images of the tiny territory, squeezed between the Mediterranean Sea, Israel and Egypt.

Van Den Hoek leads a Conflict Ecology Lab at Oregon State and has, for years, used satellite data to keep track of armed conflicts all over the world. He has mapped the progress of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, analyzed the destruction wreaked during the siege of Aleppo, the bloodiest battle of the Syrian Civil War, and assessed impacts of Israel’s six-week military operation in Gaza in 2014.

After Israeli tanks rolled into Gaza in October 2023 and bombs began to rain on the strip’s impoverished towns, Van Den Hoek quickly realized that what Israel was telling the world was not the entire story.

“I was shocked to see how quickly the damage accumulated across Gaza and how steady the new damage was appearing,” Van Den Hoek told Supercluster. “With each new satellite image, we consistently saw new damage every single time, spreading into new corners of Gaza.”

Freely available satellite imagery captured by the European radar satellite Sentinel 1 in the first months of the war provided a window into the horrors unfolding on the ground. The once neat patchwork of ochre and brown aridness dispersed among the lush greenery of cultivated fields and the orderliness of human settlements was quickly turning into one messy smudge.

The destruction was progressing at such a mind-boggling speed that within three months from the war’s onset, most of Gaza lay in ruins, Van Den Hoek recalled. At that time, the United Nations had not yet started their own satellite damage mapping effort, and many stakeholders in the international community questioned the conclusions of Van Den Hoek’s team.

“Nowadays, no one is going to disagree that Gaza is extremely damaged,” Van Den Hoek says. “But at the beginning of the war, we got a lot of pushback. People just didn’t want to believe there could be so much damage.”

But the researchers kept going.

In April 2024, about six months after the war started Van Den Hoek and his colleagues from the Decentralized Damage Mapping Group (DDMG), released a study detailing the devastation wreaked by Israeli rockets and troops in the first six weeks of the war.

DDMG is an international initiative leveraging Earth Observation data for conflict and disaster monitoring, founded in 2023.

The study, based on freely available Sentinel-1 data, revealed that in less than two months, the Israeli onslaught badly damaged over 60 percent of Gaza’s hospitals and nearly 70 percent of its schools. In images taken as early as Nov. 26, 2023, the researchers identified substantial damage to 50 percent of buildings in the central parts of Northern Gaza. Later observations showed destruction in up to 84 percent of built-up areas of Northern Gaza.

In the first year of the war, Van Den Hoek and his colleagues kept releasing a new satellite map of Gaza every week, making it available to international journalists, humanitarian organizations and other stakeholders. In year two, they reduced the frequency to once a month.

The unique satellite image chronicle produced by this satellite mapping effort allowed everybody in the world to understand the tragedy unfolding in Gaza almost in real time despite the restrictions and challenges faced by journalists.

Although Palestinian journalists have been free to report from within the territory, the intensity of the war put them at extreme risk. At least 250 reporters and photographers died in the two years of the war; a fact that further contributes to the incompleteness of the ground-based eye-witness account.

More than two years after the war began, the satellite monitoring project may play a key role in post-war restoration. If efforts spearheaded by the U.S. President Donald Trump succeed, and Gaza’s fragile ceasefire remains in place, ravaged communities and bereaved survivors will begin to ask for justice.

The toll of the two-year war is enormous.

Nearly 70,000 people, mostly civilians, are believed to have died, according to some estimates. Further 1.9 million, about 90 percent of the Gaza Strip population, have been forced to leave their homes, some data suggest. Both sides, Hamas and the Israeli army, have been accused of crimes against humanity. Reconstructing the events of the war will enforce accountability and help survivors to move on.

“Satellite mapping has already been used as supporting documentation in the International Court of Justice case against Israel and in the International Criminal Court investigations around Israel’s war on Gaza,” Lina Eklund, associate professor in physical geography and ecosystem science at Lund University in Sweden and DDMG member, told Supercluster. “In general, high-resolution satellite images have been used to identify human rights violations. Estimates based on satellites can be a way to cross check reports or get a rough idea of the extent of damage.”

The images will also help assess reconstruction needs and costs, she added, and identify the areas most urgently in need of assistance.

For example, a study by DDMG researchers co-led by Eklund and published in February 2025, assessed the scope of damage to Gaza’s agriculture. The paper, based on data from the U.S. commercial satellite constellation Planet and published in the journal Science and Remote Sensing, found that up to 70 percent of tree crops and 58 percent of greenhouses in Gaza had been hit within the first year of the war. In the most battered parts of Northern Gaza and Gaza City, this number rose to nearly 100 percent. The researchers even found that some farmland was turned into parking lots for Israeli tanks.

Restoring Gaza’s fields and greenhouses and removing unexploded landmines from the territory’s agricultural land is necessary to help restore food security in the long term and end the food crisis brought about by the war.

Satellites, Van Den Hoek says, provide a unique vantage point for the mapping of war. Apart from their ability to reach any part of the globe regardless of the situation on the ground, they allow the researchers to distance themselves from the emotional impacts of the human tragedy involved.

“Paying attention to war is extremely difficult,” Van Den Hoek said. “Satellite imagery allows you kind of a mediated distance where you can sort of take it in. You’re not seeing individual suffering. But if you compliment your understanding of the satellite imagery with on-the-ground reporting, it’s nothing short of a horror.”

The continuous satellite mapping has only been possible thanks to the availability of free satellite data from the European Union-owned Copernicus constellation. Although some commercial satellite data has been released by private operators at times, the most detailed imagery has never been made public. Commercial providers such as the American Maxar or the European Airbus restricted access to their high-resolution images of Gaza shortly after the beginning of the war.

“There is no high-resolution imagery of the likes of Maxar over Gaza available because of restrictions from the U.S. State Department,” says Van Den Hoek.

The Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar satellite proved indispensable, providing day-and-night and see-through-cloud imagery with a resolution of up to 10 meters. Optical images from Sentinel-2 offered views in natural colors with a resolution of up to 5 meters, allowing the researchers to trace fires ignited by rocket strikes and map the destruction of vegetation.

Van Den Hoek warns that while the world’s attention has been fixed on Ukraine and Gaza in the past few years, multiple even bloodier conflicts have raged around the world without much notice.

The Yemeni civil war underway since 2014 has killed nearly 400,000 through fighting and hunger. In Sudan, up to 150,000 have perished since 2023, according to some estimates. The Ethiopian Tigray war claimed up to 600,000 civilian lives between 2020 and 2022, making it the deadliest conflict of the 21st century.

“These are underreported wars where we have uncertain impacts on civilians being bombed and targeted in some cases by their own government,” Van Den Hoek says. “These are often clear violations of human rights, and our work is trying to document this for immediate response, recovery efforts, but also for the long-term accountability and peace building effort.

Eklund, however, warns that despite their advantages, satellites fill only a limited part of the puzzle that is the retelling of the tragic story of any war.

“A major advantage of satellites is that we have frequent recordings which can help us track changes over time and get a longitudinal perspective,” she said. “But it's also important to remember the disadvantages of satellite images, for example the fact that we can only assess what is going on on the ground, while it's difficult to attribute changes to certain activities or events.”

At the time of writing, the ceasefire in Gaza is extremely fragile.

Few believe in lasting peace. Reports of breaches on both sides, including an Israeli air strike that killed a hundred people in response to alleged Hamas violence at the Rafah border, have been coming in basically from the day when the peace deal was agreed. Whatever happens in the coming months, the satellites will keep watching. Although, as Van Den Hoek says, not much is left to damage. Most of Gaza was flattened in the first three months after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.

Despite the unsettled state of affairs, Van Den Hoek has hope that the work he and his colleagues have committed to will one day help the region move forward. When that might be, he is less certain of.

“This is a very violent period of time,” he says. “Possibly the most violent since the second World War. “Coming out of this, there has to be some accountability for what happened. There has to be something on the books, not just in terms of assigning blame, but in terms of grappling what has happened and setting a path forward that accounts for the impacts of war on civilian population and infrastructure.”

Don’t Panic! 3I/ATLAS is Just a Comet

2025-11-04T18:00:00.000Z

The paranoia is intense.

“Scientist issues a frightening update on 3I/ATLAS warning it is ‘not natural’!” “Does 3I/ATLAS pose a threat to Earth?” “Astronomer suspects mysterious object is up to no good!” And my favorite: “Astrophysicist says attack from ‘potentially hostile alien threat’ could take place in just days!”

These are just some of the headlines that were top-ranking when I ran a simple internet search for the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS in preparation for this article. It’s easy to scoff, but conspiracy theories, pseudo-science and misinformation have a habit of spreading like a virulent disease, particularly in this social-media age.

So the aims of this article are two-fold. First is to describe what we’re learning about 3I/ATLAS, and second is to challenge some of those conspiracy stories and help set the record straight.

Part 1 The Science of 3I/ATLAS

Throughout history people have seen comets as portents, but there’s nothing mythical about them. They’re just chunks of ice and maybe some rock mixed in. Scientifically comets are interesting because they are like time capsules, harboring materials that dates from the birth of the Solar System 4.5 billion years ago and which has been untouched since. Comets can clue us in to the conditions in which Earth and the building blocks for life formed.

To find comets that have come from interstellar space can be even more revelatory because they can tell us about planet-forming conditions around other stars, allowing us to directly compare the birth of our Solar System with others.

Conspiracists and fantasists would like to propagate the idea that there’s something highly unusual about interstellar comets, but the idea of these cosmic icebergs wandering onto our Solar System’s shores from the interstellar ocean did not begin with 1I/’Oumuamua, which in 2017 became the first object to be discovered. Let’s just say that 1I/’Oumuamua, the second interstellar comet 2I/Borisov and indeed 3I/ATLAS have all been expected. As long ago as the seventeenth century, Isaac Newton envisioned comets around other stars, and we know that comets can be ejected from their host systems, either through perturbations triggered by passing stars or by being kicked out via gravitational interactions with giant planets.

In his seminal 1985 book Comet, co-written with Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan discusses how “If every star in the Milky Way ejects a thousand comets into interstellar space every 4.5 billion years, as ours has, then there may be the equivalent of the mass of a hundred millions suns floating undetected in the space between the stars... the number of interstellar comets in the galaxy is almost 10^24, more than the number of stars in the Universe.”

These numbers are so vast that our Solar System is bound to encounter some. At least 10,000 interstellar objects are estimated to be passing through our Solar System at any one time. They’re just hard to spot, which is why we’ve only found three so far. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which is the most powerful survey telescope ever built and which begins science operations at the end of 2025, is expected to discover on average of one interstellar object per year.

So you see, interstellar objects are not a surprise.

It’s just the current observational limitations that make it seem like they are extraordinarily rare events. The argument that they are all spaceships is going to get very tired, very quickly, when we begin finding these things every year.

For now, what we have in 3I/ATLAS is a comet that is both remarkable and reassuringly familiar at the same time. Frustratingly though, it’s been playing hide-and-seek with our telescopes.

Keeping Track of 3I/ATLAS as it Reaches Perihelion

Following its discovery on 1 July by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), 3I/ATLAS was visible in telescopes as a very faint smudge that gradually grew a tail. Its path through the Solar System has taken it around the back of the Sun from our point of view, where we cannot see it from Earth.

That’s a shame, because on 30 October it will be at perihelion, which is how astronomers describe its closest point to the Sun as it follows its trajectory. At perihelion it will be 1.4 astronomical units (one astronomical unit, AU, is 149.6 million kilometers, which is the mean distance between Earth and the Sun) from the Sun, which is just inside the orbit of Mars. Even at. this distance it is warm enough to increase activity on the comet by sublimating volatile ices on the surface of its nucleus, causing an increase in outgassing that lifts comet dust into what we call the coma, which is an atmosphere that clings to the head of the comet, obscuring the solid nucleus. Some of this dust also forms one of the comet’s tails, while the other tail is composed of charged particles that have also come from the comet.

This is why perihelion is the most exciting time to be observing a comet, especially 3I/ATLAS. All that gas and dust spewing from it can be observed spectroscopically, revealing some of the material that the comet is made from. Statistically speaking, this is probably the closest that 3I/ATLAS has come to a star in billions of years, possibly since it left its home system. There could be primordial ices on its surface that have been untouched since its formation that will suddenly sublimate and become detectable.

Although we cannot see 3I/ATLAS from Earth during perihelion, we’re not completely blind because we’ve got spacecraft out and about in the Solar System that have a better view of that hemisphere of the Sun. These include various missions at Mars, NASA’s Psyche mission to the asteroid of the same name, as well as the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy moons Explorer (JUICE) that’s currently on its way to the giant planet via fly-bys with Earth and Venus. We also shouldn’t forget that copious observations of 3I/ATLAS were made between its discovery and it slipping into solar conjunction at the end of September.

What 3I/ATLAS is Made From

What we’ve discovered so far is that 3I/ATLAS is made from the same stuff, more or less, that our Solar System’s comets are. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) identified carbon dioxide, water vapor, water-ice, carbon monoxide and carbonyl sulphide in the comet’s coma. The Very Large Telescope in Chile also detected cyanide and nickel, both found in similar abundances in our Solar System’s comets in.

The differences between 3I/ATLAS’ composition and those of comets native to our Solar System are both slight and subtle. The JWST detected a greater abundance of carbon dioxide in 3I/ATLAS than is typically found in Solar System comets, and furthermore that much of this carbon dioxide is the ‘heavy’ variety, containing the carbon-13 isotope rather than the regular carbon-12. There’s also a dearth of iron in the comet’s spectrum, although iron might become more apparent if the comet were closer to the Sun and heated even more.

The compositional differences tell us of chemical variations in the nebula from which 3I/ATLAS and its parent star formed compared to the solar nebula that produced our Solar System. The similarity in the composition teaches us that stars, planets and comets all form from pretty much the same stuff as what our Solar System coalesced from. Plus we can compare different interstellar comets, hailing from different parent stars in different parts of the Milky Way, and find that they too have similar origins based on their compositions — for example, 3I/ATLAS and 2I/Borisov both have the a similar abundance of nickel.

What 3I/ATLAS’ chemistry is telling us is utterly profound — that planetary systems elsewhere form just like our own, with similar chemistry and since that chemistry led to life on Earth, it emboldens astrobiologists to think that life could therefore also evolve around other stars.

Part 2 The Debunker’s Guide to 3I/ATLAS

Unfortunately, the Internet is awash with hyperbolic and frankly made-up nonsense about 3I/ATLAS. The headlines that I gave as examples at the top of this article are just a smattering of the misleading stories, videos and social-media posts on the matter.

So let’s tackle some of those claims and set the record straight.

3I/ATLAS Will Not Impact Earth

The first claim is that 3I/ATLAS is traveling towards Earth at 130,000 miles per hour. That last part is actually correct. Indeed, 3I/ATLAS is the fastest moving natural object ever seen in the Solar System, racing through space at 58 kilometers per second (which amounts to about 210,000 kilometers/130,000 miles per hour). Interstellar comets travel fast for several reasons. One is that they had to reach the escape velocity in their home system, and afterwards they encounter other stars, usually at a distance, but still close enough to receive a gravitational slingshot. Given the velocity of 3I/ATLAS, it must have been in interstellar space for at least 7 billion years to rack up enough stellar encounters to have accelerated it.

It’s probably the oldest comet we’ve ever seen.

It is not heading for Earth, or any other planet, nor will it come near. As we’ve seen, 3I/ATLAS is currently on the other side of the Sun. Its high velocity means that rather than orbiting the Sun, its journey through the Solar System is practically a straight line, with just a modest bend where the Sun’s gravity slightly acts on it. There are likely to be some minor deviations as the result of non-gravitational acceleration as outbursts on the surface of the comet produce additional thrust, but nothing to significantly alter its course.

The closest that Earth will get to 3I/ATLAS will be 269 million kilometers (1.8AU) on 19 December 2025. Afterwards, 3I/ATLAS will continue its journey back into interstellar space. Claims that its trajectory has dramatically changed or that it has decelerated are, frankly, wrong.

Tall Tails

Another claim by Harvard’s Avi Loeb, who is the chief agitator when it comes to wild proposals about 3I/ATLAS, is that it doesn’t really have a tail, and that its diffuse appearance is a consequence of it looking blurred because it is moving so fast. Yet as any astronomer, professional or amateur, worth their salt knows, telescopes can have two tracking modes. One is sidereal, meaning with the fixed stars on the celestial sphere. This is the tracking that astronomers employ to counter the effects of the rotation of the Earth, otherwise the images of stars would become trails. The other mode is non-sidereal, and this can track objects such as comets, asteroids or planets that move relative to the fixed stars. Images of 3I/ATLAS are tracked non-sidereally, and the giveaway is that the stars appear trailed and 3I/ATLAS appears diffuse because it has a coma and a tail.

Then Loeb changed tack and accepted that 3I/ATLAS does have a tail, but that it is pointing in the wrong direction, towards the Sun. This is actually the truth — it does have what is referred to as an ‘anti-tail’ pointed towards the Sun, as well as its regular tails. Yet despite Loeb’s protestations an anti-tail is not impossible nor is it unprecedented. A recent example would be the anti-tail on the comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli–Bernstein).

To understand what is happening, let’s first explore what makes regular comet tails. As a comet nears the Sun — and it doesn’t even have to get particularly close, it could be out beyond Mars or even Jupiter — its surface warms up causing volatile ices — nitrogen, carbon dioxide and, when close enough, water vapor — to sublimate. If these ices are just below the surface, they can burst out, raising up cometary dust with them. The gas and dust forms the coma. Large particles of dust are left behind in the comet’s wake, forming the comet’s main, brighter tail. Meanwhile, charged particles in the coma’s gases are stripped away by the solar wind and radiation pressure from the Sun, forming a second, usually fainter tail called the ion tail. Crucially, the ion tail always points, straight as a rod, away from the Sun as it is driven by the solar wind. The dust tail also generally points away, though its path is more curved as the result of being laid down along the comet’s curved trajectory.

Sometimes we see an anti-tail that is a geometric illusion, caused by our point of view making it look like the tail is pointing towards the Sun when actually it is not. Occasionally though, an outburst can occur that belches a cloud of dust in the direction that the comet is moving. If the dust particles are small then the solar wind quickly takes them away, but if the dust particles are larger and more massive, it is not as easy for the solar wind to remove them, and so that dust spreads out in front of the comet, forming a tail that genuinely can point towards the Sun. Research by David Jewitt and Jane Luu — the duo who discovered the first Kuiper Belt object back in 1992 — concludes that many of the dust particles spewed out to form this anti-tail are indeed larger with a radius of about 100 microns, compared to small dust particles that are just a micron or so in size.

How Big is 3I/ATLAS?

Then there’s the issue of the size of 3I/ATLAS’ nucleus. Loeb has argued that because the coma has a low opacity, the brightness of 3I/ATLAS must be coming mostly from the nucleus itself, which would mean it must be large and artificially self-luminous. However, even a thin coma scatters a lot of light so there’s no need to invoke a giant self-luminous nucleus, which Loeb reckons must be 46 kilometers across based on observations by the SPHEREx infrared space telescope that launched in March 2025. If 3I/ATLAS really is this big, then it must be an outlier, otherwise we would have detected interstellar comets of this size before.

It’s not that large.

Based on Hubble Space Telescope images, Jewett and Luu determine that the maximum size of 3I/ATLAS’ nucleus is 5.6 kilometers. In that case, to be as bright as it appears to SPHEREx means that more than 99 per cent of its light must be scattered from dust in its coma. If there were no coma at all, and all the light was coming from the nucleus, then the nucleus would have to be 46 kilometers across to produce that light, but we know there is a coma, so it’s a moot point.

And on and on. Penn State University’s Jason Wright has done a good job on his website refuting all these claims and more, and it’s worth a read if you want to get into the details.

The Cosmic Cat

The most frustrating this is that Loeb says that he doesn’t necessarily believe that 3I/ATLAS is a spaceship, but he does think it is a possibility worthy of investigation. For what it’s worth, scientists have actually done that. All three of the interstellar objects so far have been scrutinized by SETI, with the Allen Telescope Array and the Green Bank Observatory both listening in for any signals just in case. However, as Carl Sagan often stated, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and 3I/ATLAS the evidence is that it is so clearly a comet that for most astronomers it is case-closed. Loeb, however, believes it is a “fun” line of enquiry to pursue, but this is incredibly reckless when his talk is triggering nonsense stories about the comet being a mothership in disguise — a ‘black swan’ as he calls it — heading to Earth for nefarious purposes. People do believe outlandish scientific claims and become scared by them. We remember the tragedy of the Heaven’s Gate cult who committed suicide because they believed comet Hale–Bopp to be a starship. In 2008 in India, a teenage girl killed herself because of erroneous stories that the Large Hadron Collider was going to create a black hole that would destroy the Earth. This brand of pseudoscience can turn from fun and games into something deadly serious very quickly.

We know that 3I/ATLAS will not be the last interstellar comet discovered. Some will be like 2I/Borisov, mundane in their ordinariness. Others may be unusual in one or more ways, which we shouldn’t be surprised about because these objects are not made from a cookie-cutter. Even in our own Solar System there is a fascinating diversity among the various comets, asteroids and Kuiper Belt objects. Nor do comets always behave as we would expect them to, regardless of whether they are interstellar in nature or natives of our Solar System.

There’s an old saying, which is that comets are like cats — they both have tails and do exactly what they like. It’s worth remembering that the next time an interstellar comet comes along that doesn’t fit neatly into the cookie-cutter paradigm, it doesn’t mean that it must be aliens.

Just think of it as one of the Universe’s cats on the loose.

Space Tech Protects Visitors from Hidden Dangers of Yellowstone

2025-10-27T17:00:00.000Z

Yellowstone, the world’s first national park and an area that contains about half the planet’s active geysers, sits atop a supervolcano responsible for some of the largest eruptions known to humans.

While visitors flock to see popular features like Old Faithful and captivating hot springs, it's the vast underground network of hydrothermal activity responsible for these sights that truly defines the park’s wonder.

Over the past 2.1 million years, Yellowstone has experienced three massive eruptions–about 2 million, 1.3 million, and 631,000 years ago. Together, they released enough ash to fill the Grand Canyon. Satellites can now spot plumes of ash and gas from volcanic eruptions, and these ancient blasts would have been just as visible from space.

And even today, the park is still very active, but far from a doomsday eruption. Beneath Yellowstone’s surface lies a complex system of magma chambers, fault lines, and hot water that fuels more than 10,000 thermal features–the highest concentration on Earth.

While the park's natural wonders are known and experienced by millions from around the world, it’s still the supervolcano that often captures the public imagination, especially the idea that it’s “overdue” for a catastrophic eruption. But despite the dramatic headlines, scientists say that narrative is misleading. “It’s not overdue, and it can’t erupt without warning,” says Dr. Mike Poland, a geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and Scientist-in-Charge at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.

In reality, the most immediate hazard at Yellowstone isn’t a massive volcanic eruption, it’s something far more sudden and unpredictable. Before a volcano erupts, magma moves upward, cracking rock, triggering earthquakes, and releasing gases like carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. A potential hazard to the over 4.5 million people that visit Yellowstone every year.

These signs emerge long before any eruption, which is why monitoring them is crucial. Currently, Yellowstone’s magma chamber is nearly too “frozen” to erupt meaning the molten rock is dense and mostly solid, limiting its mobility.

Understanding these signs is one thing; tracking them in the field is another.

For Poland and the team in charge of monitoring Yellowstone, no two days are the same. Some mornings begin with hauling gear to install GPS stations that track the ground’s tiniest movements. Other days involve collecting microgravity readings to detect shifts in magma or underground fluids. Poland’s team also maintains seismometers across the park to record constant earthquake activity.

In September 2025 alone, 87 minor earthquakes were recorded at Yellowstone, which is normal. In a typical year, 1,500-2,500 earthquakes are located throughout the area, but 99% are magnitude 2 or less and never felt.

Satellites orbiting overhead add another layer of observation. Radar satellites using InSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) detect even millimeter-scale rises or sags in the ground, showing how magma and hydrothermal fluids accumulate and drain beneath the surface.

High-resolution visible imagery provides views of Yellowstone’s surface features from the vantage point of space, helping scientists spot subtle changes in geysers, hot springs, and vegetation patterns. Thermal imaging adds yet another dimension and reveals heat anomalies invisible to the naked eye. In 2018, thermal satellites uncovered a hotspot that had developed in Yellowstone in the early 2000s in Yellowstone, a reminder that even well-studied areas can hide new surprises. This data is available for anyone to access and download.

Some of the tools being used to monitor Yellowstone verge on science fiction. Infrasound detectors, for example, can “hear” explosions miles away, even in remote corners of the park where no one is around to witness them. This means that when a hot spring suddenly bursts into a geyser-like eruption or a hydrothermal explosion rips through the ground, scientists don’t have to rely on chance to catch it because they already have the signal. “Our goal is to install more of that sort of sensor around Yellowstone, and our hope is that we will be able to hear some explosions in the backcountry or that occur at weird times that you wouldn’t otherwise know about, and that will help us better characterize the hazard,” Poland says.

Together, these technologies create one of the most advanced volcano monitoring networks on Earth, giving scientists a front-row seat to Yellowstone’s dynamic underground world. While many imagine Yellowstone’s biggest threat as a catastrophic super-eruption, scientists like Poland are far more concerned with smaller, sudden hazards—like hydrothermal explosions—that can happen without warning.

Poland recalls July 23rd, 2024, when an unexpected alert landed in his inbox: a hydrothermal explosion had just rocked Biscuit Basin. In an instant, superheated water and rocks blasted 400–600 feet into the air, scattering debris and tearing apart the nearby boardwalk. The event struck without warning, a reminder that Yellowstone’s most immediate hazards are often sudden and unpredictable. Fortunately, no one was injured.

Imagine a pot of water on a stove with the lid sealed tight. As the water heats, it turns to steam, pushing on the lid. Now imagine that underground, where water seeps into hot rock. Trapped steam builds pressure until it suddenly escapes—BOOM!—blasting through the ground.

That’s a hydrothermalexplosion.

Another risk scientists keep a close eye on are earthquakes, which are not related to the Yellowstone volcano, but rather all of the tectonic faults in the region. In Yellowstone, the most serious concern would be a magnitude 7 event, powerful enough to cause widespread damage. Unlike volcanic activity, there’s currently no way to forecast major earthquakes in advance. Still, the USGS is pushing forward with an earthquake early warning system, which is technology that can send out alerts to people and devices seconds before shaking arrives, giving communities just enough time to take protective action.

In 1959, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake occurred just west of Yellowstone. To this day, it is still the largest earthquake ever recorded in the intermountain west.

By combining fieldwork, satellite data, and continuous monitoring, the nine state and federal agencies that make up the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory work together to detect changes in the area’s geological system.

Yellowstone is a dynamic, closely watched system that helps scientists better understand how our planet works. It’s this integration of new technology and boots-on-the-ground science that keeps the millions of visitors who flock there each year, safe. The ground may rumble and the geysers will roar, but the real story of Yellowstone is vigilance, discovery, and the remarkable science happening just beneath our feet.

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Emily Furfaro is the co-founder and Executive Director of Dark Sky Creative Agency where she helps mission-driven teams tell big, bold stories. Before that, she led digital strategy and storytelling at NASA, shaping how the agency shares its science with the world. She’s worked on Emmy and Webby Award–winning projects, helped NASA’s eclipse coverage go global, and guided digital campaigns that reached hundreds of millions. Emily’s background spans creative direction, change management, and executive comms—and she’s all about making complex ideas feel human. She got her start in agency life and public service, with stops at Pace Communications and the White House Office of Communications. She holds a B.S. in Public Relations from Appalachian State University.

30 Years of Exoplanets: An Astonishing Catalogue of Cosmic Wonder

2025-10-21T19:00:00.000Z

It’s the stuff of science fiction; alien planets orbiting distant suns, veiled in mystery yet tantalizingly alluring, offering discoveries and adventures beyond our wildest dreams.

For the past three decades, this has been science fact, not fiction. In September 2025, astronomers working at NASA’s Exoplanet Archive at Caltech announced that the number of known planets around stars other than our Sun — extra-solar planets, or exoplanets — had passed the 6,000 mark.

It’s been a truly staggering rate of discovery since the first planet orbiting a Sun-like star, 51 Pegasi b, was announced thirty years ago on October 6th, 1995.

The man who discovered that planet was Didier Queloz, who is now the Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, but at the time of his historic discovery he was in the final year of his PhD and working with his supervisor, Michel Mayor, at the University of Geneva.

Queloz is affable, humorous and incredibly passionate about exoplanet research and passing his knowledge on to others. Those 6,000 exoplanets (actually 6,022 as of the beginning of October 2025) are his legacy, one that he is only too well aware of, and he lauds the work and dedication that has gone into discovering each and every one.

Yet the number itself doesn’t impress him greatly.

“If you put it into perspective, 6,000 planets is nothing,” he tells Supercluster, yet this is not arrogance speaking, but rather humility in front of the vastness of the cosmos.

“There are 100 billion stars in the galaxy,” he continues, “And the statistics are just amazing, because when you run the math you realize that the vast majority of stars must have planets.”

A hundred billion planets, likely many more, inhabiting our Milky Way galaxy is a mind-boggling number, especially when you consider that prior to the 1990s there were no exoplanets known.

The shock announcement of the discovery of 51 Pegasi b, which is a ‘hot Jupiter’ — a gas giant so close to its star that it orbits in a matter of days and reaches temperatures in excess of a thousand degrees Celsius — changed all that. Back in 1995, the concept of hot jupiters wasn’t even on the minds of astronomers, who thought such worlds to be impossible. And, Queloz included, they certainly were not looking for this kind of planet.

“Actually, we were expecting to find [a planet like] Jupiter,” says Queloz, highlighting how astronomers had been expecting spitting images of our own Solar System, with the smaller, rocky planets closer to the Sun and the large gas giants like Jupiter farther away.

To hunt for exoplanets, Queloz and Mayor were using a spectrograph called ELODIE on the 1.9-meter telescope at the Observatoire de Haute–Provence in France. It worked by detecting a property of stars called ‘radial velocity’. Picture a system with a planet orbiting a star. The center of mass of the system is somewhere between the planet and star. In most cases it is still very close to the star, often inside it, but crucially not at the center of the star’s rotational axis. Therefore, a star will appear to wobble around this offset center of mass, and this can be detected in the form of a Doppler shift in the wobbling star’s light. This Doppler shift represents a change in apparent radial velocity towards and away from us. ELODIE was set up to measure changes in radial velocity as low as 10 meters per second. Modern spectrographs can detect radial velocities of less than one meter per second.

Queloz and Mayor weren’t the only astronomers partaking in the hunt. A team of Canadian astronomers led by Bruce Campbell (not the Bruce Campbell of Evil Dead fame!) and Gordon Walker were using a similar method to the Swiss pair, while in the United States a group headed up by Paul Butler and Geoff Marcy had adopted a similar but more computationally complex technique.

So the race was one, but when Queloz won it, he didn’t initially believe it.

A Surprising Planet

It was expected that for giant planets on orbits similar to Jupiter, which takes 12 years to orbit the Sun, years’ worth of data would need to be accumulated to spot the radial velocity signal.

“So you can imagine my surprise when I first observed the star 51 Pegasi and I started to see the change in radial velocity straight away,” Queloz says. “I thought there was something really bad happening, bad in the sense that I had made a mistake. I battled with the data, wanting to fix the problem, until I realized that it was real and must be a planet.”

Queloz recalls how Mayor, who was on sabbatical in Hawaii at the time, was skeptical, but on his return to Geneva he became quickly convinced. Eager not to get scooped on their once-in-a-lifetime discovery, they kept their finding secret and hurried to publication in Nature, on 6 October 1995.

You’d be forgiven for maybe thinking that there would be celebrations among astronomers the world over, yet Queloz and Mayor found themselves presented with a tough crowd.

“It was really hard to convince the community,” recalls Queloz. “After all, people had tried to find planets before and there had been fake announcements, false alarms and publications describing no detections at all.”

Certainly, nobody had expected a gas giant just 7.9 million kilometers from its star and this only bolstered the skeptics’ incredulity. For comparison, Jupiter’s mean distance from our Sun is 778 million kilometers; even our innermost planet, diminutive Mercury, only gets as close as 46 million kilometers.

Searching for an explanation, the community dug up a little known model from two decades earlier that focused on the formation of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and how they may have formed farther out and then migrated in towards their parent planets. In similar fashion, perhaps this new exoplanet, 51 Pegasi b, had also somehow migrated in towards its star. “Of course,” says Queloz, “Nobody had any idea how to stop the migration of a planet.”

Over the years the migration model has become the accepted model, and to a degree has even been applied to the early movements of Jupiter and Saturn under the guise of the ‘Grand Tack’ hypothesis, even if it is not yet fully understood. Meanwhile the discovery of 51 Pegasi b was verified when more hot jupiters were discovered in subsequent years. As those years passed by, smaller exoplanets began to turn up, and on increasingly wider orbits. In 1999 the first transiting exoplanet, another hot jupiter by the designation HD 209458b, was seen, and this heralded another revolution, one in which thousands of exoplanets would swiftly be added to the roster thanks to NASA’s Kepler mission.

And so, thirty years later, we find ourselves with 6,000 exoplanets and counting on our hands. What we’ll do with them we’ll come onto, but first let’s take a brief side-step and give a mention to the forgotten exoplanets of history.

An Inconvenient Truth

Some of you reading this might be thinking, hang on — how can it be only 30 years since the discovery of exoplanets? Weren’t the first exoplanets discovered in 1992?

Indeed they were. So what’s going on?

Three years before Didier Queloz and Michel Mayor found 51 Pegasi b, radio astronomers Dale Frail and Aleksander Wolszczan found a puzzling blip in the timing of radio pulses from the pulsar PSR B1257+12. Pulsars are spinning neutron stars, which are the core remnants of massive stars that have exploded as a supernova. The detonation of the star is expected to take out any orbiting planets, yet the blip in the timing of PSR B1257+12 regular pulses was attributed to three orbiting planets that must have formed in the aftermath of the supernova from the debris of the exploded star. Frail and Wolszczan identified two of the planets around PSR B1257+12 in 1992, and a third in 1994. One of the planets is the lowest mass planet ever found, with a mass of just two per cent that of Earth.

In all, less than 20 pulsar planets are known, and they are frequently forgotten about in the exoplanet discussion. One reason is that, because they orbit pulsars and are bathed in deadly radiation rather than warm light, they will be dead worlds incapable of supporting life. The second reason is that scientists don’t think the pulsar planets formed like typical planets — one prominent exoplanet astronomer whom I spoke to described the pulsar planets as “freaks”.

And so, while they are part of the Exoplanet Archive, there is a general sense among the astronomical community that, rightly or wrongly, pulsar planets are not ‘real’ planets worthy of much study. Its the ones around Sun-like stars, like 51 Pegasi b, that astronomers are really interested in. The pulsar planets have ended up becoming an inconvenient truth.

A Treasure Trove of Planets

Radial velocity measurements are essential for providing the mass of a planet — the more massive the planet, the stronger the tug on the star — but they are hard work, relying on many careful, precise, measurements. Transit surveys, on the other hand, provide an opportunity to simultaneously observe and detect exoplanets around thousands of stars at once, just looking for the characteristic dip in light as a planet moves across its star. It’s primarily thanks to transits that we jumped from a few hundred known exoplanets to thousands.

Ten years after the first transit observation, NASA launched the Kepler Space Telescope to stare at 150,000 stars in the direction of the Milky Way in the constellation of Cygnus, the Swan.

For Caltech’s Aurora Kesseli, who works on the Exoplanet Archive, the Kepler mission was her moment of inspiration.

“I was four years old in 1995, so for me the big thing that caught my attention when I was in college in the early 2010s was Kepler’s discoveries,” she recalls. “I thought that was so cool.”

During the Kepler mission, NASA scientists would routinely announce huge batches of exoplanets, hundreds at a time. Kepler’s mission expanded over the years, morphing into the K2 mission that began surveying stars beyond that patch in Cygnus, and in total it has discovered over 3,300 confirmed exoplanets and left a legacy of nearly 3,000 more unconfirmed candidates.

“We have graphs in the Exoplanet Archive that show the pace of discovery,” says Kesseli. “You can see that before Kepler it is a few tens of planets per year, and then all of a sudden with Kepler it jumps to an order of magnitude more.”

And yet, Kepler did not succeed at its stated key objective, which was to find Earth-like planets.

“Strictly speaking, on its primary goal Kepler completely failed because it didn’t find any planets like Earth,” says Queloz.

In light of all its discoveries, labelling Kepler as a failure does seem rather mean-spirited, and Queloz agrees.

“We don’t care that Kepler didn’t find any like Earth, because instead Kepler discovered another type of world that we had never dreamed about,” says Queloz.

This new kind of world is best described as a sub-neptune, at the upper end of the super-earth regime (rocky worlds more massive than Earth) and the lower end of the Neptune-class of planet. And unlike Neptune, which is on the cold outer fringes of our Solar System, these sub-neptunes are often hot neptunes close to their star, and their composition and internal structure isn’t clear; many have densities indicating them to be vast ocean worlds.

“We started finding them with HARPS and we could sense they were an interesting planet, but Kepler discovered thousands of them [confirmed and unconfirmed] and I remember the excitement of my colleagues when they would find not one, but two or three of these planets around the same star,” says Queloz.

Such worlds are, currently, the most common type of exoplanet known and they include some of the weirdest planets found to date with exciting potential, such as K2-18b, which is a planet with nearly nine times the mass of Earth orbiting a red dwarf star 124 light years away. Like many of its kind, its exact nature is a little bit mysterious. Cambridge University astronomy Nikku Madhusudhan has argued that it is what he calls a ‘hycean world’, with a dense atmosphere of hydrogen wrapped around a deep global ocean of water. Furthermore, Madhusudhan’s team claims to have detected dimethyl sulphide in K2-18b’s atmosphere with the James Webb Space Telescope. Dimethyl sulphide is a biosignature gas on Earth, produced by life, but the chemical signature in K2-18b’s atmosphere has proven highly controversial, with many exoplanet researchers doubting that the signal is real.

Whether it’s real or not is perhaps missing the point, says Queloz. “We don’t really know exactly what these planets like K2-18b are, and while the claim [of dimethyl sulphide] may be an optimistic claim, it at least demonstrates that we can detect such a signal, and the more we observe the more we will clarify this signal, or maybe find another one.”

A Lonely Solar System

K2-18b demonstrates how, in thirty years, we’ve gone from a blip on a radial velocity chart to being able to ask whether there are signs of life on any of the planets that we have discovered. Yet Kepler’s number one science goal still hasn’t been achieved — we don’t know of any other habitable exoplanets. We can even take things a step further by pointing out that we haven’t even found any systems like our own Solar System yet, while the most common type of known exoplanet, those between the size of Earth and Neptune, are completely absent from our Solar System, nor do we have a hot Jupiter. This is leading planetary scientists to face an uncomfortable and so far unanswered question — why is the Solar System so different?

Kesseli describes how the discovery of exoplanets has become a turning point that has flipped the situation on its head.

“Before 1995, our theories for how planets form and what a typical planetary system looks like was just based on our Solar System,” she says. “Then, when we started finding exoplanets we realized that there’s so many different ways that planetary systems can form, so if we want to learn about what a typical planetary system is like, we have to look at a large number of exoplanetary systems.”

This is where the value of having so many exoplanets in the archive comes in, because we’re no longer limited to a sample of just one planetary system.

The main purpose of studying exoplanets, besides looking for a second Earth, “is something very profound, which is to try and make sense of our Solar System,” says Queloz.

One of the reasons why Earth and our Solar System currently seem so unique is observation bias. Finding systems and planets like ours is hard. Smaller planets are harder to detect, and planets farther away from their star are harder to detect, so the basic architecture of having small terrestrial planets closer to a star and gas giants farther out, like in our Solar System, is for the time being just really hard to find. This could change in the future, as the imminent launch of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in 2027, assuming it isn’t canceled as a result of the current US administration’s scorched earth approach to slashing government funding, could see up to 2,000 new planets discovered via a microlensing survey. Microlensing is an innovative use of gravitational lensing, with the telescope watching for unseen planets briefly magnifying the light of background stars. Microlensing is far better at detecting planetary systems like our own compared to radial velocity and transit measurements.

“The cool thing about this is that it actually will be sensitive to Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars, and this will give us our first look at whether such planets are actually common or not,” says Kesseli. Of course, Earth-like here really means that they are Earth-sized and in the habitable zone. Because microlensing planets go unseen, and are only visible for a very short period before their gravitational lens moves out of alignment with the background star, it is impossible to follow-up on them and characterize them.

We can, though, characterize many of the 6,000 worlds found so far, exactly because their vital statistics fall within the abilities of our telescopes and spectroscopic instruments to measure.

“I call it the gift of the Universe,” says Queloz.

“Nature has provided these planets that are easy to detect and observe with our really primitive approach of transits and radial velocity measurements. We don’t need complicated quantum mechanics to make these techniques work, they are very simple yet nobody thought they would find so many planets, because nobody thought that there would be so many planets orbiting with short periods.”

The Universe just keeps on giving and Queloz believes that it has brought us to the cusp of something extraordinary.

“The process has started,” he says. “We are exploring the planets in the galaxy right now and we try to put into perspective the diversity of the planets in our Solar System relative to a broader context, which is this huge diversity of planets in our galaxy. It is progress on this, giving us a better understanding of Earth and the Solar System, which is what I think is going to happen over the next 30 years.”

If Queloz is correct, then the legacy of his discovery 30 years ago isn’t just in the 6,000 or more planets catalogued in the Exoplanet Archive. Ultimately, it will also be in a greater appreciation of our home, the Earth and our Solar System. Perhaps this realization can help guide us to a better and more informed future where we become more responsible for our planet and its environment. If so, then discovering exoplanets when we did will prove rather auspicious, for it will have been just in the nick of time.

Do Moonquakes Pose a Threat to Artemis Astronauts and their Habitats?

2025-10-14T21:00:00.000Z

Considering the Moon is the ruins left behind by a spectacular collision between a protoplanet the size of Mars and a lava-covered Earth, it’s remarkably beautiful: a silvery spotlight reminding us that the cosmos is an ocean of stars filled with wondrous islands.

That’s why I regret to inform you that the Moon is also a horrific deathtrap, and not just because you’ll asphyxiate if you take your helmet off.

The lack of any sort of atmosphere — let alone a breathable one — means that the difference between the daytime and nighttime temperatures on the lunar surface can be hundreds of degrees, so you can be flambéed or frozen. If the Sun gets agitated and throws a maelstrom of electromagnetic radiation your way, there’s no atmosphere or magnetic field to deflect it. And without a gassy shield to impede them, small meteorites (those the size of footballs or pebbles) bombard this desolate realm like bullets.

That hasn’t stopped America, China and a suite of private spaceflight companies racing to get back to the Moon. They’re going to try and establish a permanent presence on the lunar south pole, home to precious reserves of water-ice — an ancient reserve that can water crops, hydrate astronauts, and be transformed into rocket fuel. And they won’t just have the spaceborne hazards to deal with. They will also, just maybe, have to deal with moonquakes.

That’s right: moonquakes. They’re like earthquakes. But, you know, on the Moon.

With the U.S.’s Artemis lunar program in mind, several recent studies, deploying some clever seismic sleuthing techniques, have tried to better quantify the frequency and intensity of some of these lunar temblors. And they have good news and bad news: powerful quakes could rock the Moon while astronauts are present, but the day-to-day risk of a dangerous shake is low.

“This is not so much an issue for short-duration missions,” says Thomas Watters, a Senior Scientist in the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C., and an author of several recent moonquake studies. The problem, he says, is long-term infrastructure, like parts of a nascent Moon base.

As an example, NASA wants to eventually set up a nuclear reactor on the moon to provide sufficient, sustained power to their operations. “It’s absolutely amazing that they’re talking about that, but damn, I wouldn’t want to put one of those on an active fault,” says Nicholas Schmerr, a planetary seismologist at the University of Maryland and another author on those moonquake studies.

When it comes to quakes, Earth is a bit of a showoff: not only does it produce a staggering variety of them, but it’s also capable of producing more powerful temblors than anywhere else in the inner solar system.

Thanks to the jostling of its giant tectonic plates, you have faults that throw blocks of land over and under one another, while other rifts cause parts of the crust to scrape against each other. Subduction zones, wherein one tectonic plate gets consumed by the geologic fires below another plate, can produce cataclysmic magnitude 9.0-or-higher events. Even the movement of magma, which smashes through rocks in the crust, can cause the surface world to convulse.

This seismic activity is ultimately powered by the escape of trapped heat from within the planet’s guts—heat provided by a store of radioactively decaying elements and old embers left behind by Earth’s collisional formation 4.6 billion years ago. The Moon once had plenty of both, but as it’s so tiny, most of this heat leaked into space long ago. Today, the Moon is geologically comatose. There are plenty of faults, like cracks in a desiccated shell. But there are no subduction zones, and (probably) no magmatic serpents slithering below the surface.

And yet, the Moon still quivers.

Several of the Apollo landings left behind short-lived seismometers on the lunar nearside, and between 1969 and 1977, the often-faint rumblings of something stirring below were picked up. “There are a few different kinds of moonquakes,” says Benjamin Fernando, a planetary geophysicist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, who was not involved with the recent studies. And each hints at their unearthly origins.

First, you have thermal quakes: the lack of an atmospheric bubble means the lunar surface quickly heats up in the day and rapidly cools at night — meaning the mercury can swing from 250°F to -208°F. The expansion and contraction of rocks during the day-night cycle rocks is enough to cause some shaking.

You also have moonquakes that are our fault — well, our planet’s fault, anyway. “Just like how the Moon raises tides in the oceans on Earth, the Earth raises tides on the Moon. Except the Moon doesn’t have surface water, so the tides are in solid rock,” says Fernando.

Then there are the meteorite impacts. Earth’s thick atmosphere catches and vaporizes small asteroids (read: pebble to house-sized space rocks) all the time without consequence. But the Moon is defenseless, so even relatively petite interlopers can slam into the surface and cause a staggering commotion. “Those impacts come with their own hazard as well,” says Fernando. “So it’s kind of a double whammy, if you like.”

The strongest and most mysterious moonquakes are the shallow ones. “They’re the most dangerous, in some sense,” says Fernando, noting they can reach a magnitude 5.0. And unlike earthquakes, which last for tens of seconds or a few minutes at most, these moonquakes can last for hours, sufficient to potentially knock over any astronaut infrastructure.

There are no working seismometers on the Moon, so Watters, Schmerr and their colleagues have relied on an unusual combination of techniques to better understand these shallow moonquakes. As well as reassessing archival Apollo seismic data, they’ve used NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) satellite, which takes photographs of the Moon’s surface, to examine its faults.

In 2019, their research concluded that several younger faults were activated during the Apollo era in part because the Moon is shrinking. As the last supplies of its internal heat leak out into space, the Moon cools and gradually contracts, triggering shallow quakes on various faults. Earth’s gravitational pull is also responsible for occasionally focusing this lunar contraction, causing specific faults to slip, rather than random ones.

A new study of theirs, published earlier this summer, attempted to work out the frequency of fault-generated moonquakes. They poured through LRO images taken of the undulating Taurus-Littrow Valley, the Apollo 17 landing site. A fault, the Lee-Lincoln schism, can be found there, and its surroundings were explored by astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt.

Based on the astronaut’s surveying work, and images of the site taken from above by the LRO, Watters and Schmerr reconstructed a potted seismic assessment of the Lee-Lincoln fault.

Scar marks in the lunar surface next to certain boulders hinted that some may have tumbled downslope after being set loose by moonquakes — with larger boulders requiring higher magnitude events, with greater associated surface shaking, to dislodge them. Evidence of a wider landslide was also plugged into their equations. And the geologic samples brought home by Apollo 17 revealed how long certain boulders had been exposed to mineral-altering cosmic radiation, a proxy for how long those hefty rocks had sat in place.

Their analysis determined that the Lee-Lincoln fault could produce quakes at least as potent as a magnitude 3.0—and that larger quakes were possible in the area.

“The same class of faults also occur in the south pole area,” says Watters. Last year, another of their studies identified several such faults located close to, and within, some of the areas NASA has identified as candidate landing regions for Artemis III, which will land American astronauts somewhere in region later this decade. “It’s not a seismically benign area.”

On the bright side, shallow moonquakes like this are seemingly rare.

The team estimate that a magnitude 3.0 moonquake on the Lee-Lincoln fault happens once every 5.6 million years. Any astronauts sojourning on the lunar surface for a matter of weeks, then, are very unlikely to be smothered by a quake-induced landslide.

Their base infrastructure, however, is more vulnerable. Should they experience a stronger moonquake while there, anything tall and relatively thin — say, the 165-feet-high Starship Human Landing System that SpaceX wants to send to the Moon — might be at risk of being felled, or at the very least dangerously shaken up.

This sort of remote seismic detective work is valuable, says Fernando, as it helps scientists put some limits on the frequency and intensity of moonquakes. But it can only tell you so much. “You’re only seeing the aftermath of a seismic event,” he says. Our understanding of moonquakes is still patchy, and there’s only so much you can do from Apollo-era seismic data and orbital imagery.

Fortunately, that’s soon to be rectified: the Artemis III mission will bring a cutting-edge moonquake detector to the lunar south pole. The Lunar Environment Monitoring Station, or LEMS, consists of two seismometers: one will be placed into a borehole, while the other will be put into a ditch. Both will listen out for the Moon’s geologic grumbles for at least three months, but likely many years.

Not only will LEMS help scientists better understand the seismic hazard to humanity’s lunar wayfarers, but it’ll also illuminate the region’s bizarre underworld. Billions of years ago, a ginormous asteroid smashed into the lunar south pole with a preternatural force. “It excavated all the way down into the lowermost portion of the crust, maybe even into the mantle,” says Schmerr, the LEMS deputy principal investigator. Scientists would love to explore the scar tissue – one of the largest impact basins in the solar system — that’s still visible today.

NASA also plans to launch the Farside Seismic Suite, a robotically deployed seismometer, to the Moon’s Schrödinger basin in 2027. China is also proposing to add its own seismometer to an upcoming robotic lunar mission. It’s the making of a proper seismic network — one allowing scientists to listen to the drumbeat of the Moon, and particularly the south pole, the site of what is to become humanity’s first outpost on another world.

But until that moonquake monitoring system is operational, our lunar sleuths have some advice for the Artemis program. “Make sure you’re not setting up long-lived infrastructure near active faults,” says Schmerr.

“They’re all over the place,” says Watters. If you’re going to set up a Moon base, “locate the fault, then get at least [10 miles] away from it.”

A Global Community of Citizen Scientists Collaborate to Track 3I/ATLAS

2025-10-07T19:00:00.000Z

These days, a simple backyard telescope can take you far across the solar system.

You can dance among the planets, gaze at the Pleiades, maybe catch a moon transit behind Jupiter. But a backyard-viewable comet originating from beyond the realms of our sun? That was something the amateur community could only dream of, until a little world briefly came out of the darkness in 2017, before disappearing forever: 1I/ʻOumuamua.

The cigar-shaped object, our first confirmed visitor to the solar system, was far too faint for amateur telescopes. But like many other things in astronomy, you just need to give it time, and technology. After eight years, there's a network of telescopes poised to capture unprecedented views of a freshly found object on its own one-way trip through our solar system: 3I/ATLAS.

3I/ATLAS, as the name suggests, is just the third interstellar object scientists have confirmed. While 1I/ʻOumuamua came much closer to Earth than 3I/ATLAS will, luckily for amateurs this newer visitor is considerably brighter. And the Unistellar community of telescope observers is already seeing strange things. Unistellar is a French manufacturer of networked telescopes that allow backyard skywatchers to observe astronomical objects in detail at a low cost.

"It's getting more and more active, and we're not seeing H2O yet, which is strange,"

said Ariel Graykowski, a postdoctoral fellow at the SETI Institute who specializes in small bodies and who is coordinating the Unistellar group. "But we are seeing a lot of other stuff," she continued.

Comets like 3I/ATLAS are thought to contain the building blocks of planets and moons, which includes water in some cases. But as of results made public in late August, SPHEREx — a NASA astrophysics-focused space observatory — spotted a bunch of carbon dioxide in the comet's coma, or atmosphere.

Scientists are still trying to figure out why the water signature is more muted in 3I/ATLAS than comparable ones from the solar system. But generally speaking, what we are seeing is providing us a glimpse of the conditions under which this interstellar object formed. And for the bigger questions scientists and all of us have — how life arose, what faraway worlds may host in terms of environments — an interstellar object allows us to learn these things from no further than our own backyards.

Graykowski has been working with the company Unistellar since she joined the SETI Institute, shortly after graduating in 2022. She says users of its commercial telescopes run the gamut — from retirees, to parents willing to fund their children's science, to enthusiastic midlife amateurs.

The price of one of these telescopes — typically a few thousand, depending on options you choose — is certainly not within reach of everybody. But that price point is similar to an overseas trip, an upgrade on a car, or a home renovation for more financially fortunate people willing to make different life choices in pursuit of backyard astronomy.

With the right amount of time and money, the Unistellar network of citizen scientists is literally doing just that — science. For example: they observed the breakup of another solar system comet, ATLAS, in April 2020. More recently, a paper in the Planetary Science Journal was published Sept. 25 based on their observations of activity in a comet named 103P/Hartley 2.

While amateurs do not necessarily have the experience of their professionally trained counterparts, with their status comes some perks: exclusive telescope time, and more flexibility to shift with weather and schedules. Much more than professionals who must adhere to a schedule on more powerful, high-demand telescopes regardless of the clouds overhead.

Observers come from just about anywhere.

Wataru Ono, based in Japan, told Supercluster he initially participated because he wanted to contribute to planetary defense research. "I've since become interested in other programs as well, including comets," he said. "I believe one of the charms of this citizen science program is this personal domino effect — where one thing sparks interest in something else."

Margaret Loose, from New Mexico, joined four years ago out of simple love of the game: "I got into astronomy because it makes my eyes roll back in my head," she said. But as she got to know the others in the Unistellar community, she said she enjoyed parts of it that are related to science. "I really like having specific tasks to do. I like seeing the results come in, and I really like the international collaboration."

To be sure, no single company has a monopoly on helping amateurs observe 3I/ATLAS. Shadow the Scientists, an initiative based at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is hosting regular livestreams on various professional telescopes, letting anyone who joins watch the object in real time.

The citizen science website Zooniverse has 3I/ATLAS photos on its "Rubin Comet Chasers" website, which parses photos from the National Science Foundation's and Department of Energy's Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

If you'd rather look at the object yourself, that's totally possible as well — with the right equipment or connections. You can try begging or borrowing from a local astronomy group, or using a museum's telescope if you're lucky enough to be nearby to one. Some folks are booking time on Internet telescopes.

Others are readying to use their own telescope, as by its closest approach in early November, 3I/ATLAS is predicted to be at magnitude 11. The popular eight-inch Dobsonian telescope type, for example, will likely see the object easily in dark-sky conditions. (That said, do your research before buying — telescope purchases are far too complicated to offer recommendations)

Graykowski noted that one advantage of a network like Unistellar over these other options, however, is allowing folks all over the world to collaborate real-time as events unfold. For example, 3I/ATLAS may undergo "outbursts" — periods of higher activity — which could last only minutes or hours. Statistically speaking, you're more likely to catch such an event if many people are looking together in different locations at the same time.

Then there is also the community cheer that collaboration brings. Ono emphasized that the point of observing is not to appear in a scientific paper, or even to see something novel. "Not every scientific conclusion is a 'success,' " he said, "but I believe that experiencing the ups and downs of such outcomes sparks lively discussions within the community, making it more engaging."

There's also the knowledge among the observers that this object is more than a once-in-a-lifetime observation, like Halley's Comet, which keeps the amateurs going at long nights in front of their telescopes.

"It's never going to happen again," Loose said. "Our species will ever see this object again."

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Elizabeth Howell is a Canadian space journalist based in Ottawa.

Could Strange Creatures Lurk Beneath the Icy Shells of Ocean Worlds?

2025-09-30T20:00:00.000Z

Beneath the frozen crusts of worlds like Europa, alien oceans may contain complex creatures with a profoundly different view of the cosmos.

We humans take the skies for granted. Like most life on Earth, we have evolved under the rhythms of the Sun, the Moon, and the stars, a situation that made us not only aware — but entranced — by the vast universe around us.

But as we’ve journeyed deeper into the solar system, we’ve discovered an abundance of worlds that keep their oceans locked away deep in their bellies, hidden from view under crunchy shells of ice. The most famous examples are Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus, but each passing year reveals more evidence of subterranean water seas on Jovian moons like Ganymede and Callisto, Saturnian moons like Titan and Mimas, and dwarf planets like Pluto and Ceres.

Whether these subterranean seas are habitable, let alone inhabited, remains an open question.

Several spacecraft are currently en route to the outer solar system to search for insights about that very mystery. If we ever do find life on these worlds—whether they be simple microbes or fantastical space whales—they might be literally in the dark about the great cosmic drama that is unfolding around us.

“Ocean worlds appear to be ubiquitous in our solar system, which means that the vast abundance of liquid water hidden beneath the ice shells of these moons could be the largest volume of habitable real estate in our solar system,” said Dr. Kevin Hand, an astrobiologist and director of Ocean Worlds Lab at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in an email to Supercluster.

“And if these worlds are so abundant in our solar system… just imagine what it means for alien oceans in the Milky Way and beyond,” he added.

What Might Lurk in the Subterranean Seas?

While interior oceans appear to be extremely common, no two are alike. Europa’s ocean is estimated to contain at least twice as much water as all of Earth’s seas, with seafloor depths that extend down some 70 miles — ten times as deep as Earth’s seafloor. Enceladus, meanwhile, is a mere 300 miles in diameter, with depths similar to those on our own planet. Titan boasts hydrocarbon seas on its surface, and an ocean of water and ammonia underneath its crust. On Ganymede, the solar system’s largest moon, pressurized ice may surround the silicate rocky core, which could impact habitability.

“On the bigger moons, where you've potentially got this high pressure-formed ice area, you haven't got the interaction between the liquid water and the silicate rock, which is potentially important in generating the chemicals for life,” said Dr. Grace Richards, an astrobiologist and postdoctoral researcher at Italy’s National Institute of Astrophysics. “You want to be in this sweet spot. You really need that water-rock interaction and to have an energy source, the elements that are essential to life, and the liquid water.”

The marine environments inside ice moons are also impacted by the tidal forces of their host planets, which stretch and squeeze their cores and may generate hydrothermal activity on many alien seafloors. On Earth, hydrothermal vents in the deep sea sustain vibrant microbial ecosystems that sometimes support more complex animals, like tubeworms or molluscs.

“In the deep ocean on Earth, you get no light after a certain depth, and it’s very high pressure,” Dr. Richards said. “You think about how alien the fish and the octopuses look down there. It is so cool, and it's so different from what we know, looking around us.”

“Life in the deep ocean is still so unexplored, and we've got so much more to learn,”

she added. “Hopefully these extreme environments on Earth can inform what we know about how life might develop in these extreme environments in our solar system.”

Indeed, while these bizarre deep-sea ecosystems are the most common touchstone for envisioning subsurface marine biospheres, it may be that entirely different onramps to life exist in these waters.

How Can We Get a Closer Look?

Fortunately, several missions are currently on their way to study some of these worlds up close to assess their potential habitability. The European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) and NASA’s Europa Clipper, launched respectively in 2023 and 2024, will arrive in the Jupiter system in the early 2030s. JUICE will conduct flybys of the Jovian ice moons Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede, and will eventually end up in orbit around the latter.

“JUICE will be the first time that we're going to have a ground-penetrating radar instrument for an icy moon,” Dr. Richards said. “That's going to give us loads of information about these icy moon interiors, because that's something that we really want to constrain.”

Europa Clipper also has ice-penetrating radar that can peer nearly 20 miles deep into its namesake moon’s icy shell, along with cameras and instruments designed to probe other properties. From its orbit around Jupiter, Clipper will perform a series of close flybys of Europa, eventually reaching altitude as low as 16 miles above its surface, providing unprecedented close-ups of this fan-favorite world.

Europa Clipper is “not a mission designed to detect signs of life but the spectrometers will tell us about the chemistry of the ice,” explained Dr. Hand. “The ice shell of Europa serves as a window into the ocean below and thus we can use the chemistry of the ice shell to learn about the chemistry of the ocean. I’m particularly interested to see if we can find any organic compounds with our spectrometers because, of course, carbon is the key building block for life on Earth and I think life on Europa would also be carbon-based.”

Last, NASA’s Dragonfly mission will launch to Saturn’s moon Titan in 2028, where it will land in the mid-2030s and fly from location to location to study the moon’s rich surface chemistry, which is unlike anything else in the solar system.

“Titan is an organic chemist’s dream world — there are liquid methane and ethane seas, lakes, and rivers; there are dunes piled high with grains made from complex organics; and there is a subsurface liquid water ocean beneath the organic-rich icy crust of Titan,” said Dr. Hand. “If we do someday find life on Titan, many of us speculate that its biochemistry would be unlike anything we see here on Earth.”

What Worldviews Might Develop From Inside a World?

We don’t yet know if any of these oceans are actually inhabited, and we’ll probably have to wait at least a decade for any preliminary answers about their potential to host even the simplest forms of life. While the results will be exciting, it’s important not to get too ahead of our space skis with optimism about prospective aliens in the deep.

“I don't think that we'd be finding any evidence of anything crawling around in the oceans, to be quite honest, which is maybe disappointing for people,” Dr. Richards said. “I think if we found evidence of life in our solar system, it would be single-celled organisms.”

“It's fun to talk about speculation of the deep oceans on Earth and Enceladus —the thermal vent systems where there's potentially huge biological communities, like there is on Earth,” she added. “But ultimately that is quite unlikely, and I think we need to try and be objective when we're thinking about it.”

Still, it’s tempting to wonder what kinds of life might be possible in these vast ice-covered abysses. Science fiction has already given us haunting visions, from the bioluminescent tentacled creature of Europa Report — a 2013 film that Dr. Hand consulted on — to spacefaring parasitic slug invaders from Titan in Robert Heinlein’s 1951 novel The Puppet Masters.

The discovery of even microbial life in one of these oceans would be among the biggest breakthroughs in scientific history, a finding that would suggest life is common in the wider universe. But the sheer scale and strangeness of these environments invites wilder speculation about the possibility that complex life — perhaps even intelligent civilizations — might emerge in the depths of these worlds.

Dr. Hand explores this concept in his 2020 book Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths and ponders the implications of these closed-off habitats for creatures that might emerge in them.

“Despite the potential for a technologically advanced species on such a world, they would have no night sky to foster their sense of wonder,” Dr. Hand writes in the book. “They might never be able to sense beyond the ice to discover the stars above. Could they ever develop the impulse to explore beyond their own planet, not having the Sun or stars to compel them into the sky? Think about what that might mean for their philosophy, their art, their music and their concept of the meaning of life.”

Dr. Hand speculates that creatures in these worlds might base their mythologies on the acoustics of cracking ice, rather than the stars in the heavens above. What strange stories might be told about the vibrations rippling through the water, or the patterns of heat along the seafloor, or the bioluminescent displays that could illuminate these encased seas?

It’s almost excruciating to imagine a universe teeming with such vibrant ecosystems, that are nonetheless sealed off from contact or even detection by miles of ice. But Dr. Hand holds out some optimism that somewhere, one of these civilizations might peel off the icy veil and grasp, even for a moment, a sense of the grand universe outside of these womblike worlds.

“I like to imagine that within some of these alien oceans beyond Earth, there are, in fact, biologically and perhaps technologically advanced civilizations,” Dr. Hand concludes in Alien Oceans. “Given the abundance of ocean worlds in our solar system, such worlds might be ubiquitous throughout the universe. I only hope that if they are out there, if there are intelligent creatures deep beneath the icy shells of these distant worlds, that some of them have found a way to peer through the ice and see the wonder of what lies beyond.”

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Becky Ferreira is a science reporter based in upstate New York. Her book First Contact, about the search for alien life, was published in September 2025.

Dark Matter Detectives Are Searching for Tiny Black Holes

2025-09-23T20:00:00.000Z

Our universe may be teeming with microscopic black holes.

Dark matter — the invisible stuff contributing 80% of the mass of our universe — continues to puzzle scientists. While it was long hoped that dark matter’s origins could be explained by new fundamental particles, experimental efforts to find such particles have repeatedly come up short. And while there’s no shortage of new particles to consider and experiments to construct, this lack of definitive progress has recently fueled renewed interest in solutions of a more extreme nature.

In the 1970s, it was first proposed that black holes could form directly from the small, random density fluctuations inherent to the chaotic primordial universe. The studies from which the idea emerged — pioneered by titans of cosmology like Stephen Hawking and Yakov Zeldovich — were not actually concerned with dark matter, but in recent decades primordial black holes (PBHs) have gained prominence as a compelling explanation for the substance’s origin and microphysical identity. “The idea is very simple,” CERN postdoctoral researcher Dr. Gabriele Franciolini tells Supercluster, as forming PBHs requires nothing “beyond the standard model” of particle physics, in contrast to many dark matter theories.

“This is one motivation [for] why it is theoretically appealing.”

Unlike black holes formed from stars, PBHs could originate with nearly any mass, suggesting a wide selection of observational signatures. Even so, it wasn’t until the 1990s that efforts to test the PBH-as-dark-matter hypothesis began in earnest with the advent of gravitational microlensing surveys like MACHO. These surveys, which look for the bright flashes produced when a massive object’s gravitational field temporarily foregrounds a distant star, initially suggested there was an overabundance of dark objects in our galaxy, driving interest in PBHs.

Unfortunately it wasn’t long before the hype, much like an individual microlensing event, faded. “People got excited,” Dr. Franciolini explains, “But then the observations were refined, and [researchers] discovered that the abundance… was compatible with just the stellar population,” converting a potential discovery into one of the strongest constraints on the number of PBHs in the planet-to-stellar mass range.

For black holes heavier than a few hundred solar masses, low event rates and long lensing timescales make microlensing surveys ineffective. Instead, scientists search for signs of dynamical disruption within astrophysical environments, or look for hints in the gravitational waves produced by merging black holes. In the mid-2010s, the first detection of gravitational waves at the LIGO and VIRGO observatories seemed to support a primordial interpretation, again generating interest in PBHs. In a familiar cycle, however, more sophisticated models eventually did not favor this interpretation.

Unlike with microlensing in the 1990s, this reversal has not significantly dampened interest in PBHs.

Instead, they are increasingly seen as an appealing target in an era of high-precision, data-intensive astronomy. “Asteroid-mass” black holes, which remain the last observationally unconstrained class of PBHs, are particularly tantalizing. “The most interesting [model] to work on is the one that is not yet constrained, but is soon to become constrained,” Dr. Franciolini explains. These black holes (with masses comparable to that of an asteroid or small moon) would be too small to be seen in lensing surveys or gravitational wave detectors, but large enough to avoid disappearing through a process called Hawking radiation. On the other hand, asteroid-mass PBHs present a unique challenge for astronomers owing to their microscopic sizes and minimal gravitational pull.

To get around this issue, most proposals to spot asteroid-mass PBHs leverage their hypothetical abundance: for such small objects to constitute dark matter, there would have to be a lot of them. So many, in fact, that we expect one should pass within our inner solar system every hundred years or so. These invisible visitors, mere nanometers across, would occasionally get close enough to planets to perturb their motion, enabling a search using precision measurements of the position of Mars. Less frequently, these close encounters would result in a direct collision.

For PBHs encountering white dwarfs, such coincidences would be catastrophic, triggering a supernova. Consequently, a universe awash in microscopic black holes may be ever-so-slightly brightened by the afterglow of these stellar detonations.

Collisions with most other bodies would be markedly less dramatic.

In part due to their tiny size and high interstellar speeds, asteroid-mass PBHs would often pass through planets and main-sequence stars unimpeded; only on rare occasions would one be slowed enough during an encounter to get completely captured. Eventually sinking to the cores of these objects, such concealed black holes would slowly engulf their hosts over millions or billions of years, reducing the number of stars in dark matter-heavy environments.

In another science-fiction-turned-reality idea, some scientists hope to use paleodetectors — also known as rocks — to advance their primordial pursuits. The idea isn’t entirely without precedent; rocks are often found to retain microscopic tracks of particles released during radioactive decays. Repeated puncturings by PBHs over Earth’s geological history may have similarly carved out micrometer-scale tubules in rocks, but these would be exceedingly rare. We’ll leave it for you to decide whether scouring granite countertops for dark matter traces seems worth the effort.

This mind-bending scope of these searches, inherent to many dark matter experiments, is unlikely to daunt seasoned researchers. “If you have experiments to search for it, you should do it,” says Dr. Franciolini, speaking more generally about the value of scientific experimentation. As for finally putting the primordial black hole question to rest, he remains cautiously optimistic. “We’re getting there,” he says, “I think it’s the right era.”

Editorial: How to Move Forward on UFO Sightings & Research

2025-09-16T21:00:00.000Z

Reporting by The Wall Street Journal in June revealed that a portion of alleged military UFO encounters were a result of misinformation.

Much of it stemming from "hazing" or a frowned-upon tradition of playing cruel jokes on the uninitiated as a right of passage. This allegedly occurred in the US Air Force over decades. Meanwhile, claims of alleged government UFO coverups remain largely unproven. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the best path to shaping the public's understanding of this phenomenon is through the gathering and scientific analysis of sensor data.

Wall Street Journal journalists Joel Schectman and Aruna Viswanatha recently published part one of an exposé on UFO disinformation disseminated by the Pentagon, primarily the US Air Force. Just a month prior, I also posted an article about official UFO disinformation: in the late 90s, the CIA published a report on their involvement with UFO investigations that included instances of their own deception during the Air Force’s UFO investigations in the 50s. In the late 80s, a former US Air Force Office of Special Investigation (OSI) agent claimed he had also participated in deceiving the public about UFOs. In both cases, the purpose of the deception was to cover up top-secret technology by leading the public to believe what they were seeing was not ours — but aliens.

In order to separate the signal from the noise, it is vital to understand exactly what current UAP information comes from official disinformation. UAP is the new buzzy policy term for UFO, we'll use both as we discuss past events and today's news cycle.

Congress supports the need to target the disinformation and filter it out. When they expressed their expectations for the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the latest UAP investigation organization, they additionally required AARO to investigate “the key historical record of the involvement of the intelligence community with unidentified anomalous phenomena, including… any efforts to obfuscate, manipulate public opinion, hide, or otherwise provide incorrect unclassified or classified information about unidentified anomalous phenomena or related activities.”

I was disappointed when the topic wasn’t included in the first version of AARO’s historical report on UAP released in early 2024. The recent Wall Street Journal article revealed AARO had researched disinformation, but they were pressured by the US Air Force to not report it publicly because of fears the information could “jeopardize secret programs and damage careers.”

The Wall Street Journal found that official UFO disinformation has been a common practice. It has included military personnel disseminating doctored photos of alleged flying saucers at Area 51, secret tests conducted including military personnel without their knowledge and leading them to believe they were seeing UFOs, and decades-long hazing practices that included showing military personnel alleged flying saucer photos and claiming they were from projects that reverse-engineer alien spacecraft.

Among the military personnel given false information about aliens as a joke were officers, which may explain the strong beliefs held by “whistleblowers” at the recent congressional hearing who claim there is a government cover-up regarding the truth about alien visitation. Despite the allegations made in those hearings, no hard evidence or legitimate official documents to back the claims have come to light.

The Wall Street Journal article raises questions about whether the current UAP investigation is a worthwhile effort. The question being, if the Pentagon fooled its own personnel into believing in aliens, then maybe it’s all a waste of time. As someone who has covered this topic for decades, I am long past putting faith in wild claims, but I don’t think I am alone in the belief that there is something worth looking into. I also agree with those who feel the scientific effort is much more capable of tangible, demonstrable discoveries than waiting for confessions from alleged secret keepers to get us answers.

The Pentagon’s first effort to look at the UFO phenomenon was in the late 40s. Back then they were investigating flying saucers, a term made famous by the report of an amateur pilot named Kenneth Arnold. In June, 1947, he reported seeing a formation of shiny objects over Washington state. His report became so famous that it prompted the US Air Force to create Project Sign to look into the flying saucer issue. That evolved into Project Grudge, and then in 1952, Project Blue Book. It was the first chief of Project Blue Book, Col. Ruppelt, who coined the phrase Unidentified Flying Object (UFO). He wanted to bring legitimacy to their effort and highlight the fact that they did not know what the "flying saucers” they were investigating were or where they came from. In other words, we don’t know if they are alien spacecraft, because they remain “unidentified.”

In modern times, the term UFO has been co-opted to represent alien spacecraft.

In a case of history repeating itself, a new term was created by academics, officials, and science minded UFO researchers for the same reasons Ruppelt coined the term UFO. Now we use the phrase Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon (UAP) in an attempt to destigmatize UFO research and remind the public these things are still unidentified. It is yet to be seen if the name change is working as many in the public and the media now use the term UAP to reference alien spacecraft.

By the end of Project Blue Book, the US Air Force had collected over 12,000 UFO reports. Although most were resolved, around 700 could not be explained. Many of these unexplained cases involved military or law enforcement personnel. After several reports of UFOs buzzing Washington National Airport in the summer of 1952, US Air Force Major General John Samford confirmed their commitment to UFO investigations by stating, “a certain percentage of this volume of reports have been made by credible observers of relatively incredible things.”

As is the case today, media coverage of UFO encounters in the past drove the public’s interest in continuing the investigation. That is until 1969, when the US Air Force enlisted the University of Colorado to put together a group of professors, academics, and experts to conduct a supposed unbiased third party analysis into the value of UFO investigation which concluded there was no scientific value to the effort. The US Air Force used that report to claim there was no threat to national security posed by UFOs, and Project Blue Book was closed.

Many argued the report produced by the University of Colorado did not justify the conclusion. In fact, an engineer in France named Claude Poher felt the report was a compelling argument for the continued investigation of UFOs. He successfully petitioned the French government to begin their own investigations which continue to this day.

More recently, the most compelling UAP case is an event that took place off the coast of San Diego in 2004. During training exercises, the chief radar operator with the Nimitz carrier strike group observed strange readings. He was seeing targets move erratically, including dropping from over tens of thousands of feet to ground level in seconds.

Eventually, a couple F-18s were sent to take a look at one of the targets. When they arrived at the location, they saw a disturbance on the water. Hovering above the disturbance was a solid white object. Wing Commander David Fravor approached to get a closer look and described the object as a 40 foot long white Tic Tac lozenge-shaped object that reacted to his presence by turning toward him. The object then avoided Fravor’s attempt to get behind it before it flew off at an incredible speed. In addition to Fravor, his equipment operator, the pilot and equipment operator of the F-18 that accompanied him, and a marine pilot of another aircraft that came to have a look, all witnessed the event.

These pilots are not alone.

Several other US Navy pilots have come forward to say they also had UAP encounters while on duty. The US Navy reacted by enacting new guidelines for UAP reporting in 2019.

The US Navy pilots’ claims, along with allegations of cover-ups by former intelligence personnel, propelled the UFO topic to a level of interest that has never been equaled. With so much attention on the sensational claims of the alleged whiteblowers, sober conversations from credible institutions regarding how to best investigate UAP have gone unnoticed.

While a lot of attention has been given to AARO’s claims that they have found no credible evidence of extraterrestrial visitation, they have also stated “UAP continue to represent a hazard to flight safety and pose a possible adversary collection threat.” AARO reports have repeatedly demonstrated that many cases go unresolved due to a lack of data. The solution? AARO says it is “to document, analyze, and when possible, resolve UAP reports using a rigorous scientific framework and a data-driven approach.”

And before anyone writes AARO off as solely interested in debunking, current AARO Director Jon Kosloski recently made an appearance on Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Startalk podcast and made some shocking comments. When discussing cases that merit further investigation, he mentioned hovering black triangles the size of a Prius and glowing orbs reported by “local law enforcement.”

NASA also put together a study group of scientists to look into UAP. The NASA Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study’s task was not to investigate UAP, or review the history of UAP investigations, but rather to advise NASA on how they could “move the scientific understanding of UAPs forward.” The group was given 9 months, and a budget not to exceed $100,000 to review the data available and put together their report. NASA’s study group took the effort seriously and came to a similar conclusion as AARO. In their final report they wrote: “The study of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) presents a unique scientific opportunity that demands a rigorous, evidence-based approach.”

Using the Nimitz incident as an example, we have a case in which credible witnesses are reporting incredible things, just as Samford observed in the 50s. However, the data is solely anecdotal, and we have no sensor data to confirm the event or record the nature of the phenomena observed. This data could have given investigators enough information to identify the object as either something mundane, advanced human technology operating in an area it shouldn't be, or indeed anomalous. In the case of the latter, the data would be even more valuable. If it reveals something exotic, it would give us insight into the nature of the phenomenon observed.

Whatever the situation, data collection and analysis is vital.

Harvard professor and astrophysicist Avi Loeb agrees. Via email he said the key to figuring out the nature of UAP is “by collecting scientific-quality data on them through dedicated observatories.” He created the Galileo Project, whose goal “is to bring the search for extraterrestrial technological signatures of Extraterrestrial Technological Civilizations (ETCs) from accidental or anecdotal observations and legends to the mainstream of transparent, validated and systematic scientific research.”

Loeb says, “The Galileo Project is currently assembling three such observatories that will monitor millions of objects in the sky every year.” Their first observatory was on the rooftop of a building on the Harvard campus. Their paper “Overview of the Galileo Project” reviews some of the equipment used on the rooftop observatory, including multiple types of cameras, passive radar antennas, audio equipment to analyze sound, a spectrum analyzer, and more.

I asked Loeb, who recently proposed a “Vision for a UAP-Manhattan Project,” whether all of the effort was worth it. He replied, “Definitely. Because the intelligence agencies discuss UAP and therefore the collection of data could help national security even if all UAP are human made.”

In their report, NASA went on to make a few more suggestions. To bring much needed transparency to UAP studies, the report suggests “a strategy that encourages citizen analysis of UAP data would bring an element of transparency to the field that could help combat biases, preconceived skepticism, and mistrust of authorities.”

The report also suggests “engaging the public is also a critical aspect of understanding UAP. The panel sees several advantages to augmenting data collection efforts using modern crowdsourcing techniques, including open-source smartphone-based apps that simultaneously gather imaging data and other smartphone sensor metadata from multiple citizen observers worldwide.”

I am a consultant with a company named Enigma Labs, which has based its business on utilizing the phone for crowdsourcing UAP data with their free Enigma app. In the spirit of data collection and crowdsourcing, the app enables the public to submit and share their UAP reports, allows users to browse local reports and read about historically significant cases, alerts users to nearby events, and facilitates public engagement in the analysis of the reports.

The app also includes an augmented reality camera that displays real-time aircraft, satellites, and celestial objects in order to rule out mundane explanations for whatever they are seeing. Enigma receives hundreds of reports weekly, many with pictures and videos. The app enables anyone interested in participating in UAP research to get involved.

I review the video submissions daily to find the most mysterious and entertaining. Enigma shares the most interesting reports with users and on social media. The most mysterious ones, I also share with a small number of serious and credentialed researchers interested in doing this work. The ultimate goal is to produce a case that inspires a peer-reviewed paper, which either adds to scientific knowledge by discovering a novel phenomenon or uncovers something truly exotic.

To date, there are no photos or videos universally accepted as being anomalous. However, military pilots are still encountering objects they can not explain. Even AARO has admitted they are receiving an abundance of reports, many of which go unexplained due to a lack of data.

The conspiracy field is infamously unreliable, and through disinformation, intelligence agencies have probably done more harm than good when it comes to UAP research. But we don’t need to chase conspiracies or rely on the Pentagon to conduct real research and come up with solid answers. SETI is an example of fruitful research, despite the lack of a confirmed signal from an extraterrestrial intelligence.

I have covered science enough to know that many scientists, especially those dealing with space, love Star Trek. In Star Trek, the federation researches less advanced extraterrestrial civilizations by attempting to observe them without being detected. They don’t send them radio signals. And even if we are not being visited by aliens (yet), isn’t the quest of researching unidentified anomalous phenomena what science is really about?

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This editorial was published in collaboration with our friends at Enigma, the #1 destination for UAP sightings and alerts. Share your sighting, explore case studies, and connect with a global network of skywatchers. Download the app to search the skies with Enigma.

And for all sanctioned spacecraft and the databasing of Earth-based terrestrials, download the Supercluster App.

40 Years Later: The Flaws and Timeless Themes of Carl Sagan's Contact

2025-09-09T21:00:00.000Z

Is Carl Sagan’s Contact a dated space adventure or sweeping masterpiece that carries relevance today?

It’s been forty years since Carl Sagan’s novel, Contact, was published amidst a blaze of publicity, hype and genuine curiosity about what arguably the world’s greatest ever science communicator had concocted.

It’s the story of a SETI researcher whose project discovers a signal from an extraterrestrial civilization, a message with instructions to build a device of unknown purpose, believed to be a means of transport to take a small crew to meet the aliens. Dig deeper, however, and you’ll find a tale that considers the meaning of life and God, of humanity’s place in the Universe, in the conflict between science and religion, and of an author longing to see his late father again.

Such was Sagan’s star power that, in 1981, he received a $2 million advance from Simon & Schuster to write Contact. Sagan must have had a hell of an agent: at the time it was the largest advance ever given to an author for a book that had not yet been written. But Simon & Schuster’s faith in Sagan’s novel was well-rewarded; in the first two years after publication in September 1985, Contact sold 1.7 million copies worldwide.

Further popularity lay ahead when, in 1997, Contact was adapted into a Hollywood blockbuster directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Jodie Foster. Sadly, Sagan passed away the year before.

Contact isn’t just a science fiction book about alien contact; it’s also a depiction of a possible future around the turn of the millennium from the viewpoint of the early 1980s, and it’s fascinating to compare how Sagan saw the near-future to how it actually turned out. I suspect he may have been disappointed in our lack of progress.

We certainly don’t have space habitats.

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is at the heart of Contact – its main character, Ellie Arroway, is the director of a massive SETI project, and Sagan delves deep into the technicalities of funding and conducting such a search. In real life, SETI continues listening and looking at the stars with guaranteed funding for years ahead, although perhaps not meeting the levels of investment on depicted in Contact. Perhaps the novel, followed by the film, percolated through the public’s consciousness to have an influence, at least in part, on the acceptance and growth of SETI as a serious scientific field.

There’s a lot in Sagan’s novel to dissect, so we’ll do so in four sections.

The Listeners

In the novel, the alien signal is picked up by the fictional Argus Array – a network of 131 telescopes scattered across the New Mexico desert. In the 1997 movie, the alien signal is detected by the 27 radio telescopes of the Very Large Array (VLA), which is a real radio interferometer that’s also in New Mexico, and which produced one of the movie’s key iconic visuals of Jodie Foster listening with her head phones while sat on her car, the VLA’s dishes serving as an impressive backdrop. The iconic scene became the movie's poster.

Yet, ironically, in 1997 the VLA didn’t even do SETI – it has only been in recent years, since 2020, that the VLA has been utilized in partnership with the SETI Institute.

The fictional Argus Array was probably inspired by Project Cyclops, which is the result of a design study from a NASA SETI workshop in 1971, chaired by Barney Oliver and John Billingham. Bob Dixon, who directed the Ohio State SETI program that discovered the infamous Wow! signal, described Project Cyclops as the greatest radio telescope never built. It would have featured a thousand radio dishes each 100-meters in diameter – in other words, a thousand Green Bank Telescopes – contributing to a total collecting area of about ten square kilometers, eclipsing even the Square Kilometer Array.

As an aside, there was a real-life Project Argus, which was a network of amateur radio dishes spearheaded by the SETI League. The aim was to fill the network with 5,000 stations in what the SETI League described as the most ambitious SETI project ever undertaken without government equipment or funding. Unfortunately, the project peaked in the early 2000s with 142 amateur stations. In 2024 the SETI League announced that they were winding down operations, and their final newsletter was issued in the early months of 2025 as their surviving founding members retired.

In Sagan’s fictional world, SETI has a radio telescope array that astronomers could only dream about. In the novel this leads to tensions with certain sections of the astrophysics community, spearheaded by ardent Argus critic Dave Drumlin who believes that such a facility should be used for more ‘mainstream’ astronomy.

“There are first-rate projects that aren’t finding telescope time … because this facility – by far the best phased array in the world – is being used almost entirely for SETI … this is pandering to UFO kooks and comic strips and weak-minded adolescents,” he moans.

The idea that SETI shouldn’t even be considered real science was prevalent not just back in the 1970s and 1980s, but even as recently as 2009 when Nature’s editors described SETI as having “always sat at the edge of mainstream astronomy … partly because, no matter how scientifically rigorous its practitioners try to be, SETI can’t escape an association with UFO believers and other such crackpots. But it is also because SETI is arguably not a falsifiable experiment.”

Such short-sighted criticism seems out of place today, with astronomers and scientists routinely talking about alien life. The winds of change have undoubtedly come from the massive exoplanet industry that makes no bones about searching for habitable worlds.

As for falsifiability, this is an old argument that even Sagan, through his character Arroway, addressed in Contact. In response to Drumlin, she passionately declares that “If we fail, we learn something of the rarity of intelligent life … and if we succeed, we hit the cosmic jackpot.”

The Message

The initial detection in Contact is a burst of radio waves communicating prime numbers – i.e. integers that can only be divided by one and themselves, for example 1, 2, 3, 7, 11, 13 etc. The order of the prime numbers is seemingly random, but they hide several layers of complexity that is embedded within the changing sequence of numbers. First there’s a replay of the television broadcast of Hitler at the 1936 Munich Olympic Games, just to get our attention before the signal begins churning out blueprints for a mysterious machine that proves to be a transport for venturing through wormholes.

Sequences of prime numbers do not occur naturally, and so a signal encoded in prime numbers would instantly tell us that it is artificial in origin.

A message encoded in prime numbers would also tell us something else, which is that on a basic level the aliens must have similar mathematic and scientific disciplines. Indeed, a fundamental conceit of SETI is that the aliens will be using science that, even if we don’t understand it, is a direct progression from our current scientific understanding. Many philosophers of science argue that science and mathematics are universal, independent of space and time and are the same for everyone, everywhere.

However, another school of thought is that human science is a human invention, and that our mathematics is parochial rather than universal. Take prime numbers: we place importance on them because we place importance on whole integers. Perhaps to another technological species with a wholly different evolution and culture, fractions are more important, or they interpret numbers in different ways.

Sagan’s aliens are very much purveyors of the same kind of science and mathematics that we humans understand, to the point that they make it relatively easy for us to build a machine that can travel down a wormhole – even though the characters have no idea that is what it is for. The point is that math provides a common language with which they can communicate with us. Will it be the same in real life? Until we meet them, we have no idea.

Our Response

If, at long last, we should detect a radio signal from another civilization among the stars, answering the ages-old question of whether we are alone, how should we feel about it?

SETI researchers have tried brainstorming what people’s responses might be, and opinions have varied from real-life contact being an epochal event that transforms society, to it being greeted with a shrug of the shoulders and people just getting on with their lives. Ultimately we don’t know for sure how people and governments would respond until it happens, but suggesting that there would be a mixture of responses seems like a safe bet.

The mixed response is the direction that Sagan takes in Contact. There’s the scientists, who just want to embrace the message without giving other concerns too much thought. There’s governments, politicians and the military, eager to put their stamp on things and use events to their advantage, particularly when there’s hundreds of millions of dollars involved in building the machine in the aliens’ blueprints. Then there is the reaction of the religious, suddenly confronted by something not in their scripture.

What role do aliens have to play, if any, in God’s domain?

There are characters in Contact to provide the viewpoints from each of these communities. The scientists are portrayed as idealists, driven by the pureness of their curiosity – even the skeptical Drumlin quickly comes around when he realizes the message is the real deal. The military are portrayed as suspicious, bordering on paranoid. The politicians are hamstrung by bureaucracy. And the religious viewpoint is treated as largely fundamentalist, believing that the message is the work of the devil. Though these characters are fairly one-dimensional and fit certain archetypes (or should that be stereotypes) to suit the novel, they very efficiently if not subtly convey the idea that a lot of people are going to respond in a lot of different ways to the discovery of a real alien signal.

In 2000 Iván Almár and Jill Tarter developed the Rio Scale (so-named because it was first presented at the International Astronautical Congress held in Rio de Janeiro that year) that aims to quantify the impact on society of different types of possible alien contact. It runs from the lowest impact, nil, to an extraordinary impact of 10 on the scale. There’s a fun Rio Scale calculator that you can assess different scenarios with. A weak omnidirectional broadcast with uncertain credibility requiring further verification would score low on the Rio scale. The signal in Contact – Earth-specific, detected by a SETI radio telescope, from relatively nearby (the star Vega, 25 light years away) and authentically alien without a shadow of a doubt, rates a 9 on the scale (were it from our own Solar System it would have scored the highest impact rating of 10, since it would mean the aliens were already here).

Since 1985, there has been research into how different religions would respond to alien contact, which is a topic that I previously wrote about for Supercluster. While there is still debate among theologians, many are open to the idea of alien life and for them the challenges that it will pose to their faith are surmountable. Certainly, Contact does not present a well-rounded view of how religion might respond, concerning itself mostly with just Christian fundamentalists.

The military paranoia, however, could be much worse than Sagan anticipated. In his novel, military figures are controlling of the project, intent on locking down anything that doesn’t fit the narrative that they want to present to the world at large. However, the detection of the message and the subsequent cooperation between nations to build the alien machine leads to a rapprochement between the Cold War powers.

Things might work out differently if a recent paper by Ken Wisian and John Traphagan is correct. In a previous article, I wrote about how they suggest that the detection of an extraterrestrial signal by one nation could spark an arms race between opposing nations through the perception that the message might contain important technological information. How would other nations know that the country that detected the message isn’t hiding some of its information to keep for themselves?

How much paranoia would that generate?

However, in a strong rebuttal, Jason Wright, Chelsea Haramia and Gabriel Swiney pour cold water on the idea, because it’s unlikely the signal could be kept secret. A signal would first have to be verified by another observatory elsewhere in the world, to prove that it’s not local radio frequency interference, and that means sharing the coordinates on the sky from where the signal seems to be coming from, and this is exactly what happens in Contact. Every nation on Earth tracks the signal, gathering parts of the message to share with each other.

The optimistic outlook does rely on scientists’ first instinct being to share receipt of the signal. In countries with more secretive governments, such as China and Russia, this may not always be the case. Contact shows us the ideal best scenario, with everyone working together and coming closer together as a result. We have to make sure that if we ever detect an alien signal, the same spirit of cooperation is fostered in real life too.

Galactic Civilization

The latter stages of Contact are where it ostensibly turns from a near-future thriller into pure science fiction. A crew of five, including Arroway, are whisked away by machine on a journey through wormholes and between star systems, from Earth to Vega to the near the center of the galaxy, where they dock with a huge, sprawling space station. It’s heavily inspired by Arthur C Clarke’s novel of 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which the Monolith transports Dave Bowman across space to what Clarke describes as the ‘Grand Central Station of the Galaxy’ – Sagan even names one of his chapters after the New York terminal.

In Contact, having entered the space station, the crew of five find themselves on a simulation of a tropical beach, and they each meet an alien in the guise of a loved one. In Arroway’s case – after some unwillingness, which seem strange after she has come all that way – the alien comes to her with the appearance of her late father. He tells Arroway that he’s from a kind of Office of the Galactic Census, collecting information on other species, while his civilization, which is made up of a large number of species from many worlds, is performing some indescribable astro-engineering project at Cygnus A, which in reality is a powerful radio galaxy.

It’s been the hope of SETI practitioners, all the way back to the beginning with Frank Drake and, indeed, Sagan who was at the very first SETI conference at Green Bank in 1961, that there is an interstellar civilization of worlds out there that we might one day join. It has even been posited as an explanation for the Fermi paradox – that we are in some kind of ‘galactic zoo’ maintained by this galactic civilization, possibly to enforce a kind of ‘prime directive’ of non-interference.

In Contact, the aliens say they reached out to us because we are in a troubling period in our history, but that we display a remarkable adaptability that may yet see us survive. While they don’t offer concrete help or technology, this concept of extraterrestrial civilizations helping us is a popular one among SETI scientists, and was an idea Sagan himself espoused, in both fiction and in his factual writings about SETI.

Does Contact Still Stand Up Today?

Contact was published at the height of Carl Sagan’s fame, and its reputation and popularity reflects that. Objectively, it’s not the greatest science fiction novel of all time – too often Sagan slips into lecture mode in his prose, and his characters are mostly one dimensional other than Arroway, who isn’t the most likeable character, coming across as having a smug arrogance that she actually reflects on towards the end of the novel. Nevertheless, Contact is engaging, channeling the charisma of its author. Despite being 40 years old, its scientific ideas are not dated or quaint; if anything, they still hold up today. Though its themes have had four decades to develop further, this actually works in the novel’s favor, making it even more pertinent.

Would Contact gain the same adoration from readers had it been released today? It’s hard to say. There are no more scientific celebrities who are household names like Sagan was – Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye, former students of Sagan’s, possibly comes closest.

Sagan was a polymath who was an excellent communicator and whose interests in alien life and space exploration were shared by many of the public, which meant that there was eager anticipation for Contact ahead of its release. While it has undoubtedly been Sagan’s star power that helped sell so many copies over the years, Contact has its own intrinsic merit that has allowed it to stand the test of time.

Can Trump’s Golden Dome Stop a Nuke? Probably Not

2025-09-02T21:00:00.000Z

At a cost of $175 billion, the Golden Dome project, championed by U.S. President Donald Trump, is supposed to solve the danger of nuclear annihilation once and for all. But will it?

In the early morning on August 6th, several hundred people gathered at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park to commemorate the 80th anniversary of history’s first and so-far only one of two nuclear bomb attacks. The gathered, among them a handful of aged survivors, held a minute of silence at 8:15 to mark the precise moment when the 15-kiloton uranium bomb named Little Boy erased Hiroshima’s entire city center.

Among the 13 square kilometers (5 square miles) of rubble, some 70,000 people found instant death. Further tens of thousands perished in the following days from injuries and acute radiation sickness. In the decades that ensued, thousands of others succumbed to cancer, which they had developed due to long-term radiation effects.

As recently as July 21st 2025, Vladimir Putin indicated that he'll consider a nuclear attack on Ukraine if he feels pressed to do so, according to Sky News. Putin’s frequent nuclear rhetoric has, for over three years, kept European nations from supporting Ukraine in a meaningful way, showing how impotent the world’s western militaries become when nukes are in play.

“These developments flagrantly disregard the lessons the international community should have learned from the tragedies of history,” Hiroshima’s mayor Kazumi Matsui commented at the memorial.

Assured Destruction

The nuclear bomb is humankind’s self-made Damocles Sword. Until today, the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destructions remains the only brake holding nations back from unleashing a shared nuclear hell. It gambles on instincts of self preservation and the logic of strongmen. Few find comfort in this setup.

Russia possesses the largest stockpile of warheads among all nuclear powers. According to estimates, the country may have more than 4,000 nuclear weapons available, followed by the U.S. with some 3,700 nukes. China is expanding its nuclear arsenal which currently stands at around 600 weapons. France and the UK have less than 600 nukes between them. Rising powers India and Pakistan have under 200 nuclear warheads each. Israel has about 90. Then there are the bullish upstarts North Korea and Iran, who have made significant leaps in their nuclear programs in recent years. Together with the geopolitical tensions, the risk of someone, somewhere taking the destructive first step are rising. And people around the world are rightfully asking whether there is anything that could be done to avert nuclear apocalypse.

Donald Trump’s desire to find a technical solution to the nuclear annihilation threat was allegedly inspired by the reported 90% reliability of Israel’s Iron Dome. But many experts doubt that the Iron Dome concept could be scaled into an impenetrable shield protecting the entire U.S. from the most sophisticated threats. Iron Dome mostly takes down short-range rockets and artillery shells, frequently home-made by terrorists in Gaza. Golden Dome would be able to deflect cutting-edge glide bombs and supersonic and hypersonic ballistic missiles launched anytime, anywhere in the world by the best equipped militaries.

Unveiled only a week after Trump’s inauguration, Golden Dome is one of the most ambitious defense ventures in America’s history. According to information released by Reuters on August 12th, the system should consist of four layers including a constellation of satellites and a combination of ground-based short-range and long-range ballistic missile interceptors.

Companies including SpaceX and its Starlink, Amazon Kuiper, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman have been cited as the most likely providers of technology sub-systems for the shield. But so far, details are scarce.

Shrouded in Mystery

The Trump administration has been silent on Golden Dome recently, despite the fact that the U.S. Congress in May authorized an initial $24.4 billion of funding for the development in its 2025 Reconciliation Bill.

At the 2025 Space and Missile Defense Symposium held August 5th to 7th, in Huntsville, Alabama, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth refused to discuss Golden Dome, according to media reports. The embargo surprised journalist. As the Atlantic stated, “Golden Dome is projected to cost gobs of money and [the Space and Missile Defense Symposium] is exactly the kind of place where the government can tell its story and get science, industry, and the military on the same page.”

Fred Lamb, an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Illinois and arms control and disarmament expert, thinks that this silence is not a coincidence.

“They don’t want people to be able to criticize it,” Lamb told Supercluster.

“If you keep it secret, people can’t point out problems.”

Lamb is one of many nuclear defense experts who think that Golden Dome has little chance to deliver on Trump’s promises and is likely to follow the fate of the Strategic Defense Initiative — an anti-nuke space shield project, also known under the mocking nickname Star Wars, studied in the 1980s during Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

Some space industry analysts, however, think that advances in space technology, including the reduction of launch and satellite production cost that have taken place since the Reagan era, may have changed the equation. More importantly, they see the project as a unique opportunity for the space industry. Supercluster reached out to several space industry experts to comment on Golden Dome’s feasibility but has not received a response, which is highly unusual.

The Architecture of a Nuclear Attack

Among those who think Golden Dome might actually work is former Space Development Agency (SDA) director Fred Kennedy. In an article published on the Aerospace America website in April, Kennedy argued that with advances in interceptor technology and small satellite manufacturing, a comprehensive space-based missile defense system looks “both feasible and practical.”

But Lamb, who chaired a 13-strong group of physicists that in 2022 compiled a 54-page report analyzing U.S. nuclear defense capabilities, thinks the concept stands against the constraints of fundamental physical feasibility. The 2022 report, commissioned by the American Physical Society, received an amendment this year, specifically addressing the Golden Dome project and its departure from reality.

Co-authored by Lamb and Laura Grego, a former MIT researcher, now a research director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, the report amendment considers Golden Dome “technically infeasible” and likely to “waste hundreds of billions of dollars on inherently ineffective systems.”

“Currently, the U.S. has the ground-based mid-course defense system, which was designed to be helpful against small countries like North Korea, who represent a relatively primitive nuclear missile threat,” Lamb said. “But even North Korea has perfected its missile threat and it’s grown much larger. The Golden Dome, however, has been proposed to protect against any threat. Not just from those smaller countries, but also our peer adversaries like Russia and China.”

The report, referring to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office released earlier this year, states that to reliably intercept one or two intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) fired by North Korea, would require a constellation of at least a thousand space-based interceptors, which would come at a cost of up to $542 billion. That is significantly more than the $175 billion price tag advertised by the Trump administration for the full-blown Golden Dome shield.

A nuclear war with Russia would certainly see the US warding off much more numerous nuke salvos and therefore requiring many more interceptors.

At Odds with Physics

The orbiting interceptors, Lamb says, would target the incoming missiles during the boost-phase — the early powered flight stage immediately after launch when the nuclear warhead is still enclosed in the missile’s nose cone. But this stage is extremely short — four minutes at best — meaning any interceptor, whether space or ground-based, must be located within 500 kilometers (310 miles) of the launch site to have a chance of success, according to Lamb.

But satellites zoom around the planet at mind-boggling speeds of nearly eight kilometers per second. To have enough orbiting interceptors in place to shoot down every missile in every salvo fired from every possible launch site around the world every second of the day would require a constellation of tens of thousands of satellites.

The report estimates that to take down a single salvo of ten ICBMs would require a constellation of at least 40,000 spacecraft.

“We found that to defend even against that kind of threat would require a trillion dollars just to build it and launch the system,” said Lamb. “We are not even talking about maintaining and replacing it.”

A shield against a full-scale nuke attack would need more than 150,000 satellites to be even remotely effective, said Lamb.

“If you have a nuclear war, even if only one warhead gets through, the consequences would be absolutely catastrophic,” Lamb said. “For this reason, you wouldn’t want to fire just one interceptor at each missile but at least four and with that, you quickly get into absolutely astronomical numbers of satellites.”

Fred Kennedy, on the other hand, believes that a modest constellation of around 300 satellites, each fitted with multiple interceptor rockets, could provide global coverage and decent, although not “entirely foolproof” defense.

“A critic might argue that such a missile defense isn’t worth it because two nuclear missiles could still get through,” Kennedy wrote. “And I concede, this would indeed be a tragic day for the United States and humanity. But — crucially — it would not end humanity.”

He also argues that as the cost of space systems continues to decrease, the interceptor technology might soon become more affordable than the ballistic missiles carrying those nuclear warheads.

The Decoy Problem

Kennedy’s interceptors, however, due to their lower numbers, might be forced to target the incoming missiles not in the early boost phase but in the mid-course phase, which lasts up to 30 minutes and begins after the rocket detaches from the warhead.

The existing U.S. Ground-based Mid-Course Defense System has been developed to do just that using interceptors fired from silos at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Only a handful of tests of the system have been conducted so far in somewhat realistic conditions, Laura Grego, coauthor of the Golden Dome assessment, told Supercluster. Out of those tests, only about 50% were successful.

Grego doubts a space-based nuke shield would primarily target missiles in the mid-course phase. Experts believe that any determined attacker would pack multiple decoy objects on every single missile together with the deadly nuclear warhead. That makes any deflection difficult as the defender must either attempt to shoot down every single object or find ways to reliably differentiate between the decoys and the warhead. In fact, the decoy problem prompted experts to consider a space-based nuke shield in the 1980s as they couldn’t find a solution to distinguish the decoys quickly and reliably.

“Doing mid-course defense in space takes the worst of both worlds,” said Grego. “You’re putting yourself in space where it’s expensive and difficult and on top of that you have the decoy problem that we don’t know how to solve.”

None of the Ground-based Mid-Course Defense System tests conducted so far included decoys, said Grego. These tests focused solely on the mechanics of hitting one super fast object with another super fast object.

“The decoy problem is the absolute challenge [in mid-course ballistic missile defense] and has been recognized since the 1960s,” said Grego. “These decoys can be relatively lightweight, and you can pack many of them.”

Sensors, such as radars and infrared detectors, might, theoretically, help distinguish the nuclear warhead from the empty cases, but concealment methods exist that a determined adversary could easily deploy to make the detection almost impossible.

“They might include battery-operated heaters in the decoys to make them as warm as the warhead or they can conceal the warhead in a liquid nitrogen cooling jacket,” Grego said.

Facing that many objects, the defenders might be inclined to try to shoot down all of them. But that creates another vulnerability — they could run out of available interceptors and have none at hand for the next incoming salvo.

“That’s part of the strategy,” said Grego. “To overwhelm the defense and force it to exhaust itself.”

Nuclear Arms Race

Like many other experts, Grego and Lamb are concerned that the Golden Dome will likely prompt a nuclear arms race as adversaries will do all in their power to challenge America’s assumed untouchability.

“There is no technical possibility of building a successful defense system, but the adversary is always thinking about the worst case,” said Lamb. “They will start building more nuclear weapons and unfortunately, because the system is hardly going to be reliable, if anything goes wrong, more nuclear weapons will come through and the damage, death and destruction will be greater. It’s completely counterproductive.”

A space-based missile defense system could also likely be taken down by a nuclear detonation in space, something Russia is already thinking about.

So, what is the solution?

Will we live with the Damocles Sword of Mutual Assured Destruction hanging over our heads?

“Almost anyone who studies nuclear weapons in a serious way eventually comes to the conclusion that while we need to manage the threat at the moment, the ultimate answer is that we can’t coexist with nuclear weapons in the long term,” said Grego. “A reliable technical fix is unlikely but nuclear deterrence is not a long-term strategy either because human beings are flawed. We simply need to disarm.”

As long as the U.S. administration remains tightlipped, experts will remain skeptical. There is not much time left to deliver on the lofty promises. Golden Dome is supposed to be fully operational by the end of Trump’s current presidential term.

Canada's Artemis II Mission Patch Highlights Indigenous Teachings

2025-08-26T21:00:00.000Z

This Canadian mission patch features the seven sacred teachings of an Indigenous nation.

As Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen began training for the upcoming Artemis II mission, there was one special thing on his mind — a patch he'll adorn during flight. Hansen will be the first Canadian to circle the moon when the mission launches in 2026, and he already knew where to pull an inspirational design from.

Hansen makes periodic visits to Turtle Lodge, a center for Indigenous education and knowledge in Sagkeeng First Nation (also known as Fort Alexander) in Manitoba, on the southern tip of Lake Winnipeg. Throughout the lodge is art, including that of Anishinaabe artist Henry Guimond; Guimond was the architect and head man in the construction of Turtle Lodge.

"He mentioned that he wanted to start working and creating this patch, that would have some representation of Indigenous peoples," recalled Dave "Sabe" Courchene III, who is today's leader of the Turtle Lodge, in an interview with Supercluster. "Definitely we can work that out," he recalled saying to Hansen; Guimond is Courchene's brother-in-law, who was "ecstatic" to participate.

Hansen and Guimond went back and forth several times on the patch design — a difficult endeavour given that much Indigenous knowledge can only be shared by certain people, in certain seasons, or in certain locations.

"The knowledge that's presented there… is what we call the seven sacred laws, or seven sacred teachings that are represented by animals," Courchene said. "Each of these animals carry and represent each teaching. The animals are a reminder of us to how connected we are to the land, and all of creation."

The participation by Indigenous teachers in Hansen's mission is far from token; Hansen has made several visits to Turtle Lodge even before he was named to the mission in April 2023. Just two months later, Courchene himself invited Hansen to the lodge for a four-day ceremony known as a vision quest, which requires participants to fast under supervision from Indigenous elders.

As the vision quest is highly personal, Hansen has said little about it publicly — but Courchene did explain the ceremony's significance more generally in a 2010 video on YouTube. Spending time on the land, "creates an opening" for participants to create a direction in their lives from a place of peace, he said.

While Hansen's patch is not the first time a CSA astronaut had Indigenous elements on a mission emblem, the Artemis 2 patch represents the importance of what Hansen learned from his decade of work with Indigenous peoples.

The patch includes many elements relevant to Hansen, some of which come from other aspects of his identity or of the space program. For example: a bow is meant to represent Artemis herself, the sister of Apollo as well as a Greek goddess with relations to hunting, nature and the moon. Hansen's decades of service in the Royal Canadian Air Force are symbolized by astronaut wings; he began as a cadet and is now a colonel, still an active duty member while being an astronaut.

But Turtle Lodge's teachings are central to the meaning of the patch.

The artwork is meant to show Artemis launching an arrow (and the astronaut crew) "around Grandmother Moon, who conveys the cycle of life," according to a CSA description. "It is said that she watches over the waters of Earth, regulates the tides and feeds life. The arrow launches from Turtle Island, which refers to the continent of North America in the creation stories of some Indigenous peoples."

Surrounding the patch are the seven sacred animals, which are intrinsically linked to the land upon which Turtle Lodge was built. The buffalo is meant to show respect; the eagle, love and the bear, courage. The bigfoot or giant — also Courchene's first name, Sabe, in the Ojibway language — is honesty. The final three animals are the beaver for wisdom, the wolf for humility, and the turtle for truth.

"I know Jeremy has really connected and related to that," Courchene said of the seven sacred animals. "He's said that he uses them almost like a guiding principle, on how to work and to prepare himself for his mission."

Hansen's work touches on other communities as well, particularly in the north of Canada; one example was participating in the opening of an educational space in 2018 at L'nu Sipuk Kina'Muokuom School in Sipekne'katik First Nation in Nova Scotia, according to a CBC News report at the time.

Hansen is also among the Canadian and American astronauts who have visited the Kamestastin (or Mistastin) Lake meteorite impact structure in northern Labrador. The meteorite site is analogous to what astronauts may excavate on the moon one day; for example, the crater has anorthosite, which is commonly found at the south pole of the moon where NASA may set up a lunar base for future Artemis missions.

Geology expeditions there included Innu Guardians, or Indigenous experts who manage the local lands and waters; one with Hansen in 2023, for example, included guardians Hank Rich and David Nui. The Guardians shared "everything about the Innu nation — where they've come from, the structure of their society, what their values are as a people, and some of the challenges," said Gordon Osinski, a planetary geologist at Western University in London, Ont. who led the expedition — and who often trains CSA and NASA astronauts alike at craters.

Their stories included discussions of the effects of colonization, Osinski said; the conversations included research, for example shown in a 2016 peer-reviewed paper from the American Journal of Public Health, finding that Innu and Inuit communities in Labrador had a disproportionate rate of suicide to their neighbours.

Addressing the causes are complex, the paper acknowledges; the literature consulted urges changes to "structural inequities" like poverty, and a focus on community-wide change rather than on individuals, that must be "rooted in culturally specific knowledge." Another issue is that several Indigenous communities in Labrador were told to relocate in the mid-20th century.

A later government-funded relocation of the Mushuau Innu from Davis Inlet to Natuashish in 2002-03, however, included Indigenous consultation and autonomy in choosing the location in which they would resettle, according to a 2006 paper in Acadiensis by Mount Allison University.

Canada's past decade of Indigenous relations has been overseen by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The independent commission was founded in 2007 in the wake of a class-action settlement concerning residential schools in Canada. TRC received millions of dollars in financial support from public coffers, and spent eight years creating a record of residential school ills including abuse, deaths and language loss. The commission also released a six-volume report in 2015 that included 94 "calls to action" to facilitate reconciliation.

How well the government did in meeting these calls to action is up for debate, but what is certain is there are different perspectives to consider. For example: Hilding Neilson, a Mi'kmaw person from the Qalipu First Nation of Ktaqmkuk Newfoundland and Labrador, is a stellar astrophysicist and assistant professor at Memorial University in Newfoundland.

In 2021, he co-authored a paper in response to a CSA consultation concerning its future space exploration activities. For example, there is a difficulty in exploring the moon and Mars in a way respectful to the needs of Indigenous peoples.

"The importance of the moon and Mars — as part of the cultures and knowledge systems of Indigenous peoples from around the world, and that part for many peoples — is one of relation," the paper notes, paraphrasing one aspect of a book by Gregory Cajete, who is a humanities scholar and Tewa Indian from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico.

"In the situation of relationality, the moon and Mars and other solar systems objects have their own rights to exist and be. Those rights are not necessarily incongruent with exploration and mining," the paper continues. "However, they do require a significant reconsideration of what constitutes a human right to interact with the moon and Mars."

Hansen himself has noted the divide with non-Indigenous people such as himself, each time he has been invited to work with an Indigenous nation. "Every time I am invited to participate in an Indigenous ceremony, I often feel a little bit uncomfortable showing up," Hansen said in a CSA video about the patch, and his Indigenous mentors. (He was not available for an interview due to his training schedule.)

"I'm not sure if I really belong there, but every time I am overwhelmed by how welcomed I am and how loving they are," he continued. "Every time I've had the opportunity to sit with an Elder and listen to their wisdom, I've always appreciated the perspectives they've shared."

Canada's framework for moon exploration coexists under the NASA-led Artemis Accords framework, which extend the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 into a "non-binding set of principles" for civil space exploration, according to the U.S. Department of State. Canada was one of the first signatories to the accords in 2020; simply put, they act as both a tool of space policy as well as an instrument by which some signatories make contributions to moon exploration.

Canada has several financial contributions related to the moon, but the largest and most relevant to Artemis may be Canadarm3. It's the third in a series of robotic arms that have been used on the space shuttle and then on the International Space Station. Canadarm3 is slated for use on NASA's Gateway space station; that said, negotiations are ongoing concerning Gateway's funding in fiscal 2026 after the White House zeroed out Gateway in its "skinny budget."

Assuming all goes forward as planned, however, Canadarm3 is central to CSA participating in Artemis. The Toronto-area MDA Space, which manages all the previous generations of arms, received a contract worth nearly $1B CDN ($730,000 USD under current exchange rates) in 2024 to design, construct and test the arm. Funding for this project will allow Hansen to fly on Artemis 2 — as well as other CSA astronauts, on other Gateway missions. A lunar landing with a Canadian may even be possible one day, Hansen told me for another publication in 2023.

Hansen's training schedule is demanding, but he prioritizes his time at Turtle Lodge, quietly making visits that he only advertises – if at all – well after the visit has concluded. He takes what he learns very seriously: "The mentoring that I've received in The Turtle Lodge has certainly been one of those great examples of a group of people with an open heart, a loving heart, just adding deep and meaningful value to the Artemis campaigns," Hansen said in the CSA video.

Turtle Lodge's Courchene emphasized that his community is very much seen as a partner on the mission – just like NASA, the Canadian Forces or any other entity with which Hansen has contact. The mission patch was a moment for them to come into the spotlight, but it is built on years of relationship-building with Hansen.

"Jeremy's intentions was almost like to bring the spotlight, to look to those values and those teachings and the knowledge that we have to offer," Courchene said of the patch work. He acknowledged things have not always been that way with his community, but his grandfather – a political leader in his era – said "you always have to be open and willing to work with other groups."

For Turtle Lodge, he continued, the mission patch is an example of how the Sagkeeng First Nation can work with the Canadian government on a project of value. Courchene noted the community will stand by to help with other space projects for CSA: "We will be more than willing to help in any which way we can."

...

Elizabeth Howell is a Canadian space journalist; while she has a few generations of ancestry in Canada, her family is of European descent. She produced this article from what is now called Ottawa, on unceded territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.

Artists & Explorers to Gather in Iceland for 2026 Total Solar Eclipse

2025-08-19T20:00:00.000Z

Snæfellsnes Peninsula, Iceland on August 12th, 2026. A silence is growing among the crowds.

The true headliner has arrived. People stand in collective near-disbelief, breath held, as the Moon begins to eat the Sun. Daylight dims.

On that day, the eclipse’s shadow will carve a charcoal swath across Iceland’s wild Westfjords and Snæfellsnes Peninsula. In the town of Hellissandur, where the Iceland Eclipse 2026 gathering will take place, totality will occur for 2 minutes and 7 seconds, offering one of Iceland’s longest land-viewable solar eclipses.

Alongside the cosmic spectacle, dozens of artists, tech leaders, and spacefarers from NASA, ESA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic, will share stories of awe, transformation, and exploration among the community of attendees. Supercluster’s Robin Seemangal will be attending along with colleagues and friends from across the spaceflight community.

According to NASA, the 2026 total solar eclipse will also be visible in Greenland, Spain, Russia, and a small area of Portugal, while a partial eclipse will be visible in Europe, Africa, North America, the Atlantic Ocean, Arctic Ocean, and Pacific Ocean

For those beneath its path, a total solar eclipse can be a holistic event that vibrates every cell — human, animal, or insect. Silence crashes over startled onlookers. The temperature plunges. In what seems like a paradoxical moment, we are both humbled by cosmic terror and comforted in a shared experience with neighbors, and maybe even a shared lineage with the ancestral communities that also witnessed these celestial events.

Humanity has named this wonder for millennia: Vikings told of wolves Sköll and Hati chasing Sun and Moon, turning day to darkness until villagers beat drums to scare them away. Halfway across the world, ancient Chinese believed a sky‑dragon swallowed the Sun, and they fired arrows and banged bronze pots in response.

Eclipses are more than celestial alignments. They are metaphysical tectonics, jolting us out of routine and back into cosmic kinship.

Sounds of the Cosmos

Can a music festival be a cosmic gathering? The 2026 eclipse is the headliner, music is its afterglow. Live sets from local legends will reflect the ethereal nature of Iceland itself with performances from electronic luminaries GusGus, Dream Pop trio Vök, anthemic pop act Daði Freyr, and singer-songwriter Ásgeir.

The event will also feature artists who have crafted their music as a reflection of the cosmos: Test Shot Starfish, famous for producing SpaceX’s webcast music; astronaut-turned-melodic electronic producer Dr. Chrispy; Future Dream Pop artist, annu (yours truly); and Tulum legend Eduardo Castillo — all telling the story of space through music.

MEDUZA will bring their underground-infused house to the stage, along with melodic techno pioneer Booka Shade and Detroit Techno evangelists Ryan Crosson and Shaun Reeves.

Converging Communities

With capacity capped at just 3,333, intimacy and strong community engagement will define the event.

Between August 12th and 16th, in totality’s wake, attendees will thread between these core explorations:

COMMUNITY SPACE

Roots attendees in local wisdom and global vision, with programming that features Indigenous leaders and local culture keepers, social justice advocates, and sustainability innovators. Workshops, interactive talks, and collaborative activities will allow engagement with voices shaping regenerative and inclusive futures, such as Iceland's own community legend Kári Viðarsson and global environmental strategist Daniel Blackman.

OUTER SPACE

Invites wonder through space storytelling, cosmology panels, and conversations on the future of space travel. Guests will hear first-hand accounts of journeys to space from astronauts such as NASA’s Dr. Jeanette Epps and Joan Higginbotham, ESA’s Amelie Schoenenwald, SpaceX’s Dr. Sian Proctor, Blue Origin’s Dr. Chris Boshuizen and Sara Sabry, Virgin Galactic's Christopher Huie and Keisha Schahaff.

INNER SPACE

Opens via guided meditation, consciousness workshops, and responsible conversation around psychedelics — mapping the inner cosmos as the vast sky above recalibrates our inner landscapes. Guests include Artist, Filmmaker, and Futurist Jason Silva, Psychedelic leaders Alex and Alyson Grey, musician and community leader, Eduardo Castillo, and many more.

DIGITAL SPACE

Communities gather in roundtables on digital‑nomad lifestyles, web3 global infrastructure, the evolution of AI, digital ethics, and emerging trends in the virtual and extended reality space. Hackathons and design labs feature emerging tech, fashion, and folklore — a glimpse at how we’ll live and thrive tomorrow.

Iceland Eclipse 2026 aims to be a gathering built on community and conservation, powered by local collaboration and leave-no-trace principles with support from EarthPercent, the music industry’s environmental foundation co-founded by Brian Eno, which channels a portion of event resources toward climate-positive action. The location's natural beauty is the perfect platform for conversations around preservation.

Iceland's otherworldly beauty is a sight to see in itself.

Ancient lava tunnels, glaciers, mineral-rich geothermal springs, volcanic craters and remote beaches. Iceland almost feels like an analog for experiencing an eclipse on another planet. A perfect platform for storytellers trying to paint a picture of humanity's future.

Along with the Iceland Eclipse Innovation Residency offers a month‑long immersion designed to spark future‑facing work. A cohort of global and local change‑makers — technologists, artists, scientists, writers, and cultural curators — will gather on the Snæfellsnes peninsula. From July 12th to August 11th, 2026, they will exchange expertise, co‑creating art, installations, and activations inspired by Iceland’s dramatic landscape, rich culture, and the transformative experience of a total solar eclipse.

A Pivotal Pause

History shows how eclipse-born awe can shape the human story. In 585 BC, when the Sun vanished in midday sky, warriors on the battlefield between the Lydians and Medes dropped their spears in terror, mistaking celestial mechanics for divine command — and war ended in truce. In 1919, under the shadow cast on West African soil, Arthur Eddington measured the bending of starlight, proving Einstein right and Newton incomplete, shifting the very laws by which humanity understood the cosmos.

And in 2026, we do not stumble into revelation by chance or by fear — we’ll intentionally gather beneath the Moon’s shadow, not just to witness but to harness that experience itself in an effort to shape a brighter future.

...

MaryLiz Bender is a lifelong cosmic explorer, weaving space, storytelling, and music into immersive experiences that aim to nurture our sense of connection. She will bring her Cosmic Perspective show to the Iceland Eclipse Festival, alongside workshops on art in space and discussions on consciousness. As annu, she will also perform her Future Dream Pop live set in the land that has most-inspired her ethereal musical works.

Supercluster’s Robin Seemangal will be in attendance for this event along with friends and colleagues from across the global space industry. You can purchase tickets here.

The Bizarre Tale of the Classic X-Files "I Want to Believe" Poster

2025-08-12T21:00:00.000Z

The truth about the iconic wall art is, truly, “out there.”

“I Want to Believe.” Printed in bold white type beneath a grainy flying saucer, the phrase has become more than a tagline — it’s a mantra for fans of The X-Files and seekers of the supernatural.

In the pilot episode of the beloved series, Dana Scully sees the poster on the wall of Fox Mulder’s office before she even sees his face. As the show’s popularity skyrocketed in the 1990s, the poster became a must-have accessory for fans (aka X-Philes). Now that Sinners director Ryan Coogler is rebooting the franchise, perhaps it will adorn the walls of a whole new generation of fans.

But while the poster expresses a simple sentiment, it has a complicated backstory.

Chris Carter, the mastermind behind the series, drew inspiration from the artist Ed Ruscha, who is known for placing textual overlays over images. While figuring out Mulder’s office decor, Carter decided to channel Ruscha’s oeuvre.

“The original graphic came from me saying, ‘Let's get a picture of a spaceship and put — Ed Ruscha-like — "I want to believe," Carter told Smithsonian Magazine in 2008. “I love Ed Ruscha. I love the way he puts text in his paintings. I actually got to say to him, ‘I was inspired by you.’"

After deciding on a Ruscha-esque style, the next step was searching for the right UFO photograph, which is no easy feat. People have been capturing images of so-called flying saucers — by far the most memorable form of suspected alien spacecraft — since the 1940s. Some sightings have been proven to be hoaxes or terrestrial in origin, but many remain unexplained.

These images of UFOs (or, in modern terms, unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP) have evolved into a rich iconography for the massive worldwide community of ufologists who “want to believe.”

For their poster, Carter and his team settled on a photograph taken by Swiss ufologist Billy Meier in Europe during the 1970s. Meier, who claims to be an alien abductee as well as a major prophet, is the subject of the forthcoming documentary I Want to Believe and remains one the most controversial figures in ufology — and that is really saying something.

Meier founded the UFO organization FIGU (Freie Interessengemeinschaft für Grenz- und Geisteswissenschaften und Ufologiestudien) and claims to have been in telepathic and physical contact with extraterrestrials from the Pleiades—whom he calls the Plejaren—since childhood, and asserts that he is the reincarnation of Jesus, Elijah, and Mohammad, among others. In the 1970s, he released hundreds of photographs, film footage, sound recordings, and metallic samples that he claimed are evidence of his experiences with UFO “beamships,” though these have been widely disputed by investigators.

Skeptics, including his ex-wife, have alleged that many of the photographs were staged using models made from household objects like trash can lids and carpet tacks, and that some supposed “alien” figures were actually sourced from television shows. Despite extensive criticism and claims of fabrication, Meier’s case remains one of the most well-known and controversial in modern UFO lore.

Despite Meier's history, Carter loved his saucer photograph and adapted it to the poster, which hung on Mulder’s wall for the first three seasons of the show. However, the image was never properly cleared, according to Carter, which led to an intellectual property lawsuit. As a consequence, the poster was “recast” for the following seasons, according to The New Republic. The new image showed a slightly altered UFO that was much closer to the treeline than the original.

Several other versions made appearances in the later seasons and movies.

The series’ lore cleverly accommodated these tweaks to the poster, according to The X-Files Fandom page. In the season five episode “Chinga,” Mulder says he acquired the original poster at a head shop (aka cannabis paraphernalia store) on M Street in Washington, DC. That version was lost when the Cigarette Smoking Man set Mulder’s office on fire in the season five finale “The End.”

In the sixth season episode “Alpha,” the character Karin Berquist gives Mulder the second version of the poster, which was displayed on her wall. That was replaced later with a nearly identical third version with a UFO that looked a bit more like the original poster, but that didn’t infringe on copyright. Mulder tears this third iteration apart with his foot when he comes across it on his abandoned FBI office floor in the tenth season episode “My Struggle.”

A fourth version appears on Mulder’s home office wall, and as his desktop background, in the 2008 movie The X-Files: I Want to Believe. The tenth season episode “Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster,” which aired in 2016, opens with Mulder throwing pencils at a new poster as if it’s a dartboard. Scully walks in and asks him, in her classic flat tone, “What are you doing to my poster?” The reveal that this new poster actually belongs to Scully hints at her character’s shift toward Mulder’s perspective, though she still retains most of her skeptical bonafides.

The poster is such an integral part of the show that it will even be included in the upcoming X-Files LEGO set. It will be interesting to see whether Coogler will have a new spin on the well-worn wall art, but regardless, the poster, and its message, have resonated far beyond the pop culture realm. The city of Roswell, New Mexico — known around the world as the capital of ufology — has even adapted it into a municipal motto: “We Believe.”

The phrase initially serves as an expression of the intellectual dichotomy between Mulder and Scully, and expressed by the legendary chemistry between David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. When they meet, Mulder is animated by a desire to believe in UFOs as a proxy for finding his sister. Scully, while sympathetic, abhors the idea of bringing personal priors (including her Catholic faith) into the scientific process at the risk of muddying results.

The spark at the heart of the series is how these two rub off on each other and how they often arrive at the same place despite taking different paths. Take the memorable scene in “The Truth,” which aired in 2002 and was, at the time, the series finale, in which Scully and Mulder share an intimate moment in a motel room in Roswell.

“You've always said that you want to believe. But believe in what, Mulder?” Scully asks.

“I want to believe that the dead are not lost to us,” Mulder says. “That they speak to us as part of something greater than us greater than any alien force. And if you and I are powerless now, I want to believe that if we listen, to what's speaking, it can give us the power to save ourselves.”

“Then we believe the same thing,” she replies.

...

Becky Ferreira is a science reporter based in upstate New York. Her book First Contact, about the search for alien life, is available to preorder and will be released from Workman Publishing on September 30, 2025.

We Photographed CERN's Large Hadron Collider (and Won an Award)

2025-08-05T20:00:00.000Z

Supercluster's Erik Kuna has won a CERN community award for photography

CERN has announced the winners of the CERN Photowalk 2025, a behind-the-scenes photo competition held at the massive Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland. The three winners – two chosen by a local jury, one selected by the CERN community – will now be submitted to the Global Physics Photowalk and judged alongside submitted pictures from all around the world.

Erik Kuna, representing Supercluster in competition, won the CERN community award. Specifically for the above header photo, titled Threading the Future. "Winners were chosen based on how well they fit with the theme and how they represented the facility depicted, as well as on their artistic and aesthetic merit," said a release from CERN.

At CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, a facility 17 miles long in circumference, scientists explore the fundamental building blocks of the universe by smashing particles together at nearly the speed of light. These high-energy collisions recreate conditions similar to those just after the Big Bang, allowing researchers to study the smallest components of matter and the forces that govern them. The LHC has already led to major discoveries, most famously the Higgs boson in 2012, which helps explain why particles have mass. By analyzing the debris from these collisions using massive detectors, physicists at CERN aim to investigate origins of the universe.

On May 27th, CERN opened its doors to 17 photographers from around the world and invited them to explore the advanced facility through their lens and creative style. This year’s competition, entitled “CERN Photowalk 2025: Future Colliders”, took them to four unique locations, from the galleries of the High-Luminosity LHC – the successor to CERN’s current flagship accelerator, the LHC – to the Laboratory’s main workshop.

And Erik will be returning in the fall. His winning photograph will be exhibited in the Esplanade des Particules, an open space and welcome area for CERN visitors. Below, explore the Large Hadron Collider through our 10 submitted competition photos with commentary from Erik. We'll publish a part II with more photos later this summer.

Seen from above, this complex assembly in the SM18 facility stands as the proving ground for superconducting technology that will shape the next generation of particle physics. Illuminated by ambient work lights, the test string here is part of the HL-LHC’s “cold powering” system, nicknamed the python for its winding superconducting link. These modules are cooled to near absolute zero and pushed to their physical limits before being greenlit for CERN’s most ambitious upgrades. I was drawn to the symmetry, the contrast of neon greens with industrial reds, and the way the testbed seemed to pulse with potential.

This is CERN’s main mechanical workshop, where raw materials become high-performance components for some of the world’s most advanced scientific instruments. The space hums with purpose: state-of-the-art CNC machines line both sides of the hall, technicians fine-tune code, and intricate parts are measured, adjusted, and perfected. I composed this shot to showcase both the scale and rhythm of this industrial symphony, the yellow tracks guiding the eye, the fluorescent lights tracing the ceiling like particles in alignment. This isn’t just manufacturing; it’s detailed engineering with mission-critical stakes. Every detail here, down to the smallest thread or curve, must be perfect, because in particle physics, down to a nanometer matters.

This newly constructed tunnel at CERN’s Point 1 is part of the infrastructure that will enable the High-Luminosity LHC, the most ambitious particle accelerator upgrade to date. It may look quiet now, but these galleries will soon host cutting-edge systems—superconducting magnets, cryogenics, and power converters, designed to deliver ten times more collision data than the current LHC. For me, this shot felt cinematic: the symmetry of the overhead ducting and cable trays, the converging lines of conduit and light, and the lone blue container glowing at the vanishing point. It was a moment of engineered stillness, hinting at the high-energy chaos it will someday contain. This is what the future of discovery looks like: neatly routed, precisely lit, and ready for the unknown.

This is the HL-LHC cold powering test string at SM18, an essential proving ground for the superconducting links and magnets that will define the next era of CERN’s accelerator technology. The long, winding conduit in the center delivers cryogenic current from the power supplies to the magnets under extreme test conditions. I was struck by the sheer complexity and cleanliness of this setup: bright color-coded elements, precisely routed cables, and a scale that feels almost architectural. This is what high-energy physics looks like when it’s still grounded—before it bends particles or unlocks cosmic secrets, it starts here, in this facility, under bright lights and careful calibration.

In this tighter moment from the sterile chamber at SM18, a technician delicately maneuvers a crab cavity, one of the HL-LHC’s most innovative and alignment-sensitive components. These cavities tilt the particle beams ever so slightly to maximize collision rates within the detectors, a feat that requires ultra precision and absolute cleanliness. Through the glass, I was drawn to the human scale of high-energy physics: the focused eyes behind the mask, the gloved grip on the frame, and the mirrored polish of the metal reflecting a world of exacting standards. Data may drive science at CERN, but it’s powered by people, often unseen, but always essential.

A close-up look at the TAURUS CNC machining center in CERN’s main workshop, caught mid-operation. Streams of coolant cascade over the workpiece as the bit carves into a massive slab of metal, each pass guided by micrometer-precise instructions. These are not ordinary parts: the materials shaped here must endure ultra-cold, high-radiation, high-magnetic-field environments inside CERN’s accelerator systems. I wanted to frame this not just as a machine, but as a moment, one where heat, pressure, software, and steel converge in a choreographed sequence. The bright red housing and the chaos of metal chips below echo a theme you see often at CERN: science at full throttle still starts with a spark of creation.

This machined test block from CERN’s main workshop demonstrates just how precise the team’s fabrication capabilities are, two interlocking metal pieces milled so perfectly they fit seamlessly without bonding agents. These tolerance-defying joints are essential in components that must remain structurally sound in environments subject to magnetic fields, radiation, and cryogenic temperatures. I composed this macro-style shot to highlight both the scale and the stakes: the block sitting casually on a white cloth, a finger nearby, hints at how human hands and minds guide atomic-scale precision. With the background of massive machinery, this is the precision craftsmanship at the core.

A safety technician makes a solo pass through the HL-LHC tunnel at Point 1, a critical part of protocol before new personnel or equipment enter. The space is cavernous yet controlled, the lines of piping and cable trays sweeping along the arc of the tunnel like the veins of an artificial artery. Moments before this, the tunnel felt stark and lifeless. But the bright orange vest, the purposeful stride, and the human scale instantly reframed it. This is the front line of operational readiness at CERN, where even the quietest steps are part of the system that enables world-changing science. I captured this just before we moved deeper into the gallery, grateful to walk in step with innovation.

Inside the HTS Magnet Laboratory, this intricate cabling machine twists together unreacted strands of niobium-tin (Nb₃Sn) into a Rutherford cable, destined for use in next-generation superconducting magnets. These cables must carry tens of thousands of amps in cryogenic conditions, bending magnetic fields with surgical precision. I was captivated by the controlled chaos here: fine strands fanning together in elegant symmetry, a droplet of coolant hanging from the extruder like a moment frozen in time. This is superconductivity in the making, where even before reaching absolute zero, the energy is electric. It's the kind of scene where physics and art briefly agree.

Amid coils, wires, and a tangle of superconducting test equipment, this physicist’s focus cut through it all. In the High-Temperature Superconducting Magnet Lab, she was fine-tuning a new magnet prototype while taking a moment to share her passion with visiting photographers. You could see it in her eyes, an eagerness not just to experiment, but to explain, to connect, and to inspire. It was a rare portrait opportunity in a deeply technical space, and she embraced it. The photo captures a moment of intense precision, as well as quiet pride. At CERN, some of the most powerful magnetic fields on Earth are shaped by hands like these, curious, capable, and deeply committed to pushing science forward.

...

You don’t just visit CERN…you feel it. It’s a reminder that the universe is both vast yet tangible, large and small at the same time. And I got to photograph that tension, something I love to do and I’m excited the whole team at CERN connected with the images I made.

Artist Xin Liu Engineers New Narratives for Space

2025-07-29T10:00:00.000Z

Far before humanity developed the kinds of observational technologies that would allow us to peer out from among the stars, we looked up, pondering our place in the vast universe.

Cultures from every corner of the world have invented terrestrial stories to explain the great expanse above us — great romances between constellations or a rabbit pounding rice cakes on the face of the moon. It seems that from the beginning, we felt compelled to give voice to those roving, distant bits of light.

Artist and engineer Xin Liu brings this most primal curiosity into the 21st century, reclaiming narratives of space exploration from her own lenses of feminism and diaspora. With a studio that bears more resemblance to a scientific laboratory than a typical artist’s studio, Liu often incorporates cutting-edge technologies into her interdisciplinary practice. In Living Distance (2019-2020), Liu developed a special robotic encasement for her wisdom tooth as it travelled to suborbital space on board Blue Origin's New Shepard Rocket. For her ongoing “Cry:O” series, Liu engineered special cooling systems to coat her mixed media sculptures in a thin, fragile layer of frost.

When the COVID-19 pandemic put the world in lockdown, Liu turned her attention to satellites — specifically from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Fashioning an antenna from a broomstick and coat hanger, Liu and her partner Gershon Dublon began to collect and translate data from these weather satellites from their backyard in Brooklyn in April 2020. From these grainy and pinging audio transmissions, Liu developed a suite of abstract images to visually capture their communications.

Continuing her dialogue with these satellites, Liu recently collaborated with Hyundai Artlab on NOAA: a fall towards home (2025), as one of the Artlab Digital Commissions. Here, the artist considers what these satellites might be saying beyond weather data. Liu asks how their own lived experiences translate into narratives. In developing scripts for three of these satellites, Liu draws a connection between her own life as a diasporic immigrant and these machines adrift in orbit, observing home from a faraway distance.

The Artlab Editors spoke to Liu about the process of creating this new work, her sources of inspiration when it comes to space, and how she views the relationship between art and science.

ARTLAB EDITORS:

Your practice bridges science and art across a wide range of mediums — from sculptures that dissolve over time to launching your own tooth into space — all drawing parallels between technological advancement and the complexities of the human psyche. Was there a pivotal moment when you decided to deeply explore the human condition and the ways it shapes our conceptions of space/technology?

XIN LIU:

I was trained in science and engineering so instead of looking at science and technology as subject matter, it’s my craft or language. When I am asking questions about who I am, what I’m doing in my life, or thinking about immigration, being an artist, or a woman, I use science and engineering to help process these questions. They are my native systems of knowledge that I used to learn about the world growing up.

The first artwork I ever made was when I was a student at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). I was having a lot of trouble accessing my own emotions so I ended up collecting my tears and used different kinds of laboratory instruments to analyze what was in my tears. Then, I made an artificial jar of my tears based on that recipe. Somehow, that clinical and analytical process of testing and experimentation gave me lots of comfort as I was struggling with language barriers and being able to connect with the people around me.

ARTLAB EDITORS:

It’s interesting to me that you began with a science and engineering background before becoming an artist. What compelled you to pursue art? How do you see the relationship between these disciplines?

XIN LIU:

I went to RISD for grad school so I was already in my early 20s. On the one hand, the world was already familiar to me — I like music, I like movies, I like beautiful things. But it was also incredibly far from my own reality because I didn’t know what it meant to make art.

I think it came from this sense of curiosity.

Art at the time was the most mystical thing and I wanted to open my world to it. But the relationship between art and science is a very big question.

ARTLAB EDITORS:

If it’s helpful, maybe thinking about it in terms of your own practice?

XIN LIU:

I think for me, they’re both ways of making sense of the world: Why do I cry? Why do I struggle? Why do things that seem easy sometimes become difficult? In science, we ask very similar questions: why is the world the way it is? The apple falls from the tree…How did this all happen? It is all a way of trying to understand our own existence.

ARTLAB EDITORS:

Continuing that thread and your artistic journey, your recent Artlab Digital Commission, NOAA: a fall towards home takes the form of a clickable online narrative which is told from the perspective of three decommissioned NOAA satellites. I’d love to know what you were thinking about in the process of giving voice to these satellites and how those scripts were developed.

Xin Liu, NOAA: a fall towards home, 2025. Commissioned by Hyundai Artlab, © Xin Liu

XIN LIU:

It was a collaborative project with the Hyundai Artlab team. From the beginning, I wanted to honor the satellites. I’ve been working with them since 2019 and they have become these companions that helped me through times in isolations during COVID-19 and also informed so much of the knowledge around what it means to see the world from outside of the world.

I learned about orbit photography. I started thinking about the iconic image of the Anthropocene as the Blue Marble being fundamental to lots of the new practices that I’m able to push forward. I’m very grateful for these satellites.

At the same time, they are just metals and devices. I just feel like it’s so nerdy.

How can I share my feelings towards them with a larger audience? The whole development of the script ended up being quite personal because it is about the journeys these satellites took and how they are constantly watching home while being far away.

This mirrors my life as a diasporic Chinese person living in the UK and in the US. I’m constantly thinking about this orbiting journey and my idea of home.

[Hyundai Artlab] was very helpful in providing feedback on the script’s development — I’d never written anything in dialogue form before this. They also helped me to see the way they related to these machines from their own perspective. One of our producers even became quite attached to the satellites themselves and started to read about them on Reddit.

It’s almost like having a toy that you really loved growing up — you want to tell everyone everything about it. That’s really where it all started. But in the end, all the stories you tell are, in some way, ultimately about yourself.

ARTLAB EDITORS:

After hearing about this project, I also did a deep dive into all these NOAA Reddit forums. It’s really striking to see how these satellites have such a dedicated fan base. People love culling from the raw data they’re able to collect and feel kinship with these machines for many different reasons.

What drew you to the NOAA satellites? How did you come upon them?

XIN LIU:

It started during COVID, when everyone was isolating. People began chasing these satellites to receive data. I thought it was beautiful because at the time, humans were trapped but these satellites were out there, constantly orbiting the globe. It felt like they were the only things still seeing the world. Being able to connect with them, even briefly, helped me feel that there was still a world out there. The feeling of detachment during COVID was so strong. I felt kind of lost in that time.

I did a project where we followed one satellite as it passed over Shanghai and then over New York in one sweep; both stations were receiving data together. I felt like we somehow had this very long kite that sends a signal and we both saw it from the other side of the world.

ARTLAB EDITORS:

Space is often rendered as this vast, expansive void. It conjured grandeur and unknowability. I’m curious to know what you see in space, and what about it resonates with you and your practice.

XIN LIU:

I like how, when you talk about space, you immediately enter realms that are expansive: both in terms of temporal and spatial scale. It’s a very fertile ground for lots of subjects that I’m interested in. Aesthetically, I’m drawn to deserts and vastness. I’m drawn to a void. I think maybe it has something to do with growing up in the desert myself.

A lot of my work deals with time and space and space exploration. It gives me a kind of permission to tell stories at a scale that is so hard to access in our daily life but is still happening at every single moment. Right now, we are on this planet orbiting around the sun, we’re just not aware of it. Working closely with space as a context helped me to stimulate that part of my sensation.

This idea of exploration is interesting for me. I’m always coming back to the question of why someone leaves home. I have friends who forever want to leave. I also have friends who are terrified of leaving their neighborhood. There’s something very human about this desire and fear. This idea of exploration is also related to this idea of frontiers. In science and technology, there’s this idea that as a human, you’re constantly pushing these frontiers. It’s almost a religious narrative — that this is why we’ve been put on earth.

ARTLAB EDITORS:

The way you described the vastness and void-ness of space being fertile ground is also quite spiritual. I think it’s also in quite sharp contrast to so much of our typical thinking around space and science, which tends to be very accelerationist. Your conception of space feels, by contrast, introspective, slowed down, and interior.

XIN LIU:

I feel that we live in a deeply age-ist society. So much of what mainstream culture values seems shaped by the mindset of someone in their late 20s or early 30s. It’s all about growth and exploration and this ride up is a stronger, faster, and most optimized version of what life can offer. We’re heavily biased by this one very loud voice.

My parents just retired and they are now experiencing a whole new life that I find quite beautiful. They’re on a new road strip every weekend, living like Patti Smith on the road now that they’re in their 60s. There are so many possibilities for how we live our lives. We’re just not paying enough attention to things.

Space has been historically male dominated, though it has changed quite a lot in the past 10 years. Still, earlier in my career when I was working on a project relating to space, I was criticized for being too grand. As a female artist, that’s something your work shouldn’t be. It should be intimate and domestic. But I want my work to be all of it: domestic and intimate and grand and about space and the earth and myself, all at the same time. I think we’re finally there.

Today, when we think about space, you probably think about the billionaire class, technological innovations, mining — all of that. But this isn’t what we thought about when we looked at the sky as children. We thought about the moon and its rabbit and all the stories about the things that happen in all the stars. I want to return us to that world and live a different story line.

These days, there are so many beautiful works produced by artists and practitioners that are changing the narrative that science is this abstract space. It’s almost like owning the aesthetic agenda of science. I feel like I work within this process.

ARTLAB EDITORS:

Places like space and deserts are also so often rendered as empty expanses, devoid of life or presence when they are anything but. What your work does so well is hold all of that in unison, without caving into our prescriptive binaries. It captures a truer, more nuanced picture.

I also feel like your work speaks to a kind of return to our most primal understanding and relationship with space, creating these narrative structures and stories. You’re doing the exact same thing with these satellites. I’m curious what depictions of space in popular media you’ve drawn inspiration from.

XIN LIU:

I really liked Ted Chiang’s 1998 book, “Story of Your Life.—the one that inspired the film Arrival.. At its core, the book is about language—how the understanding of language is the understanding of time. I think that’s the most important question in science and physics today:

Does time exist?

Right now, we’re living in a timeline where the future dominates. We live under a tyranny of the future where the present doesn’t exist. But I believe there may be a moment, perhaps in the next 100 years, when we finally understand time as movements and relationships. This will finally allow us to live our lives differently, not caring about growth. Much of this, I think, has already been felt by people before science tried to quantify it—through faiths like Buddhism, for example. It’s not about rejecting science, but about rethinking how we make sense of the world beyond our limited perception.

I’m really excited for that world to come but maybe I’ll be dead by then. But that’s okay.

ARTLAB EDITORS:

Time doesn’t exist!

XIN LIU:

Exactly. Time doesn’t exist. I’ll be alive and dead at the same time.

See Earth through a satellite’s eyes. Begin your journey

—

Introduction and questions by Artlab Editors. Learn more about the digital commission on Hyundai Artlab’s website. This article was published in collaboration with Artlab Editorial.

Opinion: Isn't ESA Supposed to Build its Own Human Spaceflight Program?

2025-07-22T21:00:00.000Z

Slawosz Uznanski is smiling from a projection screen, his bright white T-shirt adorned with a European Space Agency (ESA) logo and the round patch of his IGNIS mission.

He is about to address journalists and fans at an event organized by ESA at the Paris Airshow ahead of his trip to the International Space Station. Despite the ESA logo on his chest, he is technically more of a commercial flyer than an actual ESA astronaut. The Polish Government bought his orbital trip with ESA’s assistance from commercial spaceflight provider Axiom Space, which, in turn, bought a crewed launch from SpaceX for its Axiom-4 mission. Both are American companies.

The Polish Space Agency (POLSA) hails Uznanski’s mission “a huge success” and “distinction for Poland” and its “civilization progress.” The 41-year-old former CERN physicist is the first Pole in history to visit the International Space Station and only the second Polish citizen to fly to space. The first Polish astronaut, or rather cosmonaut, Mirosław Hermaszewski, spent a week on the Soviet Salyut 6 space station in 1978 as part of the Soviet Interkosmos program. Within the Interkosmos framework, the Soviets flew 18 cosmonauts, primarily nationals from countries under the USSR’s influence (although the program later accepted westerners too) to space between 1978 and 1994.

According to available information, Hermaszewski’s mission was the Soviet government’s treat to Poland and other eastern bloc countries. Although the mission was conducted using USSR’s domestic Soyuz space transportation system, the visiting space fliers were not deemed ROSCOSMOS cosmonauts, wearing the yellow and blue Interkosmos patches on their space suits instead.

A clear distinction was made during those Soviet-era missions. Today, public relations and marketing play a huge role in how space missions are presented and shaped in the public eye. Language and endorsements impact financial and geopolitical maneuvering. ESA’s arrangement with Poland and other nations to send their astronauts to the ISS with Axiom Space should come under scrutiny, especially when flyers are adorned with ESA mission patches to represent the agency on an international stage.

Commercial Spaceflight

Before Poland’s decision to fund the 65-million-euro ($74 million) Axiom Space ticket, Uznanski wasn’t even an ESA employee. He was one of 22,000 hopefuls who submitted applications in ESA’s latest astronaut recruitment round in 2021. Five “career” astronauts emerged from the selection process who joined ESA staff in 2023. Uznanski wasn’t one of them. He was considered fit and skilled enough to train as an astronaut, but the agency didn’t really need him. Instead, it designated him a “reserve astronaut,” an invention spawned during that latest astronaut recruitment drive, and placed him, together with 11 others into its astronaut reserve pool. There he was to wait until “a flight opportunity has been identified,” still working for his existing employer.

Interestingly, the reserve astronauts began making it to space — on Axiom missions funded by their respective governments — before the new batch of full-time “career” astronauts completed their basic training. Swedish fighter pilot Marcus Wandt flew to space in January 2024 with the Axiom-3 mission. Poland signed an agreement with Axiom Space “with support from the European Space Agency” to send Uznanski to space in August 2023.

Through the astronaut reserve pool, ESA created what appears to be an incentive for its member states to pay for commercial missions facilitated by a private American company (Axiom) and executed by a private American spaceflight firm (SpaceX), which could be contradictory to the agency’s purpose.

ESA’s mission, in its own words, is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability. Its industrial policy is guided by a principal of geo-return, which requires that money invested by a member state into ESA’s budget return to that member state’s industry in the value of participations in ESA’s space projects. Yet, in case of the small member states, which have so far been the main takers, the cost of the Axiom mission frequently exceeds the nation’s yearly ESA budget contributions.

Poland’s fellow post-communist country Czechia announced in June this year its intention to send its ESA reserve astronaut Ales Svoboda to space with Axiom by 2028. The nation’s government will, according to media reports, pay 2 billion Czech Crowns (about 80 million Euro or $90 million) for the trip. The Czech government thinks the investment in the Axiom mission will deliver an eight-fold return for the Czech economy, although it is not clear, what this estimation is based on (the service providers SpaceX and Axiom are more likely seeing the return on their investment here).

Europe’s Space Tech Gaps

The war in Ukraine and the recent worsening of relationships between Europe and the U.S. administration exposed glaring gaps in European defense and strategic space capabilities. Ukraine’s defense forces largely depend on satellite imagery from the U.S. government and commercial American providers such as Maxar, Planet and BlackSky. Starlink has been indispensable for the embattled nation since the earliest days of the war.

Europe doesn’t have fully-fledged alternatives available to replace either of these technologies.

For Poland and Czechia — both post-communist countries who aren't too far out of sight of Vladimir Putin’s imperialist vision — this dependency on American space assets at a time of crumbling international relations should be a source of existential dread.

It is true that the cost of Axiom Space missions pales in comparison with the needed increases in Europe’s defense spending, and that both countries, Poland in particular, have stepped up to the plate (Poland is currently the lead defense spender per capita in Europe, investing 4.7% of its GDP into military technology).

Europe, in both space and warfare, wants to be self-reliant community. A Ukraine-led Eastern European defense initiative has recently introduced an ambition to build a dedicated Earth-observing constellation that would cover regions along the Russian border from as far north as Finland to as far south as Bulgaria. The project, an emerging cooperation of Eastern and Northern European states, would comprise 70 satellites and is currently seeking funding of about 100 million euros.

ESA’s Budget Holes

ESA itself is in a near constant need to plug budget holes, its Director General, Josef Aschbacher, making frequent pleas for increased funding. In the past five years, ESA has taken a series of budget blows. First, it had to persuade its member states to find some 360 million euros to rescue the agency’s flagship ExoMars mission when it had to withdraw from a partnership with ROSCOSMOS after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia was to provide a launcher and built a landing platform for the life-seeking space robot. It also provided a few other mission-critical components that Europe doesn’t have.

ExoMars, Europe’s first ever attempt to place a rover on the surface of the Red Planet, is in a crisis again, as NASA, which stepped in to help after the Russian fiasco, may be forced to withdraw as well. ExoMars is one of a multitude of NASA-co-funded space science projects intended for a chop in the Trump administration’s controversial budget proposal. If ESA were to go it alone and place the beleaguered rover on the Red Planet as per the current launch plan, it would likely have to find another few hundred million euros to build those missing components. NASA, as the plan stands, is to provide a launcher, braking retrorockets to slow down the lander during descent and radio-isotope heaters to protect it against the biting cold of the Martian night.

None of these technologies is currently available in Europe in a space-ready form.

The ExoMars mission, conceived in 2003, is a high-stakes and high-profile project for ESA.

China has already beaten Europe to Mars and India is targeting the early 2030s for its own Mars lander launch.

As Supercluster reported earlier, Europe has been ostentatiously missing from the renewed moon race too. It hasn’t placed a satellite into the moon’s orbit since 2006 and has never attempted a lunar landing. In the meantime, ambitious upstarts including countries such as India, Japan and a bunch of fledgling commercial providers have kept the space around the moon busier than it had been since the end of the Apollo era.

But back to the ESA patch on Uznanski’s chest, and what it actually means in this current climate. Post-communist countries such as Poland and Czechia, indeed, do have a right to purchase Axiom space flights if they feel so inclined. In fact, among Uznanski’s crew mates is a fellow Eastern European — Hungary’s Tibor Kapu. Hungary, although an ESA member state like Poland, announced plans to launch its national to the ISS in 2022 without the ESA. Kapu was selected in a domestic selection process and his spacesuit is only adorned by the patch of his HUNOR mission.

ESA’s involvement in the Polish, Swedish and other Axiom Space missions raises questions whether (even if indirectly) facilitating the sale of services of two American entities is what a European taxpayer-funded institution tasked with developing the European space tech scene should be doing. This, of course, is merely this author’s opinion.

The Rubin Observatory Advances Interstellar Archeology

2025-07-15T20:00:00.000Z

By the time its 7,000-pound digital camera was set in place, and its house-sized nest of mirrors had been perfectly aligned, astronomers felt that the Vera C. Rubin Observatory was going to be a spellbinding success. But this past spring, when it had captured its first view of the cosmos, they knew it. And in June, when scientists unveiled Rubin’s shimmering landscape of intertwining galaxies and opalescent nebulas to the world, everyone else knew it too.

Rubin, sitting atop an arid mountain range in Chile, is about to start a ten-year survey of the night sky. Thanks to its giant eyepiece, and its ability to drink up even the faintest starlight, it is the most perceptive cartographer of the cosmos ever built. It will chronicle distant exploding stars and ancient galaxies. It will scope out swarms of asteroids and even hidden planets in our own solar system.

Much has been written about Rubin’s omniscience. But there is another aspect to the observatory that, for now, is underappreciated: it will turn astronomers into archaeologists.

If our solar system was a map, the benighted fringes of it would be where sailors would mark “here be dragons”. And up until July 2025, in the pre-Rubin era, they had found two such serpents: a cigar-shaped oddity, and a comet-like vessel. These voyagers – named ‘Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov, respectively – are interstellar objects, visitors from other stars. They are geologic time capsules: pieces of a long-lost world or moon, or construction material that failed to coalesce into either.

“Each of these interstellar objects gives us the opportunity to poke into another solar system,” says Olivier Hainaut, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory. But astronomers found ‘Oumuamua and Borisov serendipitously; they caught all-too-brief glimpses of them as they hastily slipped back into shadowed space. So much about them, including their provenances, remains unknown. Scientists simply didn’t have enough time to study them.

Rubin is going to tip the odds in our favor.

Its all-seeing eye will spy even the stealthiest of interstellar objects taking the plunge into our solar system—giving astronomers plenty of lead time to train their own sniper-like scopes on these interlopers. By examining them up close, and by tracing their orbits out over a protracted period of time, scientists will come to know what’s being excised from other star systems. They might even be able to identify the original stars themselves.

Thanks to Rubin’s reconnaissance, the ruins of alien worlds will be ours to peruse. “They’re coming,” says Meg Schwamb, a planetary scientist and astronomer at Queen’s University Belfast. “And we’re prepared.”

The overarching mission of the Rubin Observatory is to understand two puzzling and as-yet-undetected aspects of the universe. The first is dark matter, an invisible adhesive that seems to be binding visible matter together more tightly than gravity alone can explain. The second is dark energy, an undulating force that seems to be speeding up the expansion of reality. One way to decode both is to inventory everything in the night sky: if you know where everything is, and how it moves and transforms over time, you can put some constraints on the nature of dark matter and dark energy.

That’s exactly what Rubin’s going to do—almost effortlessly so. The solar system alone is suddenly going to become a very crowded place: in a few years, Rubin will discover a suite of new moons zipping around Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, 3.7 million new asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, 89,000 asteroids with near-Earth orbits, 32,000 icy objects beyond Neptune, a hidden planet or two at the edges of the solar system—and a number of interstellar objects, too.

Asteroids and comets are the flotsam and jetsam that didn’t quite make it into making a planet or moon—or, in some cases, they are the wreckage left behind by a cataclysmic world-destroying event. Interstellar objects are very much the same thing, but with different addresses.

“Each interstellar object that comes through will come from a different planetary system,” says Sarah Greenstreet, an astronomer at the University of Washington. “They are also clues for us about how our own solar system formed.”

How different, or novel,is our own galactic backwater?

One way to answer that question is to spot an interstellar object paying our own solar system a visit and then finding out what it’s made of. “A few years, we had zero,” says Hainaut. “Then we discovered one. And that one was completely different from everything we ever expected.”

The story of the first-known interstellar object – eventually named ‘Oumuamua – is long, fascinating and complex. Here are the pertinent facts. It was discovered by the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawai‘i – a facility chiefly tasked with identifying near-Earth asteroids – in October 2017. By that point, ‘Oumuamua was already leaving the solar system. The object wasn’t round, but cylindrical. It sped up as it swung around our star, as any object would, but its acceleration was so fast that another source of propulsion must have been involved—one that nobody was able to detect.

A few disingenuous types reckoned that the best explanation was that ‘Oumuamua was an alien spacecraft. (Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.) Astronomers largely suspected it was a peculiar comet-like object, one whose vaporizing ices gave it a Sun-escaping speed boost. But they didn’t have sufficient time to examine it to provide any definitive answers. Whatever ‘Oumuamua was, and wherever it came from, there is one thing that everyone can agree on. “It was super weird,” says Hainaut.

In August 2019, amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov caught sight of the second-known interstellar object, one soon named 2I/Borisov. This time, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (or ALMA facility) managed to zero-in on it before it evaded astronomers’ collective grasp. They found that it was a more run-of-the-mill comet, albeit one with an abundance of carbon monoxide ices.

“Now, we have two classes of objects,” says Hainaut. “Fifty percent are weird; fifty percent are what we expect.”

Any scientist worth their salt will tell you that a sample size of two is too small. Many suspect Borisov-like objects are more common than ‘Oumuamuas. “Most of them should be cometary,” says Greenstreet. But who knows?

Reasoned speculation has long been the only option—until, of course, Rubin swaggered onto the scene. There is no doubt that it’ll be able to see interstellar objects when its survey gets going. But how often do these messengers pay our solar system a visit? “It’s hard to know for sure,” says Greenstreet. “We don’t know how efficient planetary systems are at ejecting comets and asteroids out of their systems.”

Estimates for how many interstellar objects Rubin will discover during its decade-long quest range from a very pessimistic zero to several dozen. Hainaut’s best guess? “Anything between very few and several,” he says, with a smirk. Let’s conservatively say that Rubin finds a handful of them. “That means we get to directly probe a few different solar systems.”

Rubin’s survey of the night sky is largely automated. When it sees an object moving about up there that astronomers have no record of, it will immediately flag it to the relevant group of scientists. So, if an interstellar object is spotted, solar system scientists will hear a klaxon go off. Within a matter of hours (or even minutes), “there’s going to be an armada of telescopes pointed at whatever’s coming our way,” says Schwamb.

Rubin’s a multitalented telescope. But it can’t zoom in on objects in the way, for example, the James Webb Space Telescope or the ground-based Very Large Telescope (also, like Rubin, atop a Chilean mountain) can. These telescopes also have special filters on them allowing them to see objects in the infrared, which can tease out more detail about their shapes, sizes and rock-ice compositions. This granular follow-up work can tell us how similar or different these objects are to the planetary shards flying around our own solar system, says Pedro Bernardinelli, an astronomer at the University of Washington.

Rubin will also be able to detect interstellar objects “while they’re still far away from the Sun,” says Mario Jurić, an astronomer at the University of Washington. Something like Borisov should be detectable by the observatory more than a year before its closest approach to our local star. That means astronomers can see it erupt, spin, and evolve as its ices get cooked by the Sun—offering more clues as to its composition and its internal structure.

Optimistically, astronomers hope to find the return addresses of these objects. If Rubin does spot them coming into the solar system very early on, then scientists will be able to map out their orbits with great precision—so much so that, just maybe, “we can pinpoint the star they came from,” says Hainaut. That’s the different between finding an ancient dagger in the middle of the ocean and finding one in the volcanic ruins of Pompeii itself.

For now, though, we must be patient: Rubin may have made its debut this summer, but its full survey has yet to begin. Even when it kicks off this fall, we don’t know how long it’ll take to find its first interstellar object—if it finds any at all.

“The universe likes to perform jokes,” says Schwamb. Perhaps we got lucky with ‘Oumuamua and Borisov, and that’ll be our lot for the foreseeable future.

Or perhaps not. On July 1st – just after Rubin’s debut images were shown to the world, but a few months before it was due to begin its full-spectrum survey – something curious was spotted erupting above our heads. The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, a NASA-funded planetary defense facility designed to spot near-Earth objects, captured a small glimmer on its scopes. Then about 420 million miles from home, this object was crossing Jupiter’s orbit on a hyperbolic trajectory through our solar system. There was no mistaking it: scientists had serendipitously another interstellar voyager—their third-ever. And now they’re racing to study it as it sweeps around the Sun over the summer.

Hopes are high. It looks like astronomers are about to get a crash course in interstellar archaeology after all. What might the fourth, fifth…tenth voyagers be like? What stories of forgotten realms will they tell?

“We suspect that our neighbors are not too different. That’s a general rule of life,” says Hainaut. “But we might get surprises.”

In Photos: The Women Who Helped Build the ISS

2025-07-08T21:00:00.000Z

The International Space Station has enabled an uninterrupted human presence in orbit for over 25 years.

The orbiting laboratory is the largest and most ambitious space structure ever built, representing a global collaboration in science, engineering, and exploration. Its construction began with the launch of the Russian module Zarya on November 20th, 1998, followed by the U.S. built Unity node just weeks later. Over the next 13 years, more than 100 different elements and modules were launched and assembled in orbit through a complex series of more than 30 missions, involving both the Space Shuttle program and Russian Soyuz and Proton rockets.

The final major U.S. assembly mission was STS-135, the last flight of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, which launched on this day in 2011. Even after core construction was completed, the station has continued to evolve, with new scientific hardware and international modules added in the years since. Construction of the ISS has involved 15 nations, including major contributions from the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan, and the member states of the European Space Agency. Ultimately, its success hinged on the talents and hard work of a few hundred people, and still does today, as the station provides a proving ground for upcoming long-duration crewed missions to the moon and Mars.

NASA's upcoming Artemis mission promises to land the first woman on the lunar surface in just a few years. Supercluster, along with our friends at Space Camper Cosmic IPA, are celebrating the rich history of women's contributions to the advancement of human spaceflight, and to the building of a reliable outpost and laboratory in orbit.

We dug through agency archives for rare photos of the intrepid women of NASA's astronaut corps that helped build the International Space Station, our home away from home in space. And by no means does this include everyone who contributed.

Tracy Caldwell Dyson was born on August 14th, 1969, in Arcadia, California. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from California State University, Fullerton, and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Davis. Before joining NASA in 1998, she conducted research in atmospheric chemistry. Her first spaceflight was STS-118, followed by missions aboard Soyuz TMA-18 and Soyuz MS-25. During her time aboard the ISS, she performed three spacewalks to replace a failed ammonia pump and complete external maintenance. Her work helped restore the station’s thermal control system, a critical subsystem for crew safety. Caldwell Dyson’s mission contributed to ISS functionality and operational resilience.

Susan J. Helms was born on February 26, 1958, in Charlotte, North Carolina, and considers Portland, Oregon her hometown. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical Engineering from the U.S. Air Force Academy and a Master of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University. Helms served as a Colonel in the U.S. Air Force, where she worked as a flight test engineer and instructor pilot before her selection as a NASA astronaut in 1990. Over her NASA career, she flew on five spaceflights: STS-54, STS-64, STS-78, STS-101, and STS-102, which delivered her to the ISS as part of Expedition 2. During that expedition, she performed a record-breaking 8-hour and 56-minute spacewalk. Her EVA helped install critical external hardware and airlock systems during the early stages of station assembly. Helms played a key role in building the ISS’s foundation for long-term habitation.

To learn more about each of these pioneers and their fellow crew members, head over to our interactive Astronaut Database. Also, you can track all inbound and outbound spacecraft traffic as well as crew rotations aboard the ISS and China's Tiangong Space Station using our Stations Dashboard.

Catherine “Cady” Coleman was born on December 14, 1960, in Charleston, South Carolina. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from MIT and a Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. A colonel in the U.S. Air Force, she was selected as a NASA astronaut in 1992. Coleman flew on STS-73 and STS-93, and served a long-duration mission aboard Soyuz TMA-20 during Expeditions 26/27. While on the ISS, she conducted research, operated robotic systems, and supported onboard systems integration. Although she did not perform spacewalks, her work ensured seamless operation of scientific payloads and internal systems. Coleman played a vital role in enhancing the ISS’s research infrastructure and crew support systems.

Kay A. Hire was born on August 26th, 1959, in Mobile, Alabama. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering and Management from the U.S. Naval Academy and a Master of Science in Space Technology from the Florida Institute of Technology. She served as a U.S. Navy Captain and flight officer before joining NASA in 1994. Hire flew on two Shuttle missions: STS-90 and STS-130. During STS-130, she assisted in delivering and activating the Tranquility node and Cupola, which expanded the station’s habitable space and observation capabilities. These additions were vital for life-support, robotics, and Earth observation. Hire’s contributions significantly improved the ISS’s long-term livability and human performance systems.

Nicole P. Stott was born on November 19th, 1962, in Albany, New York. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical Engineering from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and a Master of Science in Engineering Management from the University of Central Florida. Before joining NASA in 2000, she worked as a structural engineer and avionics specialist for the Shuttle program. Stott flew on STS-128 and STS-133. During her stay at the station, she operated the Canadarm2 robotic arm and participated in a spacewalk to prepare external hardware. Her robotics operations were critical to the integration of new modules and helped expand the station’s capabilities for cargo transfer and resupply.

Ellen Ochoa was born on May 10th, 1958, in Los Angeles, California. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Physics from San Diego State University and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Ochoa joined NASA in 1988 as a research engineer and became an astronaut in 1991. She flew four Shuttle missions, including STS-110, which delivered and installed the S0 truss segment to the ISS. As the robotic arm operator, she played a critical role in maneuvering and attaching the truss, forming the structural backbone of the station. Her work made future expansion of modules and solar arrays possible. Ochoa’s expertise in robotics was central to ISS structural assembly.

Stephanie D. Wilson was born on September 27th, 1966, in Boston, Massachusetts. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering Science from Harvard University and a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. Selected by NASA in 1996, she became one of the agency’s most experienced female astronauts. Wilson flew on three Shuttle missions: STS-121, STS-120, and STS-131. On these missions, she served as a robotic arm operator and helped install the Harmony node and logistics modules. Her contributions enabled both structural expansion and resupply capabilities. Wilson’s precision robotics work directly supported station assembly and scientific payload delivery. Wilson was selected to participate in the Artemis program and could be both the first woman and the first African-American on the Moon.

Pamela A. Melroy was born on September 17th, 1961, in Palo Alto, California. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Physics and Astronomy from Wellesley College and a Master of Science in Earth and Planetary Sciences from MIT. Melroy was a U.S. Air Force test pilot before joining NASA as an astronaut in 1995. She flew on three missions: STS-92, STS-112, and commanded STS-120. During STS-120, she oversaw the delivery and installation of the Harmony node, which enabled further module additions from Europe and Japan. Her role as commander helped coordinate robotics, EVA, and module integration. Melroy’s leadership was key to the ISS’s expansion and international collaboration.

Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper was born on February 7th, 1963, in St. Paul, Minnesota. She earned both a Bachelor and Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Stefanyshyn-Piper served as a U.S. Navy officer and salvage engineer before becoming a NASA astronaut in 1996. She flew on STS-115 and STS-126, where she conducted a total of five spacewalks. Her EVA tasks included installing the P3/P4 truss segments and upgrading the station’s regenerative life-support systems. These missions were critical to expanding the ISS’s structural backbone and preparing it for long-duration crewed missions. Her work ensured the station’s long-term sustainability and power capabilities.

Peggy A. Whitson is currently aboard the ISS as the commander of the private Axiom-4 mission, continuing her record-breaking career in space after arriving on Dragon last week. Whitson was born on February 9th, 1960, in Mt. Ayr, Iowa. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Biology and Chemistry from Iowa Wesleyan College and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Rice University. Before becoming an astronaut, Whitson was a NASA research biochemist and project scientist for the Shuttle-Mir Program.

She was selected as a NASA astronaut in 1996 and flew on three missions for the agency: STS-111, Soyuz TMA-11, and Soyuz MS-03. She performed 10 spacewalks totaling over 60 hours and became the first female commander of the ISS during Expedition 16. Whitson accumulated a total of 665 days in space, more than any American astronaut at the time of her retirement from NASA. She then joined Axiom Space and commanded the Axiom-2 mission. Whitson's leadership and EVA work contributed to the installation of truss structures, laboratories, and life-support systems essential to the station’s expansion.

Sunita "Suni" Williams was born on September 19th, 1965, in Euclid, Ohio, and considers Needham, Massachusetts her hometown. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Physical Science from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1987 and a Master of Science in Engineering Management from the Florida Institute of Technology in 1995. Williams served as a U.S. Navy helicopter pilot and test pilot before being selected as a NASA astronaut in 1998. She has flown on four space missions: STS-116/Soyuz TMA-9 as part of Expedition 14/15, Soyuz TMA-05M for Expedition 32/33, the failed Boeing Starliner Crew Flight Test mission in 2024, and finally the return Crew-9 mission on Dragon in which Williams hitched a ride earlier this year.

Across her missions, she has spent over 608 days in space and completed nine spacewalks. Her EVAs supported the installation of solar arrays, power systems, cooling lines, and structural upgrades to the ISS. Through her extensive operational, EVA, and leadership work, Williams played a pivotal role in expanding and maintaining the International Space Station’s infrastructure across two decades of spaceflight.

Linda M. Godwin was born on July 2, 1952, in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Physics and Mathematics from Southeast Missouri State University and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Missouri. Godwin joined NASA in 1980 and became an astronaut in 1986. She flew four Shuttle missions: STS-37, STS-59, STS-76, and STS-108. During STS-108, she performed a spacewalk to install thermal insulation and external experiments on the ISS. Her work supported early external outfitting and readiness for future assembly phases. Godwin helped establish the structural and scientific platform for continued station construction.

Nancy J. Currie was born on December 29th, 1958, in Wilmington, Delaware. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Biological Science from Ohio State University and advanced degrees in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. Currie served as a U.S. Army Colonel and flight test engineer before being selected as a NASA astronaut in 1990. She flew on four missions, including STS-88, the first ISS assembly flight. As the robotic arm operator on STS-88, she helped connect the Unity and Zarya modules. This operation marked the official beginning of ISS assembly in orbit. Currie-Gregg’s precision in robotic operations laid the foundation for all future station construction.

For more on the history of the ISS, check out our short film — The Station:

Project Hail Mary Dispatches Ryan Gosling to the Tau Ceti System

2025-07-01T20:00:00.000Z

Ryan Gosling is headed back to space.

This time in Project Hail Mary, which dropped its first trailer this week and its clear he’ll be going a little further than the moon on this mission.

Based on the 2021 novel by The Martian author Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary follows Dr. Ryland Grace, a molecular biologist who prefers the chaotic fulfillment of teaching middle school science over stuffy, cutthroat higher academia. But as all hero stories go, he’s the guy tasked with saving the world from a new ice age. Our sun is dying, and so are many others throughout the universe. Gosling previously portrayed Neil Armstrong in Damien Chazelle's biopic First Man.

Except one.

When reluctant astronaut Ryland wakes up from a coma aboard an interstellar spacecraft, he has no idea where he is or why he’s light-years from home. He’s also the only survivor on board. As his memories return, he learns of the Project Hail Mary mission to the Tau Ceti system — located 12 light years (about 72 trillion miles) from Earth — to investigate a strange substance that’s slowly consuming our sun’s energy. Tau Ceti is the one star not infected by the substance, and Ryland has to figure out why in time to save Earth.

Throughout the story, Ryland uses his scientific prowess to deduce facets of the mission and a way forward. He also meets an alien, and a heartwarming friendship develops as the two beings learn about each other and develop a clunky communication system.

It’s this first contact plot point that has some book fans in a tizzy, arguing the trailer gives away too much about the extraterrestrial being Ryland meets. The protagonist encountering an alien isn’t exactly a major spoiler for the story; the novel’s synopsis teases that he may not have to save his world alone. The encounter happens about a third into the book, so it’s not surprising that the trailer would show it.

Project Hail Mary was announced last spring for a possible 2026 release. This week, Amazon MGM Studios gave it a release date of March 20th, 2026, along with the first trailer and poster. Oscar-winning filmmakers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Spider-Verse franchise) direct the movie with screenwriter Drew Goddard, the writer behind Cloverfield (2008), World War Z (2013), and the adaptation of Weir’s The Martian (2015).

Project Hail Mary is Weir’s newest novel and leans more toward science fiction than The Martian. It has classic sci-fi tropes like lightspeed travel, extraterrestrial organic life, and a sixth-grade science teacher who is incredibly intelligent and quick-witted even beyond his molecular biology expertise. Like in The Martian, Project Hail Mary’s prose is super science-y but surprisingly accessible and, dare we say, cool. Weir has a knack for creating popular sci-fi stories that grow beyond the genre to become modern literary classics.

Weir’s sophomore novel, Artemis, is a sci-fi thriller that follows a young smuggler in the late 2080s on Artemis, the first city on the Moon. In 2017, a film adaptation of the novel was announced with Lord and Miller as co-directors, though no further updates have been revealed since the studio — formerly 20th Century Fox — was purchased by Walt Disney Studios in 2019.

The Martian film adaptation pushed Weir to stardom outside the book community, pleasing scientists, science nerds, and average sci-fi lovers. A child of a physicist and an electrical engineer, Weir focused on telling a The Martian’s story as scientifically accurate as possible. Before becoming a novelist, Weir was a computer programmer and published serialized fiction on his website. Before The Martian become a New York Times Bestseller, multi-award winner, and adapted into an Oscar-nominated film, the story was shared for free on his website before being picked up by Crown Publishing.

The book and the movie are literary science realism set in a not-too-distant future.

There’s no Starfleet or space wizards in a faraway galaxy, but historic institutions like NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft. Producers of the 2015 film got help from JPL in the form of technical documents, photos, and research to accurately portray spacecraft and possible future stations on Mars.

NASA folks, scientists, engineers, and space nerds around the world quickly hopped on the popularity of The Martian. Days after its release, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shared images of locales on Mars seen in the movie, including spots where the fictional Ares 3 landed and worked, and their proximity to the Pathfinder spacecraft and Sojourner rover. JPL also wrote of the important role it plays in the Mars and rescue missions portrayed in the film. Weir, the filmmakers, and some of the stars of the movie even flew to JPL to show off parts of the unfinished film and tour the facilities and the Mars Yard — a training ground for rovers.

The internet also exploded with mainstream and indie publications capitalizing on Martian’s popularity. Outlets and blogs picked apart the science of the novel and movie, fact-checking travel times to the red planet, the realities of landing a spacecraft in its thin atmosphere, the unfeasibility of a spacious spacecraft with large windows, the viability of potatoes, and the nature of Martian dust storms. Whether or not all of the things astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon in the film) and the rest of the crew experience on Mars is completely scientifically accurate is irrelevant to what the movie sparked in the people who watched it — a genuine interest in space, science, and the probability of going to Mars.

The Martian went on to earn Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Production Design, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects. The film also won two Golden Globe Awards for Best Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy and Best Actor — Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for Matt Damon’s portrayal of the stranded astronaut.

Project Hail Mary will likely garner a similar response in the public and awards scene, though lightspeed travel beyond our solar system is a much more far-flung (pun intended) possibility than reaching one of our planetary neighbors. NASA and other real-world space science institutions don’t play as prominently in Ryland’s story, which features just as much international science politics as it does technical details about his outer space adventure and heartwarming friendship with an alien.

Still, get ready for more articles about the science of lightspeed travel and prolonged comas, the probability of sun-eating organic life, and the plausibility of learning to communicate with alien life. While we wait for the movie to drop, here are some facts about the Tau Ceti system:

— Distance from Earth: About 12 light-years

— Type of star: G-type star (our sun is a G-type, yellow-dwarf main sequence star). As the second brightest sun-like star in our sky, it’s visible unaided from Earth.

— Number of planets: Four confirmed, possibly five exoplanets, including two that could be in the habitable zone in orbit around the star. These two potential super-Earths are designated Tau Ceti e and f and are located in the inner and outer edges of the system’s habitable zone.

— Properties: Compared to our sun, Tau Ceti is slightly smaller, has a slower rotation, and weaker magnetic activity. It has a debris disk, like our system’s Kuiper Belt, filled with dust and debris.

— Appearances in popular culture: Star Trek, Barbarella, Doctor Who, The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson, and many more.

Has Europe Given Up On the New Moon Race?

2025-06-17T10:00:00.000Z

A new Moon race has been underway for years.

But one contender is strangely missing. Europe hasn’t been to lunar orbit since 2006 and has never attempted a lunar landing. In the meantime, China has conquered the lunar far side and brought to Earth samples from that unexplored region. Japan and India both cracked the challenging lunar descent and touchdown, deploying rovers that briefly roamed the lunar surface. On top of that a string of private companies, funded through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, have made sometimes more, sometimes less successful landing attempts.

Why is Europe not in the game?

The European Space Agency (ESA), an intergovernmental organization entrusted with leading the European space program, didn’t respond to Supercluster’s interview request. But one source that spoke to Supercluster anonymously said that Europe simply has other priorities and isn’t interested in what some see merely as geopolitical signalling.

“Europe doesn’t really get involved in races,” the source said. “Europe does space because of the science or the benefits for [its] citizens.”

But Europe has had a lander in the works — at least on paper — as late as 2019. The In-situ resource utilization demonstration (ISRU) mission was expected to reach the moon around 2025 and test a prototype lunar factory producing water and oxygen from the lunar soil. The mission was billed as a key contribution toward a sustained human presence on the moon.

In January 2019, SpaceRef reported that ESA awarded a contract to “study and prepare” the mission to a consortium involving Belgian space tech and services company Space Applications Services and Berlin-based PTScientists. Space Applications Services were to provide “the ground segment and communications” while PTScientists — a one-time competitor in the Google Lunar X-Prize — were to build the lander.

Only six months later, in July 2019, PTScientists filed for bankruptcy protection, according to Space News, but was acquired by an unknown buyer to continue its work under the altered name Planetary Transportation Systems.

In 2021, the renewed company managed to win a contract to develop electronics for a new upper stage of Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket. A cubesat built by Planetary Transportation Systems was among the payload lofted to space on the debut flight of Ariane 6 in July 2024. The company’s trail, however, ends after that. Its website no longer appears to exist; its activity on social media ceased around the time of the first Ariane 6 launch.

A source familiar with the situation that spoke to Supercluster anonymously said the ISRU demonstration mission early-stage study was concluded but the project didn’t proceed beyond “a bunch of PDF files on some ESA servers.”

Joining the Race at Last?

Since March 2025, however, Space Applications Services has its own contract with ESA to develop two lunar rovers — the LUVMI-M rover for commercial payload hosting and the larger Lunar Prospecting & Scouting Rover (LPSR) for transporting cargo on the moon’s surface.

Jeremi Gancet, a systems department manager at Space Applications Services, told Supercluster in an email that these missions are aiming for launch in 2027 and 2030, respectively.

“LUVMI-M relies primarily on company investment, complemented by funding from [the Belgian Science Policy Office],” said Gancet. “Funding is provisioned until [we reach] readiness for the first mission. The extent of the LPSR Phase 2 funding will be announced at the ESA Ministerial Council in November this year.”

The Space Applications Services contracts are part of ESA’s recent drive to actually join the moon race after all. But seemingly only after everybody else has made it through the finish line.

In September 2023, ESA launched a call for “small missions to the moon,” which could involve orbiters, landers and rovers and cost less than 50 million euros ($58 million). For comparison, India’s triumphant Chandrayaan-3, which delivered the Vikram lander and the Pragyan rover to the lunar south pole in 2023, cost $75 million.

The European subsidiary of Japan-headquartered lunar transportation company ispace (like PTScientist a former finalist in the Google Lunar X-Prize) also has an early-stage contract with ESA as part of that initiative. The company, which crashed its second moon-bound spacecraft during a landing attempt earlier this month, is developing a mission concept called the Mission for Advanced Geophysics and Polar Ice Exploration, or MAGPIE.

The MAGPIE, if it were to make it to the moon, would search for water ice deposits around the moon’s poles. In a statement on its website, ispace said the MAGPIE mission would “take Europe a step closer to developing resource utilization and surface operations.”

Science First

ESA’s indecisive attitude toward lunar exploration may have something to do with the structure of its programs, one source told Supercluster. ESA covers a vast scope of activities. It explores planetary bodies in the solar system, studies the universe at large, builds remote-sensing satellites to monitor Earth, develops navigation and telecommunication systems and trains astronauts for stays on the International Space Station and possibly beyond.

Out of these programs, only space science is mandatory, meaning that each of the agency’s 22 member states must contribute to the program’s budget based on the country’s GDP. The exploration of the moon and Mars currently doesn’t fall into the space science program, the source said, but rather into the voluntary Human and Robotic Exploration Program, which not every member state contributes to.

“We've had this mantra in Europe called ‘Space for Earth’, where we have tried to link space to the benefits that satellites provide for citizens down on Earth, and that includes space science satellites,” the source said. “Robotic exploration of the moon [makes] a lot of sense. You could do many interesting things, like deploying telescopes on the moon, even though it’s challenging. But for a long time, Europe has not been interested because it had moved its focus to Mars. It basically jumped over the idea of doing a rover on the moon and focused on the ExoMars mission instead.”

The ExoMars mission intends to deliver Europe’s first rover to Mars to search for traces of life under the planet’s surface with the help of a 2-meter-long drill. The mission, however, has suffered its own avalanche of setbacks. Initially scheduled to launch in 2018, the mission’s 2022 lift-off was cancelled after ESA ceased cooperation with Russia’s space agency ROSCOSMOS following the invasion of Ukraine. The rover, dubbed Rosalind Franklin, is now awaiting a new landing platform, as the original one, built by Russia, had to be let go. The mission may be under further threat as cuts to NASA’s budget, proposed by the administration of United States President Donald Trump, would end the American agency’s participation in the mission — something ESA might struggle to make up for.

NASA’s Sidekick

ESA’s interest in the moon has for years been shaped by NASA’s initiatives, which, some sources say, are in effect a response to the expansive ambitions and impressive progress of China.

“Between 2005 and 2010, the American industry started whispering that the Chinese are coming, we need to go back to the moon,” the source said. “It was clear it would cost a lot of money, so they talked to their partners on the International Space Station — countries like Canada, Europe and Japan — to join this new Artemis program. It was essentially a coalition of the willing to make it more feasible to get the funding.”

ESA was entrusted with building the service module for the Orion space capsule and a few modules for the planned Gateway station in the moon’s orbit.

The agency also committed to developing a large logistics lander called Argonaut, which could make it to the moon’s surface at some point in the early 2030s. The Franco-Italian aerospace conglomerate Thales Alenia Space bagged the nearly $900 million contract to develop and deliver the lander in January this year.

ESA’s Explore2040 space exploration strategy cites among its key lunar ambitions the delivery of a European person to the moon’s surface by 2030. That goal is now in jeopardy too, as Trump’s administration intends to reduce the lunar exploration program to refocus directly on Mars.

Lunar Baby Steps

In the meantime, a few European countries have made independent attempts to visit the moon on their own. An Italian cubesat called AgroMoon hitched a ride to lunar orbit on the NASA-led Artemis 1 mission, which tested the Orion space capsule in an uncrewed flight in 2022. The cubesat’s task was to monitor Orion’s separation from the rocket upper stage, but the satellite also sent home a few images of Earth and the moon. In 2014, Luxembourg partnered with China to launch a simple scientific payload including an amateur radio transmitter and a dosimeter measuring ionizing radiation. The device flew on China’s Chang'e 5-T1 mission, which tested technologies for China’s then planned lunar sample return mission, and remained attached to the Long March rocket upper stage that launched it. In 2022, the stack spiralled and crashed onto the moon after its orbit naturally degraded.

The most ambitious European moon venture that might be within sight of a launchpad is the Lunar Pathfinder mission spearheaded by U.K-based Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL).

Their mission, in the works since about 2020 and co-funded by ESA, will travel to the moon with a Firefly lander in 2026. From its position in the moon’s orbit, it will serve as a telecommunication relay for spacecraft and robots on the moon’s surface.

“When you are on the far side of the moon, you can’t talk directly to Earth,”

aerospace consultant Philip Davies, who works on the mission’s business development plan, told Supercluster. “If you have a data relay satellite, you can store data and forward it to Earth when you have contact. With that, we will be able to collect a lot more data from [our] science payload.”

The mission is a precursor for an ESA-funded constellation of telecommunication and navigation satellites called Moonlight, which aims to provide an equivalent to GPS for explorers on the moon’s surface.

A preliminary design contract for Moonlight was awarded last year to Telespazio, but Davies said the program is not yet fully funded. The constellation, expected to consist of five satellites, might make it to the moon in the early 2030s.

Davies thinks that Europe’s hesitation around moon missions is partly linked to the uncertainty around the moon’s actual business potential. Despite the current lunar gold rush and enthusiastic hype, the case for long-term human presence on the moon or for mining of lunar materials for use on Earth is nowhere near bulletproof.

Even for projects like Moonlight, the return on investment is nowhere near certain.

“If you look at the market surveys about the lunar economy, you will see a lot of different opinions,” Davies said. “They all predict a very rapid uptake in missions to the moon. But if you go back in time, it’s never panned out as the market forecasts have predicted.”

So for now, Europe will take it slow, and hope that there will still be room in the pack if business gets going for real.

Hubble: The Greatest Photographer in (and of) the Universe

2025-06-10T21:00:00.000Z

Hubble is still hard at work in 2025.

This year, NASA’s workhorse Hubble Space Telescope marks its 35th anniversary, celebrating over three decades of transforming humanity’s understanding of the cosmos. Launched aboard Space Shuttle Discovery on April 24th, 1990, Hubble was named in honor of astronomer Edwin Hubble, whose groundbreaking work in the 1920s provided definitive evidence that our universe is expanding—a discovery that reshaped astronomy and cosmology.

Upon its initial deployment, Hubble encountered optical issues due to a flawed primary mirror. NASA swiftly organized five servicing missions by space shuttle crews between 1993 and 2009, dramatically upgrading its instruments and optics to full potential, stretching its ultimate lifespan, and enabling Hubble to become the greatest photographer that ever lived.

Throughout its storied career, Hubble has revealed the universe in profound ways, uncovering insights like the precise rate of cosmic expansion, finding evidence of supermassive black holes in galaxy centers, and capturing views of star formation in distant nebulae. Some of its most breathtaking images include the famous Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula, a stellar nursery where new stars are born amidst spectacular clouds of gas and dust, and the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, an image revealing thousands of galaxies dating back to within a billion years after the Big Bang. These photographs have not only advanced scientific knowledge but have stirred public imagination.

Who hasn't had Hubble wallpaper on their computer at some point?

Today, Hubble continues its mission of exploration, capturing stunning images and data that astronomers around the world use to investigate phenomena from nearby solar system objects to distant galaxies. Although its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, now operates alongside it, Hubble remains invaluable due to its unique capabilities in visible and ultraviolet light.

Even after 35 years, NASA’s beloved telescope endures as an indispensable tool for discovery, inspiring generations of astronomers and stargazers alike to look up and ponder our cosmic origins. Supercluster is celebrating the life of Hubble with our sponsors at Space Camper Cosmic IPA, offering hop-lovers an exhilarating ride through the cosmos of flavor and innovation. Our team curated striking photos shot by Hubble, arguably the greatest images ever seen. And we even found images of the workhorse telescope itself, being deployed and serviced over its years of loyal service.

Hubble Deployment

This photograph shows Hubble being deployed on April 25th, 1990. The photograph was taken by the IMAX Cargo Bay Camera (ICBC) mounted in a container on the port side of the Space Shuttle Discovery on the STS-31 mission.

Deep Fields

This deep, detailed image is the result of Hubble's observations for the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS). The image displays approximately 30,000 galaxies across 9 billion years of time and space in a fascinating visual study of galaxy evolution.The oldest and most distant galaxies depicted appear red, because as the universe expands their light has been stretched or “redshifted” to longer wavelengths. Red is the longest wavelength our eyes can see; beyond it are longer infrared wavelengths, which some telescopes, including Hubble, can detect for us.

Hubble's Extreme Deep Field (XDF) combines 10 years of Hubble Space Telescope photographs taken of a small patch of sky at the center of the original Hubble Ultra Deep Field.

About 5,500 galaxies are visible in this image in various stages of evolution. Since light takes time to travel across the vast cosmos, many of these galaxies are seen as they were in the early history of the universe. The universe is 13.7 billion years old, and this image spans 13.2 billion years of galaxy development. The farthest galaxy found in the Hubble Extreme Deep Field existed just 450 million years after the Big Bang.

Jupiter

While not an actual photo, this artist's impression depicts Jupiter and its moon Europa using actual Jupiter and Europa images taken by Hubble. As you know, Europa Clipper is heading toward the Jupiter system at the moment. But Why? The Hubble Space Telescope discovered water vapor erupting from the frigid surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa, in one or more plumes near its south pole. Europa is already thought to harbor a liquid ocean beneath its icy crust, making the moon one of the main targets in the search for a habitable world.

Hubble's finding was the first observational evidence of water vapor being ejected off the moon's surface.

This image from Hubble shows the planet Jupiter in a color composite of ultraviolet wavelengths. The Great Red Spot appears red to the human eye, however in this ultraviolet image it appears darker because high altitude haze particles absorb light at these wavelengths. The reddish, wavy polar hazes are absorbing slightly less of this light due to differences in either particle size, composition, or altitude.

Stars

A huge, billowing pair of gas and dust clouds are captured in this Hubble image of the supermassive star Eta Carinae. Even though Eta Carinae is more than 8,000 light-years away, structures only 10 billion miles across (about the diameter of our solar system) can be distinguished. Dust lanes, tiny condensations, and strange radial streaks all appear with unprecedented clarity. Eta Carinae was the site of a giant outburst about 150 years ago, when it became one of the brightest stars in the southern sky.

Hubble captures the red giant star CW Leonis. The orange-red "cobwebs" are dusty clouds of sooty carbon engulfing the dying star. They were created when CW Leonis threw out its outer layers into the inky black void.

The carbon, cooked up through nuclear fusion in the star's interior, gives it a carbon-rich atmosphere. Blasting the carbon back into space provides raw material for the formation of future stars and planets. All known life on Earth is built around the carbon atom. Complex biological molecules consist of carbon atoms bonded with other common elements in the universe.

A trio of dazzling stars blaze from the hollowed-out cavity of a reflection nebula in this image from Hubble. The triple-star system is made up of the variable star HP Tau, HP Tau G2, and HP Tau G3. HP Tau is known as a T Tauri star, a type of young variable star that hasn’t begun nuclear fusion yet but is beginning to evolve into a hydrogen-fueled star similar to our Sun. T Tauri stars tend to be younger than 10 million years old ― in comparison, our Sun is around 4.6 billion years old ― and are often found still swaddled in the clouds of dust and gas from which they formed.

Comets

Hubble's shot of comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) was taken on April 20th, 2020, showing the comet's solid, icy nucleus breaking apart into as many as 30 pieces that are each roughly the size of a house. The comet was discovered on December 29, 2019 by the ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) robotic astronomical survey system based in Hawaii. ATLAS' fragmentation was confirmed by amateur astronomer Jose de Queiroz, who was able to photograph around three pieces of the comet on April 11. Hubble has a front row seat, with its sharp resolution, to go looking for more pieces.

This composite Hubble Space Telescope image captures the positions of Comet Siding Spring (C/2013 A1) and Mars in a never-before-seen close passage of a comet by the Red Planet, which happened at 2:28 p.m. EDT October 19th, 2014. On that date the comet passed by Mars at approximately 87,000 miles (about one-third the distance between Earth and the Moon). The Mars and comet images have been added together to create a single picture to illustrate the angular separation between the comet and Mars at closest approach.

Mars

While photographing Mars on May 12th, 2016, Hubble captured a cameo appearance of the tiny moon Phobos on its trek around the Red Planet. Discovered in 1877, the diminutive, potato-shaped moon is so small that it appears star-like in this time-lapsed Hubble picture.

Phobos orbits Mars in just 7 hours and 39 minutes, which is faster than Mars rotates. The moon’s orbit is very slowly shrinking, meaning it will eventually shatter under Mars’ gravitational pull, or crash into the planet.

These GIF-ed Hubble images taken in 1999 was one of several shot when Mars was 54 million miles (87 million km) from Earth, is centered near the location of the Pathfinder landing site. Dark sand dunes that surround the polar cap merge into a large, dark region called Acidalia. This area, as shown by images from the Hubble telescope and other spacecraft, is composed of dark, sand-sized grains of pulverized volcanic rock. Below and to the left of Acidalia are the massive Martian canyon systems of Valles Marineris, some of which form long, linear markings that were once thought by some to be canals.

Early morning clouds can be seen along the left limb of the planet, and a large cyclonic storm composed of water ice is churning near the polar cap.

Servicing

Johnson Space Center Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas is captured during the first spacewalk of the STS-103 mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). A large television screen seen in the front-right of the control room provided flight controllers with live downlink from Discovery. The flight director's console and that of the spacecraft communicator (CAPCOM) appear at the center of the frame.

Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-103 moves closer and closer to Hubble to begin the third servicing mission on the observatory since it was launched in 1990. This image was taken from Discovery on December 21st, 1999.

NASA astronauts James H. Newman and Mike Massimino participate in the fourth spacewalk of the STS-109 mission, the fourth servicing mission to Hubble. The two, with Newman on Columbia's Remote Manipulator System robotic arm, removed the Faint Object Camera to make room for the new Advanced Camera for Surveys.

The STS-109 crew members are photographed during a preflight news conference at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC). From the left are astronauts Michael J. Massimino, James H. Newman, Richard M. Linnehan, John M. Grunsfeld, Nancy J. Currie, Duane G. Carey, and Scott D. Altman. Altman and Carey were mission commander and pilot, respectively. Grunsfeld was payload commander and Currie, Linnehan, Newman and Massimino were mission specialists.

One of the STS-109 crew members photographed the newly serviced and upgraded Hubble as it neared Earth in March of 2002. The Space Shuttle Columbia was located over the Atlantic Ocean southwest of the Cape Verde Islands when this image was taken.

Spiral & Spooky Galaxies

Hubble captured galaxy Arp 184 or NGC 1961 which sits about 190 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Camelopardalis (The Giraffe).

The name Arp 184 comes from the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies compiled by astronomer Halton Arp in 1966. It holds 338 galaxies that are oddly shaped and tend to be neither entirely elliptical nor entirely spiral-shaped. Many of the galaxies are in the process of interacting with other galaxies, while others are dwarf galaxies without well-defined structures. Arp 184 earned its spot in the catalog thanks to its single broad, star-speckled spiral arm that appears to stretch toward us. The galaxy’s far side sports a few wisps of gas and stars, but it lacks a similarly impressive spiral arm.

In this image, Hubble peers into the spiral galaxy NGC 1317 in the constellation Fornax, located more than 50 million light-years from Earth. Visible in this galaxy image is a bright blue ring that hosts hot, young stars. NGC 1317 is one of a pair, but its rowdy larger neighbor, NGC 1316, lies outside Hubble’s field of view.

Despite the absence of its neighboring galaxy, this image finds NGC 1317 accompanied by two objects from very different parts of the universe. The bright point ringed with a crisscross pattern is a star from our own galaxy surrounded by diffraction spikes, whereas the redder elongated smudge is a distant galaxy lying far beyond NGC 1317.

In this Hubble image, an uncanny pair of glowing eyes glares menacingly in our direction. The piercing "eyes" are the most prominent feature of what resembles the face of an otherworldly creature. But this is no ghostly apparition. Hubble is looking at a titanic head-on collision between two galaxies.

Each "eye" is the bright core of a galaxy, one of which slammed into another. The outline of the face is a ring of young blue stars. Other clumps of new stars form a nose and mouth.

Hubble witnessed a grouping of galaxies engaging in a slow dance of destruction that will last for billions of years. The galaxies are so tightly packed together that gravitational forces are beginning to rip stars from them and distort their shapes. Those same gravitational forces eventually could bring the galaxies together to form one large galaxy.

Legacy

Who doesn't know Hubble and its work?

The machine that has given humans many gifts of wonder and will live eternally through the bounty of science that it continues to collect in 2025. And forever live rent-free in our hearts and minds, where Hubble has often transported us to a hidden universe. Hubble's legacy is as rich and far-reaching as its most famous photos and the proof isn't hard to find: lunch boxes, bookmarks, iphone wallpapers, drink coasters, half of all Etsy products, and of course, instagram.

Special thanks to the folks across all NASA centers, especially Johnson in Houston, that contribute to the upkeep of Hubble, for the curation and preservation of these historic images. And a hat tip to the scientists and researchers from around the world that keep Hubble busy.

Ukraine’s Defense Still Requires U.S. Space Technology

2025-06-03T20:00:00.000Z

Ukraine can no longer take America’s military support for granted.

Together with Patriot missile interceptors, various tactical weapons and fighter jets, the nation’s access to Starlink internet and insights from fleets of Earth-observing satellites could be in question. What would such a loss mean for Ukraine?

On Palm Sunday, April 13, thousands of Ukrainians strolled to churches for pre-Easter celebrations in the north-eastern city of Sumy. Most were going to pray for an end to daily Russian air raids. It was meant to be a pleasant spring morning. But instead, two ballistic missiles hit the city center, killing 37 and injuring more than 130 others. It was a cynical reminder of the failing attempts of the Trump administration to secure a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. The attack was the deadliest in two years and took place only a few weeks before the final package of military aid approved by former President Joe Biden is set to run out.

Early Missile Warning

The missiles that caused the Sumy carnage were the Iskander-M short-range rockets manufactured by Russia’s Machine-Building Design Bureau near Moscow. These missiles can only be shot down by the Patriots, the supply of which may soon be discontinued. The Patriots, however, are only a tip of an iceberg that is Ukraine’s reliance on U.S.-made tech.

Allegedly fired from the west-Russian Kursk region, the Iskander-M missiles appeared to have hit without a warning. Ukraine uses ground-based radar to detect incoming threats. To spot those following ballistic trajectories can, however, be tricky. The only other source of warning are thermal detectors on satellites of the U.S. military Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) satellite constellation, according to Reuters.

Analysts approached by Supercluster couldn’t confirm how much Ukraine relies on the U.S. for early missile warnings, as information about the SBIRS system’s use are not made public. But SBIRS is only one in a range of critical space technologies which Ukraine currently cannot replace either by its own or European assets.

Starlink Indispensable

When the war broke out, Elon Musk famously responded to Twitter calls from Ukraine’s officials to switch on Starlink internet in Ukraine. At that time, it was a life saver, for the nation was about to plunge into internet darkness after Russia disrupted its ground-based and cellular networks. Since then, Starlink has become an integral component of the defense effort, the Ukrainians having quickly found new uses for its services.

“Starlink was originally designed to provide internet access to civilians,” Pierre Lionnet, space economist and managing director at European space industry trade association Eurospace, told Supercluster. “That’s what we saw in Ukraine initially, but then the Ukrainians did something that nobody expected them to do — they started mounting Starlink terminals on drones and robots, using them to guide targeted assaults on the Russian forces.”

Most drones used in the war in Ukraine are the so-called first-person view (FPV) drones controlled by radio links. But satellite connectivity enables the unmanned vehicles to strike targets much deeper in the Russia-controlled territory. First such uses of Starlink in Ukraine were reported in mid-2022 with marine drones targeting Russia’s ships in the Black Sea. Musk was not amused. Citing concerns over escalation of the Ukrainian conflict into the Third World War, he allegedly toggled Starlink access in the Black Sea region. His commitment to the Ukrainian struggle has since cooled down.

Since February, after relationships between the Trump administration and Ukraine deteriorated, Starlink access has allegedly been used as a bargaining chip to pressure Ukraine into a deal to allow America to extract the country’s rare minerals.

Despite public squabbles, Ukrainians still rely on Starlink for civilian connectivity as well as military operations.

Their trust in Musk’s company, however, has plummeted. The problem is that there is no-fully fledge alternative that could serve all the uses currently addressed by Starlink. Ukraine also reportedly has access to Starlink’s military upgrade called the Starshield, which provides secure, encrypted communications.

“Once you put together these three use cases and ask yourself whether European assets could supply these three services, the answer is very much ‘no’,” said Lionnet.

A combination of satellites in higher orbits owned by European nations and the Eutelsat One Web low-Earth-orbit constellation could provide connectivity for ground-forces and civilians, albeit with much reduced capacity. One Web, the only developed constellation similar to the Starlink concept, only has about 650 satellites in orbit compared to Starlink’s more than 7,000. With intense use, its available bandwidth would quickly thin out. There is also the issue of latency that plagues satellites in higher orbits, which limits the range of applications these satellites can support.

“In the best-case scenario, One Web might provide about one twentieth of the capacity of Starlink over Ukraine,”

Clayton Swope, the deputy director and aerospace security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told Supercluster. “In practice, that would likely mean that most of this connectivity would be reserved for the military and there would be much less available for Ukrainian citizens.”

Lionnet points out that in addition to the reduced bandwidth, the One Web constellation and its terminals are much less suitable for use on lightweight drones and other unmanned vehicles than Starlink.

“The One Web antennas are bigger and heavier. They could be used on ships and planes but the use on drones is something that today cannot be replaced easily,” said Lionnet.

Eyes in Space

Equally irreplaceable are Earth observation satellites and constellations owned either by the U.S. government or U.S.-headquartered companies. In March, the Trump administration temporarily suspended Ukraine’s access to satellite imagery curated by the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency as part of the Global Enhanced GEOINT Delivery system. The service includes images captured by commercial companies Maxar Technologies, Planet and BlackSky, all of which have been indispensable for Ukraine to stay ahead of Russia’s movements.

At the onset of the war, Maxar used to release images of the Russian troops’ progress as well as of the destruction on the ground. High-resolution data from Maxar’s ten satellites supplemented with high-frequency revisit lower-res images by Planet and other providers, enabled Ukrainian defense forces to view Russia’s advances nearly in real time.

Although the U.S. government reinstated the data flow after a two-week pause, the threat of a permanent ban on intelligence data sharing looms large.

Just like with Starlink, Europe currently doesn’t have a fully-fledged alternative. The only full-grown Europe-based satellite imaging provider is Finland-headquartered ICEYE. Operating a fleet of over 40 synthetic aperture radar satellites, the company has multiple agreements with Ukraine to supply radar imagery that reveals the ground even through clouds and in darkness.

High resolution optical images, such as those provided by Maxar Technologies, would be much harder to source in Europe, said Lionnet. Airbus operates its constellation of Pleiades Neo satellites, which provide images with a resolution of 30 centimeters. But there are only two of those satellites in orbit; two others plunged into the Atlantic in 2022 after a post-launch rocket failure.

On top of that, Lionnet points out, the U.S. military itself has a “sheer amount of [Earth observation] satellite capacity” in orbit that is “absolutely unmatched in Europe.” According to publicly available information, the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office operates at least 50 intelligence satellites. Overall, the U.S. military space fleet has nearly 250 spacecraft. In Europe, on the contrary, the four best equipped countries — France, Germany, UK and Italy — only have some 40 military satellites between them. If the U.S. government were to halt all intelligence data sharing, Ukraine’s near real-time view of the enemy’s moves would become patchy.

“Fewer satellites would mean longer revisit rates,” Swope said. “If you are trying to figure out what’s on the other side of that hill up ahead, it might take longer, or you might not have a way to figure that out at all. And that certainly could impact operations on the battlefield.”

GPS Ubiquitous

Then there is the omnipresent, taken-for-granted Global Positioning System (GPS). It has been consistently making headlines throughout the war in Ukraine for the vulnerability of its signal to Russian jamming and spoofing.

Although Europe has an alternative in this case — the Galileo global navigation satellite system — Ukraine would still feel the complete loss of GPS painfully.

“The Galileo system is for civilian uses with the protected public service component for government users,” said Lionnet. “It would be able to provide some higher quality encrypted signal to the military, but it still is not able to do one thing that GPS does and that is weapon guidance.”

Ukraine uses U.S. GPS-guided missile systems such as HIMARS, ATACMS and GMLRS. The use of the mobile multi-rocket launcher HIMARS has been especially affected by GPS jamming, according to media reports.

Swope points out that effects of a GPS blackout would be felt beyond weaponry deployments. For too long, the world has been used to rely on GPS and switching to other constellation would come with a significant price tag.

“If I have my iPhone or a system that is using GPS for timing and synchronization like in the energy of financial sectors, I don’t know whether these systems would be immediately ready to use those other constellations,” Swope says. “

Whether its civilian-built technology or upgraded military satellites, Ukraine’s defense without U.S. space support would be nearly impossible.

The Shaky Economics of Space Cinema

2025-05-27T21:00:00.000Z

Hollywood is a business built on risk, and nothing depletes studio reserves with the potential to fill them back up ten-fold quite like sending stars to the, well, stars. Space films represent the ultimate high-risk, high-reward gamble in movie economics – mind-numbingly expensive to produce, ridiculously difficult to execute, yet capable of supercharging the box office to send executive paydays to new galaxies.

Way back when director Georges Méliès shot a rocket into the face of the moon in 1902’s A Trip to the Moon, space movies didn’t face mountains of scrutiny because very few could fact-check your interpretation of the solar system. And there was no Neil deGrasse Tyson to "well, actually" you on social media.

As one industry veteran puts it, "There was a time when filmmakers could make a pretty effective space movie because there wasn't as high of a bar before we went into space."

Then NASA had to raise the stakes by actually going to the moon.

Once the Apollo 11 footage was transmitted worldwide, raising the bar for awe and inspiration, audience expectations were forever altered. Through sheer ground-breaking genius, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey had aimed for this new standard, collaborating closely with renowned science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, who co-wrote the screenplay and provided foundational scientific concepts. Kubrick also sought advice from leading scientists, aerospace engineers, and futurists.

But despite its beloved perch in pop culture, the movie was not a huge moneymaker for MGM in 1968, not until later. Studios remained skeptical about cosmic content, even while kids devoured Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials. Then, in 1977, Star Wars exploded Hollywood economics.

"Once the summer movie boom started with Jaws and then you add Star Wars, it really ignited the space box office movie race," says Paul Dergarabedian, Senior Media Analyst at Comscore. "It proved that there was astronomical commercial value in space movies."

When Ridley Scott's Alien skulked into theaters in 1979, studio executives realized space settings could support diverse storytelling approaches while still filling seats. Alien also revealed a crucial financial lesson: with its focus on claustrophobic corridors rather than planetary vistas, space horror could potentially cost less than epic space operas. Modern budget-conscious space flicks such as Moon and Europa Report show how story, character, premise and genre can substitute for raw spectacle.

Apollo 13, a tentpole directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks in 1995, was a major commercial and critical success upon its release. Made with a production budget of approximately $52 million, the film grossed around $355 million worldwide. It was the third-highest-grossing film domestically in 1995 and became one of Universal Pictures’ most successful films of the decade. Critically acclaimed for its historical accuracy, suspenseful storytelling, technical realism, and compelling performances, Apollo 13 garnered widespread praise and earned nine Academy Award nominations.

First Man, a smaller-scale film starring Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong in 2018, performed modestly at the box office. The film, directed by Damien Chazelle, had a production budget of approximately $59 million. Globally, it grossed around $105.7 million, with roughly $44.9 million from the domestic market. While the film managed to recoup its production budget, when accounting for marketing and distribution expenses, it wasn’t considered a financial success. However, First Man received critical acclaim for its realistic portrayal of the Apollo 11 mission, cinematography, and performances, notably Gosling’s portrayal of Armstrong. The film won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and garnered nominations in technical and artistic categories.

The Cost of Leaving Earth

Delivering an authentically believable space film that wows the imagination typically requires enough cash to fund a small NASA mission. Creating cosmic environments, whether through practical effects, elaborate sets, or increasingly sophisticated CGI, usually demands serious financial thrust. The Empire Strikes Back saw its budget balloon from $8 million to $30.5 million in 1980. The Force Awakens is the most expensive film ever made. This level of investment excludes many smaller studios and production companies from even attempting traditional space epics. The path to profitability is simply littered with debris.

"Your movie, at least on paper to investors and studio partners, has to make financial success. Creating something set in space is never going to be inexpensive, so how do you do that with a mind for profitability," Dergarabedian said.

Despite Tom Cruise’s star power and the film's impressive visuals and solid reviews, 2013’s Oblivion barely reached $290 million worldwide on a $120 million budget. Throw in what was likely a hefty marketing budget and it’s highly unlikely the studio earned its money back. John Carter, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets — the list of costly space-set box office misfires from the last 15 years goes on and on. Failing to appeal to global audiences is practically a death sentence in this genre.

What Makes Space Films Profitable?

So what separates the financial disasters from the cash cows? Industry veterans point to a constellation of factors.

"To knock it out of the park, you need some star power, an easily digestible and understood premise, great marketing, a budget that delivers the presentation goods, and you need to also open at an opportune time," explains Dergarabedian.

This collective criteria helps explain hits like The Martian ($631 million worldwide), Interstellar ($757 million), and Gravity ($724 million). (All three films notched multiple Oscar nominations, including two Best Picture nods). Each film boasted A-list talent from Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, to Matt Damon, Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway. These names were flanked by high-concept yet accessible premises (man stranded on Mars, save the world, get back to earth), and timeless visuals that were worth the price of admission alone.

While you and I may love the more esoteric and cerebral space films too, general audiences don’t always share our affinity. A24's Robert Pattinson-led arthouse space journey High Life earned critical praise but negligible ticket sales. Not to pick on Pattinson again, but this year’s Mickey 17 struggled to market its cloning concept and off-kilter tone, which hurt its broad commercial prospects. Ad Astra, starring Brad Pitt, had a production budget estimated between $80 million and $100 million, factoring in reshoots and post-production costs . The film grossed approximately $127 million worldwide, with $50.2 million from the U.S. and Canada. It was considered a box office disappointment.

The economics shift considerably depending on which sub-genre you’re exploring — alien invasion, horror, space opera, sci-fi fantasy, etc. Star Wars captures the financial zeitgeist partly because it appeals to everyone from wide-eyed kids to nostalgic grandparents. Star Wars is one of the few non-space exploration topics written about at Supercluster, its impact still permeating throughout the space industry and popular culture. The Falcon 9 is named after the Millennium Falcon. The CIA used a Star Wars fan site to send coded messages to operatives around the world.

Conversely, R-rated sci-fi horror like Life targets a narrower demographic slice, making cost-benefit analysis much trickier. Films like Passengers, starring Chris Pine and Jennifer Lawrence, were met with critical derision thanks to tone deaf character choices. These underscore the inherent problem with our fascination with space — there simply aren’t enough good stories to tell and the bad ones leave pockmarks on the genre’s commercial viability. Like any fad, oversaturation of sub-par product is a constant concern.

Actually Filming in Space

The Creative Arts Agency (CAA) has yet to build a working space capsule (that we know of) so Hollywood has to piggyback off existing real-life missions if they want to make space movies on-location. That's the likely path for Tom Cruise and director Doug Liman as they attempt a previously reported $200 million project partially filmed on the International Space Station. However, no public update on the project has been given since 2023. We do know that Cruise tried on SpaceX's flight suit.

"For general audiences, I think that could be one helluva of a marketing hook, especially with Tom Cruise," Dergarabedian said. "Top Gun in outer space would be a very expensive endeavor.” For comparison, the cost of Katy Perry's flight aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard to suborbital space is estimated to be around $1.2 -$1.5 million while Cruise's flight to the ISS aboard Dragon could run around $65 million for a 10-day mission, if he flew with broker Axiom.

As Hollywood waits to see whether or not Cruise launches to orbit, Russia has already shot a hit movie aboard the ISS. Russia's The Challenge is the first feature film to send a professional film crew into orbit and stars Russian actress Yulia Peresild and cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy. Beating tinseltown to the punch raises the question of whether national space programs or private commercial endeavors are currently the best way to reach this new filmmaking tier. The Challenge was a huge hit in Russia.

The Cultural Calculus

Though we’re more exploring the financial track record and risk-reward of space films, let's acknowledge the cultural benefits that aren’t reflected on P&L statements or quarterly earnings reports. As one industry insider notes, "These movies historically have sparked an interest in science and math in kids. It's made math cool."

This cultural impact provides an additional ROI that accountants can't easily quantify. Films like Hidden Figures and The Martian — which NASA helped support with resources and expertise — have inspired new generations of scientists and engineers, creating value that extends far beyond opening weekend numbers. NASA even allowed Michael Bay’s campy classic Armageddon to film at real locations such as the Neutral Buoyancy Lab (a pool used to simulate weightlessness), various launch pads, and Edwards Air Force Base. Additionally, they provided spacesuits for use in the film.

The Final Frontier of Film Finance

Space movies remain a high-wire act of extreme cost and difficulty for Hollywood. Yet when they deliver, they replenish studio coffers and inspire a new generation of creatives and STEM hopefuls.

As we chart a course further into the 21st century, new technologies may bring production (and space travel) costs down to Earth, easing the barrier of entry to big swing blockbuster space films. The rise of international co-productions helps to mitigate risk among many partners and open new doors to multinational cooperation. While we don't cooperate in space, China's large film market is home to big budget sci-fi films, including the space epic The Wandering Earth, the country's sixth highest-grossing movie of all time. Could space cinema open a new platform for space diplomacy?

Amid it all, the audience’s continued fascination with celestial cinema endures and while many lessons were learned from the pantheon of space-themed productions, it is clear that big creative and economic risks can come with big rewards. With a superhero bump, space is likely to dominate the box office again this summer with fresh takes on Superman and Fantastic Four, heavily influenced by the Apollo-era, hitting the silver screen.

Water May Have Emerged from Dying Stars in the Universe

2025-05-20T20:00:00.000Z

Do us a favor: take a sip of water. Done it? Good. You probably needed rehydrating, but more importantly, I need to tell you something about the universe.

Did you know that some of those water molecules were filtered through the trunk of an ancient tree that grew on Antarctica long before any ice covered it? Those same molecules were also once stolen by a plant that graced a hilltop on a planet that had yet to see a single flower. Before that, a mighty dinosaur drank from a pool that was once home to at least one of those molecules of water. The very first form of life, a microbe of some sort, may have been wriggling about on an effervescing hydrothermal vent as that molecule drifted through the abyssal depths of a long-forgotten sea. And billions of years ago, icy comets and soggy asteroids delivered that water molecule — and so many more like it — to a young world named Earth.

But where did all that water originally come from? Most of the matter we interact with, made from plenty of the elements on the periodic table, was forged in the cataclysmic final seconds of countless stars that had exhausted their supplies of nuclear fuel. Hydrogen and oxygen, the two atomic components of common water, aren’t rare — and after enough stars had died in our corner of the Milky Way, it’d have a decent supply of water. But how old could some of that water be? Where, and when, did the very first droplets of water in the history of the universe form?

Telescopes looking at the farthest reaches of space have found that abundances of water existed less than two billion years after the Big Bang. But a recent study, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, suggests something rather explosive: water may have been present as early as 100 to 200 million years after the universe came to be. According to the authors’ simulations, huge volumes of it were formed very close to, or at, cosmic dawn — the moment the very first generation of stars set the dark skies ablaze with light.

It's difficult to overstate just how surprisingly early to the party this water may have been. “This suggests that water, the primary ingredient for life, existed even before the building blocks of our own galaxy were formed,” says Muhammad Latif, an astrophysicist at the United Arab Emirates University in Al-Ain, and one of the study’s authors.

There are some major caveats to this research. The team didn’t detect this ancient water; they used simulations of an as-yet-unseen type of star to understand how early on that water could have formed under certain conditions. But thanks to the high fidelity of these simulations, if these primordial stars were around at cosmic dawn, then this is probably how they would have died — with a bang, and a splash. “The simulations are state-of-the-art. So yes, the results are reliable and believable,” says Mike Norman, a physicist at the University of California, San Diego who was not involved with the new research.

And if these virtual recreations of stellar self-destruction are windows into the very distant past, then that might also mean our own waterlogged, paradisiacal world is just one in a considerably long line of oceanic planets. “The dense water cores are potential hosts of proto-planetary disks which may even lead to habitable planets forming at cosmic dawn,” says Latif. “In nutshell, life could have originated much earlier than previously thought.”

The cosmos is built by chaos.

Stars inevitably die, in a variety of spectacular ways, and in doing so create then scatter a multitude of elements out into space. The most violent of these deaths are associated with truly giant stars and are known as supernovas — explosions that sometimes outshine entire galaxies. Sometimes these stars simply burn through all their internal fuel reserves and implode under their own immense gravity. Other times, a voracious star eats too much of a companion star nearby and gives itself a destructive bout of thermonuclear indigestion.

Either way, supernovas produce a bevy of elements, from the lighter common ones to the rarer heavier ones. As I write this, I find myself glancing at my wedding ring. It’s made of tantalum, a blueish-silver metal. It may have been mined somewhere on Earth in the not-too-distant past, but originally, it was moulded in the heart of an expiring star — either a smaller one that had ballooned into a red giant, or a giant crucible that ignited into a supernova. That ring may be a symbol of affection in the extreme, but it’s also the shiny wreckage of a cosmic lighthouse.

Water is also a byproduct of star death but comparing it to something like tantalum might seem odd. After all, water is pretty much everywhere we look, from Earth’s oceans to the solar system’s myriad icy moons, all the way out to distant planets orbiting alien stars. In today’s universe, forming water is also quite easy: all one needs to stick two run-of-the-mill hydrogen atoms to one oxygen atom in a sufficiently cold patch of an already frigid universe.

But it wasn’t always so effortless to keep the cosmos hydrated. Unless you formed a lot of water everywhere all at once, cosmic radiation and the high temperature conditions around exploding stars would threaten to disintegrate all those water molecules long before any seas had a chance at forming. Along with his colleagues, Latif was curious: when, exactly, was water first able to emerge?

Naturally, their thoughts turned to the very first furnaces in the universe. Around 400,000 years after the Big Bang, the first hydrogen and helium atoms popped up before being sucked into pockets of so-called dark matter. Once in those pockets, those atoms were squashed by gravity. Eventually, they were so thoroughly compressed that nuclear fusion got going — and boom, the very first stars lit up the universe. Astronomers have decided to give these primordial stars a counterintuitive name: Population III stars. Population II stars are the descendants of Population III stars, crafted from their detritus, while newcomers like our Sun are known as Population I stars.

They may have a bit of silly name, but Population III stars are remarkably important. As Latif and his colleagues write in their recent study, these stars, and their supernovas, “were the first nucleosynthetic engines in the Universe… they forged the heavy elements required for the later formation of planets and life.” These stars were supermassive, and burned brightly and swiftly; they existed for just a few million years — not billions of years, like many contemporary stars — before blowing themselves to smithereens.

A notable point of contention is that Population III stars are theoretical. Even the almighty James Webb Space Telescope, which can see farther out in space — and farther back in time — than any other observatory, has yet to see any clear evidence (direct or indirect) of a Population III star. Perhaps one day it will. Perhaps it won’t. But the astronomical community suspect that these primordial stars, or something very similar to them, do exist at cosmic dawn. This means that, as they try to hunt them down, astrophysicists enjoy using computers to simulate their births and deaths — and what the consequences of this life cycle may be.

This recent study, which does just that, studied two Population III stars: one 13 times more massive than the Sun, and one 200 times more massive. The smaller star burned for just 12.2 million years, while the gigantic one persisted for just 2.6 million years, explains Daniel Whalen, a cosmologist at the University of Portsmouth and one of the new study’s authors. Both end their lives spectacularly, via two slightly different types of supernova. A hail of blinding light is followed by a halo of debris rocketing out in all directions.

At first, both halos are remarkably hot — too hot for the oxygen and the hydrogen to mix. “Gas needs to be cooled down first before water can form,” says Latif. Instead, all this matter spends several million years flying out into the darkness. But after a while — 2-3 million years for the gigantic star’s supernova, and 30 million years for the smaller supernova — the debris halo becomes sufficiently chilled. The halo’s outward expansion experiences some turbulence, creating swirls that gather mass, creating gravitational traps that draw in even more mass over time.

The oxygen and hydrogen in those dense, cold traps are now able to bond — and water begins to precipitate. If all the water from the smaller supernova was weighed, it would be equivalent to one-third of the Earth’s total mass. The gigantic supernova, which ejected far more hydrogen and oxygen, created a staggering 330 Earth-masses worth of water.

These simulations — whose stills represent resplendent, Van Gogh-like works-in-progress — are elegant. “The results are not surprising; in fact, they are to be expected. As soon as Pop III supernovae give you heavy elements, all sorts of molecules start to form in cool dense gas,” says Norman. Making multiple worlds’ worth of water would have been incredibly easy for these fast and furious stars.

Plenty of uncertainty remains, though. The typical mass of a Population III star is not yet known, which will affect their ability to manufacture water. And, lest we forget, nobody has yet scoped a Population III star.

“Simulations that make predictions without having any observations to benchmark the models against are always difficult to fully trust. Slight tweaks to the implementation of the model could give you very different results,” says Renske Smit, an astrophysicist at Liverpool John Moores University who was not involved with the new research. “That being said, we know that dust forms very rapidly from observations around 800 million years after the big bang, so it’s not difficult to believe water could form very early as well.”

In other words: this result is big, if true. But if it is true, the consequences for the cosmos could be remarkable. These primordial stars didn’t just create a lot of water; they also released a lot of silicon, which binds with oxygen to form a very commonplace rock. In another study — currently a preprint awaiting peer-review — by the same team, models show that, just over 200 million years after the Big Bang, in the ruins of the very first stars, planets were piecing themselves together around a second generation of stellar furnaces. And those planets had access to plenty of fresh water — water that had several routes to reach them, from comet and asteroid impacts to icy dust being imprisoned within the planets as they were being built.

Just think about that for a moment. Just a few heartbeats after the beginning of everything, of both space and time, there may have been water worlds gliding around, long before there were even enough stars to form galaxies. If life took root on those oceanic worlds, and it was able to gaze upward, it would have seen a night sky staggeringly different to our own diamantine vista.

None of those primeval planets exist today.

Eventually, their own stars would have died, immolating or jettisoning them in the process. Much of the water forged by those original supernovas would have been broken down and destroyed, split into its constituent atoms. And each subsequent generation of planets, and stars, would have their own water recycled from the seas of their ancestors.

There is, however, a possibility that some of the very first water ever made, by those impossibly ancient Population III stars, is still around today. Some may be floating out in the middle of nowhere. Some may be swept up in the creation of far-flung planets.

Not too long ago, I was outside, it was raining, and several droplets fell on my hand and trickled across my wedding ring. At that moment, a humbling thought popped into my mind. I bought that tantalum ring in 2024. That tantalum fell from space 4.6 billion years ago, along with much of Earth’s water. Those raindrops were fresh — but maybe, just maybe, a single drop contained one solitary molecule of water that was formed in the explosive final moments of a star that lived 13.6 billion years ago.

Who knows? Perhaps the next time you’re out in the rain, the memory of a star from cosmic dawn will fall on you, too.

Record-Breaking Polaris Dawn Astronauts Honored in Kansas City

2025-05-13T19:00:00.000Z

Polaris Dawn astronauts Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis have flown furthest from Earth than any women in history. We celebrated their achievements with thousands of students.

The Kansas City Royals and Supercluster joined forces again this year to bring the excitement of space exploration and human spaceflight to students, teachers, and baseball fans from around the area. School Day at the K, held on Thursday, May 8th, is a yearly celebration of STEM that includes speakers and on-field experiments with the last two years being centered around NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope.

This year's (very) special guests were Polaris Dawn Mission Specialist Sarah Gillis and Mission Specialist and Medical Officer Anna Menon. The pair greeted and spoke to 12,000 local students before the space-loving Kansas City Royals walloped the Chicago White Sox, the new Pope's favorite team (news of his papacy rang through Kauffman Stadium during the game).

The astronauts were honored with facilitating the first pitch of the game, doing so gracefully and successfully to much applause. Menon and Gillis were also presented with the Buck O’Neil Legacy seat dedication, which remains one of Kansas City’s greatest honors, recognizing those who make a difference in the community.

Buck O’Neil was a legendary first baseman and manager in the Negro Leagues, most notably with the Kansas City Monarchs, where he played from the 1930s to the 1950s. He became the first Black coach in Major League Baseball when he joined the Chicago Cubs’ staff in 1962. Beyond the field, O’Neil was a tireless advocate for preserving Negro Leagues history and helped establish the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City.

Supercluster's Robin Seemangal and Jenny Hautmann were at Kauffman Stadium for School Day at the K, demonstrating the Astronaut Database to students and teachers while gifting Polaris Dawn-themed Astronaut Database baseball cards and Supercluster's commemorative School Day at the K posters to those in attendance, produced just for this special day and signed by Menon and Gillis.

The Polaris Dawn crew, led by Jared Isaacman and piloted by Scott Poteet, flew to the highest Earth orbit since the Apollo era and successfully performed the first commercial spacewalk. Supercluster also produced Astronaut Baseball cards for both Isaacman and Poteet that were gifted to students that attended School Day at the K.

Is China Learning to Snatch Satellites for Future Space Wars?

2025-05-13T19:00:00.000Z

The headlines piqued the world’s fancy: China is practicing dogfighting with satellites.

Are humans about to plunge into a spectacular (and devastating) space war depicted in science fiction movies? Or is China’s progress more moderate than the headlines would have you believe?

Dogfighting refers to close-range acrobatic aerial battles such as those in which British Spitfires used to chase German Messerschmitts across the sky during the Battle of Britain in World War II.

Despite the fancy term, the Chinese satellite dogfighting, reported by the U.S. Space Force, is nowhere near as action-filled. At least not yet. This is what we know so far: Five Chinese satellites were observed by the U.S. military, “maneuvering in and out and around each other in synchronicity and in control,” Gen. Michael A. Guetlein, the U.S. vice chief of space operations, told media at McAleese Defense Programs Conference in Arlington, Virginia, in March.

Western security experts are concerned China is practicing such maneuvers and will use these technologies to damage or disable other nations’ spacecraft. It’s not unthinkable. Many security professionals believe humanity is inching closer to World War Three since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China's posturing against Taiwan, and now, rising tensions and violence along the Indian-Pakistan border. All involving space superpowers who could maintain a theater of war in orbit.

If these conflicts grow further, China would certainly stand against the West, using its fast-expanding spacecraft fleet to further its interests and establish military dominance in space.

Still, details of China’s actual capabilities are scarce, mostly because China doesn’t disclose them. U.S. space traffic monitoring firm LeoLabs confirmed to Breaking Defense it had observed three experimental satellites from the Shiyan-24C family and two others from the Shijian-6 fleet practice close-proximity operations in low Earth orbit. That’s the highly populated area up to 2,000 km (1,200 miles) above Earth’s surface where most satellites live — including those belonging to internet-beaming mega-constellations.

In December last year, California-based space domain awareness firm ExoAnalytics revealed that Chinese “stalker” spacecraft regularly move all over the geostationary ring. This orbit, some 36,000 km (22,000 miles) above the planet, houses many broadcasting and spy satellites.

These stalkers, ExoAnalytics’ Chief Growth Officer Clinton Clark said at a conference, move in the most unusual manner, “going up and down” and around the geostationary belt, which is sought by others for its “stationary” qualities (satellites in the geostationary orbit circle Earth at a speed that matches that of the rotation of the planet, which keeps them in a fixed position that offers constant views of a large portion of the globe). The goal of these strange maneuvers, performed with unexpected speed and agility, is to learn what American satellites are up to, experts think.

Satellite Kidnapping

The West has been observing Chinese space movements with apprehension for quite a few years now. In January 2022, U.S. space-traffic watchers witnessed the Chinese satellite Shijian-21 perform an elaborate dance in geostationary orbit around a defunct navigation spacecraft from the Chinese constellation BeiDou. Then, in a move that puzzled western observers, Shijian-21 latched onto the defunct BeiDou and dragged it 3,000 km (1,800 miles) away into the graveyard orbit, a region above the geostationary ring where spacecraft get moved at the end of their life in order not to clog the sought after belt.

On the surface, this act of space tidiness might be commendable. But it triggered alarm bells in the western space security community. Why? It wouldn’t be that much more difficult for Shijian-21 to grab an operational American spy satellite and toss it away.

Experts believe these are the early days of much more sophisticated space warfare than has been conceivable before.

And China, having for decades played catch-up with the U.S., now certainly has an edge.

“China is able to do some very sophisticated proximity maneuvers in space, which obviously can have a nefarious purpose,” Juliana Suess, a space security researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs told Supercluster. “At the moment, they are ahead of everyone else. But we don’t really know why they are doing all that. Are they preparing for something? Are they testing their limits? Or are they just showing off to the west?”

The Age of Space Warfare?

Space technologies are playing an indispensable role in modern warfighting. The whole world watched through the eyes of Earth-observing satellites when Russian troops amassed around Ukraine’s borders in early 2022 and then crossed over in late February. Views from space have been invaluable ever since for Ukraine’s commanders in their unending struggle to stay one step ahead of Russia’s moves.

It’s not just Earth observation satellites that plays a crucial role. The Starlink constellation has kept the besieged nation’s war fighters connected since Russia took down their internet and cellular networks shortly after the invasion. The invasion also came accompanied with a major cyber-attack on ground-infrastructure of satellite operator Viasat, which too had been providing services to Ukraine.

In other words, disrupt your enemy’s access to space and you are a major leap closer to victory. Both, China and Russia know that. Electronic methods that target the signal of communication and navigation satellites (jamming and spoofing) are now an everyday occurrence in Ukraine. These methods, however, don’t work against spy satellites and require a continuous effort to maintain. Until recently, the only other method to deny an adversary access to a space asset involved rather messy measures such as anti-satellite missile strikes and (as Russia once threatened) nuclear explosions in space.

Both China and Russia have conducted anti-satellite missile tests (in 2007 and 2021 respectively), having destroyed their own satellites. These demonstrations of crude destructive power cluttered the orbit with thousands of dangerous fragments making the environment less safe not only for their adversaries but for the perpetrators themselves.

China more than Russia would be inclined to avoid such moves in the future. “China now has a vested interest in keeping space a safe environment,” said Suess. “They haven’t done it again since 2007 and I think they would generally want to avoid such debris-producing events again.”

Agile Space

Stalking robotic spacecraft grabbers are the perfect tool to get rid of a pesky enemy spy satellite with surgical precision without creating any clutter at all. And these grabbers are just a beginning. The dogfighting satellite could be equipped with high-energy lasers or devices generating concentrated microwave energy beams. Both kinds of weaponry can be used to fry the enemy satellite’s electronics.

Suess says that as impressive as these technologies may sound, they are likely to be rather toothless against large constellations of satellites that now dominate low Earth orbit.

Dallas Kasaboski, space infrastructure analyst at the Analysis Mason consultancy, agrees that low Earth orbit battles, in which formations of dogfighting satellites demolish a constellation of Earth-observing or telecommunication spacecraft, are still “in the realm of science fiction.” Space, however, he says, is firmly moving from an era of inert blocks dully following the laws of gravity to one filled with much more movement.

The West, in fact, is not that much behind in the development of these agile next-generation technologies. For years, western governments have been funding the development of in-orbit servicing systems capable of refueling or repairing existing spacecraft. Various kinds of robo grabbers, including those using magnets and space harpoons have also been tested in orbit as part of active space debris removal initiatives.

“Previously, the focus has been on the satellite itself,” Kasaboski said. “You would add more broadband capacity, steerable beams or reconfigurable antennas. Now we are seeing the focus shift to support satellites and support infrastructure.”

The U.S Space Force announced in March that it will run a series of experiments to test refueling in space. Among the commercial companies to collaborate on these missions, set to launch in 2026 and 2027, is Astroscale. This Japan-headquartered company demonstrated in 2021 in orbit capture technologies as part of its ELSA-D demonstration mission.

Last year, Astroscale’s Adras-J spacecraft completed an up-close inspection of a discarded rocket stage, which it will attempt to remove from orbit by the end of this decade.

“That technology has come a lot further than it used to be a couple of years ago,” said Suess. “There is a bit of push and pull between sustainability and security. But these capabilities are there.”

Plans for orbital fuel-depots are discussed in the open as part of the drive to improve sustainability of space operations by extending the lifespan of satellites with the help of in-orbit servicing. Many other U.S. military space activities, on the other hand, remain cloaked in mystery, Kasaboski pointed out.

For example, little is known about the more than year-long mission of the top-secret X-37B space plane operated by the U.S. Air Force. In a statement marking the completion of the mission, the U.S. Space Force made rather vague revelations about the nature of the plane’s activities. The force said the spacecraft performed “space domain awareness experiments” and demonstrated its ability to use aerobreaking to save fuel during its mission.

“The activity of these space planes in orbit is really not known publicly,” Kasaboski said. “It’ really hard to talk about what we don’t know but it seems that China is ahead in those capabilities but only just barely.”

Kasoboski thinks that although the way things are done in space is set to transform in the coming years, the most likely actions to target satellites in space during near-future warfare will remain within the limits of terrestrial-based cyber-attacks.

Those, however, are likely to become more sophisticated.

“Electronic interference, jamming and hacking will remain the most plausible ways to attack a satellite,” Kasaboski said. “The attackers may learn how to hide their actions better, they may learn how to confuse a satellite with false information to make it perform some illogical maneuvers. This is something they might be able to get away with.”

Suess added: “There certainly has been a technological shift. But is it possible that a satellite will get kidnapped and dragged away anytime soon? It may be technically possible, but I don’t think it’s likely to happen any time soon.”

20 Years After Revenge of the Sith We Still Ask: Who is Darth Plagueis?

2025-05-06T20:00:00.000Z

It’s been two decades since we heard the cautionary tale of a being who tried to master death. What we’ve learned – and haven’t – since.

Decades before we heard the dead speak from the galaxy’s Unknown Regions, a master manipulator masquerading as an empathetic politician regaled a young, war-torn soldier, consumed by love and a desire to live up to his chosen one namesake, with a tale about a being powerful enough to keep loved ones from dying. He could create life and save others, but he couldn’t save himself from his worst fear – death. Teaching his apprentice all he had learned was his ultimate downfall.

This year marks 20 years since the release of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, the grand and tragic finale to a polarizing trilogy of films that chronicled the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker. The official anniversary is May 19th, but Lucasfilm began its limited rerelease of the film over a month later on April 24. In one week, the Revenge of the Sith secured its place as one of the top-grossing rereleases of all time. Worldwide, it earned over $46 million.

When Darth Sidious, still Supreme Chancellor Palpatine at the end of the Clone Wars in the film, shared the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise with Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, it was a deceitful invitation. Perhaps more than anyone, even Skywalker’s former master Obi-Wan Kenobi, Palpatine knew the Jedi’s deepest desires and fears. Sidious stoked those fears into anger and obsession, positioning himself as the only person who could fix Skywalker’s problems.

Darth Plagueis’ story was a Sith legend – one not known outside of dark side circles. Even then, because of the Darth Bane-established Rule of Two, it’s safe to assume the story was known by only one person – the apprentice who killed Plagueis, Darth Sidious.

Hearing the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis was a catalyst moment for Skywalker, who had been subtly coached, mentored, and manipulated by Sidious over the years. After killing Count Dooku at Palpatine’s encouragement, the moment at the Galaxies Opera House was the next big step Skywalker took to the dark side and to becoming Sidious’s apprentice.

But who was Darth Plagueis? Can we trust the details of the story Palpatine/Sidious provided, considering he was the one who killed Plagueis? Did he truly discover the means to create life and conquer death? What did Sidious and Darth Vader learn from him?

Details are scant – at least in the current Star Wars canon – but key parts of the Sith legend were uncovered on Exegol following the destruction of Palpatine and the Sith Eternal’s Final Order. Thanks to Dr. Chris Kempshall’s The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire – an in-universe political history of the Skywalker Saga – we have more clues about who Plagueis was. There are also revealing details in the official Star Wars databank and reference books like Secrets of the Sith and The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire.

In the Legends continuity – formerly the Expanded Universe – Plagueis’s and Palpatine’s origins are chronicled in the decades-spanning novel Darth Plagueis by James Luceno. The book is dark and dense, exploring the Muun Sith Lord’s origins and death-defying legacy through a dizzying amount of broader galactic connections. Plagueis’ and eventually Palpatine’s machinations prove to have butterfly effects on the galaxy and the “chosen one” who was supposed to bring balance to the Force.

Plagueis was obsessed with achieving immortality, and he taught his apprentice everything he learned from his master and his experiments with midichlorians. He also molded Palpatine into Sidious through over a decade of training in the ways of the Sith, including the Rule of Two. And just as Plagueis killed his own master, the Sith Lord was overpowered and destroyed by Palpatine.

Many big and small details from Darth Plagueis could fit nicely into canon. While the 2012 novel isn’t considered canon, Plagueis’ first mention in 2005’s Revenge of the Sith is. The Muun dark sider has also been briefly mentioned in various novels and reference titles. It wasn’t until The Acolyte that Plagueis made his first appearance.

In The Acolyte, set in the later High Republic era (100 years before The Phantom Menace), Plagueis watched over Osha (Amandla Stenberg) and the Stranger (Manny Jacinto), also known as Qimir, on an unknown planet. His appearance all but confirmed Qimir’s connections to the Sith and that Plagueis was already working against the Jedi in the shadows a century before the fall of the Order. Unfortunately, without another season of The Acolyte, we don’t know if or how we’ll get answers about Plagueis’ presence and machinations during this period.

Jacinto has been open about how, if The Acolyte had not been canceled, the show would have expanded upon Plagueis’ story. At FanExpo San Francisco in December 2024, the actor said there was going to be more Plagueis “in the second, or if not, the third seasons of the show.”

In a recent interview with Variety, Ian McDiarmid, who portrayed Palpatine in all of the Star Wars movies since Return of the Jedi, touched on the rumored Palpatine series that never came to fruition. When asked if any of the backstory was shared with him, he said “just the story of Darth Plagueis the Wise.”

It’s unclear if we’ll ever see Palpatine or Plagueis on screen again. Luckily, novels and reference books continue to provide much-needed details about these beloved, secretive characters.

Palpatine’s musings in Secrets of the Sith – written as a juicy, in-universe tell-all – revealed Plagueis discovered ways to use the Force to create and sustain life. The Sith lord taught his apprentice the method of transference – transferring one consciousness to another physical organic vessel. Through Plagueis’ teachings and Kaminoan cloning technology, Palpatine achieved near immortality. The Darth Sidious who continued to manipulate the galaxy through the First and Final Orders was an imperfect clone of the original but contained the consciousness of the fallen Emperor.

Like his apprentice, Plagueis was intrigued by the extraordinarily rare connection in the Force known as a dyad. In Secrets of the Sith, Sidious revealed that his master tried to create the dyad bond with him. Later, Palpatine attempted to forge a dyad between himself and Anakin Skywalker. Neither Sith Lord accomplished the goal. The interest in forcibly creating a dyad – naturally manifested between Rey Skywalker and Ben Solo – was tied to the bond’s ability to create power as strong as life itself.

Written by Resistance historian Beaumont Kin (Dominic Monaghan), The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire details some of the records and artifacts uncovered on Exegol after the events of The Rise of Skywalker. Key information about Plagueis was uncovered from the Arcane Library – found in the planet’s temple, which was home to the Sith Eternal. The scrolls and writings, reportedly dictated by Palpatine, confirm Plagueis’ existence and that he spent much of his Sith Lord life trying to uncover the secrets of immortality.

Still, little is known about Plagueis’ life and Palpatine’s training under him. Because of the extremely secretive and deceptive nature of the Sith, few trustworthy records exist. With projects like The Acolyte and other stories that take place in the years before the prequels, there’s hope of learning more about Plagueis and just how far back in history the downfall of the Jedi Order began.

The lore could be expanded soon thanks to the upcoming novel Star Wars: Master of Evil by Adam Christopher – the author behind Shadow of the Sith. Christopher’s latter book fills in crucial gaps of the sequel stories, in particular, Rey’s parentage and Palpatine’s cloning experiments on Exegol.

Master of Evil, releasing on November 11th 2025, takes us back decades to the earliest days of the Empire through Darth Vader’s perspective. The novel is expected to take place around the same time as the 2017 Marvel comic run by Charles Soule – specifically, what Vader does after bleeding a kyber crystal for his new lightsaber and getting a vision about the Force’s power over life and death.

Like his master and his master’s master, Vader becomes consumed with discovering the power to conquer death – spurred on by his increasingly sadistic master and haunted by the failures of his past.

This book is about Vader, but as with any dark side story, there’s hope for more crumbs about Plagueis and the Sith power that brought down a galaxy.

The Cold War's Impact on SETI

2025-04-29T20:00:00.000Z

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence, better known as SETI, has its roots just as much in Cold War politics as it has in human curiosity.

That’s the thesis of a new book called Mixed Signals: Alien Communication Across the Iron Curtain, from science historian Rebecca Charbonneau.

Anybody who lived through even part of the Cold War knows what a strange time it was. The world was split into two, each side a stranger to the other, and the prospect of mutually assured destruction and the possibility that could happen tomorrow, was just a fact of life that we all had grown used to.

Thankfully, it didn’t come to that. Glasnost and perestroika, a stuttering Soviet economy and the fall of the Berlin Wall brought about a thawing of the frosty relations between East and West that led ultimately to an end to the Cold War. But the world was a very different place by the time the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 compared to when the Cold War had begun in 1947. And because the Cold War defined that era, it’s influence in changing the world is undeniable, even in areas where one might not imagine it would be so pervasive. That includes SETI.

“It’s hard for me to imagine that SETI would look the way that it does without the Cold War,” says Charbonneau, who works at the American Institute of Physics. “Things like the ‘L’ factor in the Drake Equation, things like the Kardashev scale, they were just so of that particular moment that it’s hard to imagine that they would have existed in their exact form without the influence of the Cold War.”

Radio Astronomy at War

One of the commonalities between the East and West during the Cold War was the militarisation of certain civilian activities. As much as scientists might like to pretend otherwise, astronomy and the military have always been bedfellows, and it hasn’t always been the military using astronomical technology for its own ends; sometimes astronomy has been able to take advantage of what the military has had to offer too.

Radio astronomy began back in the 1930s, when Karl Jansky noticed radio waves coming from the core of the Milky Way. Yet not long after, war intervened and any radio technology was subverted for military use, most notably in the development of radar. Yet even during wartime, radio astronomy continued to develop. Numerous army officers independently detected radio waves from the Sun, while mysterious, high-altitude radar echoes heard throughout the war were a puzzle.

To track these radar echoes down to their source, astronomer and former radar technician Bernard Lovell adopted army surplus radio equipment and set up a makeshift radio observatory at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire, near Manchester in the UK, shortly after the war ended. Again, the connection between the military and astronomy was evident. Lovell discovered that the mysterious radar echoes were from meteors burning up in Earth’s atmosphere.

Buoyed by his success, Lovell set about building the giant 76-metre Lovell radio telescope at Jodrell Bank, completed in 1957 but having run massively over-budget and with Lovell facing serious questions about his management of the project. Yet the Cold War came to his rescue.

The Cold War was waged not through direct conflict, but through both a series of proxy wars and through competing for prestige. Perhaps the most dramatic example of that was the Space Race, which the Soviet Union won in October 1957 with the launch of Sputnik 1, which orbited the Earth. Yet how to prove it? The Soviets wanted the world to see that they had sent a satellite into space, while the West, particularly the United States, wanted to track it – for all they knew it was a spy or weapons satellite. The Lovell telescope was the only radio telescope powerful enough to track Sputnik 1’s staged rocket, which was of vital interest to western governments because a rocket that could enter orbit could be used as an ICBM. Afterwards, Lovell received thanks from the United States, his own government and even the Soviet Union for shedding light on the reality of the dawn of the Space Age. For the next few years, the Lovell Telescope was an important part of Cold War shenanigans as it tracked each space launch, and Lovell himself was caught up in the paranoia of the time during an invitation to visit the Soviet Union that turned disquietingly sinister.

The Chain Reaction that Crossed the Iron Curtain

Over in the United States, radio astronomy took longer to catch on – somewhat ironic, given that it was an American, Karl Jansky, who kickstarted it all. Many astronomers in the United States were sceptical of the value of radio astronomy – they didn’t think there was anything interesting to be seen in the radio sky. The only extragalactic variable radio sources were known prior to the 1960s. This, of course, was before the discovery of thousands of radio galaxies, quasars and pulsars, and radio emission from regions of star-birth and star-death, interstellar chemistry, and much more besides.

The success of the Lovell Telescope in tracking Sputnik 1 convinced US spies that some form of radio monitoring technology was essential, and as this technology was pretty similar to the technology required by radio astronomy, the two developed synchronously. It was that technology that in 1960 allowed Frank Drake and his students, Margaret Hurley and Ellen Gunderman, to conduct the first ever radio SETI search, called Project Ozma.

They didn’t discover any alien signals, of course, but their search triggered a chain reaction that spread around the globe to the Soviet Union and gave birth to the SETI that we know today.

If the United States had Frank Drake and Carl Sagan, the Soviet Union had Iosif Shklovksii. Charbonneau describes Shklovskii as Drake and Sagan rolled into one.

“Project Ozma was a big catalyst for SETI in the Soviet Union,” Charbonneau says. Though news from the West was patchy and often late, a year after Project Ozma took place Shklovskii got wind of it, and it inspired him enough to write a book on the subject – Universe, Life, Intelligence – which acted as a call to arms for Soviet SETI.

“In some ways, SETI in the Soviet Union exists because of Iosif Shklovskii,” says Charbonneau. “He’s the one who supported his students like Nikolai Kardashev to be able to do their work. The way that science was conducted in the Soviet Union was that it was at the discretion of figures like Iosif Shklovskii, and it really boils down to his actions and his interests, and it does seem he largely got his interest because of the activity in the United States.”

Communicating with ‘the Other’

Soon, Shklovskii became pen-pals of sorts with Carl Sagan, who had read Universe, Life, Intelligence and wanted to find an American publisher for it. With plentiful addendums added by Sagan, it was republished in the West as Intelligent Life in the Universe and, for many years, was the pre-eminent book on the subject. Sagan and Shklovskii’s contact across the Iron Curtain was part of a growing connection between SETI astronomers on both sides, all of whom tried to resist the efforts of national spy agencies to use the scientists for intelligence gathering.

The contact between Soviet and American SETI scientists was multi-layered. At face value it was a sharing of ideas. At a deeper level it showed that people of the East and West could work together as human beings. And deeper still, the difficulties that they faced in reaching out from their separate nations, quite alien to one another, and be understood was like role play for the day we really do make contact with an alien intelligence. This was not lost on the protagonists.

“They were very aware of the parallels between what they were trying to do, which was to make contact with ‘the other’, while very similarly trying to talk to each other – and they loved it,” says Charbonneau. “I went to the Library of Congress to read the letters of correspondence between Iosif Shklovksii and Carl Sagan. You could see it all throughout their letters and the way they talked to each other, almost as if they were extraterrestrial cosmonauts speaking to one another. Because at that time the United States and the Soviet Union were very alien civilisations to one another.”

The L Factor

American and Soviet SETI scientists even met up at a conference, co-organized by the US National Academy of Sciences and the USSR Academy of Sciences, at the Byurakan Observatory in Armenia in 1971. Yet even though the scientists were starting to get along, their governments were still at loggerheads and the spectre of mutually assured destruction loomed over everybody. And as it did so, it also worked its way into SETI.

Frank Drake’s famous equation is a calculation designed for making rough estimates regarding the possible number of communicating extraterrestrial species. It includes a variety of factors, from the rates of star and planet formation to the fraction of worlds that produce life. The very final term is ‘L’, the lifetime of a communicating species. L is such a large term, numerically, in comparison to the other factors of the Drake Equation that it is the dominant factor in the final estimate.

So L took on increased prominence, and immediately sparked discussions about the fates of civilisations, which inevitably led to meditations about the long-term survival of humanity. Drake devised his equation in 1961; a year later the Cuban Missile Crisis very nearly ignited World War Three. The discussion about the longevity of alien civilisations was mirroring our own fears of extinction.

“The way that SETI scientists spoke about L was not dispassionate,” says Charbonneau. “They were framing it in terms of these big questions, what are the fates of civilisations, do we inevitably destroy ourselves, and is technology ultimately the start of the demise of civilisation? The way that they spoke about it was so clearly tied to the Cold War anxieties that they were facing.”

Those anxieties have never really gone away, and today are trying to push their way back to the forefront, not just in the fear of nuclear war, but pandemics, climate change, artificial intelligence, descent into authoritarianism, and myriad other ways we can imagine dooming our global civilisation. L remains an uneasy legacy of the Cold War, a reminder that we can have a future, but that it could all too easily be snatched away from us. The continued silence from the stars is no comfort at all.

The Right People

There’s one other way that the Cold War seems to have had influence on SETI, in that the only two nations that did SETI systematically were the opposing Cold War powers, namely the United States and the Soviet Union.

Charbonneau has been wracking her brain for answer. “In my book I’ve tried to figure out why it was really just the United States and the Soviet Union, and really nobody else. That’s weird, right?”

Charbonneau wonders if it is a by-product of the Space Race, itself motivated in large part by Cold War rivalries. And with that came an interest in all things space and science fiction. “I do think the rich tradition of science fiction in the two respective cultures is part of the answer, but it can’t be the whole answer, because other countries also had a rich science-fiction tradition and an interest in space.”

Perhaps it is less about cultures and politics, and more about people. Even in the United States and the Soviet Union, SETI was pretty niche and prone to ridicule, and still is, with relatively few people doing it. If it had not been for Frank Drake, modern-day SETI may never have got started. If it had not been for Iosif Shklovskii, Soviet thinking about SETI may never have happened. In contrast, in the UK – a nation with an interest in space research and a tradition of science fiction – the Director of the largest radio telescope in the world at that time, at Jodrell Bank, had no real interest in SETI. If he had, perhaps it would have been a different story. No, the beginning of SETI is a story of a handful of people in the right place, at the right time, able to harness the technologies and paranoias and anxieties and curiosities of the Cold War for good rather than for ill, and to cross political borders and lines on a map to reach out and communicate with each other, putting nationalism to one side to see the world, and other worlds, from a different perspective.

Maybe we’ll never find aliens, but SETI has allowed people to discover each other before, and perhaps it will do so again in the future.

The Maya Structures that Brought Cosmic Order to Earth

2025-04-22T19:00:00.000Z

Maya “E-Groups” were centers of ritual, political, and social life. But were they astronomical observatories?

Some 3,000 years ago, the people who would come to be known as the Maya started to build the kind of monumental architecture—pyramids, plazas, and vast urban settlements—that still inspire wonder to this day.

From the very beginning, these great works included astronomically inspired complexes, known as E-Groups, that mark the rising of the Sun on key dates. For well over a millennium, E-Groups proliferated across central America and embodied a diversity of configurations, fit to the customs of the cities that still stand today in lush archaeological sites like Tikal, El Mirador, Uaxactún, Seibal, Cival, and Yaxha.

Most E-Groups feature a large pyramid located at the west side of a plaza, which faces a raised platform on the east side with three points, usually marked by temples, along a north-south axis (there are also variations that place pyramids at the southern or northern side of the plaza). From the vantage point of the pyramid, the Sun rises behind the central temple to mark seasonal moments, like the onset of the dry or rainy seasons, or the solstices. In some cases, observers also viewed sunsets behind the western pyramid from the central temple of the eastern platform.

The complexes can vary widely in styles and dimensions, but all E-Groups appear to have played a complex role in political, social, and ritual life for the Maya. Debates have raged for a century among archaeologists about the significance of these captivating constructions. How foundational were they to the origins of Maya civilization? Should they be considered ancient astronomical observatories? And what role do they play for modern Maya people who aim to embrace and revive the traditions of their ancestors?

“Wherever E-Groups were excavated, the differences in archaeological contexts suggest that their primary uses and aspects of the associated symbolism were not always and everywhere the same,” said Ivan Šprajc, a professor of archaeology at the Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and an expert on the Maya, in an email to Supercluster.

“They served for politically important agricultural and other rituals, royal ascension ceremonies, elite burials, ancestor veneration, sometimes perhaps even as marketplaces,” he added. “Only further excavations may shed further light on regional and time-dependent variations.”

The Rise and Fall of E-Groups

In 1924, the Danish archaeologist Frans Blom introduced E-Groups into modern history during excavations at Uaxactún, a sacred Maya site in Guatemala that dates back about 2,500 years. Excavators had labeled an iconic structure “Group E” in their map of ancient Uaxactún, which is how these assemblages ended up with the generalized name “E-Groups.”

In the century since Blom’s discovery, dozens of other E-Groups have been found across the remains of this influential empire, mainly clustered in the Maya lowlands of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. Now, as Mesoamerican archaeology flourishes due to increased investment and innovations like the remote-sensing tool LiDAR, researchers are pushing back the timeline of these idiosyncratic structures to the genesis of Maya urban civilization itself.

For instance, in 2020, archaeologists led by Takeshi Inomata discovered the oldest known Maya ceremonial site using LiDAR. The huge complex, called Aguada Fénix, located in Tabasco, Mexico, and dates back to about 1100 BCE. The site contains an expansive primordial version of an E-Group set on a platform that is nearly a mile long, demonstrating that these structures are an original feature of Maya architecture.

The E-Group at Aguada Fénix is “the oldest so far,” said Francisco Estrada Belli, a Maya archaeologist and research professor at Tulane University, in a call with Supercluster. “But it's like the other ones, with a western pyramid and a long platform on the eastern horizon. In those days, they didn't actually put temples at the three intervals; they just used the edges of the platform and the centerpoint.”

Estrada Belli believes that the deep origins of E-Groups suggests that they are core to Maya identity. He has spent years untangling the mysteries of Maya sites—especially at Cival, a 2,000-year-old city in Guatemala—and considers the construction and consecration of these complexes as a representation of a city’s birth.

“The very first offerings that [the Maya] laid out in the plaza are foundational-type offerings,” Estrada Belli explained. “There are rituals that represent the type of offering that you give to the universe when you want to found a new sacred space.”

“I argue that this wasn't just any offering,” he continued. “It corresponds to the foundation of the city. The city itself did not exist until there was this central plaza we now call the E-Group that was dedicated to celebrate the sunrise and the cycles and all the deities related to it. It really marks the identity of Maya people as we know it today. It’s the first material manifestation of those beliefs and it’s the earliest manifestation we have of their civilization as such.”

In this way, the E-Groups are an important emblem of the origins and early rise of Maya culture, during the Preclassic and Early Classic periods that span about 1000 BCE to 900 CE. However, their salience began to fade away over the centuries and the Maya had shifted focus to other forms of architecture long before the arrival of Europeans in the Americas.

“While important in early periods, E-Groups were not the main feature of Maya civilization,” Šprajc said. “With only a few exceptions, they were not built after about 600 CE. They were popular during the Preclassic and Early Classic periods, but even along this time, as the architecture became more diversified, other types of complexes appeared, adopting the earlier functions (including astronomical) of E-Groups.”

In other words, E-Groups were an important urban template, but Maya civilization branched off into too many dazzling new directions to be wholly encapsulated by them. Still, during their heyday, E-Groups embodied a wide variety of purposes for Maya settlements, and the roles they had pioneered were sometimes fulfilled by other architectural creations.

On a practical level, E-Groups provided guidance about agricultural timelines for planting and harvesting. They were ceremonial grounds where kings became the corporeal representation of the universe. They offered a space for public commons, sports, and administrative functions. But there’s one question that has been debated since Blom first described these complexes 100 years ago:

Were they astronomical observatories?

Are E-Groups Observatories?

In his writings, Blom marveled at the astronomical sophistication of Uaxactún’s E-Group, which he interpreted as marking the summer solstice on the north temple, the vernal equinox at the central temple, and the winter solstice on the south temple. He proposed that this complex was a “solar observatory,” a concept that exhilarated academics and the public, as it reinforced the keen celestial knowledge of this ancient culture to a wide Western audience.

A century later, archaeologists have largely rejected the idea that the Maya observed equinoxes; the central temple more likely marked a so-called “quarter day” in the Maya calendar linked to the onset of the rainy season, which happens to fall close to the spring equinox. Still, Blom’s interpretation of these complexes as astronomical observatories remains mainstream, despite the efforts of many scholars who have challenged it over the decades.

Šprajc, for instance, argued in a 2021 study that “an ‘observatory,’ in the modern sense of the word, is a place to acquire knowledge” whereas “astronomically oriented Maya buildings represent, rather, the results of knowledge.”

In other words, our modern understanding of an “astronomical observatory” is a place to collect data about phenomena in space. The Maya, in contrast, would have seen E-Groups as constructions that, though inspired by astronomy, were designed to impose cosmic order and thereby influence events on Earth, and not overtly as a means to produce new insights about stars, planets, or other celestial phenomena.

“That is why I believe the term cannot apply to the ancient astronomically oriented structures,” explained Šprajc over email. “Most of the publicly important Mesoamerican buildings (temples, palaces), not only E-Groups, were oriented on astronomical grounds. Therefore, the orientation was only one of the criteria dictating the design of these structures. Since their primary functions were religious, residential, funerary, or administrative, they cannot be defined as observatories.”

“They did serve for monitoring celestial events and may have sometimes even produced new insights,” he added. “However, in order to discover the regularities of celestial phenomena, it was not necessary to build elaborate monumental structures.”

Indeed, the Maya who built the first monumental structures at places like Aguada Fénix had likely used mountains, and other landmarks, as astronomical and calendrical guides for many centuries.

E-Groups arose as a material manifestation of observations and calculations that had been based on topographical features and were passed along for untold generations. This deep tradition of Maya skywatching is one reason that Estrada Belli prefers a looser interpretation of the word “observatory” than others in his field.

“People focus on whether it is an observatory, and I think that's besides the point,” Estrada Belli said. “It really depends on what your definition of ‘observatory’ is. The modern definition of an astronomical observatory is a place where you have a telescope and a lot of instrumentation. But an observatory could be any place that could be used to observe the sky.”

The Maya “were definitely looking at the rituals that were performed by the kings in these plazas, but the focus is the sky, so in a way, [observatory] is not a complete misnomer,” he added. “But obviously they already knew everything about the sky before they started building these things. Presumably, these concepts go back to a time before there was architecture. Any part of the landscape could have been an observatory before Maya civilization.”

Many other Maya scholars have commented on the relevance of the term “observatory” as a descriptor for E-Groups. Overall, the word seems to have been fading in academic papers on this topic in recent years. However, Šprajc doesn’t expect a new consensus to emerge overnight.

“Since the idea that E-Groups were intended to record the equinoxes and the solstices is based on such an interpretation of Group E of Uaxactún and was published back in the 1920s, the ‘observatory’ opinion became very widespread,” he said. “I am thus sure that it will take quite some time to change this general opinion (visible also, for example, in many explanatory tables at archaeological sites).”

What Do E-Groups Mean to the Maya Today?

For over a millennium, Maya E-Groups served as calendric devices, hallowed grounds, and a stage for the Sun on Earth. Now, modern Maya, the living descendants of this ancient civilization, are returning to these sacred spaces and reviving the traditions of their ancestors.

“They are making rituals to the places that were occupied at the time of the conquest” by Europeans, said Estrada Belli. “They go back to these cities that have been in ruins for 500 years, and they're trying to reclaim them after 500 years of colonization and oppression, and trying to be converted into Catholicism. Now they're going back and performing modern day rituals, which are very much a reflection of the ancient rituals.”

“Not only do they claim the places where they're directly connected to, in terms of their community in the highlands and the Yucatán, but they're also going back to the places that were abandoned 1,000 years ago,” he added.

“It's all part of this revival, and reconnection with their ancient culture.”

As archaeologists continue to unravel the mysteries of E-Groups, uncovering their ancient role in tracking the Sun and structuring Maya life, it seems the story of these sites is far from over. Modern Maya may reinvent these spaces in ways that blend ancestral knowledge with contemporary spiritual and cultural expressions. Just as the past shaped the present, the present may redefine the past by demonstrating that E-Groups are not dead relics but living sites of meaning, adaptation, and renewal.

Does Violence at a Remote Antarctica Station Spell Doom for Mars Missions?

2025-04-15T21:00:00.000Z

Allegations of violence at an Antarctic science base reveal the shortcomings of psychological testing — What does it mean for future Mars missions?

An alleged outburst of aggression at South Africa’s Antarctic research station is highlighting shortcomings in the psychological screening and participant selection for long-duration missions in isolated environments. Space psychologists are watching the drama unfold to make sure things don’t go similarly wrong on a future crewed trip to Mars.

Near the northern coast of Antarctica’s Norway-controlled Queen Maud Land, the SANAE IV polar research station perches near the edge of the plunging Vesleskarvet cliff. The 20,000 square-foot (1,850 square meters) base made up of three linked modules has become a backdrop of a crew-member’s psychological unravelling which, according to leaked reports, threatens the safety of fellow crew members.

Allegations of sexual harassment, death threats and an atmosphere of fear, have been reported in South African media, jeopardizing a mission which is meant to last until December.

But expert psychologists caution that the situation may not be as severe as it may appear at first glance.

Those crew members, a group of nine adventurers, have been locked up together for weeks, thousands of miles away from civilization, amid the endless snow-covered plains of the icy continent. With nowhere to escape and no uninvolved counsel to turn to at times of stress, interpersonal tensions can flare up easily during such missions. Although serious incidents are nowadays statistically rare, acrimony and discord can quickly take over among the isolated crew.

“These are extraordinary situations that can easily bring out the best but also the worst in people,” said Richard Addante, an associate professor in psychology and neuroscience at the Florida Institute of Technology. “In these isolated settings, time stretches and everything gets magnified. Everything that people experience in regular environments on Earth, being it work or relationships, it feels like under a microscope or on steroids.”

Not Your Best Self

Addante speaks from experience. A principal investigator for NASA’s largest psychology study investigating the impacts of space travel on human psyche (the Human Exploration Research Analog, or HERA), he has taken part in several simulated space missions including a 45-day stay in a tiny capsule at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. He has also been overseeing the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations, or NEEMO, a series of experiments which subjects teams of astronauts to two-week simulations in an underwater habitat off the coast of the Florida Keys.

The psychological discomfort experienced by participants in such missions goes beyond the mere nuisance of being stuck in a small space with a group of people who might not be a personality match. The unusual setting affects each individual on a physiological level, causing changes in sleep patterns, appetite and hormonal secretion.

“These extreme environments, being it Antarctica or a Mars analog habitat, disrupt all of the subsystems of your body,” Addante says. “Changes in nutrition, exercise, light exposure, sleep patterns — that all will have an effect on how you feel and how you react to all sorts of little things that under normal circumstances wouldn’t be a big problem.”

Psychologists are trying to select applicants that are stable and level-headed enough to be able to handle the pressures, but as Addante admits, there is only so much that psychological questionnaires and interviews conducted in the comfort of a warm office can reveal.

“These tests are mostly trying to select people out, but they are not great at selecting people in,” says Addante. “They are a way to take the temperature of the air, but they’re not a way to know conclusively the temperature everywhere. It’s a measurement at a moment in time. It’s a very coarse tool that can filter out the obvious red flags, the lowest hanging fruit, but they are not blood tests. The human psyche is too complex for that.”

John Leach, a veteran extreme environment and military psychologist, agrees. Putting together a successful crew for a mission to Mars or polar winter-over, involves gauging the elaborate interpersonal alchemy that goes beyond just weeding out people with obvious issues.

“For example, studies show that if you put two extroverts together, they won’t last very long,” Leach says. “On top of that, you are selecting from a pool of people who are not completely normal. These are people who have an appetite for doing extreme things, dangerous things. Inherently, the candidates are likely to have something missing from their lives.”

Coffins and Straitjackets

Still, the mental health toll of Mars analog missions and Antarctic research expeditions is nowhere near as severe as it used to be in the age of early polar exploration. Leach, who is currently a senior research fellow in survival psychology with the Extreme Environments Research Group at the University of Portsmouth in the U.K., recalls a story that to our ears may sound like taken from a cheap horror novel.

“When American polar explorer Admiral Richard E. Byrd planned his first expedition to Antarctica in 1928, his team carried among their supplies two coffins and twelve straightjackets,” says Leach. “He expected psychological problems.”

Psychological problems during early Antarctic expeditions were indeed not rare and were likely exacerbated by insufficient nutrition, lack of vitamins and insufficient equipment to maintain basic bodily comfort. The first crew to overwinter in Antarctica was that of the Belgian Belgica ship that got stranded in pack ice during an attempt to circumnavigate the polar cap in 1898. Two of its crew members — Jan Van Mirlo and Adam Tollefsen — developed psychotic states during the polar night that involved paranoid delusions and threats to kill fellow crew members.

A little over a decade later, radio operator Sidney Jeffreys who served on the Australasian Antarctic Expedition led by British explorer Douglas Mawson, too, descended into insanity during the Antarctic winter. Convinced his crew mates were conspiring to kill him; he took to sending frantic messages to Australia calling for help.

Leach points out the Jeffreys case as a cautionary tale showing that reports of discord and danger at Antarctic research stations need to be carefully evaluated. Perceived threats may sometimes be a result of heightened emotions in the confined setting, misunderstandings, personality differences or even an onset of paranoid delusions on the side of the complainant. In other cases, incidents may erupt seemingly out of nowhere after weeks and months of accumulated tensions.

“It's usually a number of things that come together, and it builds up and builds up, and then there's usually a trigger,” Leach said. “That trigger could be quite small, the sort of thing in other people's behaviors that might irritate you but which you would be able to handle in a normal world.”

In 2018, one such squabble at the Russian Bellingshausen Station resulted in one crew member stabbing another. The victim survived. According to an article in GQ, the perpetrator had been provoked by the victim’s constant spoiling of the endings of his books.

Insufficient Training

A mission to Mars could, in many ways, be even more challenging than an overwintering in Antarctica, Addante concedes. Stuck 4,000 kilometers from the South African coast, the expeditioners at SANAE IV could be reached by a rescue team in two weeks. There’s no chance of removing an afflicted crew member from a Mars-bound spacecraft. The range of available activities that could help dispel tensions and maintain one’s mental health is also considerably more restricted on a spaceflight mission.

“In Antarctica you can still go out and enjoy the outdoors, the fresh air in your face,” Addante says. “These missions can attract people who might be photographers and enjoy taking images of auroras and wouldn’t mind either the cold or the isolation. In a space trip, you mostly only have your mental cocoon to retreat into so it may be harder to get a respite.”

Addante thinks that the one big opportunity to improve the outcomes of long duration missions in extreme environments and reduce the probability of interpersonal conflict is better training of psychological coping skills. As surprising as it may sound, psychological preparation of crew members is currently almost an afterthought in the busy training schedule of technical skills and job competencies.

“Training for any mission is usually very busy and there is a lot of different things to train on,” says Addante. “Training for psychological coping has only recently begun to be taken more seriously. Frequently, you have crew members based around the world, at different locations, and there simply isn’t time and resources to bring them together to practice and train.”

As Leach puts it, when it comes to missions in extreme environments, “you get out of it what you take into it.”

Addante compares the success or failure of an Antarctic crew to that of a marriage. Most participants of either start off with the right intentions, not all have what it takes to make it to a triumphant end.

Leach points out that despite the occasional headline-grabbing drama, most Antarctic over-winterers who take part in the British Antarctic Survey’s missions volunteer for another rotation.

“It’s not all perfect, they have problems and worse times,” says Leach. “But overall, they enjoy it and many of them want to come back for another stint.”

Whether that will be the case with the current crew at SANAE IV remains a question.

According to the latest reports, the situation may have calmed down. No evacuation mission has been initiated. Instead, South African authorities have implemented psychological support measures including frequent phone calls with psychiatrists and counsellors. The alleged perpetrator is reportedly willingly participating in the activities designed to restore relationships at the base and has written an apology letter to the alleged victims.

According to Addante, forgiveness in such situations is as important to the successful outcome as careful participant selection.

“I think it’s important not to be too judgmental of these mental breaks and the people who have them,” he says. “These really are extraordinary situations, and it should be interpreted with a little bit of grace and forgiveness.”

Rocket Lab to Search for Signs of Life in the Hellish Clouds of Venus

2025-04-08T10:00:00.000Z

If you're hoping to find life, Venus might seem like the worst place in the solar system to look.

Its heavy-duty carbon dioxide atmosphere heaps an ocean’s worth of pressure onto its parched surface, a volcanic realm baking at 900 degrees Fahrenheit. It also rains sulfuric acid on Venus, but the surface is so hot — hot enough to liquify lead, in fact — that this rain evaporates before it ever hits the ground.

There is, however, one part of Venus that isn’t terrible: its cloud layer, part of which is oddly temperate. And in 2020, scientists announced the discovery of phosphine — a molecule frequently made on Earth by microbes — within that cloud deck. In the months and years since, the community’s confidence in that original phosphine detection has waned. But no matter: it’s already inspired an international squad of scientists and the California-based company Rocket Lab to team up and send their very own spacecraft to the hellish world next door.

The mission — tentatively called the Rocket Lab mission to Venus — is currently eyeing up the summer of 2026 for a launch date. It’ll send a robotic detective screeching through the Venusian atmosphere — but it’s not looking for phosphine. Instead, it’s going to search for the tell-tale glow of organic compounds.

“Why would you look for a biproduct of life if instead you can put your money on complex molecules that indicate life?” says Sara Seager, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at MIT, and the science team lead on the mission.

The atmospheric diver won’t survive for very long, and it will have less than 30 minutes to perform its work. But if it succeeds, and it detects organic chemistry in that alien sky — not conclusive evidence of life, but perhaps the foundations of biology — then two things will suddenly become true.

The first is that companies can send relatively cheap, hyper-focused spacecraft to worlds as extreme as Venus. “If we can show that Rocket Lab is capable of doing really serious science missions, at a cost that’s one-twentieth, or one-hundredth the cost of typical science missions… then we can open up a new era in space exploration,” says Christophe Mandy, a senior systems engineer and program manager for the Venus mission at Rocket Lab.

The second?

Science will have to redefine what it means for a world to be potentially habitable. No Pressure.

Once upon a time, perhaps hundreds of millions or billions of years ago, Venus went through a climatic apocalypse. It used to have an oceans’ worth of water and a relatively toasty, but survivable, temperature. But something nasty — perhaps several closely spaced and truly gargantuan volcanic eruptions — triggered a runaway greenhouse effect. Its ocean began to evaporate, adding more heat-trapping water vapor into the atmosphere. A dry world would see anything resembling plate tectonics shutting down, which in turn would prevent the planet from burying its carbon dioxide. And when its surface water eventually vanished, that huge carbon sink disappeared with it.

Prior to that cataclysm, Venus may not have looked too different from Earth. But today, it’s thoroughly awful, so much so that all the landers that were sent to the planet’s surface during the Cold War were annihilated in just a matter of hours or even minutes. That’s made studying Venus quite difficult, although remote observations and archival data from long-dead orbiters has hinted that the surface is alive with erupting volcanoes.

Despite the dearth of missions to Venus in the past few decades, scientists like Janusz Pętkowski, an astrobiologist at the Wrocław University of Science and Technology in Poland, are beguiled by Earth’s neighbor — particularly its cloud layer. “This is the most mysterious environment on Venus,” he says.

An astrobiologist being intrigued by Venus, an incandescent and desiccated wasteland, may sound a little strange. Those seeking evidence of alien life have tended to look for hydrated offworld environments, from the once-waterlogged lake basins of Mars to the oceanic moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Venus’s clouds are extremely dry, while also heavily seasoned with concentrated sulfuric acid, making it inhospitable to life as we know it.

For Pętkowski — another member of the Rocket Lab to Venus mission’s science team — the problem lies with that exact phrase: life as we know it.

Along with Seager and his other colleagues, Pętkowski has conducted extensive lab work to show that Venus’s clouds might be cozier than many would expect. Concentrated sulfuric acid certainly sounds hazardous, and a lot of YouTube videos showing things like hamburgers getting comprehensively eaten away by it do nothing to dissuade viewers of that notion. But Pętkowski says those videos can be misleading. “People think that organic chemistry cannot exist in concentrated sulfuric acid. And that is wrong,” he says.

If you mix sulfuric acid with water and any organic molecules, including most of the biochemicals of life on Earth, they will be obliterated. But one can’t assume the same would happen in the clouds of Venus, which contain concentrated sulfuric acid but lack plentiful water. As a result, that concentrated sulfuric acid doesn’t seem to have the deleterious effect it has on Earth: the team’s recent lab work has shown that myriad amino acids are stable in concentrated sulfuric acid, as are some of the peptide bonds that link amino acids together to form larger chains — the backbone of the complex organic chemistry that might beget life.

Perhaps our notion of habitability needs a rethink.

“If your planet doesn’t have water, but it does have sulfuric acid, then paradoxically, some of these molecules can be stable,” says Pętkowski. “If there is no water, there is no reactivity, and no falling apart. That’s an extremely weird and unexpected result.”

In other words, we shouldn’t assume that the clouds of Venus might be empty of microbial life. “Assumption is the greatest enemy of scientific progress,” he says. “You shouldn’t assume anything before doing the experiment.”

It’s also impossible to ignore the galvanizing effect that the 2020 detection of phosphine had on the scientific community. On Earth, it is naturally made in abundance by microbes, and the first foray of remote observations that year suggested a lot of it was present in Venus’s atmosphere. The detection has since been called into question; some teams, using a variety of observational techniques, have seen it (at varying concentrations), while others have not. Worth noting is the fact that it can also be made by intense volcanic activity, something that Venus almost certainly has.

“I'd say our understanding that phosphine is there is pretty good, with multiple detections over the last eight years,” says Jane Greaves, an astronomer at Cardiff University and one of the original discoverers of the phosphine signal. “However, it's puzzling why the abundance seems to vary, and that may be from different ways of processing the data or it may be true variability over time.”

Although the phosphine signal’s existence is debated heavily to this day, it had an immediate impact on both NASA and the European Space Agency, who green-lit three missions between them — two orbits, and an atmospheric probe — to Venus not long afterward. Each has a suite of objectives, from sniffing out the chemistry of the sickly sky to mapping out the world’s weird surface geology. And all three are set to arrive sometime after 2030.

Rocket Lab wants to beat them all to the punch.

NASA and ESA’s upcoming endeavors are like Swiss army knives: equipped with an array of tools designed to answer multiple questions about Venus. Seager, though, is thinking differently about interrogating Earth’s neighbor.

She is the leader of the Morning Star Missions to Venus project, a consortium of scientists and engineers who want to unearth that bizarre planet’s mysteries. “It goes back to phosphine on Venus,” she says. “I took that opportunity to ask ourselves: what would we want to do if we could go to Venus with one or more very, very focused missions?”

The project has one ultimate objective: “We want to find signs of life on Venus,” says Seager. Future spacecraft concepts include flying an instrumented balloon system through the clouds to look for biomarkers, and an even an atmosphere and cloud sample return program. But you’ve got to start somewhere, and that will be the Rocket Lab Mission to Venus, and it wants to answer a single question: is there organic chemistry in the Venusian clouds, or not?

“We’re not looking for phosphine,” says Seager. She points out that phosphine is something that can be made by life, but also by other natural sources. Phosphine may not even be in the Venusian atmosphere either. Why not instead look for complex organic chemistry? Some especially baroque kinds of organic molecules tend to be associated with life on Earth more than any geologic or environmental process.

The Rocket Lab mission is an atmospheric descent probe that relies on a single scientific instrument: the AutoFluorescence Nephelometer, or AFN. Using a laser to scan its environment, it will be able to sense the size and shape of various cloud particles. It will make organic molecules glow, revealing their previously hidden existence (if, indeed, they are there in the first place). “We will not know exactly what organic molecules we will have,” says Pętkowski. “But we will know if they are there.”

An AFN is currently being tested in an environment standing in for the Venusian cloud deck: Hawai‘i’s Kīlauea volcano. Not only is it nearly constantly erupting, but it’s “the second largest emitter of sulfur dioxide on Earth — and this can be oxidized to sulfuric acid and grow into larger aerosols resulting in volcanic fog, or vog, that is similar to the Venus clouds,” says Christopher Carr, a program engineer and scientist at Georgia Tech and member of the Morning Star Missions to Venus team.

The AFN is being flown around the volcano on a fixed-wing drone and will try to detect things like sea spray aerosols, sulfuric acid, dust and ash. By comparing the AFN flight experiments with ground-based measurements and laboratory sample tests, the team can assess the accuracy of the AFN while also building a reference data set that scientists can use to interpret the probe readings taken while on Venus.

If the AFN stands up to scrutiny on Earth, the team must then get it into Venus’s clouds. And that’s where Rocket Lab’s engineering magic comes into play.

The spacecraft, with its singular focus and solitary scientific instrument, has no frills. “The number of ways it can go wrong are as low as possible,” says Mandy, the program manager at Rocket Lab. After it launches on one of the company’s Neutron rockets, it will reach Venus in four months. After that, an AFN-containing probe will detach from the spacecraft bus, and the bus will perish, having fulfilled its transportation duties.

This is where the (real) fun begins. The probe will enter the Venusian atmosphere and will travel at supersonic speeds for three agonizing minutes. It will be protected from vaporization by temperatures of up to 4,500 degrees Fahrenheit, all thanks to a heat shield designed by NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.

At the very top of the Venusian cloud layer — about 40 miles above the surface — the probe will have decelerated, and the AFN, trapped within a specialized pressure vessel, will begin its survey. It will have just five minutes to peruse the clouds before the probe falls out of the cloud layer, after which it will have just 20 minutes to transmit its invaluable data back to Earth. After that point, the planet’s intense temperature or pressure will quickly kill the probe.

The Rocket Lab mission to Venus is ambitious, which is why it’s somewhat surprising that most of those building it are doing so part-time. “Most of the engineers are working nights and weekends on this, rather than being fully allocated,” says Mandy. Rocket Lab’s commercial missions remain everyone’s primary focus; the company’s Venus probe only exists because the company is making money elsewhere.

Speaking of which, this mission is also supposed to be cheap by design. How cheap, exactly? Rocket Lab wouldn’t reveal a figure, but a recent estimate put it at no more than $10 million, which would make it roughly 50 times less expensive than one of NASA’s two upcoming polymathic missions to Venus. If it works, then that’s good news for all planetary scientists. If not, then it wouldn’t come as a huge surprise.

“Doing space for cheap is very, very hard,” says Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist and Venus evangelist at the Washington University in St. Louis. Just look at the recent cavalcade of private missions to the Moon: although the NASA-sponsored Blue Ghost spacecraft, built by Texas-based Firefly Aerospace, successfully touched down on the lunar surface and conducted some scientific investigations, several others had grim fates. For example, Intuitive Machines, another (frequently successful) Texas-based company, flew its Athena spacecraft onto the Moon — but when it landed, it toppled over to lethal effect.

The nearby, quiescent, atmosphere-lacking Moon is troublesome enough. But Venus is orders of magnitude more perilous. “I hope they pull it off for a variety of reasons: programmatic, technical, and scientific,” says Byrne. “But if we lose contact with this probe, will the funding bodies behind it be willing to push on anyway?” Will the future Morning Star Missions to Venus still ultimately fly? “What is their appetite for risk?”

A win for Rocket Lab would be a victory for those hoping to make planetary exploration more accessible, for those wishing for a more efficient and democratic form of scientific discovery. Will the mission reveal the secrets of Venus’s skies? “I’m a natural optimist,” says Pętkowski. He’s happy they are going to try.

Seager strikes a more filmic note of hope. “A new dawn is rising,” says Seager.

Working Overtime in Orbit: Striking Photos from Butch and Suni's Ordeal

2025-04-02T19:00:00.000Z

Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore traveled 121,347,491 miles during their mission, spent 286 days in space, and completed 4,576 orbits around Earth.

It was supposed to be 8 days.

“Deep inside, I was really excited because I love living in space,” said Suni

Visit veteran NASA astronauts Sunita "Suni" Williams and Butch Wilmore in Supercluster's interactive Astronaut Database where you can see flight stats and learn more about their long and storied careers. Then head over to our Stations Dashboard to monitor future traffic and crew rotations at the International Space Station. Both utilities along with our live Launch Tracker are also available on the free Supercluster App for iOS and Android.

“I would fly again in a Starliner,” Suni said.

“It’s not about me, it’s not about my feelings. It’s about what this human space flight program is about. It’s our national goals,” said Butch.

Finding Fuel for the Future in a Burbank Castle

2025-03-25T20:00:00.000Z

Situated among Hollywood prop houses and aging strip malls, a medieval castle stands out among the otherwise mundane collection of business parks, warehouses and parking lots that have come to define the less luxurious portions of the San Fernando Valley.

Nearly a century ago, this neighborhood in Burbank was the birthplace of Americas first fighter jet. Now this fortress may be the innovation frontier for the next global fight to take on climate change. In the process, the same technology could provide a key to the Mars equation, producing fuel in situ for return flights from the red planet.

The origins of this castle trace back to an entrepreneur born in the San Fernando Valley named Gary Bandy. Bandy was a machinist by trade who took over his father’s machine shop in the 1950s. Under his leadership, the company Bandy Hinge became a pillar of the aerospace industry, and his precision milled parts were critical in the design and fabrication of many generations of Lockheed fighter jets as well as NASA’s Space Shuttle. Reinvesting the profits from this business, Bandy began building castles across Burbank to bring flair to the city he called home. Decades later, one of these castles would be home to new kind of start up, with ambitions as eccentric as the castle it called headquarters: Terraform Industries.

Terraform Industries’ plan, at face value, gets some raised eyebrows. Their stated mission is to create “gigascale atmospheric hydrocarbon synthesis”, or in simpler terms, production of natural gas, captured from the air instead of the extracted from the ground. Hydrocarbons are any chemical compound that is composed exclusively of hydrogen and carbon atoms. One such hydrocarbon, methane (CH4), is burned to create electricity and used in homes for heating and fuel for cooking applications. Raptor engines in Starship and Super Heavy rely on Methane combined with liquid oxygen to escape Earths gravity.

In many ways, the world is hooked on hydrocarbons.

Production of hydrocarbons have faced increased scrutiny as the world grapples with the effects of climate change, caused in large part by emission of these very greenhouse gases. Plenty of research has gone into methods to replace systems reliant of natural gas with with electrified or green options, but to those working at TI, these hypothetical advancements may be too little, too late.

“In the energy sector, people have been talking about the energy transition for a while now. What's important to realize is that there is no time for the energy transition, we needed that transition decades ago.” said Lucie Nurden, a chemical engineer at Terraform Industries.

“We continue to have a linear relationship with carbon, where we extract it from the ground, we burn it, and it stays in the atmosphere. [Terraform Industries] is buying us some time for this energy transition to occur by allowing the formation of a carbon cycle, where we recycle the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere back into synthetic hydrocarbons, as if we were taking it out from the ground without actually taking it out from the ground.”

In this scenario, the emissions of today would be the fuel source of tomorrow. Burning any form of natural gas would still produce harmful emissions, but Terraform Industries could recapture those pollutants and recycle them into future fuel. Producing this carbon neutral natural gas from the atmosphere feels novel, though the technology behind their first product, the Terraformer, is not. The Terraformer, which is powered by an array of photovoltaic (PV) panels, combines a few pieces of existing technology to create synthetic hydrocarbons from the air.

A Direct Air Capture device pulls in air from the atmosphere from which CO2 is separated. An electrolyzer designed by scientists at Terraform Industries isolates Hydrogen. The resulting molecules are combined in a sabetier reactor to create CH4, with leftover oxygen to spare.

The idea of an unlimited power source, one that recycles emissions into reusable energy supplies, all by pulling energy straight from the air we breathe, reads like science fiction. But Terraform Industries CEO Casey Handmer is upfront about this. “Nothing comes for free. You have to put in way more power than you get out. All processes that convert energy from one another involve losses.”

So what’s changed that might allow for this to break through when it may have seemed impossible even a decade ago?

Solar power. The price of PV panels and solar energy has cratered in the last decade, and that price is expected to continue to fall. From 2010 to 2020, there was a 82% reduction in the cost of utility-scale PV systems. In the last half decade, substantial investments and subsidies by governments across the globe have continued to bolster the technology, supercharging the market for solar power and ensuring that the energy is increasingly cheap and abundant.

With this development, the stars aligned for Handmer and the ideas he had been mulling over. “This Terraform idea kind of sprang out of some theoretical work I was doing with hydrocarbon supply chains on Mars, and making fuel from air to fly rockets.” In Handmer’s view, in order to be successful on the red planet, humanity needs a fuel source that can be made on Mars. “One of the key needs is a synthetic hydrocarbon supply chain, and it just so happens that solar power got cheap enough in the intervening years to make building it on Earth, first not only a good idea, but actually a compelling way to spin off the the absolutely colossal quantities of cash necessary to do something useful in space.”

That’s the bet, that this kind of technology is achievable on Mars. In the meantime, it has significant, important applications on Earth, where it can be developed for less money and on a more aggressive timeline. Terraform Industries faces significant headwinds. Energy market fluctuations, geopolitical factors (especially in the cost and production of solar panels), and the scale of production required to achieve cost parity with traditional natural gas extraction all add layers of complexity to TI’s business model. But that doesn't mean that Terraform Industries is waiting on the sidelines.

In March 2024, Terraform Industries successfully synthesized their first batch of pipeline grade synthetic natural gas in an end to end demo of their technology. The scale of the production was limited, but this proof of concept is validation that these processes can work here on Earth to create energy-dense fuel from air. The company is currently building out their first commercial scale Terraformer for field deployment. Scaling will be the next obstacle, as the company envisions a future where fields of photo voltaic solar panels power Terraformers across the globe and everything from stovetop gas to rocket fuel can be made cheaply and cleanly.

The idea is ambitious, the climate timeline is short, and the odds seem at times, insurmountably high. But like the castle they call home, employees at Terraform Industries aren’t afraid to buck the status quo in favor of bold solutions. And maybe one day, the achievements made in this fortress will find their way to Mars.

Starlink's Uphill Battle to Serve India

2025-03-18T18:00:00.000Z

Over 652 million Indians — more than 40% of the population — live without reliable internet, especially in rural areas where only 35% are connected.

For Starlink, this vast, unserved market is a key opportunity, but tapping into it has meant tackling India’s strict regulations, pushback from terrestrial carriers, and potential security worries from the government.

That might be about to shift.

SpaceX is forming a strategic partnership with India’s largest carriers, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, to distribute Starlink terminals through their retail locations and integrate Starlink's network with Jio and Airtel’s cellular and fiber infrastructure. The deal aims to enhance connectivity across urban and rural India with these telecom giants providing customer support to Starlink subscribers, handling installation and troubleshooting. Beyond distribution, both carriers are expected to assist SpaceX in navigating regulatory requirements, as their partnerships are contingent on Starlink’s approval from the Indian government.

This announcement came after Elon Musk met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Washington D.C. in January, after SpaceX had accepted critical demands from Indian Department of Telecommunications (DoT), including storing user data locally, granting intelligence agencies lawful access, allowing government audits of data centers, and complying with Indian encryption standards — clearing a major regulatory obstacle.

This collaboration signaled a détente between Starlink and India’s telecom giants, who have fiercely clashed over spectrum allocation for satellite internet providers like Starlink and Amazon’s Project Kuiper.

Globally, satellite spectrum is handled by the UN’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and assigned administratively since it’s shared, not exclusive. Auctions are rare, mostly for cellular networks needing sole control in an area. As Starlink eyed urban markets alongside rural ones — promising high-speed, reliable internet to businesses and affluent households frustrated by spotty service — it emerged as a direct rival to Jio and Airtel’s cellular and fiber networks. Jio, India’s top carrier, owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, called for rejecting the global norm and advocated for satellite spectrum auctions.

“We don’t fear competition,” Jio’s spokesperson said. “It’s the satellite players who seem scared to compete fairly.”

Airtel, the second-largest carrier, owned by billionaire Sunil Mittal, initially backed administrative allocation but later reversed their position, aligning with Jio to demand auctions for urban spectrum while still supporting administrative allocation for rural areas.

Airtel’s chairman, Sunil Mittal, said “satellite operators targeting urban customers must secure a license, purchase spectrum, fulfill all obligations, and pay the required fees, just like everyone else,” referring to the exorbitant auction fees paid by terrestrial operators to secure rights to provide internet services which satellite operators don’t have to.

Despite pouring over $9 billion into urban fiber infrastructure over the past decade, Jio and Airtel have struggled to provide consistent service. A 2023 survey found that more than half of their customers reported facing slow internet speeds and frequent disruptions, with resolution times often exceeding 24 hours. Starlink and Kuiper present a potential solution, offering superior quality and bandwidth that surpasses India’s top three carriers by 26%. Jio claimed that this creates an uneven playing field, citing its $23 billion in terrestrial spectrum auction costs — a burden satellite operators sidestep.

Yet, even as they pushed for auctions, both carriers were actively investing in satellite internet through partnerships with OneWeb (via Airtel’s parent company, Bharti Group) and SES (with Jio). Ironically, both secured government approval for these ventures via the administrative allocation process they had challenged, complicating their stance as they benefitted from the very system they sought to upend.

Despite their intense lobbying, the Indian government upheld this international standard, rejecting their calls for auctions.

“The satellite spectrum in the Ku band (around 14 GHz) and Ka band (27.1 to 31 GHz) is inherently shareable in nature, and therefore it is neither desirable nor feasible to allocate it through auction,” said Indian Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, adding "You can't auction something that is shared."

The extent of Jio and Airtel’s involvement with Starlink remains uncertain. Both Jio-SES and OneWeb have built substantial infrastructure, awaiting spectrum allocation to begin operations. Jio has showcased its network by connecting remote regions in Indian states of Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, and Assam, while OneWeb has established data transmission hubs in western and southern parts of the country. Both assert they can begin services within weeks of receiving a go-ahead from the DoT.

India’s Security Concerns

In December 2024, the Indian army seized Starlink terminals in Manipur, a northeast state bordering Myanmar hit by ongoing riots. The devices belonged to banned insurgent groups from Myanmar, where Starlink is legally approved to operate, and had slipped across the porous border. Fears grew that militants could use Starlink to coordinate attacks, share real-time data by bypassing India’s internet blackouts, possibly even aiding those groups with encrypted communication.

Satellite phones are already heavily restricted in India primarily due to national security concerns.

That same month, the Indian Coast Guard intercepted a boat from Myanmar smuggling $4.2 billion in methamphetamine, equipped with Starlink Mini terminals used for navigation toward Indian islands. These incidents sparked alarm over satellite internet misuse in volatile areas, prompting the government to investigate whether Starlink functioned within India, especially near the Myanmar border in Manipur. Officials also pressed SpaceX for details on the seized terminals’ owners, but the company refused, citing data privacy laws.

Starlink insisted its service wouldn’t work in India without approval. “Starlink beams are turned off over India,” Elon Musk said, addressing claims of illegal use. A DoT investigation later confirmed no connectivity within India, though reports suggested it might have worked near the Myanmar border. Now, Starlink’s license application sits with the Ministry of Home Affairs and security agencies, under heavy scrutiny.

Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia emphasized, “We’re ready to grant them a license if they [Starlink] comply with all the conditions. You have to look at it from a security perspective, making sure that all security concerns are addressed. When they do that, we will be more than happy to give it”

A Slow Start

SpaceX has long viewed India — the world’s second-largest telecommunications market — as a key target for Starlink. In 2021, Elon tweeted about the company’s ambitions, noting, “just figuring out the regulatory approval process.” Months later, Starlink outlined plans to launch services in India, starting with 100 free terminals for schools in New Delhi and nearby rural districts. The initiative aimed to support small and medium enterprises in remote areas needing reliable connectivity and healthcare facilities in rural regions requiring stable internet for telemedicine.

Starlink’s then-country director stated that over 80% of these terminals would target India’s 10 rural constituencies, offering a lifeline during natural disasters when terrestrial networks often fail.

The company opened pre-bookings to signal its intent, quickly amassing over 5,000 orders within a month. However, the Department of Telecommunications soon intervened, barring further orders and mandating refunds due to Starlink’s lack of a telecom license.

Indian regulations pose a steep challenge for satellite internet providers. Beyond security and data localization requirements, they must secure a Global Mobile Personal Communication by Satellite Services (GMPCS) license from the DoT, obtain approval from the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Center (IN-SPACe) to operate foreign satellites, establish local ground stations and gateways, and await spectrum allocation from the DoT — only then can beta trials begin.

Starlink’s pursuit stalled, with its GMPCS license application not filed until October 2022. Progress was slow; in the following months, the company met with DoT officials to address compliance and sought IN-SPACe approval for ground stations. Resistance from terrestrial carriers over spectrum allocation, coupled with security concerns tied to unauthorized Starlink use, further delayed the process. Yet, Elon and Modi’s recent meeting in Washington D.C., has hinted at an acceleration of bureaucratic approvals.

Even if cleared, challenges remain — India’s vast, underserved market demands affordability from a service priced for wealthier regions.

Starlink will need to adopt geographical pricing tailored to local needs as it has in regions with lower purchasing power. In Nigeria, hardware is priced at $365 with a $50 monthly fee, helping Starlink become the country’s second-largest internet service provider. In Kenya, they go a step forward by offering a $15/month hardware rental and a $30 monthly fee, removing hefty upfront costs. In Australia, where purchasing power is higher, Starlink charges $90/month but provides discounts for remote areas. India will require a similar adjustment to connect its millions.

Even Starlink’s reduced rates may seem high compared to India’s low cellular costs ($0.09/GB) and broadband fees ($5–$7 monthly), but its ability to reach the most isolated areas makes it a practical option. This is the most affordable satellite communication has ever been, driven by lower launch and manufacturing costs. Traditional satellite systems, often in geostationary orbit 35,768 kilometers above Earth, provided wide coverage but were prohibitively expensive to build and launch, delivering high latency (up to 600 milliseconds) and minimal speeds suitable only for basic tasks like email. Starlink’s approach is different, deploying thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit at 500–2,000 km for better bandwidth, lower latency, and broader reach.

Users connect via a small terminal pointed at the sky — no complex setup needed — and ongoing improvements to these terminals have further cut costs, enabling access to remote regions.

Starlink’s future in India depends on affordable pricing and meeting tough regulations. If it succeeds, it could bring fast internet to millions who’ve never had it, linking rural India to the digital world and proving satellite tech can bridge gaps where others can’t.

Spielberg and ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Director to Helm Dueling UFO Films

2025-03-11T20:00:00.000Z

The political thrillers of the 70s responded to the Watergate scandal and eroding trust in government; the ‘80s saw movies mirroring the decade’s rampant consumerism.

Any given era of movies doubles as a time capsule.

With a number of startling public disclosures and congressional hearings since 2017, it’s no surprise film fans will soon experience two high-profile UFO movies. The topic—always fascinating yet routinely ridiculed—has gained unprecedented legitimacy in the last decade, priming audiences for new explorations. And who better to potentially relaunch this Hollywood trend of newsy adaptations than legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg and Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski?

Spielberg vs Kosinski: A Cosmic Showdown

Though Spielberg’s UFO picture has already begun filming while Kosinski’s has not begun casting, these two features are inextricably linked. Regardless of when the latter movie arrives in theaters, these dueling UFO films are reminiscent of 1998’s blockbuster battle between similarly themed Armageddon and Deep Impact.

Folks sure do love their space movies, especially when they come in pairs.

Spielberg’s untitled alien movie – codenamed Non-View and rumored to be titled either The Dish or Disclosure – will be released by Universal Pictures on June 12th, 2026, marking the filmmaker’s first summer debut since 2016’s The BFG. Currently, the only major competition set for that same weekend is Scary Movie 6.

The film stems from a story by Spielberg and script by David Koepp, who wrote the original Jurassic Park and its upcoming continuation Jurassic World: Rebirth. UFO whistleblower Lue Elizondo, author of the 2024 book Disclosure, may serve as an advisor, according to New York Post journalist Steven Greenstreet. Greenstreet notes that producer Dan Farah, who put together the book deal for Ready Player One (Spielberg’s most successful recent box office hit) and Disclosure, directed an upcoming UFO documentary featuring Elizondo.

Spielberg has assembled an impressive cast for this one: Oscar nominee Emily Blunt (A Quiet Place) stars alongside Josh O’Connor (Challengers), Wyatt Russell (Thunderbolts*), Oscar nominee Colman Domingo (Sing Sing), Oscar winner Colin Firth (The King’s Speech) and Eve Hewson (Bad Sisters).

Plot details are about as secretive as Area 51, but Universal has branded this as an “Untitled Event Movie” on its release calendar—a distinction the studio reserves exclusively for tentpole films. Given that and its prime summer release date, both Spielberg and Universal clearly aim to deliver a broadly appealing blockbuster. If there’s anyone who knows a thing or two about making a commercially viable alien movie, it’s Spielberg.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind earned $288 million worldwide across 1977-78, or over $1 billion in today’s dollars, becoming Columbia Pictures’ highest-grossing film at the time. In 1982, E.T. grossed $619 million globally, becoming the highest-grossing film ever—a feat Spielberg pulled off three separate times in his career. In 2005, War of the Worlds invaded multiplexes and collected more than $600 million. You’d be hard-pressed to find a stronger track record in alien films this side of James Cameron.

Unfortunately, even less is known about Kosinski’s untitled UFO movie. We do know he’s reteaming with producer Jerry Bruckheimer, arguably the most successful action ambassador the big screen has ever seen. Zach Baylin (King Richard, Creed III) is penning the script, described as a “UFO disclosure-themed take on All the President’s Men.” That beloved 1976 journalism-fueled thriller followed reporters Bob Woodard and Carl Bernstein methodically uncovering the details of President Nixon’s Watergate scandal.

Adding an extra layer of intrigue to the project: UFO whistleblower and former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch, who claimed in 2023 that the government has secretly collected and studied "exotic" materials will serve as executive producer and consultant.

Amazon, Apple, Lionsgate, Paramount and Warner Bros. reportedly sparked a bidding war for the hot project, with Apple coming out on top thanks to the relationships built on F1, Kosinski and Bruckheimer’s upcoming Brad Pitt-led Formula 1 racing film. “Insiders are very high on that film, which will bow in June, and were eager to work again after the film finished production,” Deadline reports.

While Kosinski’s 2022 Netflix psychological thriller Spiderhead left a lot to be desired, Top Gun: Maverick (which grossed $1.5 billion) stands as a near perfect popcorn picture. The 2022 blockbuster marked the true return to theaters during the COVID era and doubled as a beacon of hope for a brow-beaten film industry, garnering Kosinski a ton of goodwill in Hollywood. Maverick may also tell us something about this mystery UFO feature. It’s likely no coincidence that the most viral unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) footage that came to light in recent years was captured by top navy pilots, who very likely double as the real life counterparts to Maverick, Goose and Ice Man. A feature film that dramatizes the real-life experiences of these pilots, juxtaposing the high-octane first aerial contact with the slow orderly drip of public disclosure, would be a fresh approach to a familiar genre.

Based on available information (admittedly limited), Kosinski’s film appears positioned to take a grounded look at what we do and don’t understand about alien life and governmental transparency while Spielberg’s venture may deliver a bombastic blockbuster romp. But can either film truly revitalize the box office and reignite public fascination with this genre?

The Alien Film Track Record: Box Office & Streaming

Recent history suggests that alien and space-themed films maintain a reliably high box office floor. From 2021-2024, at least two non-Marvel, DC and Star Wars films set in space and/or centered on alien plotlines have ranked among the top 15 highest domestic grossers each year. During that period, 11 movies in this category have grossed at least $100 million in the U.S. When including Marvel, DC and Star Wars to the mix, that number rises considerably.

Alien movies also significantly contribute to streaming platform success. From Q1 2020 to Q4 2024 across major streaming services (Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Hulu, Netflix, Starz, HBO Max/Max, Peacock, Paramount+ and Apple TV+), the sub-genre generated a measured quarterly average of $132.1 million in subscriber revenue, according to Parrot Analytics’ Streaming Economics model. (This data excludes superhero films, Star Wars and Godzilla/King Kong franchises, and other tangentially related properties). In that time, alien movies accounted for a strong 3.5% demand share of all movies, per Parrot data.

This trend reflects earlier periods of Hollywood responding to cultural anxiety and relevant news cycles.

M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs (2002), which grossed more than $400 million worldwide, debuted at a time of renewed interest in crop circles and supernatural events. Similarly, in the 1990s, successful money-making alien invasion films such as 1996’s Independence Day and 1997’s Men in Black cropped up in lockstep with rising UFO reporting and bubbling Y2K fears. Both films helped launch and establish Will Smith as a true blue movie star while ushering in a new era of effects-driven genre blockbusters, a trend the industry still embraces to this day. The fact that both franchises were still alive (though not always well) 15-20 years after their first installments speaks volumes about the contemporary summer blockbuster strategy.

Hollywood’s Response to Public Fascination

Does this guarantee that the upcoming UFO films from Spielberg and Kosinski will be crowd-pleasing blockbusters? No, of course not. However, it does suggest that the legitimate recent focus on alien life—including congressional hearings, Pentagon reports, and mainstream media coverage—may inspire a wide variety of movies tackling this subject from various perspectives.

Responding to the news cycle is one way Hollywood has always tried to remain relevant and timely. When handled with care and creativity, this approach can produce highly impactful and successful movies that define entire years. With masters like Spielberg returning to familiar territory and rising stars like Kosinski blending genres, audiences may be treated not just to two competing success stories, but potentially to the start of a new era in science fiction cinema—one that embodies our growing understanding of the universe and the alternately scintillating and terrifying prospect that we are not alone.

Are Earthlings Ready for a New Planet in the Solar System?

2025-03-04T21:00:00.000Z

Planet Nine, a hypothetical giant world, may be discovered soon. Cue the astrological readings, nomenclature wars, and Nibiru conspiracies.

For nearly a decade, astronomers have been searching for a hypothetical giant planet that may lurk in the distant reaches of the solar system.

We could be on the brink of discovering this new world, known as Planet Nine, assuming it exists. Later this year, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LLST) at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile will open its eyes to the sky for the first time. Planet Nine, if it’s out there, is very likely to pass through its sights.

The discovery of a new planet in the solar system would be a scientific goldmine and a satisfying resolution to a long-standing mystery. It would also be a major public sensation that could inspire wonder, controversy, and a whole lot of unhinged speculation. It’s dizzying to imagine how such an event might be culturally metabolized at this point of the 21st century, during a renaissance of infotainment, conspiracy theories, and ascendent popular dreams of human space colonization.

To make predictions, it might be helpful to look to the past. The public reactions to the discoveries of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto — as well as the brouhaha sparked by Pluto’s subsequent demotion to a dwarf planet — can help set some expectations for the dramatic entrance of a new member of the solar family.

“I think it will be a moment where people are genuinely excited about something new in space,” said Mike Brown, an astronomer at Caltech who co-developed the Planet Nine hypothesis, in a call with Supercluster. “People love space. People love the solar system. The solar system is, in many ways, the largest neighborhood that anybody knows about.”

“It’s Going to Be a Free-for-All”

Brown and his colleague Konstantin Batygin, also an astronomer at Caltech, first proposed the Planet Nine hypothesis in 2016 to explain strange phenomena in the outer solar system. The team observed that some Trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), a class of minor planets beyond the orbit of Neptune, had oddly clustered orbits that hinted at the presence of a massive object even further out in the solar wilderness.

“The 2016 study was very preliminary,” Brown said. “We had only a limited set of observations and computer simulations to try to understand where it might be. We've narrowed it down now, and have a pretty good predicted swath across the sky of where it's supposed to be, if our assumptions are correct.”

The spectre of a ninth planet has inspired intense media coverage as well as spirited scientific debate. Some researchers have cast doubt on the hypothesis, and presented alternate explanations for the TNO observations, such as the presence of a massive ice disk or modified theories of gravity. Other teams have built on the hypothesis and proposed constraints on the possible properties of the planet. Current estimates place Planet Nine anywhere from 400 to 800 times as far from the Sun as Earth, and suggest that it is about 4 to 10 times as massive as Earth.

LSST, which will scan expansive swaths of the sky with unprecedented precision, may swiftly resolve the matter. The survey will continuously release its observations for anyone to access, which means skywatchers of all stripes will be racing to spot the first glimpse of Planet Nine.

“If LSST does detect a new planet, it will most likely be through a community effort, with various groups of astrophysicists running their own algorithms on LSST’s nightly stream of 10 million transient alerts, which are records of changes in the night sky,” Amir Siraj, an astrophysicist at Princeton University who led a recent study about Planet Nine’s properties, told Supercluster in an email. “These algorithms would search for a faint speck of reflected sunlight moving extremely slowly across the sky.”

This is not remotely the first time that astronomers have searched for a hypothetical planet by following orbital breadcrumbs. In 1800, a group that became known as the Celestial Police began chasing the ghost of a hidden planet between Mars and Jupiter, which eventually led to the discovery of the asteroid belt.

Decades later, rival astronomers vied to be the first to spot a hypothetical planet beyond Uranus.

On September 23, 1846, Neptune was officially discovered with calculations made by the French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier, but it was such a close finish that the British astronomer John Couch Adams campaigned for mutual credit. The ensuing dispute over who should lay claim to the discovery enraptured the public and became a matter of national pride.

“The history since the discovery of the planet is, I think, more curious than that before the discovery,” commented the astronomer Sir George Biddell Airy in 1847.

Given the similarly competitive spirit of the hunt for Planet Nine, any news about a detection would likely make it out to the public quickly, no doubt sparking a media frenzy.

“It's going to be a free-for-all,” Brown said. ”If we find it, we will announce it within days because the data are all out there. People will want to start studying it.”

Siraj predicted that details about the planet’s discovery would rapidly be published on arXiv, a server for preprint studies, setting off a cascade of news coverage and follow-up observations.

“Almost every large telescope — both ground-based and space-based — would then be directed toward that patch of sky using ‘target of opportunity’ or ‘discretionary time’ procedures,” he said, noting that heavyweight observatories, including JWST and Hubble, would likely be enlisted to confirm or refute the findings.

Given that many people will be rushing to spot Planet Nine, another Neptune-style spat over credit may erupt in the aftermath of a discovery. This scenario would make for great news content, as the identity of a planet’s discoverer is often more meaningful than the actual planet in the eyes of onlookers.

For instance, take this 1932 report documenting local backlash in the hometown of Clyde Tombaugh, Pluto’s discoverer, after he was overlooked in a popular astronomy handbook.

“The wheat farmers and livestock railers [of Burdett, Kansas] profess little knowledge of astronomy, but they are loyal to Clyde Tombaugh, the farm boy who discovered the planet Pluto,” according to the article, which goes on to describe the community’s “ire” and “resentment over the slight” of Tombaugh’s exclusion from what they see as his rightful place in history.

In other words, the “who” in a planetary discovery is at least as important as the “what” in many cases. The personal element may be even more important with Planet Nine because, in addition to making history, the team that spots it will likely receive the combustible honor of naming a whole new world.

What’s in a Name?

At a time when the established names of locations on Earth are being litigated, it’s easy to imagine heated clashes over what name to bestow on an entirely new planet of the solar system.

“Naming rights would go to the discoverers, and whatever the discoverers choose is likely to stick,” Siraj said, adding that “it will surely provoke major arguments and differences of opinion no matter what name is chosen.”

There is, again, historical precedent for this issue. For instance, it took the international astronomical community nearly 70 years to agree on the name Uranus for the seventh planet. William Herschel, who discovered Uranus in 1781, initially proposed the name Georgium Sidus (George’s Star) after his patron King George III. Unsurprisingly, this name didn’t catch on with astronomers in other countries, leading to a parade of alternate names including Hypercronius, Transaturnis, Minerva, Herschel, and the eventual survivor: Uranus.

Le Verrier, who discovered Neptune, exercised his naming rights by choosing its present name, after the Roman god of the sea, though he changed his mind later and unsuccessfully tried to name it after himself. Pluto was named within months of its discovery by Tombaugh; the name was chosen in part to honor Percival Lowell (initials P.L.) who spent the final years of his life consumed with the unrealized dream of finding a “Planet X” that turned out to be Pluto.

“We felt in making our choice of a name for Planet X that the line of Roman gods for whom the other planets are named should not be broken,” said Roger Lowell Putnam, Lowell’s nephew and trustee, in a New York Times article published on May 25, 1930 (Pluto was discovered on February 18 of the same year). “We believe that Dr. Lowell, whose researches led directly to its discovery, would have felt the same way.”

But though Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are all namesakes of Roman gods, we've now almost exhausted this pantheon on existing celestial objects, including minor planets like Vesta, Ceres, and Eris. It may be that Planet Nine bucks the mold with a very different kind of moniker.

“The discoverer has the right to officially propose a name to the International Astronomical Union, and they will accept it unless there’s some reason not to,” Brown said.

For instance, if the discoverers propose a dumb or controversial name, like McPlanetface or Catturd-3, the IAU could push back on the choice. Otherwise, the name presented by the discoverers will be formalized.

Brown is well-acquainted with culture wars fueled by strong sentiments about planet nomenclature and categorization. He led the effort to reclass Pluto as a dwarf planet in 2006, a move that was viewed by many Pluto enthusiasts as a wanton insult against their favorite world. Brown has taken the whole episode in stride, referring to himself as the “Pluto killer.”

“I was surprised, honestly, that astronomers ever had the guts to vote to demote Pluto,” he said. “I'm glad the vote was the way it was, because that was absolutely the correct thing to do. But it took a lot of guts to do that against what was going to be a certain backlash.”

Famous as the Pluto killer, Brown now looks forward to an opportunity to replace the beloved dwarf world with a real, bonafide ninth planet.

In fact, he thinks such a discovery would helpfully emphasize why Pluto was downgraded in the first place.

If Planet Nine exists, “it is the fifth largest planet of our solar system,” Brown said. “This is a monster out there.”

“Showing what a real new planet looks like puts to bed the question of why we don't call Pluto the ninth planet,” he added. “This is what a real planet looks like.”

“Am I Still a Gemini if There’s a New Planet?”

Space means very different things to different people. It can be the arena of scientific research. It can be a spiritual tapestry. It can be a staging ground for conspiracy theories, populated by UFOs, apocalyptic omens, and the ruins of alien civilizations.

Meanwhile, as Elon Musk becomes more politically and culturally relevant, so too does his vision of space as a salvatory frontier that must be colonized to secure humanity’s future. Throwing a new planet into this swirling semantic maelstrom is sure to provoke a wide range of reactions.

“What you have got to be prepared for, with anything these days, is simply whether or not establishment science will be trusted,” said Ian Reyes, a professor of communication and media at the University of Rhode Island who has previously studied space-related conspiracy theories, in a call with Supercluster.

“Absolutely any conclusion, because of where it comes from, is prone to be questioned,” he continued. “Oh, there's another planet. Why? Is Elon Musk going to build a mansion there? Did he put it there? Why wasn't this planet there before? Am I still a Gemini if there's a new planet?”

These ruminations are, often, extremely fun. In fact, their spellbinding appeal can put scientists and science communicators in a familiar bind: The more that scientists assert a status as gatekeepers of astronomical knowledge, the more tinder is available to ignite the infotainment and conspiracy spheres.

“Establishment science is absolutely needed for certain forms of evidence to get a conspiracy theory going,” Reyes said. “It’s super-respected in some cases, but there's that moment where you get a rhetorical turn, where now we can't trust the science for some reason. That's where you open up that space for play.”

“When you compare the lack of science literacy in the public to the incredible conspiracist literacy people have, you realize that science is competing with an infotainment industry that gets people at a rather young age,” he added.

In other words, we can expect the reappearance of perennial theories about fictional worlds like Nibiru, alongside a blossoming of creative new plotlines, adapted to the current zeitgeist.

“I guarantee you that as soon as it's discovered and the first person sees a plot of its orbit, there will be YouTube videos about Nibiru and how it's going to come in and destroy the Earth,” Brown said. “Absolutely, it's going to happen. It already has. I have discovered Nibiru at least three separate times in my career, apparently. Every time I find something with an eccentric orbit and announce it, it gets a YouTube video about how it's going to destroy the Earth.”

Or, possibly, the whole thing could fizzle into a proverbial nothingburger. In fact, this would be the one scenario that might truly depart from the example of past planetary histories. The discoveries of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto were welcomed by the public, and the scientists who spotted them became international celebrities. But perhaps, in the claustrophobic media environment we now inhabit, the novelty of a new planet will turn out to be a lack of novelty.

“What would be extraordinary, super-special, or ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ to a researcher, might just be a cool Monday morning news item to somebody, especially in the present flood of information,” Reyes said.

Like so much about life on Earth, the view will depend on where people are standing and what they stand for. But regardless of the myriad outcomes, Planet Nine, if discovered, will push the boundaries of the solar system out to a new horizon, both literally and in the public consciousness.

“The planets are one of the first things we learn about in school, forming a fundamental part of how we as humans understand our place in the universe,” said Siraj. “Adding a new member to this familiar list — especially 180 years after the last major addition (Neptune) — would feel like a profound shift in our knowledge of our cosmic context.”

“After all, the solar system is our home in the universe,” he concluded. “Look no further than the discovery and then subsequent recategorization of Pluto for a reminder of how much we care, as residents of the third planet from the Sun, about planetary membership of our solar system.”

The Fastest Spacecraft Ever Built Braves the Sun

2025-02-25T20:00:00.000Z

Last Christmas Eve, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe flew close the Sun, reaching speeds of 430,000 miles per hour, the quickest any human object has ever moved.

And this was no Icarus. It survived. Venturing just 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) from the solar surface, its extreme proximity meant the mission controllers couldn’t communicate with the spacecraft during this flyby. After a tense two-day silence, a reassuring beacon tone reached the mission control of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) on the night of December 26th, confirming the probe was healthy and functioning normally.

“While Parker Solar Probe was closer to the Sun than any other human-made object in history, it operated exactly as designed and gathered observations never before possible,” said Helene Winters, Parker Solar Probe Project Manager at APL. The Supercluster team celebrated the remarkable moment, and decided that we needed to immortalize the record-breaking flyby with new apparel. Head over to our shop to check out the Parker Solar Probe Racing Team Longsleeve designed by Clara Early, celebrating the fastest spacecraft in history and its mission to explore our host star.

“From the heat shield to the solar array cooling system, this mission demanded groundbreaking technology to collect data scientists have awaited for decades. The spacecraft’s ability to withstand the Sun’s hostile environment is a testament to the team that built it.”

Four days later, by January 1st, 2025, telemetry received at APL provided detailed updates on the probe’s status, confirming it had followed pre-programmed commands during the flyby and that its science instruments remained operational. Later that month, NASA began retrieving the science data as the probe’s high-power antenna aligned with NASA’s Deep Space Network on Earth, enabling faster transmission rates. Launched on August 12th, 2018, aboard United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy rocket, Parker is now in its final year, racing to unlock the Sun’s mysteries with each daring pass.

Supercluster Chief Robin Seemangal was embedded with United Launch Alliance and NASA when the mission launched from Kennedy Space Center and documented the event.

Developed and operated by APL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the Parker Solar Probe is designed to study the Sun’s corona—its upper atmosphere—up close, aiming to understand the coronal magnetic field and plasma, uncover why the corona reaches extreme temperatures, and determine what drives the supersonic solar wind. Named after astrophysicist Eugene Parker, who first theorized the solar wind in 1958, it became the first spacecraft to enter the corona in 2021. The corona is one of the Sun’s greatest mysteries since the temperatures there can exceed 1,800,000°F (1,000,000°C), while the surface, or photosphere, is a relatively cool 10,000°F (5,500°C).

“Parker Solar Probe is changing the field of heliophysics,” Winters said. “After years of enduring the heat and dust of the inner solar system, taking blasts of solar energy and radiation no spacecraft has faced, it continues to perform.”

The probe carries four instrument suites to measure electric and magnetic fields, plasma, and energetic particles from the Sun.

These are shielded by a 4.5-inch (11.5-centimeter) thick carbon-composite heat shield, built to withstand temperatures up to 2,500°F (1,377°C), keeping the payload at a manageable 85°F (29°C). A cooling system protects its dual solar panels, which endure 1,000°F (538°C) during close approaches while still generating power.

With an eight-minute communication delay to Earth and no direct control possible near the Sun, autonomy is vital. The probe uses four light sensors to detect sunlight beyond the heat shield’s shadow, triggering reaction wheels to adjust its position and stay protected. NASA’s Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, Dr. Nicky Fox, described it as “the most autonomous spacecraft ever flown.”

Reaching the Sun’s vicinity requires more than a direct approach. Parker used Venus’ gravity for seven flybys—starting October 2018, with the last on November 6, 2024—to iteratively lower its perihelion—the closest point to the Sun—setting up the December 2024 flyby. This method reduces the fuel needed compared to a straight shot, which would demand large amounts of propellant. Consequently, this gradual and planned approach aligned the December flyby with the solar maximum, the peak of the Sun’s 11-year cycle. During this period, solar activity surges, with more sunspots, flares, and coronal mass ejections, offering a prime chance to study the Sun’s dynamic behavior.

Scientists anticipate that data from this flyby could deepen understanding of solar wind acceleration, the corona’s extreme heat, and magnetic field dynamics. Previous orbits uncovered “switchbacks”—abrupt reversals in the solar wind—and sungrazing comets, suggesting further discoveries ahead. By analyzing data across solar minimum and maximum, researchers aim to unveil the corona’s outer boundary and improve space weather forecasts that impact Earth.

So what’s in the data collected? We don’t know as of now and there’s no word on an official release yet.

NASA’s science team is likely processing and analyzing the raw data collected, a process that can take months for complex coronal data—a standard timeline for such missions. Meanwhile, Parker Solar Probe’s mission continues. It will make two more close solar passes in March and June 2025, concluding its primary 22-orbit phase. After that, NASA and APL will evaluate the probe’s remaining fuel reserves to decide its next steps—potentially extending observations until the fuel runs out.

The Search for SETI's Magic Frequency

2025-02-18T20:00:00.000Z

The late Bob Gray once described Earth’s atmosphere as being like a dirty window that you can only partially see through.

Light passes through, but at certain frequencies the atmosphere can smother, interfere with or completely block out some of the light.

That’s certainly true for the radio part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Signals ranging from about 5 MHz up to a terahertz can pass through the atmosphere, but at either extreme the signal is heavily diminished. At low frequencies the radio waves can be reflected back into space by the upper part of our atmosphere, called the ionosphere, and at the highest frequencies the radio waves are absorbed by water and carbon dioxide molecules in our atmosphere.

The clearest part of the radio window is between about 1 and 10 GHz, so for much of the history of radio astronomy it has been these frequencies that have been focused on. And where radio astronomy goes, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is usually there right beside it.

There’s a practical reason for that: since Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison’s seminal 1959 paper in Nature in which the concept of searching for alien radio signals first appeared, SETI has traditionally been a radio search (although SETI is beginning to broaden out more now). Until recently, funding in SETI has been lacking, so researchers in the field have been at the mercy of what the radio astronomers want to do with their telescopes, often piggybacking on more traditional scientific observations and the frequencies those observations are conducted at.

Things are now changing, and SETI has been able to broaden its scope as it mirrors developments in regular radio astronomy. Higher and lower frequency domains are now opening up, providing fresh hunting ground in the search for ET.

Looking for the Common Ground

The assumption is that an artificial signal from aliens is almost certainly going to be a narrowband radio transmission, perhaps a hertz wide or even smaller. That’s because nature doesn’t produce narrowband signals, so there’s no way one could be mistaken for some astrophysical phenomenon such as a pulsar. There’s not actually any reason why an alien signal couldn’t be broadband – it would certainly be more noticeable – but a narrowband signal is less susceptible to dispersion, where electrons in the interstellar medium interact with radio waves, delaying the shorter frequency ones. A narrowband signal has only a small difference between its highest and lower frequency wave, tempering the degree by which they disperse.

The problem with narrowband signals is that there are billions upon billions of narrowband channels that ET could broadcast on. How do we know which channel to tune into? Back during Project Ozma, which was Frank Drake’s pioneering first ever SETI search in 1960, Drake was limited to a receiver tuned to a single, 100 Hz wide channel centered on the 1420 MHz (1.42 GHz) emission of neutral hydrogen in the Universe, which the 26-meter (85 foot) radio telescope that he was using at Green Bank, West Virginia, was designed to observe.

Fast forward 35 years and Project Phoenix, which was the SETI effort that arose from the ashes of NASA’s cancelled SETI program used a multi-channel receiver co-designed by Jill Tarter that could simultaneously detect millions of narrowband channels. Today, Breakthrough Listen’s back-end receivers scrutinize billions of channels, each just 3Hz wide.

While modern-day SETI experiments can cover a large sweep of the radio spectrum, no telescope can observe every frequency, meaning it still comes back to the question of which channels should be prioritized. Any aliens out there transmitting messages will be faced with a similar problem – which is the best frequency to transmit on?

Schelling Points

Chenoa Tremblay, who is a radio astronomer at California’s SETI Institute, tells Supercluster that “we’re now exploring a much larger frequency space, so we don’t have to play as many of those guessing games.”

Nevertheless, light years apart, alien transmitter and human receiver have to cooperate on an almost telepathic level in order to converge on the same frequency for communication. Fortunately, game theory – for that is what this problem essentially is – has a few tricks up its sleeve to even the odds.

One of them is the notion of Schelling points.

Named by economist Albert Schelling in 1960, you can think of Schelling points as common solutions to problems that people (or aliens) gravitate to without communication with one another. This works because these solutions prove to be convenient, accessible or relevant in some way.

“Schelling points are places that others might find interesting, they might also be trying to study those regions, or they might post a beacon there,” Tremblay says. “It’s about trying to find common ground.”

In the early days of SETI, most radio telescopes were set up to study the 1.42 GHz line of neutral hydrogen, which fills the galaxy and the Universe at large, so Drake and his associates had to settle for searching on that frequency. As it turns out, 1.42GHz is not deemed a bad choice, for a number of reasons, and that’s because it’s potentially a Schelling point – a ‘magic frequency’ as it were, that to this day has remained a mainstay of SETI. Consider that much radio astronomy is conducted at this frequency; if aliens wanted to transmit on a frequency that they knew we’d be looking at, then 1.42GHz is the one.

But there’s more to this magic frequency. Consider this: a water molecule is formed of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. Put another way, water is made from an atom of hydrogen plus a hydroxyl molecule, which is made from one atom of hydrogen and one oxygen atom. Hydroxyl radiates at four different frequencies between 1.612 and 1.720 GHz. Barney Oliver called the range between the emission frequencies of hydrogen and hydroxyl the ‘water hole’, because as he put it, in an arid land the water hole is where all life comes to meet. Just as it is in the desert, so might it be in interstellar communication. It’s also a pretty quiet part of the radio spectrum; as 1971’s Project Cyclops, which was concept study for a massive phased array of radio telescopes for SETI led by Oliver, suggested, the water hole almost “seems especially marked for interstellar contact.”

The range of frequencies in the water hole form another Schelling point, as Tremblay explains.

“In the case of the water hole, not only is it relevant to life, but hydrogen is also prevalent in the Universe,” she says. “If another civilization is also interested in studying the galaxy and looking at neutral hydrogen, they might think it is common ground.”

Off SETI’s Beaten Track

The water hole isn’t the only source of possible magic frequencies. On Earth, 1.42 GHz is a protected frequency reserved for radio astronomy. Aliens could also recognize that their astronomers might want a clear channel to study the Universe, and so they might choose to transmit on another frequency instead rather than flooding it with radio frequency interference (FRI).

So over the years SETI scientists have suggested alternative magic frequencies, such as integer multiples of the hydrogen line, or multiplying it by pi, which is 4.462 GHz.

Jason Wright of Penn State University has proposed that aliens may utilize the Planck time as the basis for their transmission frequencies. The Planck time is a tiny amount of time, just 5.39 x 10^–44 seconds, and is defined as the time it takes for light to travel a distance equal to the Planck length, which quantum physics tells us is the smallest unit of length possible, 1.62 x 10^–35 meters. Wright suggests multiplying the Planck time with multiples of another fundamental number, the fine-structure constant that helps describe the strength of the electromagnetic force between two particles, to create a list of frequencies that Wright thinks would act as Schelling points because of the fundamental nature of the numbers involved. He calls this list a ‘frequency comb,’ because on a graph the spikes at each calculated frequency look like the teeth of a comb.

The 1.42 GHz frequency isn’t the only frequency that radio astronomy is conducted at. For example, before its catastrophic collapse, the Arecibo Observatory operated in what’s referred to as the ‘S-band,’ between 2.655 and 3.353 GHz, where radio emission produced by synchrotron radiation – when charged particles spiral around magnetic fields at high acceleration and release energy – in supernova remnants and star-forming regions can be observed. (The water hole is considered L-band, between 1 and 2 GHz.) These frequencies may also draw the interest of humans and aliens.

Low Frequency SETI

Radio astronomy is now also trying to broaden out and push at the extremes of that radio window, opening up new spaces for SETI play in at the same time.

For example, one trick to get around the ionospheric interference of low frequency radio waves is to try and observe them on days when space weather, powered by solar activity, is quiet. The charged particles on the solar wind can stir up the ionosphere, rending observing conditions impossible, but thanks to constant solar monitoring, we now know when conditions are going to be ideal.

However, SETI hasn’t previously done much listening at low frequencies simply because of the availability of instruments designed to operate at those frequencies.

“Then around 2013 we saw a new resurgence in low-frequency telescopes,” she says, citing the LOFAR (LOw-Frequency ARray) telescope in the Netherlands, the Murchison Wide-field Array in her Australian homeland, NenuFAR that operates between 10 and 80 MHz in France, and the Long Wavelength Array of 265 antennas in New Mexico and Texas.

“People are beginning to understand that there’s a lot of astronomy that can be done at these lower frequencies, so [SETI] can take advantage of that,” says Tremblay.

Tremblay is referring to commensal SETI, in which SETI instruments piggyback on telescopes doing regular astronomical work. Tremblay herself is the project lead on two commensal SETI searches, one on the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa, and the other on the mighty Very Large Array (VLA) of radio telescopes in New Mexico, USA. Between the two projects, the search is incredibly comprehensive covering almost every frequency from 0.5 GHz all the way up to 50 GHz.

Tremblay has also gone low in the past too, conducting a very low frequency search with the Murchison Wide-field Array. That search listened to more than 1,300 galaxies at frequencies between just 80 to 300 MHz (0.08 and 0.3 GHz). SETI searches have also been conducted in the past with LOFAR, while Tremblay is supervising a student who is going as low as 30–70 MHz in a search utilizing the Long Wavelength Array.

Tremblay points out that some of our earliest loud radio transmissions from Earth were at low frequencies. She cites Space Fence, which was a United States Air Force space surveillance system back in the Cold War, designed to detect foreign satellites passing overhead. Its powerful 1-megawatt radars operated at 216.9 MHz (0.2169 GHz). The original Space Fence was decommissioned in 2013 and a new one was initiated in 2020 that operates at much higher frequencies.

And indeed, radio astronomy itself began at very low frequency, when Karl Jansky detected radio waves coming from the galactic centre at 20.5 MHz with his ‘merry go-round’ rotating antenna in 1933.

Low frequencies can be attractive for SETI because lower frequencies have correspondingly larger wavelengths, and if the wavelength is larger than the micron-sized dust that inhabits space, a low frequency radio signal can pass through the interstellar medium more easily and not be absorbed. In other words, low frequency signals can permeate through much greater densities of cosmic dust. So there is a logical reason to transmit in the low megahertz range, and a logical reason to search there – another Schelling point.

High Frequency SETI

At the other extreme is the very high frequency range that the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array explores, observing at frequencies between 35 and 950GHz. It’s able to do so because it is seated on the Chajnantor Plateau, 5,000 meters above sea level in the Atacama Desert, above much of the atmospheres water vapour that can absorb those high frequency radio waves that exist at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths.

PhD student Louisa Mason of the University of Manchester has recently conducted the first ever SETI search using archive ALMA data. Mason and her colleagues – Manchester’s Michael Garrett and Kelvin Wandia, and Breakthrough Listen’s Andrew Siemion – focused on observations of 28 handpicked stars in a narrow range of frequencies centred on 90.642 and 93.152 GHz. The reason for these frequencies is that they fall into a band between 84 and 116 GHz where ALMA has the largest field of view. Mason’s survey was able to rule out transmitters from those stars with a power of 7 x 10^17 watts (70,000 trillion watts), which is a little more powerful than a Kardashev type I civilization (a species that is able to consume every scrap of energy on its home planet), a not unreasonable assumption for a civilization more technologically advanced than we.

Interestingly, the frequency range observable by ALMA does not include any frequencies in Jason Wright’s frequency comb based on the Planck time. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t still observe it, and there’s a very good reason to continue to do so.

A so-called ‘magic frequency’ is only a true Schelling point if it is the solution towards which both parties gravitate. So far, there’s no evidence that ET has arrived at the same conclusions that we have. Maybe their logic takes them to different solutions. Maybe their biology is different and they don’t place as much importance on the water hole. Perhaps their technology is different and their electronics and transmissions operate at different frequencies to what we might expect. Maybe they’re not using radio at all – optical and near-infrared lasers are a viable alternative, or they can somehow utilize neutrinos or gravitational waves. Or possibly they don’t exist at all, but that’s something that we could probably never prove. All we can keep doing is casting the net as far and as wide as possible and continue to consider all possibilities, waiting and hoping for the day when we finally find something. And when that day comes, it might be just what we expected, or it might be something that had never occurred to us.

Until that day, all our hailing frequencies continue to be open.

Light Pollution Threatens Earth's Last Pristine Night Sky

2025-02-11T20:00:00.000Z

The world’s last unspoiled star-observing location is in peril.

Astronomers from all over the world are mobilizing to keep our light-polluting civilization from creeping into what they have for years deemed sacred territory.

The proverbial battle ground is the Atacama Desert in Chile, a high-land plateau in the foothills of the South American Andes. Scattered across its arid peaks at altitudes of over 6,500 feet (2,000 meters) are some of the world’s most powerful astronomical observatories. In addition to its remoteness, astronomers have earmarked Atacama for their most challenging observations because of the clarity through the atmosphere above it. Shielded by the more than 20,000-foot (6,000 m) summits of the magnificent Andes range, the air above Atacama is the driest on the planet. Clouds are scarce, rain is precious.

For the observatories it means more than 300 nights a year of perfectly unobstructed views of the most distant universe. A proposed industrial park threatens this hallowed night sky.

The U.S. energy company AES Energy is now planning to build a major complex in the area to produce green hydrogen using wind and solar power. Astronomers are concerned that light pollution from the 3,021-hectare development will increase the brightness of the night sky above so much that up to 30% of the faintest stars and galaxies could disappear from the telescopes’ view.

Among the Atacama telescopes, those enjoying the most unspoiled cosmic views are located on Mount Paranal, an 8,645-foot-high (2,635-m) peak some 745 miles (1,200 kilometers) north of Chile’s capital Santiago. Since the 1990s, Mount Paranal has been home to the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT), an assembly of four 28-foot-wide (8.5 m) telescopes that act as one super-powerful star-observing machine.

Only 12 miles away (20 kilometers), on the top of the neighboring Mount Armazones, the even more potent Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is being built by ESO, a nearly 125-foot-wide (38 m) single-mirror super telescope, the largest in the world to observe the sky in visible light.

It's not just the future of ESO’s Paranal and Armazones observatories that is at stake. Astronomical organizations from all over the world that run telescopes in Chile are watching the situation with concern that its approval may usher in the beginning of the end of the world’s most scientifically valuable night sky.

“If you allow the precedents, if you allow one company to do that, that opens the door for any company to do that to any observatory in Chile,” an astronomer familiar with the situation who didn’t wish to be named, told Supercluster.

For example, the U.S. National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIR Lab) operates several observatories in the Atacama Desert including the 27-foot-wide Gemini South telescope and the unique Vera Rubin Observatory, which is expected to come online later this year. Fitted with the world’s largest camera, the $571 million Rubin will survey the sky, completing a full-sky map every three nights. This vast data set will allow astronomers to chart the structure of the universe in unprecedented detail and observe transient phenomena across the entire sky, such as supernova explosions that destroy large stars at the end of their lives. Any increase of the artificial glow of the night sky could hide some of the celestial objects from Rubin’s view.

The End of the Tether

Astronomy has been running away from civilization for more than 100 years. The arrival of electrical lights, which began replacing the much less luminous gas streetlamps in the early 20th century, paired with the rapid expansion of urban populations, pushed observatories further out into the wilderness.

But for some time, civilization and astronomy could somewhat co-exist.

In the 1920s, the legendary U.S. astronomer Edwin Hubble made his ground-breaking observations of the Andromeda nebula from the Mount Wilson Observatory located only about 16 miles (25 kilometers) from the center of Los Angeles. With a population of over half a million, the burgeoning Los Angeles was at that time the fifth largest city in the U.S. Its city lights, however, were already hindering the Mount Wilson’s Observatory’s potential, Tim Thompson, Science Director at the Mount Wilson Institute, told Supercluster.

“It was already in the 1920s when [Caltech astronomer] Fritz Zwicky advised against putting the planned 200-inch Hale Telescope on Mount Wilson due to the growth of Los Angeles,” Thompson. “That’s one big reason why it is on Palomar Mountain.”

Today, the Mount Wilson Observatory is the most light-polluted among 28 major astronomical research locations in the western world. A 2023 study led by Italian light pollution expert Fabio Falchi found that the artificial glow of the nighttime sky over Mount Wilson has increased by a staggering 1350 percent compared to natural levels.

The beleaguered Mount Wilson Observatory had to reinvent itself to remain relevant in the 21st century, Thompson admitted. Observations in visible light, which enabled Edwin Hubble to prove that the Universe extends beyond the Milky Way galaxy, are no longer feasible on the level needed for cutting-edge science.

“Light pollution, however, has no real impact on the sky at near infrared wavelengths,” Thompson said. “From Mount Wilson Observatory, wavelengths of 1 to 2.5 microns can be readily observed, which is the wavelength range in which our CHARA Array does its observing.”

The Palomar Mountain, chosen by Zwicky as the preferred site for, at that time, the world’s new largest telescope, is no longer free from light pollution either. The observatory, located some 120 miles (200 km) south from Los Angeles and 70 miles (110 km) northeast from San Diego, has seen an 170 percent increase in nighttime light levels compared to the natural state.

The World’s Last Pristine Sky

Among the 28 observatories included in the 2023 study by Fabio Falchi, the telescopes on Chile’s Mount Paranal were found to benefit from the lowest levels of artificial light pollution. The background glow above the ESO observatory has, according to the paper, increased merely by 1 percent compared to natural levels. That makes Paranal one of only a handful astronomical locations around the globe where light pollution has not yet increased the nighttime glow of the sky by more than 10 percent. According to the International Astronomical Union a 10 percent increase in night sky brightness compared to natural levels is a threshold behind which astronomy begins to suffer.

The AES Energy green hydrogen park could tip the Paranal and Armazones observatories over that limit, Xavier Barcons, the Director General of ESO, told Supercluster.

“The brightness of the sky is going to increase by 1 to 10 percent only from this project,” Barcons said. “And let’s not forget that there is an aim to create a hub, meaning that other projects may get attracted into the area and the effects will pile up.”

AES Energy, on the other hand, thinks the facility will have only a minor impact.

“The proposed project's light impact has been evaluated considering the specific locations of nearby astronomical activities,” AES Energy’s spokesperson Stephanie Cathcart told Supercluster in an email. “Calculations confirm that the maximum increase over the natural sky brightness is only 0.27% at Cerro Paranal and 0.09% at Cerro Armazones, both well below the permitted limit, ensuring the protection of these astronomical areas.”

Fabio Felchi is concerned about the situation, although he admits he has not yet evaluated the impact of the green hydrogen project on Paranal in his light pollution models. In his previous studies of light pollution in Chile, he and his colleagues found that the trans-Chilean Ruta 5 highway creates measurable light pollution at the Las Campanas observatory over 18 miles (30 km) away.

“There are far fewer light installations along Ruta 5 than we expect at this new green hydrogen project,” Falchi told Supercluster. “I believe it’s important to relocate this project further away from the Paranal Observatory.”

While Fritz Zwicky could relocate the largest optical telescope of his era to a more remote, darker location, ESO astronomers have no alternatives for their VLT and ELT machines.

With Paranal at risk, the world has virtually run out of pristine night skies.

“All the farther away places that astronomers have searched for decades to build their telescopes are now at least a bit light polluted,” Falchi said. “We have arrived at a limit. We cannot escape anymore from civilization.”

He stresses that it’s not just astronomy that suffers from the omnipresent nighttime glow, so do human circadian rhythms and the well-being of animals and plants that evolved over millions of years to rest in perfect darkness. He proposes that light pollution should be regulated just like any harmful pollutant that humankind has ever created.

Silver Lining?

Connie Walker, an astronomer and light pollution expert at NOIR Lab, tries to remain optimistic, hoping that astronomy and civilization might find a way to coexist. The biggest blow to astronomy worldwide was the advent of light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, which began replacing incandescent light bulbs in the early 2010. Cheaper, less power-hungry, brighter and glowing in the bluer part of the spectrum, LEDs took the world by storm, accelerating the spread of light pollution. Since their arrival, light pollution levels worldwide have been increasing by a staggering 9.6 percent per year, according to another 2023 research paper. But new technologies are becoming available that could reverse at least part of that damage.

“New lights are being developed that are coated in phosphor and produce amber colored light that only shine in a limited part of the spectrum,” Walker told Supercluster.

Orange light doesn’t scatter as much as white or blue light does, causing less overall sky glow. As it only occupies a limited portion of the visible light spectrum, it doesn’t interfere with most astronomical observations.

In humankind’s history, however, the battle between pure utility and the preservation of our natural world has never been an easy one. The global astronomical community is up in arms, lobbying for regulations that would prevent unhindered nighttime lighting from taking over the entire planet. The battle over the Paranal skies marks an important milestone in this struggle.

An Asteroid Stands a Chance at Impacting Earth. Are We Prepared?

2025-02-04T22:00:00.000Z

What are you doing in 2032? Whatever it is, you’d best be looking up — because on December 22nd, an asteroid will streak through the night sky, making a very close flyby of the planet.

At least, that’s what’s most likely to happen. But based on the current crop of observations, NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies, or CNEOS — whose scientists keep watch over all known near-Earth asteroids and comets — estimates that there is a 1.9 percent chance of that space rock smashing into Earth that day.

Here's another way of thinking about that. Imagine you have 53 buttons in front of you, and you’re asked to press one of them. Fifty-two of those buttons will result in that asteroid — dubbed 2024 YR4 — safely flying past the planet. But one of them will cause it to plunge into our atmosphere and hit a random spot on Earth. That could be the middle of a desert, or in the ocean, and the impact — although dramatic — will harm nobody. But if it hits a town or city, it will handily destroy much of it.

Editor's note: The odds keep changing so we'll keep updating the numbers. (Feb. 11th)

2.1% chance of Earth impact

1 in 48 odds of impact

97.9% chance the asteroid will miss the Earth

The question, then, is this: how lucky do you feel?

At this point, you’re probably wondering how you should feel about this. I don’t think you should be concerned; the odds of an impact remain low, and when more observations come in, it’s probable that the impact odds will plummet to a zero as the orbit of the asteroid is more precisely defined.

But I can’t tell you not to worry, so instead, I’m going to tell you what will happen next — what astronomers and planetary defenders are doing right now to protect the planet. I hope that knowing that practical steps are being taken to make sure we’re fully prepared for the worst-case scenario will assuage some of your anxieties.

First off, while tracking 2024 YR4 to accurately plot out its orbit, astronomers are scrambling to get a better estimate of the asteroid’s size. At the moment, they don’t know if it’s 130 feet long or 330 feet long. That may not sound like a big difference, but in terms of its potential to cause harm, it’s a vast gulf. In crude terms, an asteroid that doubles in size brings eight times more kinetic energy with it when it slams into the atmosphere.

Here’s an example. An asteroid 60 feet across will crash into Earth’s atmosphere, decelerate dramatically, and explode in mid-air, unleashing an explosion equivalent to a small nuclear weapon. It won’t make a crater, it won’t even make a fireball, but the blast wave will slam into the ground and cause widespread damage to buildings. Now double that asteroid’s size. At 120 feet across, the rocky missile still won’t make it to the ground, nor will it carve out a crater, but the blast wave will be comparable to one produced by a far larger nuclear weapon. Structures can be knocked down, people can be blown off their feet, and anyone in the blast radius stands a good chance of dying.

Knowing whether 2024 YR4 is 130 feet or 330 feet, then, is of paramount importance. The problem is that optical astronomy, which relies on reflected sunlight, only gives you a range of sizes. An asteroid that has a very shiny coating will reflect more light; one that has a dull coating reflects very little. Astronomers don’t know what the surface of 2024 YR4 is like, which means they can’t tell if it’s a 330-foot asteroid with a dull coating or a 130-foot rock with a shiny coating.

It's not clear when this size range will shrink. But planetary defenders have approval to point the largest telescopes with the best scopes at 2024 YR4 over the next few months, meaning they’ll have observations of it until early April — which, hopefully, will refine its size range somewhat and, more importantly, understand its orbit enough to drop that impact probability to zero.

But what happens if the odds remain above 1 percent? That’s where things get interesting, and almost entirely novel. As the asteroid is of a hazardous size, a possible impact is less than a decade away, and the odds of that impact are at least 1 percent, some planetary defense procedures have been activated for the very first time.

Planetary defense is, unsurprisingly, an international security concern. Within the United Nations is the Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), which, you know, discusses all sorts of off-world shenanigans, from space debris to planetary defense. And nested within UNOOSA is the Space Mission Planning Advisory Group, or SMPAG, which was formed in 2014. Consisting of states with space agencies, the purpose of SMPAG is to come up with a way to communicate to the world the dangers posed by any sketchy-looking near-Earth asteroids — and to provide options for the planet to defend itself. They have never had to do this before, because an asteroid like 2024 YR4 doesn’t come around very often.

For some time, America was the clear leader in the field of planetary defense. But today, multiple spacefaring nations are throwing their hat into the ring; the European nations making up ESA (as well as having their own asteroid-spotting telescopes) were participants in NASA’s asteroid-deflecting DART mission in 2022, and they are now flying their own spacecraft to investigate the asteroid NASA punched. China is also keen to showcase its anti-asteroid technology, India is getting better at navigating space by the year, and Japan has conducted several successful asteroid-burgling missions. That means 2024 YR4 will be on the minds of all these countries, along with several others.

What would actually happen should 2024 YR4 prove to be a clear threat to the planet is anyone’s guess. It depends on how cooperative, or not, various spacefaring nations will be, as well as the global security situation at the time. But let’s say that additional observations of this asteroid cause its impact odds to rise rather than fall.

What would Earth be able to do to protect itself?

One option would be to hit 2024 YR4 with a DART-like spacecraft, something known as a kinetic impactor. Smash into it at the right angle, with the right amount of force, and you can deflect the asteroid — and, just maybe, knock it out of Earth’s way.

The problem, though, is that the potential impact date is just under eight years out. That’s not much time to carefully plan out a deflection campaign. I imagine that a deflector spacecraft and launch vehicle, based on DART’s design, could be manufactured rather quickly, probably with the help of SpaceX (a participant in the DART mission). But you need to make sure that you conduct a near-perfect mission. If you hit the asteroid too hard, you could accidentally break it up into smaller, but still dangerous, shards — some of which may still strike the planet. And if you deflect the asteroid incorrectly, or insufficiently, it could still hit Earth, just not where it was originally going to strike.

Although it’s never been tested in space, space agencies may opt to use a nuclear explosive device, or NED. NEDs can give an asteroid far more of a push than just one DART-like impactor. A lot of work involving laboratory experiments and super-sophisticated multi-physics codes strongly suggests a NED can give an asteroid similar in size to 2024 YR4 a potent swat. And a recent study concluded that a 330-foot asteroid — the largest 2024 YR4 may be — can be essentially vaporized with a one-megaton NED if it’s met no less than two months prior to its impact day.

But, as you’d imagine, space agencies racing to launch nukes into space — even if it’s to try to save the world — carries a lot of risks, from the geopolitical to the most basic health and safety ones; you don’t want a nuke-armed rocket to explode in-atmosphere. And a NED mission isn’t guaranteed to work either. If you nuke the asteroid, and fail to deflect or destroy it, then you’ve now created a radioactive Earthbound asteroid, which nobody loves.

Another option would be to just take the hit. It’s difficult to imagine the world doing nothing whatsoever to try and prevent the impact, but if that asteroid is fated to reach terra firma, then the country in the firing line may try to evacuate people from the future, roughly city-size ground zero. The problem is that we don’t yet know where on Earth the impact will happen because the orbit hasn’t been comprehensively nailed down just yet.

At the moment, the risk corridor — a line of possible impact sites — stretches across parts of India, sub-Saharan Africa, the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and the northern part of South America. Far more observations are required to refine this. Ideally, planetary defenders would ping the asteroid with radar, which is the best way to measure its orbit. But it’s not clear if that will be possible even when 2024 YR4 makes another close Earth flyby in 2028.

So, yes, there’s a lot of uncertainty. But what you need to know is that people whose job it is to literally defend the planet are tirelessly working to reduce that uncertainty. NASA and ESA are rallying the world’s astronomers to track 2024 YR4. And SMPAG is meeting in early February in Vienna to discuss the problematic asteroid. It’s not yet known what may result from that gathering, but its attendees will no doubt begin to share ideas about how to communicate the potential risks of this asteroid to the public and to policymakers — and they may talk about the various ways in which spacefaring nations could, if needed, stop an impact in 2032.

For now, try to relax. Above all else, remember that a 1 in 53 chance of an impact in 2032 is the same as a 52 in 53 chance of a miss.

It’ll almost certainly dodge the Earth.

Andy Rivkin, an astronomer, planetary defense researcher and DART team member at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, spoke to me recently, and summed up the situation perfectly. “Bottom line, you should tell the people you care about that you love them,” he said, “but not because of 2024 YR4."

View updating impact probabilities here at Sentry: Earth Impact Monitoring

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Robin George Andrews is a photographer, public speaker, and experimental volcanologist-turned-science journalist. He regularly writes about space and geosciences for outlets including the New York Times, Atlantic, National Geographic, Scientific American, and Atlas Obscura. He is also the author of Super Volcanoes: What They Reveal about Earth and the Worlds Beyond (Norton, 2021). He lives in London, England.

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In How to Kill an Asteroid, award-winning science journalist Robin George Andrews—who was at DART mission control when it happened—reveals the development of the technology that made it possible, from spotting elusive asteroids and comets to figuring out their geologic defenses and orchestrating a deflection campaign. In a propulsive narrative that reads like a sci-fi thriller, Andrews tells the story of the planetary defense movement, and introduces the international team of scientists and engineers now working to protect Earth.

Investigating the Stonehenge Moon Mystery

2025-01-28T22:00:00.000Z

Europe’s most fascinating prehistoric monument is revealing clues about its builders’ surprising knowledge of astronomy and advanced technical skills. It also hints at advanced politics.

If you were a steadfast moon observer, tracking moon rises and sets every day, you would have noticed something odd over the past year. When Earth’s companion first swings above the horizon in the evening hours these days, it does so further to the south then it usually would. If you were to catch its morning descent, you would have seen it taking place further to the north. While the exact spot of the lunar rise and set usually shifts along the horizon throughout every month, over the past year or so, it has barely changed. Although most of us, 21st century humans, haven’t noticed, we are in a unique period in the moon’s life cycle known as the major lunar standstill.

Scientists, however, think that unlike us, ancient humans paid much closer attention to the moon’s dance and even built their monuments to reflect that rare still period, which takes place about every 19 years. Now, a team of archaeologists and astronomers in the U.K. is using the two-year standstill to prove whether one of the U.K.’s most famous and mysterious landmarks — the 5,000-year-old Stonehenge — reflects the celestial phenomenon in its design.

A Sun Temple

Archaeologists have known since the 1700s that Stonehenge was built to align with the movements of the sun. Just like the moon, the sun’s point of rise and set shifts along the horizon throughout the year. The sunrise reaches its northernmost point on the summer solstice in June; the sunset gets to its southernmost position on the winter solstice in December.

“That Stonehenge was aligned with the sun is almost beyond any doubt,” Stonehenge archaeologist and archeo-astronomer Amanda Chadburn told Supercluster. “At the center of the monument is a composition of large stones that has a shape of a horseshoe. And if you draw an axis through that horseshoe, it aligns exactly with the summer solstice sunrise and the winter solstice sunset.”

The summer solstice draws thousands of people to Stonehenge every year. Thanks to some rather aggressive campaigning by the British neo-druid community in the 1980s, English Heritage, which looks after Stonehenge, allows unrestricted access to the monument on the eve of every June 21st. Crowds gather to spend the night observing neo-druidic ceremonies evoking the sun, which then magnificently rises above one special stone opposite the central horseshoe, casting its first ray into the center of the stone circle. Archeologists, however, believe, that for the ancient neolithic architects of Stonehenge, it was the winter solstice sunset they intended to revere.

“On winter solstice, the sun sets behind what once used to be the tallest of the trilithons that make up the horseshoe, it sets behind the heart of the monument,” Jennifer Wexler, an English Heritage archeologist, told Supercluster. “We think that for those ancient people, who were mostly farmers, the winter solstice really was the key moment of the year. It’s the moment when days start getting longer again and the light begins to return.”

Stonehenge’s famous trilithons are made of two vertical chiseled sandstone blocks with a third placed flat on top of them. The central horseshoe used to consist of five such trilithons, archeologists know. Only three still stand today, surrounded by six remaining arches of what once used to be the outer circle of 30 sandstone pillars connected by overlying lintels.

The Lunar Connection

It was only in the 1960s, Chadburn said, that some Stonehenge researchers observed that four of the monument’s lesser-known stones appear to mark the extreme positions of the moonsets and moonrises during the major lunar standstill. These so-called station stones lie outside Stonehenge’s magnificent outer circle, forming a rectangular outline within which the heart of the monument sits. They also mark the diameter of the outer ditch, the oldest component of the monument.

“If you are standing in the middle of the circle, you will see that one of those stones aligns with the most southerly point on the horizon where the moon rises,” Chadburn said. “The opposite way would be the northernmost moonset.”

Chadburn and Wexler are part of a small team of researchers that set out to prove whether this conspicuous alignment could be intentional. Moon rises and moonsets, Chadburn said, can be hard to observe, especially in England’s notoriously wet and murky weather. The lines that the station stones mark are also directly perpendicular to the winter solstice sunset – summer solstice sunrise axis, suggesting the whole lunar standstill theory could be a coincidence.

Wexler said she hadn’t originally been convinced whether the moon was part of the inspiration behind the monument’s construction, but witnessing firsthand one spectacular moonrise persuaded her that the ancient inhabitants of south England’s Salisbury Plain would unlikely be oblivious to it.

“We had this really tremendous moonrise just after the summer solstice this year,” Wexler said. “It was one of those most southern moonrises on the horizon and it was a really bright full moon. It looked almost as if the sun was coming back up in the sky. It was so prominent that you just thought — wow, how would those people back then not notice that.”

Dependent on the elements for their livelihood and undistracted by the internet and television in their evenings, the farmers that worked the south English land in the neolithic period between 4,000 and 2,000 years BC must have been acutely aware of the two odd light balls taking turns in the sky above their heads. They would have wondered why the nighttime orb suddenly began showing up more to the south; an event that would remain etched into their memory for years.

“It’s suddenly coming up in a position that it normally doesn’t come up,” said Wexler. “We think that’s something they would possibly tell their kids about. That they saw this happening 18 or 19 years ago, and they would notice it happening again. We think they may have marked it in the construction of the monument as something potentially significant.”

An Enormous Endeavor

What role exactly Stonehenge played in the ancient people’s lives is still shrouded in mystery. The neolithic farmers that erected the mighty blocks left no written records, so archaeologists can only make inferences.

Scientific research shows that many of the blocks, chiseled with basic tools such as hammerstones and antler picks, are not indigenous to the south of England. The most prominent sarsen stones — the enormous sandstone monoliths that make up the inner horseshoe and the outer ring — have been traced to an area known as West Woods, some 21 miles to the north of Stonehenge.

That the ancient builders, most likely relying on tools as simple as plant-based ropes and wooden rollers, managed to transport the blocks over such a distance inspires awe. But the sheer enormity of the Stonehenge construction project is revealed in the origins of some of the less conspicuous elements of the monument. The so-called blue stones — smaller boulders complementing the circle — have been hauled from as far as the Preseli Hills in Western Wales, a mind-boggling 140 miles away from Stonehenge. Although the bluestones weigh only between 2 and 5 tons each, a fraction of the mighty sarsens, their transport to Stonehenge must have been a complicated affair requiring the cooperation of hundreds of people over many years.

In a surprising paper published last year in the journal Nature, a team of British scientists claim they found mineralogical evidence that another of the monument’s building blocks — the seven-ton Altar Stone — came from as far as northeastern Scotland, over 430 miles away. The Altar Stone, in the past positioned in front of the largest trilithon of the inner horseshoe, likely played a major role in the sun worship rituals. It is exactly behind the Altar Stone that the sun disappears on the shortest day of the year.

The Heart of Ancient Britain

The country's wide representation at Stonehenge made researchers reconsider the significance of the monument in the lives of the people who built it. It also made them rethink their beliefs about the ancient British society that put the magnificent stone circle at its heart.

Building on the Altar Stone paper, the University College London archeologist Mike Parker Pearson, the U.K.’s leading Stonehenge expert, postulated that Stonehenge, the most complex among the UK’s 900 stone circles, may have been constructed as a symbol of the unity of Britain’s neolithic inhabitants.

“The fact that all of its stones originated from distant regions suggests that the stone circle may have had a political as well as a religious purpose,” Parker Pearson said in a press release. “As a monument of unification for the peoples of Britain, celebrating their eternal links with their ancestors and the cosmos.”

Wexler said that archeological excavations in nearby Durrington Walls suggest that people from all over Britain would descend upon Stonehenge in winter months to survive the cold, barren part of the year and pray for the sun’s return.

“Durrington Walls was a settlement a few miles away from Stonehenge where people lived as they were building Stonehenge,” Wexler said. “We found huge amounts of animal bones in that area that suggest that every winter, these people would kill huge amounts of animals and feast on a massive scale. It was an off season for them, so this was something akin to our Christmas.”

Once the days got longer and temperatures warmer, the overwintering crowd would disperse all over the UK to graze their animals and tend to the land, only to return to Durrington Walls the following winter.

Parker Pearson suggests that the national unification exercise that the construction of Stonehenge could have been may have prompted by arrivals of new tribes from mainland Europe. These new migrants, equipped with superior technology including the wheel and metalworking, gradually replaced the Stonehenge peoples shortly after the monument’s construction, spanning 1,500 years, had concluded.

What exactly destroyed the culture that adorned the British Isles with such stunning megalithic monuments as Stonehenge is somewhat a mystery. They seem to have disappeared shortly after the completion of Stonehenge at around 1,600 BC. The greatest of their monuments, however, continues to stir the human imagination to this day.

Catching the Moon

Scientists will now have almost until the end of this year to crack one of the stone circle’s lasting mysteries — to find out whether the monument reflects the movements of the moon.

Wexler said the area around the station stone that marks the southernmost moonrise had been used as a burial ground when Stonehenge had first been conceived around 3,000 to 2,500 BC.

But was that just a coincidence?

“In the early centuries of the monument before they built the stones, they had cremation burials in a series of holes that go along the outer perimeter,” said Wexler. “There seems to be a concentration of these burials around the southernmost position at Stonehenge where three wooden posts were placed in the past.”

Chadburn said that the whimsical nature of the British weather complicates the research, frequently obscuring the views of the rising and setting moon. On top of that, the orbit of the moon with respect to Earth has slightly shifted since the time of the Stonehenge builders, which means the alignments with the station stones cannot be expected to be perfect anyway. Chadburn, however, thinks that locations of the station stones with respect to the motions of the moon “seems very deliberate.”

If the researchers fail to obtain enough evidence, they will have to wait until 2043 to have another look.

Super Heavy Returned Home. Starship Didn't.

2025-01-21T22:00:00.000Z

SpaceX's seventh Starship launch soared through the clear Texan skies on January 16th, marking the debut of v2 with a suite of improvements.

It was a short flight.

Following a clean separation from Starship, the Super Heavy booster guided itself back towards Starbase, executing a controlled descent and gradually positioning itself to be caught by Mechazilla, the orbital launch tower’s chopstick arms.

This marked the second successful recovery of a massive Super Heavy booster to the launch pad. However, the mission took an unexpected turn 8.5 minutes into the flight when SpaceX lost all communications and telemetry from the Starship. The spacecraft had undergone “Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly.”

It blew up.

“The 9 meter diameter version of Starship will probably fly ~10,000 times, so this is barely a bump in the road,” said Elon Musk in the aftermath of Starship's loss.

Brilliant streaks lit up the skies over the British territories of Turks and Caicos Islands as the Starship debris fell across the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in a spectacular sky show witnessed by locals and airline passengers. While visually striking, it caused numerous deviations for the aircraft flying around the area.

SpaceX said in a statement that a propellant leak had triggered a fire in Starship's aft section, ultimately leading to the vehicle's destruction. Before the final moment, flames were seen around one of the hinges of the Starship’s flap.

“Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity,” said Elon regarding the cause of Starship’s RUD.

The seventh Starship test flight, and first of 2025, set out to validate extensive modifications to the launch system. Its v2 variant stands 2 meters (6.6 feet) taller than its predecessor, increasing propellant capacity by 25 tons. Its redesigned forward flaps were reduced in size and shifted away from the heat shield, minimizing reentry heat exposure. The ship’s thermal protection system incorporates the latest iteration of the company’s advanced ceramic-based tiles, backed up with a secondary layer to safeguard against tile damage or loss. This test flight also aimed to test new experimental tiles, including ones equipped with an active cooling system that circulates cool propellant through internal channels to manage extreme temperatures during reentry.

Significant upgrades to the propulsion system introduced vacuum-jacketed feedlines for cryogenic propellant – where propellant pipes are encased within outer pipes with a vacuum barrier between them, creating superior insulation. Other improvements included new fueling systems for the Raptor engines and an enhanced propulsion avionics module that manages onboard valve operations based on sensor inputs. The ship's avionics received a comprehensive overhaul with a more powerful flight computer and integrated antenna systems that combine Starlink, navigation, and backup communications into a single unit.

The upgrade extended to redesigned inertial navigation and star tracking sensors, enhanced power systems, and an expanded network of over 30 vehicle cameras providing engineers with detailed insight into hardware performance throughout the flight.

This flight also aimed to test the Pez dispenser-style system for future Starlink satellites. Dummy satellites were loaded in the Ship's cargo bay for deployment testing. Like Starship itself, these payloads were meant to follow the vehicle's trajectory back into Earth's atmosphere rather than achieve stable orbit.

However, this aspect of the mission remained untested.

Despite the flight being cut short, Elon remained optimistic, posting on X, “The booster flight was a success, the ship flight was 1/4 successful, hence cup being ~5/8 full. New ship forward flaps, higher thrust engines, and tile adherence on ascent were tested. Improved heat shield performance was the only major thing that wasn’t tested, along with the “Pez” payload dispenser.”

Return to Flight soon?

SpaceX has already begun working on the fixes based on the preliminary failure analysis, with Elon indicating a potential return to flight by next month, saying “Apart from obviously double-checking for leaks, we will add fire suppression to that volume and probably increase vent area. Nothing so far suggests pushing next launch past next month.”

SpaceX might be able to achieve technical readiness by February but regulatory approvals could extend the timeline further. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) — the agency in charge of certifying every rocket launch from the United States — has mandated a mishap investigation into Starship’s anomaly. Led by SpaceX, this investigation will formally determine the cause of failure and identify corrective actions, including a definitive assessment of whether Starship's debris breached the designated hazard zones.

The situation became particularly complex when debris entered commercial airspace, prompting the FAA to activate a Debris Response Area, forcing aircrafts to either slow down outside the affected zone or remain grounded at their departure points, with several of them diverting due to low fuel levels while holding outside the impacted areas. The activation of this emergency protocol implied that the debris was falling outside of the demarcated hazard zone – as the FAA later clarified in their statement, “A Debris Response Area is activated only if the space vehicle experiences an anomaly with debris falling outside of the identified closed aircraft hazard areas. It allows the FAA to direct aircraft to exit the area and prevent others from entering.”

SpaceX, however, maintains a different position. In their statement, the company asserted, 'Starship flew within its designated launch corridor – as all U.S. launches do to safeguard the public both on the ground, on water and in the air. Any surviving pieces of debris would have fallen into the designated hazard area.”

Before Starship can proceed with Flight 8, the FAA must approve Flight 7's mishap report and verify that any system, process, or procedure related to this incident poses no risk to public safety. Both technical and regulatory corrective measures will need to be implemented before Starship can return to flight.

While Flight 7's outcome might appear as a setback, its iterative development approach means that occasional failures are not just expected, but accepted as valuable learning opportunities. Each Starship launch has been unique, featuring different test objectives and configurations. As Musk explained, 'This is a test program, we expect it [Starship] to explode. It's weird if it doesn't explode, frankly, because we're trying to develop advanced rockets at a high speed. If you want to get payload to orbit, you have to run things close to the edge.'"

"The ship and booster for Starship’s eighth flight test are built and going through prelaunch testing and preparing to fly," said SpaceX in a statement on their website.

Sea and Air Photos Capture Blue Origin's Towering New Glenn Rocket

2025-01-14T20:00:00.000Z

Cape Canaveral has a new skyscraper

Blue Origin is preparing to launch the inaugural flight of its New Glenn rocket, a heavy launcher with big ambitions. Named after legendary John Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth, the 98-meter (322-foot) tall New Glenn rocket is one of the largest ever developed. It currently stands vertical on Blue Origin’s Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral.

Supercluster's Jenny Hautmann was invited by Blue Origin to participate in media events surrounding the inaugural flight, joining the company for launch viewing nearby as well as setting up remote cameras to capture New Glenn's liftoff. We are tracking the mission around the clock on the Supercluster App and will be making updates accordingly. A reminder notification will go out to those who opt-in once Blue Origin's embedded mission livestream is broadcasting. Coffee will be brewed and you can download our free app for iOS and Android here.

Before the first launch window, Jenny joined Reuter's Joey Roulette for a flight over Florida's Space coast to scope out the massive new rocket and grab some aerial shots. Our friend and legendary space coast photographer Michael Seeley, who took a boat out with Starfleet Tours to see the rocket, shared some shots with Supercluster. And we've included some striking images produced by Blue Origin themselves and shared with the space press pool.

Blue Origin has moved the launch date a couple of times due to weather and a technical issue that has since been resolved. They are now targeting late night-early morning of Thursday, January 16th, during a three-hour window that opens at 1:00 AM EST for liftoff. New Glenn will carry Blue Origin's Blue Ring Pathfinder spacecraft, a deployment platform they are testing for future customer missions. An attempt to recover the rocket’s booster will be made by flying it home for a landing on the company's barge, Jacklyn, which will be parked in the Atlantic Ocean.

The first booster making this attempt is called 'So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance.'

To Glimpse the Contours of Star Lore, Look to the Pleiades

2025-01-07T06:00:00.000Z

The iconic winter constellation, and the many myths it has inspired, may open windows into the minds of our prehistoric ancestors.

The Pleiades rule the winter skies. No matter your location on Earth, this iconic asterism will be overhead to greet you on cloudless nights this season, just as it has greeted untold thousands of generations before.

Given its distinctive look and broad visibility, it’s no wonder that the Pleiades have captivated humans deep into prehistory. But just how long have humans taken note of this radiant cluster? How many names has it gone by, and how many stories has it inspired?

There are no definitive answers to these questions, but some researchers believe that pieces of the puzzle can be accessed with novel interdisciplinary techniques. New efforts to trace stories about the Pleiades across continents and through time have exposed common mythological lineages that could shed light on our ancestors in the Paleolithic era, the period that saw the emergence of modern humans and which ended 10,000 years ago alongside the thawing of the last Ice Age.

Some researchers have even speculated that a common myth about the Pleiades, which casts the cluster’s most radiant stars as seven sisters, could date back an astonishing 100,000 years, which would make it humanity’s oldest story by far. Other scholars remain skeptical of the odds that stories can survive for thousands of years.

Regardless, the human preoccupation with the Pleiades may serve as a gauzy portal into the minds of past skywatchers, potentially unlocking a tantalizing glimpse of the forgotten cosmologies that animated prehistoric human life and continue to shape our perceptions in the modern world.

“I suspect we have only just scratched the surface,” said Ray Norris, an astrophysicist at CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility and Western Sydney University, who has speculated that some Pleiades myths predate human migrations out of Africa.

“It’s an amazing idea that maybe we can hear the stories being told by our ancestors 100,000 years ago,” he continued. “Obviously we only get versions that may have been heavily modified over the years, but given enough modern versions, can we work out what the common threads are that would have been in our ancestors’ version? And what does that tell us about them?”

The Evolution of Pleiades Lore

The brilliant stars that make up the Pleiades were born about 100 million years ago, suddenly appearing in the Cretaceous night as dinosaurs roamed the planet below. Within 250 million years, the cluster’s biggest stars will die in spectacular explosions, the smaller ones will disperse, and this “timeless” constellation will vanish from Earth’s sky.

But while the Pleiades are cosmically transient, their lifespan coincides with the emergence of at least one intelligent stargazing species in their general galactic vicinity. Humans have long been transfixed by this constellation, which is located some 444 light years away; depictions of the cluster show up on Bronze Age artifacts, including the Nebra Sky Disk, and some experts have speculated that prehistoric humans memorialized them in rock art on cave walls 15,000 years ago.

The cluster is also a major locus of star lore, inspiring stories from practically every culture that looks skyward. For Julien d'Huy, an author and comparative mythologist at Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale College de France, the motifs of various stories are like narrative tracers that can yield insights about prehistoric peoples. D’Huy has become a specialist in adapting software and statistical techniques from phylogenetics—the field that organizes evolutionary relationships between species into phylogenetic trees—and applying them to mythological motifs. This approach, called “phylomythology,” can elucidate the transmission of myths over time.

“These are exciting times for comparative mythology,” d’Huy said in an email. “Phylomythology is just one of the new approaches being proposed, and the new statistical tools and access to large databases are confirming what has long been an intuition: a large part of the world's mythology comes from an old Paleolithic background and has survived to the present day.”

D’Huy has co-authored several studies with Yuri Berezkin, a historian and comparative mythologist at the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera) and a professor of anthropology at the European University at Saint Petersburg. Berezkin has spent decades amassing a huge database that charts out the transmission of known mythological motifs across the world.

“A motif is anything that is similar in two or more traditions” making it “an episode in the story, or the unit that is replicated,” explained Berezkin. “People change stories, but the bricks from which the stories are made remain the same.”

D’Huy and Berezkin pooled their expertise in a 2017 study called “How Did the First Humans Perceive the Starry Night? On the Pleiades.” The study applied phylogenetic software and tree structure to motifs connected with the Pleiades identified by Berezkin in his database, The Analytical Catalogue of World Mythology and Folklore, with the aim of determining “which, if any, of the motifs were likely to have spread in conjunction with the earliest migrations out of Africa and to the Americas”, according to the study.

The team’s findings suggest that motifs connected with the Pleiades are more frequently passed through oral traditions, like an inheritance from parent to child, than borrowed from close neighbors.

As a consequence, it’s possible to tentatively link certain traditions with specific motifs about the Pleiades.

In the study, D’Huy and Berezkin pinpoint some motifs that are “likely to have existed and spread with the earliest migrations out of Africa,” including the characterization of the Pleiades as a group of girls or women and that motif that Orion and the Pleiades are opposite sexes, with Orion typically male.

“The trees obtained from the Orion and Pleiades corpus can be used to reconstruct structures similar to what we know about the first human migrations, and to reconstruct the evolution of the mythological motifs associated with them,” D’Huy said. “This means that it becomes possible, under certain conditions, to associate archaeological remains with explanations that would have existed at the time the remains were produced. It also means that mythology can join with other disciplines, such as archaeology and genetics, to reconstruct the past history of settlements.”

The Origins of the “Seven Sisters”

The 2017 study outlines a diversity of different Pleiades stories, including a common motif in which a group of women, sometimes sisters, are fleeing from the advances of the hunter constellation Orion.

Ray Norris, the Australia-based astrophysicist mentioned above, has pondered the significance of this particular motif for years. As a scholar and enthusiast on Aboriginal Australian star lore, Norris has encountered various versions of the Seven Sisters myth across diverse Aboriginal communities, including some tales that mention a “lost Pleiad” that is no longer visible. These Aboriginal tales bear an eerie resemblance to similar stories about a group of sisters, with one lost Pleiad, from cultures all around the world and across many historical periods.

“The reason that I'm so fascinated by this is because there was almost no cultural contact between Europe and the Aboriginal people,” Norris said. “The Aboriginal people came down from Africa, around the Middle East to Indonesia, about 60,000 years ago—we don't know the exact date—and then into Australia. Nobody else came after them until the Dutch came in about 1600, and then the British in 1788.”

“So when you find these very similar stories, either they're really recent, or else they're extremely old,” he continued. “I think they are very old indeed.”

Indeed, Norris believes that the Seven Sisters story about the Pleiades may date back an astonishing 100,000 years, to the era before early humans migrated out of Africa. He expounded on this hypothesis in a 2021 paper that he co-authored with his son, the University of Sydney astronomer Barnaby Norris.

As part of their argument, the pair generated maps of the night sky as it would have appeared 100,000 years ago, which revealed that two of the Pleiades’ brightest stars, Atlas and Plieone, had a much higher degree of angular separation during this period, making them appear as two distinct stars. Since then, the stars have moved closer together from our perspective on Earth; today, they look like one bright star. The father-son team suggests that this celestial movement could be the key to the “lost Pleiad” mystery.

“These ‘lost Pleiad’ stories are found in European, African, Asian, Indonesian, Native American and Aboriginal Australian cultures,” the pair wrote, citing examples from Greek, Australian Aboriginal, Onondaga Iroquois, and Islamic mythology. “It is hard to escape the conclusion that once upon a time there really were seven easily visible stars, one of which is no longer visible.”

“When the Australians and Europeans were last together, in 100,000 BC, the Pleiades would have appeared as seven stars,” they concluded. “Given that both cultures refer to them as “Seven Sisters”, and that their stories about them are so similar, the evidence seems to support the hypothesis that the “Seven Sisters” story predates the departure of the Australians and Europeans from Africa in 100,000 BC.”

It’s incredibly tantalizing to imagine that a story could survive across such a long stretch of time, passed down by peoples and cultures that faced challenges and overcame obstacles that are completely alien to us, their descendents in the modern world. But many researchers are skeptical of the conclusions of the Norris team in part because it overlooks the huge number of Pleiades myths that do not fall into the “Seven Sisters” framework.

“I'm not sure that the [Norris and Norris] explanation is wrong, but it is simplistic and reductionist, because it doesn't take into account the great diversity of stories about the Pleiades in different cultures,” D’Huy said. “The Pleiades are not always young girls or sisters. In different cultures, they are represented by male figures (such as the Navajo hunters or orphans among the Šuar), groups of animals (chicks, fox cubs, parrots, bees) or inanimate objects (pine cones, candlesticks, baskets). Some legends evoke six, seven, eight or even more stars, while in others they are perceived as a pile of indistinct elements or a single entity.”

“This variety shows that the myths of the Pleiades are not limited to a fixed number of stars or a single interpretation,” he continued. “The problem with the [Norris paper] is that it ignores this richness by focusing solely on astronomical aspects. By neglecting to explore the multiple forms and symbolisms of the Pleiades, they miss out on a deeper, interdisciplinary understanding of the myths associated with this star cluster.”

Michelle Scalise Sugiyama, an evolutionary psychologist and anthropologist at the University of Oregon, has also studied the flow of stories about Pleiades (and other constellations) through Indigenous oral traditions. While Scalise Sugiyama thought the two studies raised interesting points, she emphasized the role of the Pleiades as a key phenological indicator of seasonal change in the interpretation of surviving motifs.

“The Pleiades are used to predict seasonal change (in both weather and resource availability) in forager societies across the globe,” she said. Though both the d’Huy/Berezkin and Norris/Norris studies mention this application, Scalise Sugiyama noted that they “do not appear to appreciate its implications with regard to the pervasiveness of Pleiades myths.”

“What makes a story “catching”?” she asked. “Stories about the Pleiades probably caught on because of their utility in coping with a recurrent stressor in hunter-gatherer life: the quest for food. For all we know, there were other, very different stories about the Pleiades, but these were gradually forgotten because the plots and motifs they used were less catching than the ones that remain.”

In other words, many different forces shaped the evolution and stability of Pleiades myths, and experts are still trying to reconstruct all of these influences today.

Taken together, the differing perspectives on stories about the Pleiades, and their utility and function for prehistoric skywatchers, reveal the central importance of this asterism as a marker of time, a purveyor of subsistence needs, and a cultural throughline across eras and continents.

We can use the human fixation on the Pleiades as a tool to connect with past societies, anchoring some points with real data like ancient DNA or archaeologist finds—though parts of this story are likely to always remain hidden in shadow.

“The stories we share sometimes unite us as much as, if not more than, genes and languages, and link us to our common humanity,” d’Huy concluded.

Blue Origin Enters New Glenn into the Heavyweight Launch Arena

2024-12-20T19:00:00.000Z

In the 24 years since Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin, it has flown 47 astronauts to suborbital space with its New Shepard rocket.

Building on this extensive flight experience and multi-billion-dollar investments, Blue Origin is eyeing to become a major player in the orbital space market with the New Glenn, their upcoming launch vehicle designed to deliver large payloads to Earth orbit and beyond.

Named after legendary John Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth, the 98-meter (322-foot) tall New Glenn rocket is one of the largest ever developed. Currently undergoing ground tests on Blue Origin’s Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral, the new rocket is awaiting a license from the FAA and a test-fire of its engines. A firm launch window will be established shortly after with the company determined to fly before 2025.

Our team is tracking developments at the Space Coast throughout the holiday and will be updating the Supercluster Launch Tracker on our website and on the Supercluster App for iOS and Android.

“It’s literally on the pad. It’s waiting for its final regulatory approval to launch, so we’re very, very close,” said Bezos when speaking at the New York Times DealBook Summit on December 4th.

Heavily inspired by Gerard O’Neill’s ideas for space colonization, Bezos envisioned millions of humans living in large cylindrical space habitats instead of colonizing planetary surfaces. This led Amazon's founder to start Blue Origin. SpaceX and Blue might not see eye-to-eye on how to build humanity’s future in space but they both agree on one principle for solving the economics of launch: drastically reducing the cost of getting mass into orbit with reusable rockets.

As it stands, SpaceX is the only company to operationally employ reusability within their launch vehicles.

Most upcoming or recently launched rockets anticipate future reusability as a potential enhancement after initial expendable launches, but New Glenn had this core feature built-in since its initial development and will attempt it on its maiden launch.

Once it flies successfully, New Glenn will be the third largest operational launch vehicle, just short of SpaceX’s Starship and NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), a big leap from the tiny New Shepard. New Glenn's first stage – known as the GS1 – is powered by seven BE-4 engines. Developed in-house by Blue Origin, the BE-4 engine uses liquid oxygen (LOx) and liquified natural gas (LNG) to produce 2,450 kN (550,000 lbf) of thrust at sea level. It is the first such American engine to use an oxygen-rich stage combustion cycle which allows for higher efficiency and performance.

With both stages combined, New Glenn can generate up to 18,640 kN (4,196,000 lbf) of thrust. While the rocket is ultimately designed to deliver up to 45 metric tonnes (99,208 lb) in low Earth orbit while being reused - slightly higher than Falcon Heavy's 30 to 40 metric tonnes - its current iteration has a more conservative payload capacity of around 25 metric tonnes (55,116 lbs), according to Ars Technica. This is not uncommon for new launch vehicles, as real-world flight data will allow Blue Origin to optimize the rocket's hardware and software over time, gradually approaching its full design capacity through iterative improvements.

Its expansive 7-meter (23 ft) payload fairing offers double the volume of Falcon Heavy's, an added advantage for missions involving bulky payloads or complex multi-satellite deployments.

Step by Step, Ferociously

Blue Origin first unveiled New Glenn to the public in September 2016, setting the target for its inaugural flight in 2020. Over the past decade, it invested billions into developing the rocket and its first and second stage engines, establishing extensive development and testing facilities in Seattle and Huntsville, Alabama, including the engine testing stands at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and the launch pad in Florida. However, as with every aerospace program, it suffered a series of setbacks and delays, pushing the maiden flight to the final quarter of 2024.

New Glenn’s development program might’ve looked dormant for years from an outside perspective, but this year, it sprung to life. New Glenn’s non-functional prototype was rolled out to the launch pad for testing in February and then again in May. A few months later, the second stage was rolled out to the pad for a static fire of the two BE-3U engines, firing for 15 seconds as the water deluge system spewed hundreds and thousands of gallons of water to protect the launch pad. With the final testing of the second stage complete, it was then integrated with the first stage ahead of its next upcoming major milestone: the integrated launch vehicle hotfire, wherein all seven BE-4 engines on the first stage will be briefly ignited to validate the systems on the rocket and the launch pad.

Initially, New Glenn was scheduled to launch NASA’s ESCAPADE satellites on its first flight, however, the agency had concerns with its readiness to meet their tight launch window and made the decision to postpone it to spring of 2025. In lieu of the changes, Blue Origin moved up their second planned mission, which will launch their Blue Ring pathfinder vehicle. In the future, Blue Ring is will operate as a transfer vehicle for hosting specialized payloads and delivering satellites to their target orbits for paying customers.

Decreased launch costs have enabled the orbital space economy to thrive, with many commercial companies using orbit as a utility to provide services back on Earth. In-space platforms like Blue Ring could end the need for those companies to develop their own propulsion, thermal management, communications, power, and compute systems and instead provide them with the added flexibility to work on their payload. Bezos described Blue Ring as “a set of APIs for space payloads that need to move around Earth vicinity or lunar vicinity”, synonymous with Amazon Web Services, which provides core-services for the internet.

This particular mission will demonstrate Blue Ring’s in-orbit data processing capabilities, telemetry, tracking and command hardware, and the ground tracking of the spacecraft for the Department of Defense. It will also serve as the first National Security Space Launch (NSSL) certification flight, crucial for Blue Origin and the New Glenn to be certified for future lucrative defense missions.

In its final form, Blue Ring will be able to host substantial payloads, powered by both chemical and electrical propulsion technologies to maneuver the orbits at the required pace. It’ll offer in-space, cloud-computing capabilities which will be supported by its data relays, making it suitable for use in transportation, logistics, and even propellant refueling.

Reusability from the Ground Up

Apart from its primary objective to successfully achieve orbit, a crucial part of the mission is to also demonstrate New Glenn’s first stage reusability by attempting to softly land the GS1 booster on Blue Origin's bespoke barge, a marine Landing Platform named “Jacklyn” stationed downrange in the Atlantic Ocean.

During its ascent phase when the two stages detach from each other, the GS1 booster will re-orient itself using its onboard thrust vector control system to follow a planned trajectory while the payload makes its way to orbit. As it approaches the thicker parts of the atmosphere, three gimbaling BE-4 engines will reignite to slow it down in – what Blue calls it – an exo-atmospheric deceleration burn. Four movable aerodynamic fins located near the top of the booster will adjust its attitude as it descends. Two large winglike projections positioned lower on the GS1, known as the strakes, will provide additional lift as it gets closer to the Earth’s surface.

Nearing the landing platform, the booster will perform the landing burn, igniting the center BE-4 engine, and throttling it down to its minimum thrust levels. Six landing legs, positioned between each of the seven BE-4 engines, will deploy as it softly touches down on the barge.

Blue Origin claims its current GS1 booster design, including its thermal protection system, can sustain a minimum of 25 flights and up to 100 in the future with incremental updates. After the GS1 returns to the launch site, it’ll require some refurbishment and with Blue Origin anticipating readiness for its next mission in just 16 days.

Prominence in the Global Launch Market

Falcon 9 proves that booster reusability works, not only from an engineering stance but also economically. SpaceX had strong incentives to make rapid reusability the norm since a high launch cadence was required to build and maintain Starlink’s satellite constellation, which brings down the average per-launch cost.

Blue Origin has positioned itself strategically to compete, securing satellite launch contracts with Telsat, JSAT, and Eutelsat. A critical customer stands to gain significantly: Project Kuiper. Project Kuiper is Amazon’s entry into the satellite internet market, intended to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink and OneWeb to provide high-speed, low-latency internet connection to areas where traditional fiber-based networks are scarce and unreliable.

New Glenn is set to support Project Kuiper with 12 confirmed launches, with an option for 15 additional missions, potentially enabling up to 27 constellation launches over five years. Adding to its commercial portfolio, Blue will also launch missions for AST SpaceMobile, deploying Block 2 BlueBird satellites for their cellular broadband megaconstellation.

Beyond commercial ventures, New Glenn will also play a major role in NASA’s crewed and uncrewed missions to the Moon as part of the agency’s Artemis program. It’ll launch Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK1 uncrewed lunar lander — a critical precursor to the company’s crewed lunar lander, the Blue Moon MK2.

Blue Origin-led National Team is one of the partners selected by NASA to develop and launch their lunar lander for a crewed surface mission on the Moon. For NASA’s second such crewed mission, the National Team’s two-stage launch architecture will use New Glenn to separately launch both Blue Origin’s Blue Moon (MK2) lunar lander and the Lockheed Martin-developed cislunar transporter. Blue Moon will then rendezvous with the cislunar transporter for propellant refueling, before docking with NASA’s Gateway station in Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO). Here, two astronauts will board the lander, descend to the lunar surface for a multi-day mission, and return to Gateway after its culmination. However, a new administration and incoming NASA leadership could make some or widespread changes to this architecture.

Blue has big expectations with New Glenn, designed to serve commercial, government, and space exploration missions and perhaps truly challenge SpaceX’s dominance. By vying for critical military and NASA contracts, these aerospace giants will drive innovation, reduce launch costs, and most importantly, provide crucial redundancy to NASA’s lunar landing architecture. With rapid reusability at helm, their impending competition will promise more than just technological rivalry, but a new era chapter in commercial space exploration that is paved by their powerful and influential founders.

Twin Spacecraft Will Fly in Formation to Reveal the Sun's Hidden Region

2024-12-17T22:00:00.000Z

A mission launched by Europe promises to close a big gap in our understanding of the sun.

The Proba-3 mission is a $210 million experimental double spacecraft that will, for the first time ever, perform a precision dance to get in formation for its observations. And doing so, the two spacecraft will recreate the rare phenomenon of a total solar eclipse to help reveal a region around the sun that is invisible to telescopes on Earth, and to probes like the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Solar Orbiter or NASA’s Parker Solar Probe.

“We live in a golden age of solar physics, but we still have this gap,” Tim Horbury, a Professor of Solar Physics at Imperial College London, who is not part of the Proba-3 mission team, told Supercluster. “We can observe the surface of the sun in great detail with instruments like the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager on Solar Orbiter and we can study the corona with occulting coronagraphs, but those coronagraphs don’t see the region just above the surface.”

The corona is the sun’s atmosphere, which is about a million times dimmer than the sun’s visible disc. To observe it, scientists must obscure the sun with a round instrument known as the occulter that is inserted inside the coronagraph. Because light bends around objects and scatters from them — a phenomenon known as diffraction — this occulter must be much larger than the visible solar disc to prevent stray light from spoiling the image. Hence the blind spot, or rather a ring, in our view of the sun.

Mysterious Blind Spot

This blind spot is not negligible. It extends to 1.5 solar radii from the sun’s surface, covering a dynamic region where physical processes, key to our understanding of the effects of the sun on the planets in the solar system, take place. Just how much must be happening in this in-between space is obvious from the comparison of images from ultraviolet cameras monitoring the surface and those obtained by coronagraphs. While the surface images reveal a jumble of magnetized plasma ribbons looping above the star’s surface, coronagraph images show an orderly assortment of even rays spreading away from the sun in straight lines.

“Proba 3 is going to look at that transition as you go from an environment dominated by plasma to an environment dominated by the magnetic field,” said Horbury.

It’s not just for the sake of science that researchers want to understand this transformation region.

Sometimes, the twisted ribbons burst, blasting into space vast clouds of charged gas known as coronal mass ejections (CME). These clouds spread across the solar system at enormous speeds up to a 1,000 kilometers per second. When they hit Earth, they cause geomagnetic storms that can damage satellites, knock out power grids and supercharge auroras. How strong such a solar storm would be depends to a great degree on what happens to this magnetized cloud in that invisible region.

“Tracing the way those magnetic fields move around as they come off the [solar] disc and out into space is incredibly important,” Horbury says. “It helps us understand the fundamental science that is going on that links the dynamics that happen on the sun’s surface with what happens in interplanetary space.”

Four Minutes Every Other Year

We are not completely in the dark about this mysterious region. About every 18 months, we get a fleeting glimpse of it somewhere in the world when the sun’s disc gets obscured by a natural occulter — the moon — during a total solar eclipse. It’s a sheer cosmic coincidence that the moon has just the right size to perfectly cover the solar disc. Thanks to the moon’s vast distance from Earth-bound observers, the diffraction effect it causes is nearly non-existent, allowing a clear view of the corona’s white light immediately as it rises from the sun’s surface, weaving a wispy spider web along the sun’s magnetic lines.

“The farther the occulter from the observer, the smaller the diffraction effect,” Miloslav Druckmüller, a professor of mathematics at the Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic and the world’s best-known solar eclipse photographer, told Supercluster. “During the solar eclipse we can capture the corona immediately after the photosphere [the bright disc] disappears.”

Druckmüller, an expert in imaging processing, became the world’s leading authority on solar eclipse photography completely unwittingly. In 1999, he photographed the first total solar eclipse visible from central Europe in 150 years, taking it as a personal challenge to visualize the corona better than anyone else. After months of careful post processing, he published the images online. They were quickly discovered by the solar physics community. The high-resolution photographs show a whirl of magnetized ribbons, exploding plasma bubbles and filaments emerging from the sun’s surface as it gradually smoothens into bright rays that stretch into space. Since 1999 Druckmüller and his growing team of collaborators have photographed every single total solar eclipse to have taken place on the planet.

It was indeed one of Druckmüller’s photographs that ESA’s Proba-3 mission scientist Joe Zander displayed during the pre-launch briefing as the aspirational outcome of the Proba-3 mission.

An Eclipse Machine

Druckmüller says that Proba-3 represents “a major leap forward.” The two satellites comprising the mission will fly 150 meters apart, carefully aligned, one serving as an artificial moon, the other being the observer. The long distance between the 340-kg observer and the 200-kg occulter will reduce the diffraction effect and with it the invisible region, making Proba-3 the most efficient coronagraph ever built by humankind.

Instead of the at-best 7-minute-long observation windows provided by natural eclipses, the Proba-3 formation will block out the sun artificially for periods of up to six hours at a time. Where Druckmüller’s photographs provide a chance glimpse into the processes in the blind region around the sun’s surface, Proba-3 will create endless movies. Not relying on serendipitous timing, the satellite and its occulter will be there to capture the most powerful solar flares and coronal mass ejection as they happen and track how they stir the little explored region close to the sun’s surface.

“It will provide us with a lot of information on the details and complexity of the solar corona and the events that are happening there,” Zander said during the pre-launch briefing. “There are many processes of interest that are happening in this region close to the sun. And we hope that with a better understanding of the physics, we can also improve our modelling of these processes and our predictions of their impacts on Earth.”

Unanswered Questions

One of the big questions scientists want Proba-3 to answer is the mechanism of the acceleration of solar wind. Solar wind is a constant stream of ionized gas that emanates and sometimes bursts from the sun’s surface. The solar wind emerges in two forms — the slow solar wind that streams through the solar system at speeds around 500 kilometers per second, and the fast variety that blows through interplanetary space at a mind-boggling two million kilometers per hour. Scientists know these two types of solar wind differ in composition and emerge from different structures in the sun’s corona. What exactly accelerates the solar wind, however, is a mystery. Models, however, show that this acceleration takes place somewhere within the invisible ring.

“With Proba-3, we will be able to see this acceleration as we’ll be able to trace the solar wind much closer to the sun,” said Horbury.

Horbury hopes Proba-3 will be able to observe odd phenomena known as magnetic switchbacks, first spotted in images taken by ESA’s Solar Orbiter a few years ago. Thanks to its ability to see the otherwise invisible region, Proba-3 should be able to trace those switchbacks, sudden changes in the direction of the magnetic field carried by the solar wind, to their origin close to the sun’s surface. Scientists think that these magnetic kinks might be behind the solar wind’s mysterious acceleration.

“It’s about finding a connectivity map all the way through,” Horbury added. “Proba-3 should help us do that.”

Improving Space Weather Forecast

The mission’s two spacecraft follow an elliptical path around Earth with the nearest point to Earth at the altitude of 600 km and the highest point 60,530 km above the planet’s surface. When the duo draws the distant arc of that ellipse, far above Earth’s residual atmosphere, they assume their position with millimeter accuracy, guided by a novel optical navigation system that is being tested in space for the first time.

It takes just under 20 hours for the pair to complete one lap around the planet.

The observer spacecraft’s main instrument is the Association of Spacecraft for Polarimetric and Imaging Investigation of the Corona of the Sun (ASPIICS), which will observe the sun’s corona as it emerges behind the 1.4m-wide shield of the occulter spacecraft. Taking one image every minute, the ASPIICS camera will capture detailed movies of emerging coronal mass ejections in visible light, helping scientists understand what triggers them.

“Coronal mass ejections are initiated in this region, and we hope to get a very close insight into the process of their initiation," said Zander. "Right now, we can see a coronal mass ejection erupt but we can’t predict when that happens. With enough observations we hope our models would be able to make those predictions.”

Improving predictions of phenomena such as coronal mass ejections will help forecast space weather events on and around Earth, providing satellite and power grid operators with advanced warnings to prepare their systems ahead of time.

Additional observations through special filters will reveal ions of iron, which will help scientists detect temperature differences within the corona and perhaps shed some light on another mystery of the solar atmosphere — its extreme temperature, which is about 200 times higher than that of the solar surface.

Two Years of Observations

The mission, which launched on December 5th on India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, will take until March to test out its systems before attempting its first eclipse-creating formation flights. It will study the sun for two years, after which it will spiral into Earth’s atmosphere to burn up.

ESA hopes the navigation technology enabling the precise formation flight could be used in the future for other applications, for example to create fleets of antennas detecting radio waves from space, similarly to radio telescope arrays on Earth.

Although Proba-3 reduces the invisible region around the sun, the occulter is still not far enough to erase the diffraction effect completely. The closest region some 70,000 km above the sun’s surface will remain invisible.

Solar eclipse photography is therefore not going to become obsolete anytime soon. The team of Miloslav Druckmüller in collaboration with scientists from the University of Hawaii is already preparing equipment to photograph the upcoming total solar eclipses in August 2026 and 2027. The researchers will ship ton of photographic equipment to capture the events and will also photograph them from aboard a NASA high-altitude plane.

Bullying and Harassment Continues to Permeate the European Space Sector

2024-12-10T21:00:00.000Z

When Karen received an email that she had been accepted as a graduate trainee at the European Space Agency, she couldn’t believe her luck.

She had just graduated from a major British university with a Master’s degree in spacecraft engineering and had high hopes for her future.

A vivacious 20-something-year-old at that time, she was equally excited about the prospects of living in a foreign country and making friends with like-minded young people from all over Europe. It was to be a life-changing year. She moved to the Netherlands to take up her year-long placement at the European Space Research and Technology Center (ESTEC) near Amsterdam and threw herself into work, eager to prove herself. But things began to sour quickly.

One of her managers was unclear about the tasks she was to carry out, then complained about her performance. She requested clearer instructions and guidance on deadlines and priorities, but the more she asked the more difficult her relationship with her manager became. Eventually, she turned to HR for advice. She was up for another shock.

“They told me I was apparently not dealing well with being away from my home country,” she told Supercluster. “But that was not true. I was really enjoying living abroad. I was making new friends, many of whom I am still in touch with today.”

She began to question herself, working harder and harder to prove her worth to her boss. But the goal posts were constantly moving.

“Once I was sent for a work trip abroad and he emailed me while I was there requesting me to urgently complete another task,” she says. “I had to work in my free time, late at night in my hotel room.”

She visited an on-site counsellor. But the only outcome of those sessions was a conclusion that she wasn’t a match for ESA.

“She led me to accept that my values didn’t align with those of ESA.”

Karen left her traineeship, one month early, having saved all her annual leave to be able to quit sooner. The scars from that first confusing professional experience stayed with her for years. Today, she is successful in an engineering field outside the space industry, mentoring fresh-out-of-school engineers making their baby steps in the workplace.

“It took me years after I left to regain my professional confidence,” she says.

A Common Experience

Karen is one of many people who encounter harassment and bullying in the space sector. A survey published by the U.K. Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) in May revealed that 44 percent of the survey’s 650 respondents experienced “some form of bullying and harassment in the workplace in the preceding 24 months.” Women and people identifying as non-binary were the most frequent recipients of ill treatment with 59 and 61 percent respectively reporting that they had been targeted. In an internal survey run in 2023 by the European Space Agency’s staff association, one in five people reported either witnessing or experiencing harassment in the previous two years. According to industry association Eurospacehub, 30 to 40 percent of women employed in the global space sector have experienced some form of discrimination and bullying in the workplace. Allegations of bullying and harassment have emerged from major new space companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin or Japan moon exploration start-up ispace.

But why is the space industry so prone to fostering what appears like toxic cultures?

Too Much Hierarchy

Lisa Steelman, a professor of Industrial and Organizational Psychology at Florida Tech, told Supercluster that the hierarchical structure typical for space industry organizations and companies creates environments conducive to harassment and misuses of power.

“There is a lot of power imbalance,” said Steelman. “You have senior employees who have significant control over the careers of junior employees. This fosters an environment where harassment is more likely to occur and less likely to be reported.”

Aine O’Brien, a RAS diversity officer and co-author of the RAS report, said the problem begins at the level of universities, where doctoral students and other young researchers are virtually at the mercy of their superiors.

“In research institutions, supervisors hold a lot of power over post-docs and junior researchers,” O’Brien said. “They have so much clout in the institutions because of the grants they bring and therefore they are kind of invincible.”

Incidents reported in the RAS survey included pressure to work extremely long hours, inappropriate jokes and unwanted sexual comments and advances. When victims challenged their offenders or raised a complaint, they frequently discovered how unassailable their harassers were. One third of the RAS survey respondents said their employer took “insufficient action” to address the problem and even twisted anti-harassment policies to cover the organization’s back rather than holding the perpetrator accountable.

“Many times, people report the incident and then it goes to the university board, and the person you are reporting against is actually sitting on that board,” said Sheila Kanani, RAS outreach and diversity officer and the report’s co-author. “Often, the victim has to leave the institution, sometimes they even leave the sector, and the institution holds onto the perpetrator until they retire. The situation ruins the victims’ life, and the perpetrators don’t tend to get punished.”

Sweeping Problems Under the Rug

In the most optimistic scenario, the perpetrator leaves the institution where the incident was reported, only to get a better job at another institution.

“It feels like sweeping things under the rug,” said Kanani.

ESA scientist Aisha, described to Supercluster a disappointing experience reporting multiple incidents of alleged harassment committed by a colleague against herself and other subordinates to the space agency’s HR.

In a report seen by Supercluster, Aisha detailed more than five incidents including yelling, verbal attacks, micro-monitoring a person’s behavior to find faults, smear campaigns and banning subordinates from talking to each other to discuss work.

The behavior of the staff member in question, a senior official with two years left until retirement, spawned an “unwelcoming atmosphere” at the center at which it occurred with a “sustained culture of fear,” deteriorating morale, delays to the delivery of business objectives and high turnover of contractors employed at the facility, Aisha alleged in her report.

Yet, she said, ESA HR refused to investigate the allegations and dismissed the report. She also pointed out that the alleged harasser had been moved to her center from another facility for reasons unknown several years prior.

Fear to Speak Up

Such experiences, Steelman said, make employees feel that speaking out is not safe. In organizations dealing with costly high-tech developments, the consequences could be far more serious than missed deadlines and high turnover of personnel. In a scathing report following the 2003 disaster of space shuttle Columbia, NASA’s Accident Investigation Board found that unhealthy culture at the agency, where dissent was discouraged and concerns of lower-level workers dismissed, meant that potentially serious technical problems were downplayed and brushed under the rug, leading to the incident that killed seven NASA astronauts.

“When there is a lot of backlash, bullying and retribution for reporting problems, people will not feel psychologically safe to raise issues,” Steelman said. “You end up with a culture where people aren’t making fully informed decisions. But if you are dealing with complex technology, this might be a matter of life and death.”

Rocky Way Out

Kanani and O’Brien, both professionals in their thirties, have first-hand experience with harassment, including unwanted sexual advances at space industry conferences. They believe that the sector has a long way to go to change the pervasive boys’ club culture with its self-protective cliqueness and condescension towards female aspirants.

“When the Me-Too movement happened in 2017, I was hoping that the STEM sector would have its Me-Too moment as well,” said O’Brien. “So far, we are talking about it more and that’s good, but I don’t think the organizations have gone anywhere far enough to take action. It doesn’t really feel that the atmosphere in the space industry has changed.”

Steelman points out that a culture change would have to start at the top. Any well-intended top-down attempts, however, are likely to hit resistance from perpetrators in top-rank positions and their protégés down the hierarchy, who’ve been comfortably getting away with misconduct for decades.

“It takes a while and it takes a kind of care and feeding to change a culture,” Steelman said. “You need leaders to show no tolerance for bad behavior and make people accountable when they cross the line. You need to support the behaviors you want and punish the ones you don’t want and be consistent across all your top leaders in the organization so that employees see that the leaders do what they said they were going to do.”

Kanani and O’Brien are aware that the space industry’s dark secret is undercutting the good work done by outreach campaigns that aim to attract young people into STEM fields.

They are concerned that promoting STEM to under-represented groups is almost a hypocrisy.

“Sometimes I wonder why we are trying to get more people into this environment when we know it’s not a safe environment for them,” Kanani said.

In their work at RAS, they continue focusing on improving education and awareness of harassment and bullying and help people develop better skills to address problems. Ultimately, they admit, a corporate culture change is mostly in the hands of the higher-ups.

“We’ll knock the bad eggs at the top off eventually,” Kanani said. “And when our generation is in senior roles, hopefully, it will be a better workplace.”

The Secrets Inside the Ancient Crystals of Long-Dead Stars

2024-12-03T11:00:00.000Z

Presolar grains — solid pieces of stardust — are unraveling a hidden history of the solar system.

What if you could hold a piece of a star in your hands?

The hypothetical evokes everything from the cartoonish collectable stars of a Nintendo game, to the ethereal divinities that handle celestial objects in mythology.

But for scientists who study presolar grains, which are tiny specks of solidified stardust, it’s a normal part of everyday life. In recent years, laboratories have received a wealth of new grains from pristine asteroid samples delivered to Earth by a series of space missions. These grains, along with the stardust preserved in meteorites that fall on our planet, are the last corporeal remnants of our stellar progenitors, bearing the fruits of their nucleosynthetic labor.

Presolar grains are the “only physical samples we have of stars,” Sheri Singerling, a planetary scientist at Goethe University Frankfurt who studies these grains, tells Supercluster.“ They bring ground truth to the other fields of astrophysics that either simulate these environments (modeling or laboratory work) or look at them from afar (observations with telescopes).”

“Time and time again, these grains have contained information that theory and observations did not predict,” she noted. “They are little treasure-troves of new insights just waiting to be studied.”

What are Presolar Grains?

Presolar grains are solid minerals, on the scale of nanometers to micrometers, that crystallized in the gassy outflows and ejecta of stars that existed before the Sun was born 4.6 billion years ago. Only senescent stars make presolar grains; main-sequence stars in the prime of their lives, like the Sun, do not shed enough gas into space to produce solid stardust.

Presolar grains can be made by a variety of different dying stars, from those like the Sun to colossal behemoths many times larger. After their parent stars have collapsed, these grains drift through the interstellar medium inside clouds of star-forged atomic gasses, famously described by Carl Sagan as “starstuff,” from which our solar system, and our own bodies, are built.

“All these grains from all these different stars basically fly around and get mixed up in the interstellar medium, they end up being incorporated into molecular clouds,” said Larry Nittler, a cosmochemist and self-described 'Interstellar Dust Buster' at Arizona State University.

“The cloud is a mixture of gas and a whole lot of dust that's formed from lots and lots and lots of stars, over a period of maybe 100 million to 500 million years,” he added, noting that the uncertainty in the time frame is because “we don't really know how long dust grains can survive in the interstellar medium.”

Because the Sun and planets condensed from these clouds billions of years ago, presolar grains were baked into the elemental mix of the solar system. Scientists have cataloged thousands of grain varieties — containing silicon carbides, diamonds, graphite, and more — in the Presolar Grain Database.

By studying their compositions, scientists can match the origin of these grains to various types of stars.

“We can determine the type of star that the grains of stardust come from by measuring the composition of different isotopes in the lab, and then comparing these isotopic compositions to spectroscopic observations of stars and to astrophysical models of stellar nucleosynthesis,” Ann Nguyen, a planetary scientist at NASA Johnson Space Center who specializes in presolar grains, tells Supercluster.

“We know our solar system was seeded by material from oxygen-rich and from carbon-rich red giants, asymptotic giant branch stars, supernovae, and novae,” she added. “There are likely other types of stars as well.”

In one stunning example, a team discovered that presolar grains from the Murchison meteorite, which fell in Australia in 1969, belonged to a group of massive stars that perished a few hundred million years before the birth of the Sun, according to a 2020 paper. These ancient crystals are the oldest material ever handled by humans.

Where are Presolar Grains Found?

At the dawn of the space age, presolar grains were unheard-of, even as a hypothetical. But hints of their existence started emerging in the 1960s during laboratory experiments on ancient meteorites. The space rocks contained weird isoptic radios of the noble gasses neon and xenon that could not be explained by contemporaneous models of solar system formation.

These findings prompted scientists, including John Reynolds and Donald Clayton, to propose the existence of presolar grains. The prediction was eventually confirmed experimentally by the chemist Edward Anders in the 1980s using an ion probe that could resolve the isotopic composition of the grains in unprecedented detail.

“They discovered that it’s not just the noble gasses, but that all the elements were just isotopically wacky,” explained Nittler, who said he felt lucky to be on the “ground floor” of the field as he began his graduate research in the 1990s. “It was the doggedness of Ed Anders to try and do this, combined with technical maturity. This whole field has continuously grown along with advances in technology. They couldn’t have been found sooner because we didn't have the technology to analyze them.”

At that time, scientists were reliant on meteorites as their source of presolar grains.

Though some stardust had been baked into Earth and other planets at the dawn of the solar system, the grains have survived in much higher concentrations in more primitive and unaltered bodies, like asteroids.

“Most material in our solar system has been homogenized,” explained Singerling. “This is just a fancy way of saying it all kind of blended together and balanced out to have roughly similar chemistries. Things like heating or interactions with fluids tend to ‘erase’ the chemical signatures that tell us a grain is presolar. We look for presolar grains in certain types of meteorites, what we call primitive meteorites, because these meteorites have not changed much since the solar system formed.”

In the 21st century, however, scientists who study presolar grains have benefitted from another technological leap — sample-return missions. Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has launched a pair of spacecraft, named Hayabusa 1 and 2, that collected a few grams of samples from the surface of the asteroids Itokawa and Ryugu, and returned them to Earth in, respectively, 2010 and 2020. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx, following those successes, hauled more than four ounces of samples back from asteroid Bennu, which arrived on Earth in September 2023. These missions have expanded both the number and varieties of presolar grains available for research.

“Sample-return has been such a huge boon for planetary science,” said Singerling. “That being said, we are still in the early days when it comes to studying these samples.”

What Can We Learn from Presolar Grains?

Presolar grains sit at the nexus of multiple different fields like astrophysics, planetary science, mineralogy, and cosmochemistry, to name a few. They open direct windows into the bellies of bygone stars, the environment of interstellar space, the origin of the solar system, and the evolution of specific bodies within it.

With that in mind, it’s no surprise that these grains can shed light on a host of open questions that touch on phenomena ranging from atomic to galactic scales. Variations in the composition of grains can also reveal details about where their parent asteroids formed, how much they’ve moved over time, and how processes like collisions or exposure to water have shaped them.

“Studying stardust in different samples can inform us on the degree of heating and hydration that a parent asteroid experienced,” Nyugen said. “We are seeing some differences in the populations of presolar grains, both in terms of stellar sources and abundances, found in meteorites, Ryugu, and Bennu.”

“For instance we found some small pockets of material in Ryugu that are less altered and have extremely high abundances of a specific type of presolar grain,” she continued. “Along with other traits, these ‘clasts’ likely came from a region of the solar system that isn’t represented by other materials that we have for study. These clasts could have been incorporated onto Ryugu when it was forming. We are seeing some interesting differences in the Bennu sample, but we’ve just scratched the surface. We’re still processing the data and conducting more analyses of different stone fragments from Bennu.”

In addition to serving as probes of asteroid evolution, presolar grains can illuminate conditions surrounding the birth of the solar system. The Sun likely had older siblings that formed from the same molecular cloud; the deaths of stars may have triggered the birth of the Sun and planets, or at the very least coincided with it. It’s possible that grains from these massive stellar siblings might be identified in future studies.

“The first generation of massive stars in a molecular cloud, which may be forming right before the Sun, can reach their end of their life, explode, and put new dust, and newly synthesized stuff in the supernova, back into the cloud,” Nittler said. “One of the big questions we have had for years, and are still trying to figure out, is: do we have evidence for that in presolar grains?”

“The Occam’s razor is that all the grains are from just a huge number of stars throughout history,” he continued. “But it would be cool to see if we can have evidence for, say, one or two specific supernovae that went on right before the birth of the solar system. Is there some concentration of supernova grains of one type or another? There's some isoptic clues for it, but it's still pretty ambiguous.”

For Singerling, another compelling mystery is how presolar grains even survive in interstellar space long enough to be integrated into new star systems, like our own.

“It might seem like the environment between stars, what we call the interstellar medium (ISM), is empty and, as a consequence, calm,” she said. “However, it is far from that. There are many destructive processes taking place in the ISM, such as irradiation from high energy particles, turbulent motions from supernovae shock waves, and collisions between particles to name a few. All of these processes should destroy presolar grains or at least change their structures quite dramatically. That's what the theoretical calculations imply.”

“And yet we find them, and some of them are quite large and intact,” she added. “There are theories on why this might be, but it is still an open question. It is one I hope can be resolved a bit more in the coming years. As for how, it comes down to a shear numbers game. We need more people studying more grains and collaborating with astrophysicists. The instruments we use to study these grains are expensive, and finding funding for the research itself can be challenging.”

These are just some of the kaleidoscopic insights locked inside presolar grains that animate the interdisciplinary community of experts who study them. In this field, which marries the spectral nature of stars with hard geochemical analysis, it’s possible to not only peek into the stars of the past, but to actually reach out and touch them.

“For the last 30 years, I feel so privileged to have been part of this,” said Nittler. “It blows my mind. Every time I find a new grain, I get excited. Even though I've been doing it for so long, it’s like: ‘This was once a piece of a star!’”

Remembering the World Timecapsule Project

2024-11-26T18:00:00.000Z

Time Capsule Carries Messages for the Future

“I find the continuing mission of Voyager 1 so moving, for the way its name alone evokes a time of promise, for the thought of that tiny contraption way out there in the vastness at the edge of the heliosphere — perhaps the farthest any human-made thing may ever travel — a bit battered, swiftly aging, still doing the work it was purposed to do.” – novelist Michael Chabon.

The two Voyager spacecraft and their iconic missions to explore the outer solar system have always inspired a sense of wonder and awe. Even now as they speed away almost silently through interstellar space, their legacy and inspiration live on.

The Voyagers, launched in 1977, are notable for not only for their remarkable discoveries and images, but also for the precious cargo they carry: identical gold-plated phonograph records that serve as time capsules that could communicate the story of our world to space-faring extraterrestrials. The records included information about our civilization — from music to personal greetings, to encoded images of our planet and ourselves. Since both Voyager spacecraft have now left our solar system and are traveling through interstellar space, they are our first emissaries out into the galaxy. Scientists estimate the Voyager records could endure traveling through space for as long as five billion years.

The Voyager Golden Records have also inspired the people of planet Earth to continue telling our stories in different ways. In a previous article we discussed the efforts to create a new and improved version of the Voyager records, an interstellar messaging project called Message In A Bottle (MIAB). This will honor the 50th anniversary of the Voyager launch by sending a new message out to the cosmos, while striving to “inspire and unify current and future generations and to celebrate and safeguard our shared human experience,” the team wrote in their paper.

There have also been other attempts over the years — some little known — to duplicate the Voyager record’s noble goals. One of those projects was called the World Timecapsule. I worked on this project from 1989-1994 with a small group of people from the Minneapolis, MN area. As a mainly educational project, it prompted students to think about what they would convey to a distant civilization about humanity — the good, the bad, the wondrous, the beautiful and not-so-beautiful things about our world, our lives, and our history — all in correlation to the subjects they were studying in school.

The project was the brainchild of Chuck Smith, who was a commercial photographer at the time.

“I certainly was inspired by the Voyager project. Growing up in the 60s and 70s, I was a definitely a space cadet,” Chuck laughed as we sat down together recently to catch up and talk about our work with the World Timecapsule. “The idea of space just captivated me, but I would say Carl Sagan inspired me more than anyone or anything. I read his book about the Voyager records, “Murmurs from Earth,” and I was blown away by the idea, and I really wanted to do something like this too.”

After considering the best options, Chuck put his ideas out to some friends. The concept quickly came together for an educational project, with the goal of taking it world-wide. A non-profit organization called The World Timecapsule Fund was incorporated in 1986, and the mission statement included the following:

• To initiate a global exploration of human nature and the meaning of our existence.

• To contribute to the educational welfare and life knowledge of students and individuals from all nations.

• To foster a greater understanding and appreciatiation for the diverse cultures of the world.

• To promote international understanding and strengthen the prospects for world peace.

The idea was to collect input from students and later from people all around the world, posing questions to help them think about the ideas and values they wanted to communicate to future generations or to a distant civilization. The submissions would be collected, and in the year 2000, a digital copy would be launched into space. Additionally, digital copies of the time capsule would be available to view at museums, with one copy buried somewhere as a traditional time capsule.

With initial corporate support, Chuck and his team developed high-quality literature and videos to promote the project. I came on board in 1989 and wrote the educational materials for students. Chuck worked tirelessly, sending out letters and information with the hopes of gaining endorsements and more funding.

“I viewed the World Timecapsule as touching the arts, humanities, and sciences,” he said, “so I shot proposals out to a wide array of people and organizations. The reception and enthusiasm I received was great and that drove me. Every step was a huge undertaking that could have easily been overwhelming. How we pushed forward sometimes I don’t know, except for believing in the dream and going for it.”

The project assembled an impressive advisory board, including the head of the Minnesota Department of Education and former NASA astronaut Brian O’Leary. (Carl Sagan sent his regrets due to time constraints, and was sorry to send disappointing news. “Disappointed?” Chuck exclaimed. “I was thrilled he replied!”)

Additionally, the Minnesota Department of Education officially endorsed the project while other organizations like NASA and the United Nations gave it a thumbs up. Teachers who were approached about participating fully embraced it.

“How often does a teacher get to say to a kid, ‘I'm going to give you the chance to speak to the future, and what you're going to say is going to be preserved just like the words of Socrates or Sophocles’?” said Sharon Tracy, a teacher at a Minnesota high school who participated in the first pilot project for the World Timecapsule. “The whole thing just was so exciting that I could not resist it.”

The project received enough funding for a pilot project and then a statewide program in Minnesota. Both were overwhelming successes. Then the project was introduced to four more states. The teachers and students who participated loved the concept and enjoyed working on this type of school project.

“The power of the enthusiasm about it — the words from teachers and students and the visionary excitement of it — made it happen,” Chuck said. “While it was overwhelming to think of taking on the whole world, the enthusiasm of those people made us believe in it and want to make it happen, as ambitious as it was.” The idea was to follow up by bringing The World Timecapsule project to schools across the US and then world-wide.

But it was not meant to be.

“It really was a great idea, and the emotion and enthusiasm caught on and initially things happened quickly,” Chuck said. “But not on the funding side. That eventually did us in. The corporate support to take it nationally and beyond just never happened. It would have required much bigger pockets.”

Additionally, the technology challenges of the time were huge. It is almost hard to imagine now, but in the early 1990s, the ability to scan and digitize content was in its infancy and incredibly expensive. Our team later concluded we were slightly ahead of our time.

In the end, The World Time Capsule garnered submissions from over 5,000 students in five states as well as hundreds of people around the world, including a group of students from Novosibirsk, Russia. The physical projects from the students — posters, essays, artwork, videos and audio cassettes — have been part of the collection at the Minnesota Historical Museum since 1994. It was our original plan to have all the submissions accessible to the public at any time. Before the advent of the internet, we thought there would need to be kiosks at museums or some other way to share the content. But now Chuck has begun documenting the World Timecapsule project online on a new website. He hopes to scan and finally digitize all the projects over the next few years.

Reading the submissions now, thirty years later, I realized we ARE in the future, and it is endearing to know the hopes and dreams shared back then will be read, just as we’d always planned.

“I was always felt — even today — what we did was top quality and really inspired people,” Chuck said. “When I look back at this, I get kind of teary-eyed. The world is a different place, with all the changes in technology, culture, and society. It’s a very different world, so I’m glad we captured those tidbits of what the students were thinking about in the 1990s.”

SpaceArc

About the same time a young Chuck Smith was thinking about his future in high school, another time capsule project was about to be born. Jim Ferren was growing up in New York state. In a school assignment to design a cultural event that would bring the world together, Ferren proposed having everyone on Earth write a page of a book about their hopes and dreams for the future. Then, the book would be sent into space to be kept for the people of a future time, much like the Voyager Golden Records.

While the idea was admittedly idealistic, Ferren could not quit thinking about it. Several years later, he proposed the idea to the Rochester (NY) Museum and Science Center (RMSC). They loved it, and quickly agreed to be a sponsor.

Ferren felt fortunate. “Lots of people have good ideas,” he said in a 1994 newsletter from the RMSC. “I was lucky enough to find an organization that thought my idea was worthy enough to adopt.”

Ferren’s idea became SpaceArc: The Archives of Humanity, a high-tech time capsule. SpaceArc was billed as a “marriage of the humanities and sciences, and has the ability to unite and excite people in the future — a future that will include outer space.”

SpaceArc ultimately collected personal messages from 40,000 people around the world, all digitally recorded on 40 inches of optical tape. Some of the notable submissions came from more than 200 prisoners, more than 1,000 members of The Compassionate Friends Inc., a support group for parents whose children have died, and more than 1,000 terminally ill youngsters. Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon and Mercury astronaut Donald "Deke" Slayton, now both deceased, also contributed submissions. SpaceArc also included a CD with 19 songs by national and Rochester area recording artists, CD rom versions of Compton’s Encyclopedia and CNN’s year end retrospective from 1993.

Everything was put into an 8-pound capsule about the size of a basketball.

With the support of 11 corporate partners, the capsule was bolted to the inside of a GM Hughes/DirecTV communications satellite and launched into a geosynchronous orbit on August 3, 1994 from Cape Canaveral atop an Atlas 11A rocket. It will likely stay in high Earth orbit for thousands of years.

Ferren said that he was often asked who he thought might find it one day. “That was never my primary concern,” he said in the RMSC newsletter. “In my mind SpaceArc has always been more about the front end of the project — coordinating the efforts of people from literally all parts of the world. [And saying] to schoolchildren that their ideas are important — important enough to be a valuable part of our planet’s history.”

Unfortunately, Ferren passed away in 2011, 17 years after SpaceArc was launched. But in about 1990, Chuck Smith and Ferren forged a friendship over their shared goals of creating a space-bound time capsule.

“I read about their project in a magazine and contacted them,” Chuck recalled. “Jim and I immediately hit it off, and I visited the Rochester museum a couple of times.”

Ferren and the RMSC offered to cooperate regarding the two similar projects, and when the World Timecapsule’s funding ran dry, RMSC offered to include the World Timecapsule student projects. SpaceArc had a one-page submission form, so Chuck and team member Gary Fulton photocopied the student submissions as best they could and attached them. They were added to other submissions from around the world.

“This is an archive that will await future discovery by an archaeologist or an individual of a future age — archaeology in reverse," Ferren said after the launch.

The goals, missions, and sentiments of both these projects are as strong today as ever. That’s why the team for the future Message In A Bottle project has found wide support and interest. In their paper, the team wrote that they are also striving to share “our collective knowledge, emotions, innovations, and aspirations in a way that provides a universal, yet contextually relevant understanding of human society, the evolution of life on Earth, and our hopes and concerns for the future.”

While Chuck Smith fully understands and endorses the new project, he also pondered how the internet has — in a way — become a record of humanity.

“Back in the 1980s and 90s, the idea of getting input from everyone and widely sharing dreams, ideas and the human story was very distant,” he mused. “Now with social media, blogs and podcasts, it’s pretty commonplace online.”

Personally, for me, the World Timecapsule was an important part of my life, and in part, led to my future career as a space journalist. Chuck told me that even through the twists and turns of his life, he views his work on the time capsule project as one of the highlights.

“Since I view myself as an artist, I look at it as a piece of social art,” he said. “I had a message I felt strongly about, and it’s still with me. Revisiting the project now helps put it into context, to see how our thinking has changed over time. But I still would love for the world to come together on some global effort like this.” —

This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Jim Ferren's name and his year of death.

The Arecibo Message: Humanity's Call to an Interstellar Neighbor

2024-11-19T21:00:00.000Z

The Day We Called Out to the Stars

Fifty years ago, Earth’s first ever interstellar message was transmitted from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. Wrapped up in the message’s 1,679 binary digits are our hopes, dreams and fears about ourselves and our place in the cosmos, entwined with the aim of reaching out to the stars in search of someone to share the Universe with.

The Arecibo message “signaled the importance of complex and difficult discussions about human communication in the cosmos,” says Chelsea Haramia, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Spring Hill College in the US and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bonn in Germany.

“It was important in making people think about aspects of communicating with extraterrestrial intelligence [ETI] and it was a demonstration that even a civilization like ours could really communicate across a large chunk of our galaxy – quite an achievement in some sense,” adds Michael Garrett, the Director of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics.

The message was beamed towards the globular star cluster Messier 13 on 16 November 1974, as part of a lavish ceremony with 250 invited guests to commemorate the re-opening of the jungle observatory. The telescope had received a major upgrade that saw its wire mesh antenna replaced by a dish of 38,000 solid aluminum panels and the introduction of a transmitter.

Communication Barriers

The Arecibo message wasn’t our first attempt to reach out to ETI, though. In 1962 Soviet astronomers sent a message in Morse code to Venus, spelling out the words ‘Mir’, ‘Lenin’ and ‘USSR’, though the effort was more of a propaganda stunt than a serious attempt at reaching out to other life. The transmission was designed to test the radar capabilities of the Yevpatoria planetary radar in Ukraine, and presumably nobody taught the Venusians Morse code beforehand.

Though I make light of it, the Morse message highlights some of the problems that Frank Drake – the father of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and the main man behind the Arecibo message – had to tackle when he set about designing his signal to the stars. It’s not just a language barrier that is going to exist between humans and any possible ETI; the barriers could be social, cultural, biological, technological, even cognitive. Drake, with assistance from a few others including Carl Sagan, had to render his message as intuitively understandable to ETI as possible.

“As the first structured attempt to communicate with ETI, it marked a turning point, not just technologically but philosophically,” says Jonathan Jiang of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech. “The simplicity and elegance of its binary format, combined with fundamental scientific information, provided a blueprint that inspired subsequent projects.”

Those projects included Jiang’s own ‘Beacon to the Galaxy’, which aimed towards building a message that could be understood by ETI. It’s inspired by the Arecibo message in many ways, including its use of binary code, which Jiang argues would be a universal concept.

The Message

Originally suggested by Drake’s administrative assistant, Jane Allen, as a way to top off the re-opening ceremony, the Arecibo message is written in binary code incorporating 1,679 bits. What’s special about this number is that it can only be divided by 1, by itself, and by two other numbers: 23 and 73. Both these 23 and 73 are prime numbers, and Drake figured they would be the clue as to the dimensions of the pictogram that the message described. It also meant that it was a short message – writing in his 1991 book Is Anyone Out There? co-written with journalist Dava Sobel, Drake describes how, as the director of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center (NAIC) that oversaw the Arecibo radio telescope, he wanted to keep the message short enough to transmit within three minutes so that the invited guests didn’t grow bored. It also was not repeated – if potential recipients are not listening at the exact time the radio waves oscillate past them, they’ll never know the message was sent in the first place. Yet if they are looking, they’ll notice that at a frequency of 2,380MHz, the signal will shine brighter than the Sun for about three minutes.

On the first line of the pictogram are the numbers 1 to 10 in binary code. These are important, because they help unlock the rest of the message.

Next are the numbers 1, 6, 7, 8 and 15, representing the atomic numbers of the five elements essential to the chemistry of all life on Earth: hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorous. These are the five elements that build the nucleotides that assemble into DNA molecules, the double helix of which is also represented in the message as a crude drawing.

“Drake’s approach was groundbreaking, and the decision to include basic mathematical and chemical principles remains fundamental,” says Jiang.

The idea is that science and math should be universal across the Universe, providing a common language.

However, perhaps the message is a little bit scant on details. If ETI’s biochemistry is exactly like ours then perhaps they’ll recognize the atomic numbers, but the nature of these numbers is not immediately obvious.

“Would an extraterrestrial receiving a list of the numbers 1, 6, 7, 8 and 15 really know we’re talking about the chemical elements central to life on Earth?” asks Doug Vakoch, who is President of the organization METI International, METI standing for ‘messaging extraterrestrial intelligence’. “Probably not. Today, when designing an interstellar message to convey core principles of chemistry, we’d embed those numbers in the Periodic Table to give aliens more context.”

A Message to the Earth

Below the representation of the DNA double helix is a stick figure of a human being. Whereas the naked humans on the Pioneer plaques stirred up controversy among prudes and people criticizing the appearance of the woman acting subservient to the man, surely a simple stick figure couldn’t be criticized beyond its simplicity?

Drake had hoped that the figure would be suitable androgynous, but it has been pointed out that the stick figure appear suspiciously male. Drake explained this away as him having difficulty drawing a stick figure that would appear female. He also included the average height of a human being as 1.76 meters/5 feet and 9 inches (in units of the transmission frequency – aliens won’t know anything about meters or feet). This also happened to be be Drake’s height, and he wondered, in hindsight, whether he had subconsciously inserted himself into his message.

“Placing the human stick figure toward the visual center of the message gives Earthlings something we can readily recognize, even if this might be the most opaque part of the message to any otherworldly recipients,” says Vakoch.

This perhaps tells us who the real beneficiaries of the Arecibo message will be. The transmission was directed at the globular cluster Messier 13, a great ball of hundreds of thousands of stars some 22,500 light years away from us in the constellation of Hercules. The chance of anyone detecting the message is slim, and even if somebody does, it would take 45,000 light years before we receive a reply. However, we don’t have to wait that long to gain meaning from the sending of the message, says Shin-ya Narasuwa, an astronomer at the Nishi-Harima Astronomical Observatory at the University of Hyogo in Japan.

“If the residents of M13 send a reply, it will arrive in 45,000 years’ time,” he says. “Will Earthlings still be around to receive it? Frank Drake and Carl Sagan hoped Earthlings would survive to that time, so the Arecibo message is also a message to the Earth, I think.”

Indeed, inherent within the Arecibo message project is the underlying hope that humanity will still be around in 45,000 years time to receive a reply. It’s a positively optimistic message to ourselves and a rare step into long-term thinking, essential if we are to cultivate a better world and a more positive future.

The message ends with the number 4.3 billion representing the population of Earth in 1974, a very simple schematic of the Sun and nine planets (including Pluto) with Earth highlighted, and another crude drawing, this time of the Arecibo dish.

This indicates another problem with the Arecibo message: it’s already out of date just 50 years later.

The population of the Earth has in that time doubled, while the number of planets in the Solar System is today a more mutable concept – Pluto has been reclassified, another possible Planet Nine exists, and the distinction between planets, dwarf planets, giant planets and brown dwarfs is becoming increasingly blurred. Even the destination – and there’s been debate as to whether it will miss M13 given the cluster’s proper motion through the sky, though Drake was adamant that the transmission was on target – is no longer as promising as had been thought. Though globular clusters pack a huge amount of stars into a relatively small volume, in theory increasing the chances of somebody detecting the signal, we now know that globular clusters are not the ideal places to find habitable planets. Their ancient age – most formed around the same time as the galaxies themselves, 13 billion years ago – means a lack of the heavy elements required to build planets or enable the complex chemistry of life. Those five elements necessary for life that are described in the Arecibo message are in short supply in globular clusters.

A Self-Portrait

How successful we deem the Arecibo message to have been depends on how we view it. Was it as inclusive and detailed as it could have been? Possibly not. “I don’t think they thought about everything that deserved consideration, but early drafts rarely achieve that,” says Haramia.

Was it a great prototype for future messages to base themselves on? You bet. “I believe it established an excellent foundation for future METI attempts,” says Jiang. “It demonstrated how we might use shared principles of science and mathematics as a basis for universal communication.”

Is it a message that is likely to find a recipient and prompt a response? Probably not, and on that basis one might question its merits, but “Given the improbability of its success at establishing communications, viewing the Arecibo message instead as a work of art allows us to appreciate its symbolic and expressive qualities,” says Rebecca Charbonneau, who is a historian of science at the American Institute of Physics and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. “By framing it as art, we can explore the message’s deeper implications about the nature of communication, human identity, and the landscape of science.”

Charbonneau draws us back to the stick figure of a human in the message. If it was indeed a form of self-portrait by Drake, whether subconscious or not, then it is revealing of the person and the culture who sent it, shaped by the gender biases, values and identities of the time, says Charbonneau. The message has, if not greater meaning, then certainly a different meaning to ourselves than it might have to aliens.

The Great METI Debate

Sir Martin Ryle, the Astronomer Royal at the time and Director of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory in Cambridge, took his own meaning from the message: that in secret (nobody was told about the transmission until the day of the ceremony) Drake had embarked on some unauthorized diplomacy, finding the arrogance within himself (in Ryle’s eyes) to speak for everyone on Earth, and perhaps place us in danger by revealing our existence to potentially hostile alien life. Within days of the transmission, Drake received an angry letter from Ryle, who was never shy of wearing his heart on his sleeve and who had also complained to the International Astronomical Union demanding that they condemn Drakes’ actions in sending the message. They did not, and Drake calmly replied to try and assure Ryle that the great distance between us and any inhabited exoplanets would surely be too far for an invasion fleet to reach us.

However, Ryle’s concerns have proven long-lasting, with each new METI transmission met with a chorus of disapproval from many in and associated with the SETI community. The whole topic of whether we should send signals into space that could reveal our existence to the Universe at large is divisive, spurring arguments at conferences and in email exchanges. It’s not so much the worry of invasion, which is often mocked by pro-METI activists but is actually a straw-man argument, that is the real concern, but rather “The damage that METI can cause socially on Earth is another topic,” says Charbonneau.

“I have mixed feelings about the Arecibo signal,” adds Michael Garrett. “It’s clearly an important event and the birth of METI.”

Although Garrett feels the risk is very low, especially given that we are frequently loudly broadcasting into space, with various military and interplanetary radar, “I don’t think that the people that practice METI understand the risks properly,” he says. “I also personally don’t feel that any individual or group or institute has the right or is entitled to speak for Earth.”

Doug Vakoch naturally has an opposing view, given his role at METI International who are dedicated to trying to call out to the stars. He describes the Arecibo message as validation for both SETI and METI.

“If even humans can send such messages, aliens might be sending something similar, so we need to be listening,” he says. “[And] if we’re expecting extraterrestrials to continuously send intentional radio signals our way, it’s only fair that we should continue transmitting messages as well.”

A Picture Paints a Thousand Words

The debate will only grow more intense the more groups such as METI International look to transmit to the stars. After the Arecibo message, there was no deliberate attempt to transmit a message for another 25 years, when in 1999 the Russian radio astronomer Alexander Zaitsev beamed into space the first of his four interstellar messages, fittingly from Yevpatoria, the site from which the Morse message was beamed towards Venus. There have been other, sporadic efforts, including METI International’s 2017 transmission to Luyten’s Star, which is a red dwarf 12 light years away. Conscious that the Arecibo message was specifically designed as a visual message, Vakoch and his team designed the 2017 signal to be interpretable by life-forms that do not have eyes. And even if they do have eyes, pictures might not be as easy to interpret as we had thought.

“Drake assumed that pictures would be self-evidently interpretable,” says Vakoch. And indeed, being a picture has helped the Arecibo message reach a kind of cultural critical mass here on Earth. “But we now know that our interpretation of pictures relies on cultural assumptions that extraterrestrials might never imagine.”

Jonathan Jiang agrees that messaging needs to be a little more sophisticated than just sending a postcard. “Modern messages may place greater emphasis on visual and contextual clarity to account for potential differences in perception and cognition among extraterrestrial recipients,” he says. “For instance, with Beacon to the Galaxy, we aimed to incorporate binary-coded visual representations and structured timestamps to improve the accessibility of our intended message. Today, we can leverage a more sophisticated understanding of data encoding and transmission, enhancing both message content and the probability of meaningful interpretation.”

This is just one example of how one of the Arecibo message’s lasting legacies is to help us develop the sophistication of our interstellar message design. Meanwhile Chelsea Haramia, who is particularly interested in the ethics of interstellar messaging and post-detection consequences, sees growing sophistication across all areas of the topic.

“The precedent that the Arecibo message set has been helpful in setting the stage for important debates about messaging,” she says. “The signal was brief, but the effects of its transmission here on Earth are ongoing.”

Indeed, it could be that the message is a more profound thing to humans than it ever could be to aliens.

It announced ourselves onto the interstellar scene, led to us considering our longevity and ability to survive into deep time to be here to receive any reply, and caused us to question our own biases and influences that can find a voice in the messages that we construct to represent ourselves with. And the Arecibo message is the lynchpin that is central to our discussions about how and even if we should attempt to communicate to the stars.

“The Arecibo message set a precedent that messaging should be done under careful consideration,” says Haramia. “Now that we’re gaining an ever-greater understanding of many of the overlooked considerations surrounding messaging, I hope that we take seriously the need for caution, discussion and expertise that such cosmically representative activities require.”

Author Peter F. Hamilton on Building a Universe for Future Humans

2024-11-12T20:00:00.000Z

Science fiction can mean many things to many people.

It’s a genre that includes everything from steampunk to Dune. So what does Peter F Hamilton, who is billed on the cover of his books as “the UK’s number one science-fiction writer” and is known for his sweeping vistas of starships, alien worlds and galactic confederations, consider science fiction to be?

“Science fiction is an extrapolation of trends to the extreme, and seeing what problems and wonders that can deliver to us as a species,” he tells Supercluster. “Maybe that will allow us to examine ourselves – who and what we are now – from a different perspective. That’s what the fundamental of science fiction is to me. Given time and an increase in our knowledge base, I can explore the way we will evolve both culturally and, in the far future, biologically.”

Hamilton is currently nearly 30 books into a novel-writing career that began in 1993 with Mindstar Rising, focusing on the exploits of former soldier and psychic detective Greg Mandel. Hamilton, though, is perhaps most well known for two sprawling space operas, namely the Night’s Dawn trilogy and the sprawling Commonwealth Saga consisting of seven novels and a volume of short stories. In general though, one thing that Hamilton doesn’t usually do is write stories that are short. His lengthiest tomes are over a 1,000 pages, and his latest novel Exodus: The Archimedes Engine, released this September just gone, isn’t far behind at 928 pages. Yet as large as his books are in page length, they’re even larger in scale, telling the tales of star-spanning societies across millennia as they deal with threats as diverse as alien invasions, a mysterious void lurking at the heart of the galaxy, or the return of the dead to possess the living.

Introducing Exodus

Exodus: The Archimedes Engine, which is the first part of a duology, sees Hamilton raise his game once more not just through the telling of the story, but the relatively unique way in which the novel has been developed. You see, it’s all based on a computer game.

Exodus is an RPG produced by Archetype Entertainment and set for release in December. It stars Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey, and Hamilton was brought in early in the game’s development to help build the universe in which Exodus takes place. Not only did Hamilton succeed in doing so, he was able to turn his world-building into two novels, The Archimedes Engine and its intended sequel.

“It is set in the universe of Exodus, but isn’t a novelization of the game,” says Hamilton. “The story is one I came up with. It takes place roughly 150 years after the game, in a different solar system several light years away.”

The in-story background to both the game and the novel is that humanity was forced to flee a dying Earth in a giant exodus that saw huge ark-ships set sail in search of new homes out among the stars. A group of the ark-ships chance upon a star cluster containing habitable planets that the survivors of Earth could settle on. And so the call went out to all the ark-ships to turn around and head for the cluster. Over 40,000 years the ark-ships arrive in dribs and drabs, their crews in suspended animation, only to find that the original settlers of the star cluster have evolved into beings who call themselves Celestials. Yet there’s nothing celestial about them, for they rule with an iron fist. Game players adopt the role of Travelers, who venture between the stars being relentlessly chased by the Celestials, but the effects of time dilation mean that the actions of the Travelers can ripple across centuries while the Travelers are voyaging, having dramatic repercussions for the rest of humanity.

“The world-building was a collaborative venture,” says Hamilton. “The game-makers had a rough outline for what they wanted, and I came along and added flesh to the skeleton.”

In Hamilton’s novel, the arrival of a long-lost ark-ship at the cluster gives the novel’s hero, Finn, the opportunity to escape the repressive regime of the Celestials and to become a Traveler and explore the depths of space to try and save humanity.

“I think, at 40,000 years, the Exodus universe is the furthest into the future I’ve gone,” says Hamilton. “The longer the canvas of time you can write, the more possibilities you have as a writer. The far-future is when you can let your imagination run riot.”

Ark-Ships

Sometimes presented under the guise of generation ships, ark-ships are a staple of science fiction, a requirement of the limitations of the speed of light and how long it would take to make an interstellar journey. Unlike the USS Enterprise, which zips between star systems in the space of an episode of Star Trek, in reality a voyage to another star would be long and arduous. At sub-light speeds of a few tens of per cent of the speed of light, it could take decades or centuries to reach the closest stars. Even at the speed of light, it would take millennia to journey any appreciable distance across the galaxy. Hence ark-ships, with allusions to Noah’s Ark, which carry on board everything required to survive the very long journey and settle on a new world at the end of it. Sometimes in fiction the crew might be in suspended animation, or they might be awake, and many generations might be born and die before the ark-ship reaches its destination.

Ark-ships are often featured in Hamilton’s work. For example, when aliens invade in both the Commonwealth Saga and his Salvation Sequence, one route of escape is in ark-ships. Hamilton has also written an audiobook series about an ark-ship, consisting of three novels: A Hole in the Sky, The Captain’s Daughter and Queens of an Alien Sun. These have yet to be published in printed form, but along with Exodus they show Hamilton’s willingness to look beyond the printed page as a medium for story-telling.

This can bring advantages.

For example, there was already lots of reference artwork for the game when Hamilton began working on it, allowing him to literally picture the universe in which he would be writing. “Having visual references was a departure for me, which I found really helpful – it certainly made me consider things from a new angle,” he says. “So after this very positive experience, I’d certainly be open to consider how stories can be told in different media.”

Wormholes

Interstellar travel in Hamilton’s novels isn’t always a slog. In particular, his Commonwealth Saga features a rather unique way of traveling from planet to planet: by train.

Okay, that’s slightly disingenuous – the trains pass through wormholes linking planet to planet, but it’s an example of how Hamilton is able to skillfully take a piece of established science-fiction technology and then put a unique spin on it. In the Commonwealth, you can catch a connection at New York’s Grand Central Station and 15 minutes later be on a brand new planet, for example. This rail network, and the wormholes that enable it, is the basic infrastructure holding together the many worlds of the Commonwealth in Hamilton’s fictional 24th century.

The wormhole technology was invented by Hamilton’s long-running characters Nigel Sheldon and Ozzie Isaacs in 2050, when they memorably beat Wilson Kime, commander of the first crewed mission to Mars, to walk on the red planet. Because they hold the patents to the wormhole technology, using it to found their company CST (Compression Space Transport) that runs the wormhole rail network, Nigel and Ozzie quickly become the richest men in the Commonwealth. While Ozzie generally keeps out of Commonwealth politics while living in his own personal asteroid, Nigel is at the forefront of this futuristic society.

Philanthropic Billionaires

Incredibly wealthy men with a philanthropic streak and who drive society are a frequent character trope in Hamilton’s work and it’s tempting to draw comparisons with certain billionaire owners of companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin. Where does Hamilton stand on how much we should rely on these billionaires, whose intentions may or may not be to benefit humankind as a whole, to drive space exploration and technology in the future?

The current circumstances are “all down to politics, unfortunately,” believes Hamilton. He points out that the great advances of the Apollo age were driven by Cold War rivalry, and while the old adversarial nature of the east versus west divide is rearing it’s ugly head again, it has yet to manifest in another space race. For now, “The current driver is focused squarely on the cost reduction of getting a payload to orbit, which thanks to the technologies primed by the advances in the 1960s and progress with automated manufacturing, has become more economic for private enterprise,” says Hamilton. “Governments, aside from the military, have moved on to other concerns.”

This means it’s the billionaires who have been able to fill that space and take a lead, but Hamilton doesn’t believe that space will only be the province of the absolute wealthiest for too long.

“Personally I regard what’s happening now as an intermediate stage,” says Hamilton. “With reducing launch costs, space becomes available to smaller research institutions and mere millionaires who can launch smaller projects across a much wider range of disciplines.”

So unlike his Commonwealth novels, where rejuvenation technology allows people to stay forever young and maintain their grip on society, politics and the economy (actions that Nigel laments having done in a later novel), Hamilton doesn’t see space exploration as being dictated by the richest few for long. That’s got to be a good thing, to avoid one or two people’s visions becoming the de facto future for humankind – and besides, the CEO of SpaceX is no Nigel Sheldon.

Living Forever

Hamilton’s rejuvenation technology, first encountered in his 2002 novel Misspent Youth (which acts as a kind of precursor to the Commonwealth Saga) is the other great advancement that helps shape Commonwealth society, with Nigel being over a thousand years old by the time of the last book (so far) in the series. And when a character grows tired of living a biological life, they can download themselves into the Advanced Neural Activity (ANA), a kind of virtual existence that almost guarantees immortality. So I put the question to Hamilton: would he like to live forever?

“I’m not sure about living forever, but I wouldn’t say no to a couple more centuries,” he admits. “If nothing else, because I’m curious to see where we’re going as a species.”

In his Commonwealth books, rejuvenation arguably allows society to remain pretty much as it was in terms of its culture (at least until the invention of the ANA). A visit to any of the Commonwealth’s ‘Big15’ industrial worlds would be like visiting any large western city on Earth today. They are not radically different societies.

However, Hamilton wonders whether in reality the ability to live for at least many centuries would really shake up our viewpoint.

“If life extension does become possible, I believe it would completely change our outlook, and haul our current culture into a much-needed mature outlook,” he says. By a mature outlook, he means one that looks beyond the next quarter and puts our lives, and the repercussions of our actions, in much broader contexts. “The current short-termism that dominates our mentality and planning is not doing us any favors.”

It’s hard to argue with any of that – just look at how efforts to keep global warming below the 1.5-degree Celsius target of the Paris Agreement are continually postponed by nations as they worry more about elections, the next economic quarter and other short-term problems at the expense of the future. Perhaps there’s a conceptual barrier that prevents generations worrying about the future if they’re not going to be there. If we could suddenly start rejuvenating our bodies and living for longer, then what happens next century would take on greater importance to people because we’d have to live through it.

It has been suggested by some futurists that societies whose population live longer might become more averse to risk, too afraid to jeopardize their long lives and die centuries or millennia too early through accident or war. This doesn’t stop Hamilton’s characters regularly throwing themselves into danger – although with their ability to be re-lifed using backed-up memories and clones of their bodies, the personal risks aren’t exactly the same, except for when his fictional civilizations face existential risks.

Hope for the Future

In real life Hamilton does think things are improving. I asked him how the world has changed since he wrote Mindstar Rising in 1993.

“There’s been a lot of progress since the 1990s, in the advance of technology and society’s attitudes in general, most of which has been for the better,” he says. “What’s happened, and the changes I’ve seen, in the past 30 years has certainly made me aware of the effects that technology can have on life in general, but knowledge also throws limitations into sharp focus. For instance, we now know how difficult long-duration spaceflight actually is for the human body.”

In Hamilton’s writing, humans adapt to living in space, or just living in a highly technological future, in different ways. In his Night’s Dawn trilogy, set in the 27th century, humanity is divided into the Adamists, who are more regular human beings though some of whom have seen their bodies changed by having to adapt to microgravity through the generations, and the Edenists who have bio-engineered an ‘affinity gene’ that allows them to telepathically communicate with their biological spaceships and upload themselves into their biotech to effectively live forever. In the Commonwealth Saga we see the continued evolution of humankind, with the development of ‘Highers’ whose bodies are able to regenerate without undergoing rejuvenation, ‘Advancers’ who employ genetic manipulation, and Accelerators who seek to evolve into a post-physical existence beyond even the confines of the ANA. In Hamilton’s three-book Salvation Sequence, humans are biomodified to fight a seemingly hopeless war. And then of course we have the Celestials in Exodus, biologically and technologically advanced, but perhaps their ethics haven’t kept pace.

Despite the trials and tribulations his characters often face, Hamilton’s post-scarcity societies are places most of his readers would like to live.

They’re not perfect, but they offer great rewards to the people who live in them.

“I do aim to provide a degree of hope for the future in what I write, even though my characters get put through hell to reach that opportunity,” Hamilton says.

And as readers, we get to join them on their journey through hell, and indeed Hamilton has many readers – his books have sold millions of copies. Now, with the Exodus project, he’s able to broaden his readership by venturing into the world of gaming. We can expect the sequel to Exodus: The Archimedes Engine in December 2025, and after that who knows, maybe a return to the Salvation or Commonwealth universes, or something new? With Peter F Hamilton, the sky is the limit.

Forty-Year-Old Loophole Exempts Satellite Pollution from Regulations

2024-11-05T11:00:00.000Z

A forty-year-old legal loophole means that air pollution produced when old satellites burn up in Earth’s atmosphere is exempt from environmental oversight.

In the age of mega-constellations, are these exemptions still justified?

A decade from now, thousands of tons of satellite and rocket debris may be burning up in Earth’s atmosphere every year, giving rise to large quantities of metallic ash, which, according to experts, could affect Earth’s climate and damage its protective ozone layer. Despite the world’s current race to tackle the environmental crisis caused by decades of unbridled use of fossil fuels, no regulations are currently in place to prevent this potential next- generation environmental problem.

In the U.S., this regulatory conundrum rests on a “categorical exclusion” from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) granted to the satellite industry in 1986 by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The FCC, responsible for satellite licensing in the U.S., currently registers the highest number of satellites worldwide, having approved SpaceX’s Starlink mega-constellations including its second-generation expansion to 42,000 satellites.

Under NEPA, U.S. federal agencies must consider the environmental impacts of their decisions and allow the public to express concern. But in 1986, the FCC concluded that satellite re-entries pose no significant risk to the human environment. This categorical exclusion means that the FCC doesn’t have to carry out a review of environmental impacts of satellite operations prior to issuing satellite licenses, including those to operators who want to operate fleets of thousands, or even tens of thousands of satellites. As each of those satellites is meant to be replaced every five years with newer, more advanced technology, mega-constellations will generate a steady stream of junk incinerating in the atmosphere.

Growing Opposition

The U.S. Government Accountability Office criticized the FCC in its 2022 report for failing to reconsider the categorical exclusion in light of the growing amount of this incinerated satellite trash. Opposition against the FCC’s slack attitude is growing with organizations including the American Astronomical Society (AAS) and Public Interest Research Groups (PIRG) having issued statements in the past months calling for more oversight of, and more research into, the effects of satellite re-entries on Earth’s atmosphere and life on Earth.

“It's definitely accurate to say that the nature and scale of space activities has changed since 1986 when that FCC NEPA exclusion was put into place,” Ian Christensen, Senior Director for Private Sector Programs at the Secure World Foundation, told Supercluster. “We're looking at a much different type of activity, much different pace,” added Christensen, who cooperates in an international research project funded by the U.K. Space Agency, which aims to assess the potential environmental impacts of satellite re-entries and provide suggestions for future regulations.

In 1986, barely 400 satellites were in orbit around Earth, compared to the nearly 10,000 in 2024.

The annual number of re-entries 40 years ago was on the order of a few defunct satellites per year. Currently, more than 300 satellites and about the same number of used rocket stages burn-up in Earth’s atmosphere each year, according to Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard Smithsonian astronomer and world’s leading space debris tracker.

“It’s hundreds of tons of material re-entering each year,” McDowell told Supercluster.

In a decade, nearly 4,000 tons of old space junk could be vaporizing in Earth’s atmosphere per year, according to data presented at the Workshop on Protecting Earth and Outer Space from the Disposal of Spacecraft and Debris held in September at the University of Southampton in the U.K.

In its 2022 report, GAO criticized the FCC for having “not sufficiently documented its decision to apply its categorical exclusion when licensing large constellations,” and urged the Commission to review its approach. The FCC agreed but said it would wait for the Council of Environmental Quality, a body overseeing environmental protection in the U.S., to revise NEPA implementation procedures. This process is currently underway.

Christensen said it was impossible to “presuppose the outcome of that review,” pointing to the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals that in July rejected a petition filed by the International Dark-Sky Association against the FCC for its decision to grant licenses to SpaceX to launch tens of thousands of satellites without conducting an environmental review.

Global Legal Limbo

Christensen, however, points out that the FCC is not the only body that needs to rethink its attitude to satellite mega-constellations.

“It’s not only a U.S. challenge,” he said, pointing to China’s plans to deploy the G60 and Guowang mega-constellations to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink in the coming years.

G60 and Guowang are expected to comprise 15,000 and 13,000 satellites respectively. Other nations have their plans too. France-headquartered E-Space, set up by One Web founder Greg Wyler, filed a spectrum application for a jaw-dropping 300,000 satellites in 2022. Wyler’s previous venture, the now fully deployed Eutelsat OneWeb, made do with 650 satellites. Jeff Bezos’ Project Kuiper, expected to begin launching by the end of this year, will add another over 3,000 satellites to the growing satellite population. Canada’s Telesat plans a more modest fleet of 200 spacecraft.

Overall, spectrum applications for about a million satellites have been filed with the International Telecommunications Union, which oversees the use of globally available radio frequencies. Experts, however, think the number of satellites eventually deployed will be more in the order of 100,000 — about ten times as much as orbits Earth today.

In its recent statement, the AAS estimates that the periodic renewal of satellite constellations will result in more than 8,000 tons of satellite junk per year burning in the stratosphere and mesosphere, the atmospheric layers at altitudes of 6 to 31 and 31 to 53 miles respectively.

Just like the FCC, other nations overseeing those ambitious space projects have currently no tools to keeps tabs on their environmental impact.

“The environmental impacts of space activities, such as satellite operations, are currently overlooked in European space and environmental legislation,” Yana Yakushina, space policy researcher at Ghent University in the Netherlands told Supercluster. “While the European Union has a robust legal and policy framework for tackling a wide range of environmental issues — from habitat conservation to climate change mitigation — space activities remain an area with significant regulatory gaps.”

Even the European Green Deal, which binds EU member states to achieve climate neutrality by 2050 lacks provisions for the atmospheric effects of the space sector, Yakushina added.

This novel environmental threat, in fact, exists in a strange in-between space that doesn’t concern any existing laws ever conceived by humans. According to Rachael Craufurd Smith, a space and policy law expert at the University of Edinburgh in the U.K., no existing international space treaty considers the problem of air pollution created by re-entering satellites.

The main international document governing space utilization and space exploration is the Outer Space Treaty ratified in 1967. This treaty, however, is only concerned with possible contamination of celestial bodies with matter from Earth and with a possible spread of extra-terrestrial stuff on our planet.

The Liability Convention, signed in 1972, focuses on harm done by satellites and rocket bodies to humans and property on the surface of Earth. If a satellite launched by one nation falls on the territory of another, the launching state is fully liable for the resulting damage. But any wider environmental consequences of space flight and utilization are outside the convention’s scope.

The Space Debris Conundrum

Ironically, the satellite pollution problem is being exacerbated by the space industry’s desire to treat responsibly another outer space environmental emergency — space debris.

A document compiled by the Inter-Agency Space Debris Mitigation Committee, which works under the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, recommends space fairing nations to remove defunct satellites from orbit within 25 years from their missions’ end.

The non-binding guidelines aim to keep the amount of space junk hurtling around the planet within limits to prevent devastating orbital collisions. A handful of unfortunate space smash-ups could fill near-Earth space with so much junk that flying anything in orbit could become risky.

The FCC, as lukewarm as it may seem in its attitude to satellite pollution, is leading the world’s efforts to declutter space, and requests an even faster — 5-year deorbit timeframe — from operators applying for its licenses. The FCC’s deorbit rule helps keep orbits safe.

It, however, means that many more old satellites will be burning up in the atmosphere in the coming years.

Although research into effects of satellite pollution on Earth’s atmosphere is in its early stages, experts think that ignoring the problem is not the right way forward. According to Minkwan Kim, an associate professor in astronautics at the University of Southampton and leader of a U.K. Space Agency-funded research project, the metallic dust from satellite incineration could have a range of little understood environmental effects. In addition to ozone depletion, it could alter Earth’s heat absorption, affect its magnetic field, increase the frequency of thunderstorms and disrupt satellite communications links.

The AAS also said that higher concentrations of satellite ash particles in the atmosphere might obscure the views of Earth-based telescopes, exacerbating the plight that the growing number of satellites already presents for the study of the Universe due to the streaks satellites leave in telescope images.

Currently, the overall impact of the space industry on the atmosphere is arguably negligible. Only about 0.1% of the overall ozone depletion caused by human activities is a result of satellite launches and re-entries, said Connor Barker, a researcher in atmospheric chemistry modelling at University College London and lead-author of a mega-constellations emissions inventory published in the journal Scientific Data in early October.

Barker, however, warns that dismissing the problem might backfire in the future.

“We have a lot of uncertainty about how this industry is going to grow,” he said. “That's one of the things that makes it hard to project this work into the future.”

Kim warns that because satellites burn up at very high — between 50 and 37 miles — the ash remains in the atmosphere for decades, maybe hundreds of years.

“It’s not like picking up trash on the beach,” Kim said. “It’s physically impossible to collect these particles from the upper atmosphere. It’s going to stay there for a really, really long time.”

McDowell added: “It’s an uncharted territory.”

Op-Ed: What the U.S. Election Means for Space Exploration

2024-10-29T20:00:00.000Z

This story was supposed to compare the space policies of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, but that task is impossible.

Neither candidate for president has anything resembling a space policy, and neither seems to care about NASA overall. I should say up-front that I want Harris to win, for reasons that have nothing to do with the American space program, but I’ll try to lay out things as I see them, as someone who scrutinizes NASA for a living.

First, the fundamentals. Here is the Republican platform for space:

Under Republican Leadership, the United States will create a robust Manufacturing Industry in Near Earth Orbit, send American Astronauts back to the Moon, and onward to Mars, and enhance partnerships with the rapidly expanding Commercial Space sector to revolutionize our ability to access, live in, and develop assets in Space.

Here is the Democratic platform for space (presumably written before Biden decided against running for reelection):

Under his [President Joe Biden’s] leadership, we’ll continue supporting NASA and America’s presence on the International Space Station, and working to send Americans back to the moon and to Mars.

As you can see, they are about the same. I don’t get the impression that Democrats are eager to publicly support commercial space (given that at this point it means SpaceX), but you’re not achieving a single one of those goals without Elon Musk.

Versus China

The Trump administration was good for NASA, in large measure because of Mike Pence, the former vice president, who was the force behind Artemis; and Jim Bridenstine, the former NASA administrator, who was its able executor. In terms of science, Bridenstine defended NASA’s Earth science program from climate change skeptics, and Rep. John Culberson of Texas lavishly funded both planetary and Earth science. Culberson really ought to be the next NASA administrator, regardless of which candidate is elected president.

Artemis, which began under the Trump administration, was the first deep space exploration program since Apollo to survive a presidential transition, and I expect that it will survive the next one as well. (Previously killed programs include the Space Exploration Initiative begun by George H.W. Bush, and the Constellation Program begun by George W. Bush.) The primary hardware driving Artemis I and II are the SLS rocket and the Orion capsule, both of which were born under the Obama administration, as was the Commercial Crew program.

The key human spaceflight issues NASA must face in the next four years include the end of the International Space Station, and prospect of China landing taikonauts on the moon.

Last week, I attended the launch of Europa Clipper at Kennedy Space Center. (You can find my exclusive interview with Robert Pappalardo, the mission’s project scientist, here at Supercluster, and my coverage of the launch at The New Yorker.) I didn’t bother getting a press pass for the event. This means I was able to have the “tourist experience” on the bus from the visitor center at Kennedy to the viewing area.

During the ride, which lasted fifteen minutes or so, a television explained NASA’s big plans for the moon (“…and on to Mars!”), including how SLS is the most powerful rocket ever built, and how many cows it could launch into space, or whatever, and how astronauts will ride in Orion to Gateway, and so on. It was generally inane, though slickly produced. It occurred to me that about two million people visit Kennedy every year, and about 1,999,900 of those people know virtually nothing about NASA, and so they are probably pretty thrilled about the way things are going.

Which means those first images of taikonauts waving a Chinese flag on the moon while NASA remains stuck in low-Earth orbit will hit Americans like a freight train. They’re going to demand answers about what the hell happened. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that NASA is a P.R. agency that happens to have space robots, and reality is about to come into harsh conflict with the story they’re selling.

Bill Nelson, the current NASA administrator, hasn’t exactly revolutionized the agency, but he has been steadfast and correct on China’s lunar aspirations. It’s not a race, and there is plenty of moon for everyone, but the fact that NASA is unable even to fly Artemis II — the easy one, relatively speaking — is a damning indictment of the way NASA has spent its money so far. Will China beating Artemis to the moon inspire a For All Mankind-like commitment to space, or will Congress pull funding for a failing enterprise?

Running Mates

The vice president of the United States generally leads the National Space Council, a group of advisors who help an administration develop space policy, but which does not have any direct operational or executive power. Not every administration has one, and fewer still take the council’s advice into account. Any prediction, however informed, of what Tim Walz or J.D. Vance would do as head of the group will have as much accuracy as a deck of tarot cards.

Vance has only been in political office for two years. He represents Ohio in the Senate, which is home to Glenn Research Center, but aside from a brief jeremiad last year against wokeism at NASA, the agency just hasn’t seemed to be that important to him, and as a senator, he hasn’t had time to affect NASA in any meaningful way. If I had to guess, I would expect that Vance, coming from the venture capital world, is philosophically aligned with Elon Musk’s Silicon Valley-informed way of doing business, but it’s the Trump administration that put SLS and Orion on the Artemis critical path in the first place.

Walz, meanwhile, is a blank slate, as NASA has virtually no presence in Minnesota. Aside from a general sort of pride that most Americans have in NASA as an institution, he probably hasn’t put much thought into the agency one way or another. He (and Vance as well) will probably have smart advisors, will probably give a couple great speeches from Marshall Space Flight Center or Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the status quo will remain secure. One of them will say proudly that NASA is doing great, and we are only twenty years away from Mars, as every administration has said since the Apollo program.

With respect to the National Space Council under Harris, Homer Hickam, an acclaimed author and former NASA engineer, described on his website his frustrating experience after the Biden administration moved into the White House. He seemed ultimately disappointed by both administrations, but the final line in the piece was a damning indictment of the incumbents: “Anyway, it’s 2024 and we are not landing on the moon and if this present crowd stays in, I have my doubts NASA ever will.”

The Elon in the Room

We should probably talk about Elon Musk. On July 13, he endorsed Donald Trump for president. Which is fine. If I had to guess, I’d say most aerospace CEOs are Republicans or right-leaning. But it would only be a guess. Musk did what he always does: he went all-in, and very publicly, speaking at Trump rally, MAGA hat and all.

I believe that Musk is less political than he is an opportunist.

Sooner or later, there will be a reckoning between Southern senators and Elon Musk. Presently, the whole of the Gulf Coast is a rocket assembly line. Old Space builds the core stage of SLS in Louisiana, assembles and tests the rocket engines in Mississippi, runs the operation from Alabama, and launches the rocket from Florida. Each of those states is represented on the Senate Committee on Appropriations. Those senators have used their influence to subsidize a world that no longer exists.

Elon Musk is building an empire that will destroy that world.

If Trump wins, Musk will get just about everything he wants: an easily-manipulated president he has on speed dial, and a shorter pathway from Earth to Mars. (Recall Trump’s 2019 tweet after his own administration announced the Artemis program: “For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon - We did that 50 years ago.”)

But if Harris wins, Musk is still well-positioned because by going all-in on Trump, he is now squarely aligned, politically, with the senator appropriators who most stand to lose in a post-Boeing, post-Lockheed space program. And because SpaceX is the only game in town by an immeasurably wide margin, it’s not like a Harris-run NASA can turn to another company to achieve, well, much of anything at all, for a very long time.

Whether or not Musk is playing four dimensional chess personally, I wish he would hire someone to post to X on his behalf, and spend more time doing literally anything else.

Space exploration is becoming increasingly partisan, and individuals — particularly Musk — now personify the American space program in a way that we’ve never seen before.

That is an unresolved risk to space exploration.

I don’t know what will happen in November, and I don’t know what NASA in 2025 will look like — mostly because I don’t think Harris or Trump do, either. Given what we’ve seen from Artemis, however, I do know this: If Harris wins, we’ll probably have a better State Department.

Maybe they can negotiate permission for the Artemis III astronauts to visit China’s city on the moon.

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David W. Brown is the author of THE MISSION, or: How a Disciple of Carl Sagan , an Ex-Motocross Racer, a Texas Tea Party Congressman, the World's Worst Typewriter Saleswoman, California Mountain People, and an Anonymous NASA Functionary Went to War with Mars, Survived an Insurgency at Saturn, Traded Blows with Washington, and Stole a Ride on an Alabama Moon Rocket to Send a Space Robot to Jupiter in Search of the Second Garden of Eden at the Bottom of an Alien Ocean Inside of an Ice World Called Europa (A True Story). He lives in New Orleans.

The Robots That Could Breach Europa's Ice Shell

2024-10-22T20:00:00.000Z

“This is my dream of dream missions.”

-Kevin Hand, planetary scientist and director of JPL’s Ocean Worlds Lab

Clipper won’t arrive at the Jupiter system until 2030, but scientists and researchers are already figuring out what's next in the search for alien life on the mysterious ocean world of Europa.

Assuming Clipper finds habitable conditions within the icy moon, humanity will need to send another mission to determine if the place is inhabited. To do that, this future endeavor will have to actually land on Europa to search for biosignatures, a task significantly complicated by the estimated 15 miles of solid ice between the moon’s surface and its ocean. However, there are engineering prototypes and proof of concepts being developed that could benefit such a mission to put (robotic) boots on the ice, and try to answer some fundamental questions about life in the universe.

To learn more, we took a short drive down the 210 Freeway, from the spaceship factories at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to the swimming pool at Caltech.

Swim for It

It’s a bright California summer day and JPL robotics engineer Ethan Schaler is standing poolside with a fishing pole. Shaler’s day job is driving the Perseverance Rover on Mars, but this morning he is working with two interns on testing the latest prototype for his Sensing With Independent Micro-Swimmers (SWIM) project.

Attached to the fishing pole is a 3D-printed, submersible drone about the size and shape of a slice of thick crust pizza. The prototype tests how well a SWIM robot could autonomously navigate and communicate while carrying a sensor payload through Europa’s ocean. Since nav and comms are still a work in progress, the fishing pole is attached so that Schaler and his interns don’t need to dive into the pool every time the drone goes rogue.

The concept envisions a fleet of these drones, each one miniaturized to palm size. They would be loaded into a “cryobot” that would carry them from the surface of Europa down through the ice and into the water. The whole SWIM project is currently funded through the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program.

“The question we are really answering is — 'is there utility in a bunch of simple, small robots that are just barely capable enough to do the mission you want?',” says Schaler. “I will fully acknowledge that SWIM’s design is kind of the opposite of how NASA normally builds robots. Which is part of why I think NASA picked us to study it.”

Acknowledging the enduring public relations value of a robotic selfie, Schaler says that some SWIM drones could be made larger in order to accommodate a light and camera.

Each drone would be charged with an hour or two worth of power, and they could be deployed all at once or over time in small groups as currents and water conditions change. Georgia Tech is building a miniature sensor chip that would be placed inside the SWIM robots to measure salinity, pressure, pH, conductivity, temperature and perhaps chemical sensing. In other words, the basic parameters for life as we know it.

Prime Number

Europa lacks an atmosphere to assist with slowing down a spacecraft, so landing there will be far more difficult than Mars. The icy moon is also bathed in a powerful Jovian radiation storm. Europa Clipper will dip in and out of the radiation storm with numerous flybys, rather than cooking in orbit right around Europa.

But in the search for life on this moon, landing is only the beginning. In order to get all those wonderful biosignature sensors under the ice and into the ocean, NASA will have to drill, baby, drill. Or, more likely, burn, baby, burn.

Enter: the cryobot.

This torpedo-shaped autonomous probe would arrive on Europa via a surface lander and then spend the next two to six years gliding downward. By quickly getting under a few feet of ice, electronics on the cyrobot would be shielded from the bulk of Jupiter’s radiation.

There are a whole lot of daunting engineering challenges to solve with these so-called melt probes – not least of which is how to consistently generate enough heat.

“Nuclear power really has been the emergent conclusion,” explains Ben Hockman, a robotics technologist at JPL. “If you put a chunk of plutonium on ice, it’s going to melt through.”

That chunk of plutonium-238 would be housed in a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), which as the name implies uses radiation to make electricity. It’s the same tech found on many NASA missions, including the Voyager probes that took the first close-up images of Europa and the later Galileo mission that showed strong evidence that the moon has an ocean with more water than Earth.

Hockman’s cryobot project at JPL is called PRIME, short for “Probe using Radioisotopes for Icy Moons Exploration.” As he explains, most spaceships powered by an RTG need to figure out a way to disperse all the waste heat generated by their plutonium. But on a cryobot, that heat is invaluable for melting ice.

Of course there are real planetary protection concerns with dropping a hot RTG into a virgin alien ocean. Plans call for corrosion proof housing that would also use the surrounding seawater as a cooling system. Engineers are also considering swapping out the RTG for a fission reactor that could be shut down when it reaches the ocean.

Once the cryobot is in the water, either free floating or else anchored to the ice, Hockman envisions it functioning for upwards of a year, perhaps deploying SWIM drones, taking photos and ingesting water samples to study with a suite of onboard sensors. Not unlike what the Mars rovers do on the Red Planet, just a lot more wet.

“No mission before has handled water,” says Hockman, “because there is just no water that we’ve been to.”

Cryobot Competition

NASA has funded research into other variations on the cryobot concept, including designs from Stone Aerospace in Texas. Some of those suggest using closed cycle hot water jets to melt through the ice, or even a laser beam fired directly out of the tip of the cryobot.

“There is an efficiency metric,” explains Stone Aerospace founder Bill Stone. “It’s kilowatts of power per cubic meter of ice melted, and you can compare these against different cryobot designs.”

To test various ice busters, Stone Aerospace uses a cryogenic vacuum chamber that holds a column of ice at the equivalent temperature that would be found on Europa, minus 320°F. Engineers there are also exploring ways to move diagonally through the ice, in the event the cryobot encounters rocky obstacles that block its downward progress.

Another complicating factor is that the sides of any cryobot would also need to be heated, otherwise ice will refreeze around it, locking the probe in place before ever reaching the ocean.

Back at JPL, the Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS) project is a 13-foot-long robotic snake that is designed to mechanically slither down an icy glacial crevasse. This would come in handy on an icy moon like Saturn’s Enceladus, where plumes of water have been observed blasting up through the ice and into space.

There is evidence for plumes on Europa as well, something Clipper aims to investigate. If giant cracks in the ice are discovered that lead all the way down to the ocean, it may be more efficient to search for biosignatures on Europa with something like an EELS robot rather than a cryobot.

Swimming Aliens

If you’re a fan of James Cameron’s lesser known work, you may have seen planetary scientist Kevin Hand go on a fantastical journey into the ocean of an ice moon, where he discovers swimming aliens and their towering underwater cities.

In real life, Hand is the director of the Ocean Worlds Lab at JPL, and the author of Alien Oceans, a guide to exploring places like Europa and Enceladus. Hand theorizes that worlds with oceans under an ice shell could be ubiquitous throughout the universe and perhaps even be the most common place for life to thrive.

“It comes back to the fundamental question of, is the origin of life easy or hard?,” Hand says. “If the origin of life is easy, if it can form around hydrothermal vents or in ice shells, then I think Europas, galactic and throughout the cosmos, are inhabited.”

Hand and project systems engineer Andy Klesh are currently refining the Buoyant Rover for Under-Ice Exploration (BRUIE), a “ceiling rover” that travels on big wheels under the ice. BRUIE has been tested in Alaska and Antarctica and could serve as another kind of autonomous vehicle to explore Europa. One version functioned for five days under the ice running on AA batteries.

More refining would be needed to deploy something like BRUIE on a moon of Jupiter, just as there is more work to be done on all these project designs. Hand and others have suggested a Europa lander that studies the surface ice without trying to burn all the way down to the ocean would be a valuable intermediate step before landing a full cryobot. There are also big engineering challenges ahead in figuring out how to communicate from an alien ocean under miles of ice all the way back to Earth. Autonomous navigation systems have more development ahead before they can be unhooked from the fishing pole.

“All these questions are entirely answerable through robotic exploration and with robots that we can build and launch now,” says Hand. “These missions are hard, but beyond verifying the technologies, there is no magic wand that needs to be waived.”

In Photos: SpaceX Dazzles the World With Unreal Booster Catch

2024-10-15T22:00:00.000Z

SpaceX caught a skyscraper with another skyscraper at Starbase, Texas

On the morning of Sunday, October 13th, 2024, SpaceX launched the fifth flight test of the Starship Super Heavy, the world's most powerful rocket, after a last minute license was granted by the FAA.

Supercluster dispatched photographers Pauline Acalin and Tom Cross to shoot Starship's liftoff and a potential attempt to catch the massive Super Heavy booster with Mechazilla, the launch tower's chopsticks arms. An idea that seemed outlandish up until SpaceX's livestream said they were actually going for it, minutes after a surprisingly routine liftoff.

So routine that the launch of Starship itself became an afterthought.

After delivering Starship to space, the Super Heavy booster appeared in the skies overhead to the cheers of onlookers who attended the launch, many with their families. Our team captured reactions during the booster's round trip flight that were shared on our socials. Screams grew louder as Super Heavy slowed down, relighting its Raptor engines and seamlessly cozying up into the arms of Mechazilla. It's all going to explode now right? Nope.

Super Heavy was successfully caught on the very first attempt, earning praise and shock from around the world. Many remarking on the engineering breakthrough and the grit of SpaceX's team. The government and policy folks who battled the FAA for permission to fly also deserve recognition.

"Prior to catch, Starship executed another successful hot-staging separation, igniting its six Raptor engines and completing ascent into outer space," said SpaceX. "It coasted along its planned trajectory to the other side of the planet before executing a controlled reentry, passing through the phases of peak heating and maximum aerodynamic pressure, before executing a flip, landing burn, and splashdown at its target area in the Indian Ocean."

"Just inspected the Starship booster, which the arms have now placed back in its launch mount. Looks great!" Elon Musk posted on X. "A few outer engine nozzles are warped from heating & some other minor issues, but these are easily addressed. Starship is designed to achieve reflight of its rocket booster ultimately within an hour after liftoff. The booster returns within ~5 minutes, so the remaining time is reloading propellant and placing a ship on top of the booster."

Burning Questions for the Lead Scientist Behind Europa Clipper

2024-10-11T15:00:00.000Z

A Conversation with the Robert Pappalardo, Europa Clipper’s Lead Scientist

For the last thirty years, Dr. Robert Pappalardo, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has dedicated his life to studying the icy moons of the solar system. For the last twenty, he has worked tirelessly to build a mission to Europa, the ocean moon of Jupiter, considered the place most likely in the solar system to harbor extant life forms.

Early next week, Pappalardo will at last succeed in his efforts.

Europa Clipper is NASA’s first outer planets flagship to launch since Cassini-Huygens left Earth in 1997. It will ride atop a Falcon Heavy rocket before beginning a six-year voyage to Jupiter. About the size of a professional basketball court, Europa Clipper is the largest planetary spacecraft ever flown. After being protected by NASA's ride out teams during Hurricane Milton, SpaceX and the mission's team are tentatively planning for launch on Sunday.

Once it arrives at the Jovian system, the spacecraft will enter orbit around Jupiter, and across four years, encounter Europa forty-nine times at various angles and approaches, flying as close as sixteen miles to its surface, capturing the moon in swaths. A powerful, onboard radar will map Europa’s ice shell in three dimensions, while its cameras and spectrometers build a high resolution map of its geology and composition. Its magnetometer and plasma instrument will characterize the ocean’s depth and salinity. By the end of its prime mission, Europa Clipper will have captured over 90 percent of Europa, and allow scientist to say for certain whether the moon’s ocean is habitable for life.

It is the culmination of the life’s work of Pappalardo, who leads the mission as its project scientist.

Before launch, I caught up with him to get some answers to some of the burning questions the public has about such a bold mission. This is a lightly-edited transcript of our chat.

SUPERCLUSTER:

Despite NASA's best efforts to explain this, I think the biggest misconception about Europa Clipper is that it's a life detection mission. Rather, it's a habitability mission. Perhaps you could describe why that is a necessary step in a campaign of exploration?

DR. ROBERT PAPPALARDO:

We need to do the initial survey of Europa to understand how it works as a world before we’re ready to go for the brass ring of searching for life. Arguably, we don't even yet know how to do that search.

I wouldn't turn down a lander if we had the option, but a global reconnaissance of Europa will help us understand first where we should even look for life, and whether the necessary ingredients—the water, the chemistry, and the chemical energy—are actually present. And then we can go in and say, ‘Ah, there’s the place: a warm spot with liquid water in the subsurface, signs of organics, and maybe there's a plume source.’ That's where we’ll go and search for life.

SUPERCLUSTER:

What does a habitable Europa even look like? Habitable means a lot of things to different creatures.

DR. ROBERT PAPPALARDO:

Another way of framing that question is: Could we find a Europa that is not habitable?

We can certainly find a Europa that is less habitable: a Europa that has a sulfuric acid ocean instead of a magnesium sulfate ocean, or a Europa that doesn't have an ocean after all, and we are being fooled by the magnetometry results from Galileo. We have to be careful in not taking our current best picture of how a world works, based on limited data, and assuming that we know all.

We want to understand if there is liquid water, where that liquid water exists, and whether the chemistry seem conducive to life. Do we expect redox potential in the ocean—oxidants and reductants—and where might we go to search? How might we do that search in the future, with what techniques?

SUPERCLUSTER:

Scientists have been debating how Europa works for centuries. I recall a Victorian-era hypothesis Europa might be a swarm of icy comets—

DR. ROBERT PAPPALARDO:

Oh, man, I like that.

SUPERCLUSTER:

So can you give me a sample of some of the key disputed scientific debates today that Europa Clipper is going to settle?

DR. ROBERT PAPPALARDO:

Plumes, first and foremost. Are there plumes there? Are they real? The initial plume results from Hubble have a signal-to-noise of one-to-two. That's really tough. It’s a very hard observation from Earth. So we're going to be able to observe over the course of four years whether there are plumes, and where are they? Are they sporadic? Are they consistent? Do they not exist? What are their characteristics? Do they tap an ocean? If they're real, we’ll fly through them.

So that's one. Chaos: How did chaos form? Is there really liquid water under there? There's a model that, right now, is only out in the ‘gray literature’—conference abstract form—that says instead of water being below the chaos surface, there is simply dry-but-warm material beneath. So maybe there's no water associated with chaos. Maybe we need to seek other oases at Europa. So if we send a lander to Thera Macula now, thinking, ‘Oh boy, there could be water there!’ It could be that that was the wrong place to go.

Another is how do ridges form? Do they involve water? Did material spew up from the subsurface, or is it just contraction of the surface that forms ridges. You know, it’s kind of esoteric—how do ridges form—but what comes into play is where is there liquid water and how is that involved, and that starts getting into issues of habitability and the exchange of materials from the surface to the subsurface.

SUPERCLUSTER:

Aside from sort of those big questions about habitability, what's an abstruse, weird question that you personally look forward to having answered after almost thirty years of studying Europa?

DR. ROBERT PAPPALARDO:

Is the ice shell convecting? It’s like a lava lamp. Are there blobs of warm ice that rise up through the ice shell and create pits and spots and domes—or not?

So convection goes on in the Earth's mantle, where warm rock rises up, and denser, colder rock sinks. It's a fundamental process that affects rocky world interiors. But we don't have an ice shell thick enough on planet Earth that would convect and bring up blobs from below toward the surface. It's relevant to habitability and the exchange of materials. So we want to understand whether Europa's ice is convecting.

SUPERCLUSTER:

And my final question: You've been trying to get this mission launched for more than twenty years. It's finally going to leave planet Earth. How does your job change now?

DR. ROBERT PAPPALARDO:

Oh, how does my job change?

SUPERCLUSTER:

I already know you're going to feel good!

DR. ROBERT PAPPALARDO:

Yeah, yeah. I will feel good.

Keeping a team together for another five-and-a-half years through cruise is the challenge that lies ahead. To keep people engaged and working together and not drifting off, while at the same time letting the team evolve as it will during cruise —that's an important part of my job. But I'll continue to be the science voice during cruise as operations-specifics are developed, and as we plan for tour, and as calibrations are done—including during the Mars flyby and the Earth flyby. That key role will continue. And I hope to take a sabbatical in there at some point.

SUPERCLUSTER:

As always, thank you for your time today. I’m looking forward to seeing you at the launch.

DR. PAPPALARDO:

Thank you so much. It’s been a lot of fun.

.............................................................................................

David W. Brown is the author of THE MISSION, or: How a Disciple of Carl Sagan, an Ex-Motocross Racer, a Texas Tea Party Congressman, the World's Worst Typewriter Saleswoman, California Mountain People, and an Anonymous NASA Functionary Went to War with Mars, Survived an Insurgency at Saturn, Traded Blows with Washington, and Stole a Ride on an Alabama Moon Rocket to Send a Space Robot to Jupiter in Search of the Second Garden of Eden at the Bottom of an Alien Ocean Inside of an Ice World Called Europa (A True Story). He lives in New Orleans.

Editor's Note: David Brown, Dr. Pappalardo, and Supercluster team members Robin Seemangal and Jenny Hautmann will be on-site at Kennedy Space Center for the historic launch of Europa Clipper.

NASA Deflected an Asteroid — ESA Launched a Mission to Study the Impact

2024-10-04T18:00:00.000Z

Planetary defense was arguably nothing but a concept until September 26th, 2022.

Before then, humanity was limited to scanning the night sky for hazardously sized asteroids—and if one was spotted heading to Earth, little could be done except to try and get those in the eventual target zone out of harm’s way. But on that September day, at precisely 7:14 p.m. eastern time, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART mission, reached its crescendo: its uncrewed spacecraft smashed into a (harmless) asteroid named Dimorphos, and changed its orbit—a dry run for a real-life emergency that would require space agencies to deflect an asteroid away from the planet.

DART was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 and was the first-ever planetary defense test, one that illustrated that scientists and engineers could rearrange the cosmos to make it more habitable for humans. And next week, the European Space Agency is going to check NASA’s homework by launching its own mission to Dimorphos.

Its spacecraft, Hera, is not only one of the most technologically sophisticated sleuths to visit the sort of asteroid that could one day threaten us. It’s also a dress rehearsal for a reconnaissance mission—one that could scrutinize an Earthbound space rock in advance of any deflection attempt, thereby bolstering humanity’s chances of success. Hera is slated to launch on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Monday, October 7th, at 10:52 a.m. ET.

ESA, which excels in planetary science missions, had fumbled its chance to fly its own planetary defense mission alongside DART—and with NASA leading the charge, ESA became a valuable, but secondary, player in the game. But should Hera work wonders, they may once again be on equal footing with their transatlantic partners.

No pressure then. “Everyone’s excited,” says Patrick Michel, the Hera principal investigator at the University of Côte d’Azur. “And a little bit scared.”

DART’s objective was simple: point a spacecraft at an asteroid, hit it, and change its orbit. That asteroid was the 525-foot-long asteroid, Dimorphos, which zipped around the larger space rock Didymos. Neither threatened Earth, but Dimorphos was the perfect target: it’s roughly the size of asteroid colloquially referred to as a city killer, in that should one impact a city, that metropolis would be annihilated.

About 25,000 of these exist in near-Earth orbits, and about 14,000 are yet to be found. If we wait long enough, and do nothing, the odds of a city getting razed by a space rock rise to 100 percent. So: why not do something about it? Let’s find those asteroids before they find us, and then blast any heading our way.

NASA and the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, who designed, built, and flew the mission, wanted to crash the car sized DART into Dimorphos to shift its orbit around Didymos. While this transpired, telescopes on Earth (and in space) would watch on to check if they succeeded. A little CubeSat named LICIACube – designed by the Italian Space Agency – would also hitch a ride on DART until just before its terminal plunge, leaping off to survive and photograph DART’s impact.

All of this went exactly according to plan. Not only did the semi-autonomous DART spacecraft hit its bullseye, but it changed the orbit of Dimorphos far more significantly than the minimum amount NASA had set as a threshold for success. It appeared that so much debris was ejected during the impact that it acted like a rocket booster, vigorously thrusting Dimorphos out of the way.

In other words, deflecting a city killer asteroid with a relatively tiny spacecraft seemed to work wonders. Not bad for a first try.

But images taken by LICIACube and Earth’s observatories revealed a more complex story: boulders the size of houses were caught flying in formation with the recently bruised Dimorphos, and a comet-like tail of coruscating matter stretching into space persisted for months. The DART team were prepared for plot twists, but what they chronicled still came as a shock. “I didn’t expect such a long tail. I didn’t expect it to be so persistent,” says Cristina Thomas, a planetary astronomer at Northern Arizona University and the lead of the observations working group for the DART mission.

Stranger still, the entire asteroid seemed to respond to the impact less like a monolithic solid and more like a fluid. Changes in how it reflected sunlight indicated that the impact caused the asteroid to almost splash about, creating tsunamis of rock that washed across it. “Maybe we didn’t leave a crater. Maybe we reshaped it. And that’s kind of mind-blowing,” Thomas says.

DART may have been a triumph, but it was a brute force experiment. You can’t just punch any old asteroid as emphatically as possible to protect the planet. You want to deflect it, not hit it so aggressively that you inadvertently fragment it into smaller but still dangerously sized pieces flying off in all directions.

No matter what asteroid a spacecraft has visited, “we’ve been surprised every time we’ve showed up,” says Andy Rivkin, a planetary astronomer at the Applied Physics Laboratory, the co-investigation team lead on the DART mission, and a Hera participating scientist. That’s fine when you’re conducting science; less so when you’re trying to save the world.

Ultimately, when it comes to battling an asteroid, you want to be prepared, not flabbergasted. That means scientists need to get to know these asteroids inside and out, “should this one day be necessary to protect Earth,” says Michael Küppers, the Hera project scientist at ESA. And that’s where Europe’s new asteroid detective comes into play.

Originally, alongside DART, ESA was going to fly a spacecraft of its own, named AIM—the Asteroid Impact Mission. It was to arrive before DART and document the impact, then survey the wreckage. Unfortunately, in 2016, member states failed to agree on AIM’s funding, and the mission was cancelled. Michel, keen to keep the fire lit, pitched a streamlined version of AIM to ESA—and he prevailed.

In 2019, the other member states gave the new spacecraft concept their benediction and euros. AIM rose from the ashes, reborn as Hera—and this October, it will fly into the firmament on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After a Mars flyby in March 2025, during which it will calibrate its instruments and conduct some opportunistic science, Hera will catch up to Dimorphos in October 2026, with its full investigation commencing just shy of Christmas that year.

Due to the financial kerfuffle in 2016, the spacecraft would now get to Dimorphos post-impact, with the toaster sized LICIACube filling in for AIM’s original impact documentarian role. It’s a shame Hera can’t witness the history-making fireworks, but thanks to its instrument suite – courtesy of 18 ESA member states, and Japan’s space agency – it’s overqualified for the job of interrogating Dimorphos: its multiple cameras, which can perceive dozens of wavelengths, will craft a portrait of the asteroid that reveals its geological composition; its laser-based radar system will characterize the space rock’s topography and mass, while aiding Hera’s flight; its radio science experiment will watch how Dimorphos wobbles to get a better idea of its density, internal structure, and motion around Didymos.

If Hera is Sherlock, then Juventus and Milani are its Watsons. These two shoebox sized CubeSats, each just a little heavier than a sausage dog, are hitching a ride to Dimorphos with the heftier Hera—and while the primary spacecraft gets on with its work, these two will kickstart their own inquiries.

Each have radio experiments, collaborating with Hera’s own, to probe the asteroid’s motion and density. Juventus, focused on investigating the subsurface of Dimorphos, will do so with its ground-penetrating radar and an instrument that detects subtle shifts in gravity. Milani is more of an astrochemist, sniffing out the minerals, water and organic matter on Dimorphos, Didymos and in the debris field now enveloping them.

“For me, this is the future of planetary exploration: to send the mothercraft that we want to keep safe, then deploy some cheaper CubeSats, with which you can take more risks,” Michel says. Eventually, both CubeSats will try to land on Dimorphos, or die trying.

Certainly, the surface-level studies of Dimorphos – an asteroid vandalized by humanity – will be intriguing. “We already know that the first images won’t look like the Dimorphos we know,” says Michel. “What we’re going to see has never been seen before.”

But it’s the measurement of the asteroid’s mass, and the mapping of its internal structure, that’s paramount to planetary defense researchers.

First, the mass: that’s crucial, because it will let the DART team work out how much the asteroid’s debris ejection contributed to its deflection.

The original mass of Dimorphos is an estimate based on mostly remote observations. (It’s something like 200 Statues of Liberty.) Values like mass and density play into calculations of how much of a boost that the impact ejecta spray donated to Dimorphos. For now, the DART team think that the asteroid was deflected so much that it was as if 3.5 DART spacecraft hit it. That’s great news for a bona fide asteroid deflection mission: you get a lot more bang for your buck, so to speak.

As to why so much material rocketed off the impact site, scientists think its internal structure is to blame. You may think of asteroids as solid chunks of rock, but no—many of them seem to be boulders flying in close formation.

In 2019, as part of a mission to retrieve a sample of pristine matter from the 3,000-foot-long asteroid Ryugu, Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft blasted a crater in it with a copper bomb. And in 2020, while sampling the 1,610-foot-long asteroid Bennu, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft briefly flew onto and prodded it. On both occasions, scientists were shocked to find that both asteroids didn’t behave like mountains of stone, but ball pits in low gravity. The comparatively Lilliputian Dimorphos – which has a different overall composition to the carbon-rich Ryugu and Bennu – is similarly strange.

“They are what you call rubble piles,” says Küppers. “Their cohesion must be extremely low, like, I don’t know, a cappuccino foam.”

That’s both a blessing and a curse. If you want to deflect asteroids like these away from Earth, then understanding just how likely they are to fountain debris and propel themselves further afield post-impact is vital. But, being so loosely bound by their own gravity, you also need to get an idea of how much it would take to accidentally fragment them into a shotgun blast of smaller asteroids. “For the same impact energy, we can just make a crater, or totally disrupt it,” Michel says.

The Hera mission will really nail down the internal structure of Dimorphos. Is it only rubbly on the surface, or is it rocky froth all the way down? By finding out, planetary defenders can get a better idea of what similar asteroids may be like, should we need to slam a spacecraft into them to shield the world.

But even after Hera has unearthed Dimorphos’ buried secrets, scientists won’t confidently claim that all city killer sized asteroids are alike. “If we have to save the Earth, I’m not sure I’d base my statistics on three bodies,” says Michel, referring to Bennu and Ryugu.

Ideally, if an Earthbound city killer is spotted many years in advance, you would want to send a different probe to the asteroid first to get a better idea of its mass and internal structure. That way, when the deflection attempt is performed by another spacecraft, it’s more finely tuned to work on that specific asteroid. Hera may be arriving after DART’s dramatic death. But its design isn’t dissimilar to the sort of robotic scout that would be flown ahead of an impactor spacecraft in an actual crisis.

Although Hera’s examination of Dimorphos is important, it’s arguably the groundwork it is laying for future planetary defense missions that will be its greatest legacy.

For several decades, planetary defense was considered to be a subset of planetary science, the curiosity-driven study of objects in the solar system. Planetary defense missions automatically involve scientific discovery, but their goal – to protect billions from a cosmic catastrophe – is markedly different. Despite that distinction, and despite a longstanding and deep well of support from Congress and scientists within NASA, it’s only been in the last few years that planetary defense missions – like DART, and the under-construction, space-based asteroid hunting observatory, Near-Earth Object Surveyor – have been liberated from competing against pure science missions and given their own dedicated funding stream.

The same cannot be said for ESA. According to Michel, as AIM’s premature demise underscored, many ESA delegates don’t yet consider planetary defense a priority. It remains underfunded, with staff often working on it part time while doing their regular academic work. “This is one of the only risks we can predict and prevent,” he says. But because the everyday odds of a catastrophic asteroid impact are low, some of Michel’s colleagues think it’s more of an expensive hobby than a globe-saving pursuit. “I know some scientists who… think it’s totally bullshit to study,” he says.

Michel’s hope is that this apathy quickly becomes a fringe position. Should Hera perform as expected, it will demonstrate that Europe, too, wants to help protect all eight billion of us from a future cataclysm. It’s a showcase of ESA’s ability to quickly develop a recon-style asteroid mission—a feat that can be accomplished for a mere $390 million. DART cost $325 million, so in total, even with NASA and ESA’s asteroid-hunting observation program thrown in, “the whole program of planetary defense is less than an aircraft carrier price tag,” Michel says.

America may be the vanguard. But “planetary defense is an international issue,” says Thomas. ESA has long been a key partner, but seeing it rise to the occasion with Hera is welcome news—and Michel wants it to be the mission that, finally, convinces even the most skeptical ESA delegates convert to the cause of planetary salvation.

“A few years ago, we had nothing,” he says. Today, “there is momentum. Now it’s our job to make sure we use it.”

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In How to Kill an Asteroid, award-winning science journalist Robin George Andrews—who was at DART mission control when it happened—reveals the development of the technology that made it possible, from spotting elusive asteroids and comets to figuring out their geologic defenses and orchestrating a deflection campaign. In a propulsive narrative that reads like a sci-fi thriller, Andrews tells the story of the planetary defense movement, and introduces the international team of scientists and engineers now working to protect Earth.

Inside the Wargame Where Earth Faces a Killer Asteroid

2024-10-01T21:00:00.000Z

Everyone was ready: NASA, nuclear weapons scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, astronomers, US Space Command, the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, even the White House.

A killer asteroid was barreling toward North Carolina and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. Impact was imminent. In just a matter of hours, America, and the world, would be transformed through an act of cosmic violence. Everyone hoped for the best but braced for the worst.

And that’s when Russia invaded Ukraine.

Few people knew how to react. But Leviticus “L.A.” Lewis did. “Guess what? The asteroid won’t care that humans are trying to kill each other. It’s still going to keep coming, and we’re going to have to respond.” Nobody could disagree. Lewis, who is the representative for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, at NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, turned to the hundreds of assembled federal, state, and local officials, scientists, engineers, and emergency managers. The show must go on, he declared. And so, it did: on February 24, 2022, as the Russian military launched their assault on their democratic neighbor, North Carolina was hit by an asteroid.

Between February 23 and 24, while DART was on its way to Dimorphos, experts had gathered at its birthplace, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, for a role-playing game. Everyone assumed the same character roles they had in real life. Their realm was not mythical, but terrestrial; their nemesis was not a dragon, but an Earthbound asteroid.

This game had been played several times before—sometimes more casually, sometimes in the United States, other times abroad, each with a varying number of participants. But this iteration of the war game was the most detailed, the most populated, the least imperfect simulacrum of the worst disaster yet to transpire[1]. And Lewis was one of several dungeon masters, watching the players respond to a preplanned but malleable story. The goal: to see how people handle the unthinkable, and to hear how they may ward off the direst outcomes—all to prepare them for the day that this grim fantasy becomes a reality.

The scripts always change with each game. Sometimes, the detection-to-impact timeline is years; other times, it’s just a few months. The asteroids can be enormous, or Tunguska-size threats. They can impact land, or bodies of water, anywhere on the planet. Whatever the situation, the timeline is compressed and squeezed into a few days, in which players try to handle the many surprises the dungeon masters periodically lob into their gameplay.

CNEOS director Paul Chodas (along with his team) was chiefly responsible for coming up with the rocky dragon’s stats and its Earthbound trajectory. When I spoke with him, he quickly dismissed the dungeon master moniker. “For me, it’s a mathematical problem,” he said. Indeed so. Then again, to be fair, like a dungeon master, his task is to work out how much damage a Demogorgon (an asteroid) can inflict on a mage (us). “Originally, it was an instructive exercise to inform the community, and decision-makers especially, of what we would know if there was an impact scenario—what the uncertainties would be and how our knowledge would evolve over time and the limitations of our knowledge, frankly.”

That aim had not changed over the past few years. But the intensity of the exercises, and the number of people playing, had risen considerably. In February 2022, the games had reached their pedagogic zenith—and much of that was down to the leadership of Lewis, the FEMA representative, someone who never quite believed he was handpicked to do battle with otherworldly forces.

He was a kid when President Kennedy gave his famous 1961 speech[2]—“ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”—and it resonated with young Lewis. Public service seemed appealing. But he also loved things that went really damn fast. “You know, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, all of that crap, that was me, I was all over it,” he told me, every word animated, emphasized, bursting with zeal. And as he emerged into adolescence, his passion was kept alight, aided by the Apollo space program.

“The most powerful weapon my mom got for me was a library card. It was all over after that,” he said. “I was always nerdy, always liked that stuff. Everybody else in my neighborhood went to the basketball court. I got my dad to get me a telescope.” He attended science fairs and launched model rockets. He was teased—but his smarts eventually won him the respect of others.

Being an astronaut, or building rockets for spacers, was his goal. Instead, his career became something more kaleidoscopic. He served twenty years in the US Navy, studying the ways of ship-based surface warfare and ultimately reaching the rank of commander[3]. He retired his commission and was working at the Pentagon in 2001 when the September 11 attacks took place. In 2007, he joined FEMA, taking on multiple high-profile roles at the nation’s disaster coordination agency while working closely with the FBI. He got married, had kids, and after forty-four years of service, he felt he was approaching retirement. Hanging up his cap on Christmas Day, 2023, felt right.

But a few years before his planned retirement, NASA gave Lewis a call and told him he was needed for one last mission: dealing with asteroid impacts. “I was ecstatic!” he told me, laughing. What better contribution to the world, he thought, than helping to protect everyone on it. “It’d be nice to know I contributed something to this place before I check out.”

FEMA normally deals with terrestrial natural disasters—hurricanes, floods, and so forth. Asteroids may be out there in more ways than one, but they are still a type of natural disaster. “It’s another low-probability but extremely high-consequence event. It’s responsible for us to be prepared for it,” said Lewis. And he and his fellow dungeon masters pulled no punches with the 2022 war game: the discovery-to-impact timeline was only six months. It was going to hit America this time, though initially, they weren’t quite sure where the strike would occur.

“In this case, a municipality in the United States actually volunteered to be the impact victim,” he told me: the North Carolinian city of Winston-Salem[4], population 250,000. And for the first time, hundreds of state and local officials—not just mostly federal officials—were involved, dialing in to the Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, from their home state. Isn’t it sort of funny that a city offered to be the victim of a simulated catastrophe? “I’m not sure some of their fellow officials thought it was funny,” Lewis said.

Plenty of the participating local officials and first responders didn’t know what to make of all this. Why would anyone offer up their metropolis as a sacrifice to the astral gods? You would have to ask the guy responsible: August Vernon, the city’s director of emergency management. “I’m not a scientist,” he told me. “I’m a closeted sci-fi geek.” And he was euphoric from the word go. In a manner of speaking, he couldn’t wait for Winston-Salem to be pulverized. It’s true that, early on, his colleagues were either skeptical or outright hostile toward the war game. “Is this a joke? What are we doing this for? What’s next, aliens?” he recalled them asking. It wasn’t a totally unreasonable reaction, considering how many other problems—including the coronavirus pandemic—they were actively addressing. But like Lewis, Vernon considered an impact to be like any other tragedy: everyone thinks the government is overreacting until something awful happens, and then they ask why the government didn’t do more to prevent it.

Every year in Winston-Salem, city and county emergency management officials get together and run various drills. “From school shootings, to cyberattacks, to plane crashes . . . we had done pandemic exercises before COVID,” Vernon said. “We have what’s called an all-hazard approach. The federal government does the same thing.” Big eruptions, earthquakes, hurricanes, chemical plants blowing up—you name it, they’ve rehearsed it. An asteroid impact was the logical next step. And why should they take the Hollywood route? “Whether it’s an asteroid or a Godzilla attack, it doesn’t matter,” he said: it’s always the same major cities getting destroyed. Why should Los Angeles get all the apocalyptic attention? Vernon reached out to Lewis, and the simulated asteroid had its North Carolinian bull’s-eye.

Vernon, a keen observer of past planetary defense role-playing games, wanted to make an important tweak. Previously, the players had been mostly scientists. The real world contains mostly nonscientists. “We didn’t want to do an exercise with just what we call ten-pound brains,” he said. Winston-Salem could be destroyed, but only on the condition that a diverse range of local officials could be players. Lewis and the dungeon masters eagerly agreed.

“It’s the first time in my life I’ve worked with the Applied Physics Lab,” Vernon told me. As excited, though, as he was to work with actual rocket scientists, his local community required a little more convincing. “I had to gently ease them into this,” he said of an incomparably dramatic and terrifying disaster. And on February 23, North Carolina and Maryland tried to stop it happening. The games had begun.

Day zero[5]. America didn’t know what was coming its way, because when the hypothetical asteroid 2022 TTX was discovered by a NASA-funded survey on February 11, 2022, it looked almost harmless.

In this alternate timeline, astronomers from all over the world peeked at its observational data—a dozen sky positions recorded over two nights—posted up on the Minor Planet Center’s bulletin board, and nobody found any reason to be concerned. CNEOS’s Scout ruled out any impact in the next thirty days, so it was passed on to Sentry. It determined that there was no risk to Earth with one exception: six months into the future, on August 16, there was a one-in-2,500 chance of an impact, which is no different from many newly identified NEOs. But, just in case, astronomers kept up their observations of the faint speck as it scooted across the dark, a distant 37 million miles from home. After feeding this observation data to Sentry on February 16, the impact odds rose to 5 percent.

A 5 percent impact probability was somewhat uncomfortable. That the collision might just be half a year away was disturbing. And with just a smattering of observations, nobody knew where it might hit. The range of possibilities covered two-thirds of the entire planet, including the Americas, Europe, Africa, and most of Asia. If it did find Earth, it might land in the ocean. But it might not. And based on how much sunlight it was reflecting, 2022 TTX was roughly 330 feet across—a city killer, for sure. But it was also so faint and distant that astronomers couldn’t quite tell if it was small and very reflective, or big and not that mirror-like. It was possible it could be 100 feet across, a small Tunguska. It could also be 1,000 feet long, a comfortable country crusher.

It’s an unenviable situation to be in. Think of it this way: you are faced with twenty doors, and nineteen of them are safe to open. But one of them, if opened, will free a monster that will devastate a random location on Earth. How confident do you feel that you will open the right door? There was, however, an element of calm at this stage. The asteroid had not yet been observed across enough of its solar orbit for scientists to know its trajectory with precision. “It is not yet possible to predict whether future assessments will indicate the asteroid will miss the Earth or hit, but the chances that the impact will eventually be ruled out are high,” the official report on 2022 TTX noted[6].

At this point during the exercise, a thought popped up: When do you wake up the US president in the middle of the night? This has been shown in movies plenty of times, and it does happen in real life when a huge disaster strikes anywhere on the planet, or when something seismic happens in the geopolitical realm. What would happen with an asteroid impact scenario? What impact odds, and what time-until-impact, would require someone to rush into the second floor bedroom of the White House to prepare the POTUS for a truly rude awakening?

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This is an excerpt from How to Kill an Asteroid by author and Supercluster contributor Robin George Andrews. The new book, a gripping account of the “city-killer” asteroids that could threaten Earth and the race to build a planetary defense system, drops today and can be ordered here.

There are approximately 25,000 “city killer” asteroids in near-Earth orbit—and most are yet to be found. Small enough to evade detection, they are capable of large-scale destruction, and represent our greatest cosmic threat. But in September 2022, against all odds, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission deliberately crashed a spacecraft into a carefully selected city killer, altering the asteroid’s orbit and proving that we stand a chance against them.

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Robin George Andrews is a photographer, public speaker, and experimental volcanologist-turned-science journalist. He regularly writes about space and geosciences for outlets including the New York Times, Atlantic, National Geographic, Scientific American, and Atlas Obscura. He is also the author of Super Volcanoes: What They Reveal about Earth and the Worlds Beyond (Norton, 2021). He lives in London, England.

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NOTES

[1] “2022 Interagency Tabletop Exercise (PD TTX4).” Center for Near Earth Object Studies CNEOS. March 1, 2022. https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/ttx22/.

[2] “ ‘Ask Not What Your Country can Do for Your . . . ’ ” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/education/teachers/curricular-resources/ask-not-what-your-country-can-do-for-you.

[3] “We Are FEMA: Leviticus ‘L.A.’ Lewis.” FEMA, November 10, 2020. https://www.fema.gov/blog/we-are-fema-leviticus-la-lewis.

[4] Wikipedia. “Winston-Salem, North Carolina.” Wikimedia Foundation. Last modified December 1, 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston-Salem,_North_Carolina.

[5] “2022 Interagency Tabletop Exercise.” CNEOS.

[6] “2022 Interagency Tabletop Exercise.” CNEOS.

Polaris Dawn is Home After Mission to Advance Human Spaceflight

2024-09-17T21:00:00.000Z

The Polaris Dawn mission set new benchmarks in human spaceflight.

Achieving unprecedented feats, it reached the highest orbit since the Apollo program, tested Starlink's laser-based communication system, conducted advanced scientific research, and, most notably, carried out a spacewalk — the first ever by commercial astronauts using privately developed spacesuits.

Launched on September 10th, 2024, Polaris Dawn stands as the most ambitious private spaceflight to date. The mission was crewed by four: Commander Jared Isaacman, founder of Shift4 Payments and a key sponsor of the mission; Pilot Kidd Poteet, a former Air Force pilot; and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, marking the first time SpaceX employees have flown into orbit.

The Spacewalk

As the primary objective of the mission, preparations for the spacewalk began immediately after the crew reached orbit. They underwent a pre-breathing process over two days, during which the cabin pressure inside the Dragon spacecraft was gradually reduced from 100 kPa (14.5 psia) to 59.64 kPa (8.65 psia) — similar to the pressure at Mt. Everest Base Camp — while the oxygen proportion in the atmosphere was increased. This process aimed to purge nitrogen from the crew's blood to prevent decompression sickness, also known as "the bends." During this period, Dragon ascended to an altitude of 1408.1 kilometers (875 miles), passing through the South Atlantic Anomaly, an area of the Earth’s inner Van Allen radiation belt. This ascent set a record as the first crew to venture that far into space since the Apollo Program. Notably, Anna and Sarah became the first women to reach such an altitude. During this orbit, they were exposed to significantly higher radiation levels than those experienced by astronauts at the ISS; hundreds or thousands of times greater than those on Earth.

On the day of the spacewalk, September 12th, Dragon reduced its orbit to 737 kilometers (approximately 458 miles), about 322 kilometers (200 miles) higher than the typical orbit for NASA’s ISS spacewalks. During the final stages of pre-breathing, the astronauts breathe 100% oxygen and donned their spacesuits. Inspired by the intravehicular activity (IVA) suits, worn by the astronauts during previous Dragon missions, these spacesuits were specially designed by SpaceX for extravehicular activity (EVA), all geared toward ensuring astronaut safety. It incorporated new materials and added joints to enhance mobility, thermal protections to withstand the extreme temperatures of space, a new helmet design featuring a visor coated with copper indium tin-oxide to protect against solar glare, and a heads-up display. They are connected to a tether which not only kept the astronauts physically connected to the spacecraft but also provided oxygen, power, and the communications links.

A series of system and leak checks later, the Dragon spacecraft began venting its remaining atmosphere, exposing all four astronauts to the vacuum of space. Only Jared and Sarah (designated EVA1 and EVA2, respectively) were designated to step outside the spacecraft while Kidd and Anna (Support1 and Support2) stood by to assist as needed. After achieving vacuum, Jared manually opened the hatch above him and emerged from the Crew Dragon spacecraft, pausing momentarily at the threshold of space to look back at Earth, marking a historic first for commercial spaceflight.

"Back at home, we all have a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world," he said.

The astronauts were outside of Dragon for about 30 minutes. During this time, Jared and Sarah performed a series of mobility checks to test the effectiveness of the EVA suits while being tethered to the spacecraft. They were supported by a scaffold, aptly named Skywalker, which helped secure them in place. This setup allowed them to conduct trials of hand and body control as well as vertical movements, while Skywalker held their feet for safety reasons.

Spacewalks are inherently risky, as it involves the spacesuit acting as a mini-spacecraft, tasked with shielding the astronaut from the harsh conditions of space while providing sufficient mobility. The very first spacewalk was performed by Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov during the Voskhod 2 mission on March 18, 1965. His spacewalk, though groundbreaking, lasted only 12 minutes and 9 seconds and was fraught with perilous challenges. Leonov floated from the spacecraft, tethered for safety, but his suit ballooned in the vacuum of space, severely restricting his movement. Additionally, the suit lacked effective thermal control systems, causing his internal temperature to rise by 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit), pushing him to the brink of heatstroke. Leonov later described sloshing in sweat inside his suit. The suit became so inflated due to the vacuum that he struggled to re-enter the Voskhod’s airlock and had to bleed off some air from his suit, risking decompression sickness.

Just a few months later, on June 3, 1965, Ed White performed the first American spacewalk during the Gemini IV mission and encountered similar issues with his spacesuit’s thermal management and humidity control, to the extent that his visor fogged up.

Additionally, a hatch mechanism problem on the Gemini spacecraft posed challenges in opening and closing the hatch.

These pioneering spacewalks taught invaluable lessons that led to significant advancements in astronaut training, communication, and spacesuit design. This evolution enabled NASA to conduct extensive 6+ hour EVAs for servicing the ISS. While the Polaris mission's venture into space echoed the feats of the Soviet Union and the United States during the mid-1960s space race, it marked a significant milestone. The spacesuits used were commercially designed, costing a fraction of those developed by governments with mighty resources. SpaceX emphasizes that these are version 1.0 of the suits, as they envision one day to enable a broader population to walk in space, on the Moon and Mars, heralding a new era in human space exploration.

Starlink’s Laser Communications

Traditionally, the International Space Station (ISS), Dragon, and all US spacecraft have relied on the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) for communication with mission control on Earth. This system comprises 10 satellites positioned in geosynchronous orbit, over 35,000 kilometers (21,747 miles) above Earth's surface. However, TDRSS is aging, with limitations on bandwidth and capacity, and is costly to maintain.

In contrast to the geosynchronous satellite systems, Starlink's laser-based communications network comprises hundreds of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), providing broader coverage along with faster and higher bandwidth transmissions. Typically designed for terrestrial use, the network was adapted for the Polaris Dawn mission through a system known as "Plug and Plaser" housed in the trunk of the Crew Dragon. This enabled seamless communication with the Starlink satellites, complemented by a router installed within the Dragon’s cabin.

Access to Starlink’s high bandwidth services allowed the Polaris Dawn crew to access high-speed, low-latency internet while in orbit, a significant technological leap forward. For the first time, astronauts could Facetime their family members directly from space. Adding a cultural dimension to the mission, Sarah performed the first violin concert in space. As a classically trained violinist, she played “Rey’s Theme” from Star Wars: The Force Awakens by John Williams. It was not only symbolic but also a technical demonstration, as her performance was recorded and transmitted back to Earth via Starlink.

“It was so special to have a violin up here and just kind of a traditional wooden instrument floating in a very modern spacecraft,” said Sarah Gillis on Everyday Astronaut’s Spacewalk Podcast.

To make this happen, the violin underwent extensive testing to verify if it could withstand the extreme conditions of space. This involved a rigorous qualification process where the violin was placed in a vacuum chamber to determine what substances might off-gas from it, which could potentially contaminate the Dragon’s atmosphere. This certification process was not straightforward but was crucial to ensuring the safety and functionality of the instrument in a zero-gravity environment.

“We faced a lot of challenges,” said Sarah Gillis regarding her violin’s certification process. She added, “We had a flight unit that we put through a full [testing] cycle as well that actually failed at two high temperatures [test].”

SpaceX was able to certify the violin for flight and it performed flawlessly during the mission. The violin performance was part of a broader initiative named “Harmony of Resilience,” synchronized with orchestra bands all around the world. It symbolized unity, hope, and resilience, particularly aimed at inspiring children while fundraising for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and El Sistema USA, a music education program.

Scientific Research and Returning to Earth

The unique mission parameters of Polaris Dawn facilitated crucial research in collaboration with NASA, the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH), and various research laboratories and universities. Flying at altitudes exceeding 1400 kilometers, the crew was exposed to higher levels of radiation compared to those experienced at the ISS. This presented a unique opportunity to study the effects of increased space radiation on human biological systems.

One of the focal points of the mission's research was the use of smart-contact lenses to monitor intraocular pressure and cornea dimensions, helping to investigate the effects of Space Associated Neuro-Ocular Syndrome (SANS). SANS comprises a series of health conditions affecting astronauts’ eyes and brains during and after prolonged space missions. The crew had also undergone MRI scans before the flight and the researchers aim to compare these scans with the ones which will be taken after the flight to study changes in the crew’s brains, caused by long-term exposure to space conditions.

Wrapping up their research on day five, the Polaris Dawn crew prepared for their return to Earth. Due to continuously unfavorable weather at the usual landing sites, which had already caused a two-week launch delay, a new splashdown site off the coast of Dry Tortugas, Florida, was selected.

Dragon successfully re-entered Earth's atmosphere and safely splashed down at the intended site, culminating this historic mission.

"We are mission complete," Jared said after the spacecraft landed. Photos of the crew's return and exit from the Dragon spacecraft were captured by the mission's official photographer, our friend John Kraus.

Polaris Dawn is the first of three missions pioneered by Jared Isaacman and SpaceX aimed at advancing human spaceflight technologies necessary for long-duration, deep-space missions while also raising funds and awareness for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Named after the Polaris Constellation, more commonly known as the North Star, which has served as a guiding light throughout human history for global navigation, this initiative underscores a significant era in space exploration.

The final flight of the Polaris program will culminate with one of the first crewed spaceflight missions of SpaceX’s Starship, which will set the stage for humans to return to the moon and push forward to Mars.

We Visited NASA's Mars-Bound ESCAPADE Probes

2024-09-10T19:00:00.000Z

We recently had the opportunity to visit Rocket Lab’s headquarters in Long Beach, CA to get a first-hand look at the ESCAPADE spacecraft in its final stage of preparation before being shipped to Cape Canaveral FL, and then to Mars.

NASA's ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) mission, with its two twin spacecraft, represents a significant step in space exploration. These satellites are designed to study Mars’ atmosphere and space weather, which could provide crucial insights into the planet's climatic history and its potential for future human exploration.

Our tour was led by Christophe Mandy, Rocket Lab’s Lead Systems Engineer for the ESCAPADE mission. His enthusiasm was infectious as he spoke with a blend of pride and professionalism about the ESCAPADE project. The stakes are high for the mission: NASA says that over billions of years, a relentless flow of particles from the Sun - solar wind - has slowly stripped away the Martian atmosphere, causing surface water to evaporate. The agency wants to find out exactly how this happened and will further interrogate if Mars was once a habitable world.

Excitement grew as we were informed we’d be entering the cleanroom, (an event not listed on the itinerary for the day.) As we waited, Christophe began by introducing us to the ESCAPADE spacecraft – affectionately named Blue and Gold – and pointed out various features of the satellites, explaining how each piece would contribute to the mission's success. These twin spacecraft are not just identical in appearance but also in their mission objectives. I could see the careful arrangement of scientific instruments and the meticulous attention to detail that had gone into every component.

The cleanroom experience is always a vivid illustration of the dedication and expertise that underpins a mission of this magnitude. As I suited up and walked through the cleanroom doors, the atmosphere was charged with a quiet intensity. Engineers and technicians moved methodically around the spacecraft, each person immersed in their tasks with the kind of concentrated attention that comes from working on something as significant as a Martian orbiter.

Standing beside the spacecraft themselves, I could see the advanced instruments designed to capture and analyze the data. The level of sophistication was impressive. What made this mission so intriguing was the innovative approach these spacecraft would take to unravel the mysteries of Mars. Christophe detailed that “half the science mission is in the same orbit so the two spacecraft are following each other.” This synchronization is designed to allow them to “measure the phenomenon over the same spot at different times.” Imagine having two sets of eyes peering at the same Martian landscape but at different moments—this is how ESCAPADE aims to observe changes over time at a single location on the Red Planet.

The other half of the ESCAPADE mission involves a different but equally fascinating strategy. Once in orbit, the spacecraft will separate into distinct paths. Christophe elaborated, “This phase is equally critical, as it allows ESCAPADE to measure the same phenomena simultaneously but from different locations.” This dual-orbit strategy is like having a pair of binoculars that can view the same object from multiple perspectives.

By observing Mars’ magnetosphere from different vantage points, the spacecraft aim to provide a comprehensive picture of how solar wind interacts with the planet’s magnetic environment.

Each of the twin spacecraft carries a suite of advanced tools, including high-resolution imaging spectrometers, which will capture detailed data on atmospheric composition and density. The instruments also feature an ultraviolet (UV) spectrometer for analyzing the planet’s upper atmosphere and a magnetometer to measure magnetic fields. Additionally, the spacecraft are outfitted with sensors to monitor the solar wind’s interaction with Mars’ atmosphere.

This mission was originally set to launch aboard the inaugural flight of the New Glenn rocket in October of 2024 but the plan has been adjusted to fly ESCAPADE on another New Glenn rocket in in Spring of 2025. "The decision was made to avoid significant cost, schedule and technical challenges associated with potentially removing fuel from the spacecraft in the event of a launch delay, which could be caused by a number of factors," said NASA.

Basically, New Glenn wasn't going to be ready in time to meet the tight launch window, especially due to it being the very first flight of the rocket. The success of this launch, whenever it happens, could cement Blue Origin's position in the space industry, showcasing its ability to handle complex missions and contributing valuable data to our understanding of Mars.

As I left Rocket Lab’s headquarters, my mind buzzed with excitement about the upcoming mission and the incredible potential it holds. The meticulous preparation of the Blue and Gold spacecraft and their innovative dual-orbit strategy left me in awe of the strides we are making in understanding our neighboring planet. The data these spacecraft will gather could not only revolutionize our knowledge of Mars but also pave the way for a permanent human presence on the planet.

NASA Canceled VIPER—That’s a Good Thing

2024-09-03T21:00:00.000Z

Last month, NASA canceled the VIPER mission to the lunar surface.

The rover would have searched for ice and other resources on the moon, but without a last-minute rescue by private dollars, is likely to be dismembered for parts, or crated for warehouse storage. This is, in a sense, the second time NASA has canceled VIPER. The mission can trace its lineage to an earlier mission called Resource Prospector, which NASA spent about $100 million on, and which was also eventually terminated.

VIPER’s cancellation is bad for lunar science, but good for NASA. Especially in a constrained budget environment, NASA should be willing to cancel more missions, sooner.

In 2019, when then-NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced VIPER at the 70th International Astronautical Congress, its cost was $250 million—a pretty good deal for a moon rover (if you ignore the hundred million already spent). Less than a year later, the agency signed a $200 million contract with Astrobotic to set VIPER on the moon using the company’s Griffin lander. VIPER had not yet finalized its design when NASA signed the paperwork, but that’s OK, because Astrobotic had never landed on the moon. At the time, NASA officials accepted a 50% success rate for such landings.

This harkened back to the initial promise of NASA’s Faster-Better-Cheaper era in the 1990s, when the agency commenced a series high-risk, high-reward missions intended to ramp up its launch cadence of robotic spacecraft. Its highest profile successes were Mars Pathfinder and the Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission. Its biggest failures—and what would eventually doom the program—were the Mars 99 missions, one of which made a new crater on Mars, and the other a lovely shooting star in the Martian sky.

For poor VIPER, right away, there were problems. In 2022, an inspector general report criticized NASA for lacking “full visibility into the risks and their potential costs to the VIPER mission.” Before the rover’s preliminary design review in August 2020, Astrobotic warned NASA about the risk of “excessive vibration” between Griffin and VIPER during launch. This would necessitate either a change in VIPER’s design, or a change in Griffin’s design.

NASA paid Astrobotic an extra $27 million to change Griffin’s design.

In March 2021, NASA announced a new total price for the mission: $430 million—not including lander. COVID’s contribution to the price at the time was $16.3 million (though it's fair to say the global lockdowns and resultant manufacturing headaches would contribute to many of the subsequent problems the VIPER team later encountered).

In any event, six months later, the VIPER rover was 15 kilograms over its mass margin, necessitating further changes in the Griffin lander. Concurrently, NASA seemed to get a little nervous about Astrobotic’s progress, and installed an overseer at the company’s facility. In all, this cost $9 million, and represented an agency unable to accept a 50-50 success rate on a now-much-pricier moon mission.

Development continued. The VIPER team faced “vendor delivery issues and supply chain concerns,” according to a report by the GAO. “Key hardware deliverables” were a year and a half late, and some hardware “required remediations” that ate VIPER’s budget.

NASA soon delayed VIPER’s launch to November 2024. A 2024 GAO report explained that the agency wanted Astrobotic to do more testing on the Griffin lander’s propulsion system. But it seems like there’s blame to go all around: if NASA had not requested a delay for further lander testing, it is unclear how VIPER possibly would have been ready for launch in 2023. (It’s still not ready, after all.) Regardless, this added $91 million to the price of the lander, and another $75 million to the rover.

In that same report, the GAO reported that the project was on track to exhaust its total funding by July 2024. That seems to have come to pass, and NASA announced on July 17 that it had canceled the VIPER mission. According to NASA Headquarters, if not for cancelation, the total anticipated cost of VIPER would have been $609.6 million—not counting the now $323 million lander—for a September 2025 launch at the soonest. (That’s the earliest Astrobotic’s Griffin lander will be ready.)

The cancelation, says NASA, will save the agency $84 million. (It will continue the testing phase of the rover through thermal vacuum testing in October.) As for Astrobotic, the Griffin lander will now carry dead weight to the moon in place of VIPER, and the lander mission will be considered a technology demonstrator. Earlier this year, its previous lander, called Peregrine, failed to land on the moon.

Response to NASA’s announcement has been largely negative, but also disingenuous (or at least, confused). More than one critic has prefixed the word “only” to the $84 million that NASA will save.

This is symptomatic of a space science community gone mad with entitlement.

Moreover, it is misleading to say the rover was “completely built,” and only a “few final tests” remain. Those tests aren’t formalities; they can and do turn up real issues with the spacecraft, and in general, a project's highest financial burn rate is during the integration and testing phase. Already, the project had reduced its subsystem tests to maintain its launch schedule. It is unclear if the estimated $84 million accounted for inevitable issues.

However, if indeed engineers had managed to build a perfect rover, ready to fly, the total mission cost would still be $609.6 million—a $100 million more than anticipated, after its price had already doubled—on a mission promised initially for $250 million, and based on a mission that had already cost $100 million in development. The scandal isn’t that NASA canceled the mission. The scandal is that NASA waited this long.

Building a moon rover is hard, and COVID dealt VIPER’s engineers some really bad hands. But NASA isn’t sitting on an ocean of money right now, and there has to be a line beyond which another dollar spent is a dollar too much. It is actually promising that NASA has not fallen prey to the sunk-cost fallacy. Earlier this summer, the agency likewise demonstrated some sense of fiscal resolve when it backed off its Mars Sample Return strategy, which was looking suddenly like an $11 billion mission sequence that wouldn’t see results until the 2040s.

The agency is responding to the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, a debt ceiling agreement passed by Congress and signed into law last year by President Biden. Under the act, non-defense agencies saw spending capped in 2024 and 2025. NASA actually fared well compared to other offices of the federal government, but flat budgets mean there is no more money. (One could look holistically at NASA’s overall budget and find a lot of wasteful spending in human spaceflight, but there is an unofficial firewall between it and science; canceling SLS would not yield fortunes for robotic exploration.)

Absent Congress giving NASA additional money to complete the rover (on top of its current appropriation), other missions, and future missions, would have to suffer. Already, budget overruns on approved missions pushed the next competition for the medium-class New Frontiers program to 2026.

VIPER is not the only mission that has gone over budget. Most notably of late, Dragonfly, an $850 million mission to Titan, Saturn’s ocean moon, stands at $3.35 billion and counting. Would it have been approved at that price? Not a chance. The Dragonfly team has a list of excellent reasons why the mission’s price has risen, including COVID and budgetary games by NASA Headquarters, and one can argue that it’s still a bargain. I wouldn’t disagree. We are indebted to the past for its investment in fundamental science; our continued investment is what we owe the future. But I wasn’t on the proposal team for CAESAR, the runner-up for the 2019 New Frontiers selection. Dragonfly’s overruns mean two fewer New Frontiers missions will fly in our lifetime.

There is still hope for VIPER. Intuitive Machines, the Texas-based spaceflight company that successfully landed on the moon earlier this year, has expressed interest in resurrecting the rover. “Our position there is that VIPER science is important to lunar scientists and the future of the Artemis program, and it’s very important in terms of prospecting for volatiles and entrained water ice in the soil,” said Steve Altemus, the company’s CEO, according to SpaceNews. If that is the case, it is proof that NASA’s cancellation of the mission was a good decision. The mission will still fly, without other missions incurring the cost. If Intuitive Machines doesn’t fly the mission, NASA will still have made the right call. Egregious budget overruns hurt space science as much as egregious budget cuts. Let’s hope NASA is just getting started.

Astronauts Will Return Home on Dragon After Starliner Mission Fails

2024-08-27T19:00:00.000Z

Plagued by a series of issues with its propulsion system, Boeing's Starliner had raised serious concerns within NASA about its ability to safely return astronauts to Earth.

After months of rigorous testing, comprehensive data reviews, and thorough deliberations, the agency has decided to rely on SpaceX's Crew Dragon to bring veteran astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore back home as part of the upcoming Crew-9 mission. Williams and Wilmore will continue their work aboard the ISS as part of Expedition 71-72 before their scheduled return on Crew Dragon in February 2025.

“Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest and even at its most routine, and a test flight is neither safe nor routine. So the decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring the Starliner home uncrewed is the result of a commitment to safety,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson during the Starliner update press conference on Saturday, August 24.

The decision to have astronauts return on Dragon instead of Starliner marks one of the most pivotal choices in NASA's human spaceflight history. The choice was unanimous among the agency's senior officials and was officially recommended by the Commercial Crew Program. Nelson emphasized that the difficult lessons learned from the Challenger and Columbia tragedies played a significant role in reaching this conclusion.

“We have had mistakes done in the past, we lost 2 space shuttles as a result of not being a culture in which new information can come forward,” said Nelson.

NASA Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore were launched aboard Boeing’s Starliner on June 5, 2024, as a part of the test flight intended to certify the spacecraft for future operational missions. Starliner’s flight was originally scheduled for nine days but its return to Earth was being repeatedly delayed by NASA as the agency meticulously reviewed data from the propulsion system to ensure the spacecraft could support safe undocking and return operations. Prior to launch, NASA was already aware of a helium leak in Starliner’s service module. However, since it was within acceptable safety constraints at the time, Boeing was given the green light to proceed.

During Starliner’s rendezvous maneuver with the International Space Station (ISS), additional helium leaks were detected in the service module. Compounding the issues, Starliner’s first docking attempt was aborted after 5 of its 28 maneuvering thrusters malfunctioned.

NASA and Boeing engineers were able to restore functionality to four of the five malfunctioning thrusters, allowing the spacecraft to dock with the ISS.

Despite the docking success, concerns remained about Starliner’s ability to safely return the crew to Earth due to the ongoing propulsion system issues. To address these concerns, NASA and Boeing conducted ground tests at the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico. These tests involved firing the engines under conditions similar to those experienced during Starliner’s approach to the ISS, as well as simulating the conditions expected during undocking and the de-orbit burn.

The testing wasn’t limited to the ground. On July 27th, NASA and Boeing performed a hot-fire test of Starliner’s reaction control system jets while it was docked to the ISS. This test involved firing 27 of the spacecraft’s thrusters in short bursts, one at a time, to collect data on their performance and assess the helium leak.

The tests revealed that the valves were operating beyond their intended temperature limits, causing the Teflon-based seals to swell and restrict the flow of oxidizer to the thrusters. This behavior had not been observed by Aerojet during the development and testing phases of the propulsion system, adding a layer of complexity to the challenges faced by the Starliner program.

"I would say the White Sands testing did give us a surprise," NASA Commercial Crew Program Manager, Steve Stitch said in the press conference. "It was this piece of Teflon that swells up and got in the flow path and causes the oxidizer to not go into the thruster the way it needs to. That's what caused the degradation of thrust. When we saw that, I think that's when things changed a bit for us."

Boeing's Starliner teams may have a preliminary understanding of the thruster issue, but the uncertainty with thrusters’ performance outweighed the accepted risk for a crewed return, as Stitch said, “As we got more and more data over the summer and understood the uncertainty of that data, it become very clear to us that the best course of action was to return Starliner uncrewed.”

“There was just too much uncertainty in the performance of the Starliner thrusters. If they had a better model for the thruster performance, we would’ve taken a different course of action,” he said.

What’s Next?

NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is a fixed-price contract, meaning the contractors are only paid when they achieve a set milestone and have to foot the bill for any failures. Boeing is already in a $1.6 billion deficit over delays and cost overruns on the Starliner program. It was just a decade ago when NASA announced that Boeing, one of the agency's most experienced contractors, won the lion's share of money available to end America's reliance on Russia to ferry its astronauts to low-Earth orbit.

At the time, Boeing won $4.2 billion from NASA to complete development of the Starliner spacecraft and fly a minimum of two, and potentially up to six, operational crew flights to rotate crews between Earth and the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX won a $2.6 billion contract for essentially the same scope of work. Now, the Starliner program finds itself at a crossroads after Boeing learned it will not complete the spacecraft's first Crew Flight Test with astronauts onboard.

Administrator Nelson said that he received assurances from Boeing’s new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, that the company remains committed to flying astronauts to the ISS under the commercial crew program. Boeing will now work with NASA to prepare the Starliner spacecraft for an uncrewed return to Earth which will begin with undocking autonomously from the ISS. Between Starliner's departure and the arrival of Crew-9, Dragon Endeavour, currently docked to the ISS for the Crew-8 mission, will serve as a lifeboat for Suni and Butch in an emergency situation.

NASA Astronauts Zena Cardman, Nick Hague, Stephanie Wilson, and Russian Cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov were initially assigned to fly on Crew-9. However, to accommodate the return of Wilmore and Williams, Dragon will launch with only two astronauts, leaving two seats unoccupied. NASA has yet to decide which two astronauts will command and pilot the Dragon. SpaceX will modify two of the seats to fit Suni and Butch's specifications, as each seat is custom-tailored for the specific astronaut flying on it. Crew-9 will also carry SpaceX’s IVA suits for Starliner's former crew, which they will don during their return to Earth.

Upon Crew-9’s arrival at the ISS, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will officially join the Crew-9 team and remain on the ISS, continuing their research and maintenance duties during their extended stay.

For Starliner to fly again, Boeing will need to collaborate with Aerojet and other subcontractors to fully understand the issues with the valves, potentially redesign certain components of Starliner’s propulsion system, and rigorously prove the spacecraft in a comprehensive testing campaign. NASA officials have stated that it is currently too early to determine whether Boeing will be required to conduct another test flight of Starliner, or if the spacecraft could be certified for operational service once the critical issues are resolved.

With a minimum six-month rotation between SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner, it’s highly likely that Starliner won’t carry astronauts again until at least 2026. Even then, given the ISS is scheduled to be retired in 2030, there may not be enough time left for Starliner to complete all six of its contracted missions, which were originally intended to be flown once per year.

The Great Star Heist and the Race to Outrun Dark Energy

2024-08-20T19:00:00.000Z

In the battle to survive the deep future, only life that can outrun dark energy will triumph.

We should count ourselves fortunate. Today, we live in what astronomers Greg Laughlin and Fred Adams called, in their 1999 book The Five Ages of the Universe, the Stelliferous Era. It’s a period in which the Universe is ablaze with the light of stars collected into galaxies. More stars are being born all the time, even as other stars perish, giving their heavy elements back to the cosmos with which it can build new stars, planets and life. Large galaxies can contain hundreds of billions of stars, and there’s an estimated two trillion galaxies in the visible universe alone.

Nothing lasts forever though. Eventually, in a 100 trillion or so years’ time, the Universe will have exhausted all of its star-forming material. The last star will be born, and from thereon the Universe will face a slow death as gradually each and every star burns out. The Universe will go dark – well it would, if a darkness had not already descended upon it. Long before the last star is born, life in the Universe will already be in deep trouble. And life’s enemy will be dark energy.

The energy of the Big Bang, 13.77 billion years ago, spurred the Universe into action, pushing it to expand. Astronomers figured that this expansion would have begun running out of oomph by now, and should have started slowing down. When, in the late 1990s, astronomers found that the expansion was speeding up instead, the shock to cosmology was palpable. A mysterious force called dark energy was ascribed to this accelerated expansion. Nobody knows what dark energy is exactly, but the name seems to fit.

Our best model describes it as the ‘cosmological constant’. Back before we knew the Universe was expanding, Einstein’s equations implied that the Universe should be changing with time, so he dreamed up the concept of the cosmological constant that would counteract gravity and maintain the cosmos in a steady state. When Edwin Hubble discovered in 1929 that the Universe is expanding, Einstein jettisoned his cosmological constant, calling it is his “biggest blunder.”

With the discovery of dark energy, scientists revisited Einstein’s old idea, twisted it around a bit and applied it to the accelerated expansion. It’s kind of a latent energy associated with space, though the details are all hand-wavy right now. The point is, the more that space expands the more space there is, and the more space there is the more dark energy there is, which expands space even more, and so on and so forth. In a Universe governed by the cosmological constant, expansion of space ultimately becomes exponential.

The Distant Horizon

In a finite Universe, light has only had a fixed amount of time to travel across space. There are galaxies so far away that their light just hasn’t had time to reach us yet. This marks the cosmic horizon, which is currently set about 46.4 billion light years away in real terms and is still growing with cosmic expansion.

Yet, while time is working to enlarge the horizon and reveal more distant galaxies, dark energy is working against it, dragging those galaxies, and every other galaxy that is not gravitationally bound to our Milky Way Galaxy, away from us. Oxford’s Toby Ord, in his 2021 paper The Edges of Our Universe, calculated that there’s a practical maximum size to the cosmic horizon. If a photon was released close in time to the Big Bang, the farthest galaxy it could reach is 62.9 billion light years away. After that, dark energy would have pulled any more distant galaxies so far away that the photon would not be able to reach them. For photons setting off now, that distance is even shorter – for a photon setting off from Earth right now, the most distant galaxy it could reach before dark energy pulls everything too far apart is 16.5 billion light years away. Ord describes a spherical volume of this radius, centered on Earth, as the ‘affectable universe’ – everything beyond cannot be causally affected by events happening in the cosmos today.

In about 100–150 billion years time every galaxy to which we are not strongly gravitationally bound will have been pulled away over the horizon. All that will be left will be our Local Group of galaxies – the Milky Way and Andromeda would have long since merged with each other and perhaps also with the Triangulum Galaxy and the few dozen smaller dwarf galaxies that are our neighbors. Beyond this super-galaxy the observable Universe, once illuminated by trillions of galaxies, will be dark. Everything else will have receded out of sight.

Building the Fortress Galaxy

It’s against this backdrop of runaway cosmic expansion that life must find a way to survive.

Life needs energy, and stars are the Universe’s power stations. Without the stars, life will struggle to survive into the deep future, but dark energy is intent on stealing the stars from us. It’s incumbent upon life to take the stars back.

This audacious idea forms the basis of a 2017 paper from Fermilab astrophysicist Dan Hooper, brilliantly titled Life Versus Dark Energy.

“There will be a point somewhere between roughly this era and 100–150 billion years into the future where a civilization will look up into the sky and notice that everything is moving away from us, and they are going to have to think about what they are going to do about it,” Hooper tells Supercluster. “And if they have the technological means to do it, then they will send out their emissaries to try and grab everything they can before it disappears.”

It would be the great star heist. Billions, perhaps trillions of stars could be stolen from their galaxies and moved physically through space back to the core of civilisation. There, they would form a dense concentration of stars that can not only power life into the deepest future, but whose combined gravity can also rebuff the divisive influence of dark energy. As the cosmos around this core of civilization is ripped away from us to disappear into the night, a line will have been drawn. The super-galaxy that our Local Group merges into will become a new haven, a ‘Fortress Galaxy’ whose gravitational ties will be like armor, warding off the expansion.

“The more you gravitationally bind it as tightly as possible, the more that matter can resist the effects of dark energy,” says Hooper.

Stealing the Stars

So, first things first. How exactly do you move a star?

Hooper admits to being vague about how this could be accomplished.

“It’s difficult to imagine what technology would likely look like for these hyper technologically advanced civilizations,” he admits. “What I think we can say is that whatever is possible within the confines of the laws of physics, I’m going to imagine that eventually we’ll find a way to do that.”

Key to this is using the energy of a star itself, either its radiative power or even its mass energy.

“Does a star produce enough energy to get that star moving?” asks Hooper rhetorically. “In some cases the answer is yes, you can outrun the horizon with the energy that a star produces.”

There’s a few plausible ways to move stars, and they all belong to a class of technology known as ‘stellar engines’. One is a Shkadov thruster, named after the Soviet scientist Leonid Shkadov who first came up with the idea in 1987. He proposed that a civilization could build a huge, hemispherical screen that sits to one side of the star. This screen would be enormous, a megastructure as wide on its long axis as the star itself, and it would reflect stellar radiation back towards the star only on that side, so that stellar radiation only escapes into space on the other side of the star. This would result in an asymmetrical force that pushes the star in the direction of the screen. In other words, the star becomes a thruster. And because the screen is perfectly balanced between the stellar radiation trying to push it away and gravity holding onto it, it can remain stable over long time scales.

The only trouble is that Shkadov thrusters are slow. After a billion years, a Shkadov thruster would have moved a Sun-like star about 34,000 light years, which is fine if stars are just being rearranged in a galaxy, but too sluggish if we’re trying to bring them in from tens, perhaps hundreds of millions of light years away. So we need to find a faster way.

That faster way could be a ‘star tug’, which was devised by Alexander Svoronos of Yale University in 2020. A star tug consists of a megastructure that mines material from the star, converting it into propellant to produce thrust. Because the megastructure and star are gravitationally bound, it ‘tugs’ the star along with it. Svoronos reckons that, in ideal conditions, a Sun-like star can be accelerated to about a quarter of the speed of light within a timescale of a few million years.

Hooper proposes that the best stars with which to build the Fortress Galaxy are those with masses between that of the Sun and a fifth of the Sun’s mass. For one thing, these smaller stars are commonplace; surveys show that three-quarters of all stars are small red dwarfs, so there will be many more of this type of star available. Their lower mass makes them, in principle, easier to move. And lower mass stars live longer lives; red dwarfs with less than a quarter of our Sun’s mass can be expected to survive for up to 100 trillion years, thanks to how they are able to access their full store of hydrogen, unlike more massive stars, and burn it more slowly without having to resist gravity trying to collapse them as strongly as in massive stars, which in some cases only live a few million years before going supernova.

As long as the stars survive, the Fortress Galaxy will survive.

Yet a star tug eats away at a star’s mass, consuming it for fuel, so this method might not work for low-mass stars as they don’t have enough mass to power a long intergalactic journey. So we’d need another plan for them. A star tug could work for higher-mass stars though. The stellar engine would whittle them down, perhaps to the point of them having the mass of a red dwarf. Then we wouldn’t just be transporting stars, we’d be engineering them too.

Maybe a technologically advanced civilization would also want to build their own new stars, using a Bussard ramscoop to sweep up hydrogen, concentrating it into a cloud that can be forced to collapse and give birth to new stars that are optimized for maximum energy extraction.

Star Wars

So far, we’ve talked vaguely about a future civilization. Perhaps that will be us, if we can survive our dangerous youth. Or maybe it will be someone else, and just maybe, they have already begun the work. Hooper suggests that if there is an alien civilization already out there stealing the stars, we might find spectroscopic evidence for it in the form of galaxies that have a spectrum where the redder light from the cooler, less massive stars is absent, leaving only more massive starlight in the spectrum. Since massive stars don’t have long lifetimes on cosmological scales, they may have gone too. There have actually been cases of galaxies that have been found to be almost devoid of stars and made up almost entirely of dark matter and gas. Astronomers call them ‘low surface brightness’ galaxies. One standout case is a galaxy catalogued as J0613+52, which is located 270 million light years away and which has no visible stars – it is only detectable by the radio emission from the hydrogen gas that fills the galaxy. The likelihood is that J0613+52 and other low surface brightness galaxies exist because of some quirk of physics preventing them from forming stars – J0613+52 contains huge amounts of gas that has gone unused. However, a galaxy that has had its stars stolen would look like a low surface brightness galaxy.

If we are alone in the Universe, then the objective is clear: we build the Fortress Galaxy for ourselves. If we’re not alone in the Universe, things become more complicated because different civilizations, even if they exist in different galaxies, would be competing over the same stars. One could imagine interstellar, or even intergalactic, wars as civilizations fight over the stars themselves. Any civilizations that can’t keep up with the mad star rush would risk falling by the wayside.

One would hope that calmer, more altruistic minds would prevail. Thus far, we have found no evidence of extraterrestrial life. Alien civilizations might be incredibly rare, less than one per galaxy. Once dark energy carries them away from us, beyond the cosmic horizon, then they’ll be gone for good and we would all be alone, at the mercy of a cold and dark cosmos. It would be better for civilizations to team up, to preserve what life they find in the cosmos across many galaxies, and bring ourselves all together at the hub of civilization that would be the Fortress Galaxy. It would be the biggest act of altruism, cooperation and engineering that the Universe would ever see, a project in which life itself would seek to defend itself against the unyielding expansion.

Time is Running Out

While there’s still plenty of time left on human timescales, waiting even a billion or two years to begin this endeavour might by too late, especially if someone else takes the initiative before us.

“In the best case scenario we start doing this right away and we can get everything out to 50 mega-parsecs (about 163 million light years) transported, cosmologically speaking, to our local neighborhood,” says Hooper. “But the longer we wait, the more of this stuff will be unretrievable.”

For example, in 100 billion years the effective cosmic horizon will be where galaxies that are just 15 mega-parsecs (about 50 million light years) from us are now.

Bye-bye Virgo Cluster.

We could take advantage of Toby Ord’s ‘affectable universe’. Why spend time going out to fetch the stars back, if there is other life out there who might want to join us in the Fortress Galaxy endeavour and bring the stars to us? We could signal such vast distances by imprinting messages onto supernova light, encoding a call to arms in absorption lines in the spectra of supernovae. While being at the far edge of this affectable universe, 16.5 billion light years away, would not allow enough time for other beings to reach us, we could still call out to a wider area than if we were having to physically travel out there and bring the stars back ourselves.

The Future is Still Unwritten

A possible twist in the tail remains. Perhaps the Universe itself will give us more time.

Earlier in the article we talked about how dark energy is thought to be the cosmological constant, wherein the strength of dark energy remains the same per unit volume of space. However, there is an alternative theory that suggests dark energy could change strength over time. Scientists called this kind of dark energy ‘quintessence’, and it would be an energy field spanning the Universe with the potential to vary in strength with time and space. The specifics are even more hand-wavy than the cosmological constant, but the basic idea is that dark energy could slow down in the future.

“The faster the Universe expands, the more stuff falls beyond the horizon,” says Hooper. “So if you want to give future civilizations the possibility to consume and use as much free energy as possible, which is essential to anything that I call life, then you want the Universe to not expand all that fast.”

There is a dark flip-side to this. Instead of slowing down, quintessence could speed dark energy up, and we’d lose the other galaxies faster. Worst case scenario: the expansion would tear the fabric of space-time apart in a ‘Big Rip’. Not even our Fortress Galaxy could survive that.

Most scientists would say that the bulk of the evidence so far is in favor of dark energy being the cosmological constant. However, initial results from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) on the Mayall four-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory hint at some tentative evidence that the strength of dark energy could have been different in the past. Hooper says he and the scientific community remain skeptical at this stage, but they are “keeping their eye on it” until further observations by DESI are analyzed.

The Farthest Future

Let’s assume the Big Rip doesn’t happen. By 150 billion years into the future all the other galaxies beyond our Fortress Galaxy will have disappeared over the cosmic horizon. With just the stars that have been brought into the Fortress Galaxy, it could survive about 100 trillion years. If the inhabitants of the Fortress Galaxy have also stashed away lots of molecular hydrogen gas, the building material of stars, they could assemble new stars to replace those that have expired. How long they could keep this up for would depend on how much gas they have, but let’s say they have enough to replace every star in the Fortress Galaxy just once. That would mean that the Fortress Galaxy could survive 200 trillion years.

After that, things get really iffy. There will be stellar remnants – brown dwarfs, white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes – to huddle around. Over unimaginably long timescales, the remnants of the Fortress Galaxy will begin to disperse, black holes would evaporate, perhaps even protons and atomic structure will decay, and the heat death will be the final nail in the coffin as the temperature of the Universe equalizes according to the Second Law of thermodynamics. The timescales involved would be beyond comprehension – for example, what the heck is a novemvigintillion? Apparently, it is 10^91 to 10^92 years, the timescale for a supermassive black hole to evaporate. How life could survive any of this is a problem for our deep-future descendants.

For now, we can barely imagine the advanced technology required to steal the stars, but that doesn’t mean we cant be thinking about it.

“The first thing to do is to try and learn all the laws of physics we can,” says Hooper. “In the long run, there’s no better investment for the future of humanity than investment in fundamental science.”

Who knows, through our studies of dark energy or the evolution of stars, or advanced engineering in space, a pathway to the next 100 billion years or so may become clearer. The next time that someone asks you what the point of astrophysics is, tell them that one day it could save the Universe.

Who Picks Up the Phone When ET Calls Earth? It's Complicated

2024-08-13T19:15:00.000Z

In the last few decades, it has become clear that almost every single star has at least one planet orbiting it.

There are 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone. Perhaps it will never happen. Perhaps the unfathomable distances between worlds means that we will always think that we’re alone, at least in our corner of the cosmos. But it’s possible that, one day, a radio observatory pointed toward a constellation of diamantine specks glinting in that deep, dark ocean above will pick up something that will change everything.

Maybe it’s a radio signal, one not coming from the death of a star, or a distant planet’s aurora. It sounds technological. It’s not an accidental interception of one of Earth’s myriad broadcasts. And it has a purposeful structure to it. Astrophysicists cannot identify the meaning of the signal. But at that stage, the cryptic content doesn’t matter as much as the source: it came from a planet 40 light-years away, which meant that, 40 years ago, someone on a technologically advanced world decided to send Earth a message.

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, has succeeded. We are not alone; someone, whoever they are, is reaching out. What happens next? And how might we decide to respond to our enigmatic galactic neighbors?

The possibilities feel infinitely variable. It is a canvas upon which countless science fiction authors and screenwriters have applied their paint. But the question of what happens after this, and other, first contact scenarios, is being increasingly treated as a non-fiction event by diverse groups of experts across the world—including astrobiologists, astronomers, linguists, zoologists, artificial intelligence programmers, sociologists, psychologists, lawyers, and philosophers. Very little certainty is possible; after all, first contact with an alien intelligence has never happened before. But their work Is grounded in novel and ongoing research—and it’s already teaching us how to ask the right questions about a genuine encounter with an off-world intelligence.

These scientists and thinkers are preparing the world for first contact; they are sketching out the blueprints that may navigate us all through the most dramatic moment in our species’ history. “If you don’t have a plan for when you do discover something, you’re gonna be in a right mess,” says John Elliott, coordinator of the SETI Post-Detection Hub at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. “This needs to be done.”

Intercepting a directed radio signal from a distant world, or moon, or star, isn’t the only version of first contact. A powerful space telescope might see a giant alien superstructure obscuring a star. We may find archaeological evidence of alien technology buried on a distant comet. A reconnaissance probe may zip through our solar system and send out a klaxon. Or aliens might park a spacecraft on someone’s lawn. But the radio signal scenario is intuitively thought to be the most likely because, to put it crudely, space is big, and direct radio waves travel across vast distances at the speed of light. It’s a decent way to communicate.

SETI involves looking for any signs of an alien intelligence, and a lot of that work involves scanning the universe for radio signals that aren’t coming from natural sources, like black holes or dying stars. The SETI Institute in California may be the most famous place partaking in this quest, but independent SETI groups all over the world with adequate funding and observatory time play major roles in the hunt for alien intelligence too.

It’s painstaking work. But if a radio signal is being transmitted toward Earth on a narrow range of frequencies, if it’s coming from a point moving across the sky, and if the signal’s structure shifts during the transmission – signifying the presence of encoded information – then the only explanation is that it’s coming from a piece of alien technology.

There is already a protocol that spells out what should happen immediately afterward. Adopted from a preexisting tome in 2010 by the SETI Permanent Study Group of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) – a United Nations-recognized body – the Declaration of Principles Concerning the Conduct of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is, on paper, quite clear about next steps.

Once a SETI signal has been verified, ideally by a consensus of many astronomers and astrophysical institutes, then this conclusion, and all its data, shall be shared “in a full and complete open manner to the public, the scientific community, and the Secretary General of the United Nations.” In addition, signatories should not respond to the signal without seeking guidance and consent of a body like the United Nations.

Transparency, patience, and a democratic approach to the world’s response, are all key tenets to the protocol—and SETI groups across the world have embraced it. But I’ve yet to talk to anyone who thinks the document is anything more than aspirational words. “That was so cute. That was such a nice idea,” says Kathryn Denning, an anthropologist and researcher of the social and ethical aspects of SETI and space exploration at York University in Canada. “It was never gonna work then; it’s never gonna work now.”

Such a global effort to detect and then validate a signal would have been difficult to cover up prior to the age of social media. Today, “it’d be really hard to keep this a secret,” says Bill Diamond, the president and CEO of the SETI Institute. “We’d want people to know.” But it won’t happen in the orderly, UN-announced manner many would hope for. Instead, anything could happen.

How do experts help the world prepare for – and mitigate – that chaos? This is the monumental query that an increasing number of think tanks around the world are tackling. The IAA has a SETI Permanent Committee. The venerable SETI Institute is now in the process of setting up a its own post-detection working group.

The newest and most notable group is the SETI Post-Detection Hub at the University of St. Andrews. Although inaugurated only in late-2022, it already boasts 50 experts. “We’re meeting every month, as a general assembly,” says Elliott, the Hub’s coordinator. Their goal? To assess the impacts of discovering alien life – whether that be microbial, or a technologically advanced intelligence – on human society, and to set out procedures for a responsible reaction. The Hub wants to become “a trusted conduit to the rest of humanity” for when first contact occurs, Elliott explains.

Denning, who is a Hub member and part of the SETI Institute’s science advisory board, makes no bones about the difficulty of this endeavor. You just have to say, “okay: what kind of things would be in our control, what kind of things wouldn’t?” she says. “It’s extremely overwhelming” to research. But “with sustained effort, we can actually try.”

One thing that would be in their control would be explaining to the world what they think the alien message says. But how do you talk to an alien if you’ve never met one?

A radio transmission directed at Earth could come from a probe voyaging close to the fringes of our solar system, or it could come from thousands of light years away—or anything in-between. Depending on the distance, humanity’s reaction, and our ability to understand the content of the message, will varying considerably.

For simplicity’s sake, let’s say the signal came from a star system 10 light-years away. That means that the message was sent to us 10 years ago, and any message we send would take 10 years to reach the source. In cosmic terms, that’s practically a conversation—and it gives humanity some time to attempt to decipher our first interstellar email. How do we begin?

Some zoologists think that the best way to practice this is by trying to converse with highly intelligent animals. And in recent years, Whale SETI has become a real, almost magical-sounding endeavor.

“Humpbacks are what sea monster myths are made of. They’re loveably grotesque, right?”

says Fred Sharpe, a whale biologist at the Alaska Whale Foundation. Humpback whales are undeniably intelligent, they communicate over long distances, and they are inquisitive, often interacting with people. Does that make them good proxy for a back-and-forth with alien life?

A team of scientists from the SETI Institute, University of California Davis and the Alaska Whale Foundation, set up the Whale-SETI project, to find out. In 2021, they had an encounter with a female humpback named Twain that left them shaken. Using two hydrophones on the bough of a boat to monitor her responses, and an underwater speaker to talk to her, they began issuing several ‘whoop’ calls, the noises whales can make to essentially greet other whales.

“After the third one, Twain began vocalizing back,” says Lisa Walker, a whale song theorist and member of the Whale-SETI project. To make sure this wasn’t a fluke, they reduced the time between calls to see if Twain’s responses also came back quicker to match that new pattern. They did, meaning there was clear turn-taking: humans, then Twain, humans, then Twain.

“There was definitely engagement going on,” says Walker. “How do you quantify that engagement?” They are currently distilling the data down to try and answer the most basic queries: “Are we actually having a conversation?” By identifying non-human means of conveying complex information, if it’s there, the Whale-SETI team hope to essentially practice conversing, in a rudimentary way, with an alien intelligence.

Other zoologists aren’t sure if this approach will yield results. “I don’t think whale song is a language. I don’t think we’ve got any behavioral indication that it is. It’s all a little bit speculative,” says Arik Kershenbaum, a zoologist and animal communication expert at the University of Cambridge, and Hub member.

Another major issue is that both the aliens, and humans, will lack a lot of context when decoding each other’s radio messages. “What do you reference?” he says. Think about trying to explain the concept of a dog to a disembodied alien. Even if you show an isolated image of a dog, without any additional context, it could just be a meaningless shape an alien—just as much of what they may say will be meaningless to us.

Kershenbaum hopes that any directed message coming from aliens will come from scientists hoping to reach other scientists. In that case, he suspects they would make it easy for us to identify patterns in the signal—and maybe not by just including elementary mathematical patterns, like prime numbers, that all technological societies should recognize. Ideally, they’d send a video, and we could send one back, solving the context problem. You could show a dog in motion, interacting with its environment—and also include written words for dogs alongside it. This would be “like a Duolingo course for aliens,” he says. And using that, we can begin to have a conversation.

But whether the message is comprehensible or mostly mysterious, it’s very likely that people will wish to respond. And that raises another tremendously challenging question. “Who gets to speak for planet Earth?” says Diamond.

Not everybody individual will get to send their own separate message to the aliens. But many agree that as much of the world’s human inhabitants as possible should be able to voice their opinion on how Earth should respond, if we choose to do so.

Chelsea Haramia, a philosopher and ethicist at the Center for Science and Thought at the University of Bonn, Germany, and Hub member, is working on how to obtain global consent for actions in the post-detection world. How do we get informed consent on, say, a response to an alien signal, from people who aren’t yet alive? “That’s what I’m working on,” she says.

Her aim is to do something philosophers don’t often do: fieldwork. She hopes to travel the world and talk to and survey people from a huge range of cultures. She is also planning to engage in active philosophy: to get groups to chat about first contact, and use their own reasoning and internal logic to reach their own conclusions. Perhaps that vast pool of data, once obtained, could be used to start projecting how future generations may react in a post-detection world.

“Why not start now?” says Haramia. “If we wait until there is a real candidate detection, or some kind of contact or message, then I think things will move really, really quickly. And I think powerful people might start to manipulate information or narratives.”

Haramia is also interested in how artificial intelligence may bolster global preparedness. AI has its problems, including the inherent biases (racism, sexism) programmed into it by its human creators, and its capability to state mistruths confidently. But it could be used to quickly gather and process an immense amount of information related to perceptions about first contact – either by directly soliciting it, or indirectly, by sweeping up information from news outlets, social media, literature, art, scientific output, and so on. “What kinds of trends or values do we see in this data?” says Haramia. It’s not necessarily an ideal way to go about it, but it’s better than nothing.

In any first contact scenario, “people are not going to agree what to do.,” says Denning. So what do we do then?” Consent in a post-detection world matters. But public opinion is not always the ultimate arbiter of our world’s fate. “If the general population of Earth got to vote on absolutely everything, I’m actually not confident that all those votes would be well-informed,” she says. With that in mind, “what things should be more in the domain of experts? What things should be more in the domain of generalized democracy?”

The Hub is an example of an expert-driven group—but a first contact scenario may need more than just experts voicing their data-driven conclusions. Ian Crawford, a planetary scientist and astrobiologist at Birkbeck College, University of London, and Hub member, recently wrote about the need for a single political voice for a range of space-based dilemmas—issues that affect all of us, from the problem of space junk in near-Earth orbit or defending the planet from killer asteroids. Crawford reckons that, in the future, a federal world government would not only be tasked with handling these problems, but they would also handle key decisions about first contact.

In the present moment, such all-encompassing unity feels impossible. Even a federal body within the UN, one that can make enforceable decisions about human actions in space, seems deeply unlikely. “We have this distrust between nations that consider themselves to be sovereign,” says Crawford, putting the current state of geopolitical affairs mildly.

“There are currently no guidelines, regulations or even treaties for dealing with first contact,”

says Andreas Anton, a sociologist at the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health in Germany, and Hub member. “It is conceivable that a scientific committee of experts from various disciplines could be set up to draw up concrete recommendations for action, which could then be discussed at United Nations level,” says Anton. But if nothing is legally enforceable at the international level, then when it comes to the question of who speaks for Earth, the answer would be everyone—but in a cacophonous, not harmonious, manner. Any technologically capable nations, research groups, companies or even individuals could, should they fancy it, message back.

Some already are. Take METI International, an organization that, among other things, sends directed transmissions into space, hoping to ping an alien society. (METI stands for Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence.) “We advocate sending intentional messages, and not just listening,” says Douglas Vakoch, the president of METI International, and an elected member of the International Institute for Space Law.

In the past, the group has used radio observatories to beam out messages – those trying to explain the concept of music, for example – to various exoplanets. Future messages may involve pulsing messages so that the rhythm matches up with the yearly orbits of the planets—a way of communicating what a year is without using words. Another idea is to transmit various elements of the periodic table to convey Earth’s environmental crisis.

Several SETI researchers are deeply wary of METI. “I don’t want to overdo the risk. But there is a risk, because we don’t know what the aliens, if they’re there, what their response will be,” says Crawford. “There is a risk that it…wouldn’t be in our interests.” Why take a chance and illuminate our planet when there is a possibility that an alien society might want to overtake or exterminate it?

Although some fret about this risk, a more common issue researchers have with METI is that they see their actions as undemocratic: those engaging in it aren’t seeking permission from the rest of the world. But proponents of METI opine that they are doing what will happen in a post-detection world anyway, so they might as well be proactive about it.

“What if they’re waiting for us?” Vakoch says. An alien society might aspire to see who’s out there first before sending out a message. “We’re trying to show we have some skin in the game.”

METI participants aim to be as sensible as possible. “I don’t think we should be sending messages that threaten other civilizations,” says Vakoch. “I don’t think we should send a message that claims to be a message from the people of planet Earth.” But why not message now, he says—and why not be honest about the planet, its triumphs and troubles, and the fact that we are a multitude of societies and individuals with divergent opinions on, well, almost everything?

“I think it’s great that there’s going to be a cacophony of voices speaking for Earth,” says Vakoch. “That’s the best representation of humankind.”

Although aspects of the signal’s interception, translation and response can be managed in various ways, it’s difficult to see how the broader social upheaval will be anything other than uncontrollable.

A recent study, of which Elliott and Anton are co-authors, attempted to game out several different first contact scenarios. A radio transmission from thousands of light-years away would be a shock, but generations later could become a somewhat normal part of human history. The aliens that sent it would be so far away in time and space that they might have moved on or died out by the time their initial message reached us. This scenario is almost akin to archaeology. But a signal emanating from just a few light-years away – i.e., from somewhere very close to home – would trigger unpredictable, and unprecedented, pandemonium. “The nearer the discovery is, the less time there is to deal with anything,” says Elliott.

“Our scenario analyses show that such an event could have catastrophic consequences for humanity,” says Anton. “Even if the aliens have no evil intentions, first contact could cause a massive cultural shock with far-reaching consequences.” Political paranoia is a major concern.

“The greatest risks are of our own making.”

But that doesn’t mean the situation is hopeless. Research by post-detection experts suggests there are practical things they can begin to do now to change the way people think about first contact—to make it something less fearful and less likely to devolve into internecine strife.

One promising avenue is to start getting people to think about space as an environment we affect. Start asking people: “What do we want to do about Mars?” says Denning. The future of the Red Planet may rest in the hands of private corporations. Do we want that asymmetric power dynamic to still be prevalent in the future? By getting societies to think like this in public forums, experts can hope to alter the way societies contemplate space—which, in time, will make them more receptive to considering first contact to be something less abstract.

Post-detection researchers are also aiming to remove unhelpful biases about how first contact may play out. A lot of popular culture on the subject involves the subjugation or decimation of humanity—and much of this stems from an overreliance on historical analogies, like those involving the Old World colonizing and slaughtering New World societies. The late Stephen Hawking once said: “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans.”

Steve Dick, a former NASA Chief Historian and Hub member, is also a prolific author. One book assesses the utility of using moments in human history to inform us about how first contact with alien life may unfold. And he thinks we are focusing on the wrong historical analogies. “There are a lot of culture contacts that aren’t catastrophic,” he says. The Age of Enlightenment, for example, didn’t come out of nowhere in Europe; mathematics and astronomy arose long before in (among others) the ancient Greek, Indian and Babylonian realms. Many cultural first contacts involved the exchange of ideas and materials, not societal destruction.

Denning suspects that historical analogies are essentially useless, in part because many misunderstand those historical flashpoints. The oft-cited Columbus/Native American analogy – which implies that the technological prowess of the aliens (Columbus) means they will inevitably squash us (the Native Americans) like bugs – irks her. “That is fucking not true,” she says. The oppression and tribulations of the Native Americans “is a story of epidemic disease, and it’s not a story of technological superiority as much as it is of brutality.”

In other words, a technological disequilibrium between species doesn’t inexorably lead to violence. It is a major feature of plenty of first contact science fiction stories, though—and that’s a problem. “The assumption that someone’s going to try to conquer or take advantage of the other as a default assumption…I think that’s so baked in, it’s hard to unthink it,” says William Lempert, an anthropologist at Bowdoin College in Maine, and Hub member. “We understate how much of a projection of our own history that is.”

One way to combat this? Tell more diverse science fiction tales. Lempert got connected to the SETI side of his academic research when he volunteered at some Native North American film festivals, and discovered that Native movies were extremely different to what many would expect from the genre.

One movie, The Visit, involves a Cree man communicating with a flying saucer on a Canadian First Nation’s reserve via a hand drum. Why not? Sometimes curiosity is all that drives two different species to interact. Just watch humpback whales, or octopuses, interact with humans. They do it just because they are curious. Why should aliens be any different?

Stories like The Visit also matter because they also challenge a common assumption that alien intelligences would target Western-centric ideals of power centers. Why should we assume extraterrestrials would be most interested in messaging, say, the American President, or any of the leaders of the world’s most economically or technologically advanced nations?

If we want the world to be better prepared on a psychological level for a genuine first contact scenario, Lempert reckons that one of the best things to do is offer a wider range of pop culture possibilities for people to consume. “Space is a mirror,” he says. No matter how first contact unfolds, it will be, in part, a reflection of humanity’s own values and mindset at the time.

It's vital to emphasize that post-detection research is in its infancy. At this stage, the only thing that’s certain is that, if a first contact event happens, nothing will ever be the same again. The new normal will be pervasively strange. And, frustratingly, no matter how we respond, we may never know the intentions of our distant messengers. We may never be able to reply in a comprehensible manner.

But for some, just knowing someone else is out there, waving hello, is sufficiently exhilarating. In a galaxy riddled with planets, one alien intelligence implies that life, from the complex kind to the simplest, is all over the place. It isn’t a fluke, or a glitch, but a feature of the universe. “The most remarkable thing we may discover about life is that it’s not remarkable at all. It happens everywhere,” says Diamond.

And with that revelation upon us all, perhaps we won’t fall fatally back on our most base, primeval, fearful, self-destructive instinct. Instead, says Diamond, “maybe we’d start thinking beyond ourselves.” He pauses for a moment. “I don’t know.” Then a smile. “One would hope so.”

Dutch Union Accuses ESA of Labor Law Breach

2024-08-06T20:00:00.000Z

A Dutch union representing contractors working at the largest European Space Agency (ESA) establishment has accused the agency of trying to circumvent European labor regulations and announced plans to take some of its manpower suppliers to court.

The announcement is a culmination of a dispute that began in 2019 when a change in Dutch labor law clarified rights of contractors loaned to third party organizations via manpower companies.

Contractors employed in permanent roles that are identical to jobs performed by staff members are entitled to equal treatment including salary and benefits, according to the Dutch labor regulations. That, however, is not the case at ESA, the union said. Contractors at the European Space Research and Technology Center (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, a coastal town between the Hague and Amsterdam, as well as at other ESA establishments across Europe, earn considerably less than ESA’s direct staff members.

The exact difference varies contractor by contractor, but disparities of more than $1,000 per month have been reported. On top of that, at the time of the law change, most ESTEC contractors were receiving no pension contributions and healthcare coverage, unlike ESA’s direct staff members, sources said.

Investigation

An investigation by the Dutch Social Affairs and Employment Inspectorate, instigated by complaints of three contractors, concluded that the affected workers should be covered by the new law. The framework under which these contractors were loaned to ESA was, according to the Inspectorate’s report, meeting the criteria for matching pay: the employees were directly selected by ESA, reported to ESA managers and fulfilled identical tasks as workers employed as the agency’s staff.

Only their payroll was managed by the manpower company, which had no expertise in the fields the workers specialized in.

“The inspectorate wrote a report three times with a clear conclusion: there was a case of making labor available,” the CNV Union wrote on its website. “This means that the hirer's remuneration applies. In other words: the seconded employees are entitled to the same remuneration as permanent employees of ESA. But seconded workers to ESA currently do not receive equal pay.”

Access Denied

The Dutch Social Affairs and Employment Inspectorate refused to comment on its findings, but the translated report, publicly available via the CNV Union’s website, describes obstacles the investigating inspector faced because of ESA’s refusal to allow access to its premises citing its diplomatic immunity.

“In the period from October 2020 to February 2021 I, the rapporteur, spoke to representatives of ESA. During our conversations I repeatedly pointed out that the Dutch Labour Inspectorate wished to have access to the ESA premises, wanted to talk to ESA employees and wanted access to the employment conditions ESA applies to its employees,” the report states. “ESA took the position that this was not possible because of the inviolability of its premises and records and the immunity of the employees.”

ESA is an intergovernmental organization that is outside any national jurisdiction and protected by diplomatic immunity, granted to it by its founding Convention. The agency has used its diplomatic immunity repeatedly in legal cases brought forth by its formal staff members and contractors, which Supercluster reported on earlier.

ESA told Supercluster in an email that the agency as well as the manpower suppliers in question “disagree” with the conclusions made by the labor inspector and that it had “cooperated with the Dutch labor inspector by providing access to requested information and explanations,” which “included among others the incomparability of tasks between loan contractor personnel and ESA staff members and the differences between employees of private Dutch companies and international civil servants.”

The CNV Union refused to say, which companies it plans to take to court but the translated report available on its website concerns a contractor employed via manpower company MODIS.

Roderik Mol, the union’s representative, told Supercluster that the union plans to file the cases with the Amsterdam District Court by the end of August. Mol added that the Union is facing the same challenges as the Dutch Labour Inspectorate, attempting to obtain information from ESA.

“We have been asking for the information that we need but they say ‘no, we are an international organization, our archives are inviolable, and we are immune,’” Mol said. “This situation has been going on for about two years now.”

Contractor Numbers

In addition to the Netherlands, ESA has facilities in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, U.K. and Belgium. The agency’s 2,200 staff members enjoy a multitude of benefits with their competitive salaries. In addition to those workers, about 2,700 contractors are believed to work at ESA, the majority of those at ESTEC.

According to more than 50 internal ESA sources (past and present contractors and staff members), who have spoken to Supercluster under the condition of anonymity, ESA teams have historically consisted of staff members and contractors employed through different manpower companies working together on the agency’s projects.

The current endeavor of the CNV Union is not the first legal attempt to point to salary discrepancies between contractors and ESA staff members.

In 2019, a court in Italy ruled that ESA and its manpower company Kelly Services were in breach of European labor in the case of communications professional Ivan Balenzio. Like the ESTEC contractors, Balenzio, who had been fired from his role after suffering a burnout, complained about his salary being about 1,000 euros lower than that of his staff colleague. The District Court in Velletri decided that Kelly Services should pay Balenzio 210,000 euros, but the company appealed the decision. The case is now heading to the Italian supreme court.

Legal Scaffolding

According to documents available to Supercluster, ESA wants to bring its use of on-site contractors in line with European labor laws by changing their employment framework from Manpower Assignment Scheme (MAS) contracts to service contracts. While workers employed under MAS agreements “may be integrated into ESA teams and may receive day-to-day instructions from ESA staff,” according to the ESA document, service contractors “deliver a clearly defined service under the supervision and direction” of their manpower company, using their own equipment.

The contractors that spoke to Supercluster and the CNV Union, however, describe this change simply as a bureaucratic exercise designed to further erode contractors’ rights.

“In our opinion, it's a way to avoid the equal pay discussion,” Mol said. “The contracts are changing now, people who have been MAS are made to work under Services, and that means that the way they work, and their legal status is going to change.”

One source said that to satisfy the criteria of a service contract, ESA is creating “almost fake work packages for our duties to be evaluated every quarter.” The source added that the new set-up requires “more managers” overseeing a contractor and “more time for administrative work” on top of the contractor’s regular duties. “I will still be expected to provide the same support I do now, and I am already very busy,” the source said.

A survey conducted by the CNV Union among more than 200 ESTEC contractors last year found that while 85% of the respondents said their role within ESA was equal to a regular ESA staff role, only 1% said they were rewarded equally for their work. 93% of the survey participants said that contractors and staff members were overall not treated equally at ESA and 88% believed that ESA as an organization was not actively looking after the best working conditions for contractors.

ESA told Supercluster that it “pays close attention to compliance of contractor companies with applicable national law” and “that new service contracts may be implemented at ESTEC to ensure consistency across ESA establishments.”

“Any such contract would of course be established for activities allowing this approach in full accordance with applicable Dutch law,” the agency’s spokesperson added.

The contractor discontent is not limited to ESTEC. A source working at the European Space Operations Center (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, ESA’s second biggest establishment, described a similar situation, involving new layers of management added between the contractors and their staff colleagues.

“It's like there's suddenly a trench between us,” the source said. “In the past, we were one team of staff and contractors who could talk together and distribute tasks. That’s no longer possible. The regulations now require that our head of unit who is an ESA staff member talks to a service manager from the contract company who can then assign a task to us.”

In a statement on its website, the CNV Union describes the transition as a “formal legal scaffolding that does not align with the spirit of the law, disregarding the interests of those affected.” The union urges ESA to stop the transition and ensure that any new contractual arrangements take into account the well-being of contractors as well as the Dutch and European legislation.

Microlensing is Revealing a Hidden Universe

2024-07-30T22:00:00.000Z

A scrappy little astronomical community is revealing a trove of Earth-sized worlds, hidden black holes, and a host of mysterious phenomena in space.

When stars align, magical outcomes become possible. Microlensing, an astronomical technique based on trippy relativistic effects, is taking this lyrical sentiment to new and brilliant extremes by exposing chance alignments in the universe—and the unexplored frontiers that they reveal.

The sheer variety of weird cosmic phenomena that can be captured by microlensing—and often only through microlensing—is positively head-spinning, to say nothing of what may be coming down the pike now that the tight-knit subfield is poised to hit its prime. Microlensing events are fortuitously situated right in the blind spot of other established methods of finding exoplanets, black holes, and other relatively small lurkers that wander far from the illuminating rays of any star.

The technique has exposed worlds in wide orbits or free-floating through interstellar space and it remains the only way to find planets at extreme distances, including beyond our galaxy, the Milky Way. Isolated black holes, long hidden from view, are now observable through microlensing. The method offers unique insights about dark matter, an unidentified material that accounts for most of the universe’s mass, and is the main line of information on mysterious entities called MAssive Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs). Microlensing also has the potential to spot exotic structures, like wormholes or primordial black holes, that have never been seen before.

“It's really phenomenal that one probe, one type of technique, can actually be used to constrain so much of our field,” said Djuna Croon, a theoretical physicist and assistant professor at Durham University who uses microlensing in her research into dark matter.

How Does It Work?

Microlensing is a form of gravitational lensing, a phenomenon that occurs when one object in space, known as the “lens,” passes in front of a more distant object, known as the “source,” from our perspective on Earth. As light from the source travels through the gravitational field of the lens, it becomes warped and magnified by the curvature of spacetime, an Einsteinian interaction that can unlock a trove of insights about both the source and the lens.

In this way, gargantuan structures, such as galaxy clusters, can project mesmerizing visions of background stars and galaxies that would be out of view without the aid of such handy “natural telescopes.” Gravitational lensing typically refers to events on these massive scales, in which the immense gravitational fields of galaxies or clusters produce images of extremely distant sources, like stars or quasars, as they appeared much earlier in the universe; for instance, the James Webb Space Telescope has captured a lensed image of a galaxy a whopping 21 billion light years from Earth.

Microlensing, in contrast, occurs with smaller objects, distances, and timescales. Microlenses are typically in the mass range of planets or stellar-mass black holes, and sources are usually background stars within our own galaxy, or nearby galaxies. Alignments between microlenses and their sources are much more short-lived—typically lasting days, weeks, or months—compared to larger lenses that endure far beyond human timescales.

The prefix “micro” doesn’t explicitly refer to these smaller scales, but rather means that microlensing events do not resolve an image of the background source like larger lenses. Instead, microlensing events simply cause a source object to brighten as it passes behind the lens.

“Microlensing is the same gravitational effect [as larger lenses] on a different scale,” explained Macy Huston, a postdoctoral researcher who specializes in microlensing at the University of California, Berkeley. “Typically this means a star in our own galaxy getting lensed by another star, black hole, or planet. On this scale, you can’t actually make out the individual warped images of the source, but instead you’ll see that the source star appears to temporarily get brighter and have its position changed very slightly as it passes behind the lens.”

Microlensing surveys are designed to capture transient flashes that signal such serendipitous alignments in space.

The search for these events is fundamentally a game of chance that requires long-term observations of huge swaths of sky to capture fleeting conjunctions that may be visible for just hours or days in some cases.

“Most modern telescopes peer in great detail at tiny specks in the heavens,” said the late astronomer Bohdan Paczyński, who pioneered the technique and coined the term “microlensing.” “They can’t keep track of what varies, pulsates, or flares up and disappears forever.”

What Does Microlensing Reveal?

The basic principles behind microlensing date back centuries to Isaac Newton, who ruminated about whether light could be bent by gravitational fields. But it only became a bonafide observational technique during the late 1980s and 1990s, as Paczyński and his colleagues recognized its potential to constrain models of dark matter. These early trailblazers established long-term surveys like the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE), a project that has been running at the University of Warsaw since 1992 and which rapidly demonstrated that microlensing could uncover a dazzling range of elusive objects in the cosmic dark.

“Microlensing is most useful for detecting objects that cannot be discovered using other techniques,” said Przemek Mróz, a microlensing expert and assistant professor at the University of Warsaw. “I think it's fair to say that no one predicted that we would discover so many interesting things.”

For example, from its inception, microlensing has been used to study dim objects that fall under the catchall term MACHOs, a variety of dark compact objects, such as black holes, neutron stars, or brown dwarfs, which are a kind of failed star. MACHOs were once a leading candidate for dark matter, but microlensing helped to cast doubt on this hypothesis and propel the field toward newer dark matter models. Meanwhile, microlensing’s potential to spot planets was first realized in 2003 with the landmark discovery of a gas giant planet about 19,000 light years from Earth, while its ability to identify isolated stellar-mass black holes has only come into focus within the last few years. In addition to discovering singular objects, microlensing observations can be used to make and refine broader maps of large-scale structures, like the disk of the Milky Way.

But though it has been around for about 30 years, microlensing as a field is now experiencing a step-change in sensitivity that will have major implications for astronomy, cosmology, and the search for extraterrestrial life. In addition to surveys like OGLE or the Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA) project, the field is about to be supercharged by the introduction of next-generation approaches and instruments, such as NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, due for launch in 2027.

“The field is still small and I know most of the people who are working on the topic,” said Mróz. “But in a few years from now, we will have Roman launched, so we need people.”

Exoplanets continue to be a major focus for microlensing surveys, especially in anticipation of Roman. Up until this point, most worlds beyond our system have been discovered through two techniques: the transit and radial velocity (RV) methods. Transits are the small dips in a star’s light that occur when a planet passes in front of it, and RV are the observable gravitational tugs that planets exert on their stars. Both methods indirectly detect planets through effects on their host stars, and are thus biased toward larger planets and smaller orbits, as those factors produce the most easily observed impacts.

Microlensing, in contrast, offers an ephemeral glimpse of all kinds of different planets that show up in all sorts of different places. For instance, scientists led by Takahiro Sumi, a microlensing expert and professor at Osaka University, published the first survey of microlensing events that detected planets with masses similar to Earth that are free-floating in interstellar space. Even smaller worlds, on the scale of Mars or Mercury, are expected to be spotted by new instruments.

“Knowing only about bound planets is not enough,” said Sumi, referring to planets that orbit stars. “Only microlensing (especially Roman) can complete the statistical census of exoplanets as it is sensitive to low-mass planets at wide orbits or that are free-floating. No other technique can.”

In other words, exoplanets detected through microlensing will, for the first time, provide a sense of the broader abundance and variety of exoplanets that exist in our galaxy—not just those that are most detectable around stars. These include free-floating worlds that were ejected from their home systems through a variety of disruptions, including the passing migrations of large planets to outright collisions with other bodies. Some large planets, including brown dwarfs, may actually form in interstellar space by condensing from gasses in a scaled-down version of the birth of stars.

Learning about the distribution and characteristics of these rogue worlds is critical to understanding planetary formation and therefore has implications in the search for extraterrestrial life, in part because microlensing enables astronomers to find a lot more terrestrial worlds that, like Earth, occupy orbits that overlap with stellar habitable zones.

“Earth-mass exoplanets may be very common in the wider orbit where we don’t have any sensitivity yet,” Sumi said. He also speculated about whether microlensing could expose moons orbiting exoplanets, which would fill further gaps in our understanding of planetary evolution and habitability.

Microlensing’s abilities as an exoplanet detector are so unique that Huston, the Berkeley expert, has occasionally been inspired to beef a bit with their fellow researchers about it. Last year at Penn State’s Astrofest program, they tweeted a picture of a whiteboard with a scrawled message—“Microlensing is cooler than RVs and transits”—as a friendly flex to members of the radial velocity and transit groups.

“There definitely are friendly (and occasionally not so friendly) rivalries among different subfields like exoplanet detection methods,” Huston said. “I’ve worked with a lot of folks who focus on transits or radial velocities in the past, and I find every opportunity I can to inject microlensing into exoplanet conversations.”

While exoplanet research attracts the most popular attention, it is far from the only field that stands to be revolutionized as microlensing hits its heyday. In 2022, scientists detected the first isolated black hole—the lonely remains of a massive star—using microlensing. There are an estimated 100 million of these solo travelers skulking through the Milky Way and microlensing is currently the only way to observe them.

“For stellar mass black holes, the end products of the evolution of high mass stars, most detection methods require a binary companion,” Huston said. “We can detect merging black holes through gravitational waves, or a black hole with a companion star through the star’s orbital motion. But, so far, only one isolated stellar mass black hole has been found, OB110462, and that was through microlensing. So there’s a lot of exciting work to try to find more of these and use them to learn more about the processes of stellar evolution that create them.”

Microlensing also continues to shed new light on the nature of dark matter. For instance, Mróz and his colleagues just published a study in Nature, based on microlensing data, that strongly disfavors the notion that dark matter is made up of primordial black holes, a hypothetical class of objects that originated in the early universe. Meanwhile, Croon, the physicist at Durham University, is developing new microlensing approaches to assess the viability of other dark matter candidates, including boson stars or axion mini-clusters.

“We know dark matter substructure exists at a lot of different scales, and especially these really small-scale objects are just very hard to probe otherwise,” Croon said.

It takes luck, patience, and ingenuity to detect microlensing events, but the wonders that can be revealed with this method are well worth the effort.

We’re now on the cusp of spying an enormous population of celestial bodies and interactions that will inform our understanding of what—and perhaps who—is out there beyond Earth. And that’s just what we know we’ll find out there. Microlensing will unveil entities that we have only imagined, and some that we have not.

“I would say that the next several years will be a golden age for microlensing,” concluded Mróz.

Return To Pine Bush

2024-07-23T21:00:00.000Z

After the 2017 bombshell New York Times UFO report, the US Government responded with senate hearings on UAP — Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.

Has disclosure fostered greater understanding toward the UFO community? We traveled again to Pine Bush, New York, "UFO Capital of the World," to find out.

Will Religion Survive Alien Contact?

2024-07-16T20:00:00.000Z

Would your faith be challenged by the discovery of extraterrestrial life?

Contact with alien intelligence would be a breathtaking event. Depending upon what guise this contact took, the consequences for society could be profound. With religion foundational for many cultures around the world, it’s critical that we consider how faith would be affected should there be news that we are not alone. Even if you yourself are not religious, it’s clear that a crisis in any of the world’s major religions would be a major concern, causing societal strife for many people.

Cynics have often declared that the discovery of aliens would be the death knell for earthly religions. In his book Contact With Alien Civilizations (2007), Michael Michaud wrote that “the more anthropocentric our religions are, the more they may be challenged by contact.” The American 20th century philosopher Roland Puccetti suggested in his book Persons (1968) that our religions would not survive the implications of an inhabited cosmos. And theoretical physicist Paul Davies has specific concerns for Christianity, stating in a previous interview with this writer that he “doesn’t see how you live with [the knowledge of alien life] and retain the core of Christian belief.”

Rising to the defence of religious belief in the face of extraterrestrial contact is Lutheran theologian Professor Ted Peters.

“Paul Davies and I debate this a lot,” says Peters, with good humour. Though the pair disagree, Peters clearly gets much out of the discussion.

To try and finally answer the cynics, about 15 years ago Peters sought to find out whether religion really would be in danger should contact occur. Working with research assistant Julie Froehlig, he conducted a survey among people who identified themselves as religious (specifically either Buddhist, Jewish, Mormon, Orthodox Christian, Protestant or Roman Catholic; Hindus and Muslims were also asked, but Peters and Froehlig didn’t receive enough replies back to draw any conclusions about those religions). The survey questions focused on whether the respondents felt the discovery of alien life would undercut their personal faith, whether it would place their religion’s wider traditions into crisis, and whether they felt other religions would be negatively impacted by contact.

The results showed that people who answered the survey did not think that their religion would be challenged by the discovery of extraterrestrial life, although some did think that others might have a problem with it.

“From my point of view, I don’t think the results were surprising,” says Peters.

“I think after 60-plus years of science fiction about space, as well as UFOs and astronomical discoveries, it’s in the culture.”

Not that everyone necessarily agrees. “Some of us are a bit hesitant about the conclusions of Ted’s survey,” says Shoaib Malik, who is a chemical engineer turned philosopher in the subject of Islam and Science, and who is taking up a post at the University of Edinburgh this August to lecture on science and religion. “The problem is that he did not differentiate who the participants were. I have a feeling that the clergy will generally not have a problem [with alien life], but I don’t think that translates to being representative of religious folk at large. I think there’s a huge disparity between the laity and the academic elite.”

Peters acknowledges that the survey isn’t perfect, but is bullish about it. “In the survey people self-identified with a religious tradition, there was no measurement of degree of fidelity or passion, and I don’t claim this is the best survey that could be done, but I’m going to stick by the survey. I’d rather have this set of evidence than none.”

Christ On All Worlds?

Christianity revolves around the fall, the incarnation and redemption, as portrayed in the story of Christ. If one believes, then this was a very specific event two millennia ago that is fundamental to the Christian religion. However, can we expect there to have been (or at least be myths of) a Christ on every inhabited planet in the Universe, or was Christ reserved just for humanity? If the latter, it would seem a somewhat arrogant perspective.

Lucas Mix, who is an astrobiologist by training and is currently project manager and co-director of the Equipping Christian Leadership in an Age of Science program at the University of Durham, UK, thinks that how Christians will respond to contact with alien life will depend on what they see to be the core of their Christian faith.

“If someone’s core commitment to Christianity is about the exclusivity of Jesus’ action, then [the existence of aliens] could be very threatening to their faith,” says Mix. “But for many of us, the central idea of Christianity has to do with this love of neighbour, and that becomes harder with aliens because they are alien. So I don’t think contact will be an intellectual challenge, but it could be emotionally challenging.”

Other religions such as Islam and Judaism could perhaps adapt a little more easily to contact because they don’t have to explain how Christ must have been reincarnated on every inhabited world. That doesn’t mean that there wouldn’t be stumbling blocks; any religion that teaches about the uniqueness of humanity would have to face up to a new paradigm where we are not unique. Furthermore, Malik has encountered individuals who cannot engage with the idea of aliens because there is no mention of them in the Quran. Similar quandaries have been grappled with by Christian theologians too: the Bible did not mention the people of the New World, or Copernicanism, but Christianity adapted (albeit slowly and painfully, particularly for the indigenous people of the Americas) to the reality of each situation.

The Apex of Creation

Malik thinks the main problem would be humanity being pushed down the hierarchy of beings.

“Here I see theological issues emerging, because in Islam and Christianity I do see some backing to the idea that perhaps we are the apex of God’s creation,” he says. “This concept of theological anthropocentrism might be shattered by the emergence of extraterrestrials.”

If extraterrestrial intelligence exists, then it is likely much older than we are. The logic behind this is that the Universe is 13.77 billion years old and there has been plenty of time for life to arise on other worlds. Humanity, on the other hand, are newcomers to the scene having arrived only around 100,000 years ago. And if ET can beam powerful signals across interstellar space, or perhaps arrive here in spacecraft from across the stars, their scientific knowledge must be far advanced than our own.

“That would mean that their intellect is far superior to ours, and I think we would be very worried by the implication that there is a smarter species than us,” says Malik.

“We’ve gotten used to being the smartest creature on the block.”

Any atheistic scientists reading this shouldn’t feel too smug. The discovery of extraterrestrial life with technology and scientific knowledge far in advance of our own could be grim for our own scientific endeavours. In his book The High Frontier (1976), the Princeton physicist Gerard K O’Neill posited that “it has seemed to me overwhelmingly probable that the first effect of the discovery [of aliens], as soon as the excitement and the novelty have worn off a little, would be to kill our science and our art.” O’Neill added that “if a civilization now radioing to us is as many thousands of years ahead of us in knowledge as we are from the Neanderthal, why continue to study and search for scientific truth on our own? Gone then the possibility of new discovery, or surprise, and above all of pride and accomplishment.”

O’Neill is saying that should aliens bequeath us with their knowledge, or even just display their technology for us to figure out, where does the imperative for us to figure out the Universe for ourselves go? If we have a scientific question, we can just refer to what the aliens say. We might also discover that some of our cherished scientific notions are wrong, but we wouldn’t learn that through our own endeavours, we’d be told it like a child being scolded by their teacher. It would no longer be scientific discovery; we’d be spoon-fed information, stripping us of all motivation to learn for ourselves.

Disintegrating Societies

Similar feelings of inadequacy could be felt by religions. Suppose that aliens arrived armed not only with faith, but with proof of God, whether a God of this Earth or another God entirely, and therefore were closer to that God than any of us. Or, what if they came to us with scientific proof that God doesn’t exist, demonstrating it by showing the inner workings of the Universe without divine intervention? Would such information be ignored the way that some religious people ignore evidence for evolution or the Big Bang? Or would being shown that the object of our faith does not exist bring with it a profound trauma that people could not recover from?

Religions will try to adapt, but despite Peters’ survey, one can make a case that it’s still an open question as to whether religions will survive the encounter. The 1960 Brookings report for NASA on the Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs included a two-page section about the consequences of the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence. This stated that “Anthropological files contain many examples of societies, sure of their place in the Universe, which have disintegrated when they have had to associate with previously unfamiliar societies espousing different ideas and different life ways; others that survived such an experience usually did so by paying the price of changes in values and attitudes and behaviour.”

Granted, how things go down would depend on how we were made aware of the reality of extraterrestrial life. Finding microbes on Mars would be very cool, but most people who aren’t astrobiologists would just shrug their shoulders. The detection of a radio signal, perhaps indecipherable, from hundreds or thousands of light years away would be headline news for a few days, and then forgotten about by the general public who would just get on with their everyday lives. A signal that can be deciphered from a planet within 10 or 20 light years of us, close enough to enable communication back and forth, would be a different and serious matter, and should the aliens turn up in their spaceships landing on the White House lawn, then all bets are off.

Retroactive Religions

One way that religions may try to survive the repercussions of alien contact is by retroactively fitting the aliens into the words of their Holy books. It is kind of an Ancient Aliens approach admits Ted Peters, and it is not an approach that he personally encourages, quite clearly stating that “The Bible does not mention aliens.” Shoaib Malik, however, describes how there is a precedence for this in how Islamic teachings integrated western science in the 1980s.

“There were two very interesting but diametrically opposed attitudes when it came to modern science,” says Malik, who has edited a new book, Islamic Theology and Extraterrestrial Life (2024), which is the first English language book on the topic. “One of these attitudes was called the Islamisation of Science, which was somewhat suspicious of modern science that was being imported from foreign lands. And the other one was called Scientific Miracles of the Quran, which is this idea that modern ideas in science were actually anticipated in the Quran, and so they used this as an apologetic maneuvers to support the divine origin of this text.”

One can imagine that were alien life to be discovered, sections of the Quran, or the Bible, or the Torah, could be reinterpreted by some theologians as describing extraterrestrials. Malik says that Islam already has a ready made alien proxy, called the jinn. Whereas Christianity has angels and demons, which are fallen angels, Islam has angels and the jinn, which are not fallen angels but a distinct category of their own.

“In the Muslim world, some people are saying that extraterrestrials are not really aliens, they are the jinn,” says Malik.

Jewish scripture has similar resource for aliens. The American Rabbi and writer, Avram Mlotek, has suggested that there are passages in the Hebrew Bible (and hence the Old Testament for Christians) that could be implied as referencing aliens, such as in Genesis, Chapter 6, which mentions entities called the B’nei Elohim (Children of God) who took humankind’s daughters as wives and that this coincided with a time when some people called the Nefilim (fallen ones) were on Earth. Is this alluding to angels and demons, or something more ‘alien’, asks Mlotek?

The Greatest Danger

And what of atheists? Will their position be shaken by the discovery of extraterrestrial life? If aliens have their own religions, or a broader spirituality that perhaps makes more logical sense to atheists, would they remain atheist or take up the religion and spirituality of the aliens? Speaking as an atheist, I have to concede that I don’t know. None of us knows how we will react to the news that we are not alone in the Universe, and how we do react may well depend on how we learn we are not alone. If you are a person of strong faith, it’s very easy to respond to a survey about a hypothetical situation and say that your faith would not be shaken. Actually coming face to face with that situation would be very different; we’d no longer be confronting a hypothetical question on a survey, rather we’d be confronting cold, hard reality.

We can be guided a little bit by history, as pointed out by the Brookings report, which at best suggests that for all our cultural tentpoles, including religion, an encounter with the alien could be a tough ride.

That’s why it’s important that these discussions are happening now, so that we can at least prepare ourselves. It’s also why those who persist on insisting that they be allowed to transmit loudly into the heavens to alert anyone out there to our presence, are playing with fire. It doesn’t necessarily matter what the aliens intentions will be in response; what will matter will be the reaction of all our cultural, societal and scientific institutions, and this could potentially pose the greatest danger.

Alien Messiahs

There’s a core belief in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) that alien civilizations with greater technology than us will also be more advanced in a moral sense too, and that they will have the solution to all our problems on Earth – climate change, war, famine, disease, you name it – and be willing to share those solutions with us. Carl Sagan for instance, posited that an alien message “may contain detailed prescriptions or the avoidance of technological disaster, for a passage through adolescence to maturity.” Frank Drake, in his book Is Anyone Out There? (1991) co-written by Dava Sobel, suggests that “immortality may be quite common among extraterrestrials,” which would see them become highly safety conscious with no warfare so that they can avoid death through non-natural causes, and to protect themselves from war with other worlds, they “would help other societies become immortal too” – including us.

It all seems loaded with quasi-religious imagery – immortal, powerful, other-worldly beings acting as our saviours by bringing peace and prosperity to humankind.

“There’s this interesting response among some folk that they believe aliens will also be the salvation of humankind, because if they’ve reached a certain critical point of intelligence, they’ve also reached a point of civilisational intelligence, and they’ve eliminated bickering and wars and discourse,” says Malik. “We’re kind of depositing the messiah complex on these aliens.”

The quasi-religious speculation of SETI scientists unfortunately conflates technological advancement with being morally or ethically advanced, but connections between the two are highly debated. Just because a civilization has great technology does not automatically make it wise or altruistic.

In light of the alien, we come back to what Lucas Mix spoke about with regards his faith, and the imperative to ‘love thy stranger’. It remains to be seen whether we can relate to, or find companionship, with an alien species, but perhaps the discovery of alien life can at least bring humanity closer together, as we find greater kinship in our neighbors than we had before when we thought we were alone in the Universe.

Alien contact could potentially bring with it many ‘shiny new things’ that could be disruptive to human societies. In some ways this will be no different to the introduction of our own disruptive new technologies, from the spinning jenny to the combustion engine and the Internet, or to integrating new scientific ideas into society such as A.I. or evolution.

In response, the whole of human society, encapsulating the religious and the non-religious, will be forced to adapt or else flounder. We may lose some of the foundations of our culture in the process, but strengthen others. As Arthur C Clarke wrote in The Exploration of Space (1951), “a faith which cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.” Though perhaps Ted Peters’ survey indicates a certain in-built robustness to faith that will triumph against the odds.

Whatever contact brings, good or bad, it would be a time for humanity to come together and hold fast to the credo encouraged by so many religions to love thy stranger. Perhaps it will make us appreciate our differences better, and force us to learn that it doesn’t matter how we say the prayers as long as we find the good in each other. By sticking together, we will stand the best chance of emerging on the other side of a contact event in a better place.

Falcon 9 Competitor Ariane 6 Finally Launched. But is the Race Already Over?

2024-07-09T21:00:00.000Z

The road from the drawing board to the launch pad had been long and humbling for Europe’s new heavy-lift Ariane 6 rocket, which successfully blasted off on Tuesday, July 9th, from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, with small satellites and experiments from various space agencies, private companies, and universities.

The Ariane 6 re-ignitable Vinci upper stage, the most innovative part of the rocket's problem-riddled development, successfully fired twice before dispersing satellites across low Earth orbit. Before the planned and final burn, however, its auxiliary power unit (a device that pressurizes the stage's tanks) shut down prematurely. As a result, the third burn, needed to complete a de-orbit maneuver didn't take place, and the stage, instead of heading into the atmosphere to burn up in line with ESA's 'no space clutter' commitment, remained in orbit 600 kilometers above Earth.

The hiccup, described by ESA and ArianeGroup execs in a post-launch conference as minor blemish in an otherwise flawless debut, won't affect the schedule of future launches.

"A completely new rocket is not launched often, and success is far from guaranteed. I am privileged to have witnessed this historic moment when Europe's new generation of the Ariane family lifted off – successfully – effectively reinstating European access to space,” said ESA's Director General Josef Aschbacher.

But the celebration can’t undo the humiliation Europe experienced as it struggled to get its new flagship launcher off the ground. Years of delays in the 5-billion-euro program meant that the supply of the predecessor rocket, Ariane 5, had run out before Ariane 6 was ready for business. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which ended the use of Russia’s medium-lift Soyuz launcher at Europe’s Kourou spaceport, and the 2022 failure of Europe’s light-weight Vega rocket, exacerbated the fiasco.

For one year, Europe was left without its own access to space, dependent on Elon Musk’s SpaceX, whose ambitions to make rockets reusable were not taken seriously by ArianeGroup executives. Over the past decade, SpaceX, indeed, has shown Europe that complacency is a trap as it pushed the European behemoth off its throne as the undisputed leader of the global launch market.

The Heyday

“As recently as seven years ago, Arianespace were the dominant player in the international launch market,” Dallas Kasaboski, a principal space industry analyst at global technology consultancy Analysys Mason, told Supercluster. “They controlled 30 to 40% percent of the market. Even more in some years.”

In 2014, Europe’s heavy-lift workhorse Ariane 5, developed in the 1980s, blasted off from its South American launch-pad six times, lifting ten giant telecommunications satellites into geostationary orbit (the orbit at an altitude of 22,000 miles where satellites appear suspended above a fixed spot on the equator). That year, the rocket also sent the final European-built automated cargo vehicle Georges Lemaître to the International Space Station.

SpaceX’s medium-lift Falcon 9, in the fifth year of operations at that time, too, launched six times that year — twice with supplies for the International Space Station, three times into geostationary orbit and once with a batch of small satellites heading to low Earth orbit.

That very same year, the council of ESA member states approved the development of Ariane 6. The new rocket, according to ESA, was to “maintain Europe’s leadership in the fast-changing commercial launch service market.” At the same time, a new company called ArianeGroup was established that formalized the partnership between Europe’s main rocket makers Airbus and Safran into a joint venture. The restructuring involved the handing over of Arianespace, the provider of European launch services, from the French space agency CNES to the new firm. Later, the teething problems at the new company would be blamed for a string of delays that resulted in Ariane 6’s debut flight lifting off four years after the intended date.

The Choice

The new rocket was to be expendable — one use only — consisting of two stages powered by the environmentally friendly combination of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The main innovation being the Vinci upper stage that could be reignited up to five times to disperse satellites at different altitudes. Ariane 6 was to come in two varieties — the medium-lift Ariane 62 with two strap-on solid boosters, perfect for low Earth orbit missions, and the more powerful, four-booster Ariane 64 intended for launches of heavy satellites into geostationary orbit. The main goal was to reduce launch cost by at least 40% compared to Ariane 5 to keep up with SpaceX’s aggressive drive for lower pricing.

“When ESA approved Ariane 6, the idea was to slash costs and be more competitive,” Maxime Puteaux, principal adviser at space industry consultancy firm Novaspace, told Supercluster. “But the issue is that Ariane 6 is more or less Europe’s answer to Falcon 9 as it was 10 years ago. Falcon 9 that we know today is very different — much more powerful, much more reliable and innovative thanks to reusability.”

In fact, SpaceX’s reusability efforts began showing results soon after Europe’s decision to make Ariane 6 expendable. In December 2015, one year after the fateful meeting of ESA member states, Elon Musk’s space firm landed Falcon 9’s first stage on a pad at Cape Canaveral for the first time. Since then, SpaceX has nailed about 330 booster landings and gradually increased the number of uses of a single Falcon 9 first stage to the current maximum of 20 flights. SpaceX is already working to certify the Falcon 9 first stage for up to 40 uses.

Talking to the Financial Times in 2020, former ESA Director General Jan Wörner said that developing a reusable rocket was deemed too challenging and costly at that time, and couldn’t be justified by the relatively low demand for guaranteed European institutional launches. Analysts agree that the case for reusability wasn’t persuasive back then. The satellite market, at that time, was dominated by large, mono-block spacecraft with lifespans of 20 years or more that Ariane 5 was optimized for. The smallsat revolution, with its concepts of mega-constellations and the idea of replacing cheaper satellites with more modern tech every few years, was only beginning to shape up.

“I think the initial decision and the initial reasoning for the decision was sound,” said Kasaboski. “When SpaceX was coming around, reusability was very, very ambitious and far away kind of technology. Most players in the space sector did not have the ability to support themselves to develop it. And the expectation was for the satellite market to remain as it was. They did not expect that high, rapid turnaround that we now see in the low Earth orbit.”

The Turning of The Tide

By 2015, however, it became clear that the tide was turning. Satellite makers began receiving fewer orders for large geostationary telecommunication satellites that used to be the bread and butter of the satellite and launch industry.

“The geostationary telecommunications market started to collapse in 2015 because the end users were no longer watching satellite broadcast TV and no longer buying subscriptions,” said Puteaux. “The launcher market at that time was in full panic on whether or not their demand will be there and how it will be supplied.”

A cohort of New Space smallsat makers came to the launcher market’s rescue. But they wanted something more than was being offered. They needed flexible and cheaper opportunities to launch in bundles with other missions. SpaceX quickly responded to the trend (which it itself helped to foster the development of its Starlink constellation), offering launches for dozens of smaller satellites on its Transporter ride-sharing missions. With the expansion of the New Space sector, the number of launches booked by commercial customers began to creep up. At this stage, Kasaboski thinks, ESA and Arianegroup should have paused to think.

“Although the initial decision made sense, there must have been a window where the configuration of Ariane 6 could have changed direction,” he said. “It might still have left them behind and over budget, but maybe they would be in a position to be a bit more competitive.”

Things were only bound to get worse for ArianeGroup. While SpaceX kept marching ahead, soon landing one booster after another and making strides toward Musk’s dream of a behemoth fully reusable Starship, the European rocket manufacturer began postponing the Ariane 6 debut launch. The triumphant first-attempt debut flight came four years after schedule, making the rocket look even more past its sell-by-date.

Puteaux points out that while Ariane 6 was designed to compete with Falcon 9, it will now face an even mightier competitor in the form of the Starship. “The Ariane 6 debut flight comes in a world where Starship has already flown four times,” he said. “Who would have thought five years ago that it would happen this way and not the other. The question is, how much Starship will eat Ariane 6’s lunch.”

ESA defends its position by arguing that Ariane 6 missions may differ from what Starship will be used for. "Honestly, I don’t think Starship will be a game-changer or a real competitor, said Toni Tolker-Nielsen, ESA director of space transportation In an interview with Space News. "This huge launcher is designed to fly people to the moon and Mars. Ariane 6 is perfect for the job if you need to launch a four- or five-ton satellite. Starship will not eradicate Ariane 6 at all."

The Lessons

Talking to the French newspaper Le Monde in December 2023, the newly appointed CEO of ArianeGroup Martin Sion attributed the delays in Ariane 6 development to the challenges faced by the newly established company when integrating its various sub-units. He also claimed the company struggled with the lack of skilled engineers after the retirement of the Ariane 5 generation.

Puteaux and Kasaboski, however, trace the problem to the European way of doing space business.

“Europe has a very strong industrial base that's often institutionally focused and it is often very difficult to change direction,” said Kasaboski. “America's ability to fail quickly and iterate in many cases works very well. It works quickly, and you move to the next thing, and there you go.”

Puteaux added: “Ariane’s history has always been about giving Europe independent access to space. This objective is still valid. But we are experiencing the limits of this approach now because we’re no longer in a world where people are developing launchers for sovereignty purposes only but rather to make money on top of it.”

He adds that the ESA principle of geo-return (a rule that guarantees member states to get their worth of contribution into ESA back in the form of industrial contracts) and the influence of member states on where subcontracts go is an additional obstacle to efficiency.

“ArianeGroup, because of the geographical return, doesn't get to choose its contractors,” said Puteaux. “It’s dictated by other member states, selecting, putting money to the program, hence designating with whom the contractor or integrator is forced to work with. When a contractor is not at risk of being fired and being replaced by someone else, there are no incentives in moving fast and being efficient and innovative.”

Here to stay?

Among the main blows to ESA and ArianeGroup ahead of the debut launch of Ariane 6 was the decision by the European weather satellite operator Eumetsat, announced on June 29th, to launch its new flagship geostationary satellite on SpaceX’s Falcon 9. The satellite, Meteosat Third Generation-Sounder 1 (MTG-S1), was scheduled to launch on one of the upcoming Ariane 6 launches in early 2025.

The 340-million-euro- per-year subsidy, which ArianeGroup secured from ESA member states last year to keep Ariane 6 launch cost down, drew further criticism.

Despite the setbacks, Kasaboski and Puteaux agree that the market “wants and needs Ariane 6.” Arianespace has a backlog worth of 3 billion euro of Ariane 6 launches, according to Puteaux, with the Amazon Kuiper and OneWeb constellations being among its most significant customers.

The question is, how long is Europe’s new rocket going to stay. Puteaux, for one, doubts, it will live up to the benchmark set by its predecessor Ariane 5, which kept launching satellites for 27 years.

“I don't think that Ariane 6 will live as long as Ariane 5,” said Puteaux. “I think that it's a kind of transition rocket for maybe 10 years. I think we might soon see either a replacement being developed or new competitors to emerge in Europe.”

A Chinese Rocket Accidentally Launched and Exploded

2024-07-02T23:00:00.000Z

An engine test in China ended in disaster on Sunday when a rocket broke free of its supports and crashed into a hillside near a populated city.

While there were no casualties, the incident once-again raises serious concerns about China’s approach to rocketry.

“This is really an egregious event,” says Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and astronautics expert at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “It’s quite shocking they would have made such a basic mistake.”

Space Pioneer, a private Chinese company also called Beijing Tianbing Technology Co, had been performing a static fire test of its Tianlong-3 launcher when the incident occurred. The rocket, seen as a competitor to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in the US, will be 71 meters (233 feet) tall with a reusable first stage that returns for a ground landing.

Sunday’s test was a firing of the first stage of the rocket, ahead of a first possible launch later this year. A static fire test, a norm in spaceflight, is when a rocket is mounted on a stand and held securely to the ground with hold-down clamps while its engines fire, to test the rocket is in working order before a launch attempt. “We do these tests because sometimes there are problems that we haven’t found in previous testing,” says Phil Metzger, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida.

Disaster struck for Space Pioneer, however, when its clamps failed, leading the rocket to take to the air instead of remaining on the ground. Video footage showed the rocket climbing into the sky before it rotated onto its side. The exploding fuselage then fell back to Earth as it started to break apart, its engines still firing, and crashed into a hillside 1.5 kilometers (one mile) from the test site near the city of Gongyi in central China, which has a population of 800,000 people.

“We sincerely apologize for the incident,” the company – which has raised more than $400 million in five years – said in a statement. “We deeply regret disappointing everyone who has supported and followed us.” They added that there were “no casualties” from the event, and said they would compensate any residents that had experienced property damage from the incident.

In a previous statement, the company said the cause of the incident had been a “structural failure at the connection between the rocket body and the test bench.” It added the rocket was “the most powerful power system test of any carrier rocket currently under development” in China, with the ability to lift 17 tons of mass to orbit.

It’s unclear what, if any, investigation will result from the incident. However, it is not the first time that international eyes have been on China for its approach to rocket launches. Just last week, video was shared of the first stage of a Chinese government Long March 2C rocket falling near a village in southwest China while expelling toxic gas.

“This does make you wonder about whether there is a broad problem with China’s space safety culture overall,”

says Victoria Samson, chief director of space security and stability at the Secure World Foundation in Washington DC.

In the US, rocket launches take place over the ocean to ensure falling debris does not endanger people, but China uses several inland launch sites that result in dangerous events like this, although it does plan to move launches to an ocean launch site on the island of Hainan. Static fire test failures, meanwhile, are rare but not unheard of; one of the most notable in the US was in 1952, when a Viking sounding rocket broke free from its clamps and crashed several kilometers from its test site in New Mexico. “That was, of course, in the more cavalier days of the 1950s,” says McDowell.

Were a failure like Tianlong-3 to occur today in the US, the ramifications for the company would be severe. “They certainly would have their launch license pulled,” says Rand Simberg, a space consultant based in Wyoming. “There would be a serious investigation.” Metzger said that it’s unlikely a US regulatory body would have allowed a static fire test so close to a populated area as Space Pioneer’s test. “I'm shocked at how close they were to neighbouring communities,” he says.

"They could have actually had that explosion in a populated area."

The outcome of the incident is likely to be “at the very least, a delay” for the first launch of the Tianlong-3 rocket, says Jean Deville, a space analyst in France that monitors China’s space activities. An orbital launch had been scheduled for June or July this year, but the static fire test will now need to be repeated “likely in a more remote location”, meaning a first launch could now be at the end of 2024 or early 2025, says Deville.

For commercial launch in China, “this accident will likely lead to additional regulations which will help prevent such accidents in the future,” said Deville. As for any repercussions for Space Pioneer, “it's unclear at this stage and depends on the outcome of the investigation,” he says. “It seems like Space Pioneer got lucky. Had the rocket gone in a different direction, things could have ended very differently.”

You can track China's spaceflight activities on the Supercluster App's live Launch Tracker, interactive Astronaut Database, and Stations Dashboard where we monitor traffic and crew aboard the Tiangong Space Station.

NASA's Space Trash Hit a Florida Home. The Family is Suing.

2024-06-25T21:00:00.000Z

The claim against NASA will set a precedent for how future space debris accidents are dealt with.

On March 8th, 2024, 19-year-old Daniel Otero was alone at home in his family’s house in Naples, Florida when the walls began to shake. He first thought that the town, about 40 miles south of Fort Myers, may have been hit by an earthquake. But when he set out to inspect the house, he found a small hole in the ceiling of one of the rooms and a matching fracture in the floor below. It was clear that something had fallen through the roof. The sheriff’s department later found an odd projectile under the floorboards — a partially melted metallic cylinder only about 10 centimeters long.

The fragment was later identified as a piece of space debris ejected from the International Space Station that, contrary to NASA’s expectations, failed to burn up in the atmosphere. The family is now asking NASA to pay $80,000 in damages including emotional distress, non-insured property damage loss, business interruption damages and the cost of assistance from third parties.

The resolution of the claim — the first of its kind — will set a precedent for how such cases are handled in the future. Chances of being struck by a piece of space debris are still extremely low — one in trillions — but reports of fragments of orbital junk landing near inhabited areas have become more frequent in recent years. Only two months after the Florida incident, a glamping company in North Carolina found a partially burned disposable support structure from SpaceX Dragon crew capsule on its property. A similar piece of charcoaled junk was found in a field in Canada the same month.

Space Debris Law Not Applicable

The rare occurrence seems to have landed the Otero family in a legal loophole. While many consider this event to be the most serious space debris hit since a piece from the disintegrated Space Shuttle Columbia fell through the roof of a dentist’s office in Texas in 2003, the incident is not covered by the Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects adopted by the United Nations’ member states in 1972. According to the Convention, a launching state is “absolutely liable to pay compensation for damage caused by its space objects on the surface of the Earth or to aircraft, and liable for damage due to its faults in space.”

However, as Christopher Johnson, the Director of Legal Affairs and Space Law at the Secure World Foundation, an NGO focused on space sustainability, told Supercluster, the Convention “does not apply where the national citizens of a launching state suffer damages caused by that state.”

In this case, the piece of debris was a NASA-owned support structure ejected from the space station in 2021 together with a batch of used nickel-hydride batteries. If the Otero’s house was in Mexico or up north in Canada, the U.S. government would have to compensate the family without protest.

Instead, the Otero family’s claim, filed through the legal firm Cranfill Sumner, calls upon the Federal Torts Claim Act (FTCA) claiming negligence on NASA’s part.

FTCA, in place since 1946, provides a legal framework for individuals to claim compensations for personal injury, death, or property damage caused by negligence or wrongful omission by an employee of the federal government.

The North Carolina-head-quartered firm, however, calls out NASA in a statement on its website for not having an immediate compensation framework available for domestic victims while being “absolutely liable” for international damage.

“We have asked NASA not to apply a different standard towards U.S. citizens or residents, but instead to take care of the Oteros and make them whole,” Mica Nguyen Worthy, a partner at Cranfill Sumner’s Charlotte office, said in the statement. “Here, the U.S. government, through NASA, has an opportunity to set the standard or ‘set a precedent’ as to what responsible, safe, and sustainable space operations ought to look like. If NASA were to take the position that the Oteros’ claims should be paid in full, it would send a strong signal to both other governments and private industries that such victims should be compensated regardless of fault.”

The agency now has six months to respond to the family’s claims. Worthy told Supercluster in an email that if the case is not resolved “to the Oteros’ satisfaction,” the family might consider filing “a potential lawsuit”. She, however, added that “NASA has been professional” throughout the process.

“We have been engaged in dialogue with NASA’s legal counsel and intend to work through the issues together as they are unprecedented,” Worthy said.

NASA refused to comment on the case for Supercluster, saying that “it would not be appropriate to comment on a pending claim.”

The Growing Space Junk Problem

Over 300 metric tons of defunct satellites, used rocket stages, objects thrown out of the space station and various collision fragments enter Earth’s atmosphere every year. That’s only about 2% of the annual mass of natural meteorites that cross paths with the planet. The vast majority of both — natural and human-made objects — burns up in the atmosphere. Only larger objects occasionally make it to the ground. But experts think that the amount of space debris making it all the way down will grow in the future.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) released a report last year, which estimates that a piece of debris could injure or kill someone every two years if plans to deploy large satellite mega-constellations are completed based on the most ambitious plans. SpaceX Starlink, OneWeb, Amazon Project Kuiper, and Chinese ventures G60 and GuoWang have similar visions of thousands to tens of thousands of satellites.

Companies behind those mega-constellations intend to replace satellites about every five years with newer, more capable models. The old spacecraft will then be taken from orbit using residual propellent and sent into the atmosphere to burn up. Getting rid of old space stuff this way is a preferred option of the space community as it prevents junk from cluttering orbits for decades, threatening other spacecraft with collisions. On the downside, it means that within a decade, the amount of re-entering satellite mass could increase ten-fold and with it the percentage of objects surviving re-entry.

Space historian and astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, who tracks satellite re-entries globally, told Supercluster that no “good statistics” are available of the proportion of space junk that reaches the ground but that “the frequency of reports” of debris landing in inhabited areas “has been increasing.”

“I don't think it's a serious problem yet, but it is something to worry about,” McDowell said. “We have been lucky that no one has been hurt to date, but that luck will run out eventually.”

The 19-year-old Daniel Otero was certainly the lucky one. According to available reports, he had been enjoying a relaxed afternoon only a few rooms away from the point where the debris pierced through the house. His father Alejandro rushed home after learning about the incident. In addition to concerns about the damaged roof, the family also worried the odd metallic projectile could be toxic.

To identify the owner didn’t take long. Space experts at that time had been tracking the re-entry of a 2,630-kilogram pellet of used batteries that astronauts had sent afloat from the International Space Station three years prior. It took the junk three years to spiral down from the space station’s orbit at 400 kilometers above Earth. NASA had expected the junk to burn up completely above the Gulf of Mexico.

A closer inspection at Kennedy Space Center later confirmed the 700-gram space shrapnel was piece of the pellet’s support structure — a stanchion made of the metal alloy Inconel, a nickel-chromium-based superalloy used in extreme environments under high temperature.

Leading By Example

Johnson said the incident brings into question the methods NASA uses to assess the risk of space debris surviving re-entry. Operators can guide old satellites that are still under control to re-enter over remote ocean areas. Space junk that is completely dead, however, can only be monitored. NASA, Johnson added, will now have to demonstrate that it takes the problem here at home as seriously as it does abroad.

“It can be viewed as setting some level for the 'standard of care' for how states behave on orbit, and especially in how they dispose of their refuse,” Johnson said. “On the international level, the U.S. is a major proponent and advocate of the UN Long-term Sustainability Guidelines, which call on states to take measures to address risks associated with uncontrolled re-entry.”

Worthy added: “My clients are seeking adequate compensation to account for the stress and impact that this event had on their lives. They are grateful that no one sustained physical injuries from this incident, but a ‘near miss’ situation such as this could have been catastrophic. If the debris had hit a few feet in another direction, there could have been serious injury or a fatality.”

According to the European Space Agency, some 12,540 satellites currently orbit the Earth. Only 9,800 of them are operational. In addition to that, space sustainability experts track about 35,670 fragments of debris down to the size of 10 centimeters. Overall, more than 12,400 metric ton of stuff hurtles in Earth’s orbits.

In Photos: The Alien World of Pine Bush, NY

2024-06-18T19:00:00.000Z

Five years ago, Supercluster dispatched a production team to Pine Bush, NY.

We were in search of those who bear witness to the mysterious events that have defined life in the UFO capitol of the world. Pine Bush is the kind of town that Mulder and Scully would have visited in Season 1 to investigate a cow mutilation. Normal enough until you start listening to the gossip and lore of the town. Stories of all variety. Triangle UFOs. Metallic flying spheres. Thousands of sightings from townsfolk, local officials, and even cops, from over a century. Many well-documented with shared eyewitness accounts.

We met both the sincere and the eccentric while filming our short documentary and captured a subculture on the fringes, just before startling test pilot videos began circulating in major newspapers like the New York Times and eventually, in congressional hearings. New York's own Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand are among the most vocal lawmakers behind the new wave of interest. With UFOs and aliens now on the front pages and in new legislation, we wondered how the vibe has shifted in Pine Bush and decided to return on Saturday, June 1st. Not just as filmmakers producing a follow-up documentary, but as vendors at the town's UFO fair — in the trenches in a community of true believers.

Pine Bush's yearly UFO Fair features merchandisers, food vendors, tarot card readers, self-published authors, and us, a space media company that would happily welcome a meeting with aliens or a photo of an alien spacecraft. We also make some pretty cool UFO merch, some themed for Pine Bush. Our vendor neighbors were a toy store and a soap maker. After setting up, we remarked how far we were from Cape Canaveral or Starbase, and that this isn't our usual crowd. Soon after, a man wearing a full rubber alien space warrior suite with an official U.S Space Force mission patch greeted us. "Fancy meeting you here!" as we handed him a free Supercluster launch poster. Practicing good intergalactic diplomacy, he gifted us one in return. I joked that we should carpool back to Florida.

There were quite a few fake (hopefully!) federal agents walking around. Quite a few Men in Black, some FBI, and we even saw a Ghostbuster. I mistakenly called out a Dana Scully, due to what I thought was a recognizable wig. She corrected me by explaining that she was dressed as a character from Dr. Who. And yes, there were multiple Dalek's in attendance. The crowds grew as morning turned to afternoon, many visitors being locals, nerdy cosplayers, and families with children. We gave out a few hundred Astronaut Baseball cards and demonstrated how to use our free suite of apps to track all human activity in space. Not as interesting as tentacled invaders but fun nonetheless.

Humans can be aliens too! We told the children of Pine Bush, who rolled their eyes.

While the general conversation around UFO or UAPs have dwindled over the last few months due to lack of hard evidence and splits among the vocal and very-online UFO community. Some have published more books and some continue to raise more money for the cause. The Pentagon's AARO (UFO investigation unit) said there's no evidence of aliens so nobody listens to them anymore. An older gentlemen visited our table to remark on our "cool" AARO UFO Mission Patch that we have for sale. I explained that we were trolling the Pentagon office with the saucer design. He laughed and walked away with it. Without paying.

Was that you AARO!?

The people of Pine Bush seemed mostly unbothered by the UFO topic entering the mainstream. Some hit us with "well yea, we've been saying it!" and a couple of folks seemed validated by the news coverage. We met a podcaster who said he felt empowered to share his own experience and sightings around the area. The folks featured in our upcoming Pine Bush follow-up will feature some of the more passionate storytellers around town.

The fringe conversations that were legitimized over the mainstream UFO news cycle and taken seriously, are beginning to fade back into obscurity. "The government is covering everything up!" one side will say. Another will jump in with "these UFOs and aliens might be angels and demons." While we can't speak for the latter, we can report that the government (NASA) and one of America's largest defense contractors (Boeing) have their Starliner crew capsule stuck at the International Space Station many days past its mission due to technical issues plaguing the spacecraft.

If they are in possession of alien technology, they don't know how to use it. They can barely operate the human technology, which is around 50 years old.

While at the Pine Bush UFO fair, we became users of our own app as we turned our attention to Kennedy Space Center where Jenny was covering the troubled Starliner mission. As you know, it scrubbed. And we did announce it to those in ear shot of our vendor table.

A woman in full alien space queen regalia asked in a surprising and suspicious tone, "Boeing flies astronauts!?"

"Not yet" we explained to the person who believes aliens regularly fly over Pine Bush. "We hope Boeing is able to fly soon.....we want to believe."

At the end of the day, many of the folks we met during the Pine Bush UFO fair are just passionately curious and proud of the myth that surrounds their town. Many of the town's parents stopped by our table to download the Supercluster app, so they can help their kids spot the International Space Station with the naked eye. If they are looking up anyway, might as well spot our own spacecraft.

Our mission is to create more space fans and make it much easier to be a space fan. That means meeting people where they are. And sometimes that's the Space Prom at the Pine Bush UFO Museum on a Friday night.

Our next Pine Bush documentary will be out soon.

For more photos by Levi Christiansen visit https://www.levichristiansen.com/

Starship Super Heavy Achieved Ocean Landings. Mechazilla is Next.

2024-06-11T21:00:00.000Z

Building on the shortcomings of previous flights, SpaceX launched the world’s largest and most powerful rocket for the fourth time. It finally returned home.

On Thursday, June 6, Starship S29, stacked atop Super Heavy Booster 11, launched from Starbase, Texas, at 7:50 a.m local time. Teams gathered invaluable data, achieving reusability milestones while certifying changes from previous flights. “We've gone from utterly insane to merely late!” said Elon Musk, referencing the lofty goals for Starship, which seem one step closer after each test flight.

Starship lifted off with 32 of 33 Raptor engines igniting on the Super Heavy booster. Despite one engine being down, the vehicle ascended as expected along its planned trajectory, demonstrating the critical engine-out capability and redundancy built into Starship since its development. After the hot-stage separation, the Super Heavy booster turned around and successfully performed a soft landing in the Gulf of Mexico, seven minutes and 24 seconds into the flight. The booster itself is around 20-stories tall.

Starship continued its flight to orbit, maintaining its orientation throughout the coast phase before re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere over the Indian Ocean. Teams captured real-time telemetry and high-definition video throughout the re-entry courtesy of Starlink, another achievement. Starship successfully navigated the phases of peak heating, sustaining the maximum temperature generated during re-entry and maximum aerodynamic pressure, the point of greatest stress while reentering the thicker parts of Earth's atmosphere. As Starship neared the ocean surface, it initiated a belly-flop maneuver and ignited three center Raptor engines, allowing for a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean, culminating the flight 66 minutes after liftoff.

“This is like a 20% lucky outcome because both the Booster had a soft landing and the Ship had a soft landing in the ocean,” said Elon after the successful test.

Booster Soft Splashdown

A key objective of this flight was to demonstrate a soft water landing for the Super Heavy booster. Data from the third flight indicated that the filter supplying liquid oxygen to the Raptor engines was blocked, causing a loss of pressure in the engines’ turbopumps and resulting in an early boostback shutdown and re-ignition failure during the landing burn. For this flight, SpaceX modified the hardware inside the oxygen tanks to improve propellant filtration capabilities, along with additional hardware and software changes to increase the startup reliability of the Raptor engines during landing.

Flight 4 certified these changes as the Booster separated from the Starship, initiated a flip maneuver, and successfully ignited 13 Raptor engines for the boost back burn to return to the targeted landing site in the Gulf of Mexico. The hot-stage ring was jettisoned from the Super Heavy, a temporary measure to keep the booster within its mass constraints for the landing burn. Future Starship iterations will feature a lighter, integrated hot-stage ring for full reusability.

Unlike the Falcon 9, Super Heavy doesn’t perform an entry burn as its steel structure is designed to handle atmospheric pressures and heating. As the booster entered the thicker parts of the atmosphere, it used its large grid fins to finely maneuver itself toward the landing zone. It ignited 12 of the 13 Raptor engines for the landing burn, switching to only the center 3 to softly land on the water. Despite the fiery landing burn and visible debris, the booster maintained its orientation and landed precisely in the Gulf of Mexico. This successful soft landing marks a first in Starship’s flight tests, bringing teams closer to reliably retrieving the booster.

Making the Re-entry and Ship Landing

Starship continued on its planned trajectory, just shy of achieving orbit at 151 kilometers in altitude, traveling at a speed of 26,500 kilometers per hour. Not achieving a stable orbit is intentional to ensure Starship safely re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere in case SpaceX loses communications with the vehicle, a very real possibility during these tests. The previous flight saw Starship in a slow, but uncontrolled roll throughout its coast phase, resulting in an irregular atmospheric entry with more intense heating on both protected and unprotected areas. The cause was determined to be the clogging of several of the Ship’s valves responsible for roll control. With additional roll control thrusters onboard Ship 29, it maintained a stable configuration during its coast phase as it made its way to the Southern Indian Ocean. There were some hiccups in getting the external views for most of the coasting phase, but the VADER team – the Video/Audio Design & Engineering Resources team responsible for all the launch broadcasts – kept 3 million cumulative viewers on X (formerly Twitter) captivated with the serenading classical music of Johann Strauss II.

Forty-five minutes after liftoff, the views from Starship began streaming in as it entered the Earth’s atmosphere, traveling at over 26,700 kilometers per hour at an altitude of 107 kilometers. Plasma started surrounding the leeward side of the Starship protected by 18,000 hexagonal ceramic tiles. During this phase, the vehicle experienced temperatures of over 1400 degrees Celsius (2600 F). In the initial phase of re-entry when the atmosphere is thin, Starship’s flaps were tucked in and the vehicle was solely controlled by its thrusters. Four minutes and thirty seconds into the atmospheric re-entry, Starship successfully passed the point of peak heating.

The vehicle survived the highest temperatures, but as it descended into the thicker parts of the atmosphere, air pressure began to build up and interact with the Ship’s heat shield. The Ship started shedding a significant amount of speed, but also parts of its heat shield, particularly near the hinge of its right forward flap. The heat shield broke apart bit by bit at the hinge, and the high temperatures began melting the stainless steel structure, despite its very high melting point.

Starship continued its fiery re-entry as its guidance system adapted to the damage on the forward flap to maintain a stable trajectory and successfully made it through Max-Q, the point where the atmosphere exerted the maximum pressure on the Ship during re-entry. As Starship shed most of its speed to subsonic levels, the damaged flaps were still adjusting to maintain a stable trajectory. It achieved terminal velocity at an altitude of 2 kilometers before igniting three Raptor engines to perform the belly-flop maneuver and the landing burn to reduce speed and land on the Southern Indian Ocean. Despite maintaining the landing trajectory, damage to the flaps caused the landing to occur 6 kilometers off the intended area.

What’s Next?

Flight 4 provided SpaceX teams with ample data, which they called the "payload" of the test, to drive improvements needed to achieve Starship's lofty goals, set by SpaceX, NASA, and the United States, to land astronauts on the Moon under the Artemis Program. It also validated SpaceX’s controversial choice of stainless steel over lighter carbon composites.

Based on Super Heavy’s precise landing in the Gulf of Mexico, SpaceX will attempt to land the world’s largest and most powerful rocket booster on the launch pad using the Chopsticks on the Orbital Launch Tower. “Unless something comes up that we think is problematic, we will try to bring the booster back and catch it with the giant mechazilla arms,” said Elon Musk regarding landing Super Heavy back on the launch pad.

He clarified that similar to Falcon 9’s return-to-launch-site landing profile, Super Heavy will target an area over the Gulf and maneuver itself to the launch site if all its systems are healthy.

As the booster performs the landing burn over the launch pad, the chopstick arms on the launch tower will close in and hold the booster using the lifting pins, the same way the booster was mounted on the launch pad before the launch. This could not only enable rapid launch cadence but will also save mass by eliminating the need for landing legs.

“It will take us a while to perfect capturing a rocket out of the air with mechazilla arms, but once we do it will save so much [mass],” said Elon.

Starship’s heat shield will also be improved as SpaceX will be switching to new hexagonal tiles, which Elon claims are twice as strong as the current ones. These tiles will be laid on top of a secondary heat shield layer to ensure the vehicle survives even if a tile is cracked or displaced. This layer, made of felt-based silicone, is ablative, meaning it absorbs the intense heat by gradually wearing away. While it may not be ideal for reuse, it will ensure future Starships return without extensive damage.

Elon says that with these and many more changes, the next flight of Starship will be in about a month, with the goal of returning Super Heavy to the launch pad while ensuring a clean re-entry and soft landing of the Starship from orbital velocities.

Elon reiterated the challenges they continue to face with the ceramic tiles, which can handle the temperatures but are difficult to ensure they remain on the Ship after multiple violent high-energy re-entries, saying, “[Starship heat shield] tiles are ceramics; they are like a coffee cup or dinner plate, so you’ve got a whole bunch of dinner plates stuck on the side of a rocket which is shaking like hell.”

SpaceX plans to iterate on Starship and Super Heavy via such integrated test flights. The end goal with this program is for both vehicles to require minimal repairs and increase the launch cadence to mirror an airline-like operation. It’ll reduce the launch costs, make it cheaper to explore space, and finally achieve SpaceX’s primary goal of establishing a city on Mars.

A Moving Frequency: Cosmic Art Exhibit Comes to New York

2024-05-28T22:00:00.000Z

Seven years ago, I interviewed Paris-based Cyrielle Gulacsy for the New York Observer, a burgeoning artist who found inspiration in the exploration of the cosmos, using graphite or ink to create illustrations of space-faring machines. Back then, Gulacsy sought to reveal the aesthetic details of technical objects like satellites, rockets, and even parachutes. Today, she has returned to New York City with a new exhibit at the Mignoni gallery that peers into the quantum universe and further interrogates the cosmos.

Gulacsy, born in Paris in 1994, is an artist whose work is currently rooted in the realm of astronomy and astrophysics, subjects of great interest to her. Gulacsy explores and interprets complex scientific concepts like spacetime, electromagnetism, and the diffraction of light, in an effort to help others appreciate the astonishing mechanisms behind reality. By translating layered ideas into minimalist and abstract imagery, Gulacsy aims to provide viewers with a glimpse of the invisible world that surrounds us. Mignoni notes that Gulacsy believes, like the philosopher Baptiste Morizot, that 21st Century man may have grown too desensitized to their surroundings.

Her paintings often involve meticulous research and are known for their simplicity and evocative power, inviting viewers to reflect on the elusive framework of the universe. Her work features themes of light and time, illustrating how the light we see from celestial objects is a form of time travel, representing images from the past.

A Moving Frequency is Gulacsy’s second solo exhibition at Mignoni. Her first was in 2022 and was titled Light in the Distance, "an exploration of the properties and power of light." Gulacsy worked to reveal the range and variety of the often invisible cosmic light that emanates from distant stars.

A Moving Frequency comprises of eight, identically-sized, 70 7/8 X 59 1/16 in. (180x150 cm) paintings, each giving a shade of a deep, ethereal, iridescent blue. "Approximated and rendered physically in acrylic paint, these vibrant dots together form a highly material pictorial surface of variegated color, depth, and texture that, when seen from close to, appears to suggest an infinite and energized field of collectively pulsating particles," explained the Mignoni in a press release for the opening. "Seen from further away, however, this pointillistic cosmic soup fuses in the eye of the viewer into a single, shimmering, near-monochromatic field of color that radiates on a single, penetrative blue wavelength."

Seven years after our first interview, I visited Cyrielle Gulacsy at her studio just outside of Paris as she planned and prepared to return to New York City for the new exhibit. We discussed her road as an artist, the new subjects she's exploring, and we dive a little deeper into the science and theory behind A Moving Frequency, running at Mignoni from May 29th to August 31st.

ROBIN:

Since we last spoke on the subject of your art years ago, how has the body of your work changed? Has there been a shift in the philosophy behind your approach?

CYRIELLE GULACSY:

Over the last 7 years, my work has evolved a lot.

It was amusing to read our first interview together and revisit my concerns at the time. I had just began to show my work in galleries and I had not even started to properly paint or use colors, which are now key elements in my practice.

My subject matter has also significantly evolved. Back then, I was already interested in the viewers' ability when facing an enigmatic or abstract image, to engage their curiosity and how this image could be transformative for them. This idea has persisted, but the subject of the image has changed. I gradually moved away from aerospace and aeronautics and started to delve deeper into physics, the functioning of things, the matter that conceives and makes reality, and how physics describes it. This shift of interest resulted in new works on light or spacetime, where I try, through painting or sculpture, to reveal this invisible reality that eludes us, and perhaps incite the viewers to connect with this real world once they've left the gallery.

I am currently undergoing a new upheaval in my work, as I recently became aware that physics actually fails to describe one of the most fascinating phenomena in the universe, which was therefore completely absent from my work: life.

ROBIN:

Can you tell us a little bit about your work on display at the Mignoni and the theme behind the exhibition?

CYRIELLE GULACSY:

The exhibition at the Mignoni gallery is a continuation of my work on visible light.

This time, I decided to focus on a single color. The exhibition is entitled "a moving frequency" and this frequency is the blue. Each color of the visible light spectrum is related to a wavelength and has a specific frequency. When we observe the sky and the universe, we notice that celestial objects moving away from the Earth have a wavelength that shifts towards red, also known as redshift. When they move closer to us, this wavelength is shorter and then shifts towards blue. This is called blueshift. I really like the idea that what is approaching us is bluer. The photons that I paint also move towards Earth, towards us, towards our eyes, from the light of the sun. It turns out that these photons appear blue to us most of the time.

This idea of movement also interests me in its temporal dimension; it evokes change, a moment of transition. The exhibition is a representation of this suspended spacetime, the passage of light through the atmosphere, that place between space and Earth, but also the moment of transition from day to night, which is ultimately neither night nor day but a transitional moment rarely captured because it is rarely anticipated. This exhibition has, for me, an emotional dimension that was not present in previous exhibitions.

This "frequency" moves us personally, like an inward journey. It is a color that touches a specific sensory space that goes beyond the simple definition of a physical phenomenon. This blue is both personal and universal. This exhibition is special to me because it symbolizes my own return to Earth, like a suspended moment, just before landing.

ROBIN:

Can you describe some of the scientific principles that inspire your current collection? Are there scientists or thinkers that inspire your work? I know that Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History Of Time lit a fire in you a long time ago. What does that for you today?

CYRIELLE GULACSY:

There is indeed a reading that has been particularly transformative for me recently and has led to a new series. It is the book "The most beautiful trick of light" by the French astrophysicist David Elbaz.

This reading arrived at an interesting moment, shortly after I realized that in my work, heavily inspired by physical and mathematical descriptions of the world, the idea of life was missing. A body in which life has faded away is still made of the same number of atoms, and physics seems to be unable to report or picture this moment, which is far from being a trivial matter. This idea troubled me, and I had the unfortunate sensation of seeing myself floating in space, detached from the ground.

To remedy this issue, I started to focus more on biology and sciences of life, while continuing my current research on light. One day, I stumbled upon this book where the astrophysicist David Elbaz highlights a quite astonishing reasoning: Since the origin of the universe, matter has been assembling thanks to light, forming increasingly complex objects, stars, galaxies, thereby generating more and more light. It turns out that what we observe as one of the most complex and therefore brightest forms that the universe has generated is life itself.

A human being would emit 200,000 times more light particles than the sun, in the infrared field, proportionally to their mass. This idea deeply moved me. We, the living, were ourselves tiny suns. These stars that I desperately gazed at in the distance were ultimately already by my side. I decided to observe this light by myself, using a thermal camera.

Originally, I wanted to observe plants, whose photosynthesis also emits thermal radiations in the infrared field. With my camera, I went to gardens before sunrise and at dusk. One day, a bee entered the camera's field, and what I saw on my screen strangely looked like a star in a cloud of gas and dust. This journey gave birth to a series of photos printed using the cyanotype technique, in which one can distinguish a multitude of light points spread out in space like the constellations of a starry sky. These sources of light are, however, much closer to us, on Earth. They are the thermal signature of bees. The heat they emit radiates in infrared light and is then captured by my thermal camera.

I sought to get closer to the living, and all I had to do was to follow light, but this time, the terrestrial light.

ROBIN:

Are you keeping an eye on any future exploration missions?

CYRIELLE GULACSY:

I am following the Euclid mission with great interest, and anything related to dark matter and dark energy particularly interests me. The upcoming discoveries and also the absence of discoveries on this subject could completely challenge the physics we use, relativity, and the standard model. I think this is a period that will be significant for the history of science. It's still amazing to think that 95% of what makes our universe is still beyond our grasp; in fact, the same can be said of the ocean as well.

ROBIN:

How have you grown as an artist in the last 7 years?

CYRIELLE GULACSY:

As an artist, I feel like you are constantly questioning and challenging your practice. My work has been in constant evolution and I don't think it will ever stop. What has changed is that I have gained confidence. It's not about being satisfied or not, but rather knowing, with more certainty, that I am doing what I love and that is a sufficient reason to keep going. I have also started exhibiting in other countries, which is also encouraging, but as this is a variable factor, I try to focus on how my work is growing and how to remain true to myself.

ROBIN:

What's next for you?

CYRIELLE GULACSY:

First of all, to land. I want and need to come back down to earth, and this started with the idea of integration of life into my work with this new series on the light of bees that I mentioned earlier.

I also want to change the medium of painting and switch from acrylic to oil paint. This will probably completely change the outcome of my works; it will no longer be about matter and accumulation but more about transparencies and overlays. It's a challenging perspective for me to make both my painting and its concept evolve. Up to this present moment, I had confined myself to the corpuscular aspect of light, photons as particles, represented with colored spots. But this representation is reductionist because photons are indeed neither waves nor particles; these words are actually quite obsolete to describe what light really is. Perhaps the best way to describe light would be to consider it as a density of energy, which is neither localized nor delimited.

Thus, oil can be stimulating because with a much longer drying time, I will be able to work my brushstrokes with a more blurry aspect, as if each point of color is connected with the others around it. Lastly, I want to think of my next work more as sensory experiences.

These upcoming works will be the subject of an exhibition in Europe in 2025.

Starliner Remains Parked as Boeing Faces Further Engineering Challenges

2024-05-21T17:00:00.000Z

Plagued with delays due to engineering issues, Starliner remains tethered to the ground.

Boeing and its customer, NASA, are now dealing with a helium leak from one of the capsule's reaction control system thrusters in the spacecraft’s service module. Helium was previously detected by Starliner’s sensors while it was on the launch pad in early May, but was within the determined limit.

Starliner was scheduled for its inaugural crewed flight on May 6th but was called off due to an issue with a pressure valve on the Atlas’ Centaur upper stage. The flight was slated to carry veteran NASA Astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams to the International Space Station.

The Atlas V and Starliner spacecraft were rolled back to the ULA’s Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) at Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida to replace the problematic valve and carry out additional checks. Boeing conducted several pressure tests of the Starliner’s service module and said that the leak would not pose a significant risk to the flight, adding that it is sealed effectively across the entire service module.

Helium is crucial to Starliner as it pressurizes its propulsion system, powering the 28 Orbital Maneuvering and Attitude Control (OMAC) thrusters and the reaction control system. These systems are essential for orienting and maneuvering the spacecraft in orbit, docking with the International Space Station, and to begin de-orbiting procedures to return to Earth.

NASA and Boeing teams are currently working to ensure that Starliner retains the performance it needs to rendezvous and dock to the ISS while maintaining the redundancy it requires for a crewed launch. Additionally, NASA says that the Commercial Crew Program and International Space Station Program will review data and procedures before making a final determination to proceed with the launch, which is now set for June 1st.

Technical issues with Starliner aren’t new. During the Starliner’s first uncrewed flight in December 2019, the spacecraft couldn’t place itself into a stable orbit shortly after separation from Atlas V as an internal error with the timekeeping caused it to perform a sequence of maneuvers at the wrong time, deviating from its planned trajectory. NASA and the Boeing team forgoed the planned rendezvous and docking with the ISS but focused on getting the capsule back and demonstrating the capsule reentry and landing operations. It successfully touched down at its landing zone at the US Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, becoming the first American orbital crewed capsule to land in the US.

Hoping to correct issues from the first flight, Starliner was just hours away from returning to orbit for the second time in August 2021 before its teams experienced issues with the valves onboard its service module. 13 of the 24 oxidizer valves that carried propellant for in-orbit propulsion and reaction control systems did not work as expected. It took Boeing months to identify the source of the issue, citing excess water and humidity reacting with the oxidizer and the Teflon seals of the valves, causing them to corrode and get stuck. The company had to extensively study and redesign the valves, implementing serious changes to the service module.

With corrections in place, Starliner launched for the second time in May 2022. During its orbital insertion burn, two of its OMAC thrusters failed to fire as expected. The first thruster failed after only one second. Its backup thruster immediately fired and continued for 25 seconds before it too failed. Tertiary backup group kicked up and the spacecraft was able to place itself in orbit and made its way to the orbiting laboratory. Starliner docked to the ISS and spent 4 days before landing back at the White Sands in New Mexico.

This upcoming third flight, with a crew onboard, intends to build on lessons from the first two test flights and plans to test several systems before certification for operational use.

Starliner is launched atop the Atlas V, a veteran rocket that has launched to orbit 99 times successfully, having propelled NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance Rover to Mars, New Horizons spacecraft to Pluto, multiple Earth observation satellites for NASA and national security payloads for the Department of Defense. For Starliner missions, the Atlas V variant consists of two solid rocket boosters and a Centaur upper stage with dual engine configuration, consisting of two Aerojet Rocketdyne RL-10 engines, as opposed to the conventional single-engine setup. This dual-engine configuration, once standard on all Atlas missions for decades, became less common as the performance of the RL-10 engines improved. However, this setup is crucial for Starliner as it allows for a flight trajectory that enables a crew ejection capability during the entire powered flight in the event of failure.

Flying onboard the inaugural Starliner mission are veteran NASA astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore as the Commander and Sunita "Suni" Williams as the Pilot. Both astronauts, former Navy test pilots, are highly experienced in testing unknown equipment. Their extensive spaceflight experience and lessons learned have led them to pilot the sixth-ever crewed spacecraft developed and flown in the US. Suni Williams will also mark a milestone as the first woman to fly on the first crewed flight of an orbital spacecraft.

"I don't think either one of us ever dreamed that we'd be associated with the first flight of a brand-new spacecraft,” said Butch during a press conference. Butch was inducted into NASA’s Astronaut Corps in 2000. He has flown aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS-129 and the Russian Soyuz spacecraft for Expedition 41/42, accumulating 178 days in space and conducting four spacewalks.

Suni Williams, selected as a NASA astronaut in 1998, is an Ohio native who has participated in Expedition 14/15 and 32/33. She has flown aboard Space Shuttle Discovery for the STS-116 mission and the Russian Soyuz. Williams served as the commander of Expedition 33 and performed three spacewalks during that stint and totaling 7 during her spaceflight career.

Suni and Butch have been integral to the development of the Starliner, having been involved since the project's inception and playing an active role in the design of several onboard systems. Their extensive piloting experience in the Navy has been crucial in shaping the spacecraft.

“That background of understanding test acquisition was required to certify various components ... [and] the vital importance of making sure that in an integrated fashion, everything works as planned. That's been invaluable for the process," Wilmore noted.

Initially, NASA astronauts Nicole Mann, along with Suni Williams, and Boeing astronaut Chris Ferguson were assigned to this mission. However, subsequent delays led to Nicole being reassigned to SpaceX’s Crew-5 and Ferguson being replaced by Barry Wilmore due to family reasons.

Starliner’s Crewed Flight Test is set to pave the way for operational missions that will transport four astronauts to the ISS for six-month durations, pending a comprehensive review of the test data. Following a successful conclusion of these tests, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program will transition from its developmental phase to an operational phase, where SpaceX and Boeing will alternate launching missions to the ISS.

The first operational mission for Starliner, named Boeing Starliner-1, is scheduled to launch no earlier than early 2025. Commanded by NASA Astronaut Scott Tingle with Michael Finkle serving as the Pilot, the crew will also include Canadian Astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Japanese Astronaut Kimiya Yui as mission specialists.

Steve Stich, Program Manager of the Commercial Crew Program, noted that while the upcoming updates to Starliner are not groundbreaking, they are significant enhancements that will be implemented by the first operational mission, incorporating feedback from the Crewed Flight Test. "Boeing has plans to do various updates, and one of them they’re going to put in place for Starliner-1 is an improved capability to land in winds. They’ve also got an upgrade to some of the structures that hold the airbags," said Stich during the launch readiness press conference. "For Starliner-1, we’ll [also] have the capability to dock and undock from the Zenith port and also perform port relocation operations."

Currently, Starliner can only dock on the forward facing port, located at the Harmony module of the ISS, previously occupied by SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour. To make way for Starliner, the crew of Crew-8 conducted the autonomous port relocation operations, shifting the dragon spacecraft to the IDA port located towards the Zenith. Supercluster tracks all traffic and crew movements at both the International Space Station and China's Tiangong Space Station on our Stations Dashboard available here and on the Supercluster App.

With the operational phase of Starliner, NASA will gain access to two independently developed and launched crewed spacecrafts for the International Space Station, adding a layer of redundancy to ensure the United States always maintains the capability to launch humans into orbit. "We are really excited to have this second transportation system up and available to us," remarked Stich. This level of redundancy was always a strategic goal of the Commercial Crew Program, aiming to secure continuous human presence on the ISS and maintain operational capabilities even if one spacecraft encounters safety or other issues.

"We've seen in the past the importance, I think, of having this dissimilar redundancy, [because] it's always tough to fly into space," Stich added, emphasizing the foundational objectives of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.

Our Commemorative Starliner Poster is available for purchase in the shop now.

India is Rapidly Advancing Toward Achieving Human Spaceflight

2024-05-14T21:00:00.000Z

In August of 2023, India's Chandrayaan-3 landed on the lunar south pole, marking a major leap in the country's space exploration efforts.

Indian space agency ISRO’s Chandrayaan program has been wildly successful. The first mission, Chandrayaan-1, was credited with discovering water on the Moon using a NASA-provided science instrument called the Moon Mineralogical Mapper (M3). ISRO now plans on expanding its capabilities, however, building and testing human spaceflight technologies are both expensive and complex.

India's overall goal is to develop the capability to consistently fly humans in orbit using indigenously developed spacecraft. In late February 2024, Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled India's first Gaganyaan mission astronauts with the ambition of launching them in 2025, and with the hopes of future Indian crews reaching the moon by 2040.

Over the span of 63 years since Yuri Gagarin first ventured into space, only the United States, China, and Russia have had the capability to launch astronauts into orbit, with Russia still utilizing the Soyuz spacecraft, a legacy of the USSR's space program. With India’s entry into crewed spaceflight, it will join this exclusive group of spacefaring nations, reinforcing its status as an emerging space superpower.

“After four decades, an Indian is poised to venture into space and this time around the countdown, the timing, and even the rocket would be ours,” said Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The country's first astronaut was Rakesh Sharma, who flew with the Soviets in 1984.

India's plans for a human spaceflight program began in 2006 when the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) initiated preliminary studies on a space capsule – later named the Gaganyaan – capable of orbiting Earth for a week and returning via splashdown. In 2009, ISRO submitted these findings to the Indian government to secure the necessary funding, but the proposal fell short. Consequently, the first uncrewed mission, initially planned for 2013, was postponed to 2016.

By 2012, limited funding had cast serious doubts on the continuation of the program, relegating all related activities to a lower priority within ISRO. However, in 2014, the government considered proposals for an increase in ISRO's budget, and the crewed spaceflight program was back on the table. In 2018, the Indian Government allocated over a hundred billion rupees (amounting to $1.46 billion) to the Gaganyaan program and this definitive push came as Prime Minister Modi committed to launching astronauts by 2022, aligning this target with the country's 75th year of independence. This commitment revitalized India's ambitions in human spaceflight, setting a firm timeline for achieving this milestone.

ISRO’s proposals were to develop a capsule designed to ferry 3 astronauts to orbit. It will be lofted atop Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (LMV3), India’s medium-lift launch vehicle from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, located on India's east coast in Andhra Pradesh. The launch vehicle has been in operation since 2017 and is India’s first rocket certified for crewed missions, having flown 7 times successfully. Future upgrades to Gaganyaan will allow it to rendezvous and dock with a space station and India is aiming to establish its own orbiting lab by 2035 with the first module planned for launch in 2028.

With revived funding, ISRO made significant progress in developing re-entry technologies, flight suits, human-rating the launch vehicle, and the flight abort system — designed to save the crew in case of an anomaly during the launch. However, like many aerospace programs, the Gaganyaan was behind schedule. The pandemic further exacerbated these delays. With the launch now rescheduled for July 2024, ISRO has conducted multiple tests to validate systems for the first uncrewed flight of the Gaganyaan. In 2021, the Propulsion team successfully tested the service module's propulsion system, which utilizes hypergolic propellants.

One of the most critical components of a crewed spacecraft is its parachute system. After re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, the Gaganyaan will initially deploy a drogue parachute to reduce its speed to subsonic levels, followed by the deployment of 2 main parachutes for the final descent. In August 2023, ISRO successfully conducted integrated tests for the drogue parachute deployment at the Defence Research and Development Organization's (DRDO) Rail Track Rocket Sled Facility. This facility features four-kilometer-long rail tracks that can propel test articles to supersonic speeds.

These tests are crucial as the drogue parachutes not only decelerate the capsule but also trigger the deployment of the main parachutes, which ensures a soft water landing. The Gaganyaan’s main parachutes have been under close-loop testing since November 2022, starting with an Integrated Main Parachute Airdrop Test. During this test, a 5-ton mass equivalent of the Gaganyaan capsule was dropped from an altitude of 2.5 kilometers. The main parachutes initially deployed in a reefed configuration to lessen the load, a method similar to that used by SpaceX's Crew Dragon. ISRO plans to conduct five such integrated tests to qualify these parachutes for crewed flights.

The Gaganyaan spacecraft is equipped with a launch escape system, a crucial safety feature designed to quickly separate the capsule from the launch vehicle in the event of an anomaly. This system is mounted atop the capsule and includes solid rocket boosters capable of propelling the capsule away from the rocket to safety. The system is a puller system, which “pulls” the spacecraft away from the rocket, akin to the abort systems on NASA's Apollo Missions.

The launch escape system is integral to any human-rated spacecraft, designed to function reliably every time, although it is hoped never to be used. The first integrated test of the Gaganyaan's launch escape system from the launch pad was conducted in July 2018. This test successfully demonstrated the system's ability to operate from the ground. The crew module reached an altitude of 2.5 kilometers and experienced acceleration up to 10Gs before descending safely to the Bay of Bengal, located approximately 2.9 kilometers from the launch pad on the Indian East coast.

Later tests focused on the operation of the launch escape system during supersonic speeds. The first such test was scheduled for October 2023 where the Gaganyaan test module, integrated with the launch abort system, was launched atop a modified Liquid strap-on Booster L40 used on ISRO’s GSLV Mk II rocket.

The test achieved most of its objectives: the crew module separated from the booster at an altitude of 15 kilometers, maintained its trajectory, deployed its parachutes, and splashed down safely, later being recovered by the Indian Navy. However, rough seas in the Bay of Bengal caused the crew module to assume an unexpected orientation during recovery. To address this issue, ISRO plans to implement an "uprighting system" similar to the gaseous balloons used in the Apollo missions, which will prevent the Gaganyaan from toppling over in rough sea conditions.

This new feature will be tested during the second in-flight abort test scheduled for May 2024. This test will also assess the launch escape system's performance at twice the speed of sound, incorporate fixes from previous tests, and aim to qualify the system for crewed flights.

Final Milestones

India is rapidly advancing towards achieving its human spaceflight goals, though there are several milestones to reach before a crew will be launched. Following the second in-flight abort test, ISRO's plans include an additional integrated airdrop test of the main parachutes, a second pad abort test, and two uncrewed orbital missions under the Gaganyaan banner.

The first uncrewed launch, Gaganyaan-1, will utilize the human-rated LMV3 launch vehicle to send the Gaganyaan capsule into orbit. This mission will not have astronauts but will carry a mannequin named Vyommitra. This mannequin will be loaded with sensors to collect data on the Environmental Control and Life Support System and during re-entry to assess the effects of weightlessness and radiation exposure on humans. It will also perform various microgravity experiments to simulate crewed missions.

Gaganyaan-1 serves as the first integrated test flight combining the space capsule and the launch vehicle. Before the second crewed Gaganyaan mission, ISRO plans two additional tests of the launch escape system to ensure its reliability for human spaceflight.

India has already selected its first class of astronauts, comprising Prashanth Balakrishnan, Ajith Krishnan, Angad Pratap, and Shubanshu Shukla—all Indian Air Force test pilots, reminiscent of NASA’s Mercury astronauts. Of these, three will participate in the Gaganyaan missions, with one serving as a backup.

"These are not just four names or four people. They are four powers who will carry the aspirations of 1.4 billion Indians to space. I congratulate and wish them all the best," said PM Modi when awarding astronauts wings at a ceremony at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center in Kerala.

These astronaut candidates underwent intensive training, which includes sessions at ISRO’s new astronaut training facility in Bengaluru, the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Moscow, and further training is planned at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Post-training at Johnson Space Center, one of the selected astronauts will be assigned to launch on the Axiom mission to the ISS on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft this year.

This joint NASA-ISRO mission will mark a significant step since Indian Astronaut Rakesh Sharma's historic space flight to the Salyut 7 space station aboard a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft under the Interkosmos program.

All of these missions will be trackable on the Supercluster App.

The Battle to Reverse the European Space Agency's Diplomatic Immunity

2024-04-30T20:00:00.000Z

Denise and Daniel Kieffer once looked forward to a peaceful retirement in their picturesque hometown of Sète on the French Mediterranean coast.

Instead they've been spending their time studying the legal frameworks of intergovernmental organizations and investing money left to them by their deceased son Phillipe into reversing the diplomatic immunity of the European Space Agency, whose staff managers allegedly harassed Phillipe until he died by suicide 12 years ago.

Detailed by Supercluster in an earlier story, after years of fruitless efforts, the Kieffers landed their first small victory in January 2024 when the Paris Appeals Court overturned an earlier decision by the Paris High Court to not challenge the agency’s immunity protection. Specifically, the immunity of the ESA's alleged harassers.

The decision could create a crack in ESA’s seemingly impenetrable legal shell, which has for decades protected this European counterpart to NASA from external scrutiny. The battle, however, is not yet won as the taxpayer-funded agency, with an annual budget of more than 7 billion euro, has appealed against the decision in the Paris Supreme Court. The Kieffers told Supercluster they have low expectations of the Supreme Court’s deliberations as it had previously upheld ESA’s diplomatic immunity in a harassment case pursued by another former ESA staff member.

Ex-Workers Speak Up

The case fought by Denise and Daniel Kieffer on behalf of their satellite engineer son is one of several brought over the years to courts in ESA’s member states by former employees alleging harassment or labor law breaches. Some of these cases were against ESA directly, others targeted contracting agencies that provide workers for ESA. All of them, the ex-workers claim, came up against ESA’s reluctance to cooperate with the investigators on the grounds of its diplomatic immunity. A claim that puts the agency outside of any national jurisdiction, granted to the ESA by its 1975 founding document, the Convention.

Three of those ex-workers agreed to speak with Supercluster publicly, detailing their exhausting legal battles with the agency they once considered the manifestation of their childhood dreams. The testimonies follow leaks of documents and anonymous allegations made to Ars Technica last year, which described widespread and ongoing problems with managerial harassment at the agency.

Revenge for Strike Participation

“I have tried to put everything that happened at ESA out of my mind, but I want to speak up because otherwise these things will continue forever,” Riccardo Biondi, an Earth observation scientist who worked at ESA’s Center for Earth Observation near Rome between 2006 and 2008, told Supercluster. Biondi was employed at ESA not as a direct staff member but as a contractor hired through a third-party company, which he requested not to be named due to concerns of legal retaliation.

Formerly a research fellow at the University of Perugia who has since gone on to have a successful career in his field, Biondi fell out of favor of his managers at the contracting company and his ESA superiors after having taken part in a strike to support contractor colleagues whose jobs had been cut. He describes a campaign of mobbing and moral harassment that continued for weeks and months after the strike, and eventually led to him to seek opportunities elsewhere.

“I had a contract that had to be renewed year by year because otherwise it would look like a permanent contract, which they didn’t want,” Biondi told Supercluster. “So, when my contract came up for renewal, my manager at [the contracting company] told me that ESA was not happy with me at all and that I was not good at my job. So, I said, fine, I’ll leave. But they didn’t want that. They gave me a new contract but there was a 20-day gap between my old and new contract, so that it didn’t look like a permanent contract in the face of Italian law.”

Soon after, Biondi’s ESA staff managers started coming up with tasks for him that were not in line with his job description, he said. Instead of doing science, Biondi was asked to copy hundreds of old tapes with satellite data and, using just his wheeled chair instead of a trolley, to transport these tapes from one office to another. He was also suddenly banned from using ESRIN’s sports facilities and not allowed to cross the premises in his jogging outfit during his lunch time run, he said.

Ordered to Court

Disheartened with the situation, Biondi looked for opportunities to move to another ESA establishment and was selected for another contractor role at ESA’s largest center, the European Space Research and Technology Center (ESTEC) in the Netherlands. But just as he was about to sign the new contract, the vacancy was scrapped, he said. He handed his notice to the Italian contracting company anyway but was told he could not leave before his contract ends despite a two-month notice period included in the terms of this employment agreement.

“They told me they would take me to court if I left,” said Biondi. “I said OK, and instead of waiting for two months, I left the next day. But then, they refused to pay my last salary. At the end, it was me taking them to court to get my money but also for the demotion I had been subject to.”

Although his case was primarily against the contracting company, the judge requested Biondi’s ESA staff managers to testify in court. Both had refused, citing their diplomatic immunity, said Biondi. But in a twist of events unlike those experienced by the Kieffer family, the judge disregarded the immunity and ordered them to testify anyway. Biondi easily won compensations for the denied salary, but eventually dropped the demotion case due to exhaustion and a desire to move on.

“My lawyer told me that the demotion case was not worth fighting for because that’s something quite common in Italy anyway and even if I had won, I wouldn’t have gotten too much.”

Labor Law Dispute

Despite the decision in the Biondi case, ESA played the diplomatic immunity card again in 2019 when taken to court by another former ESRIN contractor, Ivan Balenzio. Balenzio, a communications professional employed through contracting company Kelly Services, worked at ESRIN for 15 years but was fired from his position in 2015 after suffering a burnout due to “a toxic work situation.” Balenzio’s dissatisfaction with ESA partly had to do with enormous salary differences between contractors and staff members performing similar tasks. Italian labor law guarantees workers employed through contracting companies the same conditions that staff members employed in similar roles enjoy. Inside ESA, however, the discrepancies were substantial.

“A colleague of mine who was a staff but doing essentially the same job was earning about a thousand euros per month more than me,” Balenzio told Supercluster. “And that didn’t seem right. The District Court in Velletri ruled in Balenzio’s favor and ordered ESA and Kelly Services to pay Balenzio 210,000 euros in compensation. An appeals court later decreased the amount.

Nota to Ministry

Judges in both trials, however, faced ESA’s lukewarm attitude to cooperating with the investigation on the grounds of its diplomatic immunity. In the run-up to the first hearing, the agency even sent an official “nota” to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, requesting that the Ministry ensure “Italian judicial authorities at the Court of Velletri respect the immunity from jurisdiction” granted to ESA by its 1975 founding Convention. Supercluster has seen and confirmed the nota.

The Convention grants ESA and its staff members immunity from jurisdiction “in respect of acts, including words written and spoken, done by them in exercise of their function.” This immunity remains in place even “after [the staff members] have left the service of the Agency.” These workers also “enjoy inviolability for all their official papers and documents,” the Convention states. Equally “inviolable” are ESA’s premises located in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain, the U.K. and Belgium.

Intergovernmental organizations, such as ESA, are protected by diplomatic immunity to prevent any sovereign state from excessively interfering in the organizations’ internal matters. ESA’s Convention, however, states that the agency’s Director General has a duty to lift the agency’s immunity in all cases where “reliance upon it would impede the course of justice and it can be waived without prejudicing the interests of the Agency.”

In the agency’s nearly 50-year history, that decision, however, has never been taken, ESA told Supercluster in an earlier email.

“During my trials, the judges said that the immunity cannot be applied in my situation as the case had nothing to do with ESA’s internal autonomy,” said Balenzio. “But it was clear that although ESA said it intended to cooperate, it was quite hard to obtain from them even basic documents that would show the salary differences.”

Threatened for Talking to Media

After his victory, Balenzio spoke to Italian media. While discussing his experience, he mentioned his belief that he may have been discriminated against as a homosexual man, and described perceived homophobic remarks he had been subject to from some ESA staff members during his time at the agency.

“It was mainly jokes, comparisons, references,” he told the Italian website Open in December 2019. “One thing I will never be able to forget is that during the parties organized after the various communication events, my boss constantly told me ‘homosexuals drink prosecco’. Repeated several times it seemed like a personal attack to me."

ESA, Balenzio told Supercluster, “didn’t like it.”

In a letter sent to Balenzio’s lawyer in April 2020 and seen by Supercluster, Turin-based law firm Musy Bianco and Associates, writing “on behalf of the European Space Agency,” threatened Balenzio with legal action for his claims about homophonic harassment.

“ESA is verifying the effects of the behavior you have carried out - and it goes without saying of those that you further carry out in defiance of this warning - and reserves in this regard every initiative suitable for the protection of its rights, including as compensation for damages,” the letter signed by Paolo Bianco, reads.

ESA confirmed to Supercluster the existence of this letter, saying that Balenzio was “making false allegations that could prejudice ESA’s reputation” and that Balenzio had “not been the victim of homophobic harassment at ESA.”

Balenzio appealed to Italy’s Supreme Court against the decision of the Appeals Court, which reduced the amount owed to him by ESA and Kelly Services.

Speaking to Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano, ESA’s head of legal services Marco Farrazzani said that the discrepancies in Balenzio’s salary were due to “mistakes” made by Kelly Services, through which Balenzio was employed at ESA.

Ordering Paper Clips

For the Kieffer family, the most relevant case is that of former rocket engineer Nathalie Pottier who lost her war against ESA’s diplomatic immunity in 2016 when the French Supreme Court ruled that ESA’s internal procedures were solid and included "guarantees of impartiality and fairness,” a claim that the Kieffers, Pottier and other past staff members who have attempted to address their grievance through ESA’s internal mechanism, strongly disagree with.

Because of its special status that puts it out of reach of any national jurisdiction, ESA is obliged to have an internal court that simulates the function of a justice system. Its Administrative Tribunal consists of six judges paid by the agency and appointed by its council. This tribunal only deals with disputes involving staff members and not contractors and doesn’t have a provision for appeals. It is also unable to rule on requests to overthrow the Director General’s decision not to lift immunity of ESA’s staff members. For this reason, the Paris Appeals Court agreed that justice had been denied in the Kieffer case and requested the first court reexamine its decision to not challenge ESA’s refusal to lift immunity in the investigation of Philippe’s suicide. The precedent set in the Pottier case, however, suggests that ESA may still have a final victory.

Pottier, a former rocket engineer with degrees from Paris and Moscow and microgravity and missiles research experience from the U.S., spoke to Supercluster about her experience. Once tipped by some to become France’s next astronaut, she was hired by ESA as a launcher engineer in 2005 to work on the agency’s Soyuz launcher program at the European Spaceport in Kourou.

Pottier claims she was subject to a sustained campaign of moral harassment by her superiors after raising a security issue and refusing to sign-off documents due to concerns. Similarly to Biondi, she perceived that she was being punished for her refusal to comply by being stripped of her engineering duties and instead being given tasks well below her qualification levels.

“My role as a launch engineer was reduced to ordering pins, models, studies of model bases, quotes for paperclips in the shape of a Soyuz rocket, and checking my supervisor’s and colleague’s English writing,” she said.

Similar reduction of responsibilities was also reported by colleagues witnessing the treatment of Phillipe Kieffer prior to his suicide, according to legal documents in the case.

Pottier believes she was disqualified from ESA’s 2008 astronaut selection in retaliation for complaining about her treatment by her superiors. She left ESA in 2010, two years before Kieffer hanged himself in his house in Leiden, the Netherlands, near ESTEC premises.

ESA told Supercluster that it had “cooperated at all times with the judicial authorities of the Member States concerned – the Netherlands and France – in order to facilitate the proper administration of justice” in the investigation of Kieffer’s suicide and that “a number of ESA staff members were called as witnesses” by the French investigating judge “during the inquiry, which spanned some ten years.”

The agency also maintains that Kieffer was not a victim of harassment although its internal tribunal ruled the cause of his suicide as work-related. The allegations by Biondi, Balenzio and Pottier, as well as those by the Kieffer family, seem supported by the results of a recent internal harassment survey leaked to Ars Technica in December. The survey found that one in five ESA workers had experienced perceived harassment in the workplace in the last two years.

ESA insists it has cutting-edge anti-harassment policies in place.

Choctaw Students Study Indigenous Heirloom Seeds in Space

2024-04-23T16:00:00.000Z

In 2023, NASA astronauts brought a total of 16 ounces of indigenous Choctaw heirloom seeds to the International Space Station for an experiment in collaboration with tribal middle school students.

The seeds were descended from those saved by survivors of the Trail of Tears, a forced migration in the 19th and 20th Centuries, when indigenous tribes were driven out of their homelands by the United States. The Choctaw community is now helping with an experiment that tests if some of these seeds can survive the harsh environment of space and help future astronauts thrive.

Heirloom seeds are often defined as seeds that have been open-pollinated and have been cultivated for at least 50 years. The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University sent these seeds up to the International Space Station so they can experience space radiation and microgravity, an experiment in collaboration with tribal students.

Astronauts transported a total of 16 ounces of the seeds of wild lamb’s quarters (Tvnishi), Choctaw sweet potato squash (Isito), Choctaw flour corn (Tanchi Tohbi), rabbit peas (Chukfi) and Smith peas (Tobi) up to the ISS on SpaceX’s 29th Commercial Resupply Services mission for NASA, which launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida in November 2023.

Once the seeds return to Earth on Dragon, Choctaw middle-school students at Jones Academy will conduct experiments to see whether the seeds still germinate and grow well enough to be used for space agriculture. The students will compare the seeds that have been on the ISS with similar seeds that have stayed on Earth at the CNO. Dragon is due to undock from the Harmony module’s space-facing port on April 26th if weather cooperates, and splash down off the coast of Florida the following day.

Based on previous experiments with tomatoes, it is likely that the seeds that have been to space will perform less well than the control group, according to Ian Thompson, tribal historic preservation officer at the CNO.

Thompson said the Choctaw community has been collecting wild plants for over 12,000 years and has been growing agricultural plants for around 2,500 years. They developed tribal varieties of squash, corn, beans and other crops. These agricultural skills promoted stability within the community helped them survive during and after colonization. There were around 20,000 Choctaw people before their migration. They have over 159,000 descendants in the 21st Century. Today, the Choctaw community lives mainly in Oklahoma and Mississippi.

The Trail of Tears was an unjust and terrifying experience for the Choctaw communities that were forced to migrate west from Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana to Oklahoma. Thompson said in a PBS interview that during the first wave of the Trail of Tears, in the 1830s, between 1,500 and 4,000 of the 12,000 displaced people died. (The CNO website says the total number was 15,000, 25 percent to 33 percent of whom died.) Subsequent waves of this forced migration continued until 1903.

“Sometimes, Choctaw people were forced to stay in open camps in the middle of winter with no tents, no shoes, almost no food,” Thompson told PBS. “In some of those camps, they were fed rations that had been declared spoiled by the United States military that were still fed to them. Lots of people died.”

“Through the colonization process, eventually our food system was shoved to the side along with our communities,” Thompson said. “Unfortunately, many of our seeds were marginalized as well… [and] became rare or endangered.”

Sometimes, only a handful of a type of heirloom seeds were left, Thompson said. The CNO’s Growing Hope program gathered these seeds and cultivated them to prevent their extinction. As of April 2023, according to an article in the journal Health Promotion Practice, Growing Hope had provided 214,377 seeds to 1,179 Choctaw families.

“If you think about those hundreds of years of work being condensed down to just eight seeds for some of these varieties, it's worth more than diamonds,” Thompson said. “It's worth more than almost anything per weight.”

Jacqueline Putman, program coordinator for Growing Hope, watched the seeds being launched into space on November 9th. “It was absolutely spectacular,” she said. “I have no words for it. Just to think about the seeds that our ancestors fought so hard to keep and to think that... they looked into the heavens and our seeds are in the heavens that they looked at. It just amazes me.”

The idea for this project came from a brainstorming session where Putman envisioned the future of Growing Hope and imagined that her community could send seeds to space. She said she made a drawing on a whiteboard during a planning session.

The seeds are considered sacred by the Choctaw community, Thompson said. There are legends about some of the seeds being gifts from a higher power. The seeds are considered sacred partly because they have been grown by dozens of generations of the ancestors of the Choctaw community. The research team consulted Choctaw elders to obtain their approval for this project, Thompson said. Communal decision-making is always involved when the heirloom seeds are concerned.

“I'd like to emphasize that the seeds are part of a viable foodway that our ancestors created,” Thompson said. “That traditional foodway was functioning perfectly well a couple hundred years ago before the Trail of Tears. When we work to bring that back, it's an opportunity to combine cultural revitalization and wellness.”

The standard American diet does not work well for the Choctaw community, Thompson said. Diseases related to processed food, saturated fat and refined sugar are common.

“When we have an opportunity to go back to our traditional foods, especially the plant-based foods, for a lot of people that comes with a significant improvement of health,” Thompson said. The traditional Choctaw diet is based on many native plants, along with animals, fish and shellfish. It is high in vitamins and minerals.

These heirloom plants could potentially provide high nutritional value for astronauts.

Funding for this project was provided by Boeing through a collaboration with Kat Gardner-Vandy, assistant professor of aviation and space at OSU. She played a key role in making this idea a reality.

OSU offers a National Aeronautics and Space Administration Science Activation program called Native Earth | Native Sky. The developers of this program will integrate the story of this experiment into its middle-school curriculum, which will be available for free this year.

Seeds and informational resources are available to Choctaw community members through the Growing Hope program. Applications are accepted yearly from January to April. Applicants can call the program office at (918) 567-3709 ext. 1016 for details. Seeds are available on a first come, first served basis.

We Visited the Europa Clipper Spacecraft at JPL

2024-04-16T21:00:00.000Z

The idea that humans (a vocal consensus of scientists and researchers throughout the global scientific community) are looking at an icy water world in the massive Jupiter system and wondering what may be swimming around in its saltwater ocean is nearing hard science fiction. The theory that Europa may harbor microbial life is enticing, provocative, and feels like an inquiry that once sat on the fringes of space exploration. Many scientists now agree it is the best place to look for life in the Solar System.

A mission to Europa has walked a long road from napkin to the clean room and soon, onto the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center, from where many of NASA’s pioneering interplanetary missions have departed. The endeavor to discover a mysterious world beneath Europa’s ice shell has lead to the creation of the largest interplanetary spacecraft ever built by the agency, Clipper. Its mission? To determine the habitability of Europa by scanning it with multiple flybys.

In April 2020, Supercluster published a thorough longform by author and journalist David Brown on the lengthy and politically turbulent development of the Clipper mission as well as the delays associated with its previous launcher: the Space Launch System. We also published a detailed follow-up on Clipper’s scientific instruments by Nancy Atkinson just two months ago.

Now, Clipper is just six months away from launch and we were invited to visit the RV-sized probe at NASA’s legendary Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the first time I suited up for a clean room spacecraft visit since OSIRIS-REx was launched on its mission to Bennu in 2016. At the time, I wrote a dispatch for Popular Science about potentially contaminating the spacecraft (and the eventual asteroid sample) as a way to talk about contamination. It seemed like a fun idea at the time until the spacecraft returned home and I thought about booking a one-way trip to a non-extradition country.

The clean room, and decontamination before entering, is serious business, especially at JPL, a NASA center at the heart of the agency’s storied efforts to explore the Solar System. After nearly 10 years covering space exploration, the first few being at Cape Canaveral, it would be my first visit to what always seemed like the coolest NASA center. And it is. For space fans to space industry professionals to silicon valley, a JPL visit is on the bucket list of many nerds. Including mine. The first time I tried to visit was the end of February 2020 when it seemed like shutdown was looming. I flew to California for four days in which I first joined the LA City Council meeting where a vote was being made to allow SpaceX to build Starship at the Port of Los Angeles. I then raced to visit SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, tour the Virgin Orbit factory in lead up to future projects, visit the James Webb Space Telescope at Northrop’s facility, and then make my way to JPL for a quick tour. After more bad COVID-19 news broke, I left town before I could get there, and flew right back to Cape Canaveral.

It was time to try again, despite the soul crushing traffic between LAX and Pasedena. Before our anticipated arrival on Thursday, April 11th, JPL’s media team sent out a list of precautions and guidelines necessary for a “clean” clean room visit. “These requirements are driven by a need to protect Europa Clipper’s sensitive instruments from dust, dirt, and debris so the spacecraft can perform its valuable science around Europa and to protect a moon that might currently have conditions suitable for life from any Earth microbes that might hitch a ride on our spacecraft,” said the release. Casual.

Planetary protection is taken very seriously by NASA and a scientist from that office was among our JPL guides. Precautions include a shower before your visit, refraining from perfume and cologne use, and going that day without glitter. There was a note about no cold or flu-like symptoms which concerned me because I do face allergies and sinus issues far more frequently in the spring, especially when I travel. I didn’t take a chance, popping a Claritin before heading over to JPL. I hardly ever worked with other press pools in the space industry so I was curious about the attendees and what the setup would be compared to the circus at Kennedy Space Center.

I arrived to a beautiful and seemingly green campus, a welcome contrast to the flat and industrial area around NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building and Press Site at Kennedy Space Center. Next door to JPL was a horse ranch. At the welcome center, broadcast journalists and space journalists were gathering for the day’s Clipper events. When you first enter, you are directed to check in with a computer at the entrance and to take a seat. A few moments after finding that seat, you are immediately called up to the welcome desk to confirm identification and to get a guest badge printed. I was then directed to another group for a third round of checking in. I recognized Irene Klotz from Aviation Week, a longtime correspondent in the Kennedy press pool, we shared a hug. Later, my longtime friend and colleague Jack Beyer showed up to cover for NSF. A handful of local news folks gathered to talk about the death of O.J Simpson, which just happened.

Now for the purposes of moving forward with this account and showing our readers a little bit behind the curtain of media operations during flagship missions, I won’t mention any specific names or people. Everyone was suited up and mostly unidentifiable anyway. After my third check-in, I was called over by security to make sure I was checked in, in which they made me email the JPL team to let them know I was checked-in, even though we were standing just a few feet from them. I sent the email and sat down and was told by JPL’s team that my predetermined time slot had been delayed by 20 minutes. This is all to remind me that no matter how cool the NASA center, it's still a janky government bureaucracy.

The group of journalists were then split up into multiple groups to rotate through the different events JPL had planned for us. The security guard came to check on me one more time and apologized for checking on me so many times. I asked if I could go to the large employee gift shop that was a little further into the campus. They said no and that the tiny welcome center shop would be open soon.

My first stop was the Von Karman Auditorium, named after JPL’s founder Theodore Von Karman. In the 1930s, Karman pioneered rocket propulsion and after a few failures and dangerous experiments “several graduate students led by Frank Malina, along with rocket enthusiasts from the Pasadena area, moved their work off campus,” according to NASA. One of those rocketeers was Jack Parsons, occultist and possible spy. The auditorium displays a few models on the floor that included Voyager and its Golden Record, a cross-section of Europa showing its terrain of ice and saltwater, as well as small model of Clipper. I walked around while I waited for my meeting with Project Scientist Robert Pappalardo, who David Brown referred to as the mission’s Jean-Luc Picard. I noticed JPL’s media team was running short on time so I offered to reduce me allotted 15 minutes with Pappalardo to 10, to which they were happy to do.

Pappalardo is your quintessential brilliant mission scientist, battle worn from years of development but enthusiastic about the probe finally launching. He needed a few moments to refresh before our interview and wanted to move away from the facility’s bright lights. I opened by asking about the primary instruments on Clipper. “Those are ones that gather light, and the in-situ instruments that sense their environment and particles close up, he said. “REASON, the radar instrument, is amazing. The ice penetrating radar can shine radar wavelengths, essentially Radio waves, at Europa that penetrate through cold clean ice, bounce off liquid water, and back to the spacecraft to give us CAT scan of Europa's ice shell, Pappalardo explained.

“Where is the liquid water?”

Pappalardo said that if Europa cooperates, Clipper’s instrument could penetrate all the way down to the ocean to measure the thickness of the ice shell. The Europa Imaging System is a camera suite with high resolution and a wide angle imager. From 50 kilometers it gets images that are half-a-meter per pixel in resolution. A mass spectrometer will analyze gasses in Europa’s faint atmosphere and in the possible erupting water plumes. It will study the chemistry of the moon’s suspected subsurface ocean, and how the ocean and surface might exchange material.

Clipper, in orbit around Jupiter, will make 49 flybys of Europa at closest-approach altitudes as low as 16 miles (25 kilometers) above the surface, over a different location during each flyby to scan about 80% of the moon.

Clipper will take half a decade to reach the Jupiter system, I rudely reminded Pappalardo. “It's a hard one,” he replied. “You hear me sighing a little bit. Yeah, it's not like we're killing time. It's a five and a half year cruise from launch to Jupiter orbit insertion, then about another 11 months before we make the first Europa flyby. So what are we doing? We're developing software that we need for the flybys.”

At about 8 minutes into my promised 10-minute interview, a JPL rep interrupted the conversation because the bus taking me to the clean room was leaving early. I quickly asked Pappalardo on what a dream result looks like following Clipper’s investigation of Europa. “The dream result is to understand,” he replied. “Can we identify a sort of oasis at Europa a place where there's evidence of heat. Maybe there's evidence of a plume source of shallow liquid water of organics on the surface. And that could be a place that we might be able to send a Lander in the future and dig and Sample.” After an awkward conclusion to the interview, I then boarded the bus to the clean room, where I waited for a while.

JPL provided a multi-piece suit that included shoes for your shoes, a head cover, and a one-piece coverall that zipped up to the neck. The last pieces we put on was a surgical mask and latex gloves that were taped to our “bunny” suits around the wrist. Before suiting up we stuck our sneakers in a cleaning machine and our helpers wiped down our phones and other handheld equipment.

Two at a time, suited up journalists and members of the JPL media team entered a small air shower room that connected the locker and clean rooms. High-velocity air jets aid in decontamination prior to entering the clean room.

Out of all the Hollywood depictions of space exploration throughout the years, the most accurate thing that translates on screen is people putting on bunny suits. It feels as fantastical in real life as it does on the big screen and it is one of those moments in a space career that underscores the marquee reason for working in the industry: seeing spacecraft. Before we got down to the floor, our group was ushered to a guest viewing area that displays the clean room from above through glass. The scene is unreal, even for LA. A dozen white suits in a clean room that has seen some legendary missions, each commemorated with a large insignia near the ceiling of the clean room, like championship banners at sports stadiums. Viking, Curiosity, Mariner, just to name a few.

JPL's team said to have fun, which you don't hear much doing coverage at NASA centers. Telling the story of space exploration should be fun, I appreciated that. We were encouraged to take selfies and chat with the Clipper's team members. There was a mannequin dressed in a clean suit holding a sign that identified the spacecraft. The space industry loves mannequins, especially for testing crew vehicles. A member of NASA's media team shared that they worked on the agency's Psyche mission and had a tab opened with Supercluster's anxiety-driving countdown clock in the days leading up to launch. It caused much stress, apparently. I pulled out my phone to show that we were already tracking Clipper on our app but no countdown to stress everyone out yet. Another team member mentioned a window but we'll update the clock once NASA confirms. It will be a daytime launch.

The Europa Clipper spacecraft is larger than life and noticeably complex in design. You'd need a few days to spot each component in the whimsically chaotic array of cables, wires, switches, buttons, and fasteners that create a colorful grid around the spacecraft's hull. White suits scurried around the spacecraft, maintaining a 10ft perimeter around it. Surrounded by step ladders and cranes, the spacecraft's metal hull glistened under the bright lights of JPL's clean room, hallowed grounds. The discovery of life in Europa's ocean would be a transformative moment for the human race and the beginning of a new age of science. Clipper stands as the forerunner of this enterprise and the research it sends back could have paradigm shifting impact on not only the future of space exploration, but across countless fields of scientific research.

The vehicle's wings, or expanding solar arrays, are already at Kennedy Space Center. Each wing is approximately 46.5 feet (14.2 meters) long and approximately 13.5 feet (4.1 meters) high. With its arrays deployed, the spacecraft spans more than 100 feet (30.5 meters), or about the length of a basketball court. JPL said the agency will likely allow reporters at Kennedy Space Center an opportunity to visit the spacecraft once it arrives on the space coast and before its loaded onto SpaceX's Falcon Heavy. In which case, Jenny Hautmann will take photos with an actual camera.

The Supercluster team both in New York and Cape Canaveral are pretty excited for the launch of Europa Clipper atop Falcon Heavy and hope to see many space fans in Florida for the launch currently slated for October 10th. Jenny working to update launch viewing locations on the app while our designers conceptualize something cool to commemorate the mission. Erik Kuna and myself will be heading to Kennedy Space Center to also witness and capture the liftoff of the historic Europa Clipper probe.

In Photos: The Great American Total Solar Eclipse

2024-04-09T20:00:00.000Z

From the path of totality to the coasts, millions across Mexico, the United States, and Canada enjoyed a rare and awe-inspiring total solar eclipse on April 8th, 2024.

Supercluster photographer Erik Kuna was conflicted on where to shoot the event, but ultimately landed away from the crowds in Jackson, Missouri, under the path of totality.

Jenny Hautmann remained at the Space Coast to get a shot of a partial solar eclipse visible from Florida, and to cover the final flight of the Delta IV Heavy, a vehicle that was powerful enough to launch the Parker Solar Probe, humanity's first mission to the Sun itself.

In the days before the eclipse, the threat of clouds loomed for those along the path of sold out hotel rooms and Airbnbs. Something our team is very familiar with. Rocket launches always come with the possibility that the weather will simply not cooperate. And there's that pesky fog at Vandenberg in California.

After much consideration, Erik's choice of location proved fruitful. As for the conspiracy theories around CERN creating a wormhole and NASA's sounding rockets launched "at the eclipse," we were also very disappointed that an inter-dimensional portal did not open.

Especially after that hilariously-timed Earthquake shook our office.

Space Experiment Provides Insights for Developing Cancer Drugs

2024-04-02T10:00:00.000Z

The quest for a cure for pancreatic, lung, and colon cancer has led to space.

Researchers from the Frederick National Laboratory sent several cancer-causing, mutant KRAS proteins to the International Space Station to crystallize in December 2018. The samples orbited in space for five weeks, and were then photographed in a laboratory using X-rays after they splashed down into the Pacific Ocean.

The research resulted in progress being made toward a goal of developing a drug that can "lock" the KRAS proteins' tails, effectively preventing cancers from growing. This could potentially help many cancer patients.

“This was a very exciting opportunity,” said Albert Chan, a scientist at FNL. “Before I signed up for it, I had heard of crystallizing proteins in space on the International Space Station, but actually being involved in it was an amazing experience. I learned a lot. I learned how to not take things for granted. I had to analyze everything."

There's a long history to this area of research. According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, as of 2021, university researchers and drug companies had engaged in over 500 experiments on the ISS that involved growing protein crystals, over a period of 20 years.

What role do proteins play in the human body?

And why are they important for researchers to study?

According to the U.S. government website Medline Plus, “Proteins are large, complex molecules that play many critical roles in the body. They do most of the work in cells and are required for the structure, function and regulation of the body’s tissues and organs."

Scientists generally agree that there are close to 20,000 proteins in the human body, according to an article by Nathan Ahlgren, assistant professor of biology at Clark University.

Launches carrying sensitive research are exciting (and stressful) times for the teams involved in this type of research. In a blog post for the National Cancer Institute, Chan described the Dec. 5 Falcon 9 rocket launch carrying the experimental equipment as “a flash of fire, followed by an unrelenting rumbling sound that crescendos to a deafening roar, shaking the ground and the air.” The launch was part of SpaceX CRS-16, a commercial resupply mission on a Dragon spacecraft departing from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The experimental equipment onboard needed to withstand both cold temperatures — since the samples were sent up to space frozen — and also the intense vibration from re-entry and a violent splash-down in the Pacific Ocean.

“The [crystallization research] steps are actually quite similar to what we would do under normal Earth gravity,” Chan said. But instead of mixing the proteins and the crystallization solutions together on Earth and waiting for crystals to appear, the team froze the samples immediately after mixing them, packaged them in dry ice, and sent them to Florida.

In Florida, staff loaded them into the capsule and sent them up to the ISS, Chan said. On Dec. 9, Alexander Gerst, an astronaut from the European Space Agency, unpacked the samples so they could defrost and the proteins could crystallize in a microgravity environment.

The samples were then ejected from the ISS, after which they splashed down in the Pacific Ocean near the California coast. Chan took a commercial plane to retrieve them. He brought the samples on a plane to Argonne National Laboratory, where they were photographed using an X-ray technique.

“They have a facility called a synchrotron,” Chan said. “It is a very strong X-ray source. So it shoots the X-ray to the protein crystals. And from there we can get a diffraction pattern that we convert back into a 3D model of the protein.”

Chan and his coworker Dhirendra Simanshu, a principal scientist at FNL, compared the results to a similar experiment conducted at FNL.

Why was this experiment conducted in microgravity?

“Protein crystal growth (PCG) is a major area of cancer-related study in microgravity,” NASA says. “A detailed look at the early decades of cancer research in space highlighted the benefits of microgravity: cells grow into 3D forms that behave much as they do in the body, cell growth and function such as gene expression and cell signaling are different, and cell cultures experience lack of sedimentation and reduced fluid shear.”

Crystallizing proteins in microgravity can produce better-quality specimens.

“We thought that maybe by crystallizing in microgravity, changing the gravity parameter, we would be able to get good protein crystals, and get the full structure of it,” Chan said. “The crystal-growth process is more controlled without all the turbulence introduced by Earth’s gravity.”

“Since there is evidence that crystals grown in low Earth orbit appear to be more perfect — they are bigger, more ordered, and diffract better in general — we decided to give it a shot,” Chan wrote in his blog post.

Researchers will use these crystals to discover the structures of proteins so that they can develop treatments that are targeted and effective.

Part of their study involves using a molecular "glue" that they could use to anchor the proteins’ tails to their cores, Chan said. With further research they will be able to better understand how these tails and cores interact, which will lead to more refined techniques.

Cancer drugs could then be designed that would bond with the proteins in their initial state, according to an article from the magazine Upward. These would lock the tails and prevent the proteins from adhering to nearby cell membranes — stopping these cancers from growing.

“Drugs are often small molecules that bind to proteins to interfere with their normal functions,” Chan said. “The binding usually involves a set of contacts and electrostatic interactions that are unique to the drug and the protein pocket. A carefully designed drug should fit only to the protein pocket it is designed for, like a key that can only fit into a very specific lock. This way, we can avoid the drug binding to other non-disease-causing proteins and therefore minimize side effects.”

While the team was able to see the 3D structure of protein cores with their molecular glue, they were not yet able to clearly see the tails, and how exactly these structures interact. “We believe maybe our glue wasn't strong enough to really attach the tail strongly to the core, so maybe it was whipping around a little bit,” Chan said. “It was still a step forward.”

Simanshu said that the experiment resulted in better-quality data than similar experiments that were conducted on Earth. “The crystallographic properties of the crystal which was grown in microgravity is certainly better than what we grow on Earth.”

“About 25% of the microgravity crystals were visibly bigger and had nicer appearances (smoother surfaces, sharper edges, etc.),” Chan wrote in his blog post.

“The data collected with X-ray was also better. We saw as much as five-fold improvement in signal-to-noise... this shows that the beauty of our crystals is not only skin-deep; they are beautiful inside as well. With the data-quality improvement, we were finally able to solve protein structures that we could not solve with the Earth crystals before.”

Meanwhile, other cancer researchers continue to partner with the ISS on a variety of experiments as part of the Cancer Moonshot Initiative. In the summer and fall of 2023, the ISS and NASA provided a funding opportunity for further cancer research in space to support this initiative.

Local Astronomy Club Keeps History Alive in French Guiana

2024-03-26T19:00:00.000Z

“Hello, Earth. Guyanautes here.”

On Monday mornings, the voices of Guyane Astronomie can be heard by anyone tuned to Radio Péyi, a local station in French Guiana. Every week, the devoted group of astronomers and star lovers broadcast a fictional transmission from an imagined future in which “Guyanautes” recount stories of the stars, the skies, and their home country: French Guiana, a small nation on the northern tip of South America.

This remote European territory between Suriname and Brazil is primarily known within the space and scientific community for being the home of Centre Spatial Guyanais, Europe’s spaceport. Since its installment in the 1960s, Kourou is renowned for the launch of the very reliable, albeit now retired, Ariane 5 rocket and its predecessors. In our previous dispatch from the region, we looked back a hundred years, when the French government shipped thousands of prisoners to the territory to live in exile and be forced into hard labor. Many dying from the conditions. And how, within two decades, this “green hell” transformed into a technological and scientific center.

This time, we tag along with the Guyanautes as the radio program explores the late 1600s, when French Guiana was home to a consequential astronomical event that laid the basis for some of the century's most remarkable scientific findings.

At this point in history, French Guiana was a volatile and violent place as several colonial powers and Amerindian groups fought for control over the territory, largely covered by the Amazonian rainforest. These astronomical discoveries occurred in a time when Amerindian and slave communities deeply suffered from colonial oppression by imperial powers. It's important to note that scientific endeavors were largely driven, and made possible, by this colonial rule. Missions relied heavily upon the ease of movement for Europeans at a time when they possessed much of the world.

In the midsts of these conflicts, Jean Richer, a French astronomer, and his work companion Meurisse (last name unknown) set sail to the then-French colony in early 1672 to answer one of the most pertinent astronomical queries of that time: what is the distance between the Sun and Earth?

The fall of that year would be a prime moment for measurements, as Mars would stand the closest to Earth in more than a decade. The French Académie Royale des Sciences sent the pair to the equator (French Guiana lies at 5 degrees North, a key reason why it was chosen as a launch site centuries later) such that they and a compatriot in Paris could make simultaneous observations of Mars. The voyage across the Atlantic alone took the pair more than a month, only to be welcomed by the harsh conditions of the South American rain season.

In this mostly-unexplored territory, Richer had to be perseverant and resourceful to build the observatory necessary for their task. They managed to do so in a span of a few months and as the skies cleared with the arrival of the dry season, Richer stared at the night sky for weeks, noting down his observations and conducting measurements. The report he wrote afterwards was shared with his research partner in Paris and would come to play an important role in modern astronomy.

So, who is this famous astronomer who had stayed behind to conduct the measurements in the (relatively) safe confines of Paris? His name: Giovanni Cassini. By computing the parallax, which is the observed displacement of an object caused by the change of the observer's point of view, Cassini used Richer's observations as well as his own to come to the estimation that the Earth and Sun are 138 million kilometers apart. An estimation so close to what we now know (150 million kilometers) that he is applauded for it to this day. He is the namesake of the famous Cassini probe sent to explore Saturn, known for the image “the day earth smiled” as well as its many scientific discoveries.

But whereas Cassini is still acclaimed centuries on, Richer, and his trip to French Guiana largely disappeared from our collective memory.

Guyane Astronomie is fighting to change this. They organize events throughout the territory to promote astronomy and its historical roots in French Guiana, including stargazing evenings, astronomy talks, and four conferences per year. Additionally, they advocate for a more widespread understanding of the astronomical practices of the many Amerindian communities in French Guiana, for whom the stars are guides to maintaining an agricultural calendar.

Supercluster spoke to Gaetan, one of the key members of the organization, and he showed us an excerpt from French Astronomer Aymar de la Baume Pluvinel, who visited French Guiana a century after Richer did. Avid amateur astronomer and solar eclipse chaser, Pluvinel led an expedition in 1899 to witness Richer's astronomical event. The experience left such an impression that he wrote a year later: "I hope that French Guiana will still play a role in the story of science, and I hope that a new astronomical phenomenon will bring me back to Cayenne where they know how to welcome astronomers so well."

Today, French Guiana still plays a critical role in amplifying astronomical knowledge of the universe. On Christmas morning in 2021, French Guiana saw the James Web Space Telescope (JWST) launched from Kourou, taking less time to reach its destination than the Atlantic crossing took Richer and Meurisse. From there, JWST has sent countless images of the universe back to Earth dazzling the general public with new science and stunning glimpses into the universe. In April of 2023, JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer) set off from the same location, on a quest to find out if the moons around Jupiter hold secrets about the origin of life. With flagship exploration missions like these, French Guiana plays a huge role in the global scientific community that could have hardly been imagined by the researchers that made their way here centuries ago.

It is the JWST launch that birthed Guyane Astronomie. The club is now run by 7 enthusiastic, mainly amateur, astronomers, who organize a monthly star gazing session for its 70 or so members. The Guyanautes radio program is an initiative by its vice-president, Frédéric, with Gaetan’s support. They hope to reach as many locals as possible, which can be a challenge when certain locations are only accessible by spending days on a boat traversing the Amazon. “We hope to inspire the passionate and the amateurs, those who want to help the development of our events and actions,” said Gaetan.

Their latest project is to launch astro-tourism in French Guiana to share the wealth of stories and experiences that this oftentimes overlooked territory has to offer. The Guyanautes, and Guyane Astronomie at large, make sure that the astronomical potential, and past, of French Guiana, are not forgotten.

Third Flight Test Sets the Stage for Starship's Ambitious Future

2024-03-19T20:55:00.000Z

Third Times a Charm? Almost.

Pi day 2024 saw SpaceX launch the behemoth two-stage Starship Super Heavy prototype, a third integrated flight test performed with the experimental solar system-class vehicle. Flying from the remote Texan village of Boca Chica, now called Starbase, the Super Heavy booster stage fired all its 33 Raptor engines, lifting off with the second-stage Starship from SpaceX’s reinforced orbital launch mount.

The flight marked a few new milestones in Starship's development. Its Raptor engines demonstrated full-duration engine burn to orbit, the Super Heavy booster performed a boost-back burn and demonstrated re-ignition of Raptor engines in-flight, SpaceX operated Starship's payload bay, and for NASA's Artemis moon missions, Starship demonstrated the transfer of cryogenic propellant in orbit. While the mission ended with Starship attempting hypersonic re-entry before its destruction over the Indian Ocean, the vehicle is beginning to demonstrate that its interplanetary goals will soon be in reach.

Starship Super Heavy, designed to propel humans and cargo back to the moon and beyond, powered through its ascent after a smooth launch at 9:25 AM ET on Thursday, March 14th. At 2 minutes and 42 seconds into flight, the Super Heavy booster powered down all but three of its Raptor engines. As it reached the point of stage separation, Starship ignited all of its engines to move away from the booster; a unique system known as Hot Staging. Starship continued its trajectory to orbit while the Super Heavy performed a flip maneuver and reignited 13 Raptor engines to make its way to the targeted splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

Descending through the thicker parts of the atmosphere, the booster was guided by its grid fins, similar to how Falcon 9 adjusts its trajectory before landing. 7 minutes after liftoff, as the Super Heavy neared the splashdown point, it re-ignited several of its engines for the final time in an attempt to softly splash down but disintegrated over the Gulf, what SpaceX calls a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (RUD). It blew up.

Meanwhile, 6 Raptor engines on Starship continued its ascent. 8 minutes and 37 seconds into the flight, all engines powered down as the Ship reached its intended orbit. The launch targeted an unstable orbit by design so that Starship could return back to Earth even if SpaceX had lost control of it, thereby not contributing to the space junk which poses a threat to operational satellites.

Once in orbit, Starship tried to stabilize itself using its reaction control system (RCS) but was unable to do so throughout its coast phase. The vehicle was seen in a constant (but slow) roll but it didn’t stop SpaceX from carrying out their additional test objectives. The teams successfully opened and closed Starship’s payload door, referred to as the “pez dispenser” by SpaceX. It is a temporary system designed to specifically deploy Starlink satellites before the vehicle is fully operational and ready for larger commercial payloads.

Starship also conducted the first-ever propellant transfer demonstration which involved transferring the cryogenic liquid oxygen from Starship’s header tank to the main tank. This demonstration was carried out under NASA’s Tipping Point contract for $53 million to demonstrate in-orbit cryogenic propellant transfer, critical for Starship’s launch architecture and under development in collaboration with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

“Storing and transferring cryogenic propellant in orbit has never been attempted on this scale before,” said Jeremy Kenny, project manager, NASA’s Cryogenic Fluid Management Portfolio at Marshall. “But this is a game-changing technology that must be developed and matured for science and exploration missions at the Moon, Mars, and those that will venture even deeper into our solar system.”

Starship was scheduled to reignite their Raptor engines to demonstrate re-ignition in space; however, it wasn’t performed because of the vehicle’s unstable orientation. 46 minutes after the liftoff, Starship went to re-enter the atmosphere for the first time. During this phase, the telemetry and the uninterrupted live video stream were provided through Starlink, completing yet another crucial test for in-space use of SpaceX’s internet satellite system. A bright red plasma started surrounding the vehicle as it entered Earth’s atmosphere at 26,700 kilometers per hour (16,591 miles per hour) at an altitude of 100 kilometers (62 miles). Plasma is very rarely seen in spaceflight coverage due to the communications outage it causes.

Starship wasn’t able to sustain the high heat level of the plasma generated for long, disintegrating over the Indian Ocean. Although unsuccessful, this re-entry attempt provided teams with valuable data on heating and vehicle control during hypersonic re-entry that will be used to improve systems for their next test.

“With each flight test, SpaceX attempts increasingly ambitious objectives for Starship to learn as much as possible for future mission systems development. The ability to test key systems and processes in flight scenarios like these integrated tests allows both NASA and SpaceX to gather crucial data needed for the continued development of Starship HLS,” said Lisa Watson-Morgan, HLS Program Manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Human Landing System [HLS] is the Starship’s lunar-optimized variant currently in development to land Astronauts back to the Moon under NASA’s Artemis program.

SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell expects the next integrated flight test to occur in early May. While the teams are still analyzing the flight data, the focus of the next flight will be to perfect Ship’s re-entry. Shotwell mentions an aggressive Starship development goal for this year, which is to reach orbit, deploy satellites and recover both Ship and the Booster. The flight profile and general objectives are expected to remain the same on Starship's next flight test.

SpaceX will be conducting a now-routine mishap investigation in-tandem with the FAA before being certified for flight. FAA’s Associate Administrator for Office of Commercial Space Transportation, Kelvin Coleman, says that SpaceX is aiming for 6-9 more Starship launches this year.

Starship has become the largest and most powerful rocket to successfully launch into Earth’s orbit but it still has a long way to go before it delivers on SpaceX’s ambitious goals. This isn’t just a development of new rockets but a radical launch architecture that includes multiple efficient launch pads and ground support equipment, different Starship variants, and most importantly, the in-orbit refueling system which promises to enable deep space missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

Getting to orbit just represents one of many challenges ahead for the Starship launch system. Once operational, it’ll attempt to revolutionize space transportation, giving rise to new opportunities in commercial, defense, scientific research, and human spaceflight ventures.

What Follows a Successful Starship Demonstration?

Decade after decade, NASA’s flagship missions are becoming increasingly capable but are primarily limited by the launch vehicle’s mass and volume constraints. This pushes the engineers to find clever solutions, often increasing R&D costs and mission risks. The James Webb Space Telescope was plagued by this issue as NASA engineers had to develop new technologies to build its 6.5-meter primary mirror with Beryllium and complex systems to fold those segments such that it is light and compact enough to be launched on the Ariane 5 rocket

A larger and more powerful launch vehicle like Starship would enable such missions to have flexible mass requirements, allowing the use of simpler, heavier components with less exotic materials and incorporating more robust engineering margins.

"The availability of greater mass and volume capability, at lower cost, enlarges the design space," said Charles Lawrence, the chief scientist for astronomy and physics at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“We want to take advantage of that.”

Lawrence, along with astrophysicist Martin Elvis and Sara Seager argued how Starship can accelerate astrophysics research in an article published in Physics Today.

NASA’s next flagship mission after the Roman Space Telescope can greatly benefit from future launch vehicles with greater capabilities but the agency won’t be able to bank on them anytime soon. Recommendations from the 2020 decadal survey have led NASA to work on the Habitable Worlds Observatory mission. However, to keep its development within NASA’s astrophysics budget, its launch dates have been pushed to the 2040s while the mission will be developed to launch on a rocket operational in the 2020s, thereby not accounting for the rise in new technologies in the future.

“Studies of the largest flagship missions that NASA commissioned took three years and were completed by 2019. The unfortunate timing meant that the capabilities of Starship could be only briefly considered in the Astro2020 deliberations,” stated authors in the paper Accelerating astrophysics with the SpaceX Starship.

It might take a while before NASA’s Science Directorate benefits from Starship’s capabilities but there’s no denying it can lower the complexities of many missions and this is already apparent.

Starship is set to launch Voyager Space and Airbus’ Starlab space station in LEO in 2028 and thanks to its large payload volume, it’ll require just a single launch to deliver the entire station to orbit. This will avoid in-orbit assembly which can be expensive and induce higher risk to the mission. Once in orbit, the station will be ready for human missions almost immediately.

Starship’s unique abilities have given rise to innovative concepts to bridge the gap to astrophysics observation from space. SpaceX reportedly is working with Dr. Saul Permutter at UC Berkeley on a space-based telescope launched on Starship. The concept involves using Starship itself as a structure for a telescope, with a resolution 10 times greater than the Hubble Space Telescope, per Elon.

The Department of Defense also has a keen eye on Starship’s upcoming capabilities. In general, larger and cheaper rockets will enable larger payloads to orbit while lowering the mission costs but the advantages aren’t just limited to space. The US Transport Command (USTRANSCOM) and the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) are studying the possibility of transporting cargo via Starship from one point on Earth to another. Starship’s second stage is in itself a powerful launch vehicle and can theoretically transport passengers and payload across the Earth with hypersonic velocities. SpaceX concepts show Starship launching into a suborbital trajectory, completing most international trips in around 30-40 minutes. Combined with its rapid reusability and high launch cadence, it can be used to transport emergency cargo at a rapid pace, faster than any current aircraft. In 2021, AFRL awarded SpaceX with a $102 million contract under their Rocket Cargo Program and since then has gained new confidence in Starship’s reusability and rapid turnarounds, crucial for it to be competitive with cargo transports by a Boeing C-17 Globemaster aircraft.

“We can insert cargo transport as part of their regular launch rate progression, and treat it just like another satellite in their flow, or have contracts in place where we can inject it into their flow,” said Gregory Spanjers, chief scientist for rocket cargo program at AFRL at Space Mobility Conference on January 30, 2024.

“That’s when we can bring the costs down by an order of magnitude and where it starts getting extremely attractive.”

AFRL has been working with SpaceX on ways to “containerize” military cargo so that it can go on a rocket, and the challenge is to come up with a standard container design that can also be used on other modes of transportation.

“The plan is to continue to refine the concept as vehicles and delivery systems evolve. What we’re trying to do is set ourselves up to be an early adopter of these big rockets as they mature.”

DoD has also expressed their interests in commandeering Starship as a government-owned and operated asset for “sensitive and potentially dangerous missions”, per a recent report in Aviation Week. Usually, DoD contracts SpaceX when they require their launch services, however, this proposed arrangement calls for the Pentagon to take control of the vehicle on its own.

”We have had conversations and it really came down to specific missions, where it's a very specific and sometimes elevated risk or maybe a dangerous use case for the DOD where they’re asking themselves: 'Do we need to own it as a particular asset; SpaceX, can you accommodate that?'" said Gary Henry, Senior Advisor for National Security Space Solutions at SpaceX said at the 2024 Space Mobility Conference.

"We've been exploring all kinds of options to kind of deal with those questions," Henry added.

Such commercial and government opportunities could accelerate the development of the launch architecture which is critical to enable human spaceflight missions to the Moon and Mars, and potentially beyond.

Starship HLS is expected to return humans back to the Moon under NASA’s Artemis program in the next few years. The agency awarded SpaceX with a $2.1 billion contract to develop technologies that can land Starship on the Moon for Artemis 3 mission and beyond. Starship HLS will launch atop the Super Heavy booster and rendezvous with a fuel depot in low earth orbit to refuel before heading to a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit. The lander will await the arrival NASA’s Orion spacecraft, launched onboard the Space Launch System (SLS). Once Orion reaches NRHO, it’ll dock with Starship as 2 of 4 astronauts will board the HLS and descend down the surface. The landing is slated to take place during the Artemis 3 missions with SpaceX planning to demonstrate this ability beforehand with an uncrewed lunar landing and ascent test.

Although there are no plans in motion for a permanent presence on the Moon, a gradual decrease in lunar mission costs and the ability to land over 100 metric tonnes of cargo on the lunar surface can help establish a permanent base on our nearest celestial neighbor.

While it may be contracted for lunar missions, SpaceX’s Starship goals have always centered around putting humans on Mars and establishing a city. The launch system has been designed from ground up for interplanetary missions. High launch rate, full reusability, little to no refurbishment, and propulsive landing with in-orbit refueling are all important components needed to reach Mars, transport large cargo shipments, and ultimately enable a permanent human presence.

Methane as a propellant was specifically chosen since it can be produced on Mars via the Sabatier reaction. The current plan involves a crew-rated Starship to launch onboard the Super Heavy booster to low-Earth orbit. It’ll then rendezvous with the fuel depot to refuel before coasting to Mars. Once arriving, Starship will perform a propulsive landing on the red planet resembling the way Falcon 9 touches down at Cape Canaveral. Initial cargo flights will have the equipment needed for the first human missions, including in-situ fuel production. Locally produced Methane and Liquid Oxygen will fuel the Starship for the return journey to Earth. Owing to Mars’ low gravity, Super Heavy isn’t required for the Starship to reach Mars’ orbit.

Its large habitation volume — equaling the International Space Station — won’t require immediate establishment of a base and is sufficient for human presence for early missions. It just doesn’t stop there, local fuel production can help establish a fuel depot in Martian orbit, which can enable even heavier payloads to launch in the outer solar system and beyond.

With the potential to revolutionize the space industry, Starship is still in its initial stages of development and a long road lies ahead before it can fulfill SpaceX’s grand ambitions of making humanity a multi-planetary species and even an interstellar one. As sci-fi as that sounds. "This Starship is designed to traverse our entire solar system and beyond to the cloud of objects surrounding us. A future Starship, much larger and more advanced, will travel to other star systems," said Elon Musk on X.

Getting out of the solar system and traveling to our nearest star, Proxima Centauri located 4.2 light years away or 40 trillion kilometers (25 trillion miles), will require far greater leaps in propulsion technology development, one that is not even comprehensible today and would require decades of research. The small leaps taken today iteratively will enable large ones in the future.

The Oxygen Bottleneck: Technological Alien Worlds Need Fire

2024-03-05T22:00:00.000Z

Do aliens play with fire?

Oxygen: the source of so much life on Earth. It's vital to every breath we take — and without it water couldn’t exist, and fires couldn’t burn.

Moreover, according to a new paper from astronomers Amedeo Balbi of the University of Roma Tor Vergato, and Adam Frank of the University of Rochester, if other worlds don’t have oxygen, and lots of it, then our chances of finding another technological society like our own are slim.

To understand why, let’s take a trip back in time, over 6,000 years to the final days of the Stone Age. By this stage, humans had been tool-bearers and tool-makers for some time, with stones hammered and chiseled into arrow heads, knives and spears. Yet metals such as copper and bronze offered greater options. These more malleable materials could be worked like stone, but the more they are hammered the more brittle they become. It’s a problem that is easily remedied by the process of annealing, which involved heating the metal.

To heat the metal, those early tool makers needed to make fire, which was no problem; humans had been using and controlling fire since the time of Home Erectus, one million years ago. So they took to their flint rocks and sparked a flame to anneal the copper, thus bringing about a new age: the Copper Age — to soon be followed by the Bronze Age. With access to metals new technology was invented, and refined, and civilization developed.

Yet, like people, fire needs oxygen to breath. There’s plenty in Earth’s atmosphere now, an abundance of 21%. To facilitate open-air combustion, an abundance of at least 18% is required. Any lower and fires will sputter and go out. Lightning might strike a tree and cause it to explode, but the tree won’t burn. Sparks will fail to light up a campfire. The lack of wildfires would irrevocably alter our planet’s ecology. And without fire, generating the heat to anneal metal would not be possible. If Earth’s oxygen had been 17% some 6,000 years ago, then the Stone Age would never have ended, and our modern technological civilization would not have come to pass.

Technology Needs Oxygen

Luckily for us, Earth’s atmospheric abundance of oxygen has been higher than the critical value of 18% for at least the past 420 million years. Yet oxygen has not increased linearly throughout history; there have been fluctuations in the availability of atmospheric oxygen that has left traces in the geological and paleontological record. There’s no guarantee that Earth has to always have an oxygenated atmosphere and, by the same token, there’s no guarantee that any other potentially habitable planets around other stars will have high concentrations of oxygen either.

It’s this realization that has led to Balbi and Frank’s epiphany. In a new paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, they point out that on worlds with oxygen abundances less than 18%, technology will not be possible for the reasons outlined above. As such, attempts by the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) to find life that has developed technology that we can detect would be doomed to failure on such worlds.

“That’s what totally blew my mind,” Frank tells Supercluster. “They’d have no access to this source of energy that they would otherwise use for their tool-building and tool-using purposes.”

Without the ability to forge metal to build radio antennas, to provide the combustion necessary to launch rockets, or the means of generating energy from burning fossil fuels and developing technology to fire lasers into the sky, any aliens on an oxygen-poor planet would be largely undetectable, at least from the point of view of SETI. Frank and Balbi call it the ‘oxygen bottleneck’. There could be countless planets out there with life, even intelligent life, but lacking the oxygen to start fires.

Where Are All the Oxygen Planets?

Far from being bad news for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, Frank thinks this could be a boon. Why waste time searching oxygen-poor worlds when we could more efficiently use our resources listening and watching planets with plenty of oxygen and therefore a greater likelihood of technological life? With billions of star systems in the galaxy to search, this would help cut the odds in SETI’s favor.

Which is great in theory, but the question is, how many potentially habitable planets in the galaxy have sufficient oxygen to support technology?

Currently, we don’t know. What’s more, we aren’t really even in a position to say.

“We’re really at the hairy edge,” says Frank. “It’s conceivable that the James Webb Space Telescope could [find out], and we might get lucky.”

The JWST is probing the atmosphere of nearby exoplanets via a method known as transit spectroscopy. When a planet transits across the face of its star, producing a detectable dip in the star’s light, some of that starlight filters through the planet’s atmosphere. Molecules within the atmosphere absorb that light at specific wavelengths, casting dark lines in the star’s spectrum that betray the molecules’ presence. Already the JWST has discovered molecules such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane and even water vapor in exoplanet atmospheres, and the Hubble Space Telescope has observed oxygen in the atmosphere of a gas giant planet (specifically the exoplanet HD 209458b, which is so close to its star that its atmosphere is evaporating) but an oxygen detection on a terrestrial world has thus far eluded us.

More probably, it will require the next generation of space telescope to be able to measure the oxygen abundance of exoplanets. “They’ll be designed with this problem in mind,” says Frank. “Certainly in the next 20 or 30 years we’ll have the telescope technologies that will be able to make these observations.”

A next-generation space telescope, which is already on the drawing board for a launch in the 2040s, after being highlighted as a priority by the National Science Foundation’s most recent astrophysics decadal survey, won’t have to rely on transit spectroscopy. It will instead blot out the light of a star using a coronagraph, reducing the star’s glare substantially so that the telescope, which will be in the eight-meter class at the very least, can directly image exoplanets instead.

The Ups and Downs of Earth’s Oxygen

Until then, in lieu of any actual exoplanetary data, perhaps we can use our own planet as a guide. For the first half of its life, Earth had no oxygen in its atmosphere. There was life though – anaerobic microbes that gained their sustenance by converting sunlight into energy. Then, around 2.4 billion years ago, cyanobacteria evolved – microbes that form the basis of photosynthesis in plants today, consuming carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen as a waste product. The sky filled with oxygen instigating the ‘Great Oxygenation Event’, and 400 million years later the oxygen abundance had reached 10%. Alas, the oxygen was toxic to many of the older species of microbes that existed at the time, leading to a mass extinction that some scientists refer to as the ‘oxygen catastrophe’.

Since then, it’s been a story of fluctuating oxygen levels rather than a steady rise. There were two more big rises in oxygen, known as the Neoproterozoic Oxygenation Event spanning a period of time between 850 million and 540 million years ago, and the Paleozoic Oxygenation Event some 420 million years ago, but even these events had their bumps in the road.

Take the Neoproterozoic Oxygenation Event, for example. About 750 million years ago the atmospheric oxygen abundance was 12%, but within a few tens of millions of years it had plummeted to just 0.3%. The cause? An ice age where almost the entire planet froze over, quite possibly triggered by life itself, as vast mats of macroalgae removed enough carbon dioxide – an important greenhouse gas – from the atmosphere to send Earth into a snowball state. As ice covered the land it cut off the supply of nutrients that ordinarily ran-off into the ocean to feed the macroalgae, slowly starving them. As they died off, so too did their production of oxygen. However, without the macroalgae to draw it out of the atmosphere, carbon dioxide belched out by volcanoes was able to steadily accumulate once more, warming the planet and bringing the snowball state to an end.

Following the end of global winter, oxygen levels began to reassert themselves and, for the last half-billion years, Earth’s atmosphere has been oxygen rich. “My modeling suggests that oxygen levels in the atmosphere reached 18% roughly 420–423 million years ago,” says Alex Krause, who is a biogeochemical modeler from the University of Leeds who has been studying the development of ancient Earth’s atmosphere. “There is some data that hints that 18% might have been reached around 480 million years ago, but I am not entirely convinced it would have been that high by this point in time.”

Krause says that there’s even evidence that by the Permian period, which lasted between 250 and 299 million years ago, Earth’s oxygen abundance could have been as great as 35%. So, if potentially habitable exoplanets develop in a similar fashion to Earth, we can expect to find them across a huge spectrum of oxygen abundances, from barely nothing to perhaps a third of their atmosphere being composed of oxygen.

Flowers and Fires

As the huge fluctuations during the Neoproterozoic Oxygenation Event illustrate, life can have a dramatic impact on a planet’s oxygen abundance. Even something as simple as the evolution of angiosperms — flowering plants — during the Cretaceous period when large dinosaurs walked the Earth had a marked effect. Wildfires are one way that nature can regulate oxygen levels, burning huge swathes of oxygen-emitting plants, but research conducted by Claire Belcher of the University of Exeter has shown how angiosperms altered the behavior of forest fires, and therefore how those fires regulated atmospheric oxygen.

What’s evident in all of this is how life is inextricably linked to the ebb and flow of atmospheric oxygen, and therefore how life itself can be the arbiter of whether the oxygen abundance reaches 18%. Certainly large, complex life — particularly life with fast metabolisms — require more oxygen, but how much oxygen large animals need is unclear,

“Where exactly is the dividing line?” asks Frank rhetorically. “Do you need 18% for something as big as a brontosaur? I don’t think so, but you probably need more than 1%, and in between that we just don’t know. That 18% is a physical limit, not a biological limit.”

There are some caveats to this physical limit. One is that we could easily fall foul of false positives. A 2021 study led by Joshua Krissansen-Totton of the University of California, San Diego found multiple ways in which an exoplanet can develop an oxygen-rich atmosphere without the presence of life, often by being too hot or too wet for ordinary weathering, which can draw oxygen down from an atmosphere, to take place. So we might find planets with greater than 18% oxygen levels, which in Frank’s paradigm would make them high-priority targets for SETI, but they would prove to be red herrings because the oxygen would have accumulated geochemically, rather than biologically.

There’s also the problem of atmospheric pressure; the lower the pressure, the more rarefied the oxygen will seem. “It’s possible that life might not advance to a technological civilization without at least 18% oxygen in the atmosphere,” acknowledges Krause. “However, that also depends on atmospheric pressure, which might not be the same on other planets and has possibly changed through time on Earth.”

Be Prepared to Be Surprised

In the cases where there is life but the oxygen abundance is below 18%, we ought to be careful not to completely rule out technological life. It would be naive to assume that life couldn’t find a way.

We see surprising ways in which life is able to communicate here on Earth, and when it comes to SETI, communication of some form, whether deliberate or not, is the key. For example, some bacteria are able to communicate with each other using signaling molecules, and are able to sense the density of those molecules released into the environment to determine the number of bacteria in their colony. This is known as quorum sensing and some bioluminescent microbial colonies apply quorum sensing to regulate how they fluoresce; one could imagine an entire planet covered in microbial mats, all working together as one singular organism through quorum sensing to emit light on a global scale that could be detected light years away by astronomical observations.

Frank agrees, and even posits ways in which we can imagine life negating a lack of oxygen to create technology.

“Communities of bacteria could find ways to leech metals out of the ground and build things with them in weird and interesting ways,” he proposes. “Maybe you could get natural radio telescopes or something. We have to be really open to not being so Earth-biased. I think when it comes to life in the Universe, we need to be prepared to be surprised.”

Young and Old Civilizations

Frank and Balbi’s paper is also specifically about a certain level of civilization. When lightning struck on Earth, setting trees and grasslands ablaze, our intrepid ancestors saw the flames and realized they could make use of them, and even spark fires of their own. On a planet without enough oxygen for spontaneous open-air combustion, however, that knowledge about how fire can be tamed and wielded would never be accrued. The native lifeforms wouldn’t see any fire to inspire them to begin a journey that might eventually progress beyond the Stone Age, to one day reach for the stars.

“We’re really focused here on young species,” Frank explains. “How could a young tool-using species advance to a level where it can begin building the kinds of technologies that will leave technosignatures?”

Maybe, the lack of enough oxygen to fuel fires is one of the so-called great filters, a phrase first coined by Robin Hanson to describe the many barriers that might prevent life evolving to technological intelligence and filling the galaxy with their presence. These filters could contribute to the Fermi Paradox — the mystery of why we see no evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. The nature and timing of these great filters is unclear. Some may lie early in a species’ history; others may await them in their future. It’s a foreboding concern for our future. If there is still something ahead of us that will curtail our development, be it nuclear armageddon, climate collapse, a war with artificial intelligence, an asteroid strike, or something else, our future existence could be threatened. On the other hand, if most of the great filters are found early in life’s evolution, then maybe we’ve got a good chance of surviving. The lack of oxygen preventing a technological civilization would therefore be one of these filters that we’ve already managed to slip past.

And once at our fingertips, technology could protect us from any future drops in oxygen. As they have in the past, oxygen levels will surely fluctuate in the future over timescales of millions of years. Should the oxygen abundance drop to below 18%, it wouldn’t mean that our technology would suddenly stop working; once a technological civilization becomes established, it can use its technology to mitigate the consequences of an oxygen drop. In the far future, a billion years or more ahead of us, the Sun will warm and the Earth will begin to sizzle. Plant life will wither away and oceans will evaporate, and atmospheric oxygen will bottom out. And yet, if we’re still around in that far future, it need not spell the end for us.

“In another billion years, if humanity can get through what we’re dealing with now, we might terraform Mars or put up sunshields,” says Frank. “With technology, a species can become functionally immortal, it can free itself from the constraints of stellar and planetary evolution. So in that sense, all bets are off, which is what makes it so interesting.”

Technology, combined with a dose of enlightened self-interest and an awareness sufficient enough to avoid wiping themselves out, can give a civilization the tools to hold the Universe in the palm of its hand. We can’t even begin to imagine what the upper bounds for such a civilization could ultimately be. But we do know that there are lower bounds, and to squeeze through the bottleneck requires a happy coincidence of timing, of oxygen levels, and the evolution of technological intelligence aligning in order to push past this particular great filter. If a planet just has one without the other, then technological life will never happen, and our modern human society of mod-cons, shining satellites and microchips would stand out among the stars like a lonely spark in the Universe.

Is the FAA Helping or Hindering SpaceX's Ambitions?

2024-02-20T22:00:00.000Z

Although its jurisdiction is within the U.S., FAA standards are often adopted by similar international agencies.

From overseeing tens of thousands of aircraft navigating the vast US airspace, to regulating space launches, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) stands as the central government agency tasked with ensuring public safety both in the skies and on the ground.

Historically, NASA and the U.S. Air Force held responsibility for space and rocket launch activities, a standard practice since the inception of U.S. rocket launches. This included overseeing missions such as Mercury, Gemini, the Apollo Program, Space Shuttle missions, and various other U.S. Air Force launches. High costs and substantial investments required for space launch technology meant that such endeavors were predominantly government-led. However, this dynamic shifted significantly with the emergence of the commercial launch industry.

In 1982, a small company with 7 employees planned to conduct a space launch from Matagorda island in the Gulf of Mexico. Space Services Inc. (SSI) developed the Conestoga rocket, launching it into suborbital flight to demonstrate that a private company could indeed reach space, even capturing the attention of President Reagan. SSI enlisted Deke Slayton, NASA’s first Astronaut Chief and one of the seven Mercury astronauts, to oversee the launch operation. Obtaining approval for the launch proved to be slow, complex, and costly. At that time, the U.S. lacked regulatory means to manage or prevent such a launch, forcing the company to navigate through 18 different government agencies and secure 10 different approvals.

Despite capturing significant attention, SSI’s launch alone did not kickstart a commercialized space sector. Instead, NASA's Shuttle program, marketed to the White House as a “space taxi” capable of weekly launches, played a pivotal role. This vision led to the retirement of the U.S. fleet of expendable rockets—Delta, Atlas, and Titan—critical for military space access, thereby making the U.S. Air Force fully dependent on the Shuttle and leaving it without independent access to space—a concern for the Air Force due to arising issues with the Shuttle.

The U.S. Air Force, alongside the contractors of the expendable rockets—McDonnell Douglas (Delta), General Dynamics (Atlas), and Martin Marietta (Titan)—successfully lobbied the White House to support the burgeoning commercial space launch industry by privatizing their fleet of launch vehicles. These companies proposed to produce and sell launch services not just to the Air Force but also to other entities. In response, President Reagan signed an executive order establishing the Office of Commercial Space Transport (OCST) to oversee and regulate private space activities. Assigned to the Department of Transportation after a keen competition with the Department of Commerce, this decision was made under the stipulation that the office would not fall under the FAA's jurisdiction, due to concerns that the FAA's stringent regulatory approach might stifle the growth of this nascent industry.

As commercial space launches became increasingly feasible thanks to relaxed regulations, new challenges emerged for these companies, such as accessing launch pads, securing insurance, and navigating the export licensing process. These commercial entities, also contractors for the U.S. Air Force (USAF) and NASA, found themselves in a precarious position, unable to directly address these issues with the agencies managing their contracts without risking their business relationships. Here, the OCST played a crucial role, quickly establishing a reputation for fostering the growth of the commercial space industry with their motto "Blue Skies; not red tape," highlighting their commitment to minimal regulation.

The agency even entertained the idea of industry self-regulation, supported by studies indicating that commercial space launch activities posed minimal public risk.

However, in a significant shift in 1995, the Clinton administration transferred OCST to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), despite the original agreement to keep it separate. The division within the FAA was now headed by the Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (FAA/AST). The agency's objectives remained the same: to license every commercial rocket launch and re-entry. The FAA/AST's role was to regulate the commercial launch industry to ensure public safety on the ground and to uphold the United States' national security and foreign policy interests, all while maintaining regulation at a minimum to support the growth and development of the industry.

In 1998, under the leadership of Patti Grace Smith, the newly integrated Office of Commercial Space Transportation within the FAA marked a milestone when the Mojave Air and Space Port in California became the first inland commercial spaceport licensed by the administration. It was during Smith's tenure that the spaceport hosted a historic event: the launch of SpaceShipOne in May of 2003. The privately developed crewed spacecraft was funded by Paul Allen and designed by Burt Rutan’s company, Scaled Composites. This event was likened to the Wright Brothers' first flight, setting the stage for the future of the commercial human spaceflight industry.

This groundbreaking mission coincided with discussions about retiring the Space Shuttle due to escalating costs and safety concerns. The success of SpaceShipOne's suborbital flight led Congress to direct the Secretary of Transportation to oversee the safety of the burgeoning commercial human spaceflight sector, limiting the FAA's rule-making authority to issues that could lead to catastrophic failures and encouraging collaboration with industry to enhance safety.

Increasing Conflicts

The Office of Commercial Space Transportation (OCST) was created to lightly regulate the commercial launch sector. For a long time, Lockheed Martin and Boeing largely dominated this industry. During this era, OCST's regulations became outdated and stagnant, with little effort towards modernization until SpaceX's significant entrance with its Falcon 9 rocket, sparking considerable tension with the FAA.

In 2017, SpaceX’s President, Gwynne Shotwell, advocated for deregulation at the National Space Council's first meeting, emphasizing the need for updated regulations to match technological advances and the frequency of launches from the United States to bolster a robust and competitive domestic launch industry.

“If we want to achieve rapid progress in space, the U.S. government must remove bureaucratic practices that run counter to innovation and speed,” Shotwell said.

“Regulations written decades ago must be updated to keep pace with the new technologies and the high cadence of launch from the United States if we want a strong space launch industry here at home,” she added.

Tensions between the FAA and SpaceX heightened with the development of SpaceX's Starship in Boca Chica, Texas, especially during the SN8 prototype launch, which ended explosively due to Raptor engine issues during landing. The FAA's subsequent investigation into the SN8 incident, which included a launch license violation, delayed the SN9 prototype test, revealing a need for updated regulatory approaches.

On December 8, 2021, SpaceX launched the SN8 on a suborbital trajectory. The prototype successfully reached its maximum altitude of 12.5 kilometers (8 miles). However, the mission ended with an explosive landing, attributed to issues with the Raptor engines during the landing burn. A failure typically leads to the FAA grounding the rocket until the necessary corrective measures are implemented by the company. However, the SN8 launch had an additional complication.

SpaceX had violated its launch license with the SN8 flight, indicating that the FAA had not certified this specific suborbital launch of the Starship prototype in the first place. The investigation into the mishap, conducted jointly by the FAA and SpaceX, delved into both the technical aspects of the landing failure and the broader cultural issues within SpaceX that allowed the launch to proceed initially. This comprehensive scrutiny significantly impacted the timeline for the next Starship test launch, involving the SN9 prototype.

Although SN9 was technically ready for launch, the process was delayed as FAA officials were still going through their license review process for the test because of several changes SpaceX made in its license application. The FAA's heightened vigilance was a direct response to the changes SpaceX had made in its application following the SN8 incident. Frustrated by this lengthy and time-consuming process, Elon tweeted, “Unlike its aircraft division, which is fine, the FAA space division has a fundamentally broken regulatory structure. Their rules are meant for a handful of expendable launches per year from a few government facilities.”

“Under those rules, humanity will never get to Mars.”

The licensing hurdles continued as the company pivoted to carry out orbital test flights with Starship and the Superheavy boosters. The initial plan for the Boca Chica launch site, now known as Starbase, was to support an expanding launch schedule for the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. The FAA had certified SpaceX to conduct up to 12 commercial launches per year from this site, including two Falcon Heavy launches. However, this plan did not materialize as expected. In 2018, SpaceX announced a change in strategy, deciding to use Starbase exclusively for the development and launch of Starship. This shift presented a new regulatory challenge: SpaceX did not have a launch license for Starship to launch from Starbase. Consequently, the FAA needed to conduct an Environmental Assessment (EA) of the launch site to certify Starship for orbital launches.

Their first orbital attempt in April 2023 had extensively damaged the launch pad and resulted in widespread debris across the site as the rocket lifted off. Following repairs to the launch pad and the implementation of corrective measures to prevent such incidents, SpaceX still found itself waiting for approval from both the FAA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who were still evaluating whether the implemented measures were sufficient to prevent major environmental impact in the future.

SpaceX's Starship program is ambitious with plans for dramatically lower costs and much larger payloads to currently inaccessible destinations in the solar system. But SpaceX seems far from an operational cadence that would bring those goals in reach. They would like to begin deploying their next-gen Starlink satellites, specifically designed for launch aboard Starship, and also fulfill their promise to return humans to the Moon. In 2021, NASA awarded SpaceX $2.89 billion to develop a lunar lander based on their Starship architecture to land humans back to the Moon.

SpaceX’s success would mean progress for NASA and the United States’ goals for the Artemis program and the company believes that a slow certification process is hindering national interests.

During a Senate Hearing in October 2023, SpaceX’s vice president for Build and Flight Reliability, Bill Gerstenmaier urged Congress to streamline regulations and increase the FAA/AST headcount for a faster issuance of space launch licenses, emphasizing that the office needs at least twice the resources they have today. Gerstenmaier was the former chief of human spaceflight at NASA.

Over the past few years, the number of orbital launches is increasing year after year. SpaceX flew 94 times in 2023 and plans to launch 150 times this year. With a launch scheduled every 4 days, it’s increasingly difficult for the FAA to manage the hectic pace.

SpaceX believes that the FAA workforce hasn’t increased with the boom in launch cadence. According to the Washington Post, the FAA's Space Division has been calling for more resources for several years, but with little luck. To get Starship’s launch license, the agency had to shift the resources allocated for SpaceX to support the operational Falcon 9 launches, meaning that Starship’s fast pace began to interfere with the company’s Falcon missions. SpaceX was competing with itself to secure more launches.

At the Senate hearing, SpaceX argued that developmental programs with national importance should be given priority, stating that it took 2 years for them to secure the license for the initial launch and many months for the second.

“We’ve been ready to fly for a few weeks now,” said SpaceX senior Vice President Tim Hughes, who oversees global business and government affairs for the company. “And we’d very much like the government to be able to move as quickly as we are. If you’re able to build a rocket faster than the government can regulate it, that’s upside down, and that needs to be addressed. So we think some regulatory reforms are needed.”

“There should be some sort of prioritization relative to programs of national importance,” Hughes said. “For instance, launches that serve the Artemis program. One would think that those would be treated with the utmost efficiency, all within the context of protecting public safety.”

Ever since its inception, FAA/AST has licensed over 634 launches, 34 of them being commercial human spaceflight missions (as of the writing of this article). After the Senate hearing, lawmakers of the US Senate’s space and science subcommittee pushed the FAA/AST to accelerate the approval of the commercial launches, citing the new space race between the United States and China. In response, the FAA is working to hire additional staff and prepare for a substantial increase in launch cadence in the coming years. But, recruiting high talent has been difficult.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) mentioned in its report that in one instance, the FAA didn’t receive an adequate candidate pool for 4 out of 10 human spaceflight-related positions for which it has been actively recruiting. Over 50% of those came from NASA having had the experience in crewed flights via the Commercial Crew program. The best people with the recent knowledge and experience of human and non-human spaceflight are the ones working in the industry themselves, thereby making it incredibly difficult for the FAA to hire them.

The agency also created a new aerospace rulemaking committee (SpARC) to streamline the launch and re-entry licensing processes. The committee will work in tandem with the industry partners and help the FAA review and approve spaceflight activities as fast as possible without compromising safety procedures.

It remains to be seen if the FAA will be able to handle the growing Falcon’s launch manifest and the ever-accelerating pace of Starship’s development program. FAA’s administrator for Commercial Space Transportation, Kelvin Coleman, said that SpaceX is targeting an aggressive launch schedule this year, amounting to at least 9 Starship launches. Across these 9 launches, Starship might undergo various design changes, adding to the FAA's already burgeoning workload. Coleman assures that they’ll be working together with SpaceX to ensure that regulatory oversight minimally impacts launch operations while upholding their stringent safety standards, which have contributed to making modern flights and rocket launches some of the safest in history.

Could Europa Support Life? Clipper Was Built to Find Out

2024-02-13T11:00:00.000Z

Though life is ubiquitous on Earth, we've yet to find it anywhere else in our solar system — or beyond.

But one of Jupiter’s icy moons is considered the most likely place in our solar neighborhood where extraterrestrial life might exist.

Why Europa?

“It has a global ocean underneath an icy shell,” says NASA astronomer Trina Ray on X. Scientists estimate Europa has about twice as much water as all of Earth's oceans combined. “And that ocean has been there for 4 billion years. It's full of chemistry, its full of energy, and maybe the ingredients for life.”

That’s why one of the most anticipated missions scheduled for launch this year is the Europa Clipper, a spacecraft filled with a suite of sensitive instruments that will help unlock the secrets of this enticing, distant moon. Currently scheduled to launch in October 2024, Europa Clipper should arrive in the Jupiter system no earlier than 2030. During its nominal four year mission, it will perform nearly 50 close flybys of Europa.

Europa is 1,940 miles (3,100 kilometers) across, just slightly smaller than Earth’s Moon. This moon is considered an ocean world, as decades of analysis strongly suggest an ocean of liquid water lies beneath a surface of ice. Images from previous mission show an ice-covered surface full of cracks, ridges and faults, but hardly any craters. While the surfaces of most moons are covered in craters, a crater-free surface indicates there's an active geologic process taking place, erasing any evidence of impact. Scientists say the cracks are an external signature of a vast internal salty ocean, with ice plates that have broken apart, shifted position, and been refrozen. All these characteristics would be extremely difficult to explain if the moon does not contain a global subsurface ocean.

Europa Clipper will be able to investigate Europa’s ice shell and subsurface water, as well as study the chemical elements and energy sources that might exist there. All nine of the science instruments for the mission have now been installed on the spacecraft, which is being assembled at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“The mission will confirm — or conceivably, refute — the existence of Europa’s subsurface ocean, and it will further characterize the moon through multiple investigations in order to constrain its habitability,” the mission science team wrote in a recent paper. “The goal of the Europa Clipper mission is not to detect life itself, but to assess Europa’s ability to support life as we know it by harboring essential chemical compounds and sources of energy in addition to liquid water.”

Much of the evidence is likely to be buried deep beneath the moon’s thick icy crust. While Europa Clipper is an orbiter and will not be landing or sending a probe to the surface, many instruments will allow for studying the moon ‘from the inside out.’ Additionally, plumes of water vapor have been detected erupting from below the icy surface of Europa, bringing the ocean to the surface and above. Several instruments should be able to analyze these plumes, allowing for the study of the moon’s interior ocean.

Unlike other missions where the various instruments are often studying different targets, NASA says the hallmark of Europa Clipper’s science investigation is how all the instruments will work in sync while collecting data. During each flyby, all the instruments will gather measurements and images that will be combined to paint the full picture of Europa.

“The instruments work together hand in hand to answer our most pressing questions about Europa,” said JPL’s Robert Pappalardo, the mission’s project scientist. “We will learn what makes Europa tick, from its core and rocky interior to its ocean and ice shell to its very thin atmosphere and the surrounding space environment.”

Pappalardo added, “The science is better if we obtain the observations at the same time. What we’re striving for is integration, so that at any point we are using all the instruments to study Europa at once and there is no need to have to trade off among them.”

Let's take a look at the various instruments onboard Clipper, and what they should be able to reveal about Europa:

Cameras

Even before the spacecraft reaches the Jupiter system, the science cameras will begin their work to send back high-resolution color and stereoscopic images of Europa. The Europa Imaging System (EIS) includes a wide-angle camera and a narrow-angle camera, each with an eight-megapixel sensor. These images will allow for the study of geologic activity — and any changes in the moon’s surface during the mission — as well as measuring surface elevations, and providing context for other instruments. The visible-light cameras will map Europa at far better resolution than previous missions. This will provide a better understanding of Europa’s surface.

The spacecraft’s two infrared cameras, the Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System (E-THEMIS) uses infrared light to find warmer regions on Europa where liquid water may be near the surface or might have erupted onto the surface. It will also measure surface texture to understand the small-scale properties of the surface, mapping the moon’s surface composition, temperature, and roughness.

Together, the cameras and other instruments will reveal much about Europa’s chemistry and geologic activity.

Spectrometry

Three instruments will help investigate the atmosphere and surface of Europa using spectrometry, which analyzes the chemical spectrum of materials. While this moon’s atmosphere is faint, with only 100 billionth the pressure of Earth’s atmosphere, scientists expect that it holds clues about the moon.

A mass spectrometer called MAss Spectrometer for Planetary EXploration/Europa (MASPEX) will analyze gases in Europa’s faint atmosphere and in the possible plumes. It will study the chemistry of the moon’s suspected subsurface ocean, and how the ocean and surface might exchange material.

Think of MASPEX as being like a dog riding in a car.

“Dogs love to go for a ride and the best part is to stick their heads out the window and take a big sniff as the world goes by,” said science team member Dr. Kelly Miller, at a talk she gave at the Southwest Research Institute in 2023. “They can learn a lot about their environment doing that and that's essentially what we're going to do with MASPEX. We're going to sniff Europa as we fly by and learn as much as we can.”

The Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa (MISE) is an infrared spectrometer that will map the distribution of ices, salts, organics, and find the warmest hotspots on Europa. The maps will help scientists understand the moon’s geologic history and determine if Europa’s suspected ocean is suitable for life.

Europa-UVS, an ultraviolet spectrograph, will collect ultraviolet light to search for plumes and identify how the properties of the dynamic atmosphere change over time. If any plumes are erupting, they could be observable by this instrument.

Plasma and Magnetic Field Studies

Jupiter’s magnetic field, the largest in the solar system, fills the entire Jupiter system and beyond. The Galileo mission to the Jovian system in the 1990s made a big discovery: the magnetic field of Jupiter is disturbed by Europa. Scientists determined this is likely caused by the movements of Europa’s salty subsurface ocean, which changes the surrounding magnetic field. A magnetometer called Plasma Instrument for Magnetic Sounding (PIMS) will study this by analyzing Europa’s ionosphere.

The Europa Clipper Magnetometer (ECM) should be able to confirm that Europa’s ocean exists. It will measure its depth and salinity, and measure the moon’s ice shell thickness. It will also study Europa’s ionized atmosphere and how it interacts with Jupiter’s ionized atmosphere.

Working in tandem, the two instruments will analyze the plasma (charged particles) around Europa, which will provide clues to the structure of the moon’s interior.

Radar & Gravity

A big part of the mission is gaining a better understanding of Europa’s ice shell. Estimated to be about 10 to 15 miles (15 to 25 kilometers) thick, this outer casing may be geologically active, which would explain the fracture patterns that are visible at the surface. The Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface (REASON) will use ice-penetrating radar to probe Europa’s icy shell for the moon’s suspected ocean and study the ice’s structure and thickness. It will also study the moon’s surface elevations, composition, and roughness, and search the moon’s atmosphere for plumes.

Europa and its gravity field can affect radio signals. The Gravity/Radio Science instrument will use the spacecraft’s telecommunications equipment and analyze frequency shifts in the spacecraft’s signals to Earth. This will help study Europa’s internal structure.

Additional Chemical Analysis

While MASPEX will study the chemistry of the moon’s suspected subsurface ocean, scientists also believe that tiny meteorites eject bits of Europa’s surface into space.

The SUrface Dust Analyzer (SUDA) will identify that material’s chemistry and area of origin, which should offer clues to Europa’s ocean salinity.

Ready for Launch

The Europa Clipper mission has been under development since 2015, and scientists are ready for their spacecraft to set sail.

“Planetary scientists are so excited about ocean worlds like Europa,” said Miller, “because they're a really tantalizing opportunity to answer that millennia-old question, are we alone?"

"This question dates back at least to the ancient Greeks and it has profound implications for the origins of life on Earth, and our understanding of our place in the universe. Either answer — yes or no — is going to have a huge impact not only on science but also on the culture and philosophy of our world.”

The Europa Clipper mission will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Japanese Moon Startup Faces Discrimination Lawsuits

2024-02-06T22:00:00.000Z

Two lawsuits have been filed against Japanese moon exploration start-up ispace.

Together they suggest the Tokyo-based firm, which saw its Hakuto-R lander crash during a debut lunar landing attempt in April last year, suffers from a toxic culture rife with discrimination and harassment against non-Japanese workers.

The lawsuits, filed by the former CEO of ispace’s U.S. branch Kyle Acierno, and one-time Vice President of Spacecraft Development Mohamed Ragab, have both been filed in 2023 and are still waiting to be tried by the Colorado District Court in the U.S.

Both Acierno and Ragab worked for ispace as the company transitioned from a tiny team of enthusiasts to an operation employing more than 200 staff on three continents. Their respective roles with the firm, however, ended in disappointment as the firm’s Japanese management allegedly treated them with disrespect and dishonesty, the lawsuits claim.

Moon Dreams

ispace began its life in 2010 as a parent company of Team Hakuto, a competitor in the Google-sponsored Lunar X Prize competition, which challenged privately funded teams to develop lunar landers and rovers that would be able to traverse 500 meters of the lunar surface and beam images to Earth.

Named after the mythical white rabbit that according to Asian lore lives on the Moon, team Hakuto, led by engineers from Tohoku University in Japan, was among five finalists of the contest, which offered a grand prize of $20 million to the first team to complete the task.

The competition ended in 2018 without a winner, but several of the companies behind the top teams went on to raise sufficient funds to keep their Moon dreams going. ispace secured its future beyond the X Prize in December 2017 when it received a record-breaking investment of more than $90 million mostly from Japanese backers including the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, the Development Bank of Japan, Tokyo Broadcasting System, Konica Minolta, and Suzuki Motors.

Acierno first joined the company in 2016 as a young space exploration enthusiast. At that time, ispace had a permanent staff of only four people and operated with “limited financial means,” the lawsuit filed by Acierno’s lawyers on June 8, 2023, states. Acierno first worked at the company’s base in Tokyo for several months as an unpaid intern. Soon, the firm’s CEO Takeshi Hakamada offered him the role of Global Development Manager, hoping the Canadian would help the start-up build relationships with governments and bigger companies in the West.

Within Acierno’s first year at ispace, his effort brought in a big contract with the government of Luxembourg, which led to the establishment of ispace’s European office where Acierno became the Managing Director. Two years later, he was promoted to Vice President of Global Sales and Strategy back at the Tokyo headquarters. In 2020, he was appointed CEO of the newly established U.S. branch. By that time, major cracks were evident in his relationships with the Japanese executives.

Ragab, unlike Acierno, was already a senior space industry professional with previous experience as a Chief Engineer at United Launch Alliance and Lockheed Martin. He was offered the role of ispace’s Lander Program Manager/Chief Engineer in 2016 and, just like Acierno, soon proved his worth, his lawsuit, filed in July 2023, states.

Ragab’s connections helped ispace forge a partnership with Draper Laboratory, a U.S. research organization that had developed the legendary guidance computer that navigated NASA’s Apollo-era landers to the lunar surface.

The partnership with Draper later allowed ispace to bid for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program and be selected as a future provider of lunar cargo transportation.

Unity Gone Wrong

From the outside, things seemed to run smoothly at ispace in those years. Behind the scenes, however, tension brewed between the company's Japanese and non-Japanese workforce, the lawsuits claim.

Although headquartered in Japan and headed by a Japanese CEO, ispace has been employing international professionals from the start. Most of the engineers working on the lunar lander had other than Japanese nationality, Acierno’s lawsuit claims. The atmosphere, however, was not an “all-for-one, one-for-all” multicultural space utopia; a unifying endeavor bringing people from all continents and walks of life. Quite on the contrary.

“Japanese engineers refused to take orders from non-Japanese team leads,” Acierno’s lawsuit states. “Such insubordinate behavior disrupted the normal workload and introduced delays in the project.”

Ragab, leading the engineering work, bore the brunt of the animosities that appeared motivated by nationalistic sentiments.

“Japanese members of the software team on the project, led by Japanese employees Yuuya Sugaita and Fumiaki Yamana, refused to attend most meetings, including critical reviews, and report any progress for the year to Mr. Ragab,” Acierno’s lawsuit states. “These members, as well as Electric Manager, Ryo Ujiie, constantly undermined Mr. Ragab. This was tolerated by CEO Hakamada.”

The lawsuits also describe a 130-page thread of Slack chat messages exchanged by high-ranking Japanese employees plotting against their non-Japanese colleagues and planning to orchestrate their dismissal through false accusations. The conversation leaked to 20 other staff members in April 2019, resulted in a major downturn in relationships within the company.

Unpaid Stock Options

Ragab’s tenure at ispace was, at that time, coming to an end. His lawsuit details a campaign by ispace’s CEO Takeshi Hakamada to persuade Ragab to leave voluntarily and relinquish his stock options worth 2.5 % of the company’s value, based on the terms of his employment contract signed in 2016.

“Defendant Hakamada told Plaintiff to remember that if he keeps that ‘attitude not to try to agree, and then try to keep staying’ ... ‘psychologically, it’s not good for’ Plaintiff,” the lawsuit states.

“Defendant Hakamada warned that if Plaintiff continues his employment with Defendant ispace, ‘similar things (such) as the Slack will happen again, and then more, much worse next time,’ and that ‘next option will be more proactive actions in a bad way.’”

Ragab was eventually fired in February 2020 for a supposed “lack of achievement.” His lawsuit claims he had been “subjected to unwelcome comments, jokes and slurs based on his national origin” throughout his employment with ispace. He has also never received his stock options, worth $8 million in ispace’s IPO in April 2023, which took place only two weeks before the failed landing of the Hakuto-R mission.

At that time, Acierno, too, was no longer with the company. He was dismissed in August 2022, only a few weeks after the partnership with Draper won a $73 million CLPS contract to deliver cargo to the moon’s far side for NASA. Just like Ragab, Acierno, too, was denied the stock options assigned to him in his employment contract.

“CEO Hakamada denied his request and verbally threatened him by saying that if Mr. Acierno tried to exercise his stock, ‘[He] will have [a] lot of enemies!’” states the lawsuit.

ispace declined to comment to Supercluster but pointed to two documents (here and here) addressed to the Tokyo Stock Exchange in December 2023, in which the firm discloses that a case related to one of the two American lawsuits was dismissed by the Tokyo High Court that month.

Botched Landing

In an article published on Sept. 23, 2023, Financial Times links the toxic culture within the company with the failed Hakuto-R landing on April 26 last year. According to the newspaper, “the turnover of engineers at ispace was so high” in the years leading up to the landing attempt “that entire teams sometimes left at once.” The article, based on interviews with “dozens of former and current employees” describes ispace’s corporate environment as one where “failure was not allowed” and where “technology concerns were allegedly pushed aside.”

The landing failed when the probe’s altitude sensors got confused by a crater rim, indicating the lander was already nearing the ground. According to Ragab’s lawsuit, the failure occurred due to a late decision to go for a different landing site, for which the project team didn’t run simulations.

The landing failure did not slow down ispace. Its Mission 2 lander is currently being assembled in Japan and could be launched at the end of this year, the company said in an earlier statement. That mission, if successful, will place a series of experiments and a 26-cm-tall rover on the surface of the moon to study local resources.

The NASA-funded Mission 3 is currently expected to take place in 2026. The company is developing a new-generation lander that will be able to deliver to the moon’s surface 300kg worth of payload, which is ten times more than the first-generation spacecraft. In December, the company announced it had received an $80 million grant from the Japanese government’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program to fund the development of its third-generation lander that could fly to the moon toward the end of this decade.

Daily Survival on the International Space Station

2024-01-30T22:00:00.000Z

What does it take for humans to survive the dangerous environment of space?

A complex network of systems supports astronauts in their everyday lives on the International Space Station. These include air revitalization, water recovery, and oxygen generation.

“Three seconds is about how long you can survive with no pressure around you,” said Grant Anderson, president and CEO of Paragon Space Development Corporation. “Despite what all the science fiction movies show you, you can’t go out and then come back a minute later. Three minutes is about how long you can go without oxygen. Then there’s the three days, which is about how long you can go without water. Three weeks is how long you can go without food.”

Outside the spacecraft, the environment is a space vacuum with radiation exposure.

“When in sunlight, the temperature is about 250°F, and when outside of the sun, the temperature is about -250°F,” said Sandra Jones, public affairs officer for the International Space Station.

The International Space Station provides astronauts with their survival needs in terms of clean air at the right pressure and temperature, drinkable water, personal hygiene, physical fitness, and food, according to Alesha Ridley, Environmental Control and Life Support Systems program manager at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Johnson Space Center.

On a miniature level, spacesuits provide some of those same features — water, oxygen, temperature, and pressure, Ridley said. “We have scrubbers that remove the carbon dioxide to keep that from building up too high and causing toxicity. They’ve got drinking water in their spacesuits. They can drink through a straw. They’ve got coolant running through their suits.”

The International Space Station has reached a milestone where it now recovers 98% of the water onboard, Ridley said.

This was a technology gap that needed to be addressed to make travel to Mars possible.

The water-recovery system consists of the urine processor, the water processor, and the brine processor, Ridley said. The urine is treated with a chemical that prevents microbes from growing in it.

The urine processor uses low pressure to separate the water from everything else that is in the urine, Ridley said. The brine processor assembly takes brine from the urine processor and extracts even more water from it by flowing heat over a bladder. This vapor is collected in the air. The distilled urine from the urine processor goes into the water processor and is combined with water from the humidity in the cabin that comes from sweat, breathing, washing, and the brine processor. The water processor has a series of filters in it. It also has a catalytic oxidizer that uses oxygen to remove volatile organic chemicals and other contaminants.

The astronauts use water from the water processor to fill drink bags or hydrate meals.

”A lot of [the] food gets shipped to space dehydrated, just like a camping meal,” Anderson said. “You buy those things, you put in hot water and mix it around, you've got macaroni and cheese or risotto or whatever. The same thing gets done in space.”

The astronauts on the International Space Station can choose from a vast menu where they can select from many different cuisines, Ridley said. “There’s a lot of dehydrated food. Then when we fly cargo vehicles, we fly fresh food as well. They can get fresh fruit and stuff like that. We’ve been developing the capacity to grow food on the space station. They’re, I think, almost always in the process of growing some types of vegetables or fruits… and to my knowledge, they get to eat that when they’re harvesting it.”

To conserve water, the astronauts do not take showers, Ridley said. They use washcloths with small amounts of water. Overall, astronauts get less dirty in space than they would on the ground. They use no-rinse shampoos, according to a video from the International Space Station.

Some of the clean water also goes into the oxygen generator for electrolysis, Ridley said. The oxygen generator uses a cell sac that is similar to what is used in submarines. Membranes inside the cell sac separate the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen goes into the cabin. Oxygen levels can be adjusted by changing the amount of power that is sent to the sac. A hydrogen-and-water mixture comes out of the sac and is separated. Currently, the hydrogen is vented outside the spacecraft and the water is reused.

The air revitalization system monitors the pressure of oxygen, the pressure of nitrogen, and the amount of carbon dioxide, Ridley said. It also keeps an eye on trace gases. Humans emit a small amount of methane, along with ammonia and carbon monoxide.

Plastics and adhesives in space and on Earth emit chemicals through offgassing. The designers of spacecraft have a list of materials they can and cannot use, Anderson said. “In a microgravity environment, some materials do offgas even more. The toxicity depends on exposure.”

“We have to keep the oxygen at a breathable amount, which is generally between 2.8 and 3.2 pounds per square inch partial pressure,” Anderson said. “That's just to provide you with enough oxygen to operate. Then we have to scrub out the carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide turns toxic after a certain level. You always have to have the air flowing around you. So the fans are life-critical.”

The crew aboard the space station exercises two to 2.5 hours a day to maintain their bone density and muscle mass. On the U.S. side of the station, Ridley said, they use a bicycle, a treadmill, and a weight machine.

In the long run, a disturbingly large number of health conditions can occur due to space travel.

Astronauts can experience higher risks of cancer, heart disease, cataracts, psychiatric problems, bone loss, muscle loss, and kidney stones, according to NASA. The publication ”NASA Technology Roadmaps TA 6: Human Health, Life Support, and Habitation Systems (2015 report)” says that central nervous system and degenerative tissue effects may also occur.

Astronauts may also age prematurely, experience immune or endocrine problems, or have difficulties with hand-eye coordination or spatial perception, according to the report “Review of NASA’s Evidence Reports on Human Health Risks (2016).”

Without the International Space Station, humanity would have almost no way of knowing what the body experiences in long-duration spaceflight and its permanent effects. This critical data is needed for human missions to Mars and long-term settlement on the moon.

NASA Awards Money to Far-Out Mission Concepts

2024-01-23T21:00:00.000Z

If you’re interested in out-of-the-box ideas for future space technology, look no further than the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. NIAC has been around in various iterations since 1998, but NASA just announced 13 new innovative space technology concepts that will receive seed money to help get these pioneering but early-stage ideas off the drawing board.

Some of the concepts are new ideas for missions, such as a winged vertical takeoff and landing craft for Mars or a daring sample return mission to Venus. Others are new ways of dealing with persistent problems, such as a new concept for a nuclear rocket engine; others are completely new ideas, with some in the category that sound so crazy, that they just might work.

“The diversity of this year’s Phase I projects – from quantum sensors observing Earth’s atmosphere to a coordinated swarm of spacecraft communicating from the next star – is a testament to the truly innovative community reached by NIAC,” said Mike LaPointe, NIAC program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington D.C, in a press release announcing the new awards. “The NIAC awards highlight NASA’s commitment to continue pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.”

The 13 new awardees, called fellows, will receive NIAC’s Phase I funding, consisting of a maximum of $175,000 in grants to evaluate their technologies, which could enable tomorrow’s space missions. Fellows have nine months to explore the overall feasibility and viability of their concepts.

If the ideas prove to be viable, fellows are eligible to compete for further NIAC funding. Phase II awards provide two years of research at a total funding level of up to $600k, to further develop the concepts, and identify potential challenges, while exploring opportunities to bring these concepts to life, either within or outside of NASA. Very few NIAC proposals have ever made it to Phase III, which provides for two years of further fleshing out the concepts, at a total funding level of up to $2 million.

Since all NIAC studies are in the early stages of conceptual development, they are not considered official NASA missions. But one day, they could be.

“The daring missions NASA undertakes for the benefit of humanity all begin as just an idea, and NIAC is responsible for inspiring many of those ideas,” said NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free. “The Ingenuity helicopter flying on Mars and instruments on the MarCO deep space CubeSats can trace their lineage back to NIAC, proving there is a path from creative idea to mission success. And, while not all these concepts will fly, NASA and our partners worldwide can learn from fresh approaches and may eventually use technologies advanced by NIAC.”

One of the more eye-catching new proposals is the one highlighted above by Mike LaPointe, a swarm of tiny spacecraft that could send images back to Earth from the nearest-known potentially habitable exoplanet, Proxima Centauri b, located at only 4.2 light years from the Earth. The proposal was submitted by Thomas Eubanks, the chief scientist at Space Initiatives, Inc, a space start-up that designs small, 50-gram femtosatellites for use in low Earth orbit.

But the concept for the Proxima Centauri swarm would incorporate even smaller spacecraft: thousands of gram-scale interstellar probes with solar sails that would be propelled by lasers, enabling them to reach relativistic speeds. In his proposal, Eubanks wrote that this is “likely to be the only technology capable of reaching another star this century.” Once at Proxima Centauri, the tiny probes would work together to generate an optical signal strong enough to transmit images.

“Our team determined in our work over the last 3 years that only a large swarm of many probes acting in unison can generate an optical signal strong enough to cross the immense distance back to Earth,” Eubanks wrote in his proposal.

Those distances provide huge challenges. “The 8-year round-trip time lag eliminates any practical control by Earth, therefore the swarm must possess an extraordinary degree of autonomy, for example, to prioritize which data is returned to Earth. Thus, the reader will see that coordinating the swarming of individuals into an effective whole is the dominant challenge for our representative mission to Proxima Centauri b.”

Eubanks and his colleagues believe they can have the technology for such a mission available by 2075.

The Venus sample return mission proposal comes from long-time NASA innovator and scientist Geoffrey Landis from the Glenn Research Center. Landis has previously come up with ideas for colonizing Earth’s sister planet with cities floating in the planet’s cloud tops, and exploring Venus by airship or windsail. Since the surface of Venus is one of the most hostile environments to explore in the solar system, Landis’ latest idea involves a spacecraft strong enough to withstand the immense atmospheric pressures and temperatures to gather and return a sample from the surface of the planet. The concept merges innovations in high-temperature surface systems and solar aircraft with a state-of-the-art carbon monoxide rocket that can create propellant from Venus’ hellish atmosphere.

Another concept awarded funding for the 2024 Phase I proposals is a way to detoxify water and ice found on Mars for use by future human explorers. While Mars appears to have plenty of subsurface water ice that could sustain a Martian colony, unfortunately, the ice is contaminated by toxic perchlorates. Not only is it toxic for human consumption, perchlorates “are potent oxidizers that cause equipment corrosion … even at low concentrations,” writes fellow Lynn Rothschild from NASA’s Ames Research Center. The detoxification system Rothschild has designed is not so much mechanical as biological. It incorporates a spaceflight-proven strain of bacteria capable of consuming and removing toxins. Rothschild says that, unlike traditional water purification approaches, this would eliminate the perchlorates rather than filtering them to dump somewhere nearby.

“The system will be launched as inert, dried spores stable at room temperature for years,” Rothschild writes. “Upon arrival at Mars, spores will be rehydrated and grown in a bioreactor that meets planetary protection standards. Martian water will be processed by the bioreactor to accomplish perchlorate reduction. Processed water can then be used or further purified as required.”

Other concepts selected to receive 2024 NIAC Phase 1 grants include a network of telescopes on the moon, a microgravity hibernation laboratory for use on the International Space Station, and lightweight fiber-based satellite antennas for use on small satellites.

You can find additional details for each of the 13 avant-garde concepts on the NIAC website.

Vulcan Flew Flawlessly. Its Lunar Payload? Not So Much.

2024-01-09T21:00:00.000Z

A dramatic day unfolded in the space industry on Monday, January 8th, a few hours after United Launch Alliance successfully launched the maiden flight of its new Vulcan rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The new launcher is powered by Blue Origin's BE-4 engines and marks the first time the Bezos-owned company's hardware has flown an orbital mission.

United Launch Alliance has a proven and uninterrupted record of launching many of NASA's flagship science missions like the Perseverance Mars rover, the Parker Solar Probe, and sample return mission OSIRIS-REx. Just to name a few.

ULA Chief Tory Bruno remarked on the seemingly perfect maiden launch by noting that the only problem that arose was a broken coffee machine in launch control. It was fixed by a nearby rocket scientist before liftoff. Praise came from across the industry, and included was a congratulatory reply on X from Bruno's nemesis SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Many expect the Vulcan to provide some competition in the Falcon-dominated launch market.

ULA's customer for Vulcan's first launch, the Pittsburgh-based private company Astrobotic, did not share in the mission's success. Just hours after launch, Astrobotic reported an anomaly aboard their Peregrine Lunar Lander that prevented it from pointing itself toward the sun, which is needed to charge the spacecraft's batteries. Later, they reported a failure in the propulsion system, jeopardizing the mission's primary objective of landing on the moon.

Updates came throughout the day and while there was a small glimmer of hope when Astrobotic reestablished communication with the lander, they ultimately realized that the failure resulted in a loss of propellant that would have enabled a lunar landing. Astrobotic will now try to get as close to lunar distance as possible while gathering valuable flight data and testing components aboard the spacecraft. The company will try again with its Griffin lander, currently in development.

Peregrine was partially funded by NASA to leverage the private space industry for logistics, planning, and research for the agency's upcoming crewed Artemis missions to the lunar surface. Today, NASA announced that those missions are now delayed by at least a year.

“There are many challenges with spaceflight, and we’re incredibly proud of the Astrobotic and NASA teams that have put us one step closer to a robotic return to the lunar surface as part of Artemis. This delivery service model is a first for the agency and with something new, there is a higher risk,” said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

Supercluster team members Jenny Hautmann and Erik Kuna were on-site for the late-night launch and captured liftoff with remote cameras set at Space Launch Complex 41.

ULA to Debut Vulcan Rocket for Lunar Lander Mission

2024-01-02T22:00:00.000Z

The United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket could fly for the first time next week. Can it compete with SpaceX?

It’s the latest vehicle from the long-standing United Launch Alliance (ULA), which once held a near monopoly on military launches and planetary missions for NASA, but has since been usurped, and is now up for sale. ULA is hoping its new Vulcan fleet of vehicles will offer healthy competition in today’s launch market.

There’s little doubt who the major player is right now. In 2023, SpaceX launched 96 times, accounting for more than 90% of US orbital launches this year. Their Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets dominate the launch market and, if successful, their upcoming Starship might surpass that mantle.

ULA, however, has been ever-present in US launch for two decades, since forming as a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin in 2006. Its Atlas and Delta series of rockets have been used for a wide variety of government and commercial missions, with more than 150 launches over 17 years. Some notable highlights include the launch of NASA’s Perseverance rover to Mars in July 2020 and the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sampling mission launched in September 2016. Now the company is up for sale, with three bidders in the running — one of which is Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.

Partly due to the dominance of SpaceX and a changing market, ULA has focused its efforts on a new rocket — Vulcan Centaur — these past few years. The company is phasing out both its Atlas V and Delta IV rockets, the last of those two fleets, with the inaugural launch of Vulcan set for next week. Unfortunately for ULA, the launch has been beset by delays. “It’s been a long time coming,” says Phil Smith, a space industry analyst at the US firm BryceTech.

Vulcan was supposed to launch in 2019, but numerous issues have pushed back that date, including problems with the rocket’s oxygen and methane BE-4 engines, supplied by Blue Origin, with one engine exploding during a test in June. Those engines will ultimately end ULA’s reliance on the Russian built-engines used on its previous rockets, a partnership that ended following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

A two-stage rocket measuring 202 feet tall, Vulcan will be capable of lifting up to 60,000 pounds to orbit. Tory Bruno, ULA’s CEO, said in a press call on November 15 that Vulcan was “very highly optimized” for reaching high orbits, noting the rocket was “much more capable, much more affordable and has a lot of flexibility” compared to ULA’s previous rockets.

Signifying that is its first launch, known as the Cert-1 mission — it is one of two certification missions required to launch national security missions — which will liftoff from Cape Canaveral in Florida no earlier than January 8. The primary payload on board is the Peregrine lunar lander, a nearly 3,000-pound machine that will touch down on the Moon equipped with various instruments, built by the US firm Astrobotic Technology and partly funded by NASA. Also on board is a “memorial spacecraft” from the US firm Celestis, called Voyager, which will carry human DNA and ashes into orbit around the Sun.

ULA’s ultimate goal is to launch two Vulcan rockets every month by the latter half of 2025, said Bruno. The rocket will not compete with SpaceX on reusability, with ULA opting only to attempt recovering and reusing the rocket’s first-stage engines, rather than the entire vehicle. However, according to Bruno, the rocket will still be competitive with SpaceX; it already has a “backlog of 70 Vulcan launches” over the next five years worth billions of dollars, including customers such as Amazon, which has booked multiple Vulcan launches to fly satellites for its Project Kuiper space internet mega constellation to rival SpaceX’s Starlink.

“The global launch industry has changed its character in the last 18 months,” said Bruno. “There’s more demand for launch than there are global launch vehicles available to do it, partly because of the withdrawal of Russia, and also because of the introduction of these mega constellations.”

Phil Smith believes the rocket can be competitive “but a couple of things need to happen” before that is the case. “One is it has to work,” he says. “Then it will prove itself out in the contracts that it’s got.” While ULA is unlikely to be able to compete with SpaceX on price, currently around $2,000 per kilogram for Musk’s company, additional factors such as reliability will be important. “There are other ways to evaluate competitiveness,” says Smith. “Customers don’t just look at pricing. Maybe Starship will be too much bang for your buck. Maybe you prefer the Vulcan Centaur for a particular mission type.”

“Having that mix of vehicles is important.”

ULA’s long-standing success in launching rockets might also play a part and could be a key selling point to one of its potential suitors.

“If I were buying a space business, I’d go look at ULA,” Bruno told Bloomberg in an interview in October. “It’s already had all the hard work done through the transformation. You’re not buying a Victorian with bad plumbing. It’s all been done. You’re coming in at the end of the remodel, so you can focus on your future.”

All eyes will be on next week's Vulcan launch and any impact it might have on a potential sale. Having once dominated the US launch market, ULA is now undoubtedly playing catchup to SpaceX and will hope Vulcan can be its new poster child as it seeks to reestablish itself as a major player. Doing so is beneficial not just to ULA, but for American launch as a whole, too.

“We’re always excited when a new vehicle comes online,” says Smith. “We need competition.”

Track the maiden flight of ULA's Vulcan rocket with Astrobotic's Peregrine Lunar Lander by downloading the Supercluster App for iPhone and Android.

A Golden Record for the Next Generation

2023-12-19T22:00:00.000Z

What message would you send to an alien civilization?

The desire to communicate with other life that might exist elsewhere in the universe seems to be part of the human psyche. This desire — driven by a yearning to know if humanity is alone in the cosmos — has prompted us to send radio signals deep into space and listen for any that other civilizations might be sending our way.

We’ve also sent artifacts into space. Our most ambitious (and notorious) effort was the Voyager Golden Records, two identical gold-plated phonograph records launched in 1977 along with both the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, as time capsules that could communicate the story of our world to space-faring extraterrestrials. The records included information about our civilization — from music to personal greetings, to encoded images of our world and ourselves. Both Voyager spacecraft have now left our solar system and are traveling through interstellar space, our first emissaries out into the galaxy.

Scientists estimate the Voyager records could endure traveling through space for as long as five billion years.

“The Voyager record is a symbol of our shared human heritage and curiosity about the cosmos,” said Jonathan Jiang, a senior research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “It reflects the universal human desire to leave a mark and communicate with others, even across the vastness of space and time.”

The Voyager Golden Record project is now approaching its 50th anniversary. Jiang and several colleagues think it is time to compile and send out a new and improved version, an interstellar messaging effort called Message In A Bottle (MIAB).

The New MIAB

The MIAB concept was originally proposed in 2021, and Jiang’s team — which includes members from JPL, SETI Institute, Blue Marble Institute, Interstellar Foundation, and several other organizations and universities — have been refining their ideas. They have now published a new version of their paper, which includes new philosophies and enhanced goals.

“The new MIAB has two main purposes: to propose a message for extraterrestrial or future Earth beings, and to unite humanity under a common goal,” Jiang told Supercluster. “It now emphasizes involving people globally to contribute diverse perspectives on human civilization.”

In their new paper, the team writes that their project strives to “inspire and unify current and future generations to celebrate and safeguard our shared human experience.” They also have the goal of sharing “our collective knowledge, emotions, innovations, and aspirations in a way that provides a universal, yet contextually relevant understanding of human society, the evolution of life on Earth, and our hopes and concerns for the future.”

Jiang explained that this new MIAB will also put greater emphasis on promoting STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) education while attempting to communicate with an extraterrestrial intelligence and fostering common understanding among humans.

“Furthermore, MIAB introduces the idea of creating and preserving a comprehensive record about humanity and Earth, including videos, images, and sounds,” Jiang said. “This record would serve as a historical relic for the future.”

“Even in the event of Earth's destruction.”

The original Voyager record was conceived and designed in the 1970s; therefore, the ‘playback’ technology of the day was used. Cartridges with needles to play phonograph records were included, with instructions for their use inscribed on the records’ covers. But technology has changed dramatically since the Voyager record was sent — and will likely change and advance just as much in the future. Therefore, the MIAB team has been considering the challenges in making MIAB accessible to an alien civilization and future generations of Earthlings.

“One significant challenge is ensuring the longevity of the message format,” Jiang said. “Technological formats evolve rapidly, and the MIAB message must be stored in a way that remains readable and interpretable for potentially thousands of years. Also, as technology advances, ensuring that the message remains relevant becomes crucial. Information can become outdated quickly, and the MIAB initiative must find a way to update or adapt the message over time to reflect the ever-changing nature of human society and knowledge.”

Another challenge is in establishing a mutual understanding and trying to encompass all the unknowns of both space and time.

“MIAB must convey information using symbols and conventions that both future generations of humans and potential extraterrestrial recipients can comprehend,” Jiang said. “We cannot predict with certainty the cognitive abilities or modes of perception of potential extraterrestrial recipients. MIAB must strike a balance between providing comprehensive information and leaving room for interpretation, as we cannot anticipate the exact nature of the beings who might one day receive it.”

Hello Universe

Voyager wasn’t the first effort at intentionally sending a message into the cosmos. Pioneers 10 and 11 launched in 1972 and 1973 and were the first spacecraft set on trajectories that would eventually take them out of the Solar System. They both carried small metal plaques with inscribed pictures identifying the spacecrafts’ place of origin (our solar system and Earth) along with a friendly-looking man and woman, all for the benefit of any other spacefarers that might find them in the distant future.

Just a year later in 1974, astronomer Frank Drake headed up the Arecibo Message, a radio transmission sent towards the direction of the globular cluster M13. The transmission used binary arithmetic to depict human DNA, our solar system, and human figures. The message will take at least 25,000 years to arrive at its intended destination, but the message is considered a pivotal event in the pursuit of interstellar communication.

Similar efforts followed, with radio signals intentionally sent out to — hopefully — reach intelligent extraterrestrial life in both nearby and distant star systems as part of Active SETI (Active Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence). While some question the idea of purposefully letting aliens know we are here, there is an endearing nature to wanting to initiate contact — the first gesture of friendship, as it were.

Additionally, there have been attempts over the years to duplicate the Voyager record’s noble goals. From 1988-1992, I worked with a small group of people from the Minneapolis, MN area on a project called the World Time Capsule. As a mainly educational project, it prompted students to think about what they would convey to a distant civilization about humanity — the good, the bad, the wondrous, the beautiful and not-so-beautiful things about our world, our lives, and our history — all in correlation to the subjects they were studying in school. The ultimate goal of the World Time Capsule was to not only send a spacecraft with messages out into the cosmos but to have a database on Earth accessible to anyone to read the student’s hopes and dreams for the future. The World Time Capsule gathered submissions from over 5,000 students in five states, but the technology challenges of the time were huge. It is almost hard to imagine now, but in the early 1990s, the ability to scan and digitize content was in its infancy and incredibly expensive. Our team often concluded we were slightly ahead of our time.

The World Time Capsule eventually merged with another similar educational program called SpaceArc, which originated at the Rochester Museum & Science Center in Rochester, N.Y. SpaceArc ultimately launched student and public submissions on board a geosynchronous satellite in 1994. SpaceArc should orbit our planet for generations, where a passing alien ship might find it, or perhaps Earthlings could retrieve the satellite sometime in the future if we ever need to remember who we were back in the 1990s.

Moving Forward with MIAB

But yet, ever since the Voyager Golden Records were launched, no other extraterrestrial messages quite like them have been sent into space.

At an event at Caltech in August 2023, Jiang discussed MIAB’s goals on a panel that included Ann Druyan, who was the Creative Director and collaborator with scientist Carl Sagan on the original Golden Record. The event was in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and featured the worldwide premiere of Techne and a panel discussion that constituted the first announcement and public launch of MIAB. The panel was moderated by author and Supercluster contributor Daniel Oberhaus.

Druyan fully supports the MIAB idea of celebrating and safeguarding the human experience. She said that even though she felt they gave their all in compiling the data used for the Voyager record project back in 1977, the next generation should now create new messages.

The panel discussion also included Daniel R. Small, an artist, author, and filmmaker. Small recently produced a documentary film series called “Techne: Evidence in the Anthropocene.” The Anthropocene refers to an unofficial unit of geologic time used to describe the most recent period in Earth's history when human activity has begun to have a significant impact on the planet's climate and ecosystems. Small will be following MIAB's effort while Directing and Producing an upcoming film about the internal committee and the various challenges they face.

The film includes scientists and artist-investigators who contemplate both deep time and the fate of the human species. It looks at the dual nature of technology, exploring humanity’s technical achievements while cautioning against potential pitfalls.

For example, in the film, Jiang and other scientists talk about research that suggests there is a very high likelihood that intelligent extraterrestrial life is short-lived and prone to self-annihilation. This idea, in many ways, adds a palpable sense of urgency to any interstellar messaging efforts because our transmission window and perhaps the window for extraterrestrial civilizations who might receive these messages might be quite small.

“Are we plagued by our paleolithic brains, to the extent that we are simply not evolved enough to solve issues related to the Anthropocene? And the hyper-contemporary technological apparatuses that seem to be outpacing our ability to understand them?” Small contemplated during an interview with Supercluster.

“The new interstellar messaging effort is attempting to reckon with some of these same issues, only in a much broader context, and to outline and better come to terms with our planetary conditions. So, in that way, Jonathan and his team are already embracing what I would consider to be a form of Techne, in how they are approaching MIAB.”

Techne, Small explained, was a term used by the ancient Greeks that denoted a form of producing knowledge through making and doing, i.e., practical knowledge.

“The main driver of Techne was an epistemological model for putting scientists and experts from a diverse array of different fields into conversation with artists and their varied fieldwork, methodologies, and framing of similar issues,” Small said. “The goal was to try and find the connective tissue, but to also highlight how the work of an artist intersects in so many ways with the work of scientists, philosophers, and technologists.”

While the film series is not public yet, it will be on tour next spring, starting with a stop at MIT in Boston. View the trailer for Techne here.

“Techne is a model for generating knowledge that moves across many disciplines and fields that opens up discussions between science, technology, economics, and history,” Small said. “The more open-ended projects like interstellar messaging efforts become, the more intriguing they are in that they acknowledge the limits of our knowledge and attempt to return to a primordial soup of how communication might occur under vastly different conditions.”

Jiang said the MIAB project will be used as an educational tool, but also to be a beacon of hope in the cosmos.

“We want human civilization to survive, and so we want to use this activity as sort of tool to wake people up to think about humanity’s future,” Jiang said during the panel session.

Jiang said there are no solid timelines yet for the project, but he and his team are going to take diverse input from people from all over the world for the project. They also hope to convince NASA to support this next-generation “time and space-traveling capsule.”

NASA-Funded Private Moon Race Begins With Dueling Landers

2023-12-12T23:00:00.000Z

Several US companies hope to reach the surface of the Moon next month as NASA preps for human missions.

Next year, four astronauts will fly around the Moon during Artemis II, to prepare for Artemis III, NASA's long-awaited return to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972.

Paving the way for these crewed missions is a fleet of landers being developed by private companies in the US. Funded by NASA, these companies will test out various technologies for those upcoming human missions and scout out potential landing sites at the Moon’s south pole, as NASA ramps up its efforts to sustain a permanent presence.

“We are explorers and adventurers as a species,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a briefing. “That is the fulfillment of our destiny.”

Leading the charge of these private companies are Pennsylvania-based Astrobotic and Texas-based Intuitive Machines. The former hopes to launch its Peregrine lander to the Moon on January 8th on the maiden flight of ULA's Vulcan rocket, while the latter has set for a January 12th launch of its Nova-C lander atop SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.

“The anticipation is building,” says Steve Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines. “The team has worked countless hours on perfecting this machine.”

Both companies are being partly funded by NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, along with Firefly Aerospace from Texas. Some $2.6 billion has been set aside for these CLPS missions by 2028, which will test many of the technologies and techniques NASA hopes to employ on its Artemis human landings that are set to begin later this decade. But there is also a hope these companies will spur a new lunar economy that will encourage more private companies to head to the Moon.

The market potential for such services remains unclear. “There certainly is no killer application at the moment,” says Caleb Williams, vice president at the US space analyst firm Quilty Space. Yet NASA’s financial commitment both to CLPS and its overall Artemis program to return humans to the Moon shows there are opportunities for companies like Intuitive Machines.

“What they are doing is positioning themselves for what is going to be a large amount of government spend on lunar surface activities,” says Williams. “If you can say, hey, I successfully landed, that gives you a lot of credibility.”

If successful, Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines will be the first private missions to the Moon; the last two attempts, Israel’s Beresheet lander in February 2019 and Japan’s Hakuto-R mission in April 2023, both failed. Astrobotics is targeting a region known as the “Ocean of Storms” on the Moon’s near side, while Intuitive Machines will head to the Moon’s south pole.

The lunar south pole is of high value both for potential scientific discoveries and local resources. Scientists believe the Moon’s south pole is rich in water ice, which could be used to produce rocket fuel and eventually be processed into drinking water. China, Europe, India, and Russia have all stated their intention to try and utilize this resource; only India has reached the location so far.

Nova-C will take five days to reach the Moon following its launch, entering lunar orbit for a day before finally attempting a nerve-wracking landing on the Moon. It is targeting the rim of a crater at the Moon’s south pole called Malapert A for the landing, having been asked by NASA to move its landing site earlier this year. “We’ll be further south than anybody’s been,” says Altemus. “That’s a fantastic place to set up a research station.”

The stationary Nova-C lander will carry with it several instruments to study the Moon’s surface. The goal of the mission is “scientific discovery and engineering technologies,” says Altemus. While some instruments are supplied by NASA, others are from partners that have paid for space on the lander, highlighting potential commercial opportunities from future Moon landings.

That will include studying the lunar dust, which is “superfine like talcum powder” says Altemus, to see how it interacts with the dust plume of the lander. Other studies will measure radio waves on the Moon, while there will also be a camera to take images of the Milky Way from the surface of the Moon. “It’ll be an interesting view that no one’s ever seen of the Milky Way galaxy,” says Altemus.

Other instruments will monitor the touchdown of Nova-C, including a 360-degree camera supplied by Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University in Ohio that will fall to the surface ahead of the lander and take pictures of the landing. And there’s even a piece of fabric for US clothing company Columbia Sportswear on board, perhaps a brazen example of potential private partnerships. “It’s partly a sponsorship and partly an engineering technology demonstration,” says Altemus.

Next year, a second lander from Intuitive Machines will include a NASA-built drill to attempt to dig for water ice under the lunar surface and a small “hopping” vehicle to jump into one of the Moon’s pitch-black craters, thought to be rich in water ice. Another mission from Astrobotic will carry NASA’s VIPER rover and attempt to drive into such a crater.

Missions to the Moon remain risky investment opportunities, highlighted by the failures of Beresheet and Hakuto-R. Setbacks are likely to happen again, and how commercial lunar companies cope with such failures remains to be seen. “It’s very tough for a public company to be involved in these high visibility failures,” says Williams.

Yet, if NASA is willing to keep funding commercial landers, alongside a hopefully steadily increasing trickle of private investment, there could be exciting times ahead. Work on the vehicles that will take humans to the moon, including NASA’s massive Space Launch System rocket and SpaceX’s even more massive Starship, is charging ahead. While NASA has tried and failed to return to the Moon before, things feel decidedly different this time.

The beginning of 2024 could see NASA’s bid to have private companies begin lunar landings succeed. Later in the year, humans will hopefully fly around the Moon alongside subsequent private lunar landings. It’s a busy time for Moon fans. Who will be along for the ride?

Reading Between the Lines of International Space Cooperation

2023-12-05T22:00:00.000Z

One merit of the International Space Station has been its ability to inspire the idea that humans can work together, peacefully, as they expand into outer space.

Indeed, many in the space community view the ISS as a profound example of how space exploration can bring together a diversity of cultures among nations with a common interest in space exploration.

Following the early years of the American and Soviet space programs — which were grounded in nationalistic rhetoric and Cold War rivalry — the past few decades have been characterized by an expanding narrative of space as a context for international cooperation.

The Artemis Accords have been hailed as a strong roadmap to the future of human space expansion, with statements often wrapped in pretty bows that emphasize the common national interests and ambitions of the participants in the multilateral agreement. Without question, signatories like the US, Japan, and the EU share interests in human expansion beyond low-Earth orbit (LEO), but often missed in the signing ceremonies is the fact that national motivations related to space exploration are often not, in reality, the same — or even all that well aligned. A quick look at the websites for the European Space Agency (ESA), NASA, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) shows this clearly. NASA states its mission is to explore “the unknown in air and space,” and to innovate “for the benefit of humanity,” in a way that “inspires the world through discovery.”

Lofty goals, to be sure.

The ESA’s website has a more terrestrial message: “The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.” Note the difference in focus. While NASA presents its mission in rather grandiose terms of exploration and inspiration for the entire world, the ESA’s focus is more squarely on what it can do to benefit Europe.

Although the JAXA website doesn’t offer a pithy mission statement, a letter from JAXA President Yamakawa Hiroshi captures the main goals of the organization: “To incorporate the results of our R&D into the social system and continue to serve the public … As the core implementing agency to support the Japanese government’s development and utilization of space technology, we work with pride in the challenging space and aeronautics field.” Not the most awe-inspiring statement, to be sure. The Japanese case focuses on pragmatism and support of broader Japanese governmental policies.

There is certainly overlap in these three statements. And there is little question that for all of these agencies the primary goal is to do what their governments want them to, which is why the imagery, tone, and scope varies significantly and points to how both governments and citizens view their respective space programs. NASA presents its mission in the rather Star Trekian terms of exploration of the unknown and benefits to humanity — as a whole. The ESA, on the other hand, focuses on being Europe’s highway to heaven and has a more pragmatic tone of benefiting Europeans, and then maybe the world. Interestingly, JAXA’s leadership statement is quite specific — it focuses on research and development to support the Japanese “social system,” without reference to any grandiose benefits for humanity as a whole.

The differences are subtle, but meaningful, and were evident at the Japan/US signing ceremony for the Framework Agreement on Peaceful Exploration of Space. The agreement outlines a variety of areas of cooperation between the two countries. Watching the video is fascinating because it shows the different tones represented in the comments of the speakers.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson described the signing as being among two “…nations poised to unlock the secrets of the universe. Space unites us…a victory for all of humanity…barriers overcome and new worlds understood…we chart a new chapter in a continuing adventure together.”

Following Nelson’s comments, Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio stated, “US/Japan space cooperation has entered a new era with Artemis…I strongly hope that this agreement will robustly promote our space cooperation even further” and he goes on to emphasize his desire that other aspects of the already strong US/Japan alliance will be intensified with the agreement.

After Nelson’s magniloquent remarks, Kishida’s statement seems a bit bland, emphasizing not the grandeur of space exploration, the mysteries of the unknown, nor the benefits to humanity — but a rather prosaic pitch for a deepening alliance between two countries as it relates to space cooperation.

Of course, the overall tone of the ceremony is complex. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, like Kishida, emphasizes a US/Japan bilateral cooperation in space, but quickly shifts to elevated American rhetoric, noting that cooperation has been part of a space race that “electrified the world, seizing the imaginations of millions of people awed by the men and women who dared to go into the unknown…it inspired generations of scientists, researchers, innovators, and dreamers”, he opines, as well as paving the way for many technological advances that have improved life on earth. Blinken closes his remarks by harkening back to the “soaring” ambitions of the Kennedy era in space exploration. He notes that Japan and the US will pave the way for countless technological advances, like those that have improved the lives of people across the planet, and adds that space exploration binds people together in pursuit of knowledge.

But the Japanese Foreign Minister, Hayashi Yoshimasa, managed to bring the ceremonies down to earth with his final comment characterizing the agreement between the two countries as one that will allow the pursuit of many projects to be “conducted efficiently.” Yoshimasa takes the wind out of Blinken’s soaring sails.

Amidst the genuine positive feelings and hyperbole often at play as the age of international space cooperation continues to unfold, it’s important to understand that despite the successes of the ISS and agreements like the Artemis Accords, space agencies, and their constituent governments do not have entirely overlapping agendas, nor interests.

The ESA has 22 member states representing diverse cultures such as Poland, Norway, Italy, Romania, and the United Kingdom. Without even considering cultural differences, a quick look at the United Nations Human Development Index, which considers factors such as health, education, and income, shows how diverse the countries of ESA are: Norway ranks second with a score of 0.961 while Romania is fifty-third with a score of 0.821. The nominal GDP per capita for Norway in 2022 was $106,594; for Romania, it was $15,324. Even while largely sharing the political interests associated with liberal democracy, these differences underscore that an organization such as ESA must balance a varied range of national interests and ambitions that, then, must be coordinated with other space agencies with which ESA is cooperating.

ESA, NASA, and JAXA all represent liberal democracies that — despite insignificant cultural, political, and economic differences — have much in common in terms of their interests. The situation becomes much more complex and blurred when we consider other major space powers such as China and Russia. The case of Russia shows how quickly the embroidery of cooperation can unravel. After years of positive comments between the US and Russia about cooperation in space (with the occasional tense moment), Russia’s war in Ukraine has seriously stressed the relationship.

Much less absurd is China’s approach, which can be gleaned from a white paper published in 2021. At a press conference on the publication, vice administrator of the China National Space Administration, Yanhua Wu emphasized international cooperation and humanity’s “shared future” (not ambitions or interests) while making it clear that said shared future was not necessarily the one Americans or others have in mind: “China's space industry would actively participate in the global governance of outer space in the next five years and provide Chinese solutions and Chinese wisdom in areas such as monitoring and handling of near-earth objects, planetary protection, and space traffic management.”

Interestingly, Wu emphasized China’s space industry as opposed to the space program and it is equally intriguing that he spins the rhetoric to display the importance of Chinese solutions and wisdom — read Chinese leadership and culture — as humans continue to expand beyond LEO and attempt to cooperate in the process. While I think we need to welcome Chinese solutions and wisdom, I also am convinced that these are unlikely to align neatly with the solutions and the wisdom of organizations like NASA, ESA, and JAXA.

The political ideologies that motivate rhetoric and activities associated with the development of space programs are tied to other national ambitions. China, for example, not only wants a voice in space expansion, but that voice calls from a larger ascent of military, political, and economic power that has characterized Chinese goals over the past few decades. President Xi Jinping has regularly used ideological rhetoric aimed at stimulating nationalism and pushing for an assertive foreign policy that, as Kevin Rudd noted in Foreign Affairs, is “turbocharged by a Marxist-inspired belief that history is irreversibly on China’s side and that a world anchored in Chinese power would produce a more just international order.”

And this brings us to the crux of the issue. Despite the ‘for all humanity” rhetoric, what different countries and space organizations mean by this is not necessarily clear, or aligned. Nor is the extent to which specific national ambitions are recognized as shaping how people think about human exploration in space and the policies governments develop to promote those goals. Despite sometimes fustian claims of common human interests, space agencies are tied to local national politics and ideologies. One can see this clearly in JAXA’s emphasis on the “social system,” which appears to reflect the Japanese government’s policy to create what they refer to as Society 5.0, defined as “[a] human-centered society that balances economic advancement with the resolution of social problems by a system that highly integrates cyberspace and physical space."

There are several reasons why this is important. First, there is a tendency among space enthusiasts — and the space community in general — to pontificate on the idea of space exploration as uniting humans and being good for humanity without much attention paid to the fact that we live in a diverse world. Humanity is not a particularly unified thing; we are characterized by diverse cultures, nations, political systems, and identities and there is a conceit in thinking that space exploration is somehow uniformly good for “humanity,” or that varied humans will conceptualize the potential benefits and risks in similar ways. When leaders talk about space exploration and its benefits to “humanity” we should always question what is actually meant by humanity. We are simply too broad and complex a species to simplistically lump everyone together under the belief that we unproblematically share common interests and aspirations.

Second, while cooperation is important and desirable, we need to be careful to avoid allowing kumbaya moments, like signing ceremonies, to overshadow the fact that different governments conceptualize and imagine space exploration in distinct ways. We may be able to cooperate, but that does not necessarily mean we are on the same page when it comes to interests and ambitions related to expansion and settlements. More overt awareness of this fact may help to avoid problems further down the road as countries with, in fact, different interests and ambitions work to cooperate on projects like creating a base on the Moon or putting boots on Mars.

Finally, we should not lose sight of the fact that the American vision of space exploration, itself grounded in the ideology of manifest destiny, with ethnocentric and religious underpinnings, is not one shared by competitors like China and Russia.

Nor is it even shared by US allies like Japan and the European Union.

What is striking about the agreement ceremony between Japan and the US is that the leaders seem to be talking past each other.

They are saying different things about the same agreement, in terms of national ambitions and interests. And this is generated by the fact that different political ideologies and national interests shape the ways leaders think about and represent their space programs.

Human expansion into space in the 21st Century is decidedly not about “humanity” moving to the stars; it is about various humans and their governments moving beyond LEO. Even as we earnestly try to cooperate, we will bring differences of culture, policy, national interests, and collective ambitions with us into the Solar System.

The space community must avoid the easy self-deception that human expansion into space will be necessarily characterized by human unification. Star Trek is a nice ambition, but the road ahead is much more likely to be not only distinguished by cooperation but marked by conflict as our diverse interests and ambitions converge.

Spending the SETI Institute's $200 Million Gift

2023-11-28T22:00:00.000Z

How would you spend $200 million?

That’s the welcome dilemma facing the SETI Institute, whose future is bright thanks to a huge financial gift from a late benefactor guaranteeing that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence can continue at the Institute.

Founded in 1984 by Jill Tarter and Tom Pierson, and nestled in California’s Silicon Valley, the SETI Institute has been the leading light in the search for technological alien life ever since. Despite the near-catastrophic decision by the US Congress to cancel NASA funding for SETI, the SETI Institute has persisted, diversifying its research among six divisions at its Carl Sagan Center for Research: astrobiology, astronomy and astrophysics, climate and biogeoscience, exoplanets, planetary exploration, and SETI.

“Each of those divisions is an actively funded part of the SETI Institute,” says the organization’s CEO, Bill Diamond, in an interview with Supercluster. “Five of those six have access to federal funds through NASA and the National Science Foundation, but the sixth — SETI — does not.”

Instead, SETI has had to survive off scraps, or the occasional donation or endowment from a friendly philanthropist. Then in 2015, the search for ET hit the jackpot — the $100 million riches of Yuri Milner's Breakthrough Listen project. However the funding was not universal; Milner partnered with the University of California, Berkeley, not the SETI Institute. All those millions and none of it was going to the organization that had kept SETI alive all these years.

But the SETI Institute had friends of its own. In 2008 Tarter met Franklin Antonio, one of the founders (employee number seven) of the electronic chip maker Qualcomm, whose products are found in everything from cell phones to smart homes. Antonio, who led R&D at Qualcomm, had an expertise in electronic engineering that was second to none, but he also had a very keen interest in the search for life beyond Earth. In 2012 he jumped on board at the SETI Institute as a benefactor, initially providing £3.6 million toward the Allen Telescope Array (ATA). The ATA had been the SETI Institute’s great hope when initially conceived, but over time it had increasingly become a ball and chain around the Institute’s neck regarding continued funding.

When Diamond joined in 2015, Antonio expressed his disappointment at the direction the situation with the Allen Telescope Array had taken, and the result of their frank discussion was a root-and-branch review of everything to do with the ATA. Antonio not only made recommendations but also regularly attended science and engineering meetings at the Institute.

“Franklin was very different from your typical benefactor in that he participated actively in the program rather than just funding it,” says Diamond. “He was an extraordinary gentleman, super-smart, and very passionate about science, education, and about giving young people from all backgrounds an opportunity.”

Sadly, Franklin Antonio died at the age of 69 in May 2022, but in his passing, he bequeathed $200 million from his estate to the SETI Institute. The gift is the gift of life, in a way: it means that SETI research at the SETI Institute is now assured a healthy existence long into the future.

How to Spend $200 Million

To put into context just what an enormous sum of money this is, it is twice the amount that Breakthrough Listen has spent to utterly transform SETI over the past decade.

So, with their coffers full, how are the SETI Institute going to spend their newfound riches?

“The very first major decision we made was not to spend the money [on one big thing],” says Diamond. “Instead, we’re going to treat it as an endowment, and I would say that one of the most profound things that this resource does is that it permanently funds SETI programs at the SETI Institute.”

First off, it ensures job security for researchers at the Institute. Second, it allows the Institute to continue with its current research programs such as participating in COSMIC, the Commensal Open-Source Multimode Interferometer Cluster, which is a SETI search using the Very Large Array (VLA) that was made famous as the backdrop to Robert Zemeckis’ movie adaptation of Carl Sagan’s novel Contact. Third, it will fund PhD students and international researchers who may not have access to funding in their home country. Fourth, it will not only keep the ATA operational, but it will also pay to continue the upgrading work that Franklin Antonio began.

Upgrading the Allen Telescope Array

The ATA, based at Hat Creek Observatory in the Cascade Mountains, provides the SETI Institute with a dedicated radio-telescope array that can be used for SETI full-time. Originally part-funded by Microsoft’s Paul Allen (hence the name), the idea was to give SETI Institute researchers a dedicated instrument, but the dream quickly turned sour. The original plan was to have 350 dishes, but a lack of funding meant development stalled at 42 dishes back in the 2000s.

The ATA even had to be put into hibernation for a short time in 2011 when money for it ran out before help came from SRI International, which is a Californian not-for-profit research institute that took over management of the ATA partly in exchange for being granted fifty percent of the observing time on the array.

The upgrades prompted by Antonio are in the form of second-generation feeds for each of the 6.1-meter dishes in the array. The telescope feed is the antenna that is placed at the focal point of a radio dish and contains all the detector electronics. Originally, the dishes could detect radio wavelengths between 500 MHz and 10 GHz; the new feed electronics broaden this range to between 1 and 15 GHz, and cryogenic cooling doubles the sensitivity. Signal processing and data analysis have also been improved with all-new computer servers that speed up the observations.

”We’ve got about half the dishes of the ATA now outfitted with these second-generation feeds,” says Diamond. With Antonio’s gift, the SETI Institute will now be able to fund kitting out the remainder of the dishes with these new feeds, making the ATA a formidable instrument of “world-class level,” according to Diamond.

Could the ATA also grow with the addition of new dishes? This is an expenditure that is possible, says Diamond, although he cautions that it must be something that the scientists and administrators of the SETI Institute agree is the best way to invest some of the money.

“It all comes down to how we get the most bang for our buck,” says Diamond. “Personally I’d love to see the array get up to 64 dishes, which would dramatically improve the sensitivity, but it depends on what we collectively feel is the best investment.”

He does rule out any effort to match the original plan for the ATA, though. “I don’t think there’s any motivation or need to go up to the 300-and-odd dishes that were the initial concept,” Diamond says.

Financing SETI’s Next Generation

More understated, but potentially just as important to SETI in the long run, are the plans to fund PhD students and international researchers.

PhD students are the future of SETI, the researchers that will carry on the search in the coming years. Back in the day, with no federal funding for SETI, Paul Horowitz at Harvard used to do SETI PhDs by stealth, having students design instruments for radio telescopes but then using them for small SETI projects. Breakthrough Listen introduced dedicated SETI PhDs, and now the SETI Institute will follow suit.

In fact, the SETI Institute will finance six PhDs, one for each of its research divisions.

PhDs in SETI are important in more ways than simply training the next generation of SETI researchers. With enough scientists trained in various aspects of SETI — be that radio or optical SETI, or searching for technosignatures in general — the more chance there is that some of them will get onto the committees of funding bodies such as those for NASA or the NSF. Their presence on such committees would neatly converge with growing public, academic, and even political interest in the search for alien life, the interest that has been gaining momentum from the success of Breakthrough Listen. To illustrate this, in 2018 Congress asked NASA to host an academic conference discussing SETI and technosignatures, and NASA’s Deputy Associate Administrator for Research, Michael New, told attendees that NASA funding for SETI projects was not necessarily off-limits anymore.

The hope is that this momentum will put pressure on politicians to authorize new public funding for SETI and that having the right people in the right place on funding bodies will give SETI projects a better chance of getting some of the pot of money made available to scientists.

Previously I’d asked Andrew Siemion, who is both Principal Investigator of Breakthrough Listen and the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI Research at the SETI Institute, about the importance of students studying for PhDs in SETI.

“Once you have them on funding committees,” Siemion told me, “then it’s game-set-match because then you have them making the decisions about the things that are going to be funded in the future, and the cycle will self-perpetuate at that point.”

Investing in SETI People

That’s the real investment being made by both Breakthrough Listen and Franklin Antonio’s gift, not in instruments or technology, but in people who will hopefully help to ensure that SETI gets a bigger slice of the action in the future. The same applies to the SETI Institute’s promise to make funding available for the first time to overseas researchers from countries that don’t have, and perhaps can’t afford, a SETI program.

“To begin with, this pool of money [for international researchers] will be somewhat modest, but I think it’s going to be a very significant change for the field broadly,” says Diamond.

For a long time, SETI has been the domain of a group of scientists based mostly in California, with the shared perspectives that brings, but SETI is also crying out for new ideas and new perspectives. Involving researchers from other countries will broaden SETI’s approach and strengthen the robustness and quality of the search.

Things are now looking up for SETI at the SETI Institute. When Supercluster spoke to Bill Diamond, he was at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester in the UK for a workshop formally opening Breakthrough Listen’s new partnership with the University of Oxford, and this time the SETI Institute is invited to the party.

With the clout the SETI Institute now wields, it is going to remain a major player in SETI from hereon — right where it should be.

SpaceX Achieves New Milestones With Second Starship Flight

2023-11-21T22:00:00.000Z

Following months of repairs, hardware testing, and a lengthy regulatory process, Starship Super Heavy took to the skies for the second time from Starbase.

All 33 Raptor engines were successfully ignited and reached full thrust, lifting the largest launch system ever built. In contrast to its previous flight, the Raptor engines onboard the Super Heavy booster functioned as expected. This, combined with quicker thrust throttling to minimize contact with the pad, enabled Starship to lift off smoothly and pitch away from the launch site.

With thrust exceeding twice that of the Saturn V and surpassing NASA's Space Launch System, Starship Super Heavy followed its planned trajectory into space. After passing the point of maximum aerodynamic pressure, the vehicle achieved supersonic speed for the first time.

The previous test flight experienced multiple engine shutdowns before stage separation, but the lessons learned from that flight resulted in a flawless ascent profile. SpaceX addressed all the issues encountered during the first flight, and this launch marked the maiden test flight of several new technologies.

As Starship Super Heavy approached the stage separation point, all but the central three booster engines shut down in a staggered sequence at MECO (Most Engines Cut Off). While the Super Heavy booster continued to provide thrust, though significantly reduced, the six Raptor engines on Starship ignited, facilitating its separation from Super Heavy. Engine plasma exited from the booster’s skirt, in an additional ring specifically designed for this stage separation system — known as hot staging. This was the first time hot staging was performed and tested in-flight on an American rocket since the Titan fleet.

Rarely used by American launch vehicles, hot staging is common in Soviet-era Russian rockets like Soyuz since it simplifies the stage separation system, and enables more mass to orbit. SpaceX estimates that hot staging will increase Starship’s maximum payload to orbit by 10%.

Heat shields and skirtings on the booster helped protect it from Starship's fiery plume. Multiple-raptor engines on Super Heavy reignited as it steered away from Starship and began its boost-back burn. However it was shortly terminated by the Autonomous Flight Termination system. The cause for this is still unknown, but it’s highly probable that all the required engines might not have reignited properly and the booster significantly deviated from its planned trajectory, leading to its automatic termination at an altitude of 90 kilometers (56 miles) over the Gulf of Mexico.

Starship continued its burn toward orbit.

As it passed the Kármán line (100km) the vehicle became the most powerful rocket to ever make it to space.

Just short of the second stage cut-off, Starship lost all communications from the ground and experienced a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (big explosion).

Starship achieved a maximum altitude of ~150 kilometers (93.2 miles), and avelocity of ~24,000 kilometers per hour (~15,000 miles per hour), its highest ever. This second integrated flight test successfully demonstrated the highly dynamic stage separation system, booster boost-back burn, and all the mitigations that were in place after the first flight.

Post-launch, inspections of the pad revealed that work done to strengthen it, including the water-cooled steel plate, worked as expected and requires little to no refurbishment for the next launch.

Despite being a success in terms of an iterative development program, Starship Super Heavy did in fact explode, thereby falling short of its official objectives and immediately triggering an FAA anomaly review.

Just like the previous launch, SpaceX will work in tandem with the FAA to lead an investigation to seek the cause of failure and implement corrective actions before being cleared for the next flight test. With minimal to no damage to public property and the surrounding environment, it won’t require any supplemental or new environmental review, and the approval process should be faster than before, pending how soon SpaceX can figure out what went wrong.

Elon expects to achieve technical readiness for the next flight within 3 to 4 weeks. The actual launch will probably take place in the first quarter of next year, pending regulatory approval. With every flight test, SpaceX moves closer to achieving the goals they set out for the Starship development program, which includes supporting NASA’s Artemis program to land astronauts on the Moon, and ultimately, on Mars.

NASA: 2023 Data Points to a Scorching Earth

2023-11-21T22:00:00.000Z

This year saw record-breaking heat waves between June and September.

These extreme weather events have correlated with monsoons in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan; decreases in Arctic sea ice; high ocean temperatures; and flooding in New York, Libya, Hong Kong, and Brazil. When Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, saw the data, he was shocked.

“[My] scientist brain is like, ‘What's going on?’ And then there's the… ‘Oh, shit’ part of my brain,” he said, “We predicted this.” NASA reported in 2020 that Geophysical Research Letters has evaluated its climate-change projections and found them to be accurate.

“The long-term trends here are all due to human-caused climate change,” he said. “All of the record-breakingness of this is really due to those long-term trends which are all our fault.” Data from NASA and World Weather Attribution supports this conclusion.

The heatwave enraged the public, creating debate on its causes. Some researchers have been looking for explanations that do not involve climate change. There are three causes that scientists are seeing as potentially contributing to the heatwave, Schmidt said, but they each would cause only hundredths of a degree of warming. The global mean temperature this summer went up by around 0.2°F.

(This August, according to a graphic from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), temperatures on land frequently hovered between 2°F and 3°F above the average between 1991 and 2020. In some locations, they were between 3°F and 4°F above the average. Greenland had a higher temperature rise than other land masses — largely between 4°F and 6°F.)

First, NOAA reports the sun has been ramping up to a solar maximum, a high level of irradiance that increases the global mean temperature several years afterward. This, Schmidt said, should not yet be creating a significant impact.

Second, water vapor was ejected from the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcanic eruption which led to an explosion in January 2022. Schmidt said this emitted 10% of the water vapor that is currently in the stratosphere. (Geophysical Research Letters also estimates that it is 10%.) A study in Nature Climate Change said that this could warm the planet by 0.06°F.

Third, he said ships using cleaner fuel reduced the amount of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere, which might change the level of aerosols in the sky and alter the level of cloud cover. This could potentially warm the globe. However, this effect, according to a NASA model, would only be a few hundredths of a degree Fahrenheit.

These three effects would only add up to around 0.1°F, which is not enough to explain the heatwave, he said.

“There's a lot of kind of unbridled speculation about tipping points and things like that, which really isn't justified,” Schmidt said. “And then there's a whole bunch of ‘Oh! Blame the volcano! Blame everybody except us!’ from the people who don't want to pay attention to the long-term trend [of climate change since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution].”

This year, according to NOAA, June through August were the warmest recorded in 174 years of NOAA data. The average temperature of the land and oceans in August was 2.25°F greater than the average in the 20th century. Between June and August, the global surface temperature was 2.07°F above the 20th-century average. The last 10 years of this season have been the warmest on record.

“We've been effectively monitoring the climate… for over 40 years now,” Schmidt said. “You'd think nothing would surprise us, but no. This summer really has been something very special — and not in a good way.” NASA is very active in climate research. It provides extensive information about climate change on its website, where it reports long-term trends affecting the globe.

Partly, the unseasonable heat has been due to an El Niño — an event in which the sea surface warms occasionally in the tropical Pacific, causing global temperatures to shift upward, he said. This event will peak in December through February and will affect global temperatures mainly during the next three to six months.

The consequences of heating up the globe can create catastrophic events such as torrential rain, tropical storms, intense wildfires, and extensive droughts. For example, this year, Storm Daniel caused the death of over 10,000 people in Libya, according to NOAA. In August, Hurricane Dora exacerbated a wildfire on the island of Maui in Hawaii, which then became the deadliest wildfire in U.S. history. During the same month, monsoon flooding in Pakistan and India caused the evacuation of over 100,000 people. New York City declared an emergency due to flash flooding at the end of September.

“Every degree you warm the oceans, you add 7% to the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere that's available for big rain events,” Schmidt said. “We saw these 40°C days in the United Kingdom [that] never happened before. We saw new records being broken with temperature in North Africa and in Europe.”

NASA bases its data summaries on information from buoys, weather stations, ships, and satellites, he said. The agency also looks at data from a few separate predictive systems and uses a Monte Carlo simulation method that uses random sampling to predict uncertainty in its datasets.

“Ocean data is now based on a network of ocean buoys which have temperature sensors embedded within them,” he said. “They go up and down through the ocean column. When they come up, they relay the information back to headquarters, and then it gets collated. So you've got these ocean buoys, you've got ocean ship measurements, you've got weather station data. We have instruments onboard some NASA satellites. We can check what we're doing by comparing [it] to the satellite measurements.”

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is monitoring this El Niño from space using the satellite Sentinel-6. Its website says, “El Niños are characterized by higher-than-normal sea levels and warmer-than-average ocean temperatures along the equatorial Pacific. These conditions can then propagate poleward along the western coasts of the Americas. El Niños can bring wetter conditions to the U.S. Southwest and drought to regions in the western Pacific, including Indonesia.“

What do these high temperatures mean for public health?

“Even small differences from seasonal average temperatures are associated with increased illness and death,” the World Health Organization website says. “Some populations are more exposed to or more physiologically or socio-economically vulnerable to physiological stress, exacerbated illness, and an increased risk of death from exposure to excess heat.

These include the elderly, infants and children, pregnant women, outdoor and manual workers, athletes, and the poor.”

The Case for Mining Resources in Space

2023-11-07T22:00:00.000Z

To foster an in-space economy, we should turn to celestial bodies as resource hubs.

Lunar and asteroid mining offer practical pathways for fueling a burgeoning New Space industry. Transporting resources from Earth to space for space-based activities is currently neither cost-effective nor sustainable while returning space-based resources to Earth makes little economic or technical sense. However, a long-term perspective on space mining would benefit Earth: there are vast resources in space, and Earth has an increasing demand for critical metals which are crucial for transitioning to a decarbonized economy.

Today, demand for strategic minerals outpaces supply as humanity plunges deeper into a human-made climate crisis. We urgently need new sources of critical metals that we can access without leaving scars of environmental degradation on our planet. Lunar and asteroid mining offer new targets for resource extraction and responsible resource stewardship.

It’s possible to design an in-space economy with forward-looking aspirations of providing metals for Earth's energy and industrial transition. By first prioritizing in-space water utilization for space-based industrial activities, the roadmap for space resource utilization could eventually encompass both water and metal extraction for in-space purposes and the provision of space-based metals for terrestrial needs.

Today’s space-faring nations have focused on lunar ice as a first step in long-term space-resource utilization. Water is an enabler of the space industry. This year’s lunar missions and research by the U.S., China, India, and Russia have been characterized by the pursuit of this life-sustaining resource. Water on the moon is critical for human consumption and radiation shielding, and hydrogen and oxygen produced via electrolysis can be used for life support or combusted for rocket propulsion, as detailed in Kornuta et. al’s “Commercial Lunar Propellant Architecture: A Collaborative Study of Lunar Propellant.”

As the space industry grows, technology advances and costs drop, metals for use-in-space manufacturing and metals for return-to-Earth scenarios will become possible for humanity’s technology and resource roadmaps. Enabling and incentivizing water-for-use-in-space foundational activities can help materialize in-space manufacturing and resourcing.

In the context of space resource economics, John Lewis' 1998 book "Mining the Sky" highlights three key points: First, it emphasizes the significant cost of transporting materials from Earth to space, meaning industrial activities occurring in space should be made with materials from space. Second, Lewis suggests that only materials with a high market value on Earth would justify the cost of transporting them back from space. Third, it underscores that the energy cost of sending materials back to Earth from near-Earth space is likely to be lower than the cost of launching from Earth, making Earth more suitable as an importer rather than an exporter of raw materials due to its deep gravity well.

Unless the cost of raw materials on Earth substantially increases, space resources are best used in space rather than brought to Earth. For example, cobalt’s ten-year average price of $33,420/metric ton is far from the “thousands of dollars per kilogram” requirement to make return-to-Earth metals extraction economically feasible. Platinum, however, has a ten-year average price of $891.82/troy ounce ($28,672,013/metric ton) with a forecast of demand pickup and lower supply.

The particulars of each metal will heavily impact the economic viability of a return-to-Earth scenario within the unit economics of a lunar or asteroid mining operation. Future research considerations in this arena are the impact of major pricing changes on global trade, including the global deployment of a carbon tax (or other financial schemes to incorporate externalities as costs within operating expenses) and geopolitical bottlenecks that disrupt prices and increase volatility. These changes may tip the balance from terrestrial materials sourcing (deep-sea mining and metals recycling) to space-based return-to-Earth via lunar or asteroid mining.

Dependency on Fossil Fuel

The move away from fossil fuel-based inputs for industrial activities has sparked demand for critical minerals to power decarbonized industrial, commercial, and residential activities. A 2022 IEA report notes that solar plants, wind farms, and electric vehicles (EVs) “require more minerals to build than their fossil fuel-based counterparts. A typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car and an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fired plant. Since 2010 the average amount of minerals needed for a new unit of power generation capacity has increased by 50% as the share of renewables in new investment has risen.” Amidst this context, demand for critical minerals has skyrocketed.

Increased metals demand for a transition to a less carbon-dependent industry has strained supply chains, making more consequential the geopolitical relationships of minerals-rich countries, while further incentivizing extractive activities. Expanding global resource extraction deepens human and labor rights crises and environmental degradation and each critical metal embodies its own geopolitical, labor, and environmental impact. For example, lithium carbonate, a key input for battery metals, traded from South America to Asia, the U.S., and Europe is linked to soil degradation and groundwater contamination, while cobalt, used in batteries and high-strength alloys, largely originates from the Democratic Republic of the Congo where child labor is commonplace within the industry.

Economists at the IMF estimated that “replacing fossil fuels with low-carbon technologies would require an eightfold increase in renewable energy investments and cause a strong increase in demand for metals. However, developing mines is a process that takes a very long time—often a decade or more—and presents various challenges, at both the company and country level. Given the projected increase in metals consumption through 2050 under a net zero scenario, current production rates of graphite, cobalt, vanadium, and nickel appear inadequate. Current copper, lithium, and platinum supplies also are inadequate to satisfy future needs.”

Two solutions to critical metals demand dominate current policy discussions and investment trends: deep-sea mining and metals recycling. The third and fourth options, lunar mining and asteroid mining are considered here as long-term solutions for heavy industrial activity off-Earth that may grow in attractiveness as space technology evolves. Demonstrated technological feasibility will encourage interest and investment in solutions previously thought to be impossible for use-in-space and return-to-Earth resource scenarios; having a long-term roadmap encompassing both will advance the space industry while ensuring terrestrial challenges are prioritized.

Lunar and Asteroid Mining

Lunar and asteroid mining hold promise as future solutions to the growing demand for critical minerals. As space technology advances, these methods may become more economically and technically viable. In-space mining not only has the potential to address Earth's need for critical metals but also paves the way for expanding human activities and industries beyond our planet, thereby enhancing our scientific and exploratory capabilities within and beyond our solar system.

The early space economy, as detailed in Kornuta et. al's Commercial Lunar Propellant Architecture, must leverage In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) to enable “the efficient use of resources both on Earth and in space, as well as continued expansion and development of human presence outside of our planet.”

Water extracted from lunar regolith converted into rocket propellant would enable new missions further into our solar system or beyond, advancing industrial development and expanding scientific exploration. Additional lunar resources of strategic importance include Helium-3, used for nuclear fusion for power generation, as well as rare earths. While lunar ice prospecting continues, the 2023 SOFIA Map of Water Near the Moon's South Pole “assembled the first detailed, wide-area map of water distribution on the Moon, shown below.”

This confirmation of ice on the lunar South Pole further emboldens multiple nations’ plans to establish a permanent presence on the moon. The 2024 NASA Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission will land in this region “to conduct the first resource mapping mission beyond Earth.” With prospecting missions still underway and lunar industrialization years out, lunar-extracted resources in the near future should be considered cost-prohibitive for return-to-Earth applications. Lunar resources, at this time, can only be considered for use-in-space applications.

Asteroid mining for a return-to-Earth scenario, like lunar mining, is only feasible if the cost of asteroid-based extraction drops below the cost of Earth-based extraction, but the financial upside may be worth the risk for investors with deep pockets and tolerance for a decades-long return on investment (ROI). Private company Karman+ aims to launch its first asteroid mining mission in 2026 with an explicit corporate mission to “mine space resources from near-Earth asteroids to provide abundant, sustainable energy and resources in space and for Earth.” Asteroid water can be used for in-space propellant, and iron and nickel could be used to replace depleted Earth resources or for industrial activities in space.

As described by NASA, in reference to John S. Lewis’ Mining the Sky, “The comets and asteroids that are potentially the most hazardous because they can closely approach the Earth are also the objects that could be most easily exploited for their raw materials.” Validating this, the Near-Earth Object (NEO), Bennu, whose sample was returned to Earth in September, has evidence of carbon and water.

The NASA explainer continues, “It is not presently cost-effective to mine these minerals and then bring them back to Earth. However, these raw materials could be used in developing space structures and in generating the rocket fuel that will be required to explore and colonize our solar system in the twenty-first century. Whereas asteroids are rich in the mineral raw materials required to build structures in space, the comets are rich resources for the water and carbon-based molecules necessary to sustain life.

In addition, an abundant supply of cometary water ice could provide copious quantities of liquid hydrogen and oxygen, the two primary ingredients in rocket fuel. It seems likely that in the next century when we begin to settle the inner solar system, the metals and minerals found on asteroids will provide the raw materials for space structures, and comets will become the watering holes and gas stations for interplanetary spacecraft.”

As a space-based commercial economy develops, nations that lock in space manufacturing and infrastructure will benefit from a first-mover advantage. As the National Space Council Users’ Advisory Group notes, “While the development of the industrial capability to access and make use metals and other materials “in situ” (on-site) will take longer, designing and securing the infrastructure that supports it is a task that should not continue to be postponed: The nation that first profitably develops these resources will secure a position of global economic and geopolitical leadership for generations to come.” This explains today’s American, Chinese, Russian, and Indian ambitions to land, prospect, and industrialize the lunar surface.

Certain early infrastructure plays will be more advantageous, ensuring long-term resource security, as the U.S. government has suggested with its assessment of a strategic in-space propellant reserve. By developing an industrial setting from which rockets could fuel in space, countries and companies can reduce costs associated with launching to escape Earth’s gravity well. As 80% of a rocket’s mass is propellant, any reduction in propellant requirement improves overall project cost. While today’s Earth-based launch costs to Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) have dropped from $65,000/kg to $1,500/kg, in-space propellant availability will further enable economic activity, space industrialization, and exploration.

Water from the Moon or asteroids converted to propellant in space will enable this first industrial activity; of course, getting to the Moon remains significantly challenging, with almost half of Moon landings ending in failure.

Development of a U.S. Space Propellant Reserve would enable three key outcomes, according to the National Space Council Users’ Advisory Group:

“First, it would stimulate economic development by reducing uncertainty regarding the availability of propellant, enhancing confidence for governments and private interests alike. Secondly, it would buffer U.S. future in-space economic interests from temporary interruptions in supply. Finally, a reserve would also provide a significant means to help stabilize a future space commodities exchange, in which forward purchases (futures) of commodities such as water, oxygen, hydrogen, metals, and propellant, could be traded. All of these commodities are driven by transportation; therefore, investing up front in a strategic reserve can enable greater predictability in accessing, delivering, and utilizing them, creating some assurance and greater security in commercial activity.”

By contributing to a strategic reserve first for water/propellant and then for critical metals, companies, and countries can enjoy less volatility in a space-based supply chain for a burgeoning in-space economy. Should space resources be needed to address Earth’s supply, a propellant or metals reserve would ensure supply regardless of terrestrial geopolitical or environmental constraints.

The long-term vision of asteroid mining should include metals procurement for use-in-space and metals return, to support human development terrestrially and aid resource requirements on Earth amidst diminishing environmental conditions. While lunar- and asteroid-based resources can’t be considered near-term solutions to humanity’s dire critical minerals demand, advancing technologies that enable this potential future deserve further research and investment as we consider all solutions for advancements in human development, both on this planet and off.

DeLaine Mayer is a professor of astropolitics at New York University and has an MS in Global Affairs from NYU and an MS in Space Resources from Colorado School of Mines.

After ISS, Will a New Home Materialize for NASA?

2023-10-31T20:00:00.000Z

NASA is betting big on a commercial space station.

In 2031, the International Space Station (ISS) will be deorbited in a fiery inferno, crashing back through Earth's atmosphere to its final resting place at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. It will be the end of a decades-long international partnership that has seen the US, Russia, Europe, Japan, and other nations work peacefully together.

NASA hopes one or more commercial space stations will replace the ISS, run not by governments but, for the first time, by private companies. The goal is to “continue to do research for the benefit of humanity and maintain a sustained presence of humans in space,” says Camille Alleyne, deputy manager for NASA’s commercial space station program at the Johnson Space Center in Texas.

In December 2021, NASA funded three US companies a total of $415 million to look into developing space stations — Blue Origin, Nanoracks, and Northrop Grumman – alongside an existing partnership with the US firm Axiom Space. Similar to NASA’s Commercial Crew program in the 2010s that fostered the arrival of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule and Boeing’s delayed Starliner vehicle, the plan is for multiple commercial space stations to arise from these partnerships. “We like competition,” says Alleyne.

But this dream has faltered somewhat in recently, with several companies wavering. Earlier this month, Northrop Grumman announced it would end its solo bid for a commercial space station and join a competing effort. In September, Blue Origin’s proposal for a space station was said to be in limbo as other programs, such as Blue Origin’s lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis program, took precedence.

Artemis is NASA’s plan to return humans to the Moon, which will start with four astronauts flying around the Moon in an Orion capsule in 2024. Later this decade astronauts will touch down on the lunar surface, initially in a SpaceX Starship with Blue Origin’s lander in development for future missions. NASA also plans to begin construction of a new space station near the Moon, the Lunar Gateway, as soon as next year.

After ISS

All of this is interspersed with the planned retirement of the ISS. Its aging hardware means that NASA and the other ISS partners have decided, at the moment, to end the project in 2031. Commercial space stations in low Earth orbit, it’s hoped, will replace much of the current work done by the ISS. “We do a lot of science in microgravity that you cannot do here on Earth,” says Frank de Winne, head of ESA's European Astronaut Centre in Germany.

Any of these stations would not be as big as the ISS, likely comprising a few habitable modules at most. That will be enough for prolonged stays in space, or to conduct research in Earth orbit. Exactly what sort of research that might be conducted is still being ironed out. “We are in discussion with NASA and with the other ISS partners about how we’ll conduct science on commercial space stations,” says de Winne.

Axiom has already started flying private astronauts to space on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, at suggested ticket prices of some $55 million per seat — out of reach to most of us but attractive to the super-rich. Commercial space stations, if they come to fruition, could feasibly play host to lots of willing paying customers who would stay on board, like a space hotel, for days or weeks at a time.

However, the exact market case for companies to make money from operating commercial space stations remains murky, says Caleb Williams, vice president at space analyst firm Quilty Space. “The amount of development funding NASA has given out has not been huge,” he says. “We haven’t seen a lot of killer applications or high revenue-generating activities,” noting that some companies are “getting cold feet.”

Laura Forczyk, the founder of US space consulting firm Astralytical, agrees that the market potential is a little unclear. “I don’t believe anybody expected all four of the commercial space station awardees to have operational space stations because of the business case,” she says. “It’s a risky business, and we know from the International Space Station that it is very expensive to run a human-rated platform in space. It’s extremely challenging to make a space station that is profitable.”

With seven years of the ISS still left to run, the need to rush into commercial space stations for NASA or other governments may not seem immediately apparent. However, after the ISS retires, the sole space station orbiting Earth will be China’s Tiangong outpost.

But NASA is barred from working with China or visiting the station under US law.

That means if NASA is serious about keeping its own humans in Earth orbit it will need to put its weight behind commercial space stations. Having no space station in low Earth orbit would give China important prestige over the US, and given the rhetoric from NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on how the US is in a “space race” with China, that would be unlikely to go down well in Congress.

In 2026, NASA will announce further funding for commercial space stations in Phase 2 of its program. That could include funding not just for the aforementioned four companies, but any of a number of new players that have emerged more recently, such as the US company Vast Space. “There could be new entrants that show up that we don’t even know exist today,” says Alleyne.

The potential benefits, says Alleyne, are large. “The market is showing to be quite vibrant in the future,” she says. “Hundreds of billions of dollars [from] private astronauts, in-space manufacturing, and marketing and advertisement.”

ESA has also thrown its weight behind commercial space stations, signing a Memorandum of Understanding with Axiom in October to “explore collaborative opportunities in human spaceflight, science, technology, and commercialization” and including access to Axiom’s planned space station.

NASA’s goal is for commercial space stations to overlap with the end of the ISS, with first launches to begin “around 2029,” says Alleyne. The aim now is to make sure that one or more of the projects is viable, and can take up the mantle of the ISS when it heads towards retirement.

“We need to still be in low Earth orbit,” says Alleyne. Missions to the Moon, and perhaps one day Mars, could be separated by years, but having a space station gives a “continuous presence” in space, she says. “That’s really important.”

Can we make them work financially? All bets are off.

Family of Deceased Engineer Fights ESA Diplomatic Immunity

2023-10-24T10:00:00.000Z

Four days before Christmas, 2011, 38-year-old ESA engineer Philippe Kieffer died by suicide at his home in Leiden, the Netherlands.

Twelve years later, his family is still fighting for justice, and looking for answers about the alleged bullying and harassment that led to this tragedy.

Kieffer’s parents remember the enthusiasm and excitement with which their son first took up his role at ESA’s technological heart, the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), in the Netherlands, in 2002. He loved his job, and couldn’t imagine working anywhere else. When, seven years later, a new manager arrived and took a dislike to Kieffer, the engineer kept holding on, hoping for things to improve.

According to publicly available information, two of Kieffer’s colleagues raised concerns about Kieffer’s treatment by his superiors with the agency’s HR department in the months leading up to his death, but nothing ever changed. Entries in Kieffer’s diary, which had been found after his demise, describe his struggle with public humiliation and professional ostracization, the reasons for which Kieffer never understood.

But his parent's quest to hold the alleged perpetrators accountable has constantly run up against the wall of the agency’s special legal status — its diplomatic immunity, and the inviolability of its documents.

On November 7, Kieffer’s family will have one last shot to persuade the Paris Appeals Court to overthrow ESA’s diplomatic immunity and force the agency to release documents related to the circumstances leading up to his death. The decision could set a precedent, as it would allow, for the first time in the agency’s nearly 50-year-long history, for allegations against it to be investigated in public.

A World Unto Itself

ESA, an intergovernmental organization currently comprising 22 member states, is not alone among intergovernmental organizations fending off allegations of workplace bullying and fostering an unsafe corporate environment. Similar claims were earlier leaked from the European Patent Office. In 2019, the management of the United Nations Mine Action Service came under public criticism for creating a culture of fear and intimidation.

Apart from these allegations, the organizations have one thing in common — their special legal status, which sets them above any national jurisdiction and turns them into little micro-worlds with their own rules and internal justice systems. This arrangement protects these organizations from external political interference, but at the same time creates a precarious situation for its employees.

“The purpose of international organization immunities is to ensure that international organizations are able to carry out their functions in all the countries where they work,” Carla Ferstman, a professor of law at the University of Essex, told Supercluster via email.

“If an international organization was subject to the domestic courts of the countries where it works, this could, arguably, impede the organization from being able to act independently, and it would also be logistically problematic for an international organization to set up rules about how it operates internally, to comply with the external rules of each country where it operates.”

What Happens at ESA, Stays at ESA

ESA’s special legal status is enshrined in its founding Convention, a 130-page document that sets up ESA’s basic legal framework. Drafted in 1975, the year ESA came into being from the merger of the European Space Research Organization and the European Launcher Development Organization, the Convention features a whole section on the “privileges and immunities” afforded to the agency’s staff members.

All staff members, according to the Convention, are immune from jurisdiction “in respect of acts, including words written and spoken, done by them in exercise of their function.” This immunity remains in place even “after [the staff members] have left the service of the Agency.” These workers also “enjoy inviolability for all their official papers and documents,” the Convention states. Equally “inviolable” are ESA’s premises located in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain, the U.K. and Belgium.

Due to this special legal status, whatever happens at ESA remains locked-up.

For the Kieffer family, this means that a report on the internal investigation into the circumstances surrounding Phillipe Kieffer’s death has been inaccessible. So has his personal HR file, which documents his repeated complaints about the treatment he received from his managers, and internal email exchanges that could shed light on his situation.

Most government-funded institutions in the democratic world are subject to Freedom of Information Acts that allow members of the media and the public to request access to such documents, and even to take the institutions in question to court if they fail to behave transparently. ESA and many other intergovernmental organizations, however, remain out of journalists’ reach.

This special legal status sets ESA apart from its main partner in the international space arena — the American space agency NASA, which is subject to American law including the 1966 Freedom of Information Act.

Ferstman, who authored a book called International Organizations and the Fight for Accountability: The Remedies and Reparations Gap, is aware of the shortcomings in the intergovernmental organizations setup. In theory, she said, organizations such as ESA have “internal administrative procedures in place in order to address staff claims,” but these processes are frequently set up “to benefit the organizations.”

“The internal claims process is used to justify the immunity; it is de minimis,” said Ferstman. “The more that is written on these issues the better.”

Hiding Behind Immunity

In ESA’s case, staff members that feel wronged by the agency and fail to find a resolution through the agency’s HR department can turn to its Administrative Tribunal. Consisting of three judges appointed by the agency’s council, the tribunal is the only tool of supposedly independent justice in the microcosmos of ESA.

In 2014, the tribunal, at that time called the Appeals Board, heard the request of Philippe Kieffer’s parents to lift ESA’s immunity to allow an independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding their son’s suicide. The tribunal rejected this request, stating that Philippe Kieffer was not subject to harassment by his superiors (despite testimonies of his colleagues and a record of discussions he had with the agency’s HR department).

The tribunal, however, ruled that Kieffer’s death was work-related, and awarded the family a life insurance pay-out worth five years of salary.

The family has since spent most of this money fighting for justice through the public courts. So far, all their attempts to allow judges in France to investigate the case have been met with ESA’s reluctance to cooperate, according to the French Association Supporting Victims and Organizations Dealing with Suicide and Professional depression (ASD-Pro), which has been supporting the Kieffer family.

ASD-Pro pointed out that the Administrative Tribunal’s decisions are final, allowing for no appeals, a very different system from legal procedures that are commonplace in the outside world.

“We asked three successive French foreign ministers to have the immunity lifted,” Denise Kieffer told Supercluster. “We received three refusals motivated by the judgment of the Administrative Tribunal which, however, has nothing to do with a public court in France.”

The Kieffer family, their lawyers, and ASD-Pro question the qualification of the Administrative Tribunal to make judgments on the matter of workplace harassment and point out that the judges sitting on the Tribunal don’t apply actual law but only the agency’s Convention and its internal regulations. They are accusing the agency of hiding behind its immunity and abusing it to avoid accountability.

“It should be remembered that the immunity of individuals and the inviolability of documents are intended solely to protect ESA from any interference by states and individuals in its aerospace activities and not to protect itself from the potential effects of its management on its employees,” ASD-Pro told Supercluster in an email.

Denise Kieffer commented: “It is said in the statutes of the agency that [ESA’s Director General] has a duty to lift immunity in all cases where it can be lifted without harming the interests of the agency. In the case of Philippe, immunity is diverted from its initial objective of industrial protection to escape justice with complete impunity.”

ESA disagrees with those charges. In an email exchange with Supercluster, ESA’s spokesperson stressed that in the case of the suicide of Philippe Kieffer, "the agency complied with its duty to cooperate with the national authorities in the course of the legal proceedings that eventually led to the dismissal of the case."

ASD-Pro, however, objects to ESA’s assertion, saying that said cooperation "was limited to exchanges of letters by which the agency refused to communicate to the investigating judge all the internal documents that could enable him to really investigate the parents’ complaint."

Aspiring for the Stars

Philippe Kieffer’s case, while the most tragic, is not the only allegation of workplace harassment against ESA. In a previous investigation (soon to be published by another news publication), the author of this article gathered more than 15 testimonies of workers who have either personally experienced or witnessed workplace bullying and harassment at ESA.

Just like Philippe Kieffer, those workers failed to find a resolution for those conflicts within the agency.

These stories cast a shadow over ESA’s carefully cultivated public image of a diversity-promoting agent of inspiration, a cool facilitator enabling Europeans’ participation in humankind’s grandest endeavor — the exploration of outer space.

ESA told Supercluster in an email that although the agency’s Council (a gathering of political representatives of its member states) has the power to “waive ESA’s immunity from jurisdiction,” it has never taken that step.

“The Agency has always cooperated with national authorities to facilitate the proper administration of justice,” the agency stated, adding that it has “procedures in place that enable workers to report harassment without disclosing their identity, which aims to encourage the submission of reports without possible retaliation.”

A New and Improved Starship Super Heavy is Ready for Flight

2023-10-17T20:00:00.000Z

Since Starship Super Heavy first took to the skies, SpaceX has been working to get their next set of vehicles ready for flight.

The goals for the second integrated test flight remain more or less the same — to test out current technologies in Starship and the launch pad, gauge how the improvements over the previous flight pan out, and ultimately get the entire launch system — the largest ever developed — to an orbital velocity.

However, the company has yet to receive authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to launch again. Supercluster sources point to an FAA license coming in at the end of October with a launch expected in early to mid-November. But, in an email to Bloomberg, the US Fish and Wildlife Services said that they had yet to review the corrective measures, which could further delay the launch approval process anywhere from 30 days to 135 days.

It is standard for the FAA to ground a rocket (or an aircraft or spacecraft) in case of an anomaly. The agency then closely works with the company to review their mishap investigation which involves rooting out the cause of failure, coming up with corrections to prevent it from happening again, and ensuring the rocket manufacturer implements those said actions. In early September, the FAA announced it had closed the Starship mishap investigation and directed SpaceX to implement 63 corrective actions to prevent its recurrence.

Elon shared the actual list on X which included actions on Raptor engines, Super Heavy booster, launch pad, avionics, and safety and reliability improvements, further stating that the company has successfully implemented 57 of those actions, while 6 of them are designated for future flights.

“If the engines light, and Starship doesn’t blow itself up during the stage separation, then I think we’ve got a decent chance of reaching orbit,” said SpaceX CEO Elon Musk during a virtual talk at the International Astronomical Congress in Baku, Azerbaijan. Musk didn't want to set expectations too high with concerns stemming from the fact that Starship will sport a radically different stage separation system, one which hasn’t been utilized by any modern-era American rocket.

“We’re trying to move to a passive system stage separation system where you don’t have pushers to try and eliminate parts,” explained Musk.

Unlike the Falcon 9 which is equipped with a pusher system that physically separates the first and the second stage, Starship will ignite its Raptor engines whilst the Super Heavy booster's engines are partially thrusting to pull away at the point of stage separation. This is known as hot-staging, and the idea isn’t new and has been used for decades by Soviet-era rockets with the likes of N1, Proton, and Soyuz, and even some decommissioned American rockets in the Titan family.

“From the physics standpoint, it is the most efficient way of doing stage separation,” he added.

If this violent, yet comparatively simpler and lightweight system works, Elon says it can increase Starship’s payload to orbit by 10%. That’s 15 tons more to low-Earth orbit by just eliminating the pusher system.

SpaceX has been launching Falcon 9 once every 4 days, an unprecedented rate for the rocket industry.

SpaceX has the same high hopes for Starship and even intends to eventually surpass that cadence set by its workhorse Falcon 9. The aim is to build, test, and iterate their hardware, which involves flying them as much and as soon as possible. SpaceX believes the government and its regulatory bodies are not keeping up with the pace and in the end, will hamper the country’s ability to send astronauts to the Moon under NASA’s contract.

William Gerstenmaier, SpaceX's Vice President for Build and Reliability told The Washington Post that he intends to raise this point in a Senate hearing, advocating for streamlined regulations and an increase in FAA’s resources to issue swift launch licenses.

“With the flight rates that are increasing, with the other players that are coming on board, we see there’s potentially a big industry problem coming where the pace of government is not going to be able to keep up with the pace of development on the private-sector side,” Gerstenmaier said ahead of his testimony before the Senate Commerce subcommittee on space and science at a hearing titled, “Promoting Safety, Innovation, and Competitiveness in U.S. Commercial Human Space Activities.”

Starship Super Heavy’s inaugural launch on April 20th — the first with both Starship and its Super Heavy booster — saw the massive integrated vehicle lift off from the orbital mount at Starbase in Texas. The vehicle reached an altitude of 39 kilometers over the Gulf of Mexico, surpassing the maximum aerodynamic pressure. The booster then lost multiple Raptor engines and the two stages weren’t able to separate during ascent. Starship Super Heavy started tumbling and veered off course, activating the flight termination system.

The flight provided SpaceX with invaluable data, particularly on the Super Heavy booster and the launch pad. The immense thrust of 30 Raptor engines shattered the concrete at the base of the pad, uprooting the structure. SpaceX used a high-strength high-density concrete called FONDAG which is designed specifically for abrasion and heat resistance. Based on the previous static fire data (where engines throttled at ~50% thrust levels), teams theorized that it would sufficiently be able to handle Super Heavy’s whopping 74,000 kN of thrust. However, as the engines ramped up to full thrust during the orbital flight, even one of the strongest concrete foundations couldn’t survive the booster’s fire and fury.

Over the months, SpaceX teams removed the debris and carried out several repairs on the launch tower. Tons of new rebar were installed underneath the launch pad, followed by new concrete poured by convoys of trucks. Once cured, SpaceX installed a water-cooled steel plate over it.

To prevent the launch pad from being obliterated, the water-cooled steel plate will essentially act as a water deluge system, spraying tonnes of water beneath the launch pad. It’ll receive this high-pressure water from six recently installed water deluge tanks and a set of pressure tanks. As the Raptor engines ignite, most of their heat will be cooled by the water and turned to steam, while the remaining will be absorbed by the actively cooled steel plate.

The orbital tank farm and the vertical GSE tanks sustained visible damage from the flying debris during the first launch. These dents were buffed out, and repairs were carried out to support testing of Booster 9, the next Super Heavy booster to fly.

Super Heavy Booster 9 sports various upgrades over its predecessor. The most notable change is a vented interstage and a heat shield on top to survive hot staging. Adding such an extension will allow the plasma from the second-stage engines to exit away from the rocket while the heat shield will protect the booster from blowing up.

Apart from these visible changes, Booster 9 is equipped with electric thrust vector control actuators instead of hydraulics, a proper full-engine failure isolation system, and incremental reliability upgrades to its thrust plate, vents, grid fins, and plumbing system. The engine isolation system is crucial as it’ll prevent other engines from malfunctioning if one of the engines blows up or as SpaceX likes to call it, Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (RUD).

The first flight also uncovered an unexpected issue with Starship’s Flight Termination system, designed to terminate the flight should something go wrong. As the launch vehicle deviated from its planned trajectory and began tumbling, it took much longer for FTS to activate. Once it did, this system only punched holes in the tanks but never broke the launch stack as planned.

At SpaceX’s Massey test facility at Starbase, a booster test tank was subjected to FTS-related testing in a bid to re-certify their system before the second attempt.

The test resulted in the complete destruction of the tank.

As the repairs on the orbital launch pad concluded and the steel plate was installed, Booster 9 was rolled out to the launch site to commence its testing campaign. Launch teams carried out a spin prime test — where the turbo-pumps of the engines are revved up by the propellants without igniting them — before attempting to static fire all 33 of its engines. The testing campaign wasn’t as smooth as expected since the first static fire ended at 2.74 seconds, just shy of the expected duration of 5 seconds with 4 engines shutting down prematurely.

But as the teams worked on its problems, they successfully fired the Raptor engines for full duration with only 2 engines aborting. While these tests were carried out to certify Booster 9 for flight and inform teams of future upgrades, it was also a crucial test for the launch pad, particularly the steel plate, to assess how the system handles Super Heavy’s thrust — at least at 50%. Whether it can sustain the flight level thrust won’t be known until the second flight.

Meanwhile, the Starship vehicle slated for the next flight — Ship 25 — completed its construction and was also prepped for its testing campaign at the suborbital launch site which included everything from a spin prime test to a 6-engine static fire of all its Raptor engines.

Once both the stages were tested, Starship 25 was rolled down to the orbital mount and stacked onto Super Heavy Booster 9 using its chopsticks. In 6 months, SpaceX went from a heavily damaged launch pad to a fully functioning one, equipped with upgrades to prevent such destruction from happening again.

Starship’s development is highly dynamic. By the time a vehicle completes its construction, teams already have a ton of improvements slated for their next prototypes. In a bid to improve reliability, SpaceX continuously improves their Raptor engines and tests them at their engine test facility in McGregor, Texas. Recent improvements to Raptors will increase Superheavy’s thrust by 50%, making it over thrice as powerful as the Saturn V rocket which took Astronauts to the Moon in the 70s.

High thrust levels of the engines will also increase Starship’s performance, decreasing the amount of work required by the booster to reach orbit, which can end up as low as 100 seconds.

Data from the second launch attempt will also help to finalize the design of the launch pad. SpaceX plans to launch the Starship Super Heavy from their historic Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Starbase, with the Florida pad dedicated more towards operational launches while Starbase hosts tests and development.

Teams in Florida were working on the launch pad but the work was halted when it proved the current design was incapable of surviving a launch. If the pad modifications — including the water-cooled steel plate — perform well during the second integrated Starship Super Heavy flight, work in Florida might resume. Musk said during the IAC conference that Starship might begin launching payload from next year. "I think there's a good chance we start deploying Starlink V3 satellites next year, roughly a year from now.”

Musk added that returning and landing the Starship back to Earth from orbit is the most challenging aspect of the program, but they can start launching satellites before they achieve that milestone. The overarching goal of Starship’s development program isn’t solely to reach orbit. It encompasses achieving rapid reusability, Falcon 9-like reliability, developing in-space refueling, and long-term cryogenic fuel management. These elements are not just essential for SpaceX’s ambitions to land on Mars, but also to land astronauts on the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program.

Starship embodies humanity’s long-standing aspirations of establishing a permanent settlement on the Moon and a self-sustaining city on Mars. The rocket that eventually realizes these dreams might look radically different from what is currently on the launch pad.

However, like the proven Falcon 9, it is the iterative and adaptive nature of this billion-dollar commercial venture that will pave the way to make it a reality.

NASA Commits to the Search for Life on Habitable Worlds

2023-10-10T21:00:00.000Z

NASA has been searching and cataloging planets beyond our solar system for decades.

Kepler was NASA's first space telescope built specifically to hunt for exoplanets, and since its launch in 2009, thousands of planets have been confirmed. But exoplanet researchers want to go beyond just cataloging, and dig deeper to understand the composition and atmosphere of these worlds, and learn whether they harbor alien life.

Most of the rocky, Earth-sized planets have been detected orbiting red-dwarf stars, the smaller, dimmer, and the most common type of stars in our Milky Way galaxy. Such planets are hard to detect and confirm because of their star’s tight habitable zones.

Directly imaging them requires advanced exoplanet coronagraphic technologies which block out the light of the host star. The James Webb Space Telescope’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) have coronagraphic capabilities which helped it directly observe the Earth-size rocky planet, formally known as LHS 475 b.

The planet's spectrograph couldn't definitively identify its atmospheric composition, however, researchers were able to confirm the absence of Methane and other hydrocarbons. They also observed that an atmosphere composed entirely of carbon dioxide is plausible, as its signature might appear as a flat or featureless spectrum with the current spectrographic capabilities.

With current technology, Webb can detect life-marker elements like Methane, but the mere presence of such elements doesn’t translate to the planet’s habitability. More advanced instruments are needed to draw more definitive conclusions.

To push exoplanet exploration further, a new eye is needed: NASA's proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory or HWO. Leveraging the technology of Webb and the forthcoming Roman Space telescope, HWO will offer more accurate measurements, potentially distinguishing between types of atmospheric composition.

“The critical thing when talking about biomarkers is the ratios of these different signatures in the planet's atmosphere, as well as all of the other things that are going on with the planet, like its distance from the star, and the rate of rotation of the exoplanet,” says Dr. Amber Straughn, Deputy Project Scientist for James Webb Space Telescope Science Communications and Associate Director of NASA’s Astrophysics Science Division in an interview with Supercluster.

Dr. Straughn also added that the habitability of a planet is dependent on its host stars. The tighter habitable zones of red dwarfs mean that the planets in such zones are usually pretty close to the star, exposing them to extreme levels of X-ray and ultraviolet (UV) radiation, which can be hundreds of thousands of times more intense than what Earth receives from the Sun, likely rendering these planets uninhabitable.

“Not only the biomarkers in the atmosphere but also the host star is super important in determining habitability. A planet could have an atmosphere with things like methane or oxygen, but if the star is blasting X-rays, there's no way there's going to be life on that surface.”

The HWO concept aims to enable the highest precision exoplanet observations. In addition to the coronagraph, which blocks out starlight, a JPL team proposed a supplementary structure to achieve a one-ten billionth contrast ratio: the Starshade. This deployable, flower-shaped structure is designed to situate itself precisely between the telescope and the star, significantly reducing starlight before it reaches the telescope. The distinct design of the Starshade's petals is optimized to reduce light bending, producing exceptionally dark shadows.

Why utilize two starlight suppression techniques? The answer lies in the distinct advantages and limitations of both the coronagraph and the starshade that are largely complementary. This makes the combined approach in HWO far superior to one that uses either technique exclusively. In tandem, they can observe a spectrum from ultraviolet to near-IR without depending on emerging or untested technologies.

Advanced coronagraphic and spectrographic tools will enhance our understanding of planetary systems. One system that has captivated NASA and the wider scientific community is TRAPPIST-1. TRAPPIST-1 consists of 7 rocky worlds, and all of them hold the potential for water on their surface. Studies have suggested some could harbor more water than the oceans of Earth, either in the form of water vapor for the planets closest to their star, liquid water for others, and ice for those farthest away.

TRAPPIST-1 has been a prime observation focus for Webb and is anticipated to be a key target for future space observatories, including HWO.

The Habitable Worlds Observatory isn't just about exoplanets. As a large-aperture UV to near IR telescope, it promises a wide range of astrophysics research. It will capture the most detailed UV to visible images compared to any existing or planned space telescope. Its capabilities extend to exploring the lifecycle of baryons, probing the universe's origins by observing primordial stars and supernovae, modeling dark matter across galaxies, and mapping auroral activity on gas and ice giants within our solar system.

Continuing NASA's tradition for flagship astrophysics missions, HWO will not only complement research from telescopes like JWST and Roman but will also allocate half of its primary mission time to the Guest Observer (GO) program, which allows external scientists, researchers at public and private universities and institutions, and sometimes even the general public to propose observations for the space observatory.

The HWO project came together after HabEx (Habitable Exoplanet Observatory) was proposed as a top priority by the Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics 2020, a forum for long-term exploration the astronomy community will pursue. Rather than endorsing one specific proposal, the Decadal Survey urged NASA to merge key features of both HabEx and the proposed LUVOIR, the Large Ultraviolet Optical Infrared Surveyor. This fusion, now dubbed the Habitable Worlds Observatory, marks NASA's inaugural mission explicitly designed to seek life signs on planets outside of our Solar System.

NASA is now putting together teams that will reframe the goals set out by the decadal survey. It’s called the START team, which stands for Science, Technology, Architecture, and Review Team.”

“This will be a big team of scientists that get together and figure out how those high-level goals drive down into more specific goals; how those specific goals will inform what kind of telescope we need to build, with what specifications.”

NASA has invited 56 individuals from diverse segments of the scientific community, encompassing academia, government, and private sectors. These selected individuals will form the backbone of both the START and the Technical Assessment Group (TAG). While START is dedicated to refining HWO's scientific aspirations, TAG will explore various mission architectures and the technologies needed to realize those goals.

While NASA's current focus lies with the Roman space telescope, slated for a 2027 launch, the planning for the Habitable Worlds Observatory is in progress. “These specific goals laid out by START team will drive the engineering of the technology... That’s the whole process that’s playing out right now.”

Dr. Straughn also emphasized that NASA is intensifying efforts to avert substantial cost overruns and prolonged delays in their upcoming flagship missions, aiming to sidestep issues that plagued Webb’s development program.

Proposed during the 2000 decadal survey as the Next Generation Space Telescope, the JWST was envisioned as a revolutionary leap for astronomy. It aimed to do away with moving parts, embracing segmented mirror optics instead. Its development mantra was "faster, better, and cheaper," a slogan championed by then-NASA administrator, Dan Goldin.

Yet, the journey from conceptualization to tangible hardware was fraught with challenges. The scope and objectives of the JWST expanded, and its specifications underwent frequent revisions. The mission's ambition to incorporate nascent technologies, which were yet to be developed, resulted in delays and escalating costs. These setbacks not only hampered the JWST but also had ripple effects across other programs within NASA's Science division.

“One of the big lessons learned from JWST is when we started its development there were like 10 things we had to invent ... that caused a lot of the schedule delays and budget overruns,” says Dr. Straughn

“We're doing this mission completely differently.”

The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) will leverage existing technology to curtail the ballooning costs and protracted timelines typically associated with such flagship missions. This means HWO (and upcoming flagship missions) will only be commissioned once such advanced technologies are developed and matured.

Heeding the survey's advice, NASA established the Great Observatory Maturation Program (GOMAP). Tasked with nurturing nascent technologies, GOMAP will operate concurrently with NASA's present flagship projects. It will focus on several key early activities to ensure future flagship telescopes, starting with HWO, are developed on a predictable cost and schedule while minimizing the risks of overruns.

GOMAP will crystallize the HWO's mandate, further the technologies pivotal to its groundbreaking scientific contributions, and lay the groundwork for its long-haul readiness.

All these steps will be set in motion ahead of its actual development and construction, which will commence after Roman’s launch.

In contrast to the JWST, HWO won't be designed from the ground up. The foldable mirrors proposed by LUVOIR have already been tried and tested by JWST.

The advanced technologies integral to HWO's coronagraph will be tested and refined with the forthcoming Roman space telescope. Roman's Coronagraph instrument, set to be the most powerful exoplanet coronagraph ever launched, boasts the ability to detect planets nearly a billion times dimmer than their host stars.

“We already know about a couple of key technologies that we need for HWO and we are starting to work on those. The Roman’s coronagraph is being worked on by the JPL team. The folding mirrors and their stability are extremely important and we’ve achieved that with JWST’s mirror,” said Dr. Straughn.

“It is more stable than we planned and predicted, but in order to do exoplanet science, we need an even more stable mirror. One of our scientists is working on this technology, building an ultra-stable test bed. It's just incredibly hard engineering. But we’re already working on it.”

HWO's Starshade is also not new to development. It has been under the aegis of JPL for several years as part of NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration program, and its technical readiness parallels that of the coronagraph.

Dr. Straughn also mentioned that NASA will also roll out new management and scheduling protocols. The program will adopt a modus operandi akin to planetary missions, which have tight and limited launch windows that cannot be missed.

“We are going to take the sort of planetary science view of building to schedule. When you're sending a mission to Mars or to another planet, you have a launch window, and if you miss that launch window, you might have to wait another year and a half before you can launch.”

“We’re gonna have a schedule, we’re gonna have a launch date and if the technology problems come up, we’re going to have to reassess.”

The Habitable Worlds Observatory is slated for a mid-2040s launch and will be stationed at the Earth-Sun Lagrange Point 2 (L2) region, joining the ranks of the JWST and Roman observatories. Situated beyond the Earth, Moon, and Sun, the L2 point presents an optimal vantage point for space observatories. Its strategic location ensures that the Sun is always behind the observatory, enabling efficient solar power generation and offering an uninterrupted gaze into the vastness of space.

Taking cues from the Hubble telescope, which greatly benefited from servicing missions, the design of the Habitable Worlds Observatory will incorporate the feature of serviceability. The aspiration is that, by launch time, crewed missions to the L2 region will have become feasible.

“The Habitable Worlds Observatory will be serviceable and we are planning that from the very beginning. It's something that our astrophysics director at headquarters says every time he talks about it that we're gonna plan this one to be serviceable.”

NASA's work with the HWO represents a dual commitment: uncovering insights about habitable planets in distant star systems while refining its own mission development processes. By integrating new managerial and developmental strategies, the agency aims to optimize the way flagship missions are designed and launched.

The ultimate goal? To reveal Earth-like habitable worlds, that may already harbor life.

SpaceX Set to Launch NASA Mission to Heavy Metal Asteroid

2023-10-03T17:00:00.000Z

The asteroid 16 Psyche may be the remnant metallic core of a failed planet. We’re about to find out.

Inside our planet is a core that — as far as we can tell — is made of metal and spins to give our world its protective magnetic field. Without the help of Jules Verne, however, we can’t go look for ourselves.

But an asteroid called 16 Psyche might be the next best thing — the suspected remnant core of a planet, out there floating freely in space. We’ve only ever studied it from afar with telescopes, but soon, a NASA spacecraft of the same name will launch on a mission to study this fascinating object up close for the first time.

“We think Psyche may be the core of a body that had its outside stripped off,” says Ben Weiss at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Deputy Principal Investigator on Psyche. “So it’s potentially an opportunity to visit an exposed planetary metallic core.”

Psyche will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida on October 12th. It will then take nearly six years to traverse some 4 billion kilometers to its target using an ion thruster, arriving in August 2029, where it will enter orbit around the potato-shaped object some 280 kilometers wide at its longest point. The Supercluster team will be on-site at Kennedy Space Center for liftoff.

The launch of the mission was moved off its original October 5th date due to an issue with the spacecraft. During routine pre-flight tests, engineers noticed that the settings used to operate the thrusters were incorrect. "The change allows the NASA team to complete verifications of the parameters used to control the Psyche spacecraft’s nitrogen cold gas thrusters," said a statement from NASA. "These thrusters are used to point the vehicle in support of science, power, thermal, and other demands, such as spacecraft orientation and momentum management."

Radar observations of Psyche, which orbits in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, show that it is extremely dense and more reflective than other asteroids. This means it might be rich in metal, with 40 to 60% of its bulk thought to be mostly iron compared to the fractions of metal seen in regular asteroids. What we don’t know is whether this metal will be mixed into the rock of the asteroid or appear as sheets or even lakes of metal on its surface.

“Right now it’s just wild speculation as to whether it’s gleaming, whether it’s a smooth surface or a rough surface,” says Weiss.

“We’ve speculated about glittering cliffs.”

The solar-powered Psyche spacecraft has two cameras and three instruments to study its namesake, allowing it to probe the asteroid’s composition, its surface, and even look for any evidence of a remnant magnetic field. “Maybe the body in its early state might have generated a magnetic field,” says Weiss.

The thinking is that Psyche might have begun life in the same way as Earth and the other planets, with a metallic rocky core forming and starting to pull in other material. At some point early in the 4.6 billion-year history of the solar system, however, when it was about twice its current size, Psyche was hit by a large impact. This may have torn away its still-forming outer layers and left only the metal core behind, or perhaps the object was destroyed entirely and re-formed as a metal-rich object mixed with rock.

“It was starting to form as this little baby planet,” says Stephanie Jarmak, a research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Texas. “As it was forming, it got so big and hot in the center that it condensed this primary metallic core.” Psyche also rotates on its side relative to the Sun, perhaps supporting the impact idea, with several large craters thought to be on its surface from remote telescope observations. Another possibility, however, might be that Psyche simply formed in a metal-rich pocket of the solar system, rather than undergoing this impact-formation scenario.

In March, Jarmak used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to study Psyche and plans to submit her results for publication in October. One of the goals was to see if there was any evidence of water mixed into the asteroid. “We’re trying to figure out if it’s this pristine sheet of metal, or if there are deposits of water-rich rocky material interspersed across its surface,” she says, which could tell us more about the object’s origin.

The high metallicity of Psyche has led to various overzealous headlines in recent years, some proclaiming Psyche to be worth “$10,000 quadrillion”. Such figures are speculative – we don’t really know exactly what Psyche is made of, while the prospect of mining asteroids for resources remains tentative at best. But that does not diminish the exciting interest in this object.

“Any of its components, in the far-flung future, would be useful for building components,” says Jarmak. “Even any of the [water-rich] material on Psyche’s surface could be equally valuable for fuel.”

The asteroid is part of a class of objects called M-type asteroids and, while it is fairly unique in this class, there are other similar objects in the solar system, such as the asteroid 216 Kleopatra. The planet Mercury also seems to look like the exposed core of a once larger planet. “It’s a weird planet because it’s basically a core with a little bit of rock on top,” says Weiss.

By comparison, Psyche seems to have its metallic core exposed on the surface. Studying it should hopefully teach us about planet formation, and not just in our solar system but around other stars too. “Psyche gives us an opportunity to start to understand how you could form something [like this],” says Weiss.

Much remains unknown about such objects. “We’ve sent spacecraft to rocky worlds like Mars, icy worlds like Europa, but this is an opportunity to go to a metal world,” says Weiss. “We want to know what it is like geologically. What does a volcano or impact crater look like on a metal world?”

At the end of this decade, we’ll find out. Get your asteroid mining picks at the ready.

An Increasingly Noisy Earth Is Drowning Out the Aliens

2023-09-26T22:00:00.000Z

Dashed hopes and false alarms are a way of life for SETI.

And life is getting noisier, as SETI scientists battle against increasing radio frequency interference (RFI) while straining to hear any whispers from possible technological life elsewhere in the Universe.

There’s so much radio interference these days that any detected signal has to be assumed to be RFI until proven otherwise. Scientifically, taking this skeptical approach is the right thing to do, lest you make a fool of yourself for prematurely declaring triumph in the search for ET. But emotionally, there’s always a tingle of excitement whenever a candidate signal is found.

Yet for SETI scientists, those tingles have been growing increasingly subdued.

“I think at this point, people rarely get excited, no matter what the signal looks like at the beginning, because there have been so many false alarms in the past,” Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute in California, tells Supercluster.

And RFI has been growing worse over the years. Mobile phones, passing aircraft, signals from satellites and spacecraft, military transmissions, electronic machinery, and even microwave ovens, all produce radio emissions that SETI has to contend with.

“There are so many transmitters now,” laments Shostak.

“All the radio spectrum is being used by more and more people.”

The prevalence of RFI means that SETI is picking up signals all the time. Usually, sophisticated algorithms are able to sift through the terabytes of data that are typically being collected by radio telescopes as they scan across billions of narrowband channels, and identify the terrestrial interference. When that fails, if the signal is still transmitting, then another simple check is a spatial one: if the signal is real, turning your telescope away from its apparent point of origin in the sky should have the effect of seeing the signal go away, to return when you point back at its source. If you can still hear the signal when turning your telescope off-target, then it must be local interference.

But every now and then a signal comes along that beats these filters. These false alarms can be a double-edged sword, says Shostak.

“On the one hand, false alarms are kind of frustrating because you spend a lot of effort on them and you get people’s hopes up, but personally, if I had to vote, I’d say that false alarms are valuable because they test the system.”

For one thing, the detection of false alarms shows that your equipment is working. In SETI that’s not automatically obvious; unlike radio astronomers who know to expect a signal from neutral hydrogen if they point at a galaxy, SETI astronomers don’t expect to hear anything, at least not right away.

Identifying the origin of false alarms and the patterns they leave in the data allows the filters to recognize them in the future, making the search more efficient.

The most exciting false alarms also often have an interesting story to tell as they become part of the fabric of SETI’s own mythology. So without further ado, here are six of the best false alarms in SETI.

The Spy Plane in Project Ozma

The very first false alarm came right at the beginning, during the early days of the very first SETI experiment back in April 1960. This was, of course, Frank Drake’s Project Ozma, performed on the 85-foot Howard Tetel radio telescope at Green Bank. Over the course of two months, Drake listened to two nearby stars thought to be promising candidates for hosting habitable planets (of course, in 1960, no actual exoplanets were known) — tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. While slewing the telescope between the two, Drake detected a powerful, pulsed signal at 1420MHz. The signal was there the next day too, but it became apparent that it was moving across the sky far too fast to be on the celestial sphere. Instead, it was a military transmission from an airplane at an altitude greater than any known plane had ever flown. Although it has never been officially confirmed, Drake likely detected a secret U2 spy plane a month before one was shot down over the Soviet Union, revealing its existence to the world.

A Signal from SOHO

Seth Shostak was at the center of a false alarm in 1997 that demonstrated how, despite best efforts, news of a SETI detection is always going to leak out.

It was June 24th and scientists at the SETI Institute were in the middle of Project Phoenix, the first survey to take place after private donations had resurrected SETI following the cancellation of NASA’s alien-hunting program in 1993. It was all routine until a persistent signal was detected apparently coming from the red dwarf star YZ Ceti, 12 light years away.

“It looked good,” Shostak recalls. “It survived all the checks that we made.”

Well, almost. The team was hurriedly ringing around other observatories, trying to get independent confirmation of the signal, when an on-off check suggested that the signal was still being detected six arc-minutes away from the star — a red flag that it was RFI.

But everyone was so excited, the information didn’t sink in.

In the middle of all this, Shostak received a phone call from a New York Times journalist asking about the signal. Shostak was puzzled since no announcement had been made, but the journalist was well-connected and had managed to find out through the grapevine. The signal turned out to be communications from the joint NASA–ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) mission, but it was an important reminder that no signal, real or false, could be kept secret for long.

“It’s safe to say the media will always get hold of it,” says Shostak. “The media are often on top of the story long before the scientists know.”

Microwave Misunderstandings

Sometimes, the RFI call comes from inside the house.

In the early 2000s, astronomers at the Parkes Radio Observatory in Australia began detecting puzzling pulsed signals that lasted just a few milliseconds and appeared when the telescope was pointed in a particular direction.

Radio astronomer Sarah Burke-Spolaor of West Virginia University led the initial investigation into these signals, which she called ‘perytons’. It became gradually obvious that they must be RFI because they were being seen all over the field of view rather than coming from one specific position. Furthermore, they tended to happen around midday, and peaked in July, which is the middle of winter in the Southern Hemisphere. These facts were significant clues: the clincher was when microwave physicist Jim Benford pointed out that the observatory’s visitor center was directly behind the radio dish when it was detecting perytons. The radio emissions were coming from the old microwave oven in the visitor’s center, every time the door was opened prematurely!

The Alien Megastructure Star

This was a false alarm of a different kind: not a radio signal, but an astrophysical phenomenon that was weird enough that it looked like it could be a techno-signature.

Astronomer Tabetha Boyajian of Louisiana State University noticed unusual dips in light coming from the star KIC 8462852. It seemed like huge swarms of objects were transiting the star, and at times the transiting swarm was so dense that it blocked 22 percent of the star’s light. Compare this to a transit by a Jupiter-sized planet, which blocks just 1 percent of the light.

Speculation was rife that this could be evidence for some kind of partially built Dyson swarm, or some other mega-structure. Ultimately, observations showed that the magnitude of the transits were not equal when observed through different filters. In other words, the transiting objects were blocking more light at certain wavelengths than at others, meaning they could not be solid objects. Instead, they are enormous, dense clouds of dust, although it is still not clear whether this dust is actually orbiting the star, or is in interstellar space and just happens to be crossing our line of sight.

With the mystery still to be completely solved, Boyajian’s Star shows that there aren't always quick answers, and it could potentially take years for some false alarms to be resolved.

BLC-1

The most exciting recent false alarm was BLC-1 (Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1), detected in 2019 by the Parkes telescope as part of the Breakthrough Listen SETI search. Signals were observed apparently coming from Proxima Centauri, which is the closest star to our Solar System. What’s remarkable is that BLC-1 passed all the tests that are meant to filter out RFI, including the on-off test.

When a particularly compelling signal comes along, it gets assigned to a small group of Breakthrough Listen scientists to ‘red team’ it, or in other words try and disprove it. Normally they’re able to do this fairly quickly, but BLC-1 proved more resistant to being discredited.

“In the case of BLC-1, we red-teamed it for a couple of days and we weren’t able to disprove it, and that’s the point that it became a bonafide candidate signal,” says Andrew Siemion, who is Director of Breakthrough Listen at the University of California, Berkeley. This red teaming usually happens about once per year, which gives an indication of how rare strong candidates are. But BLC-1 was a tough nut to crack.

“It got to the point that we brought our entire team to bear in trying to understand what it was. That’s the only time that has happened,” says Siemion.

The signal had a characteristic Doppler shift, and the Breakthrough Listen team explored every avenue to try and explain it as RFI.

“We thought for sure that we would be able to ascribe the Doppler signature to the acceleration of some known moving object around the observatory,” says Siemion. “But we weren’t able to do that.”

Excitement began to grow among the team.

“The best way to describe it was that my excitement was oscillatory,” says Siemion, as he reflected on how things would look good, and then swing the other way, and then back again as options were discussed and ruled out. It was only when one crucial discovery was made that Siemion accepted that the signal wasn’t extraterrestrial in nature.

“When we found other signals in the data that had the same specific drift signature to BLC-1 but were clearly interference, I think that was, for me, the moment where the pendulum never really swung back in the other direction,” he says.

Ultimately, a study led by Breakthrough’s Sofia Sheikh concluded that the signal was being produced by the intermodulation of radio emissions from multiple clock oscillators commonly found in terrestrial electronics. But it was the first time a signal had passed all the regular filters that are relied on to weed out RFI.

Beating the False Alarms

As fascinating as the false alarms can be, SETI scientists would naturally prefer to avoid them altogether. To that end, Siemion and Berkeley graduate student Bryan Brzycki have come up with a way to test whether a detected signal really has come from deep space without having to resort to the spatial on-off test.

This has great advantages. You need to do the on-off test while the signal is still transmitting, which isn’t always possible if the signal is short or doesn’t repeat. The famous Wow! signal of 1977 is a good example of a short, non-repeating signal, and that is why we don’t chalk it down as a false alarm — we don’t know if it was.

With Brzycki and Siemion’s new method, the test can be done long after the fact (though alas, there’s not enough data in the Wow! Signal to further test it).

The new method takes advantage of the fact that filling the not-so-empty space between us and the stars is a fog of interstellar plasma — basically a sea of ionized atoms and free electrons. It’s turbulent and patchy, denser in some directions than in others. The free electrons in the plasma interact with radio waves passing through it, refracting the waves to differing degrees depending on their frequency. A narrowband signal will still contain some variances in frequency, and this interstellar refraction results in radio waves of slightly different frequencies arriving at Earth at slightly different times, prompting constructive and destructive interference between them. This has the effect of causing the amplitude of the signal to rise and fall, often rendering it too faint to be detected.

This effect is called ‘scintillation’ and to astronomers conducting astrophysical observations, it can be a headache. Brzycki and Siemion, however, realized that it could be a boon for SETI analysis.

That’s because the modulation that it imposes on the signal is an undeniable sign that the signal has traveled through interstellar space and therefore cannot be RFI. Brzycki has developed an algorithm to look for scintillation in signals to distinguish them from the noise of radio Earth.

“The effect that we’re looking for is that the signal is modulated by the plasma throughout the galaxy, and that would indicate that the signal is coming from far away and not just above or in Earth’s atmosphere from RFI,” Brzycki tells Supercluster. “There’s a lot of interference that we detect on a regular basis and really this is a way to differentiate and prove that the signal is coming from outer space.”

The method does have some limitations. The greater the density of plasma a signal passes through, the stronger the modulation, but that means it doesn’t really work for any signals from neighboring stars — we’d have been out of luck for BLC-1, for example. Brzycki and Siemion estimate that a signal would need to have traveled, on average, 10,000 light years to have a detectable modulation caused by interstellar scintillation. This distance, however, will vary along different lines of sight. In some directions where there is more plasma closer to us, the distance is reduced. In others, the distance would be greater.

Using the 100-meter Green Bank radio telescope in West Virginia, Brzycki is testing his algorithm by surveying stars in the direction of the densely packed galactic center, a line of sight along which are the most stars and the most plasma. He’s currently working on developing his algorithm further so that ultimately it can be used with ease by anyone in the SETI community. So long as the signal is continuous — either a carrier tone or a constant pulsing — the method should be able to identify it as interstellar in origin.

“This is the first time in radio SETI where we have had a potential way of telling the difference between interference and a techno-signature without spatial information for a one-off signal,” says Siemion. “Being able to intrinsically look at the signal and tell whether or not it’s coming from a distant source is a revelation.”

The algorithm will not be able to eradicate false alarms completely. Besides not being suitable for nearby star systems, it’s possible although unlikely that RFI could mimic the modulation produced by the scintillation. However, it should cut down quite drastically on the false alarms.

Now that SETI astronomers know what to look out for, the hope is that they won’t get fooled again.

Pristine Asteroid Sample Returns with 'Daredevil' OSIRIS-REx

2023-09-19T21:00:00.000Z

On September 24th the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will fly past Earth, to bring back pieces of an asteroid.

It will drop off a sample return container in the Utah desert in a highly choreographed operation, while the spacecraft itself speeds off to another destination in space.

OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) left asteroid Bennu after surveying the asteroid in 2018 and collecting the samples in 2020.

Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator, called the spacecraft a “daredevil” because of how close it came to Bennu during its orbit and its audacious but brief “touch and go” sample acquisition. It used a special collector that reached out and plunged its arm into the asteroid’s loose surface, grabbing rocks and pebbles before quickly moving away, like a cunning jewel thief.

Dropping off the sample return capsule from space so that it lands in a precise location on Earth — a remote area measuring 36 by 8.5 miles (58 by 14 km) — is daring as well.

"It's the equivalent of throwing a dart across the length of a basketball court and hitting the bulls-eye," said Rich Burns, the mission’s project manager, during a media briefing last week.

When it approaches Earth, OSIRIS-REx won’t slow down to release its cargo. If all parameters are met, when the spacecraft is 63,000 miles (102,000 kilometers) from Earth — or about one-third the distance from Earth to the Moon — ground controllers will trigger the capsule’s release. The capsule will hurtle unpowered toward our planet for four hours, then at 10:42 AM EDT, begin plummeting through the atmosphere at about 27,650 mph (44,500 kph).

Atmospheric drag will slow the capsule enough for parachutes to deploy, with the main chute unfurling about a mile above the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range. If all goes well, the capsule will touch down gently at just 11 mph (17 km/h), in a large unpopulated area. From entering the atmosphere to reaching the ground will take just 13 minutes, and a recovery team will be waiting to retrieve the capsule.

NASA will provide a live stream of the sample being delivered to Earth beginning at 10 AM ET on its website and Youtube channel.

Safety First

Of course, all the safety parameters must fully align before the capsule is released. Most important is OSIRIS-REx’s trajectory, which determines the capsule’s ability to survive the angle and temperatures of entry. It also must be precisely on target for an accurate landing, ensuring the safety of the ground crew on hand within the landing zone.

Controllers have been monitoring the spacecraft’s flight path, and performed a thruster burn on September 10th, putting it on course to release the sample capsule.

On September 17th, NASA’s engineers slightly shifted the OSIRIS-REx’s trajectory to refine the landing location. The spacecraft briefly fired its thrusters to change its velocity by 7 inches per minute (3 millimeters per second) relative to Earth. This final correction maneuver altered the sample capsule’s landing location east by nearly 8 miles (12.5 kilometers) to the center of its predetermined landing zone.

“We do have a ‘go no-go’ decision point,” said Sandra Freund, OSIRIS-REx program manager at Lockheed Martin, the company that built the spacecraft. “We fully expect that decision to be a ‘go’ at two o'clock in the morning local time on September 24th so at that point the mission operations team located at Lockheed Martin in Littleton, Colorado will be sending the commands to the spacecraft to start the sequence.”

If for some reason the landing needs to be aborted, the spacecraft will be diverted to an orbit that brings it back for another try, but not until 2025.

But if all goes well, about 20 minutes after releasing the sample capsule, the spacecraft will fire its engines to divert past Earth and head onto its extended mission to study asteroid Apophis. The spacecraft will then be christened with a new name, OSIRIS-APEX (OSIRIS-Apophis Explorer), and reach the asteroid in 2029. After its discovery in 2004, asteroid 99942 Apophis was thought to be one of the most hazardous asteroids that could potentially impact Earth. But that assessment changed as astronomers tracked Apophis, and now there is no risk of this asteroid impacting our planet for at least a century.

Studying Pieces of an Asteroid

The OSIRIS-REx sample return container will be sent to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston to be studied in a new state-of-the-art curation facility and laboratory, which replaced the original Lunar Receiving Lab which housed the samples of Moon rocks brought back by the Apollo astronauts. After the initial study, Lauretta said a briefing is already scheduled for October 11th to share the first findings. Portions of the asteroid samples will also be shared with researchers around the world.

While Japan's space agency, JAXA, has retrieved asteroid samples twice, from Itokawa and Ryugu, this is the first asteroid sample return mission for NASA. But OSIRIS-REx’s sample is the largest sample collected from beyond the orbit of the Moon. Mission scientists estimate there is about a cup of rocky material on board — about 8.8 ounces, or 250 grams — collected from the surface of Bennu. This ancient space rock — or "grandfather rock," as the team has been calling it — could provide clues about how the entire solar system evolved over 4.6 billion years.

“There’s a story these samples are going to tell us,” Lauretta explained. “We're going back to the dawn of the solar system and looking for clues as to why Earth is a habitable world, a rare jewel in outer space that has oceans and a protective atmosphere. We think all those materials were brought by these carbon-rich asteroids very early in our planetary system formation. Of course, the biggest question — the one that drives my scientific investigations — is the origin of life. How did it originate and why was the Earth the place where it occurred?”

Studying the Bennu sample could also aid in planetary defense. Astronomers estimate the 1,614-feet-(490-meter)-wide asteroid has roughly 1-in-1,800 chance of hitting Earth in the next 300 years.

Asteroid Autumn

The return of OSIRIS-REx’s samples is the beginning of what NASA is calling “Asteroid Autumn.” After the sample return in September, SpaceX is targeting early October for NASA's Psyche mission to a never-before-seen metal-rich asteroid. November brings the Lucy mission’s flyby of the small main belt asteroid Dinkinesh, and then it will go on to explore seven Trojan asteroids, a population of primitive asteroids orbiting in tandem with Jupiter. These asteroids are thought to be relics of the early solar system and fossils of planet formation.

Webb and the Great Cosmic Question Mark

2023-09-05T21:00:00.000Z

Now well into its second year of scientific operations, the James Webb Space Telescope is consistently providing stunning, jaw-dropping images.

With the team’s goal of publicly releasing at least one new image every week, there is now a wealth of JWST pictures available to peruse and enjoy.

“The James Webb Space Telescope has already delivered upon its promise to unfold the universe, gifting humanity with a breathtaking treasure trove of images and science that will last for decades,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, in a statement honoring the telescope’s first year of work.

But more importantly, the new telescope’s data has provided new and intricate details of so many different objects in the universe: stars, galaxies, black holes, and even distant extrasolar planets — those outside our solar system. With JWST’s crisp infrared spectra, more detailed information can be garnered than ever before.

Already, the JWST has confirmed the distances of some of the farthest galaxies ever observed, discovered the earliest, most distant supermassive black holes, and determined the compositions of planetary atmospheres with more detail than previous telescopes. JWST has also revealed the chemical makeup of stellar nurseries and protoplanetary disks, detecting water, organic carbon-containing molecules, and more. Already, hundreds of scientific papers have been published with JWST data, some answering longstanding questions — while others have raised new questions.

Let’s take a look at just a few recent images and what we’ve learned compared to previous telescopes:

Here’s an eerie new look at a familiar object: The Pillars of Creation. Made famous by the 1995 image from the Hubble Space Telescope, the pillars are just a small region within the massive Eagle Nebula, which lies 6,500 light-years away. With its enhanced infrared vision, JWST has been able to peer more deeply into the gas and dust of this iconic region of space. This image combines data from two cameras aboard JWST, the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). With this combined data, more colorful stars show up within and behind the dust and gas. Near-infrared light reveals thousands of newly formed stars (look for bright orange spheres that lie just outside the dusty pillars), while the mid-infrared light shows more dust — especially above the pillars, which can be seen in orange.

But within the pillars, newly formed stars can be seen, especially at the top edges of the pillars, which show up in a deep red. Scientists say these stars are quite active, and they periodically send out supersonic jets that can interact within clouds of material, creating almost lava-like regions within the pillars. These regions in the pillars have never been seen before in this kind of detail. These young stars are estimated to be only a few hundred thousand years old and will continue to form for millions of years.

In December of 2022 when we talked with Mark McCaughrean, who is the European Space Agency’s Senior Advisor for Science & Exploration and part of JWST’s Science Working Group, he had just received the raw data from JWST of an object he has long been interested in, the Herbig-Haro 211 system. We now have the stunning processed image.

The Herbig-Haro 211 system is a still-forming protostar, and like the new stars in the Pillars of Creation, it is spouting supersonic jets. Herbig-Haro 211 is one of the youngest stars known to scientists, thought to be only a few thousand years old.

Since new stars are often enshrouded in gas and dust, it makes it difficult for them to be seen from Earth. Herbig-Haro 211 is closer than the Pillars of Creation (about 1,000 light-years away from Earth), so JWST can see more details of these jets. This image provides a glimpse at five to ten times higher resolution than any previous observations of Herbig-Haro 211. The jets look somewhat like lightsabers and stretch for several light-years. Combining data from NIRCam and the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) reveals an array of bow shocks along the jets, and provides unprecedented insights into protostellar dynamics, according to the scientists.

In a new paper published in Nature, McCaughrean and lead author Tom Ray said that the JWST data shows that the jets primarily consist of slowly moving molecular beams, as opposed to more mature stars that emit jets of atoms and ions. This is contrary to what astronomers thought before, and Ray said that how such beams are produced without the added ingredients of atoms and ions is currently a mystery.

While JWST can peer into the cosmic depths, it can also look closer to home. This new image of Saturn has the iconic rings glowing in infrared like never before. Saturn itself appears extremely dark at this infrared wavelength because the methane gas in the atmosphere absorbs almost all the sunlight falling on the atmosphere. However, the icy and rocky rings stay relatively bright. The particles in the rings range in size from smaller than a grain of sand to some that are as large as mountains on Earth. This image was taken with the NIRCam instrument.

This capture is part of a series of very deep exposures of Saturn, designed to test the telescope’s capacity to detect faint moons around the planet, contrasting with its bright rings. While details of the rings can be seen, look closer to see several of the planet’s moons: Dione, Enceladus, and Tethys. Scientists are looking to get more details on the orbital characteristics of the known and newly discovered moons which could help put together a more complete picture of the current Saturn system.

Even though Saturn appears dark here, the underlying data provides some surprising and unexpected details. This is the first time that the planet’s atmosphere has been seen with such clarity at this wavelength (3.23 microns), which shows less of the usual stripes and more of the aerosols high above the clouds, which astronomers are still studying. They said this new image of Saturn is just a hint at what JWST will add to Saturn’s story in the coming years as the science team delves deep into the data.

Perhaps you won’t recognize this object, as the new JWST image of the Ring Nebula looks almost nothing like pictures from other telescopes.

“When we first saw the images, we were stunned by the amount of detail in them,” said astronomer Roger Wesson from Cardiff University, in a recent NASA blog post. “The bright ring that gives the nebula its name is composed of about 20,000 individual clumps of dense molecular hydrogen gas.”

The MIRI instrument reveals approximately ten arcs in the outer regions of the nebulae’s ring. Outside the ring are strange “spikes” pointing directly away from the central star, which show up prominently here, but were only faintly visible in Hubble Space Telescope images.

“These arcs must have formed about every 280 years as the central star was shedding its outer layers,” Wesson said. “These rings suggest that there must be a companion star in the system, orbiting about as far away from the central star as Pluto does from our Sun. As the dying star was throwing off its atmosphere, the companion star shaped the outflow and sculpted it. No previous telescope had the sensitivity and the spatial resolution to uncover this subtle effect.”

The MIRI image also provides a completely different view of the nebula’s central region. Here it looks like a pair of red lips, as opposed to the blue ocean-like view in this Hubble image, below:

Perhaps the strangest image we’ve seen from JWST comes in the form of a question … a question mark, to be exact. Hidden within a much larger composite image from the telescope showing a tightly bound pair of young stars known as Herbig-Haro 46/47, is a strange configuration that looks like a question mark in space. Really.

"The aliens know we've found them and now they're just messing with us," one user on Reddit wrote.

So, what exactly is this question mark? Astronomers don’t yet know (and they are obviously more focused on the primary target of the image) but several theories have emerged.

Perhaps it is a pair of interacting galaxies that just happens to form a question mark shape because of the tidal interaction between the galaxies? or it could be just a chance alignment of 2 or 3 galaxies as seen from the telescope’s vantage point.

But finding this object makes us wonder about what other unusual objects are still out there, just waiting to be discovered with the James Webb Space Telescope.

India Takes the Lead in Global Race to the Moon

2023-08-29T17:00:00.000Z

Several nations, and a few audacious private companies, are now vying for a place on the Moon.

But not just any region of the lunar surface: the prized South Pole. The discovery of water ice in the shadowed craters of this area makes it a prime candidate for permanent human presence. Yet, the very attributes that make this zone so appealing also render it challenging for landings, with its mountainous regions and uneven terrain.

On August 23, 2023, India's Chandrayaan-3 mission defied these challenges and successfully landed near the lunar south pole, becoming the first such spacecraft to do so. With this accomplishment, India joins an elite club of lunar landing veterans: the United States, Soviet-era Russia, and China.

The genesis of India’s lunar exploration program, Chandrayaan, traces back to 1999 when the Indian Academy of Sciences first proposed the concept of a scientific lunar mission. Bolstered by support from the Astronautical Society of India and backed by government funding, ISRO launched its inaugural mission to the Moon in October 2008, Chandrayaan-1. Its primary mission was to meticulously survey the lunar landscape, and map its topography and chemical makeup, with a keen interest in the south pole. A year into the mission, NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument aboard the orbiter confirmed the existence of water ice in the permanently shadowed regions by producing the first high-resolution map of minerals.

Chandrayaan's mission secured its place in history by playing a fundamental role in this key discovery.

The country’s growing space ambitions gave rise to the Chandrayaan-2 mission, initially envisaged as a collaborative venture between India and Russia where ISRO would develop an orbiter and a rover while Roscosmos would provide a lunar lander. However, persistent delays on the Russian front, exacerbated by the Phobos-Grunt mission failure on Mars, nudged India toward domestic development of the lunar lander.

Despite setbacks and increasing costs, Chandrayaan-2 was successfully launched in August 2019. The mission consisted of an orbiter, a lander named Vikram, and a rover dubbed Pragyan. The mission progressed without a hitch as it entered lunar orbit and deployed the orbiter, aided by Earth’s gravity assist. However, during Vikram’s powered descent down to the surface, it deviated from its intended trajectory due to a software glitch and crash-landed on the Moon.

Nevertheless, the lessons learned from Chandrayaan-2 laid the foundation for Chandrayaan-3's resounding success, establishing India's role as a formidable player in lunar exploration.

Superpowered Competition

Approximately a month after Chandrayaan-3 launched from India, Russia launched their Luna 25 lander onboard the Soyuz-2.1b rocket from Vostochny Cosmodrome in east Russia. Weighing less than half of Chandrayaan-3, Luna-25 was able to directly reach the Moon via the trans-lunar injection maneuver and hence was slated for a landing before its Indian counterpart on August 21. However, on August 19, Roscosmos suffered an anomaly with the lander during a maneuver to move it into a pre-landing orbit. Luna-25’s primary propulsion system worked for 127 seconds, instead of the planned 84, according to the head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, entering into an unstable orbit and crashing on the lunar surface.

Luna-25 was Russia's first attempt at landing on the Moon since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The lander was renamed Luna to emphasize continuity with the Luna Programme, originally set in motion by the communist state in response to NASA and President Kennedy’s pledge for crewed lunar missions.

During its 18 years of operation, the program launched various impactors, orbiters, rovers, and sample return missions and accomplished a lot of firsts in lunar exploration. In 1966, Luna 9 became the first lander to successfully land on the surface of another planetary body. Months later, Luna 10 became the first artificial satellite of the Moon, having been successfully inserted into lunar orbit. As the program picked up momentum, Luna 17 and Luna 21 carried the first robotic wheeled vehicles — named Lunokhod — to explore the lunar surface. More complex lunar landers were launched which returned lunar regolith back to Earth. In 1976, the Soviet Union launched its last mission to the Moon, ending the Luna program as the country shifted its focus to long-duration human presence in low earth orbit.

It wasn’t until the late 1990s that nascent plans were drawn for a new lunar lander. Throughout the early 2000s, several additional efforts were made, including a collaboration with Japan on a now-canceled Lunar-A mission, and with India on the Chandrayaan program.

The failure of Phobos-Grunt to touchdown on Mars necessitated a comprehensive overhaul of the lunar lander, giving rise to a modernized design, once known as Luna-Glob. While initial blueprints included both an orbiter and a lander, the Luna 25 mission was ultimately distilled to a lander-focused endeavor, aimed predominantly at showcasing its landing capabilities. Following the setback with Luna 25, Roscosmos convened a commission to thoroughly investigate the mishap. Borisov had confirmed that upcoming lunar explorations would feature an orbiter, designated Luna 26, and a lander, Luna 27, slated for a 2027 and 2028 launch, respectively, however, it remains to be seen how much these timelines will shift.

While India’s Chandrayaan program was in initial stages and Russia was struggling to revive past glories, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) set up the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program (CLEP). The goal was clear: initiate robotic Moon missions, gradually transitioning to lunar human spaceflight. The inception of CLEP marked an era of achievements, with China launching its inaugural lunar orbiters, Chang’e 1 in 2007 and its successor, Chang’e 2 in 2010, both of which orbited the Moon successfully.

Three years later, China became the 3rd nation to ever soft land on the surface of the Moon with their Chang’e 3 lander. This achievement was historic; the world hadn't seen a soft lunar landing since the days of NASA’s Apollo and the Soviet Union's Luna Program in the 70s. The Chang’e 3 mission was further celebrated when its lander deployed the Yutu rover, powered by solar panels and radioisotope heater units (RHUs) to keep it warm during the lunar night. Due to higher-than-expected rigorous lunar conditions, the rover experienced a series of issues. The heat from the RHU did allow it to survive the lunar night, but the rover was immobile within 42 days of deployment. Designed to last for 3 months, Yutu operated for 963 days before mission control lost communications on August 3, 2016.

China returned to the Moon again in early 2019, securing another first as Chang’e 4 landed on the far side of the Moon. Initially conceptualized as a backup to Chang’e 3, the lander was reconfigured for the next mission upon its success. Chang’e 4 deployed the Yutu-2 rover which sported an improved design, incorporating the learnings from the previous mission. Powered by solar panels and heated by RHUs, the rover broke the lunar longevity record of 321 days, dethroning the Soviet Union’s Lunokhod 1.

Having twice proven its prowess in lunar landing technology, China pivoted its focus to lunar sample return missions. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Chang’e 5 landed at Mons Rümker, a volcanic formation located north of Oceanus Procellarum at the northwest part of the Moon’s near side. After touchdown, the lander’s onboard drilling and scooping mechanisms secured lunar samples, which were then housed in a specialized container aboard the Ascender. After touchdown, advanced drilling and scooping mechanisms secured lunar samples, which were then housed in a specialized container aboard the Ascender. This module was designed to propel samples from the lunar surface to an awaiting orbiter. After the transfer, the orbiter returned to Earth.

Encapsulated regolith was transferred to a reentry module which performed a skip re-entry as the capsule momentarily ricocheted off the Earth’s atmosphere before eventual landing in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region of China.

Following these successes, China’s next mission aims to be the first to return samples from the far side of the Moon. It is scheduled for launch in 2024 and is designated to land at the southern edge of the Apollo Basin impact crater located in the southern hemisphere of the Moon's far side.

Commercial Moon

The United States’ return to the Moon is in full swing with NASA’s Artemis program. Capitalizing on momentum from the successful Commercial Crew program, NASA has now engaged private entities to send small robotic landers and rovers to the lunar surface. The Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) contract enables full autonomy to private companies to develop and launch their lunar landers while providing NASA and other commercial entities access to the lunar surface for a fixed-low cost.

One such frontrunner is a Houston-based company, Intuitive Machines. The company is on the cusp of launching its Nova-C lander to the Moon onboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 by the end of the year as a part of a $77 million CLPS contract. The mission, dubbed IM-1, will target the Malapert A lunar crater, located near the Shackleton crater at the lunar south pole, and will deliver five NASA-centric and six commercial payloads. Based on technology inherited from NASA’s Project Morpheus, Nova-C is powered by a liquid methane-based propulsion system and utilizes off-the-shelf components for a lower build cost.

Using liquid methane adds further complexities to the mission, as the lander will need to be fueled during launch, and since Falcon 9 operates on aerospace-grade Kerosene (RP-1) and liquid oxygen, SpaceX will have to make special arrangements to fuel methane to the lander. However, once operational, Nova-C will be able to land over 100 kilograms of payload at the surface. Looking ahead, Intuitive Machines has already scheduled the second and the third mission for the Nova-C, both tentatively scheduled for an early 2024 flight onboard Falcon 9 and subject to change depending on the first mission’s outcome.

The IM-2 mission will see the Nova-C lander land near the lunar south pole and deliver NASA’s Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1) along with numerous commercial payloads. PRIME-1 will be the first attempt at harvesting ice from below the lunar surface using a mass spectrometer, demonstrating the feasibility of resource utilization.

The IM-3 mission will deliver various scientific payloads to Reiner Gamma, a lunar swirl located on the western edge of the Moon and is one of the most visible swirls from Earth. This unique landing site will help researchers learn more about this region and its radiation levels.

Another company eyeing to successfully land the first privately developed lander on the Moon is Astrobotic. Based in Pittsburgh, the company has purchased a ride on the inaugural flight of ULA’s Vulcan rocket to launch their Peregrine lander. The launch has been consistently pushed back due to delays in Vulcan’s development and the lander’s technical readiness.

Designed in collaboration with Airbus Defense and Space, the Peregrine lander stands 1.9 meters tall and 2.5 meters wide and can land up to 265 kilograms (584 lbs) of payload on the surface of the Moon. Its propulsion system is powered by hypergolic bi-propellants, negating the intricacies of mid-launch fueling.

The first mission, dubbed “Mission One'', will transport 28 payloads, with NASA sponsoring more than half through the CLPS contract. Peregrine is scheduled to land on Gruithuisen Gamma, located north of crater Gruithuisen at the western edge of Mare Imbrium.

This mission, regardless of the outcome, will provide invaluable data for the development of Astrobotic’s larger lander, named Griffin. Under the CLPS contract, Griffin will land NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER), designed specifically to map the distribution and concentration of water ice on the lunar south pole. The launch timeline is highly subject to change but is currently scheduled for November 2024 onboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy.

Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines won’t be the first private companies to attempt landing on the Moon. Israeli organization SpaceIL launched a privately developed lunar lander named Beresheet onboard the Falcon 9 in 2019 in partnership with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). The lander was originally developed as a part of Google’s Lunar X Prize contest and while the contest ended without a winner, SpaceIL’s initiatives were partially supported by X Prize and the Israeli government which allowed them to continue working on the mission.

Beresheet was on track to land north of Mare Serenitatis, located east of Mare Imbrium. However, complications arose when one of its gyroscopes malfunctioned during the landing sequence. Further complications ensued as a communication dropout with mission control prevented an immediate manual reset. By the time communications were reestablished, Beresheet had lost too much altitude to enable a soft landing. Ultimately, it crashed on the Moon's surface, reaching a final speed of 500 kilometers per hour (310 miles per hour) before impact. It was later revealed that Tardigrades were aboard the Beresheet spacecraft and may have survived their journey to the Moon.

Following the failure of the original Beresheet mission, SpaceIL decided to pursue a second attempt with Beresheet 2, slated for launch in 2024. Initially intended as a singular mission, this follow-up not only aims for lunar landing success but also fosters increased international collaboration with the United Arab Emirates.

Another previous attempt came from the Japanese company iSpace which attempted to land their Hakuto-R lander at the Atlas crater, located southeast of Mare Frigoris. Hakuto-R was also conceived as part of the Lunar X Prize. The mission was launched in December 2022 onboard the Falcon 9. During a five-month travel time, the lander traveled further than any privately funded spacecraft at over 1,400,000 kilometers (870,000 miles).

During the final moments of the powered descent, mission control lost communication with the lander. Further analysis by the team determined that a software issue caused the lander to incorrectly assume its altimeter data was faulty. The lander misjudged its actual altitude and kept hovering 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) above the surface before running out of propellant and plummeting uncontrollably down to the surface.

Despite the unsuccessful attempt, Hakuto-R became the first Japanese lander to attempt a lunar landing. The country’s subsequent attempt is imminent, with Japanese space agency — Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) – gearing up for its Smart Landing for Investigating Moon (SLIM) mission, scheduled for a September launch onboard Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ H-IIA launch vehicle from Tanegashima Space Center in Japan.

Once in orbit, the lander will coast for 3-4 months before arriving at the lunar orbit and attempting to land at a small lunar impact crater named Shioli, located within the crater Cyrillus, northwest of Mare Nectaris.

SLIM features a unique feature-matching algorithm specifically developed to precisely land on the lunar surface, with an accuracy range of 100 meters (330 ft). If the spacecraft nails a soft landing on the surface, it’ll not only demonstrate its precision landing capabilities but also make Japan the fifth nation to land on the Moon. The mission’s success will pave the way for the country's next lunar mission, Lunar Polar Exploration Mission (LUPEX), in collaboration with India.

Scheduled for 2026, ISRO and JAXA will launch an uncrewed lander and rover to further explore the lunar south pole. India will provide the lander while Japan will develop the rover and launch the mission onboard the H3 launch vehicle. LUPEX’s mission characteristics call for a precision landing which the lander will execute based on the very feature matching algorithm SLIM used.

Once on the surface, the rover will use its onboard drill to collect sub-surface samples of ice water which will be analyzed by a suite of instruments to accurately map the prized water available in the region.

The race back to the moon is heating up.

And while India may have just taken the lead, it will be tough for any program to hold pole position against all this competition.

Supercluster Explains: Hypergolic Propellants

2023-08-22T21:00:00.000Z

For the latest entry in our animated Supercluster Explains series we tackle a combustable, dependable, and highly toxic topic: Hypergolic Fuels.

Hypergolic fuels have a unique characteristic:

To burn fuel, you normally need ignition — like a match to a candle, or the spark plugs in your car. Basically you usually need a little bit of something very hot to get the fire going.

But some liquids, really volatile, toxic, corrosive ones, will burn without external ignition. You just mix the liquids together and voila — instant burning.

This is great for spacecraft because it's a reliable process. To start and stop the engine, you can just start and stop the flow of the two liquids. And you can keep them in tanks on your spaceship for years.

Just don’t touch them.

SETI Deploys New Instruments in Search for Alien Intelligence

2023-08-15T20:00:00.000Z

A woman sits on the hood of a car, headphones on, eyes closed.

The camera pans in toward her face as an otherworldly sound begins pulsing, louder and louder. In the famous scene from the movie “Contact”, Ellie Arroway listens for aliens by plugging a set of headphones into the Very Large Array. In real life, the “Wow!” signal was found by a telescope called the "Big Ear,” and our most powerful current search is called "Breakthrough Listen.” But are SETI scientists really just listening for strange noises on the radio?

Humans have pondered the existence of life beyond Earth since ancient times. In 60 BCE, Lucretius reasoned that “there must be other earths inhabited by different tribes of men and breeds of beasts.” A millennium and a half later, in 1440, Nicholas of Cusa theorized that the Sun, stars, and other parts of the heavens were likely inhabited. But another half millennium passed before realistic methods of communicating with them were proposed.

Marconi, Tesla, and other pioneers of radio technology soon recognized its potential for wireless communication between worlds. Indeed, Tesla was convinced he’d picked up broadcasts from Martians in 1899 (they may in fact have been natural radio signals coming from the interaction between Jupiter and its moon Io.) In 1924, when Mars was at its closest to Earth in over a century, radio operators across the world listened to their sets and picked up a variety of strange sounds.

But was it really Martians calling?

“There is no proof that the signals come from another planet,” said Marconi. “No one can say definitively that abnormal sounds on the wireless originate on the earth or in other worlds.”

This problem of distinguishing between technosignatures (true signals from alien technology) and radio frequency interference, or RFI, continues to be the major challenge for modern SETI. The existence of radio transmitters engineered by humans motivates us to imagine that intelligence elsewhere might have followed the same path. But those same human-made transmitters cloud our searches with terrestrial noise.

Filtering the Noise

In 1960, a 29-year-old radio astronomer named Frank Drake, who had been working at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, WV since obtaining his PhD from Harvard two years earlier, began Project Ozma, the first modern SETI search. Using the observatory’s 26-meter dish, Drake spent 150 hours scanning the stars Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani at frequencies around 1420 MHz. By comparing the signal from one feed horn pointed at the star being studied, and a second horn pointed off into space nearby, the Project Ozma radiometer was able to filter out local RFI, which would be likely to enter both horns with equal strength.

Next, the radiometer compared the signal strength from a filter designed to pick out a comparatively broad band of noise from the radio spectrum, with that from a filter designed to select a narrow (100 Hz wide) range of frequencies. Many astrophysical objects emit radio waves, including the vast amounts of hydrogen which permeate our galaxy, which radiates at 1420 MHz. Indeed, a year before Ozma, Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison published a paper, “Searching for Interstellar Communications,” which suggested searching for techno signatures at this “objective standard of frequency, which must be known to every observer in the universe.” Natural radio emissions such as those from neutral hydrogen cover a relatively broad swath of the radio spectrum, but only artificial transmitters are capable of producing signals narrower than a few hundred hertz.

The two filters employed by Project Ozma — a spatial filter to isolate signals coming from a particular direction in the sky, and a narrowband filter to select only engineered radio signals — still form the foundation of the majority of modern radio SETI experiments. However, despite reducing overall RFI volume, pernicious signals can still sneak through these filters. On its very first day of observations, Ozma detected an off-the-scale signal apparently coming from Epsilon Eridani. But after a few minutes, the signal disappeared. To try to confirm whether the signal was terrestrial or extraterrestrial, Drake pointed another small antenna (sensitive to a large area of the sky) out of the window of the control building. About ten days later, the Ozma radiometer and the smaller antenna both picked up the same signal. The team never determined its source, but it was consistent with a transmitter on board an aircraft that had passed close to the position of the star being studied.

By the time the Breakthrough Listen initiative was launched in 2015, radio telescopes, and the instruments attached to them, had made huge leaps forward. Breakthrough Listen deployed its first digital instruments to two of the largest steerable dishes in the world — the 64-meter Parkes telescope, and the 100-meter Green Bank Telescope (located just one kilometer from the telescope used by Drake for Ozma.) But in contrast to Ozma’s single 100 Hz channel, Listen’s backend is capable of digitizing billions of 3-Hz-wide channels at a time.

Unfortunately, artificial transmitters have also proliferated in the past five decades. At many of the frequencies observed by Listen, the instruments receive powerful radio signals wherever they point in the sky. A GPS satellite can be picked up by the antenna inside your cellphone, so when it gets anywhere near the direction in which a big radio telescope is pointing, the signal overwhelms the receiver. Bluetooth and wifi, satellites delivering phone and internet … noisy RFI is getting louder by the day.

But Drake’s filters can still help us find signals of interest. By pointing the telescope on and off its target star (either by using multiple feed horns or by physically moving the dish,) and by looking for narrow bandwidth signals, much of the interference can be rejected. Further, by throwing out signals that don’t change their frequency over time, we can even get rid of pernicious signals that survive the first two cuts. Any transmitter on a distant world would be expected to be moving with respect to our receiver in such a way as to introduce a drift in frequency due to the Doppler effect.

Promising Signals

“Seeing a drifting signal is unusual for most Earth-based transmitters,” explains Sofia Sheikh, a radio astronomer at the SETI Institute who collaborates with the Breakthrough Listen team. So in 2020, when Sheikh, and Breakthrough Listen summer intern Shane Smith, spotted a signal from the Parkes telescope that was drifting in frequency, and only appeared when the telescope was pointed at the star Proxima Centauri, they dubbed it “BLC1” — Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1.

“BLC1 had a few features that made it stand out as unique from the millions of signals that we'd seen before,” says Sheikh. “As well as being narrowband and drifting, the signal persisted over several hours, which gave us lots of data, and a high confidence that we weren’t seeing something like a fast-moving satellite. The signal only seemed present when we were pointed at Proxima Centauri, so it appeared to be localized in the sky.”

Ultimately, though, the team determined that blc1 was RFI. “The key to solving the blc1 mystery was associating it with a group of similar signals at other frequencies, which all had the same shape and general properties,” explains Sheikh. “These signals showed up no matter where the telescope was pointed, implying that the transmitter causing them was on Earth's surface and that the drifts were being caused by some sort of electronic malfunction instead of true motion.”

When weird signals pass through the filters, the search for lookalikes that are obviously RFI can be laborious. But artificial intelligence might help vet future candidates. “Machine learning algorithms are really good at tasks like classification, so an ML classifier could likely find those mirror signals much faster than we did with traditional database methods,” says Sheikh. “Alternatively, if there were a set of true technosignatures in the data and we only found one with traditional methods, an ML classifier could find similar true signals with the same technique.”

University of Toronto student Peter Ma, an undergraduate intern with Breakthrough Listen, has developed a tool to do just that. Using a machine learning algorithm known as an autoencoder, Ma studies the way signals cluster in “latent space” — an abstract representation of signal morphology. Ma has used this technique to implement what amounts to a “reverse image search” that can be applied to radio SETI data, seeking lookalike signals that can help confirm or reject a candidate. Ma has also trained his autoencoder on simulated signals, and then set it loose on 120 terabytes of Green Bank Telescope data. The algorithm found eight signals of interest that had been missed by the classical approach.

But might there be more effective ways of rejecting RFI in the first place? While big single-dish telescopes like Green Bank have some unique capabilities, an increasing number of SETI experiments are using arrays of dishes for their searches.

“Telescope arrays are perfect for localizing signals — and localization is a key feature of a true technosignature,” says Sheikh. “Arrays allow you to monitor multiple nearby stars at once with a technique called `beamforming’, taking data much faster than single dishes. And, if a signal is found in any one target, it can be compared to a simultaneous control sample by looking at the other beams on other targets. This is great for getting rid of any non-localized RFI (the majority of the signals that we detect in a SETI search), and extracting signals that could be true technosignatures.”

Chenoa Tremblay is spearheading this approach using the new “COSMIC” system on the Very Large Array in New Mexico. COSMIC — the Commensal Open Source Multimode Interferometer Cluster — combines signals from the VLA’s 27 antennas to form beams on targets of interest within the array’s primary field of view on the sky.

“Our SETI system on the VLA operates alongside regular operation of the telescope, without interfering with the scientists’ primary science goals and data. This is known as a commensal system,” explains Tremblay. “The advantage of this commensal operation is that we record and process a search for technosignatures whenever the telescope is operational. Many previous technosignature searches required dedicated time on large telescopes. This meant that surveys of a few thousand stars could take years of observation.

Now, with COSMIC, we are observing up to 3000 stars per hour and can operate when the telescope does; up to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The disadvantage is that we don’t control where the telescope is pointing or what frequency it is observing. As a commensal system, we are along for the ride.”

Systems like COSMIC, and a similar instrument deployed by Breakthrough Listen on the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa, are helping to sift through the RFI haystack more and more effectively, placing ever tighter constraints on the number and power of any extraterrestrial radio transmitters. But so far, a real technosignature remains elusive. Peter Ma’s eight signals of interest had gone away when the stars were reobserved. Ultimately, confirmation of a technosignature would require an independent team to point their telescope at the same target and confirm that the signal was indeed coming from that location on the sky, rather than from some pernicious source of local RFI.

But what if ET is using technologies other than radio? Although many modern SETI searches still use radio telescopes, a variety of other strategies are also employed, from looking for anomalous changes in brightness of stars that might indicate engineered megastructures in orbit, to searching for the characteristic signatures of interstellar laser communication.

Perhaps, though, they are not using electromagnetic waves at all, or have some technology that is so advanced as to be incomprehensible to humans. Be that as it may, we’ve sampled such a small region of our galaxy, over a short span of time, and a limited range of frequencies, that there is still much searching to be done using radio.

As Cocconi and Morrison said in their 1959 paper, “The probability of success is difficult to estimate; but if we never search, the chance of success is zero.”

For now, we need to keep “listening”.

Hanging Out in Japan’s Space Village

2023-08-08T21:00:00.000Z

“And this is the time I delivered 'unaju' to space.”

Noriaki Inami angles his laptop toward me and hits play. We both lean in to watch a grainy video clip of the classic boxed eel and rice dish majestically ascending into the stratosphere, the Earth’s cloudy horizon receding below. “We used a special balloon to deliver it. This was a promotional campaign to raise awareness about this company’s partnership with JAXA,” says Inami, adding somewhat suddenly, “Next year, it’s my turn, I’m going to space.”

As it turns out, Inami has been aiming for the stars for a long time. Back in 2005, he booked tickets to fly with Virgin Galactic. When the original flight was delayed, he spent the intervening years running his own space consulting business, INAMI Space Laboratory. Now, after a long wait, his launch date is approaching and he couldn’t be more excited — his business card lists his occupation as “future astronaut.” Still, he doesn’t see himself as a mere tourist. “I lost my leg a long time ago,” he tells me between sips of beer, “Here on Earth, I use a prosthetic, but in space things are different. I think it’s important to show how space can change our ideas about disability and that anyone can be an astronaut.”

In another context, meeting a space mogul scheduled to be a groundbreaking astronaut would be surprising. But, on this particular night, Inami fits right in. We’re at Cafe & Bar Nagareboshi, a monthly meetup hosted by ABLab, a membership organization formed to bolster space business in Japan. Held at a small bar in Tokyo’s Suidobashi district, the salon brings together an interesting mix of space enthusiasts to drink, chat, and connect over their shared passion for a space-bound future.

The Space Village

I came to ABLab through my work with the ARIES project, an ethnographic initiative tasked with exploring the many ways people and communities around the world relate to space exploration. As part of my research, I’m spending a few months in Tokyo to get a handle on what the Japanese space industry looks like as it steps into the new space era. Around the country, and especially in and around Tokyo, there’s a thriving ecosystem of ambitious start-ups, business networks, student organizations, and gathering spaces all working to put Japanese space operations on the map. Currently, this community is still fairly niche. In fact, many jokingly refer to it as the “space village” for how tight-knit and provincial it can be at times. And it’s true — after just a few weeks of hanging around various space events, I began seeing familiar faces, and becoming a familiar face myself.

The space village wasn’t always there; it had to be built. Like other countries, a lot of this process was structured by the state. Japan has a long, storied history as a space power — NASDA, the country’s first space agency got its start in the early 70s, and JAXA, its successor organization, has been a major partner n the ISS and other high-profile missions. In 2010, the agency even pulled off the world’s first asteroid sample return mission with its Hayabusa probe, an impressive bit of engineering and an important scientific milestone. However, in the past decade or so, there has been a growing emphasis on fostering a private space industry.

A turning point began with the 2008 Basic Space Plan, which outlined the government's intention to build a domestic market for space-oriented business. Following this, the Japanese Diet has passed a series of laws and frameworks aimed at making commercial space operations a more enticing proposition for local firms. For instance, the 2016 Space Activities Act streamlines access to orbit while the 2021 Space Resources Act provides a legal path for private companies to explore, extract and use various space resources. These laws, alongside a slew of government grants and other financial incentives, are hoped to double the size of Japan’s space sector in the coming decade, with a rough target of a $21.1 billion dollar valuation by the early 2030s.

The plan has met some success, Astroscale, headquartered in Tokyo, seems poised to construct and capture an anticipated market for orbital debris removal, while iSpace, another Tokyo-based company, is currently preparing a second lander mission to the moon. While these companies may be the most likely to make international headlines — after all, lunar landings, even uncrewed ones, are still quite the spectacle — the Japanese new space world includes much more.

My night with ABLab is a window into the neighborly side of the space village. My Japanese is conversational at best, and it only really excels if the conversation sticks to a select few topics, like what my name is and which objects are where. Still, mingling around the venue, I meet a wide range of people, each with their own connection to the cosmos. There’s a programmer creating blockchain tools for satellite data, an architect specializing in space station interiors, and interns from a small launch startup. Soon, the featured event of the night begins. It's a presentation and Q&A on space hygiene and cosmetics with Shintaro Teraoka of the Space Beauty Organization. He speaks of the challenges of living in orbit, how extraterrestrial environments could produce new beauty standards and the ways space-based research could make useful advancements for use on Earth. Everyone listens with rapt attention. Afterward, I make my way to the back of the room to chat with a pony-tailed engineer. He’s building an experimental propulsion drive in his garage. As we talk, I leaf through a large sheaf of hand-drawn schematics; while I can’t vouch for the technology either way, the dedication is definitely there.

The anthropologist David Valentine, writing on the early years of new space in the United States, observed the “remarkable solidarity” among space enthusiasts, noting that “young people who I saw enter the field as unknown volunteers in the first year of my fieldwork were rapidly assimilated… and came to be on first name terms with influential players in short order.” A decade later, my own fieldwork in Los Angeles found the industry had calcified to a degree; friendliness persisted, but the sector’s transition from fringe community to big business had instituted a more stratified social structure. In Tokyo, the community still feels small and fluid enough that a newcomer could easily find themselves sharing a beer with anyone, from a cosmic artist to a seasoned CEO.

From the Village to the World

While all this community and bonhomie is great at the personal level, there are frustrations, too. For all of Japan’s success in other industrial and technological fields, the country’s relatively small space industry is still trying to expand and find its footing on the world stage. There’s a general anxiety that if things don’t pick up, the space industry here may fall behind other growing space economies. Speaking to contacts around Tokyo, I hear a couple of different theories as to why. Some point to Japan’s more tentative approach toward entrepreneurship in general. And indeed, overall, the country’s economy is notable for producing fewer new businesses than its peers. Further, recent surveys have found that less than 8% of Japanese respondents felt their country offered good opportunities for startups, compared to nearly 50% in the US. As one observer put it at a space business happy hour,

“People here don’t want to take the risks, I know I don’t.”

Still, others point to a more subtle stumbling block: marketization. One hot day in July, I traveled out to Tsukuba, a city about an hour north of Tokyo that’s home to JAXA’s headquarters, to meet with a growing satellite communications company. The company’s chief technologist spoke of the pitfalls of being too reliant on the agency’s support. “Most companies here get their start contracting with JAXA — and JAXA has very high standards,” he explains. “So, companies get very focused on building these bespoke, perfect technologies and don't give a lot of attention to how to sell them, or how to make them scale.” I’d heard variations of this same sentiment numerous times in my few months in Tokyo. One night, I ended up chatting with a startup founder at Spacetainment Coffee, a space-focused co-working cafe in Harajuku. “We’re very good at technology, but very bad at marketing,” he told me with a soft, almost cautious tone, “we think if we build the best technology, people will come right to our door, but that’s just not true.”

Despite these struggles, enthusiasm about Japan’s future in space continues to rise and real efforts are being made to position the country as a regional leader. In early July, I attended Spacetide, a space business conference put on by a Tokyo-based non-profit of the same name. The conference is the largest of its type in the Asia-Pacific region and this year’s was the the most well-attended event in the organization's eight-year history. The schedule was packed with speakers from around the world — there were the usual presentations from Amazon and NASA — but also an intense focus on Japan’s up-and-coming market. Potential investors could see presentations from Warpspace on its novel optical communications constellation and from Elevation Space on its newly produced re-entry vehicles. Eager students and young professionals could network and hand out resumes at a special career event. As a recruiter from iSpace told me, “We’re getting so much interest these days, it’s hard to keep up.”

After a long day at the conference, I went out for drinks with the organizers and several dozen young volunteers that helped the event run smoothly. Once again, I found myself in a room full of tipsy energy; table upon table packed with people excitedly sharing their passion for space. The small trio at my table showed the diversity at the event — here was a worker at Elevation Space, a specialist in private space insurance, and a JAXA engineer who specialized in deep space exploration but dreams of starting his own business. Over several rounds of highballs, we have a wide-ranging conversation. We touch on the day’s events (exciting, exhausting), iSpace’s recent crash landing (disappointing, still impressive), and the possibility of extraterrestrial life (definitely out there, probably not here). Finally, we get to the space village and what it may look like in the future. The consensus was optimistic, if a bit wistful.

“In Japan, space is still a dream for a lot of people, but it can be more,” one tells me, “a few years ago, the village was enough, but it’s time for us to step outside and meet the world.”

Organ Transplants and Sushi Delivery From Anywhere on Earth

2023-08-01T20:00:00.000Z

Ever wanted sushi delivery from your favorite Japanese restaurant — in Japan?

How about a trip from New York to London in 90 minutes? Or a life-saving organ transplant delivered around the world?

Those are the promises on offer from hypersonic aircraft development, an area of research long-touted as the next revolution in flight, but where progress has been slow over the past few decades.

Now, several companies are hoping to redefine the field and deliver on some of those science fiction-like ideas. “It’s fundamentally shifting how goods and people move around the world,” says Skyler Shuford, co-founder, and Chief Operating Officer of the US based hypersonics startup Hermeus.

The current airspeed record is still held by the SR-71 Blackbird, a sleek hypersonic vehicle developed by the US defense contractor Lockheed Martin in the mid-to-late 20th Century. Initially flown in 1966 and retired in 1999, the Blackbird was able to reach speeds higher than Mach 3, or three times the speed of sound. Its top speed, Mach 3.3 or some 2,200mph, was hit in 1976.

But since the SR-71, development in such high-speed flight has generally seemed to stall. Yet for years, organizations have wondered about the use cases of hypersonic flight, loosely defined as above Mach 5.

“If you’ve ever flown from the US to Australia, you’ll understand the allure of hypersonic flight,” says David Van Wie, an aerospace engineer from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland.

“It’s an 18-hour flight. Wouldn’t it be nice to do it in a couple of hours?”

New Players

Hermeus, founded in 2018 and based in Georgia, is hoping to re-ignite the desire for hypersonic flight. It is developing an engine, Chimera, which can transition from a typical turbojet engine seen in jet aircraft to a ramjet, which uses the high pressure of incoming air to reach much higher speeds. In the SR-71, both the turbojet and ramjet remain active. “Our system fully shuts down the jet engine and turns on the ramjet,” says Shuford. “It allows us to push up to about Mach 5.”

Next year the company hopes to fly a vehicle for the first time, an uncrewed autonomous aircraft called Quarterhorse, which will use this Chimera engine. Within a few years, Quarterhorse will attempt to break the SR-71’s record. “The third vehicle is the one where we’ll be targeting the SR-71’s air speed record,” says Shuford.

Texas-based Venus Aerospace, founded in 2020, is opting for a slightly different design. Their engine is a “rotating detonation rocket engine”, which uses a circular wave of detonation to produce a shockwave and accelerate the vehicle.

“The goal of Venus Aerospace is to kickstart this whole hypersonic economy,” says Andrew Duggleby, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Venus Aerospace with his partner Sarah Duggleby. “From our point of view, it really has to start with a new engine.”

Their design, a “blend between a rocket and an airplane,” says Duggleby, would initially be deployed on uncrewed drones, with the company aiming for supersonic flight in 2024. But ultimately, like Hermeus, it has much broader ambitions for passenger flight in the future. “We’re redefining first class,” says Duggleby.

Around the World

At hypersonic speeds, a flight from Seattle to Tokyo would take barely three hours. Miami to São Paulo in Brazil would be less than two hours. And Los Angeles to Hawaii? Just an hour.

Such speeds do not come cheap. The only successful commercial high-speed airliner, the Concorde, had ticket costs of more than $12,000 for a supersonic return trip from New York to London. The Concorde operated from 1976 until 2003 before being retired, encountering cost issues following a fatal crash departing Paris in 2001.

The ultimate goal of Hermeus is a hypersonic passenger aircraft called Halcyon. Capable of flying above Mach 5, it would have space for 20 passengers, flying some 90,000 feet above the ground with a range of 4,600 miles. While supersonic flight remains restricted over land, Halcyon could service some 125 global routes that had adequate stretches over ocean.

“We’re really focused on major city pairs over water,” says Shuford. “If the regulations change, we’ll be happy to expand that market by five to 10 times.”

Tickets would not come cheap, however. “It’s not something for an economy-style seat,” says A.J. Piplica, CEO and co-founder of Hermeus. “It’s targeted at business and first-class travelers, roughly on par with business class today. That’s $5,000 to cross the Atlantic one way.”

Venus Aerospace has a similar goal with its Stargazer aircraft, intended to transport about a dozen passengers at speeds of up to Mach 9 or 7,000 mph at altitudes of some 170,000 feet. “At those speeds, you could go from the West Coast of the US to Japan in an hour, and have a meeting without jetlag,” says Duggleby. “If you wanted to, you could be home by dinner.”

Next-Level Deliveries

At hypersonic speeds, novel applications start to open up. The military, of course, is interested in such technologies. But there are more unique use cases. “I guarantee you there would be some restaurant in San Francisco that would love to get the early morning sushi delivery in Japan, 6 am, from the fish markets,” says Duggleby.

Another possibility might be Amazon-like deliveries across vast distances. “It opens up overnight package delivery anywhere in the world,” says Van Wie, perhaps delivering tools or equipment to a location where they are required urgently but otherwise unavailable. “It depends on what you’re buying on Amazon and how bad you really want it,” says Shuford.

Perhaps the healthcare world would take a closer look, too. “Getting first responders to where they need to be is a strong one — anything where time matters,” says Shuford, such as “the ability to keep a heart or a lung in the right conditions.”

That could lead to “a five to 25 times increase in the area of serviceable organ donations,” he says.

There is a long way to go yet. But if hypersonics can be proven to work effectively, and eventually carry humans, the potential applications will only grow and grow.

“This is a fundamental shift in speed,” says Shuford. “Leaving New York City at 7 AM, working a whole day in London, and then getting back home in time for dinner. That’s in the realm of possibility.”

Life Marker Phosphine Detected on Venus Again

2023-07-25T21:00:00.000Z

Phosphine is a potential indicator of life on our extremely inhospitable neighboring planet.

And now the researchers who stunned the scientific community in 2020 when they announced the detection of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus have detected it again, twice.

The team of scientists, led by Jane Greaves of Cardiff University in Wales, used the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawai’i to observe Venus’ atmosphere in February 2022 and May 2023 and found phosphine in both observing runs.

Speaking at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting (NAM) 2023 in the UK on July 6, 2023, Greaves said her team was able to look deeper into the Venusian atmosphere, finding traces of phosphine, even down into Venus’ clouds, lower in the atmosphere than previous measurements.

Phosphine was a completely unexpected finding on Venus, a place known to be bleak and uninhabitable. In one paper, Greaves and colleagues called the detection a “Wow! Signal in chemistry,” — referring to the famous “Wow!” signal, the strongest candidate for a genuine alien transmission.

Phosphine is made from one phosphorous and three hydrogen atoms (PH3). It is flammable and toxic. On Earth, it is often thought of as swamp gas, produced by microorganisms living in a very low oxygen (anaerobic) environment. On Venus, it is not obvious how it could be produced, which initially led some scientists to question the findings of Greaves’ team.

However, even though the phosphine was observed in low quantities at Venus, the fact that it has been found several times since its initial detection in 2017 infers the molecules are surprisingly persistent. Sunlight or the sulfuric acid in Venus’ clouds should annihilate the gas before it can accumulate. Repeated detections mean the phosphine must exist with some type of replenishing source, or there’s some odd type of unknown chemistry going on in Venus’ atmosphere.

In her talk at NAM, Greaves said the several detections over the last few years, from three different sets of instruments, and from many methods of data processing keep providing more and more clues that there must be some sort of steady, replenishing source.

The initial detection was based on observations at JCMT in 2017, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope in northern Chile in 2019. As we reported in September 2022, even though other scientists questioned the observations and conclusions, Greaves’ team detected the gas again in 2020 and 2021, both times using JCMT.

Additionally, Greaves said a reanalysis of data from NASA’s airborne SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) observatory, which was previously thought to show a non-direction of phosphine, in fact, does show phosphine in the data.

“By-passing some instrumental effects, we extract a detection with 6.5 [omega] confidence from the same data,” Greaves and her team wrote in their paper, published on arXiv. They also noted how observations during “mornings in Venus’ atmosphere” would show higher abundances of phosphine versus observations in the afternoon, since sunlight destroys phosphine. They said that all observations should be noted with a type of timestamp, which might explain differences in the amount of phosphine. “If the six available datasets can be reconciled in this way, further modeling of possible sources of PH3 (e.g. volcanic, disequilibrium chemistry, extant life) seems worthwhile,” the team wrote.

As they noted, one potential source for the phosphine would be active volcanism on Venus. While it has long been known that Venus is covered in volcanoes, whether any of them are still active has been highly debated. However, in March 2023, two researchers announced they had found evidence for recent active volcanos on Venus, using archival radar images taken in the 1990s by NASA’s Magellan spacecraft.

Adding to the volcanism possibility, another paper, published in 2021, concluded that volcanism could provide an adequate amount of detectable phosphine. The authors said that small amounts of phosphides from deep inside Venus’ mantle could be brought to the surface by volcanism, then ejected into the atmosphere in the form of volcanic dust by explosive volcanic eruptions.

The question regarding phosphine in Venus’ atmosphere is likely to be debated for some time. Astronomer Chris Lintott from the University of Oxford told Supercluster that more observations are needed.

“I’m shocked that that team hasn’t been awarded more time with ALMA; checking what’s going on with this more powerful instrument seems essential,” said Lintott, who is not involved with the Greaves team study. “The hope is to make a better case with new JCMT data that might show whether the phosphine appears in Venusian morning, evening, or daytime.”

But the debate continues, with some scientists still questioning the phosphine findings.

“Of course, even if the Phosphine is real,” Lintott said, “understanding what is causing it is another matter. My guess would be exotic chemistry in the atmosphere - but isn’t that exciting too?”

However, until a spacecraft can go to Venus to make in situ observations, the back and forth on this finding will likely remain. Even though only one space mission has gone to Venus in the past 30 years, the recent resurgence of interest in Earth’s closest neighbor has NASA and ESA committing to three new missions to Venus, all due to launch by the early 2030s.

NASA has DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble Gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) and VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topograph, and Spectroscopy), and Europe has the EnVision orbiter.

Beaming Harnessed Energy Back to Earth

2023-07-18T21:00:00.000Z

The Space Power Revolution

The future of clean energy is waiting for us in space. Up there, above the atmosphere, the shining Sun is illuminating our planet with unfettered light. If only we could harness it.

Now, thanks to several technological convergences, we stand on the cusp of being able to do so, with plans for fledgling Dyson swarms of satellites that will collect sunlight, convert it into either microwaves or optical laser light, and beam that energy where we need it, whether that be down to Earth, the Moon, or other spacecraft.

A Dyson swarm, which you may have heard referred to as a Dyson ‘sphere’ — although that evokes images of a solid structure that in truth would be unstable and unworkable — has its roots in Olaf Stapledon’s 1937 novel Star Maker. Stapledon envisioned planetary systems surrounded by “a gauze of light traps” that collected solar energy. Stapledon’s imagination inspired Freeman Dyson to write a more technical treatise on the concept in 1960, and since then the concept of the Dyson swarm has become part of the fabric of SETI and the lexicon of futurists.

In principle, a Dyson swarm isn’t particularly complex. The sheer unfathomable scale of it aside, it’s just a bunch of satellites with station keeping, loaded with solar panels and a means of beaming that energy to its preferred destination. While we can’t build a Dyson swarm (yet), the ability to launch fleets of satellites to form constellations in Earth orbit is not only feasible but is being improved on.

Progress has been especially rapid in the past few years. “Even just 15 years ago people thought this was pure fantasy,” says Stephen Sweeney, who is a Professor of Photonics at the University of Glasgow, in an interview with Supercluster.

It’s all starting to come together because of the convergence of several disparate technologies and the pressure to come up with solutions to the climate emergency that is accelerating all around us. The three hottest days in recorded human history were all in the past two weeks.

One key factor has been the emergence of the private sector as a major player in spaceflight, having reached LEO en masse, reducing launch costs and increasing accessibility to space. SpaceX has launched over 4800 Starlink satellites to date.

Another is the development of ever more sophisticated semi-conductor technology required for crafting reliable, durable, and highly efficient solar panels. The final and most crucial factor made its first baby steps earlier this year.

MAPLE’s Sweet Success

On January 3rd, 2023, Caltech’s Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD) roared into orbit on board a SpaceX Falcon 9. Among the three experiments it carries is MAPLE, the Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment, which is a prototype that future historians may one day look back on as the seed for a Dyson swarm.

That’s because MAPLE is able to convert solar energy into microwaves and then transmit those microwaves to a receiver that turns it back into electrical power. Sounds simple enough, but where MAPLE really made history was by beaming this microwave energy back down to Earth, where it was received on the rooftop of Caltech’s Gordon and Betty Moore Laboratory in Pasadena, California. It was only a small amount of power, mere milliwatts, but a startling demonstration of a concept first envisioned by Nikola Tesla.

Tesla wanted to eschew telegraph wires and find a way to transmit power through thin air. However, at the turn of the 20th century when he was conducting his experiments, radio technology was far too primitive for his ambitions. Today, of course, radio and microwaves beam power wirelessly all the time – whenever we take a call on our mobile phone or switch to Wi-Fi, or bounce communications off satellites, but in these, the transmission of information is the primary objective, and the power accompanying that information is rather low.

It’s one thing for MAPLE to transmit a few milliwatts to the ground, but if solar farms in orbit are to eventually replace fossil-fuel-burning power stations on Earth, the amount of energy they produce needs to get into the gigawatt levels.

Stephen Sweeney, who has been working in the area of wireless power beaming since 2009, sees the main obstacle to progress as the difficulty of scaling this technology. A single solar panel in space, with access to sunlight and no clouds in the way (unlike solar farms on Earth,) will receive a little over a kilowatt of energy per square meter. Current solar panel technology typically has a conversion efficiency of about 30 percent (higher efficiencies are being tested in lab experiments), so it might actually only generate between 300 and 400 watts per square meter.

Scaling that up, “You need a colossal amount of panels to get up to the gigawatt level,” Sweeney tells Supercluster. Not only would huge satellite constellations be required, but microwave transfer in particular would need enormous receivers on the ground. “The receivers need to be huge, on the order of 10 square kilometers — you’d have to build an artificial island to house them.”

Investing in the Future

In June, the UK Government awarded funding of £4.3 million to various universities and technology companies to address some of these challenges. Among them, researchers at the University of Cambridge as well as a Welsh technology company, MicroLink Devices UK Ltd, will receive some of the funding to develop lightweight solar panels that can withstand radiation in the space environment.

Solar panels are made from semiconductor materials, but “Semiconductors sometimes don’t like space because cosmic rays can cause damage,” says Sweeney. However, he points out that new materials that are not only flexible but perhaps better able to resist radiation are being developed. “There’s a whole range of completely new materials called perovskites that are very promising and cheap to make solar panels from.”

This recent British funding, coupled with the success in the United States of MAPLE, are both signs that the field is accelerating rapidly.

“The whole field is becoming more energized,” says Sweeney. “Groups all over the world, in Japan, the US, and increasingly more European initiatives, have all been looking at the possibilities of wireless power.”

Back in 2009, Sweeney was working with Airbus studying wireless power transfer via lasers rather than microwaves. Although lasers are more expensive than microwave equipment, and a cloudy day is enough to hamper their use, lasers do have their advantages for power transfer. They produce a much narrower beam, allowing the transmitter to aim at smaller targets. These targets might be other satellites or spacecraft, or a location on the Moon. On Earth, small and mobile laser-energy receivers could be transported to war zones or disaster areas to provide power where there is none.

Most recently, Sweeney has teamed up with a start-up called Space Power, with an eye on space-to-space energy transfer.

“The next step for space-to-space transfer is to figure out how to supply additional power to satellites in eclipse, to give them a boost,” he says.

When in the Earth’s shadow, satellites are not receiving any sunlight, and their power levels dip. The idea is to target their solar panels with lasers to give them a power boost, but ordinary solar panels are not optimized for laser light. However, future satellites can be built with this facility in mind. Space Power is designing a generic, off-the-shelf ‘plug-and-play’ system that can accept laser power and which aerospace companies can add to the satellites that they build. This could reduce satellite wastage, leading to fewer satellites breaking down or de-orbiting, and ultimately help manage the amount of space debris.

“We are looking to increase small satellite operating efficiencies by a factor of between two and five times,” says Keval Dattani, who is Space Power’s Director.

The Worldwide Energy Matrix

Another company, EMROD, plans to take the idea of power beaming a step further. With offices on three continents, they have partnered with Airbus as well as the European Space Agency and have plans for wireless power grids both on Earth and in space. In particular, EMROD plans a Worldwide Energy Matrix, which would be a satellite constellation that relays energy wirelessly across low-Earth orbit and to and from Earth. The energy wouldn’t necessarily have to be generated in space; to avoid having to lay cables on the ocean floor, energy from offshore wind farms could be beamed into space, relayed by the Worldwide Energy Matrix or something similar, and then redistributed to where it is needed.

“I think that’s a good way of looking at it,” says Sweeney on the idea of an energy grid in space. “Having an effective way of capturing energy in space and delivering it somewhere, whether that be Earth, or the Moon, or other space vehicles, is key. Once you have that space-based power station, a lot of other stuff will naturally follow.”

And that ‘other stuff’ could be the space dreams of Wernher von Braun, Freeman Dyson, Gerard O’Neill, and a legion of other futurists who have depicted a significant human presence in space, with space stations, moonbases, asteroid mining, and regular spaceflight. “For us, this is a neat solution with long-term benefits, not least for lunar outposts and asteroid mining, but back here on Earth too,” says Dattani.

Perhaps, too, constellations of solar farms could be the first baby steps along the road to eventually constructing a Dyson swarm.

It’s not all positive. If Starlink, OneWeb, and other emerging constellations of communications satellites threaten ground-based astronomy, then constellations of solar farms covering the sky could kill it off entirely. Even if space-to-space power transfer makes space telescopes even more viable, that still leaves the billions of people on Earth without access to an unspoiled night sky.

There’s also the issue of security. We’ve seen during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine how energy supplies have been targeted, from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. A fleet of unprotected solar-power spacecraft would make an easy and vulnerable target for the anti-satellite weapons currently being developed and tested. One solution might be to make these orbiting solar farms modular, so even if some modules are destroyed, either deliberately or by accident, the other modules continue to operate.

The End for Fossil Fuels?

Because of the security fears and the huge engineering challenge of constructing a space-based energy industry, it’s unlikely that solar farms in space will replace all ground-based energy production in the foreseeable future. Wind, wave, geothermal, and solar energy on Earth will all still be needed, while nuclear scientists live in the perpetual hope that clean fusion will be able to replace toxic fission in producing significant contributions to our energy grids by 2050. Coincidentally this is the same date that the UK Government is hoping that space-based solar power will be generating 10 gigawatts of energy to the national grid, which is about a quarter of the UK’s current peak electricity demand. Other countries are aiming for similar gains from investing in space-based solar power.

As our planet warms, the hope is that solar energy from space, coupled with renewables on Earth and the large-scale development of fusion reactors, will hasten the end of fossil fuels. As anthropocentric global warming breaks new records for temperatures seemingly every year now, ice caps shrink at an ever-alarming rate and delicately balanced habitats become increasingly uninhabitable, new solutions are desperately needed.

You should expect wireless energy transfer to be coming to a home near you soon. Ground-to-ground wireless transfer is racing ahead, with innovations on the horizon including the ability to charge your car by laser as you drive on the road, meaning smaller batteries and less battery wastage, and to charge your mobile phone from anywhere in a room via laser. Scientists are now working to develop this technique so that it doesn’t harm our eyes should we accidentally look at the laser. Point-to-point microwave energy transmission between relays on Earth is also being developed with safety cut-off features should someone unwittingly get caught in the beam.

Large-scale or small, it seems that the wireless energy revolution is here. If successful, not only could it make for a greener planet Earth, it could help bootstrap our way to an orbital economy, based on the Moon and beyond, and start to look to the stars.

Building a complete Dyson swarm is a long, long way off if it could ever happen — Freeman Dyson casually suggested getting the raw materials for it by dismantling Jupiter.

Considering that even reaching gigawatt levels of energy production is going to be a stretch, then the concept of a complete Dyson swarm remains far-fetched. However, solar farming in Earth orbit could do us the world of good.

Supercluster Explains: Spacesuits

2023-07-11T19:00:00.000Z

Space is a cold-blooded killer.

It’s the largest thing in existence, and it wants you dead. We technically live in it, and it wants you dead. The ways one could meet an untimely demise in the vastness of space can be assorted and ultimately macabre. If you’re living the dream in orbit, without a spacesuit, you’ve only got a couple of minutes to beam that selfie back to Earth.

Always wear your spacesuit, your personal spacecraft.

Tell a friend. Save a life.

And don't forget to visit the interactive Astronaut Database, the most complete record of spacesuit wearers.

Gravitational Lensing Discovers "Behemoth" Black Hole

2023-06-30T10:00:00.000Z

Earlier this year a team of astronomers discovered a supermassive Black hole 30 billion times the size of the Sun.

This makes this particular black hole, discovered at the center of galaxy Abell 1201 by researchers from Durham University, led by Dr. James Nightingale, one of the largest currently known to science. But It’s not the size of this black hole that makes the work of Dr. Nightingale and his colleagues significant. It’s how they found it.

For the first time, gravitational lensing was used to detect and measure a black hole — and there are major implications for the future of astronomy.

To understand gravitational lensing we need to understand one of Albert Einstein’s major insights. According to his theory of general relativity, space and time are not two separate entities, but a single four-dimensional manifold called spacetime. And spacetime — often called the “fabric” of our universe — warps and distorts in the presence of massive objects. Gravity, in this picture, is simply a function of the way this “warping” affects the movement of objects as they travel along these distorted spacetime paths.

On smaller scales these distortions give us the orbits of planets, for example. But on huge scales other strange phenomena emerge.

SPACETIME LENSES

Gravitational lensing occurs when a massive object curves spacetime to such an extent that light emitted from behind the object bends around it. Often this lensing produces a magnifying effect, allowing astronomers to see distant galaxies in more detail. And we can use the lensing effect to calculate the mass of the distorting object itself, since the amount of curvature produced is in proportion to the object’s mass. There are many forms this lensing effect can take. It can double an image, or form what is called a ‘gravitational arc,’ and in the presence of a particularly large mass the distorted light forms a ring, called an Einstein Ring.

The team at Durham wanted to understand the source of a gravitational arc in the galaxy Abell1201, first identified with the Hubble Space Telescope in 2003. The distortion was unaccounted for by the visible matter in Abell1201, which meant the sources of the lensing were either a concentration of dark matter, or a black hole. If a black hole is inactive — that is, it is not actively accreting — then it has to be detected indirectly. This is, however, difficult for distant objects.

The application of gravitational lensing thus overcomes some of the major obstacles in the study of black holes, as lead researcher Dr. James Nightingale tells Supercluster. “Techniques for determining black hole masses face limitations, as they are confined to nearby galaxies with restricted mass ranges (e.g., through the velocities of stars,) or are applicable only to "active" black holes, which represent less than 1% of all galaxies, and restrict the range of masses that can be studied.”

This poses a question. If gravitational lensing lets us study a whole range of black holes normally outside detection and in the far reaches of the galaxy, why is this the first time it has been used? The answer lies in the particular structure of Abell1201.

According to Dr. Nightingale: “The reason gravitational lensing has not previously facilitated black hole detection is simply because we had not encountered a lens system where the lensed background source's light passed close enough to the black hole at the center of a lens galaxy. The occurrence of such a situation, as in the case of Abell 1201, relies on a series of rare and fortuitous circumstances, including a precise alignment of the lens galaxy relative to the source.”

In 2019 the world was captivated by the first published images of a black hole, at the center of the galaxy 87 Messier, by the Event Horizon Telescope.

Dr. Nightingale clarified for us that while these images were also aided by gravitational lensing, his team’s approach is unique. “One thing to note is that the [87 Messier] images are technically “gravitational lensing,” as the light of material behind the black holes being imaged is being lensed to form these images. Abell 1201 is the first use of gravitational lensing where two galaxies, separated by billions of light years, are used.”

IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE STUDY

To test their theory the team at Durham University took the image of the gravitational arc and ran several simulations where they varied the mass of black holes. The simulations also tested the likelihood the arc was caused solely by dark matter. After ruling out other scenarios, the simulations were able to prove that an ultramassive blackhole was the source of the gravitational arc in Abell 1201.

Gravitational lensing was first experimentally confirmed in 1979. Dennis Walsh, Robert F. Carswell and Ray J. Weymann looked at a double Quasar called Q0957+561 A and Q0957+561 B. They showed that it was actually one quasar, whose image had been doubled by a gravitational lens. This not only showed that gravitational lenses were real, but highlighted their use in helping us develop an accurate picture of the universe.

Gravitational lensing was also critical to the discovery of dark matter. Since it is mass that dictates how much light will bend, if there is a discrepancy between a lensing effect and the visible mass, we know there must be an invisible source of mass. As NASA summarizes: “dark matter acts like a cosmic magnifying glass, bending and amplifying the light from distant galaxies behind it.”

In addition to the work of Dr. Nightingale's team at Durham, there are ongoing efforts to use gravitational lensing to map the distribution of dark matter in the universe. There is also an current research project by University Chicago and Fermilab scientists to examine light from just after the big bang, light which they can examine and analyze by looking for gravitational lensing effects.

The Durham team’s research has indicated ways to locate distant inactive black holes using gravitational lensing. This point they highlight in their article’s conclusion: “This would enable the masses of non-active black holes to be measured at high redshifts…With over 100,000 strong lenses set to be observed in the next decade, it is inevitable that more SMBH measurements via strong lensing will be made.”

The door is now open to studying the largest black holes in the universe. Dr. Nightingale told Supercluster that “While gravitational lensing events are rare, they are most prevalent in the most massive galaxies that host the largest black holes.” This means, he explained, that “lensing effectively "selects for" the largest black holes, enabling us to focus our investigations on these astronomical giants.”

This allows us to study the formation and details of one of the universe’ most intriguing objects and give us deeper insight into the early formation of the universe’s galaxies. As a series of massive telescopic projects — Euclid, LSST, SKA — go online in the coming years, our ability to detect and study a variety of non luminous cosmological objects will be of increasing importance for enhancing our understanding of the universe.

“The future of this methodology holds the potential to greatly enhance our understanding of galaxy formation in the early universe … providing valuable insights into the nature and characteristics of these cosmic behemoths."

The Science of Speed: Understanding Hypersonic Flight

2023-06-27T10:00:00.000Z

A scene in last year’s Top Gun: Maverick depicts Tom Cruise piloting a hypersonic aircraft called the Darkstar.

In the blockbuster film, the fictional aircraft successfully reached speeds of over Mach 10 — or ten times the speed of sound — before it disintegrated in mid-air. Back in the real world, however, the fastest a piloted airplane — one capable of takeoff and landing — has flown is Mach 3.3, or 2,193 mph (3,530 km/h).

This record was set by the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, way back in 1976.

But now a startup called Hermeus is looking to make hypersonic flight a reality for the rest of us, with the ultimate goal of a commercial passenger aircraft called Halcyon, and with a first flight perhaps as early as 2030. The company hopes to soon roll out a remotely-piloted prototype aircraft called Quarterhorse for testing, with ambitions for Mach 4 flight by 2024. For a company that was only founded in 2018, that’s a fast turnaround.

“We focus on using existing technology and materials rather than finding or founding new ones,” said Glenn Case, one of the company’s founders, and the Chief Technologist. “That means we are on the precipice of rolling out one of our first vehicles by the end of the year, heading towards our goal of radically accelerating air travel. Quarterhorse will enable us to de-risk the technology needed to build Halycon at a lower cost and without risking pilots onboard.”

Hermeus has another hypersonic aircraft in the works called Darkhorse, a hypersonic uncrewed aerial system (UAS) with multi-mission flexibility designed for defense and intelligence clients. The company brands Darkhorse as representing a major technological leap, providing a capability matched by no other country in the world.

And the timing is important. The development of these hypersonic vehicles has recently become a top priority for the US Air Force, for deterring the hypersonic weapons currently being developed by China and Russia.

Hypersonic So Far

Sustained hypersonic flight — or traveling faster than five times the speed of sound — has been a goal in aviation and for the military for decades. While rocket-powered missiles and space vehicles routinely achieve hypersonic speeds, hypersonic flight within the atmosphere in a crewed, winged aircraft has been problematic, despite years of research and test flights. The field of hypersonics has also faced decades of boom-and-bust cycles, with ups and downs in governmental interest and funding, ever since the U.S. started developing hypersonic aircraft in the 1950s.

The technical challenges of sustained hypersonic flight are vast.

Reaching those speeds — past Mach 5 (3,806 mph or 6,126 km/h) — means having air-breathing engines capable and versatile enough to power the aircraft from takeoff and acceleration through Mach 1 all the way to Mach 5 and beyond. During flight, those speeds produce metal-melting heat and turbulence capable of ripping an aircraft to pieces. But the rewards of hypersonic flight would be revolutionary: passengers could fly from New York to London in 90 minutes — twice as fast as the supersonic Concorde.

Hypersonic flight is not totally unprecedented. In 2004, NASA flew the X-43A hypersonic test aircraft up to Mach 9.6. This unpiloted test aircraft was initially boosted by a rocket before switching to a "scramjet,” a high-performance air-breathing engine, which takes in air from the atmosphere to help burn its fuel. But the hypersonic portion of the X-43A flights lasted only 11 seconds. It was a glaring demonstration that keeping an engine running at those speeds is incredibly challenging.

Hermeus And Beyond

One of Hermeus’ taglines is to “Bring Newspace to Aviation.” The four founders all have backgrounds working with Newspace companies. Case worked at Blue Origin, and later worked at Generation Orbit along with a trio of others who led the development of the Air Force’s X-60A hypersonic rocket plane. The foursome left to found Hermeus: CEO AJ Piplica, chief product officer Mike Smayda and chief operating officer Skyler Shuford. Smayda and Shuford also had stints at SpaceX.

“While everyone in the industry seemed to be focused on small launch, we knew there was a real keen need in the military for high-speed systems and in particular air-breathing engines,” Case told Supercluster. “So we decided to kind of jump off a cliff in 2018. And try to build an airplane on the way down.”

The sleek, rendered designs for the three planned Hermeus vehicles show smooth, blade-like surfaces with wings blended into the body, much like the SR-71. The design is all in the name of thermal management, and to reduce drag, said Joe Schoneman, a Loads & Dynamics Analyst at Hermeus. Schoneman said that while Quarterhorse is about the size of the Air Force’s T-38 jet (about 50 feet, with a 15 ft wingspan), upcoming flight tests will help improve the future designs of Darkhorse and Halcyon.

“Once we have flight experience with Quarterhorse, how our models and designs line up with reality is going to inform [the design],” Schoneman told Supercluster. “This is inherently a very iterative process.”

But it is the Hermeus engine design that sets them apart.

Instead of developing a highly complex and expensive air-breathing scramjet engine like ones on NASA’s X-43 and the Air Force’s X-51 experimental hypersonic drones, Hermeus is using a simpler ramjet design based around General Electric’s smaller J85 turbojet, which powers other aircraft today, including the T-38.

Called Chimera, their engine is a turbine-based combined cycle, or (TBCC), which is a hybrid between a turbine engine and a ramjet, allowing for both low-speed (takeoff, cruise, and landing) and high-speed operation during flight. This is unique in the field of hypersonics. Hermeus says that by making a full-range air-breathing hypersonic engine that does not require a rocket to accelerate, they will have an aircraft that can be rapidly re-used. And a Chimera-powered aircraft would be able to take off from any major runway and return to land at the same airport. This is far less complicated and requires less infrastructure than an aircraft dropped from a larger carrier, or propelled from a rocket.

One of the most complex parts of the engine’s operation is the transition from turbojet to ramjet.

“Several things have to go right in a very short period of time,” Case explained, “because you have to effectively turn off the turbojet and turn on the ramjet while maintaining stable flight.”

The Hermeus team conducted a successful test of Chimera at the Notre Dame Turbomachinery Lab last year, where high-speed Mach 4 flight could be simulated. The test campaign lasted five months, and engineers ran the jet in bursts, repeatedly demonstrating a stable transition from turbojet to ramjet.

“We are the first privately funded commercial company to have ever done this, and we did it for an order of magnitude less time and money than any governmental program,” said Case. “So, we demonstrated the capital efficiency that a Newspace-type company can bring to the game. But more importantly, the test gave us a lot of great data to help us with some component redesigns to make the engine more efficient.”

That puts Hermeus on target for its lofty goal of reaching Mach 4 speeds by next year.

And it would break the sustained airspeed record set by the SR-71.

Why Hypersonic, Why Now?

Over the past few years, several other private companies have begun to develop new hypersonic aircraft, with similar goals to significantly advance the United States’ ability to design and operate hypersonic vehicles.

In 2020, high-altitude launch company Stratolaunch revealed designs for two hypersonic aircraft, plus a reusable space plane that will be launched from its giant Roc Carrier Aircraft launch plane, similar to Virgin Galactic’s White Knight Two. Stratolaunch’s hypersonic planes are called Talon-A and Talon-Z, while the space plane is dubbed Black Ice.

The Talon-A is planned to be a fully reusable, autonomous, liquid rocket-powered Mach 6-class hypersonic vehicle with a length of 28 feet (8.5 m) and a wingspan of 11.3 feet (3.4 m). The first tests, perhaps by next year, will last for “over 1-minute of hypersonic flight testing, and glide back for an autonomous, horizontal landing on a conventional runway,” according to Stratolaunch.

And earlier this year, Rocket Lab announced a hypersonic program called HASTE (Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron), a suborbital testbed launch vehicle derived from Rocket Lab’s heritage Electron rocket. On June 17, the company successfully conducted its first launch for “a confidential customer” (likely the US military), from Virginia’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport within NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. Rocketlab says their hypersonic program was created to serve the unique needs of the U.S. defense and intelligence community and its allies.

And of course, long-time companies like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon are part of a revitalized interest in hypersonic vehicles and missile defense following recent intelligence that China fielded a test in 2021 of a hypersonic, nuclear-capable weapon, and Russia’s recent use of hypersonic weapons in its invasion of Ukraine. Australia, Iran, both North and South Korea, Brazil, Germany, Israel, India, and Japan are also said to be developing hypersonic programs.

There’s been relatively little US investment in these systems in recent decades, but that has changed. According to a January 2023 report from the Congressional Budget Office, the Department of Defense’s proposed budget for Army and Air Force hypersonics development for 2023-2027 now sits at $15 billion, along with the Navy’s hypersonic development program, which recently announced a $1.1 billion contract with Lockheed Martin.

There’s a sense that the US is now playing “catch up.”

“I think it's one of the biggest travesties of American technology development, how we’ve fallen behind when we were so far ahead in terms of hypersonic research,” Case told Supercluster. “What we had was built on the shoulders of giants, with the X-15 flying virtually every week in the 1950s and 1960s, but then the focus shifted to space. Then in the late 1990s and early 2000s, we had the X-43 and X51 testing in scramjet development, but it stopped because the adversarial threat wasn’t there at the time. To be honest, the U.S. sat by the sidelines. Now we're playing catch-up.”

Case and Shoneman both mentioned that much of the hypersonic research developed during these boom periods was published and became public, so those now considered “adversaries” of the United States were able to stand on the shoulders of giants, too.

In this new boom period, Hermeus hopes to ride the current wave of hypersonic interest.

“I think developing reusable hypersonic systems is one of the most important things that aerospace engineers could be doing right now,” Case said. “Hypersonic passenger flight would be game-changing for everyone. And without being able to go into too much detail of what Darkhorse will be capable of, the one thing that really sticks with me is that it’s a platform with the capability to keep the U.S. ahead of others. And keep us out of war.”

Machine Learning Reveals Hidden History of Runaway Slaves

2023-06-18T10:00:00.000Z

Impatience isn’t usually a virtue.

But entrepreneur Bill Perkins found that a little impatience can sometimes spur innovation. And even uncover hidden history.

Perkins already has a long and varied list of accomplishments, as a successful hedge fund manager, professional poker player, film producer, and author. But he’s recently added ‘space sector entrepreneur’ to that list because of an unlikely space-meets-history story, where impatience overcame impossibilities.

The result is Perkins’ new company called SkyFi, where anyone can have easy access to high-resolution satellite images from anywhere on Earth, anytime. If you’ve ever tried to purchase even a single orbital image of our planet, you’ll find it’s not as easy as it sounds — or, as Perkins says — as it should be. SkyFi changes that with an app and API that puts satellite data and the tools to analyze it in the palm of your hand.

The story behind the company’s genesis is equally transformative; an intriguing tale of figuring out how to use state-of-the-art artificial intelligence tools to uncover the hidden histories of runaway slaves in the 1800s.

While that might be one of the most improbable segues ever, it all happened because of Perkins’ impatience.

“Yeah, it was a daisy chain of serendipity that led me to be part of the space industry,” Perkins told Supercluster. “But I’m just a guy who loves history and data, and is usually impatient for an answer.”

Freedom on the Move

It all started in 2018 when Perkins heard about a crowdsourcing project from Cornell University called Freedom On The Move. The goal of the project is to create a comprehensive database of details from runaway slave advertisements posted in American newspapers prior to the Civil War, during the 18th and 19th centuries. To achieve this, researchers enlisted the help of the public to sort through scans of these ads, which were placed by enslavers trying to locate fugitive slaves, or by vigilantes and police departments who had captured African Americans who they deemed to be runaways.

The detailed column-length advertisements offer monetary rewards, but also include a wealth of personal information about the fugitives, such as their name, appearance, age, marital status, places of origin, or if they were possibly running to reunite with a spouse or child. By themselves, the ads were almost like a miniature biography.

Collectively, the ads constitute a comprehensive and rare source of information about the experiences of slaves in America.

But the data extraction process was slow. The project relied on volunteers to transcribe scans of these ads — which are sometimes hard to read — into plain text. The next goal was to somehow go through the text to pull out the relevant pieces of information, such as names, common jobs, and other details to create a database so that historians could put together stories of individuals while gathering information for an overall history.

“I am really passionate about this idea of uncovering these hidden histories,” said Perkins, who is African American. “But I'm super impatient and couldn't wait for the crowd-sourcing because I just wanted to know these stories right away and know the details at scale. I thought, why can’t we just use optical character recognition (OCR) to scan the text, and then build something using machine learning, training it to pick out all the details about each person?”

Perkins, who founded the investment management firm Skylar Capital, turned to his quantitative analyst, Eric Anderson, currently CTO of SynMax, another Bill Perkins company.

“My job at Skylar,” Anderson explained, “was to ingest enormous amounts of information and distill it into succinct pieces of intelligence that can be used to make trades. Bill saw what I was doing as a potential key to helping Freedom On The Move.”

While Anderson worked on creating a machine using novel AI-based technology that could scan text and extract information, Perkins coordinated with Freedom On The Move, getting access to some of the 20,000 ads the volunteers had already digitized. Perkins and Anderson used that data to train their model to understand key terms like names, job descriptions, height, and features like scars or skin color, to extract as much personal information as possible from the ads. After several iterations and tweaks to improve accuracy, they were able to set their new machine to work.

“The work that Freedom On The Move had been doing for years got 20,000 ads digitized. But we were able to get 60,000 ads completely scanned in a matter of seconds,” Anderson said. “Not only that, we built this machine to churn out historical data, with research-ready information culled from these ads.”

Their work has helped uncover a treasure trove of previously hidden information. Perkins started a separate organization called Runaway Project, which works cooperatively with Freedom On The Move. But Runaway Project has worked to get access to additional databases that contain thousands of other runaway slave ads that were published from 1705-1865. With all this information they are curating a free database that unlocks a huge piece of history.

“There are not many diaries from slaves or other accounts from that time of the people I call the true freedom fighters,” Perkins said, “and I think these stories need to be known and celebrated.”

A Rediscovered History

One of the often-overlooked traumas of slavery is how enslaved people’s history is systematically taken away from them.

“Most of us have the benefit of knowing exactly where we came from or the ability to look for it,” Anderson said. “I can trace my family history back to the exact English town my ancestors came from, find out when they emigrated to New York, and locate their signatures on immigration documents. It’s a powerful experience to have that connection to your past. But with slavery, that history was severed, and there are no records of the existence of millions of people.”

Perkins and Anderson see Runaway Project as an opportunity to remediate that since the runaway slave ads contain perhaps the only written record of these people. They have a goal of eventually digitizing between 200,000-250,000 runaway slave ads.

With the amount of information extracted so far, Runaway Project has found larger patterns buried in the data. For example, 85 percent of runaways were male, the median age of the runaway slaves was 25, the most common skills were that of carpenter or cooper, the most common month when people ran away was July, and those aged 15-20 years old commanded the highest reward. These details are helping historians put together a cohesive picture of life as an enslaved person during that era.

But the personal stories are incredibly compelling. Anderson shared a story of how the Runaway Project database allowed one of his co-workers to finally know details of one of her ancestors.

“Tatiana had a story that had been passed down through her family that one of her ancestors was a runaway slave,” Anderson said. “She had no documents or records, but she had approximate dates, ages, and a couple of variations of a name. We took that to the database and within 20 minutes we found the ad describing her ancestor with information irrefutably tied to the story she had. So, we went from just having a verbal history to getting something concrete. That’s the power of the data."

To help tell these personal stories, Perkins and Anderson started a Twitter account @FromSlaves which shares details collected from the ads.

“Instead of just posting the information — which can be dry and not very ingestible,” Perkins said, “we can humanize it more if we tell the story from the perspective of the runaway."

Each tweet includes the ad for the runaway and includes personal details that provide insights into the time period.

The Runaway Project is also making its methodology available for other researchers to use.

“While what we developed is useful for what we’re doing,” Perkins said, “I want my efforts replicated to help other researchers in other fields. Once you digitize data and run AI machine learning, you can find all sorts of information that is hidden in the data.”

Looking Toward Space

Perkins also realized this process of surfacing information from existing data could be beneficial for his other companies. However, when he wanted to purchase satellite images to garner data for his hedge fund, he found the process bureaucratic and frustrating enough that he decided to try to change it.

He set about creating a satellite data marketplace with the goal of modernizing, democratizing, and ‘easifying’ access to satellite imagery. The goal was to make purchasing satellite imagery as simple as using an app on your phone.

“I can order anything on my phone from pizza to a car,” Perkins said. “I should be able to have access to satellite data, too."

The new customer-focused company SkyFi partners with over a dozen satellite, balloon, and aerial imagery operators to revolutionize the process of obtaining current, high-quality Earth images on demand, with views in daytime or nighttime, in visible or multispectral wavelengths, or even video.

SkyFi’s customers range from individuals who want a satellite image of their wedding or want to plan a remote hiking trip, to students and researchers monitoring environmental trends in climate change or deforestation, to businesses that want to monitor assets from anywhere, or commodity brokers who need to monitor things like crops growing on any continent.

Perkins said he relishes hearing from users about how SkyFi is making their lives and work easier.

“I’m just an inquisitive, impatient trader,” Perkins said with a smile. “But it feels good to help in [advancing] our understanding of our world, as well as in the preservation of history. While the work we’ve done with Runaway Project is really rewarding, the fact that it led to SkyFi feels even better. If we can help someone prevent, solve, or do something to better our world [today] because we made it easier and cheaper to get access to the data, that’s what I’m here for. That’s what I really care about, having an impact on the world.”

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What questions do you have about the world? SkyFi is launching new analytics tools to make the most of Earth observation data. Learn more at the SkyFi Beta Insights Survey.

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UAP Whistleblowers Make Startling Claims During DC Event

2023-06-13T21:00:00.000Z

Last week, a career intelligence officer claimed the US Government had recovered alien spacecraft.

The story continues a thread of mainstream UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) reporting that started with dam-breaking articles in the New York Times on encounters between Navy pilots and UAP that defy what we know about aerial maneuvering and physics. The accounts were accompanied by remarkable video footage, captured by military aircraft sensors. In those reports, witness Lt. Ryan Graves claimed that UAP encounters were actually quite common.

This was the only time we, the general public, had seen anything resembling an official disclosure of UAP evidence. But the GIMBAL, GOFAST, and FLIR footage is still very much open for interpretation.

Those stories were pushed out and evangelized by Tom Delonge’s To The Stars Academy, and by former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Chris Mellon, who wrote an editorial for Politico calling for UAP disclosure in the days leading up to David Grush’s story going public. Former Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) Director Luis Elizondo was also a key figure surrounding the disclosure of the Navy pilot encounters.

We also learned that AATIP was funded by the US Government to investigate UAP, and much of the project’s money went to Robert Bigelow, the founder of Bigelow Aerospace, a space habitat company that quietly shuttered in 2020 facing a "perfect storm" of financial and legal issues, laying off its 68 remaining employees. The company still had its BEAM module attached to the ISS when it closed, and NASA still uses it today, five years past the expected lifespan of Bigelow's mission.

Today, the newly-formed AARO handles UAP investigations for the Pentagon and they participated in NASA’s first UAP hearing on May 31st, 2023, where Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, Director of AARO, said that flying spheres have been spotted around the globe and that display “very interesting apparent maneuvers.” Nearly a year before, on May 17, 2022, Congress held its first UAP hearing in 50 years where a video of an unknown flying metallic-looking sphere was revealed to the American public.

Veteran UAP researcher George Knapp and documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell, who brought whistleblower Bob Lazar’s Area 51 story back into today’s news cycle with a documentary and appearances on Joe Rogan, are also making connections between Lazar’s claims and the UAP being talked about today. Lazar’s story first came to light in the late 80s through Knapp and others with his story staying somewhat consistent since. Lazar claims to have examined and worked on crashed alien spacecraft, far more advanced than our own. Lazar's account is considered by many to be the primordial ooze from which modern UAP mythology was born. It is very interesting that the specific capabilities described by Lazar over the years do somewhat correlate with the odd maneuvering seen in the Navy pilot videos.

The UAP news cycle reached a new height with NASA’s meeting, a gathering of researchers, space professionals, and scientists tasked with looking at the data and forging a path for understanding the phenomenon. While they’ve got a ton of catching up to do, the group helps with removing the stigma around future reporting and investigations that might be pursued by serious reporters and investigators.

A Fly on the Wall

This brings us to another group: The Disclosure Project. They want to be the center for UAP eyewitness accounts and hope to convince the government to disclose alien existence and deploy the recovered tech to solve all of humanity's problems.

Supercluster was invited to attend an event on Monday, June 12th, being held by the Disclosure Project at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. The gathering was touted as a “disclosure” event where startling evidence and testimony regarding UAP coverups would be put forth by whistleblowers from the military. A rep used the word “definitive” in describing what they had to reveal.

The event was hosted by the Disclosure Project’s controversial leader Dr. Steven Greer, who you’ll know if you’ve seen more than a couple of high-profile UAP and disclosure documentaries in the past decade. He’s been in the game for 30 years and is a central figure in the movement to get the US government to declassify and disclose knowledge of extraterrestrials, and an activist fighting for whistleblower protections for those who come forward.

Greer is also promoting a documentary, The Lost Century: And How to Reclaim it. The title refers to Greer's main thesis that shadow entities operating illegally without congressional oversight are hoarding and reverse-engineering advanced alien technology that could benefit humanity. An example often mentioned by Greer is unlimited free energy.

I didn’t attend the event as a beat reporter, haven’t done that since a sportscar was yeeted to space. Instead, I was on a mission to understand who these witnesses were, to see if Greer had an internet-breaking piece of evidence, and to hear what they wanted from the public. I explained my current role to his representative in detail to manage expectations about reporting on the event.

While there’s not a ton of UAP conversation happening on space Twitter, I spoke to a handful of folks from the spaceflight community that included high-level engineers and execs from commercial space, other space reporters, and congressional aids whose bosses are now taking a serious interest in the UAP news cycle. In late 2019, I asked Elon Musk if he heard or saw anything relating to extraterrestrial activity to which his response was no. He sticks to that story until today.

There are some concerns about where the story is going — whether it's actually aliens or not. Space exploration lives and dies by two things: congressional interest and therefore congressional budgets, and the knowledge of spaceflight’s many achievements and advancements among their constituents. If the American public by large starts to believe that the US Government is in possession of interstellar technology, they aren’t going to give Boeing another 3 billion dollars to build more lemons.

We need that lemon money.

With these concerns and our own curiosity, I attended the Disclosure Project’s event with an open mind and tried to be as observant as possible. Over the weekend before the event, I spent some time digging into the backgrounds of the eyewitnesses and whistleblowers that would be testifying. One of them was a Raytheon subcontractor that would make claims about a facility at the South Pole to examine and reverse engineer a recovered UAP. Another witnessed a spacecraft built by Raytheon using parts from a recovered UAP. These are extraordinary claims and I hoped they had photos or video.

The Disclosure Project’s program started at 2 PM ET and they asked me to arrive an hour early, which I did. People flooded the large room on the 13th floor, I was directed to sit right in front of the handful of panelists and Dr. Greer, but opted for the second row where I saw a few open seats between what I thought was a group of journalists. I did a quick look for Dan Akroyd, an old-school UAP influencer. He wasn’t there.

The audience was pretty full with very few seats left vacant in a space built for a maximum of 700. Plenty of cameras clicked and chatter grew among the crowd as Greer and his witnesses, who he called “American heroes” took the stage. There was an image projected behind them of the organization’s previous disclosure event that occurred in May of 2001 — this was the first I’d heard of it.

About 8 years ago, I started working on the UAP story for the New York Observer through interviews I conducted with Apollo astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell at his home in Florida, and with Stephen Basset — a known UAP lobbyist in Washington DC. Mitchell was convinced that extraterrestrials had visited our nuclear testing sites and missile silos. I imagine his claims would have carried more weight today. Mitchell passed away in February 2016.

Basset always pushed for UAP disclosure from the White House and had hoped the Clintons would do so once Hillary won the presidency. Another space reporter and I had dinner with Basset in DC last year and the conversation indicated to me that the central personalities and researchers surrounding the UAP story were not working together and even carried grudges. Basset always pointed to another so-called disclosure event that occurred in 2013: The Citizens Hearing on Disclosure, which was actually covered by the Washington Post and others. It was a gathering of similarly fashioned whistleblowers: former intel community, military, and defense contractors from the US and allied nations. There was very compelling testimony at this event but no physical evidence was presented for examination.

You can watch those hearings and Monday's meeting on YouTube.

With UAP, the news cycle never really means new and none of the claims being repeated in these disclosure events these last couple of years are really fresh. What’s new is congressional interest and official UAP hearings. And public forums on the subject held by NASA.

While sitting in the crowd at the Press Club, I took a look around me. The crowd ranged from serious aerospace historians to a guy who believes Queen Elizabeth was a lizard wearing human skin. I wasn’t entirely sure I was sitting next to other journalists. One of them was too excited and said something about getting Greer’s autograph, another said it felt like a court hearing, which is interesting. The foundation of many court trials or hearings includes the presenting and cataloging of hard evidence. Evidence that can be analyzed and verified by a third party.

The best space reporters work with an unspoken rule: believe half of what you see and none of what you hear. And it's a huge red flag when a company or organization has nothing but terrible concept art to show you. If Boeing says “We have a new spacecraft that flies humans” you don’t believe that statement until you see Boeing’s spacecraft flying humans. The same rules apply to the UAP story.

In front of me were the witnesses. Michael Herrera, a former U.S. Marine, witnessed a craft built with captured UAP technology being loaded with drugs and weapons in 2009. D.C. Long, a US Army serviceman who was stationed at Ft. Bragg, NC, has knowledge of Range 19––a secret UAP facility within the base. Steven Digna, Jr. who was a Private First Class in the U.S. Army and stationed at Ft. Irwin, CA witnessed a “V” shaped UAP built by Raytheon with recovered UAP. Eric Hecker, a former Raytheon subcontractor stationed at the South Pole and claims there is a facility there, and Col. Donald Heckert, a Retired Lieutenant Colonel, Program Manager, USAF, ASD, at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.

On paper, these guys are very serious and credible witnesses. Most of them had something that resembled a thousand-yard stare. Some of them barely blinked at times, sitting for a couple of hours without moving or flinching before it was their time to speak. They looked focused and determined. They didn’t seem like guys about to tell a tale or put on a show. While Greer is profiting from documentary and book sales, these individuals don't seem to be gaining anything from coming forward.

Herrera stood up to describe the event in which his squad encountered a UAP in the jungles of Indonesia and where he implied American-led forces disarmed him and his fellow Marines and threatened their lives. He seemed visibly scared and emotional, his voice breaking a few times while he held back tears. Unfortunately, his and the other’s testimonies were driven by digital art. Red flag.

And the art wasn't even good, which really bothered me.

Still Nada

The Disclosure Project says it has terabytes of data from years of eyewitness accounts, declassified files, and other compelling reports. But we've seen no hard evidence from them, especially at this meeting. And beyond the fighter pilot videos we’ve all seen but don't understand, there’s been no compelling evidence to really support any UAP recovery claims. The narrative that’s being pushed by all these disclosure groups is too extraordinary and fantastical for paperwork and word-of-mouth. Sure, there have been photos throughout the years, some fascinating, but nothing concrete. Nothing worth printing on the front page of major newspapers.

The Disclosure Project claims there are dozens of cases throughout the decades where some kind of exotic UAP material or even bodies were recovered. If that's the case, there should be something a civilian scientist can test or some hardware that an aerospace engineer can examine. Or photos and videos of the many objects the Disclosure Project claims to exist under the control of secret black-site programs around the world. Programs they claim involve many people, acres of property, and what seems to be billions of dollars of R&D. But still, no evidence is smuggled out?

That’s my big criticism here. But also, there doesn’t seem to be a line or ceiling when it comes to the claims I’m hearing. UAP and disclosure groups don't seem to have a filter. They’ll dish everything they've heard: details about anti-gravity propulsion and teleportation technology, and in the next breath, little green men (like really little) or the man-bear-pig. In the space industry, we’ve learned a very important lesson: what you do say to the public is just as important as what you don’t say. Why don't we get aligned on the alien craft before moving on to interdimensional beings?

One of the digital renderings Greer pulled up during his long-winded opening statement showed a pair of earless nude humanoid figures that emerged from a UAP, a male and female alien. It looked like a rough storyboard sketch for a sci-fi B movie. The aliens looked like they fronted an ABBA cover band. Greer also declared that all extraterrestrials that visit Earth are entirely peaceful and benign––every last one. My soul almost left my body. Even if I believed most of Greer's claims, he'd lose me here. It's a wild claim on top of a pile of other wild claims. That specific declaration about universally benevolent alien beings gave the presentation a cult-like vibe.

Many of those who believe, and are vocal about UAP disclosure online, also subscribe to a constellation of related conspiracy theories with a seemingly unending thread. There are times when UAP evangelists and members of the disclosure movement use bureaucratic goals as a great Trojan horse into a destigmatized conversation about aliens. Then they hit you with it: the CIA killed JFK because he knew about aliens or something of that nature.

And some of the narratives coming from disclosure groups seem to cast others as false flags who sow more black-site deception. Greer insisted that the lives of UAP witnesses and whistleblowers were at risk after coming forward. He claimed that false flag operations using robotic aliens are used to intimidate and discredit people while showing an illustration of the fake robot alien. Greer noticeably sped through the Disclosure Project's contribution to the disclosed Navy fighter jet videos: their input is that the famous tic tac vehicle is man-made using recovered alien tech. The proof? A variety of napkin illustrations.

Greer is known globally for his UAP work, involving himself in many cases. He makes strong, definitive statements, and uses his experience briefing the Pentagon and CIA on these cases to reinforce the narrative. He claims to have been offered 2 billion dollars to stop his work and activism and has accused those involved with covering up UAPs with threatening the lives and well-being of his whistleblowers, who he does seem to genuinely care about.

I decided to leave the Disclosure Project’s hearing around 4 PM, about 3 hours after I arrived. I had seen more than a dozen CGI renderings and had enough. It’s almost double what we typically get from NASA or the many vaporware startups out there. Each witness was given a standing ovation after their time on the podium, I used one to leave the event without making a scene or creating awkward optics for the many cameras in the room.

A thousand eyewitnesses and whistleblowers can come forward, but without any hard physical evidence, this story can't really move forward in a real way. We want to believe these whistleblowers but have to remain objective. Someone at some point has to come forward with hardware or exotic material that can be examined and tested by civilian scientists and aerospace engineers. Not just for public diligence and accountability, but to validate those whistleblowers that are telling the truth.

The Great Mauritian Satellite Dish Revolt

2023-05-30T20:00:00.000Z

The Republic of Mauritius is among the more geographically isolated countries in the world.

Finding it on a globe can be difficult if you don’t know where to look—but there it is, one small island and a smattering of even smaller islets scattered some 1000 kilometers east of Madagascar. Given its far-flung location, tropical climate, and picturesque beaches, the country is often seen by outsiders as a vacation destination, a place to go and get away from it all.

A nation of barely one million people, it’s not exactly ranked among the world’s foremost space powers. But it is slowly finding a role in the space ecosystem. In fact, life on the island is increasingly intertwined with activity in orbit. Recently, new space companies are becoming more active on the island, but as I found on a recent research trip, in the past, connecting with orbit was a do-it-yourself operation.

While most come to Mauritius to enjoy its sandy shores and locally distilled molasses rum, I came as a space anthropologist with the ARIES project, an ethnographic initiative tasked to understand the many ways people interact with space. My primary goal was to explore how this remote archipelago is increasingly crucial to the world’s growing network of satellite infrastructure. The country is currently becoming something of a satellite hub because as it turns out, a remote island is an ideal location for satellite ground stations.

It’s all about location. When satellites capture data from orbit — for example, a gorgeous aerial photo — that data must be transmitted back down to Earth. However, LEO sats can only downlink data for the brief moments they pass over a receiving station below. Thus, to ensure constant connectivity, it’s necessary to have stations all over the world, including in the middle of the Indian Ocean. As a result, companies are keen to outfit Mauritius with ground station infrastructure. There's already one commercial station on the island’s southern coast and another is being built toward the north. Many are optimistic that space tech will become an economic engine for the island's future.

Island Life

Even before this recent space boom, satellite communication was part of daily life in Mauritius, especially for accessing television. As in many places, satellite dishes and antennae are a common sight everywhere on the island. Driving around the island’s winding roads, you can’t miss it — they sit atop the shimmering towers of Cyber City, the country’s new-build urban development, and hang from the windows and balconies of Flic en Flac, a sleepy community on the western coast. Flip on the tube in any given pub and you may catch a cricket match in Australia or a news broadcast from India, South Africa, or France. Now, this type of connectivity is taken for granted. In fact, it almost seems quaint given the ubiquity of reliable high-speed internet.

However, back before the island was blanketed with broadband, satellite TV was the window to the wider world. Yet, it wasn’t always accessible. Just a generation earlier, most people living on the island couldn’t access it at all.

This brings us to Jaques Gentil, a retired airline mechanic and the current secretary of the Aeronautical Society of Mauritius. I first contacted him as part of my research into Mauritius's aerospace industry. We met on a sunny morning as he was out buying assorted computer parts to repair a rig destroyed in a recent cyclone. Gentil, a mustachioed man in his 60s, is a consummate tinkerer with a knack for DIY projects. As we talk, he describes the many technical ventures he’s set up including a small solar power network, an automated hydroponic system, and a homebrewed satellite telemetry and weather station he runs out of his house in Quatre Bonne. His enthusiasm for building and experimenting is contagious, though he’s so modest he almost glosses over one of his most impressive accomplishments:

Back in the early 90s, before the new space era, Gentil ducked government regulations to build the country’s first private satellite dishes.

Understanding why setting up a satellite dish had to be a controversial, DIY affair requires knowing a bit of the country’s unique history. The republic's main island, conveniently named Mauritius, is just over 2000 square kilometers, or roughly three times the size of New York City. A tiny blip amid the vast Indian Ocean, it wasn’t discovered until Arab traders spotted it around 1000 A.D. The Dutch tried to set up shop in the 16th century but only stuck around long enough to eat the entire native population of Dodo birds. For the next few centuries, it was used as an imperial outpost, first by the French, then the British, who brought enslaved Africans and indentured Indian laborers to work the sugarcane plantations.

By the time Mauritius finally won independence in 1968, it was home to a very diverse population, a multiethnic mix of Muslim, Hindu, and Christian communities with ties to countries all over the world.

During these first decades of independence, the country remained fairly removed from outside media. Up until the 90s, the government maintained tight controls on foreign broadcasts, only allowing access to television from the state-affiliated Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation (MBC). According to Leslie Alexander, a former US ambassador to the island, this restriction was meant to foster some form of unity among the diverse population, which had previously experienced internal tensions. In interviews, Alexander recalls an illustrative incident: In 1993, he placed a satellite dish on the embassy roof, which attracted a visit from the deputy prime minister. The politician wasn’t thrilled—he explained that the government was wary that outside broadcasts might stoke factionalism, “[Prime Minister Anerood Jugnauth] is afraid that if people start putting up satellite dishes they’re going to start looking at TV from India and from Pakistan and this is going to get them all riled up and they’re going to go out [and riot].”

A few months later, a Mauritian man tried to import a satellite dish of his own. The state, ever cautious, intercepted it at the port. Suddenly, the issue of TV censorship was front-page news, which caught the attention of Gentil. He found the restriction ridiculous—after all, the satellites were up there broadcasting, why shouldn’t Mauritians be able to listen? “It’s crazy! I don’t see why they did this. I think the thinking at the time is that you need to tell the population only what you want to tell them.” Still, in his view, there was a loophole. The government was making it illegal to import a satellite dish, however, they hadn’t said anything about building your own. Reflecting on this little bit of legal hairsplitting, Gentil laughs, “I love a challenge. This was an opportunity for me to do something... to show them:

“You think it cannot be done? Well I’ll do it!”

Building the dish turned out to be easy enough for an experienced technician like Gentil. At work, he had just replaced some paneling on an old 747, so he repurposed the discarded metal with some chicken wire to create a 3.7m parabolic cone. Next, he outfitted the dish with some cabling and a simple signal-retrieving system and placed the whole contraption on the roof of his family’s home. After a few adjustments, it worked. Images appeared, fuzzy at first, then clearer. There was TV5 from France, M-Net from South Africa, and news broadcasts straight from Moscow, Beijing, and Lisbon. Just like that, the Gentil household had tapped into signals from above and connected to the world at large.

A massive metal dish isn’t exactly inconspicuous, “Everybody knew about it,” says Gentil, “In fact, my parents used to tell me, you know, one day they're going to come and arrest you!” The national press even reported on the technological provocation. Gentil was covered as something of a folk hero; Le Mauricien described him as an “ingenious citizen” and claimed his homemade dish spoke to “a desire that is very present in the Mauritian collective unconscious… to escape the control of the State.” As word got out, others followed his lead and built dishes of their own, Gentil and friends built a few others in the neighborhood, “Once we knew how to do it, it was easy to replicate. You know, it was really about getting such an idea at all. It was just something that nobody would have dreamed about before because it was a big no-no.”

With public pressure mounting around the issue, and the established laws clearly being flouted, the government eventually dropped many of the restrictions keeping people from foreign broadcasts. By the end of the decade, dishes dotted the rooftops of Mauritian homes all across the island. Even so, the government has not completely relaxed its tightly wound grip on media freedom—recently, proposed plans to regulate social media through a Digital Ethics Committee have raised the ire of citizens and watchdog groups.

While Gentil’s original dish was destroyed by a cyclone a few years ago, the DIY spirit that moved Gentil to put it up remains unshaken. Skilled amateurs have been instrumental in bringing Mauritius into the new space age. Back in 2019, the Mauritian government launched MIRSAT-1, the nation's first satellite. As part of the process, the Mauritian Research and Innovation Council relied on the expertise of dedicated enthusiasts. Volunteers from the Mauritian Amateur Radio Society (MARS) were crucial for both installing and calibrating communications antennas for the project. They even helped dozens of schools build antennas of their own to contact MIRSAT-1 as it orbited above. With a little bit of ingenuity, signals from space are never so far away.

SETI Scientists to Devise Plan for Lunar Listening Station

2023-05-23T20:00:00.000Z

A few dozen SETI scientists are gathering in Sydney, Australia.

Their goal is to lay the foundation for what may become the most ambitious alien-hunting mission in history: a dedicated SETI observatory on the farside of the moon.

Although it will be years before a SETI radio telescope lands on the moon, the three-day conference that began on May 22nd in Australia is an important first step in that direction and will mark the first time that the requirements for a SETI lunar observatory mission have been rigorously defined. The goal of the attendees is to hash out the technical specifications for this mission, which will inform a formal Phase A study that the group hopes to publish by the end of next year.

The study grew from a paper submitted by researchers from Breakthrough Listen, the world’s largest SETI program, to the National Academy of Sciences’ 2020 Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey that made the case for a SETI observatory on the lunar farside. Now, with additional support from Breakthrough Listen, an international coalition of SETI researchers will take the rough sketch presented to the Decadal Survey and use it to create a detailed plan for what this mission would actually look like.

“The benefits of a technosignature observatory on the lunar farside were identified early on in SETI, but it was just not thought to be a credible prospect because of the very large costs involved with putting anything on the moon,” said Andrew Siemion, the Director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center and a leader of the Phase A study. “That recently changed for a number of reasons, but I think most importantly the advent of commercial spaceflight dramatically reduced the cost of bringing a payload to the lunar surface, which has fueled something of a renaissance in lunar astronomy.”

There are two main reasons that SETI researchers are interested in building an observatory on the lunar farside. The first is that the Earth is a very loud place, electromagnetically speaking. Satellites, cell phones, TV towers, military radars, and other modern technologies all produce high-frequency radio signals in the same part of the spectrum where SETI scientists are looking for messages from ET. The second is that the Earth is enveloped in a thick atmosphere that blocks about a quarter of the high-frequency radio spectrum from ever reaching the Earth’s surface.

If ET was trying to contact us on those bands, we’d never hear the phone ring.

Terrestrial interference has been a challenge since the very first SETI experiment in 1960 when the planetary astronomer Frank Drake mistook a radio signal from a passing airplane as an extraterrestrial greeting. This led SETI researchers to start contemplating a truly “extra-terrestrial” solution to their problem: a dedicated observatory on the farside of the moon.

During the two-week-long lunar night, the farside is the most radio-quiet place in the solar system because the moon acts like a giant electromagnetic shield. And because the moon has virtually no atmosphere, a SETI observatory would also be able to access swathes of the electromagnetic spectrum that have never been previously observed during a SETI campaign.

“The lunar farside is the most pristine place in our solar system because it’s the only place that always points away from Earth,” says David DeBoer, a research astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Breakthrough Listen project manager for the Berkeley SETI Research Center. “This would be the first time ever that we’d be able to do an observation that’s free of radio frequency interference. The expectation is that we’re mostly going to see blank static, which means that any signal we pick up is going to be amazing because there’s nothing that can mimic the signals we’re looking for like there is on Earth.”

The idea for a lunar observatory has been floating around the SETI research community for decades, but it wasn’t until very recently that it became a feasible goal. The first successful mission to the surface on the farside of the moon didn’t occur until 2019, and even this mission required marshaling the resources of one of the world's most powerful countries. But as the cost of space access continues to plummet thanks to reusable heavy launch vehicles and the commoditization of space-grade hardware, the once far-fetched idea of a SETI observatory on the lunar farside no longer seems so outlandish.

The only thing that was missing was a solid plan.

“We really needed to undertake a formal Phase A study to figure out what this observatory could look like and what we could do for a reasonable amount of money—say $150 or $200 million,” said Siemion. The study is funded by a grant from Breakthrough Listen, a SETI initiative bankrolled by the Russian-Israeli billionaire Yuri Milner, and Siemion says their primary goal is to “identify a credible path forward for a lunar farside radio technosignature mission that could be accomplished in the next five to seven years.” Although Siemion believes that technology has progressed to the point where this ambitious mission is feasible, the devil is in the details.

On Earth, SETI mostly boils down to a data analysis challenge. Researchers use powerful computers to sift through massive amounts of data collected by radio telescopes in search of signals that look unnatural. These are so-called “technosignatures,” radio signals that could only be produced by an artificial source of extraterrestrial origin. But searching for these faint signals among the overpowering noise from radio sources on Earth requires a lot of equipment and a lot of power. Any mission to the lunar farside, however, will be inherently resource-constrained. Figuring out how to efficiently crunch data on the lunar farside while providing adequate power to the radio telescope is a major challenge that the SETI researchers will need to iron out as part of their Phase A study. As an added challenge, this equipment will have to contend with an incredibly harsh environment that will see temperatures swing from 250 F to -200 F over the course of the lunar day-night cycle.

“The overall philosophy of the project is we want to use as much off-the-shelf technology as we can—and there’s a lot of it,” Siemion said. “But we’re not used to operating in this highly power-constrained environment so we need to identify the scientific opportunities and then the salient elements of the digital signal processing pipeline that are absolutely necessary to achieve those objectives.”

Fortunately, the SETI researchers aren’t the first ones to attempt to tackle this problem. NASA also has plans to put radio telescopes on the lunar surface as part of the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment mission. The LuSEE mission will place two landers on the moon’s surface, one on the near side and one on the far side, which are expected to launch as soon as 2025. Although the farside LuSEE lander is designed to observe low-frequency radio waves to study the early universe—making it unsuitable for SETI work—the technical challenges faced by the mission are analogous to those of the SETI observatory.

“We're the only people who have actually spent any time thinking about how to do radio astronomy on the moon,” said Stuart Bale, the LuSEE principal investigator and a collaborator on the Breakthrough Phase A study. “We know how to do the system engineering and we know how to do the thermal engineering. None of it has flown yet, but we have a big head start on what [Breakthrough] wants to do so we’re going to try to help work their concept into something similar to LuSEE and put together a fundable proposal.”

Although the exact design of the SETI observatory is still very much an open question, Siemion says it is unlikely to look anything like a typical radio telescope on Earth. For starters, the observatory will have to be small enough to fit in on a lander weighing less than 500 pounds. The lander will also need assistance from an orbiter that can relay data back to Earth, although it’s unlikely that the SETI mission will launch its own orbiter and instead piggyback on existing lunar satellites.

“The challenge with the farside of the moon is that you need a way to get signals back to Earth and that requires some sort of relay,” DeBoer said. “So the first thing is to make sure we have a way to get the data back because without that we can’t do anything. Fortunately, that infrastructure is being developed as part of all these NASA commercial and lunar programs.”

Another big challenge is power. There are various options available to the team, but each comes with significant tradeoffs. A radioisotope thermoelectric generator—also known as a “nuclear battery”—is one option, but these systems are heavy and expensive. Solar power is another option but would mean that the lander would lose power for weeks on end during the lunar night. Regardless of what solution the team picks, however, the entire system will likely have to operate using the equivalent power of a 100-watt lightbulb.

The technical challenges that will have to be ironed out by the Breakthrough team during their Phase A study are immense, but not insurmountable. Siemion hopes that they will be able to conclude the study by the end of next year and if the project goes forward the world could see its first SETI lunar observatory by the end of the decade. And it can’t come soon enough. Now that NASA has committed to establishing a permanent presence on and around the moon through the Artemis missions, the lunar radio environment is expected to become increasingly noisy. The window of silence on the lunar farside may be short-lived and endows the project with a palpable sense of urgency. China, now operating the largest radio observatory on Earth, is also quickly expanding its footprint on the moon.

“The cleanest that the radio spectrum is ever going to be on the lunar farside is today,” said Siemion.

“It’s only going to get louder. the sooner we can do this, the better.”

But even as the moon gets more crowded and noisy, the SETI observatory would still have to contend with far less interference than it would on Earth, and would open up vast portions of the radio spectrum that used to be completely inaccessible. It’s a brave new frontier in the search for extraterrestrial life and with any luck may be the giant leap we need to finally make first contact.

A Jungle Prison Becomes a Spaceport

2023-05-16T18:00:00.000Z

Imagine waking up on a tropical island.

You’re surrounded by palm trees, you hear singing birds and waves crashing into the coastal rocks. The island is small and with no permanent inhabitants; it is just you, some fellow tourists, a few hospitality staff, and the monkeys with their loud morning cries. If you find yourself on the Salvation Islands, off the coast of the city of Kourou, French Guiana, then you are a stone’s throw away from an active spaceport. And a rocket launch might be imminent.

I began to explore these islands a few weeks after first arriving in South America a few months ago. I made my way to Kourou to gather research on the social and cultural impacts of the space industry on local communities. My work is part of the ARIES project, a team of ethnographers that are investigating the impact of outer space on people around the globe and searching for missing narratives among communities woven into the global space industry.

For my research, I am particularly interested in how this European spaceport found its way to South American soil, and what it means for the surrounding communities. Fellow ARIES project member Peter Timko also published some of his research on Supercluster, taking a look at the culture around Norton Space Props in Hollywood and its impact on the space industry.

In my first weeks here I've spent most of my time learning French, wandering around, and working in the archives of the Centre Spatial Guyanais. If you followed the anxiety-driven but successful Christmas morning launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in 2021, then you are somewhat familiar with the mysterious spaceport in French Guiana. The massive space observatory was launched by the ESA on the Ariane 5 rocket.

Kourou is hard to get a grasp on. On the one hand, it ticks all the boxes of its self-proclaimed status as “ville spatiale”; you are greeted by a big mock-up rocket at the entrance of the city; there are billboards by space agencies, Lockheed Martin, and Airbus sprinkled around town and graffiti of monkeys in spacesuits adorns the sides of buildings.

On the other hand, space seems far removed from most people’s daily lives. Even though advanced rockets are launched a few kilometers from the town, power cuts, and bad internet connections are a common occurrence for the majority of the people here. Kourou is relatively small, with an official population of around twenty-five thousand, and there are significant disparities in living standards between different neighborhoods. The space community down at Cape Canaveral might find some of this familiar.

At the beachfront, you find the villas of the higher-ups of the space industry. These are the biggest and most prominent homes you can find in town. Behind, there are the houses for engineers and scientists provided by their employers; still nice, just at a different scale. Most of the rest of the town is visibly less well-off, with smaller and lower-quality housing. Other neighborhoods include the Village Amerindian, Village Saramaca, and Cité du Stade, sections specifically created to house the people displaced when the Space Center claimed the land they were living on in the 1960s.

Finding a Space Center

When the French Space Agency arrived in Kourou in 1968, it essentially set up all the infrastructure that is the foundation of the town that exists today, including roads, schools, and social venues like the cinema. Before then, Kourou was the home to about 600 agriculturalists, practicing ‘abattis’; a nomadic agricultural method of slash and burn. There would be no place for that after the Space Centre was established — the continental French way of life was now imposed on its inhabitants.

To understand why the French decided to bring their spaceport to French Guiana, we have to make a detour to a different, former, French colony: Algeria. Prior to, and since the establishment of the French space agency, CNES, in 1961, France had a launch base in Hammaguir, Algeria. But when Algeria successfully fought through a bloody campaign for independence, they negotiated the termination of the rocket site as part of the Evian Accords, leaving France in a pickle. With the ongoing Space Race between the US and the USSR, the French were desperate not to fall too far behind and thus quickly started their search for a replacement site.

After drafting a shortlist of fourteen sites, CNES ranked potential replacements on the basis of several criteria; including logistics, geography, infrastructure, and geopolitical status. With a latitude of 5 degrees, favorable weather conditions, and the possibility to launch both North and Eastwards, Kourou ticked all the boxes for an operational spaceport. Additionally, the territory officially integrated as an overseas department into the French state in 1946, which avoided the political complications of launching in a different nation, and provided the steady political climate deemed necessary for sustainable success. It emerged as the clear winner.

But the location has a sordid role in French history. Less than two decades prior, French Guiana was a cruel penal colony and a forced settlement for many French convicts. This served a dual purpose: not only did it solve the problem of overcrowded prisons in metropolitan France, but it also created the workforce deemed necessary to develop the infrastructure of French Guiana.

The working conditions were incredibly harsh as the prisoners were not accustomed to the Amazonian heat and humidity, and its accompanying tropical diseases caused many deaths. But at the great cost of the lives and suffering of these prisoners, roads were constructed, infrastructure was built, and a town took shape.

When it came to prison camps in French Guiana, the Salvation Islands were particularly notorious. They were known for their social isolation, continuous mental torment, and the knowledge that dangerous waters would make escape near impossible.

These islands housed one of the penal colony's most famous convicts: political prisoner Alfred Dreyfus. And the memoir of another of its inhabitants, Henri Charrière, titled Papillon, would later inspire adaptations depicting the harsh realities of a French prisoner in the 20th century. Charrière, who was a criminal since childhood, was wrongly convicted of murder in 1931 and sentenced to life in French Guiana's penal colony.

According to the autobiography, Charrière spent the next 14 years transferring between the different prisons around the colony while enduring brutal violence and inhumane conditions. He attempted to escape many times but the most daring came in 1941 when Charrière and a fellow inmate built a makeshift raft and finally got away from the infamously fortified Devil's Island, part of the Salvation Islands, and sailed to freedom through shark-infested waters. His book, reaching mainstream popularity, would be adapted into a feature film in 1973 that shares the same title as the book and stars Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. The film was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner.

Devil's Island finally closed in 1953 but a majority of the 80,000 prisoners incarcerated there over the course of a century never made it back to France. Many died from disease and the conditions of the penal colony.

If I had found myself here in 1923, rather than in 2023, the tropical dream would have been a surrealistic nightmare. Now just the remnants of the prisons remain. Now you can wander around the island, take a dip in the “prisoners swimming pool,” and sleep in the former guardian residency. You might spot many of the animals that populate the area. According to the ESA, French Guiana’s geography and proximity to the equator make it both an ideal place for a spaceport and a lush wildlife habitat. "Marine turtles nest close to the spaceport and the scarlet ibis has made the grounds of the spaceport its home."

Much of the area is untouched forest, accessible only by boat. There are rapids, waterfalls, forest trails, creeks, and marshlands as well as remote villages. "It is a nature lover’s paradise; more than 6000 plant species, 700 bird species, and 160 species of mammals have been identified to date," ESA explained.

Amidst rocket launches, the lush Amazonian wildlife thrives, highlighting the delicate balance between human advancements and nature preservation. Despite its dark history, Kourou's spaceport embodies a potent blend of innovation and ecological coexistence. Despite some opposing voices, there are many surrounding communities who find pride and solidarity with the mission of space exploration and the advancements in aerospace happening in their own backyard.

Future generations growing up in and around Kourou may pursue careers at the spaceport and one day, even work in space.

A Rocket Photographer Shoots New York

2023-05-09T20:00:00.000Z

Supercluster is based in the New York City neighborhood of Soho and while our hometown is not quite known as a space destination like Cape Canaveral, Houston, or even LA, we still know how to party. Sometimes you’ll find your favorite space beat reporters at a Brooklyn dive on a Friday night with the SpaceX livestream pulled up on someone’s phone, and sometimes we’ll get a visit from a NewSpace startup friend here in town to ring the opening bell at NASDAQ.

Even NASA will take advantage of New York’s bustling culture and foot traffic with live streams broadcasted on the massive screens in Time Square during Mars landings and milestone missions. Fans and members of the space community know to make a quick pilgrimage to the Shuttle Enterprise, now retired and on display aboard the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, a former aircraft carrier parked on Manhattan’s west side.

Supercluster photographer Erik Kuna recently spent more than a week down at Starbase, Texas along with Robin Seemangal and Jenny Hautmann to cover the first flight of Starship Super Heavy. Erik captured an image that was seen around the world and shared by many but it was hardly the first time he’s shot an iconic photo of a space mission.

Following the explosive launch of Starship Super Heavy, Erik Kuna left Starbase for New York City to teach a class on photography. We asked him to shoot the Big Apple while in town.

"A big part of photography is luck, however, nowadays you can increase your luck through careful planning and the use of available technology and software," said Erik. These are the main ingredients for a good Supercluster launch photo.

A great app we use often is PhotoPills. It’s available on iOS and Android and allows you to plan any shoot, at any location, at any time in the future. These features are critical when capturing spaceflight and objects in the night sky. It also works for capturing photos of a busy metropolis.

For the above photo, we knew the full moon would be rising during twilight last Friday, May 5th. Now all we had to do is find a location we’d want to shoot that would align with the city in an interesting way. Erik needed a spot to the west that would allow us to shoot back toward Manhattan. "Luckily, there's a perfect place for this, located in Weehawken, New Jersey right next to the Dueling Grounds," Erik recalled.

Just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, these grounds are where the infamous duel between political adversaries Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr took place.

The area had become a popular spot for duels due to its close proximity to New York City and its relative isolation from law enforcement. The specific spot where Hamilton and Burr dueled, known as the "Hollow," was a small clearing on a rocky ledge overlooking the river. The duel took place on July 11, 1804, and resulted in Hamilton's death the next day. Shortly after, dueling was outlawed in most states and the use of the Weehawken site as a dueling site faded away.

"In planning for our moon shot, I started lining things up in the frame. We have the Intrepid Air and Space Museum where the Space Shuttle Enterprise is housed and a recent addition to the skyline, Vanderbilt One, that sparked the motivation to hunt for a moon pass right over the top of the building," Erik explained.

"Now, all we needed was the weather to cooperate."

Thanks to another useful app called Astrospheric, we can track the transparency and cloud cover hour by hour. It was super cloudy right at sunset in New York but Erik knew it would clear by the forecast. Then, about 45 minutes before the shot, he saw the glow of the full moon starting. The clouds were hiding it, but light was peering out here and there. Erik convinced his student group to stay that extra time and wait out the clouds, since he had a feeling the forecast was right and they would get their shot.

That philosophy can produce a great photo anywhere.

The Glass Half-Full Starship Test

2023-04-25T20:00:00.000Z

SpaceX has taken a significant step in the development of its rapidly-reusable launch vehicle, Starship Super Heavy, by flying the beast to an altitude of 39km during its heart-stopping first fight. Did SpaceX fail to complete its larger objectives? Yes. Did they accelerate the program by testing systems and gathering flight data? Also, Yes.

The rocket cleared the pad and climbed as it continued to lose multiple engines and subsystems essential for the ascent. As more and more engines failed, Starship Super Heavy deviated from its planned trajectory before being stopped by the flight termination system over the Gulf of Mexico. Just before the massive vehicle self-destructed for safety about 4 minutes into the flight, SpaceX’s livestream explained that Starship’s visible cartwheels in the sky instead of the planned booster separation, “does not appear to be a nominal situation.”

Despite the explosion, the outcome is a step in the right direction for SpaceX, proving many concepts and producing data about what didn’t go the way they planned. Given the complexity of the rocket, SpaceX had subliminal expectations. With over 3,600 tons of super chilled and densified liquid oxygen and liquid methane loaded on the rocket, one of the major objectives was to lift off and steer away from the launch pad.

“Just don't blow up the launchpad,” said Elon Musk during a Twitter space. At first, it seemed that hurdle might have been cleared but when the dust settled at Starbase, the aftermath was not ideal. And while assessments by the company and local officials still need to be completed, the damage to the launch facility seems significant. This has been SpaceX's modus operandi since they first stuck a shovel in the dirt road that is now Starbase: Build, test, destroy, then build it better. Before this test, SpaceX had only flown (and destroyed) Starship prototypes without its giant booster.

Since its unveiling in 2016 at the International Astronomical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, Starship has undergone significant design changes, including transitioning from carbon fiber to stainless steel and abandoning landing legs in favor of using chopsticks on the launch pad to catch the booster and the ship.

Standing 120 meters (394 feet) tall, Starship Super Heavy is the largest and the most powerful launch system in the world, capable of launching substantial payloads to any destination in the solar system, allowing humans to live and work on Mars and conduct speedy intercontinental point-to-point transportation to destination across Earth’s surface. NASA needs Starship to bring humans down to the lunar surface during the Artemis III mission.

The highly anticipated first integrated launch of Starship and its Super Heavy booster had been looming ever since the successful 31-engine static fire of Booster 7 on February 9. Although the test was originally intended to fire all 33 engines, one engine was disabled pre-firing and another engine aborted just before ignition. Despite the monumental and high-risk nature of the test, SpaceX demonstrated the booster's technical readiness to successfully fire a large cluster of engines and proved that the launch pad can withstand 50% of the engines’ thrust. On Monday, April 17, the first launch window was unceremoniously scrubbed due to a frozen valve issue and turned into a wet dress rehearsal. Teams worked through the next couple of days to get ready for Elon’s wish: a 4/20 launch.

As the sun came up on the infamous weed holiday, the visibility was extremely poor, with a thick blanket of fog obscuring the rocket from view. Despite the less-than-ideal viewing conditions for onlookers near the launch site, it wasn’t affecting the launch commit criteria and SpaceX pressed on with the second attempt, keeping a close eye on pesky upper-level winds.

Just like the previous attempt, the countdown and the propellant load went smoothly.

The vents on the rocket periodically released oxygen and methane as they boiled off. At T- 40 seconds before the launch, the flight director called a hold due to slightly off-nominal flight pressures on the B7. A few seconds later, the countdown resumed for the historic flight.

Just 8 seconds before T-0, 30 out of 33 Raptors that power Super Heavy successfully ignited and the full stack lifted off and cleared the pad. It began its pitch maneuver towards the Gulf of Mexico. becoming the largest and most powerful rocket ever developed to take flight, surpassing NASA's Space Launch System launched last year. At around T+ 30 seconds, Booster 7 lost a Raptor engine, followed by one of its Hydraulic Power Units.

Starship continued to make its way to Max-Q, the point of maximum aerodynamic stress experienced by the rocket, losing more engines along the way. Down an HPU and over 8 Raptors, Starship continued along its planned trajectory, demonstrating a strong engine-out capability.

Engines continued to fail and the vehicle was unable to maintain the correct trajectory. As Starship reached the point of main-engine cut-off and stage separation, not only did the booster separation system fail, meaning the Starship was still attached to Superheavy, the whole stack started tumbling. More and more engines failed and many of them started burning the copper inside the engine, characterized by green flames.

A couple of tumbles later as the rocket moved out of the launch safety corridor, the flight termination system was activated on both the ship and the booster as the rocket underwent “Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly”. It blew itself up.

As SpaceX works towards a second test flight, it'll involve more than just implementing changes on the Starship Super Heavy system. The orbital launch site will require hefty repairs, including re-concreting the surface and refurbishing the launch tower, chopsticks, and tank farm.

While Starship did clear the launch pad, the facility suffered the wrath of 30 Raptor engines igniting at 90% thrust levels. Initially ramping up to 50%, the engines throttled up to the operational levels which shattered the concrete base of the orbital launch mount, according to SpaceX’s early analysis.

Despite using the Fondag concrete – specifically designed to withstand extreme forces and temperatures in the harshest environments – the high-energy engine plume blew away the concrete debris, exposing the hexagonal foundation of the launch mount. This flying debris inflicted damage upon the tank farm as well as the surrounding area, including the Starhopper.

A massive water-cooled steel plate is also in the works and will be installed under the launch mount to sustain the engine plume of the 33 Raptor engines. Elon clarified on Twitter it wasn’t ready in time for the first launch and based on the data from the static fire, teams didn’t expect this level of damage. “[The steel plate] Wasn’t ready in time & we wrongly thought, based on static fire data, that Fondag would make it through 1 launch.”

SpaceX may have expected significant damage to the launch pad without these protection systems but made the decision to launch anyway because the data and lessons learned with this particular Starship Super Heavy and the ground support equipment were more valuable than waiting for such systems to be installed and tested.

Elon anticipates a rather quick return to launch, saying “Looks like we can be ready to launch again in 1 to 2 months.”

SpaceX will be working with the Federal Aviation Administration, and other government bodies to investigate the failure points. The FAA will green-light the second launch only if it approves the company’s investigation report and officially closes it.

Despite the fiery end to the test, Starship’s historical integrated flight test can hardly be considered a total failure as it provided SpaceX with loads of valuable data that will help direct their design decisions in the future. SpaceX employs an iterative development process for Starship that involves a continuous cycle of design, testing, and refinement, with new prototypes incorporating improvements over the previous iteration. That also means quite a few blown-up prototypes with more expected to meet the same fate in the future.

Starship Super Heavy Booster 7 and Ship 24 were outdated even before they were stacked and readied for this failed test launch as SpaceX had already introduced flight reliability upgrades for future vehicles. The forthcoming Booster 9 will be equipped with electric gimbals for the engines, eliminating the need for HPUs. The 33 outfitted Raptor engines are more reliable and are equipped with enhanced shielding, designed to isolate them from potential engine explosions in flight. With these upgrades, SpaceX aims to prevent the same failures that plagued this flight.

The integrated test flight provided teams with a lot of information about what works and what doesn’t on the Super Heavy booster, however, there’re still a lot of unknowns on the Starship itself, particularly the heat shield. It might take several test flights for SpaceX to achieve orbit and even more flights before they’re able to recover and refly the vehicle with confidence.

Starship has great expectations and even greater ambitions. It remains to be seen if SpaceX will be able to truly lower the cost of access to space and enable frequent crewed flights to the Moon and Mars. What’s clear from this test is that Starship requires a lot of work and it’ll be a substantial number of successful flights before SpaceX will be flying the first crews.

Capturing the First Flight of Starship Super Heavy

2023-04-25T18:00:00.000Z

A few of the Supercluster team's remote pad cameras, placed pretty close to Starship Super Heavy inside the security fence at the launch site, have yet to be retrieved. It's likely they did not survive the fire and brimstone that engulfed the area as the massive rocket flew off the pad.

During the 4/20 launch, our team was at a safe distance (about 5 miles) and captured spectacular images of Starship's liftoff, flight, and eventual self-destruction. One of Erik Kuna's cameras placed just outside the launch site took the remote shot seen below but may never work again.

In Photos: The Spectacle of Starship Super Heavy

2023-04-18T21:00:00.000Z

Starship Super Heavy is unreal.

Supercluster team members Robin Seemangal, Erik Kuna, Jenny Hautmann, and Deven Perez are at Starbase in Texas as SpaceX prepares for the first flight of Starship Super Heavy, the vehicle NASA will use to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972, and the ship that will strand Elon Musk on Mars.

The first launch window on Monday, April 17th fizzled out unceremoniously as it was stated on SpaceX's live stream that teams would convert the launch attempt to a wet dress rehearsal, a procedural run-up to launch for mission control teams that stops a few seconds before liftoff.

Elon, low-key happy about it, tweeted that a valve had frozen and it would take a few days dot dot dot. SpaceX's founder and CEO, the richest man in the world, could have his wish of a 4/20 Starship launch.

We will be updating the Starship Super Heavy launch tracker on the Supercluster App around the clock until liftoff and we're also following a Starlink and Falcon Heavy launch happening over the next few days. Click here to download for Android or iOS.

X-15 and the Pioneers of Hypersonic Flight

2023-04-11T10:00:00.000Z

On October 14, 1947, a test pilot achieved a milestone so important that it was immediately classified as “Top-Secret.”

Several months later, reports were leaked, and the world learned for the first time that a human being had flown faster than the speed of sound. Chuck Yeager had “broken the sound barrier,” reaching a velocity greater than “Mach” 1 — a term named for the Austrian physicist Ernst Mach — that refers to an aircraft traveling at the speed of sound at a set temperature and air pressure.

Since that moment scientists and researchers around the world began work to expand the envelope of high-speed travel. With one barrier broken, the focus quickly shifted to the potential for reaching “hypersonic” speed — traveling greater than 5 times the speed of sound, at an altitude below 90 kilometers. At Mach 5 a flight from New York to LA would take just 30 minutes. The possibilities captivated the imagination of a generation.

Breaking Barriers

Flying at the speed of sound is difficult enough. But hypersonic travel is constrained by its own set of unique technical challenges. When traveling at 5 times the speed of sound air resistance generates copious amounts of heat, which requires active thermal protection for the aircraft. Some aircraft manage this heat with systems to regeneratively cool their fuselage in flight. But these mechanisms can in turn make the aircraft heavier, which makes reaching higher velocities more difficult.

And these high-velocity environments can be tough on the airframe of the aircraft, reducing stiffness and strength. Advancements in metallurgy over the past century have led to the engineering of special nickel alloys and advanced carbon composites designed specifically to handle such extreme environments.

In the United States, many of these challenges were first faced by the engineers and crew of the X-15, an experimental aircraft developed by North American Aviation and operated by NASA and the US Air Force. The X-15 was powered by a Reaction Motors XLR11 engine, the first liquid-fuel rocket engine developed in the United States specifically for use in an aircraft. This early engine used ethyl alcohol and liquid oxygen as propellants, and later generations would switch to anhydrous ammonia, liquid oxygen, and hydrogen peroxide.

On October 3rd, 1967, almost exactly 20 years after Chuck Yeager’s historic flight, the X-15 set a record for the highest velocity achieved by a crewed aircraft — Mach 6.7. This record has never been broken.

During its 9-years of operation, NASA’s X-15 was flown 199 times by 12 pilots, including Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong. Of these 12, 8 flew higher than 80 kilometers, (the US criteria for spaceflight,) which qualifies them as X-15 astronauts.

Like many X-series aircraft, the X-15 was designed to be carried and drop-launched from the wing of a Northrop Grumman B-52. This mother ship would carry the X-15 to an altitude of 13.7 kilometers, where it was dropped while flying at 805 kilometers per hour.

In the late 1950s, the Lockheed Corporation was also developing the X-17 research rocket, designed to test the effects of high-mach atmospheric entry. Standing 12.3 meters tall, this three-stage rocket was a test vehicle for the development of nuclear-armed submarine ballistic missiles like the UGM-27 Polaris.

And much of the lessons of the X-15 and X-17 went into the design and development of the space shuttle, which would pass through hypersonic speeds as it slowed in re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere.

Ramjets

Now, half a century later, and after extensive efforts involving both public and private sectors, hypersonic flight research is again on the rise.

Aircraft like the X-15 were propelled by rocket engines and carried both their fuel and oxidizer. But engineers knew that using atmospheric oxygen to burn fuel could be critical for reducing the weight of the aircraft, and several parallel efforts were focused on “air-breathing” propulsion systems, called ramjets.

Propelling a jet aircraft requires high-pressure air to maintain the flow through the nozzle and generate thrust. Turbojet engines on fighter jets have compressors that produce the required pressure. Ramjets however work by “ramming” the external air into the engine using the forward speed of the vehicle. This eliminates the need for compressors, which simplifies the engine and saves weight — but with a caveat. Ramjets actually require supersonic speeds to work most efficiently.

It’s an old idea. The development of ramjets was first proposed by French aerospace engineer René Lorin, who outlined the idea and its principles in 1913. Lorin was granted a patent for his invention but the technology was way behind the physics, and he was never able to build a prototype. Building on his research, numerous French aerospace engineers worked on theoretical concepts, but it wasn’t until 1926 when Andrew Carter from the United Kingdom proposed the first practical ramjet-like propulsion system designed specifically to enhance the range of artillery shells. Similar work was also carried out by Hungarian inventor Albert Fonó, however, his proposal to equip gun-launched projectiles with ramjets was rejected by the Austro-Hungarian Army.

The actual construction and testing of ramjets didn’t begin until the mid-1930s in France, Germany, and the Soviet Union. French engineer René Leduc ground tested a ramjet up to Mach 0.9. By 1938, work on full-scale ramjet-powered aircraft had begun, and ground tests were conducted up to Mach 2.5. In Germany, Dr. Wolf Trommsdroff led a successful effort to develop artillery shells powered by ramjets. Tests conducted in the 1940s saw the shells accelerating up to Mach 4.2. And the first operational ramjet-powered missile took the form of the V1 “buzz bomb.”

In the Soviet Union, Boris Stechkin began ground testing ramjet components put to Mach 2 in the 1930s, before the war ended his research.

In the US, ramjet development picked up in 1940 when aeronautics engineer Henry J. E. Reid joined hands with Roy Edward Marquardt in the UK, whose primary work focused on ramjets and their military applications. Their efforts continued after the war and augmented the development of the BOMARC, Talos, and the UK’s Bloodhound anti-air missiles.

As the technology matured, the advantages of ramjets led the US Navy to set up the “Bumblebee” program, in collaboration with John Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. This program led to the development of surface-launched and air-launched ramjet-powered missiles.

Ramjets have been shown to work efficiently at Mach 3, but at higher speeds, their efficiency starts to drop, so modifications were required to force the continued combustion of supersonic airflow. Engines of this type became known as supersonic-combustion ramjets — or “scramjets.”

Scramjets

Interest in scramjet engines began in the late 1950s with the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, and Russia all conducting a plethora of theoretical studies on significant performance gains at a post-Mach 5 velocity. The US Navy started prioritizing hypersonic propulsion development in the form of the External Ramjet (ERJ) program. In 1958 the ERJ demonstrated a net-positive thrust at Mach 5 for the first time. Following this early success, the Navy started an exploratory development program to demonstrate the technology necessary for a scramjet-powered missile, which came to be known as the Supersonic Combustion Ramjet Missile (SCRAM).

SCRAM was predicted to have a 350-mile range flying at Mach 7.5. While it underwent considerable development and ground testing it never proceeded into flight testing, and was ultimately canceled in 1977 due to mounting technical complexities.

A scramjet engine was also envisioned for the Rockwell X-30, a spaceplane technology demonstrator developed under the National Aero-Space Plane (NASP) program. The goal of the NASP was to create a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) spacecraft, and later a passenger spaceliner to potentially replace the Space Shuttle. Backed by NASA and the US Department of Defense, comprising DARPA, Air Force, Navy, and the Strategic Defense Initiative Offices, the program called for a scramjet-based aircraft capable of achieving Mach 8. In 1986, contracts were awarded to Rockwell, McDonnell Douglas, and General Dynamics to develop the hypersonic SSTO vehicle. Rocketdyne and Pratt & Whitney were awarded $175 million to develop the propulsion system.

Despite steady progress in structural and propulsion technology, the X-30 was plagued by added military requirements and unsolved issues with environmental control systems, safety equipment, and human ratings. As development progressed into the early 1990s the X-30 was larger, heavier, behind schedule, and over budget. It was ultimately canceled in 1993.

But learnings from the X-30 and decades of scramjet propulsion development on other projects culminated in NASA’s experimental X-43. The X-43A aircraft successfully flew at hypersonic velocity and set the current record for the fastest uncrewed jet-powered aircraft — clocking in at Mach 9.6. Developed under NASA’s Hyper-X program, and managed by the Langley Research Center and Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards, California, the X-43 program involved Boeing, Orbital Sciences Corporation, General Applied Science Laboratory, and Micro Craft Inc, and was designed to demonstrate a scramjet’s ability to achieve hypersonic speed.

Because the X-43 scramjet engine could only operate at speeds of Mach 4.5 or higher, it was mounted to a Pegasus rocket, which boosted the aircraft to the required base velocity. Together called the “stack” by project members, the Pegasus and X-43 were drop launched by a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bomber.

Following the success of the X-43 the emphasis for NASA became sustained hypersonic flight, and development shifted to the X-51 “WaveRider.”

Developed in cooperation with DARPA, Boeing, and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, the X-51 “WaverRider” was designed to fly at Mach 5 at an altitude of 21,000 meters. Similar to the X-43, the WaveRider was drop-launched by a B-52, and was initially propelled by a solid rocket booster to achieve baseline velocity. The X-51 first achieved simulated Mach 5 velocities during ground testing at NASA’s Langley Research Center, with further tests conducted to observe acceleration between Mach 4 and Mach 6 to confirm hypersonic thrust.

WaveRider’s first powered flight testing occurred in 2010. It flew for 200 seconds and achieved Mach 5 velocity, and though this was short of a planned 300-second total flight duration, it still set the record for the longest hypersonic flight time of 140 seconds, beating the X-43.

In 2013 the X-51 flew for a 4th time, reached Mach 5.1, and it lasted 210 seconds — good enough to beat its own previous record.

After this test, out of fuel, WaveRider splashed down into the Pacific Ocean. It was the completion of the X-51 program, considered a successful demonstration of the potential for hypersonic flight.

It was also exactly 100 years after René Lorin filed the first Ramjet patent.

The Road Dragon Paved for Starship

2023-04-04T21:00:00.000Z

By the time I met Stuart Keech for an exclusive interview in a conference room at SpaceX Headquarters in Hawthorne, California, he had already launched astronauts to the International Space Station aboard a Dragon crew capsule and seen them through flight. Concurrently, a second Falcon 9 rocket carrying a flotilla of Starlink satellites launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Dragon docked with the space station, and impossibly, it seemed, there was still another launch to go. Two Intelsat communications satellites were set to fly from Cape Canaveral, and in perfect SpaceX fashion, would coincide within ten seconds of Dragon opening its hatch and feeding astronauts to the station. It had been a long day, and had a long way to go.

Keech is the senior director of Dragon Engineering, and as such, is the man in charge of keeping America in the human spaceflight business. (Previously, he was director of Dragon Propulsion.) Dragon is the only way astronauts can get to the space station from U.S. soil, and with the proliferation of issues plaguing Russia’s Soyuz capsules, might soon be the only way for anyone at all to travel there.

In a matter of days, the company will fly the Starship Super Heavy rocket for the first time. The sleek silver ship and its booster, the latter taller than the Statue of Liberty, are both entirely reusable, with Starship designed for orbital refueling. It is the sort of rocket you imagine NASA would have been building all this time, but hasn’t—a rocket designed for the future, making its orbital launch a turning point in human spaceflight: at last, a spacecraft capable of flying astronauts not only to the moon and the Lunar surface, but also to Mars. It will be able to carry Starlink satellite nodes in much greater numbers, as well as Starshield, the Defense Department counterpart to Starlink. In addition, Starship is theoretically capable of point-to-point flights to different places on Earth, which again, is of great interest to the Defense Department for moving large amounts of cargo very quickly. NASA’s robotic space science program is also considering the potential of Starship for launching heavier robotic spacecraft on new, and sometimes direct, trajectories.

No part of NASA, the American military, or human exploration can achieve their loftiest ambitions without Starship’s success. It is, in short, the sort of quantum leap that was the Apollo program itself.

In terms of sheer splash, this might make Dragon and Falcon 9 seem obsolete or destined for scrapyards and museums. But when you walk onto the shop floor at SpaceX Headquarters, you realize immediately that not only is Dragon still the backbone of human spaceflight, but that it’s just getting started. After crossing through the cube farms of engineers and others—Elon Musk’s desk is nondescript, one among many—you enter a literal spaceship factory, and hanging above, outside mission control, is the very first Dragon cargo capsule ever flown. It is scorched all around, having survived launch, docking, reentry, and splashdown. And there, on its side, is a tiny testament to the SpaceX style of forward-thinking. They put a window in the cargo craft. One day, they were going to fly people. They succeeded in 2019.

“The whole world sees Starship as SpaceX’s next thing, and I'm responsible for the Dragon program that right now is the American spaceflight program,” says Keech, a youthful, affable engineer who made time to chat despite an unbelievably busy schedule. “It could be soon eclipsed by something like Starship that’s also going to be flying humans to space, but I think that the mission statement for Dragon is to continue to expand the envelope of of human flight in low Earth orbit.”

Even after Starship gets its space legs in the next few years, SpaceX will be mounting increasingly ambitious and unexpected missions for Dragon—missions that NASA has no other way to achieve.

Keech had awakened at two in the morning before the Crew 5 launch for a meeting with NASA to talk about the weather. When launching astronauts, it wasn’t enough to have a clear, beautiful day over Cape Canaveral, Florida, where the Dragon would fly. Worst-case scenarios also demanded attention.

“We were specifically tracking some weather at the stage separation location for Dragon,” he said. “If Dragon aborted off the top of Falcon, we want to make sure it was safe for the crew when the capsule splashed down.” This meant somewhere off the coast of South Carolina. “It’s got to be safe for the astronauts, and for the team that would recover them.”

Around three a.m., everyone agreed that it was safe to fly. Afterward, the crew suited up, and members of the SpaceX flight team in Florida began what Keech called “fluffing the pillows” on Dragon, doing everything from draping seatbelts across the seats to turning the lights on. Meanwhile, at Mission Control in Hawthorne, the Dragon team monitored the spacecraft for any anomalies. But after they sealed the crew in the craft, someone studying high-resolution camera footage noticed a single human hair in the hatch. Though the craft was almost certainly safe for flight, there was plenty of time, so SpaceX decided to halt preflight testing, open the door, remove the hair, and reseal it.

“It’s just one of those things where on the ground, you can take action, right? Once you launch, we would be talking about it for six months, so you might as well just take the time and do it,” he laughed.

SpaceX “owns” Dragon, both literally and in terms of operation. Twenty-four-seven, teams from Mission Control in Hawthorne handle its preflight, flight, docking, and the weeks or months it might be docked with the International Space Station.

Because he worked on Falcon before he came to Dragon, Keech says he might be more relaxed than most during launch. “I love watching Falcon fly. It's exciting to see the culmination of both vehicles, which must work in tandem to get crew up to ISS and back safely.”

The Dragon team has adopted the same maintenance process that Falcon pioneered. After the capsule splashes down, it’s loaded onto a recovery vessel and brought to Cape Canaveral, where the SpaceX team there unloads it, removes thermal protection, and inspects everything. They examine everything on the interior (though little of the inside is refurbished from flight to flight). Each of the systems is put through a functional checkout, valves are tested thoroughly, propulsion systems are studied, as well as electrical and fluid system behaviors and air conditioning.

Engineers eventually reinstall the heat shield and thermal protection, and back to the launch site the capsule goes. It is a continuous process. While they were launching and docking the capsule for Crew 5, teams were actively working through the maintenance and refurbishment of the capsule for the Crew 6 mission. Meanwhile, they were doing pre-launch testing for the next cargo launch.

“We're managing now a fleet of Dragons,” says Keech. “We have seven vehicles and all of them are doing something at any given time.” Their total planned fleet, he said, will have three cargo vehicles and five crew vehicles.

And their ambitions go beyond loading the space station with people and sundries.

Late last year, SpaceX and NASA announced a study to see if they could boost the orbit of the Hubble Space Telescope, which would dramatically extend the life of that vital national astronomy asset. Previously, astronauts aboard the space shuttle could service the telescope, but obviously, those days are done. SpaceX, in conjunction with the Polaris program, would find a way to do the job.

“We've looked at the performance of Dragon and whether we have enough propellant and delta-v capability to rendezvous with and boost Hubble based on how heavy Hubble is and how heavy Dragon is,” says Keech. “But what we're kicking off now is the next level of that. We need to figure out what the rendezvous would look like.”

The vehicle that they are planning to fly would have a crew on it, Keech explains. “The docking itself would happen using software on Dragon, potentially with the ability for the crew to take over if there's a problem.” It would be similar in that regard to the crew’s ability to dock manually with the International Space Station if the automatic guidance systems failed.

Hubble is already prepped for the activity. The last service mission there, in 2009, left a docking mechanism on the spacecraft. By an amazing coincidence, one of the astronauts on that shuttle mission, and the last person to have hands-on Hubble, was astronaut Megan McArthur, who flew on the SpaceX Crew 2 mission, and who is married to astronaut Bob Behnken, who flew on the first crewed flight of the Dragon program, docking with the International Space Station in 2020. “It’s pretty incredible,” said Keech.

Support for the service mission came from the top. “Early on,” said Keech, “we didn’t know if we wanted to do Hubble, and then we talked to Elon. And he’s like, ‘This sounds awesome.’ And we were like, great!”

Keech says of Musk, “He knows exactly when to challenge the team to make sure we’re always thinking about the next thing, and trying to improve Dragon to do the next thing. And he’ll say, ‘And then what's the thing after that?’” Musk was also eager early on for the Polaris Dawn mission, which will be the first private spacewalk in history.

For all his eagerness to push spaceflight forward, however, Musk knows when to pull back. Last summer, there was a propellant leak on a Dragon cargo vehicle. SpaceX ultimately had to partially offload the vehicle to fix the leak and then put it back on. There were conversations about whether they needed to do any of that, however. NASA could have flown the mission safely with one valve closed. It would have reduced the spacecraft’s fault tolerance, but not place the vehicle or its contents in jeopardy. If something went wrong, the Dragon team could have simply brought the vehicle home early.

Musk disagreed. “We should fix the leak,” he said.

“We need him to buy into what we're doing because it's like, delay this mission or fly at higher risk posture,” says Keech. “I wanted to go fix the leak and I was happy that he wanted to as well. But bringing that trade forward, like I understood we can go either way, and he was resolute that we go fix it.”

Though Starship represents a new chapter for SpaceX, NASA, and human spaceflight overall, in many respects it is an evolution of the flight systems to come before.

“The cool thing about Starship is it's kind of a blend between Falcon and Dragon,” says Keech. “We can take the lessons learned and the best parts of both—and eliminate the worst parts—and make an ultimately better and more capable vehicle.” Starship is a two-stage vehicle, just like the Falcon 9, but its upper stage is also capable of carrying humans. “It's like if you turn the Falcon second stage into Dragon—that's what Starship is.”

The human-rated version of Starship will have to have thermal control systems and life support system, just like Dragon, and the Starship team takes advantage of that. “There are certain teams within Dragon that are very unique at SpaceX, whose knowledge is acutely applicable to what we’re going to be doing on Starship as we take people to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.” Last year, for example, the Dragon team began upgrading the Dragon dehumidifiers to make them “more manufacturable,” says Keech. “That's because we know we have to have a dehumidifier on Starship in order to fly people in the Artemis human landing system program, as well as our own missions to the Moon and Mars.”

The Dragon program, he says, is continuing to push the envelope, all in pursuit of the goals that Starship and SpaceX cumulatively have. “We know we need a spacesuit that can walk on Mars someday. So doing a spacewalk on Dragon is on the path toward that. All this is in parallel with our highest priority: servicing the International Space Station with astronauts and cosmonauts, as well as cargo. And it's pretty wild. This is very much the active expansion of spaceflight, and of making space accessible. That's what we're doing right now. And we're gonna continue to do it.”

Middle East Nations Advance on the Space Frontier

2023-03-21T20:00:00.000Z

In early March, SpaceX successfully launched the Crew-6 mission.

Crew-6 carried US astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, Russian Cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, and United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi aboard Crew Dragon Endeavour to the International Space Station.

The crew will spend up to 6 months at the orbiting laboratory, conducting scientific research as a part of Expedition 68/69. The mission is a historic first for the Emirates, as it is their first long-duration mission in space. At the end of this mission, Al Neyadi will set the record for the longest time continuously spent in space by an Arab astronaut.

In 2019, under an agreement with Roscosmos, the UAE sent its first astronaut, Hazzaa al-Mansoori, onboard the Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS. During his time in orbit, Mansoori was part of several scientific experiments and conducted a tour of the orbiting laboratory in Arabic. The mission hoped to inspire and train a new generation of engineers and astronauts as the country plans to expand its reach in space. Two years before this mission, the country didn’t even have an astronaut corps.

In 2017, the Dubai-based government organization, Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center, announced an astronaut program — the first of its kind in the Middle East. The country’s first astronaut corps included Hazza Al-Mansoori, Sultan Al Neyadi, Nora Al Matrooshi, and Mohammed Al Mulla. In 2019, Al-Mansoori and Al-Neyadi were awarded NASA’s Astronaut pins as they were certified for missions aboard the ISS upon their completion of the agency’s basic training program. Both the astronauts were trained for the Crew-6 mission before Al-Neyadi was selected to be a part of a long-duration mission as a mission specialist, while Al-Mansoori acted as backup crew. Al Matrooshi and Al Mulla are currently training in NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for future missions.

To push beyond Earth Orbit, the UAE signed NASA's Artemis Accords, an international treaty that aims for peaceful collaboration and exploration on the Moon, Mars, and beyond. As NASA races to land people back to the Moon for the first time in the 21st century, the UAE will be actively involved in this endeavor. The country is in discussions with Boeing to develop the airlock module for the Gateway space station around the Moon, reported first by the UAE’s The National.

Recently, the UAE also took a significant step towards its Moon exploration program. On December 11, 2022, SpaceX launched the Japanese iSpace Hakuto-R Moon lander on Falcon 9. Onboard the lander is the the UAE’s domestically developed Rashid rover, named in honor of Dubai's late ruler Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum. Weighing just 10 kilograms, the rover was built by a team of 11 engineers at Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center who have been working on this project since 2017.

Hakuto-R is scheduled to land in April at the Atlas Crater, located in the northeast part of the Moon, to the southeast of Mare Frigoris.

Once down at the surface, the Rashid Rover will study properties of lunar regolith, petrography and geology of the Moon, dust movement, and study surface plasma conditions and the Moon's photoelectron sheath. Lunar regolith is one of the major concerns when designing any equipment for lunar exploration. A variety of test samples have been attached to its wheels as a part of the materials adhesive experiment which will test how the regolith interacts with different materials. The rover will also be collecting numerous pictures of the surface, having been equipped with 2 cameras supplied by the National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), France’s space agency.

The UAE is also a part of an exclusive club of nations that have successfully deployed a satellite around Mars. Named the Al-Amal probe (“Hope” in Arabic), the orbiter is designed and built in collaboration with the University of Colorado-Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), Arizona State University, and the University of California, Berkeley. It was launched onboard the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-IIA launch vehicle from Tanegashima Space Center in Japan during the 2020 Hohmann Transfer window, entering Mars’ orbit 7 months later.

The Al-Amal probe was designed specifically to study the Martian atmosphere and its climate. Equipped with an infrared and ultraviolet spectrometer and a multi-band camera, the orbiter will study the atmospheric layers of Mars in detail. The collected data will help study the drastic climatic change in the Martian atmosphere from the time it could sustain liquid water to today, when the atmosphere is so thin water can exist only as ice or vapor. It’ll also provide us with valuable insights into how and why Mars is losing its hydrogen and oxygen into space, and the connection between the upper and lower levels of the Martian atmosphere.

Last year, the UAE Vice President Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum unveiled the "Mars 2117 Project”, which aims to develop a city on the red planet by the year 2117. According to the Government of Dubai, the first phase will involve developing the skills and technologies to achieve scientific breakthroughs needed to send humans to Mars in the next decades. A team of Emirati scientists, along with international partners, will develop an international scientific consortium to speed up this research project.

Saudi Arabia Returns to Human Spaceflight

The largest oil-rich nation is also venturing into global space initiatives, diversifying its platform to sustain itself in the post-oil economy. Saudi Arabia’s space activities have a long history. In 1976, the country was the founder of the Arab Satellite Communications Organization, also known as Arabsat, a communications satellite operator which serves exclusively the Arab world. It launched its first satellite, Arabsat 1-A, in 1985 onboard Arianespace's Ariane 3 launch vehicle. A few months later, Arabsat 1-B was launched onboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1985 as a part of the STS-51G mission. The launch included a seven-member international crew including Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan bin Salman Al Saud, making him the first Arab to go to space, and the youngest person to fly on the Space Shuttle at the time.

In 2018, the country established its space agency, named the Saudi Space Commission, as part of Prince Salman's Vision 2030 agenda. SSC established the country’s first astronaut program to train Saudi personnel for short and long-duration space missions and to conduct scientific experiments and research.

This summer, the country will be sending 2 of its astronauts on a 10-day mission to the International Space Station. Saudi Astronauts Rayyana Barnawi and Ali al-Qarni will join their American counterparts John Shoffner, and veteran Peggy Whitson as a part of Axiom-2 — the second privately funded mission to the ISS — scheduled to launch onboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon no earlier than May 12. Barnawi will become the first Arab woman to go to space and both the Saudi astronauts will be the first from their country to visit the orbiting laboratory.

When Axiom-2 docks to the ISS, there will be 3 Arabic astronauts onboard — Al Neyadi from UAE and Barnawi and al-Qarni from Saudi Arabia — marking another historical first for the Arab world.

Israel Utilizes Commercial Industry

Israel has a relatively space-rich history after launching their first satellite Ofek-1 in 1988 onboard their domestically developed Shavit launch vehicle, joining an exclusive club of countries that have designed, developed, and launched their own satellite. Shavit is still operational, having last launched in 2020 from Palmachim Airbase, located near the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The rocket is launched into a retrograde orbit, meaning the payload is placed in an orbit having the opposite rotational motion as Earth. Launching in such an orbit almost halves the capability of an already small satellite launch vehicle, but ensures that its debris falls into the Mediterranean Sea and that it does not fire over regional neighboring countries.

In 2003, the country sent its first astronaut — Ilan Ramon — to low earth orbit onboard the Space Shuttle Columbia’s STS-107 to the International Space Station. Tragically, Columbia disintegrated upon atmospheric re-entry, killing all 7 crew onboard including Ramon.

18 years after the disaster, a former Israeli air force pilot and a businessman, Etyan Stibbe, launched onboard the privately-funded Axiom-1 mission to the International Space Station, becoming the second Israeli citizen to go to space. Stibbe carried with him surviving pages from Ramon’s space diary and even celebrated Passover on the station with matzah that he brought and gefilte fish offered by the Russian astronauts onboard.

The country also has its sights set on the Moon. In 2011, an organization based at Tel Aviv University was established to participate in the Google Lunar X Prize with the goal of landing on the Moon and performing various tasks. Named SpaceIL, it received its initial funding from American philanthropist Sheldon Adelson and the Israel Space Agency. By 2017, SpaceIL was conducting integration and testing of their lunar lander named Beresheet. By 2018, Google ended their contest without declaring any winner, since no team was able to launch to the Moon within the set timeframe. Having secured the necessary funding, SpaceIL continued working on their lander. By 2019, the Beresheet lander was integrated and launched to space onboard the Falcon 9.

Once in a parking orbit, the lander performed 4 burns using its main engine to raise its orbit and match the Moon’s apogee. The spacecraft successfully maneuvered itself to lunar orbit before decelerating itself for a soft landing at Mare Serenitatis, one of the primary dark lava seas on the Earth-facing side, located southeast to Mare Tranquillitatis or the Sea of Tranquility, where the first humans on the Moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11 landed in 1969.

During the descent phase, Beresheet’s main engine stopped mid-flight. A command for a system reboot was sent and the engine was back online but it was too late as the lander had lost too much altitude for a soft landing and the spacecraft crash-landed at Mare Serenitatis. The mission was still a huge success for the team, as Beresheet became the first commercial lunar lander to rendezvous and attempt to land at the surface of our nearest celestial neighbor.

Further investigation revealed that an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU2) gyroscope failed during the approach to the landing site, which in turn shut down the engine. An immediate reset of that equipment by the ground control crew was not possible because of a sudden loss of communication with the control network.

Learning from their failures, SpaceIL announced the company’s second attempt at landing on the Moon, the Beresheet 2, currently scheduled for 2025. With the same budget as the last mission — $100 million — Beresheet 2 will include more cooperation from international partners, with NASA, German Aerospace Center (DLR), and the United Arab Emirates among the 7 countries that have expressed their interest.

The mission will consist of 3 integrated spacecraft: an orbiter and 2 lunar landers. Orbiter, named the “Mothership”, is intended to orbit the Moon for several years and will be used for several scientific experiments. The two landers will descend down to the surface, one to the Earth side and another to the far side of the Moon.

Artificial Intelligence Searches for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

2023-03-14T10:00:00.000Z

There’s a new player on the SETI scene, and it’s already finding mysterious radio signals that could potentially be the real deal.

For more than six decades astronomers have searched through billions of narrowband radio channels, struggling to find any sign of intelligence. And adding to the challenge of listening at the right time, in the right place, there’s myriad confounding signals all over Earth, from cellphones to GPS, wi-fi to microwave ovens, which wash over a radio telescope and interfere with its strained hearing of the heavens. Even though in principle all that radio junk from human activity can be sifted through and sorted, the sheer amount that could obscure any true alien signal means the odds are really against us. Especially as we enter the era of ‘Big Data’ astronomy.

It’s becoming less of a job for a human, and more of a job for a machine.

A new machine-learning algorithm, written by an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, Peter Ma, has cut through the terrestrial noise to uncover eight currently unexplained radio signals, each with some hallmark of bonafide extraterrestrial chatter.

Ma first fed his algorithm with simulated signals, training it to recognize what we think an alien radio signal might look like — one that exhibits Doppler drift incurred by the rotation of the transmitter and the receiver on rotating planets, and which also displays a clear on-off pattern when the telescope is moved away from the target star. If a signal really is just terrestrial interference, then it shouldn’t exhibit Doppler drift, and in principle should disappear when the telescope is moved away from the target.

Then, he unleashed it on 480-hours’ worth of data collected from 820 star-systems by West Virginia’s Green Bank 100-meter radio telescope. This amounted to millions of radio signals, mostly spurious, but once the algorithm had ruled out the terrestrial radio frequency interference (RFI) and astrophysical noise, eight candidate signals remained. These seem to be coming from five star -systems, all between 30 and 90 light years from Earth.

Training the Algorithm

Despite being singled out by the machine-learning algorithm, the smart money is still on these eight signals being terrestrial RFI that slipped through the net. Much like BLC-1 — the anomalous signal detected by Breakthrough Listen, believed to originate from Proxima Centauri, but actually was from human-built electronics — they are almost certainly going to turn out to have a mundane origin.

What is important is that the algorithm was able to sift through the torrents of more obvious RFI to find the eight unusual signals quickly. More pertinently, when the same data was fed through the traditional search pipeline, the eight signals were all missed. In other words, Ma’s machine-learning algorithm is spotting interesting signals that otherwise would not have been detected.

“The top eight candidates [were] detected coming from noisy parts of the spectrum, in the range 1.4–1.6GHz,” Ma tells Supercluster. “The algorithm seems to perform better in certain regards, in that it discovered more interesting signals that the traditional algorithm failed to detect.”

The algorithm strikes a balance between supervised and unsupervised machine learning. Imagine you were training the algorithm to recognize pictures of cats and dogs, says astronomer Steve Croft of Breakthrough Listen at the University of California, Berkeley. In supervised machine learning, you label the pictures ‘cat’, or ‘dog’ to help the algorithm. In unsupervised learning, the pictures are not labelled, and the AI has to figure out which are cats and which are dogs on its own.

“Then there’s in-between approaches like what Peter is doing,” Croft tells me. “He’s simulating some signals and then training an auto-encoder to reproduce the input, and then he’s feeding that into a random forest classifier that actually does the figuring out of what things are.”

Given how pervasive A.I. is becoming in our lives, we’re all having to learn the new language of artificial intelligence, only in this case it has taken on a distinctly arboreal dialect. A ‘random forest classifier’ is a collection of ‘decision trees’, which are a means to allow an algorithm to sort data by making decisions according to a tree-like model, with the branches being different outcomes, such as, is this animal a cat or a dog?

Though it sounds complicated, it’s really just pattern recognition, and in the context of SETI it becomes a kind of cosmic ‘Where’s Waldo?’

“The ultimate goal is a universal anomaly detector, where it figures out what all the human interference looks like and then says, here’s something that looks different,” says Croft.

Reverse Image Search

BLC-1 was something of a watershed moment for SETI, where an encroaching bit of RFI — specifically the radio emission from a common oscillator widely used in electronics — was able to sneak through all the usual safeguards and filters and, for a short time, look like a convincing alien broadcast. When I asked Ma and Croft whether their algorithm would have recognized BLC-1 for what it was, they were unsure. BLC-1 was detected by a different telescope, in a different dataset to the one their machine-learning algorithm was trained on. The algorithm isn’t yet adaptable enough to be able to switch between such diverse datasets, but maybe there’s a quicker workaround.

“Currently we are working on tools that will help vet signals like BLC-1 by enabling us to better scan through datasets for ‘lookalikes’,” says Ma.

To do so, Croft hit upon the idea of a SETI analog to Google’s ‘reverse image search’, whereby you take an image and upload it to Google, and the search engine finds all the images that look like it.

“That would be great for [signals like] BLC-1,” says Croft. “If we can feed that signal in and ask the algorithm if there are any other signals like it in the data, it would help with us vetting it.”

Croft remarks on how he idly mused about the idea of a reverse search function in his last meeting with Ma before Christmas 2022, and by the time they returned in the New Year, Ma had taken the initiative and already implemented the idea.

“Specifically, the reverse search algorithm would answer the question of, ’where else does this candidate appear in our data?’,” says Ma. ”If the signal is RFI then in the past we should have picked up similar looking hits. If it was truly a technosignature, then we should’ve seen only this kind of signal in observations of this particular target.”

Efforts to re-acquire the eight signals identified by the algorithm with Green Bank have so far failed. That doesn’t mean anything. All it tells us is that whatever the origin of the signals, they are not persistently switched on. It’s possible they will forever remain a mystery, like the Wow! signal of 1977. Either way, they’ll soon be joined by more: if the algorithm can detect eight signals in a relatively small dataset, just wait for what it will find when it’s let loose on data from one of the big next-generation radio telescopes, such as the ngVLA (Next Generation Very Large Array) or the SKA (Square Kilometer Array).

Interview with a Chatbot

At the moment, A.I. seems really smart because it’s able to search through data quickly, but it’s only able to identify signals within the parameters that we give it. However, given the explosive acceleration in A.I. research, how soon before it is able to go beyond what we ask it to look for, and start to come up with its own ideas about how to detect extraterrestrial life?

In a field that is advancing at a rate governed by Moore’s Law, it’s difficult to predict where research into artificial intelligence will take us next. When I asked what A.I. might be able to do for SETI in, say, 10 years’ time, both Ma and Croft demurred. Instead, I chose to ask an actual artificial intelligence — ChatGPT — and put to it the question, will A.I. be able to think of new technosignatures that humans haven’t thought of?

“Yes, it’s possible that artificial intelligence (A.I.) could help us identify new technosignatures that humans haven’t thought of,” the chatbot told me. “A.I. has the potential to analyze data and patterns at a scale and speed that would be impossible for humans to do on their own, and it can also identify patterns and connections that may be difficult for humans to detect.”

Interviewing an artificial intelligence for an article was certainly a first for me. Of course, ChatGPT isn’t really sentient; it’s a smart algorithm that can search through and gather human information on the Internet really quickly to provide a response.

“The thing that’s been blowing everybody’s mind, mine included, in the past 12 months or so has been the generative algorithms,” says Croft. “I’ve seen creative things coming out of ChatGPT where it is synthesizing all of human knowledge and then trying to move that forward to the next step. So I hope this evolves to the stage where we can ask it to take the blinders off and imagine, based on everything it knows about physics, biology, chemistry, exoplanets, technology, all of these things that the A.I. has learned, and to tell us what it thinks ET might be doing. It will probably come up with some good ideas.”

Alien A.I.

If A.I. does eventually find ET, there could be some symmetry to the discovery. Several prominent scientists with an interest in SETI, including most recently Cambridge’s Martin Rees and the SETI Institute’s Seth Shostak, have suggested that alien life, if it is technologically millions or even billions of years ahead of us, might no longer be biological, but artificial.

I talked about this with Shostak a few years ago. “I’ve been saying this for a long time,” he told me with his usual passion for the subject, imploring us to look at the timescales for technological development. One minute we’re inventing the motorcar or radio, and the next we’re developing artificial intelligence, and progress in that field is only going to accelerate to the point where we have artificial general intelligence, in the form of machines that can think for themselves.

“Thinking machines can evolve much more quickly than biology can, so it seems to me very straightforward to argue that the majority of intelligence in the cosmos is not biological, but is synthetic machine intelligence,” said Shostak.

Here’s the tricky part: there’s no need for an A.I. to live on a planet with oceans and a breathable atmosphere and a stable climate and all those things astronomers look for when thinking about life. A machine might be just as happy in the cold vacuum of space.

“Since machine intelligence might be the dominant form of intelligence in the Universe, then the obvious question is, how do we find it?” asked Shostak rhetorically. “It may not be on a planet — why would it be on a planet? It doesn’t need a planetary surface, it needs different things, it needs an energy source, it may need a heat sink, it may need this, it may need that, and we really have no idea what may be of interest to these machines. It’s like earthworms trying to figure out the behavior of humans — they’re not going to have very good ideas.”

We may be the earthworms to the Universe’s super-intelligences, but perhaps A.I. might see kindred spirits in these alien machines, and be able to make better educated guesses about what the aliens might be up to, where they might be and, more to the point, how to find them. It might take our A.I. to find an alien A.I.

A Meeting of Machines

As we move into the realms of full-blown speculation, here’s another thing to mull over. SETI research is beginning to consider the possibility that there could be visitors to the Solar System even now, probes sent to explore, just like we send robotic emissaries to the other planets of the Solar System. It’s a long shot, but if there were an alien probe here, so far from home, it’s likely able to act autonomously with some form of artificial general intelligence.

The prospect of sending A.I., possibly in some kind of melding with biological intelligence to explore the Universe makes sense, according to Martin Rees. In 2013 I was able to sit down for a chat with him at a 100 Year Starship conference at the Royal Society in London. There he talked about how the environment of space, coupled with the huge distances between stars and the time-spans involved in interstellar journeys, means that machines are better suited to exploring space than biological life.

“The motive for interstellar travel is rather weak so long as we are humans with human limitations,” Rees told me. “I think it would be a more attractive prospect if we evolve into some new species that lives for much longer, or if we can develop human–machine hybrids that can have longer effective lifespans, because it is going to take a long time [to reach the stars] and that timespan is not daunting for entities that can transcend human limitations.”

So, if aliens want to come to us, they may well send their artificial intelligences instead. If we were to discover an active probe in our Solar System, how could we communicate with it? Again, having a home-grown artificial general intelligence could give us an edge in reaching out to and talking to an intelligent alien machine.

For now this is all science fiction, but with the way things are progressing, it may not remain science fiction for too much longer. Astrobiologists often look to understand the origin of organic life on Earth to better understand what alien life might be like. Perhaps we should also start to chronicle the origin of artificial intelligence on Earth for the same reason.

Norton Space Props Was El Dorado for a Burgeoning Launch Industry

2023-03-07T23:00:00.000Z

Take a drive up the 101 from Hollywood, head over the hills and past the studio lots to the dusty outskirts of Sun Valley.

It’s not a glamorous Los Angeles destination; this area doesn’t attract starry-eyed tourists like Rodeo Drive or the Walk of Fame. Out here, among the body shops, used car lots, and strip mall pawn brokers is a modest warehouse with a hand-painted marquee reading N.S. Aerospace. Welcome to Norton Space Props.

This unassuming business has been a low-key destination in the space world for more than seven decades. What looks at first glance like just another cut-rate junkyard was actually a vital bridge connecting the first space age to the current new space era. Thanks to some prescient hoarding and canny engineering, this salvage outlet became a site where old technology, once lost, came roaring back to life.

I made my own pilgrimage to the valley in December of 2022. I’d been exploring the aerospace industry in and around Los Angeles as part of the ARIES Project, an ethnographic initiative documenting the many ways people and societies relate to space. Throughout the fall, the name Norton came up periodically as I cruised around the LA space circuit: a short entry in Atlas Obscura here, an offhand comment from a tipsy machinist at an industry happy hour there.

One rainy night, I found myself in a suburban garage in Torrance with two engineers showing off their DIY liquid-propellant rocket.

Between bits of industry gossip, they explained that many of its parts were harvested from scrap yards around the city. “Have you ever heard of this place up north of Hollywood?” I asked. The response was immediate, “Of course! I’ve been there, we’ve all been there. Everyone knows about Norton.”

Even if you haven’t been to Norton Space Props, chances are you’ve seen their wares. If you’ve watched a film set in orbit or enjoyed a cinematic romp through the cosmos, you’ve spotted pieces from the Norton Space collection. This business has become one of Hollywood’s go-to suppliers for the type of objects and furnishings needed to craft an alluringly scientific mise en scène, realistic or fantastic. Need industrial fixtures and complex piping for your spaceship exteriors? You’ll find them here. Want an analog board dense with buttons and knobs for a retro control room look? Norton’s got you covered.

“I call this the Mandalorian area,” says Carlos Guzman, pointing to a pile of metallic panels stacked and strewn haphazardly in a corner, “these were all over that show.” Guzman is the current owner and operator of Norton. A stout man in his 50s, he wears a short beard flecked with gray and, on the day we met, a black ball cap tucked low over his eyes. He began working at Norton in the 90s. Before then, the shop, called Norton Sales, was a family affair, owned by Norton J. Holstrom, a local restauranteur, and his son, Norton Holstrom Jr., a self-professed “junkie.” When the original Nortons retired, Guzman took over; “by the time they were selling, I was basically running the place. No one would buy it without me staying on [as staff]. So I just bought it myself.”

Guzman shows me around the warehouse like a seasoned librarian navigating his archives.

We shuffle between shelves of clunky analog voltmeters and pass what appears to be a large communications satellite. As we go, he gently picks up different objects and calmly describes their provenance. Seemingly every piece, no matter how obscure, has a story, and Guzman knows it. What’s remarkable about this collection is its pedigree. The props and set dressings at Norton are not mere tchotchkes or mock-ups. For the most part, everything here is actual aerospace equipment—real engines, real solenoids, and real avionics units. Today, this authenticity makes everything look stellar on the silver screen. However, a few years ago it made Norton a gold mine for new space upstarts looking for a boost. Understanding why requires a detour in the scrapyard of history.

The story of Norton Space Props is bound up in southern California’s industrial past. While the military spending of World War II made Los Angeles a major manufacturing hub, it was the Space Race that transformed the region into an aerospace powerhouse. When NASA launched the Apollo program in the 60s, it relied on a network of hundreds of private firms to design and build components for its lunar missions. Rocketdyne, Aerojet, and Douglas Aircraft, as well as numerous other companies in and around LA all scored big contracts to contribute. By the end of the decade, nearly half a million highly skilled workers were employed churning out aviation and space equipment. It was around this time that Holstrom Sr., fueled by a keen business sense and mild hoarding instinct, began snapping up discard and scrap items from factories around the region. Soon, he had put together a brisk business buying and reselling parts as a surplus outlet.

Though, as the 60s rolled into the 70s and the 80s, things changed. Politics pushed NASA to tighten its budget and adjust its priorities. The agency’s once mighty stream of lucrative contracts dried up to a trickle. The whole sector slumped into a so-called “space recession.” This slowdown, combined with the broader wave of deindustrialization rocking the country, forced many local aerospace firms to shift gears or close shop. As companies wound down operations and workers decamped or retired, large swaths of hard-won engineering know-how were scattered and lost. Luckily, Holstrom swept in to buy up what physical traces were left behind. Piles of pneumatic valves, thrust chambers, gas tanks, and the occasional fully-formed rocket engine accumulated in his multiple warehouses around the Valley.

Much has been written about space junk, often highlighting the unruly qualities of the material actually sent to space.

There's a wide consensus that discarded boosters, dead satellites, and minuscule bits of space debris can not only disrupt current operations but pose both environmental threats and safety concerns for people in space and on Earth. Many futurists will speak in grave terms about the ever-looming threat the Kessler syndrome poses to humanity's space ambitions. However, as Alice Gorman, an Australian archeologist affectionately known as Dr. Space Junk points out in her book Dr. Space Junk Vs. The Universe, objects in orbit aren’t just threats. They “can be regarded as archaeological artifacts, the material record of a particular phase in human social and technological development,”

In Gorman’s view, even a dead satellite whipping through space stands as a crucial piece of material heritage, a physical record of past human endeavors that still hold important meaning in the present. This same premise holds for space junk here on earth. For those interested in aviation history, Norton’s artifacts could hold tremendous sentimental value. Many avid collectors came to acquire prized pieces for their own enjoyment—one wealthy enthusiast, a CEO of a major tech company, walked out with an XLR-99 engine, a serious piece of equipment that originally powered the X-15 hypersonic jet.

However, as a renewed push toward space gained traction in the early 2000s, another type of scrap enthusiast began showing up. NASA, once again chartered to aim for the moon, set about reclaiming what was lost during the space recession.

To these engineers, Norton’s collection wasn’t a passive reminder of bygone days, but as an active archive that could be mined to build the future.

NASA engineer Kent Chojnacki described the situation on a segment aired on Los Angeles public access TV, “There’s not an Apollo 101 handbook that tells us everything like this is why we did this, this is why we did this… we have a lot of drawings that say what [was built], not so much why.” It’s a bit like having the final answer to a complex calculus problem but not seeing any of the steps taken to derive it—that’s just not the best way to learn math. However, if you locate an original component, you can recreate its design process step by step. Simply buy back the old parts, take them apart, and rebuild them.

Using this trick, NASA could train new teams and update its designs on the cheap.

Of course, NASA wasn’t the only one to figure this out. Around this same time, the so-called new space era was taking off and private enterprises began angling to create their own launch programs.

For entrepreneurs seeking an edge over the competition, Norton’s stock was an invaluable asset.

Using the same reverse engineering techniques as NASA, they could buy up old parts and use them to train engineers and develop technology faster and cheaper. With a few choice objects from Norton, start-up technicians could quickly fill in gaps in their knowledge or rapidly improve and iterate on what worked in the past. As word got out, Norton became a destination for anyone looking to get into space. “Demand got really big. It was huge,” says Guzman, “if I told you the names of some people that I talked to, it would just blow your mind like really Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, people like that.”

But complex engines and other elaborate pieces weren’t the only way Norton fueled the new space boom. The scrapyard also supplied new spacers with cheap access to less glamorous parts like regulators, gauges, and pumps. During Apollo’s heyday, NASA’s spending topped out at nearly 5% of the federal budget, and the agency’s subcontractors in California were churning out basic parts at an astronomical scale. While some of these were used, a huge percentage weren’t. Instead, they were bought up by the Holstroms.

“Let me ask you a question,” says Guzman, “there’s people that don’t don’t believe the US actually went to the moon… how do you know we went?” After a pause, he sweeps his hand to the clutter around the warehouse, laughing, “I tell them, ‘you think all of this is fake?’ I used to have whole rooms full of solenoids! What else did they build five million solenoids for?”

Norton’s massive stores of these simpler components were a boon for younger firms in need of cheap parts. While often not in perfect flight shape, these vintage items were good enough for ground support, testing, and other ancillary roles. Companies like Scaled Composites and Blue Origin would purchase crates of Norton’s solenoids by the dozen. Guzman recalls speaking with Peter Beck, the founder of the launch company Rocket Lab. He was looking for a specific valve and Norton just happened to have thousands. Beck was astounded, “he was like, you know, in New Zealand, I had to make my own stuff in a machine shop. And here you're going to walk to a surplus place and there's tons and tons of everything. The resources in the United States are mind-blowing.” In this way, California’s first era of state-backed aerospace production gave the county’s new upstarts a distinct advantage, and Norton helped make it possible.

Eventually, the new space trade came to an end.

A single launch company bought up much of Norton’s remaining stock, partially for their own use, and partially to get it off the market for everyone else. Left with a warehouse full of miscellaneous gizmos, Guzman shifted the business completely toward Hollywood. He’s gotten back into designing special effects and even begun building custom pieces that combine the raw look of his original parts with new, stylish touches and flare. At the front of the shop, Guzman shows me his latest creation, a tall stack of copper tubing and analog dials. He flips a switch and a constellation of colorful LEDs spring to life around the structure—suddenly the room feels more like Forbidden Planet or a far-off space station than a dusty garage between a carwash and sheet metal fabricator. As we stand in the alien glow, I ask Guzman how he feels about his legacy of helping the space industry find its footing for a new generation. He demurs, “You know, I just do what I like, and I've met a lot of really interesting people, too. But really, I’ve been lucky to find this niche. It’s just something that I’ve loved doing.”

In Photos: SpaceX Launches International Crew to the ISS

2023-03-07T19:00:00.000Z

On Thursday, March 2nd, SpaceX launched its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station from Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying Crew-6. Our team members Jenny Hautmann and Erik Kuna were on site to capture liftoff.

Heading to space for a six-month mission were NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren "Woody" Hoburg, United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. SpaceX has now launched 34 humans into orbit in less than three years. Head over to our Astronaut Database and sort by "Crew Dragon" to see the complete list.

The SpaceX Dragon, named Endeavour, docked at the space station on Friday, March 3rd at 1:40 AM EST while the station was 260 miles over the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Somalia, according to NASA. We have updated our Stations Dashboard to reflect current traffic and crew at the ISS.

Docking was slightly delayed as teams troubleshot a faulty docking hook sensor on Dragon. "The NASA and SpaceX teams verified that all of the docking hooks were in the proper configuration, and SpaceX developed a software override for the faulty sensor that allowed the docking process to successfully continue," the agency explained.

The Man Who Wrangles the Workhorse Falcon 9

2023-02-28T21:00:00.000Z

The day SpaceX successfully launched Crew 5, I sat down with Jon Edwards, the vice president of Falcon launch vehicles, for an exclusive interview at SpaceX headquarters.

At 43, he was younger than I expected, and quick-witted, with sharp, probing eyes. Four astronauts lifted off atop a new Falcon 9 that morning, which, Edwards told me, is always a little more stressful than when the company launches a flight-proven rocket.

When he started at SpaceX in 2004, the words “flight-proven rocket” would have seemed absurd, as there was no such thing. That previously-flown rockets are now considered the more reliable option is a testament to how far spaceflight has come in such a short time, and a large measure of credit for that goes to Edwards himself.

On launch days, which are increasingly common for SpaceX, which aims to achieve 100 such feats in 2023, every prospective problem must be worked doggedly. Two hours before he walked into the conference room for our interview, a computer flagged a payload fairing anomaly for a Starlink launch later that day. They would not be receiving live telemetry from the fairing in flight. Edwards investigated the glitch with the responsible engineer so they could find a way to contain the issue. He needed to know if the problem would affect the primary or secondary mission objectives, namely: the deployment of the Starlink payload, and the recovery of the fairings and booster.

“Sometimes in this business, a small, seemingly innocuous issue can actually be a symptom of a much bigger problem,” he said. “For every little issue that you see, you have to assume that it's bigger than you think it is until you're convinced otherwise. You've probably heard us say, ‘only the paranoid survive.’ That's what got us to where we are. I've been here a long time, and that one thing saved our butts time and time again.”

Edwards was hired right out of college by Tom Mueller, an aerospace engineer and one of the founders of SpaceX. In those days, SpaceX was not even blowing up rockets yet, let alone launching or landing them. Rather, the company was just beginning to do turbopump testing. Elon Musk was not yet a mega-celebrity and still did all job interviews himself.

“Even then, when he entered the room, it was an intimidating presence,” Edwards recalled. “He got right to it. He didn’t waste any time. He looked at my resume quietly, got up, asked me a few questions about projects I worked on in school, and asked me a riddle.”

(Edwards asked that I not share the riddle, just in case Elon still uses it. It involved geography and had more than one answer.)

Edwards gave a correct answer straightaway, and Elon replied, “OK, that’s the easy answer. What about the hard one?” So Edwards thought about it more and gave a very creative, but very wrong answer. Elon laughed at Edwards’ response but appreciated the young applicant’s out-of-the-box thinking.

Such thinking, along with that healthy dose of paranoia, would eventually launch—and eventually begin to land—the Falcon line of rockets.

And from the start, rocket recovery was part of Elon's plan.

“We put a parachute on the very first rocket we lost,” said Edwards. It was a long shot that the parachute would actually work (the rocket broke up during reentry before the parachute had a prayer), but, he continued, “Elon always has this thing where you have to have a greater-than-zero-percent chance. You don't put a parachute on it, there’s a zero-percent chance it survives.”

Eventually, the Falcon team decided to go for propulsive landings. It was ambitious, and though the idea suffered frequent public ridicule with each failure, inside SpaceX, no one thought the idea was impossible.

“I mean, it was within the laws of physics,” said Edwards. “We knew that the tricky part was having a rocket with extra performance to do its primary mission—which is to put a meaningful amount of payload mass in orbit—and then have the energy left over to propulsively land.”

The first time SpaceX tested its soft landing systems on an actual mission was in 2013, after placing the Canadian CASSIOPE spacecraft in orbit. Rather than attempt to land on a drone ship, however, the rocket aimed for the ocean. After deploying its payload, the rocket reoriented itself, as we have come to expect today, and descended to a predetermined spot in the ocean. There, above the water, it slowed under controlled power.

“The fact that we could actually slow this thing down and in a controlled way, kind of hit a target, and know our velocity? We're all just like: put some landing legs on it! This is gonna work. I remember after that mission, I was over the moon. I was like, this is actually going to work.”

It did, and aside from the cost savings of reusing rockets—once considered a one-and-done technology—Edwards said it has given SpaceX a tremendous reliability advantage over its competitors. The majority of work the Falcon team does between flights does not involve actually changing anything, but rather, inspecting the hardware that just flew.

“We're trying to learn what we can,” he said. “That's one of the things about recover-and-reuse that's often overlooked: it's an incredible advantage in terms of reliability to get your hardware back and be able to look at it and learn stuff you didn't know or expect. I'm convinced that companies that don't recover their rockets have issues they don't know about that someday will bite them.”

He believes that, in keeping with the SpaceX ethos of making rocket launches as regular and reliable as commercial air travel, “flight-proven” rockets will one day—if they are not already—be considered to be safer than flying a new rocket.

“Just like when they build an airplane, they do a test flight not with an entire load of people, but rather, two pilots alone who work it through the paces. It's similar to a rocket,” he said. “We would like to fly it first to really, really exercise it.”

Since the start of the Falcon 9 reusability program, those exercises have extended the lifespan of that class of rockets from ten launches to, currently, twenty. The key to expanding reuse, he said, is “qualification,” which is an aerospace engineering term that basically means that analyses and testing have proven the margins for whatever a rocket needs to do in flight. “If you're going to do 20 launches, we have to show—either through analysis or tests or both—that you can do a lot more than that… We don’t just roll the dice.” He and his team spent an entire summer going through 500 different design units on the rocket, making sure every single one was fully qualified for the additional flights.

Initial qualification for the Falcon Heavy rocket, also under his purview, was its own challenge from a structural dynamics perspective. The Falcon team had to figure out the interaction between the three boosters at liftoff, and their interaction with the launch pad. Booster separation was a particularly difficult problem to be solved and involved determining the loads going into the side boosters and the center core during separation so that all three would survive and still be reusable. The aerodynamics of the Falcon Heavy were also unique. Moreover, the Falcon team had to figure out the dangers of ice falling from the second stage and hitting the nosecones below. They even added carbon fiber armor to rocket protuberances to protect it from any high-altitude birds that might impact the rocket.

“By the time the rocket got to that altitude, an impacting bird would have hit as though it were shot from a cannon," Edwards explained. "We actually did some bird testing with frozen chickens.”

Launch is hard, reentry is hard, and landing is hard, but the biggest challenge with the Falcon 9 rocket that people do not necessarily expect, said Edwards, is what happens after it lands on a drone ship. “There are waves and there is wind. A storm can come through, and we can’t put people on there with a rocket slipping and sliding around.” The team developed a robot, called Octograbber, but it is not always agile or fast enough to grab a sliding rocket. “Ocean weather is intense, and we've had rockets slipping and sliding, and man, you just stay up all night praying it doesn't fall over the edge or something.”

As for the future of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, Edwards said there are no plans to make any further major changes to the rocket. Rather, the rocket team is focused on making small changes to improve reliability and rapid reusability.

“I think the fastest we’ve turned a booster around and launched it again is 21 days from launch to launch—and we can beat that,” he said.

Another executive with the company said that during a recent Falcon 9 meeting, the team was discussing how to reduce refurbishment times, and how what used to take six months became five months became three months became three weeks. Elon chimed in: “Why do we have any refurbishment at all? We shouldn't need any refurbishment. You should just land it and fly it again—fix it so it does that.” It would involve evaluating all the things that presently require inspections between launches, and redesigning them so that said inspections are unnecessary. It is an ambitious goal, but if any company can pull off such a feat, it is SpaceX, which has a demonstrable record of doing the impossible-adjacent.

“The SpaceX approach is proven effective,” said Edwards. “If protecting the primary mission objective, you can take risks on the secondary mission. And it's okay to get some egg on your face. That's how you learn. Whereas other organizations want it to be perfect from the very first attempt, I promise you that you're going to learn twice as much by flying it than you are by pencil whipping and doing analyses. Because we sure did.”

Ultimately, according to Edwards, the imperative to optimize and improve with such ambition comes straight from the top of the company. “Elon says if you’re not putting holes in the ground, you're not trying hard enough.”

David W. Brown is the author of THE MISSION, or: How a Disciple of Carl Sagan, an Ex-Motocross Racer, a Texas Tea Party Congressman, the World's Worst Typewriter Saleswoman, California Mountain People, and an Anonymous NASA Functionary Went to War with Mars, Survived an Insurgency at Saturn, Traded Blows with Washington, and Stole a Ride on an Alabama Moon Rocket to Send a Space Robot to Jupiter in Search of the Second Garden of Eden at the Bottom of an Alien Ocean Inside of an Ice World Called Europa (A True Story). He lives in New Orleans.

DARPA is Reigniting the Nuclear Engine

2023-02-21T11:00:00.000Z

DARPA plans to prove a Nuclear powered rocket engine as early as 2027.

NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will demonstrate a nuclear-powered rocket engine that will aid long-duration deep space missions and might even power crewed missions to Mars. Under DARPA's Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program, the agencies plan on launching a spacecraft powered by a Nuclear Thermal Reactor (NTR) engine in Earth orbit by 2027.

“With the help of this new technology, astronauts could journey to and from deep space faster than ever — a major capability to prepare for crewed missions to Mars,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

Once in orbit, the teams will conduct several experiments with DRACO’s reactor at various power levels. These data will be thoroughly examined by engineers on Earth, before conducting a full-powered test.

“These tests will inform the approach for the future operation of NTR engines in space,” said Dr. Tabitha Dodson, DARPA program manager for DRACO.

The development will be led by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) while DARPA acts as contracting authority for the experimental spacecraft and nuclear reactor. The reactor will be powered by high-assay-low-enriched uranium (HALEU) to reduce risk and logistical hurdles. It will also be engineered to ignite only in orbit — as an added safety precaution.

“DARPA and NASA have a long history of fruitful collaboration in advancing technologies for our respective goals, from the Saturn V rocket that took humans to the Moon to robotic servicing and refueling of satellites,” said Dr. Stefanie Tompkins, director, DARPA.

Nuclear History

In 2021, DARPA awarded General Atomics, Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin with the first phase contracts for the DRACO program. Awarded $22 million, General Atomics is responsible for the preliminary design of the Nuclear engine’s reactor and propulsion subsystem. Under a $2.5 and $2.9 million contract respectively, Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin will work independently to develop other operational and demonstration systems.

Nuclear engines are a technological leap in modern propulsion systems, requiring a total redesign of how a rocket engine operates. Rather than generate heat due to the combustion of the propellant and the oxidizer, the nuclear engines — as the name suggests — are equipped with a fission-based reactor core. The extreme heat from the reactor rapidly expands liquid hydrogen through a conventional rocket nozzle to generate thrust.

This external heat source results in an unprecedented increase in performance, resulting in an exceptionally high exhaust velocity and ISP, which can theoretically double or triple payload capacity and allow for faster transit times, a key requirement for deep space crewed missions.

This isn’t NASA’s first nuclear rodeo. The development and testing of nuclear engines predate the space race, with early designs meant to replace the conventional second stage for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. After the Sputnik crisis, these plans were redirected and named Project Rover. They were thereafter managed by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and NASA’s Space Nuclear Propulsion Office, a program created in Washington DC to manage exploration activities involving nuclear engines. Due to the classified nature of the program, the engine’s construction and tests were carried out at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Area 25 Test Facility in Nevada.

During Project Rover, over 20 engines were tested, with over 17 hours of engine run time.

After 1963, the NERVA (Nuclear Engines for Rocket Vehicle Application) program was established to further develop technologies specifically for the space program. Unlike modern nuclear engines, NERVA used highly-enriched uranium for their reactors. The program was considered highly successful and had strong political support from various senators. Picking up the work from Project Rover, NASA developed their first nuclear engine named NERVA NRX (Nuclear Rocket Experimental), to demonstrate ignition and engine restart without an external power source, provide teams with more data during a variety of conditions, and evaluate the endurance of the nuclear reactor during multiple restarts.

NERVA’s first test fire took place in September 1964 with NERVA A2, running flawlessly at full power. During the test, the engine showed a significant leap from any solid or liquid-powered engine, with an ISP clocked at 811 seconds. ISP or specific impulse is a measurement of the efficiency of any rocket engine. It is calculated in seconds — amounting to the time a rocket engine can generate thrust. A higher ISP indicates a higher burn time (in seconds) with the same amount of fuel, hence, a higher efficiency.

A year later, NERVA A3 was successfully tested to verify a full power run and restart. Later on, as the engine matured, the scope of test campaigns grew to include long-duration full-power burns and multiple restarts. Learnings from these experimental test programs led to the development of NERVA XE, the first nuclear engine designed as a complete flight system. After a comprehensive testing regime, the rocket engine was eventually deemed suitable for spaceflight operations by NASA and ready for missions to Mars.

During a series of tests between 1968-69, XE ran at full power for 1680 seconds and was restarted 24 times.

The agency's plans were not limited to Mars but included deep space probes to outer planets in the Solar system. Nuclear tugs were envisioned to take payloads from low earth orbit to higher orbits, to resupply space stations in Earth orbit, and to support a permanent lunar base. A nuclear-powered upper stage for the Saturn V was also planned, which could’ve launched over 150 tons to LEO.

But the rising costs of the Vietnam War and a dwindling NASA budget made it harder to fund the NERVA program. President Johnson was adamant to keep the US nuclear propulsion program alive, funding NERVA specifically twice. But as President Nixon came to power in ’69, cost-cutting went into effect, and he canceled the program by 1973 to fund the Space Shuttle.

After 17 years of research, development, and comprehensive testing, and spending over $1.4 billion, NERVA never left the test stand.

Reignition

Half a century later, we’re reigniting this transformational technology, embedded with 21st-century safety features and a better understanding of nuclear science.

With DARPA providing fixed-price contracts for the DRACO program, the commercial companies involved are much more motivated to successfully complete their contracts and find innovative solutions, all while under the supervision of experienced government entities.

NTRs are not needed for an initial Mars mission but they’ll significantly accelerate the advent of a permanent and sustainable human settlement on the red planet. And a highly-efficient engine would greatly reduce transit times for scientific payloads venturing out to gas giants, the outer solar system, and beyond.

Nuclear engines reduce the exposure to radiation by drastically reducing the travel time. A conventional mission to Mars during a Hohmann-transfer window is around 9 months, however, nuclear propulsion can cut transit times by at least 50%. This results in cost savings, fewer consumables on board, and more mass for experiments, gear, and Elon's baggage.

Tracking The Tiangong Space Station

2023-02-14T11:00:00.000Z

We've been hard at work on new features for the Supercluster App.

The first major update this year is the inclusion of the Chinese Space Station, the Tiangong. We've seen increased orbital traffic as China builds out their station, with a regular crew of astronauts, and it's a sign of the science fiction times we're living through that we've been (happily) forced to expand our space station tracking functionality.

Along with adding the Tiangong we'll now also be tracking "Arrivals and Departures" from both stations through a new "Timetable" function for crew rotations and cargo resupplies.

You can also toggle back and forth from the ISS to Tiangong to see their relative positions over Earth through our mini map. And of course the Tiangong fully integrates with the Astronaut Database.

Moving forward we will include relevant information for all craft docking to the Tiangong, just as we have for the ISS. As points of interest, experiments, or advances are made with specific craft we'll highlight those milestones as well.

The Supercluster App is available free for all space fans on iOS and Android:

https://www.supercluster.com/app

And as always please, send any suggestions or comments to the Supercluster team at info@supercluster.com. Feedback, criticisms and ideas for new features from the community have helped make the Supercluster App what it is today.

"We're Not Calling This a Rescue Soyuz"

2023-02-01T11:00:00.000Z

Three space travelers need a new ride home.

Roscosmos will launch an uncrewed Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS to return two Cosmonauts and an American astronaut after their spacecraft was damaged in a micrometeoroid strike.

Russian Cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin, and US astronaut Frank Rubio were launched aboard the Soyuz MS-22 as a part of Expedition 67/68. The MS-22 crew was initially set to return in March, but their mission will be further extended for an indeterminate period after their replacement spacecraft arrives.

"They are ready to go with whatever decision we give them,” said Joel Montalbano, NASA's ISS program manager in a joint NASA-Roscosmos press conference. "I may have to fly some more ice cream to reward them."

Montalbano also made it clear that this launch should not be characterized as a rescue mission since the immediate return of the crew is not required.

“We're not calling this a rescue Soyuz. No immediate need for the crew to come home. I'm calling it a replacement Soyuz.”

On December 14, 2022, cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin were preparing for a scheduled spacewalk when the mission control at Houston and Moscow noticed a leak from the aft portion of the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, docked to the Rassvet module on the Russian side of the ISS. The spacewalk was canceled as the ground teams at Moscow began an investigation to evaluate the nature of the leaking fluid, and its potential impact on the Soyuz spacecraft, which was due to return to Earth in March.

Ground controllers in Moscow said that there had been damage to the outer skin of an internment assembly compartment of the Soyuz, causing the coolant to leak. This was then confirmed as the teams noticed a drop in pressure in the external cooling loop of the spacecraft. To have a closer look at the source of the leak, Roscosmos made use of the cameras onboard the 17-meter-long robotic arm attached to the ISS, known as the Canadarm2.

High-fidelity images from Canadarm2 helped conclude that Soyuz’s cooling system was struck by a micrometeoroid, resulting in a puncture less than a millimeter wide and causing the coolant to leak out of the spacecraft. NASA and Roscosmos officials are certain that it was not caused by the Geminid meteor shower or space debris.

"Space is not a safe place and not a safe environment. We have meteorites, we have a vacuum and we have a high temperature and we have complicated hardware that can fail," said Sergei Krikalev, Roscosmos’ chief of crewed space programs.

"Now we are facing one of those scenarios ... we are prepared for this situation."

This is the first time a spacecraft has been declared unfit to return a crew to Earth in the 22-year span of continuous human inhabitation onboard the ISS. But a similar instance took place in 1979 when the soviets launched cosmonaut Nikolai Rukavishnikov and Georgi Ivanov onboard the Soyuz 33 mission to the Salyut 6 space station. It was the fourth international crew launch for the Soviet's Intercosmos program, which saw cosmonauts from the Soviet Union’s allies launching to space. This mission was also the first such flight to be commanded by a civilian, and the first Bulgarian to reach space.

However, as the Soyuz was rendezvousing with the Salyut, its onboard attitude control system failed and its engine automatically shut down after 3 seconds of a planned 6-second burn. This was the first in-orbit failure of the Soyuz propulsion system. After multiple troubleshooting attempts by ground control, the mission was ultimately aborted, and the crew returned safely back to Earth.

Because Soyuz 32 — the previously launched spacecraft — shared the same engine design, Soviet teams decided to not use that spacecraft for a return journey, and instead launched a fresh return vehicle to the Salyut, incorporating numerous engine design modifications.

The uncrewed Soyuz 34 mission was launched on June 6, 1979, successfully docking with the station by June 9. With a reliable return craft available, the resident crew undocked and returned to Earth on August 19, establishing a then-space-endurance record of 175 days.

The Plan

As the teams concluded their investigation, engineers at Roscosmos back on Earth studied the data to determine the viability of MS-22. Utmost safety precautions are taken during any crewed mission to minimize risks, and the agency eventually certified MS-22 infeasible for crew return, deciding instead to launch a “replacement” uncrewed Soyuz to the ISS.

“[MS-22 Soyuz] will bring back some experiments, they'll monitor temps inside. Expect it to be OK — just not suitable for carrying people,” said Krikalev.

Originally designated for the crew of MS-23, the replacement Soyuz will launch on February 20, 2023. Normal handover procedure will be followed and the MS-22 spacecraft will be undocked for re-entry. The teams will continue to monitor the spacecraft and inspect the damage once it returns back to Earth.

The safety protocol of the ISS states that crew members should return to their spacecraft (either Soyuz or Crew Dragon) in case of an emergency that requires total evacuation. But since the extent of the damage to the cooling system is still unknown, it’s still not clear if MS-22 would be useable for an emergency return to Earth. Krikalev said the decision would be made by accessing the risks of various options as temperatures in the capsule could reach unhealthy levels of 30-40 degrees Celsius (86-104 degrees Fahrenheit) during re-entry.

"In case of an emergency, when the crew will have a real threat to life on the station, then probably the danger of staying on the station can be higher than going down in an unhealthy Soyuz," said Krikalev.

Ever since the incident, NASA has been in constant talks with SpaceX about how Crew Dragon can accommodate more people in case of emergency. The spacecraft was developed to launch and return up to 7 astronauts but NASA preferred to limit the configuration to accommodate only 4.

The upcoming NASA and SpaceX crewed launch to the orbiting laboratory, Crew-6 will be launched just after the Soyuz MS-23 to incorporate the manifest changes and a direct handover between Crew-5 and Crew-6.

The Micrometeoroid Threat

Micrometeoroids are small tiny extraterrestrial rocks, measuring between 10 micrometers to 2 millimeters in size. While incredibly small, they travel at very high velocities and can pose a significant threat to space exploration and operations. Mitigations to their strikes are a significant design challenge for not only spacecraft but also space suit designers. Numerous high momentum impacts degrade the outer casing of the spacecraft and long-term exposure threatens its functionality.

The impact of such minute, yet high-velocity objects is heavily researched under terminal ballistics, which also includes the study of mitigation techniques to minimize damage. Such work — conducted by Harvard astronomer Fred Lawrence Whipple — predates the space race but only proved useful when space exploration later boomed after the 1960s. Whipple had demonstrated that the chance of being hit by a meteoroid large enough to destroy a spacecraft was extremely minute, but it will be constantly struck by meteoroids the size of dust grains, now referred to as micrometeoroids.

Whipple developed a solution to this problem in 1946 by designing a thin foil film that is held a short distance away from the spacecraft. Known as the Whipple shield, it vaporizes the micrometeoroids into plasma when it strikes the foil. This plasma quickly spreads and is diffused before it can penetrate the structure of the spacecraft.

Subsequent research and development led to new lighter and stronger materials to be used as the Whipple shield. Ceramic fiber woven shields were proven to provide better protection from particles traveling more than 7 kilometers per second than aluminum of the same weight.

NASA also developed a multi-layer flexible fabric for its inflatable space station module named TransHab. Although it never ended up flying, the technology was later reused to build the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, which was launched to the ISS in 2016 and is still operational.

Even with such extensive research, spacecraft launched in space still sustain damage from micrometeoroid strikes. One of the mirrors onboard the recently-launched James Webb Space Telescope was hit by a micrometeoroid and the damage caused was significantly more than NASA expected. According to a report on the telescope's performance, the strike will have a lasting impact on its observation.

These strikes have raised an important question. Is Soyuz, and other spacecraft that have absorbed micrometeoroid strikes — just unlucky? Or are our spacecraft far more susceptible than originally thought? And will we find that these objects are more common and more dangerous than we expected? Observing the rate and characteristics of future impacts will be an important factor in answering these questions, and will be critical for ongoing advances in terminal ballistics.

You can track the Roscosmos "not a rescue" mission by downloading the free Supercluster App for iPhone or Android where you can access our launch tracker, astronaut database, and space stations dashboard which will soon feature China's Tiangong Station. Access the web version of the Soyuz mission here and the rest of our utilities by clicking through Supercluster dot com's navigation bar.

Building the Kardashev Scale

2023-01-24T11:00:00.000Z

We Love Building Models.

While pitching ideas for how to animate The Kardashev Scale, lots of options got tossed around. Supercluster contributor Keith Cooper had recently proposed a story on rethinking the entire construct, and we needed to do it justice.

Maybe 16-bit? Stop motion? Traditional cel animation? But when someone suggested we do the whole film in miniature — scratch-building everything ourselves — there was no turning back.

There's a model-building cohort within the Supercluster team, always sharing their robots and dioramas. There's Gundam, of course, and kitbashes, and post-apocalyptic scenes. We had the experience, and here was a medium perfectly suited for imagining distant, alien visions of hyper-advanced civilizations. We couldn't pass it up.

But it's definitely not the most efficient way to shoot a short film. Model building is a slow game. It's meditative and introspective. Sometimes it can feel like a huge time investment for such a (literally) small payoff. Honestly, it can be tedious, and difficult to explain the appeal. But it's a common experience to accidentally become obsessed, even if you don't know how exactly it happened.

"Why do you build models?" I asked James Stuart. "'The miniature grants a false dominion,'" he replied over Slack. Well, there you have it.

Building The Type 1 Wasteland

The completed city was inspired by equal parts Blade Runner, Trantor, and Coruscant. And probably a dozen other examples. It's really not difficult to find science fiction visions of a fully mechanized future planet, all scrap of greenery obliterated. Not sure what that says about us but it's probably not good. As far as model building goes tho — tons of fun.

Joe Haddad reflects on some of his processes on a build like this. “The power of kitbashing is that you leverage the complexity and meaning from each miniature sculpted piece you chose to combine. In the case of Kardashev, where our creative team has been tasked with constructing vast worlds and technologies that do not exist, kitbashing as a creative technique multiplies the impact of each decision. It literally creates worlds beyond our understanding.”

The Type 0 Campsite

As originally formulated by Nikolai Kardashev, a Type 0 Civilization would cover anything from prehistory through where we find ourselves on Earth today, and even further down a technological trajectory until we reach total planetary energy capture.

But to contrast the grim machine future of our Type 1 diorama, we went backward toward an idyllic past, finding a calm campfire wedged in a sheltered canyon.

Filming The Kardashev Scale

Building these things is only half the battle. You gotta figure out how to get them on film. And as Jack Nesbitt and Jamie Carreiro assembled our intricate rig and painstakingly selected the right lenses, the question was always "how do we create the illusion of scale?"

The Dyson Sphere And Beyond

The Dyson Sphere is where we make our first mind-bending leap. Type 0 and 1 Civilizations are both at the planetary level. With Type 2 we're in control of a star. With Type 3, an entire galaxy.

“We built each of the four models to have a distinct style and texture to emphasize the tremendous distance in both time and technology that separates each civilization type," adds Jamie. "The motorized elements and miniature lighting incorporated into the models help add scale, drama, and enticing weirdness.”

Tristan Dubin weighed in on the editorial process. "One of the hardest parts of this project was deciding to cut shots. Every time we cut a shot, we were deciding to not show a model, or part of a model that we all had built. It’s one thing to cut a shot when it’s a picture a camera took. It’s another when it’s a model you’ve made yourself. It was necessary however, because in order for the piece to feel large enough, it was better to imply more and show less."

The Completed Film

Check out our completed love letter to the (sometimes controversial) Kardashev Scale below.

Falcon Heavy Blazes the Night Sky Carrying a Classified Payload

2023-01-17T21:00:00.000Z

Twin Falcon Heavy side boosters touched down on Landing Zones 1 & 2 at Cape Canaveral about 8 minutes after SpaceX launched a clandestine payload for the U.S. Space Force. Liftoff occurred on Sunday night, January 15th, at 5:56 PM ET from Launch Complex 39A. Supercluster's Jenny Hautmann was on-site at Kennedy Space Center to shoot the mission. Jenny placed remote cameras at the pad to capture the Falcon Heavy's launch and took a helicopter flight over Cape Canaveral for a better view of the recovered side boosters.

Rethinking the Kardashev Scale

2023-01-17T11:00:00.000Z

It’s a vision that matches the grandest of space operas:

A galaxy-spanning empire that is millions, perhaps even billions of years old, and which has conquered every star in its domain and now harnesses mind-blowing amounts of energy. It’s acclaimed as the pinnacle of technological achievement and the ultimate trajectory of technologically intelligent life. It’s not necessarily fiction, however. Such civilizations are one of the main targets of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Life.

It’s a vision both exciting and terrifying in equal measure. Exciting because our ideas about technologically developed civilizations are essentially extrapolating into our own possible future. And its terrifying, because nothing seems to be out there. Are we truly alone?

Such civilizations, if they do exist, are described as Kardashev type III civilizations. Let’s explain. Sixty years ago, the Soviet astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev of the Sternberg Astronomical Institute in Moscow developed a system for characterising civilizations based on their energy consumption. His genius was in realizing that there was a cost to sending interstellar transmissions of the kind that we hope SETI will one day eavesdrop. The energy required to broadcast interstellar distances and be heard is immense (which is why our television signals are unlikely to be detected beyond our Solar System).

“The Kardashev scale was the obvious thing to do, because Kardashev wanted to think about how powerful a radio signal would need to be in order to be detectable, and what that implied in terms of energy consumption,” says Michael Garrett, who is the Director of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester, and Vice-Chair of the International Academy of Astronautic’s SETI Permanent Committee.

Energy Consumption

Kardashev invented a three-tier scale of energy consumption. A type I civilization is able to harness and utilize the entire energy available to it on a planet, estimated to be between 10^16 to 10^17 watts. Compare that with our current energy expenditure, which in 2018 was measured by the International Energy Agency to be 1.9 x 10^13 watts.

A type II civilization is a big step up. Far from being content with just the energy available to it on a single planet, a type II civilization would collect all the entire radiated by its star. This is popularly envisaged as a spherical shell, called a Dyson sphere, encapsulating the star. One of the most notable renditions of such a structure was seen in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode ‘Relics’, where it was depicted as a solid sphere with a habitable inner surface. Alas, a solid sphere would not be stable, for even a small gravitational nudge, perhaps from a passing star, could ultimately cause the sphere to collide with the star at its centre. Instead, a vast swarm of individual energy collectors, each with maneuvering thrusters for station keeping, is the more idealized solution. Yet there are still hazards. An accident could create a cascading wave of collisions, like Kessler syndrome only on a much larger scale. However, if a ‘Dyson swarm’ could be carefully constructed and maintained, then the amount of energy available to a civilization would be huge, although the exact amount would depend on the luminosity of the star, since not all suns shine equally. A Dyson swarm around our Sun could collect on the order of 10^26 watts.

Then there are the type III civilizations that achieve dominion over all the starlight in a single galaxy, perhaps by traveling to all the stars and constructing Dyson swarms around each. The total energy they would have available for consumption is estimated to be between 10^36 and 10^37 watts, though again it depends on the size, star-formation history and luminosity of the galaxy in question.

The scale has been finessed over the years — Carl Sagan introduced decimalized graduations, and human civilization today rates at 0.728 on the Kardashev scale — but overall it continues to remain prominent in our thinking about extraterrestrial life.

Yet there’s something paradoxical about The Kardashev Scale. And it’s questionable whether it would have been proposed today, in an era when we are all too aware of the damage that rampant industrialization and energy consumption inflicts upon the environment.

A Different Path to Type 1?

In 1972 the Club of Rome published their Limits to Growth report, which predicted that if the global population continued to grow and if energy use kept increasing unabated, human civilization would collapse by the mid 21st century.

Indeed, Brendan Mullan and Jacob Haqq-Misra of the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science in Seattle have expressed skepticism that the Kardashev scale is feasible given how climate change and population growth is stymying our efforts to grow towards becoming a type I civilization.

On the other hand, critics of the Limits to Growth report argue that we can protect the environment and continue to enjoy growth. In his vision of how humanity might reach type I status, Caltech’s Jonathan Jiang argues that good stewardship of a planet is all part of becoming a type I civilization. If we are able to transition from fossil fuels to nuclear and renewable power over the next 20 years, while adhering to the internationally agreed target of keeping warming to less than 2 degrees, Jiang suggests that we could become a type I civilization in another 349 years. Mark the year AD 2371 on your calendar. Moving energy production into space, perhaps as the beginning of building a Dyson swarm, or at least part of one, would also remove some of the environmental effects.

Believe it or not, environmental concerns could also affect type III civilizations. To build a Dyson swarm you need a lot of raw material – asteroids and moons wouldn’t be nearly enough. Instead, Freeman Dyson casually suggested that we could one day dismantle Jupiter.

To build Dyson swarms around every star in a galaxy would require taking apart hundreds of billions of planets.

As well as how this might affect any native life in those planetary systems, it also uses a bunch of raw material.

“What if extraterrestrial intelligence tries to become a type III and then fails?” muses Brian Lacki, a researcher with the Breakthrough Listen SETI project at the University of California, Berkeley. “If they have consumed all their resources trying to become one, and then they self-destruct and turn to dust, will there be anything left in the galaxy for anyone else to use in the future?”

Fallen Empires

Admittedly, there is something arrogant in our belief that we can predict what a civilization with technology millions or billions of years ahead of us might do.

“We’re not even a type I civilization, so for us to guess the characteristics of a type III civilization sometimes feels a stretch,” says Garrett.

Something is certainly amiss. Our careful searches for type III civilizations have so far found nothing. A Dyson swarm absorbs sunlight, but left to its own devices, the temperature of the solar collectors would increase until they melted. So, they must radiate excess thermal infrared radiation, which should in principal make them visible to some of our astronomical satellites. The problem is, there are also natural sources in space of thermal infrared, specifically interstellar dust. Evolved stars shrouded by dust have an infrared signature every bit like a Dyson swarm. Initial surveys of initially anomalous infrared sources by Fermilab’s Richard Carrigan found no evidence for Dyson swarms, while in 2015 the Glimpsing Heat from Alien Technologies (G-HAT) project led by Penn State’s Jason Wright surveyed 100,000 infrared-strong galaxies, but found none containing signs of a type III civilization. More recently, Garret and Hong-Ying Chen of the Chinese Academy of Sciences drew a similar conclusion when searching for type III civilizations by taking advantage of a correlation between infrared emission and radio waves produced by star formation in a galaxy. In an unmodified galaxy, there should be a very strong correlation, whereas a galaxy modified by a type III civilization would deviate from that correlation quite significantly. Cross-matching radio data to 16,367 galaxies with strong infrared emission found only four that had more infrared than expected relative to their radio waves. Two of these are already known to astronomers as being purely natural phenomena, but the other two remain unidentified. The likelihood is that they too are natural galaxies, probably with more dust than usual. Garret says that he’s tried to get time on other telescopes to follow-up on these two candidates, but with no luck so far.

Does this mean that such civilizations don’t exist? Not necessarily, says Lacki. “Even if they do spread throughout their galaxy and start doing things like building Dyson swarms, there might still be limits which prevent them from being noticed.”

In 2018, Lacki wrote a paper in which he posited that building Dyson swarms around the most massive, most luminous stars might be cost prohibitive. Take the star Betelgeuse in our galaxy as an example. Its diameter is 1.23 billion kilometers – 881 times wider than our Sun. Building a Dyson swarm around a star so enormous is going to take a lot more material than building one around our Sun — thousands of Jupiters’ worth – so much more that there’s not nearly enough material in such star systems to do it. Furthermore, such stars only last a few million years before exploding as supernovae. A civilization aiming to survive into the deep future would be best staying away from such stars. Instead, Lacki suggests, civilizations will find it easier to build Dyson swarms around Sun-like stars, or smaller and longer-lived red dwarfs. If this is the case, the near-infrared signature of galaxies where this is happening will not change enough to be noticed from afar, because most of a galaxy’s light is produced by massive stars.

New Tricks

Recently, both Garrett and Lacki have started to wonder if this paradigm of alien civilizations with interstellar capabilities building Dyson swarms around stars is the correct idea at all.

“I just wonder if there is a trick we’re missing in the sense that we’re extrapolating from our physics and current status as a sub-type I civilization and trying to imagine what a really advanced civilization would be like,” says Garrett.

Lacki supports this, pointing out that “Being a type III is not necessarily this very specific thing, there might be several ways to get there.”

What we need now is outside-the-box thinking, and indeed Lacki has developed an alternative to Dyson swarms that is startlingly different to previous ideas.

Lacki’s idea is based around dust. When we look up at the Milky Way arcing across a dark sky, we see that it is split by dark abysses of dust absorbing the light of stars beyond. Perhaps a civilization could take advantage of that to not only become a type III civilization, but to potentially evolve into a quite different life-form.

Lacki’s idea is to engineer the dust, with a swarm of self-replicating nano-probes that can transform the dust into tiny light collectors.

“My thought was that you might harvest the molecular clouds [of gas in the galaxy], where this material is relatively dense and easier to collect, and if you wait long enough most of the cold gas and dust in the galaxy will cycle through those molecular clouds,” Lacki says.

The molecular clouds could be laced with smart dust that would eventually percolate out to fill the galaxy, creating an effective shroud that absorbs starlight and results in a very different kind of type III civilization. In the Dyson swarm paradigm, the energy collection is very focused, making huge amounts available in a relatively small volume of space. In Lacki’s smart dust concept the energy collected is more diffuse, across the entire diameter of a galaxy that could measure tens to hundreds of thousand of light years across.

However — and this is where Lacki, by his own admission, gets really speculative — the smart dust could contain nano-electronics, with each grain networked together. Scientists including the SETI Institute’s Seth Shostak and the Astronomer Royal Martin Rees have speculated that technological life may ultimately upload itself into a digital realm. In Lacki’s proposal, life could upload itself to the network of self-replicating smart dust.

And then, In a sense, the galaxy could become alive.

“You might imagine an ecosystem being established in interstellar space” says Lacki. “I don’t know if it could sustain consciousness at galactic levels, especially on cosmological timescales, but I draw an analogy with Gaia, where you have this self-regulating ecosystem. I pictured basically living galaxies, where the interstellar medium has these response mechanisms that are self-regulating. It’s definitely speculative.”

It might take tens of millions of years to accomplish this, but if the ambition of technological life is to survive into the deep future then it has to take on the challenge of such long-term projects.

Doing Computing and Drinking Cocktails

Then we come to the question of what will life even do with the entire energy of a galaxy in the palm of its hand? Futurists imagine immense computing projects, generating virtual reality universes, or manipulating the very fabric of space-time. Michael Garrett quips that “People argue that they would do computing, but maybe they just sit by the beach and drink cocktails.” Although it’s a flippant comment, it highlights that we don’t really know what a civilization with technology millions or even billions of years ahead of us will aspire toward.

For Lacki, it’s very simple — they will want to eat, at least by consuming energy. In his smart dust concept, “The amount of energy per capita might not be too big,” he says, alluding to how energy collection will be more diffuse across the galaxy. “If these things are self-replicating and spreading out across the galaxy, then I think that’s like asking, why does life on Earth need to cover the entire Earth? And everything has got to eat, even if it’s in a very general sense.”

Becoming a type I civilization certainly seems to be within our reach, and presumably is achievable by other technological civilizations out there. We might detect them by their signals, as Nikolai Kardashev imagined when he originally developed his scale.

Type II civilizations are more ambitious. Theoretically they are plausible. Realistically there are time, technological, resource and budgetary constraints that could limit their development, although partial Dyson swarms may be more common. If many technological civilizations do exist, then it doesn’t seem unreasonable that some of them may have built a megastructure like a Dyson swarm around their star. Indeed, if humanity can use becoming a type I civilization as a springboard to building a robust spacefaring infrastructure in the Solar System, we too might progress along that trajectory. But finding Dyson swarms around individual stars is more of a challenge for SETI.

Type III civilizations should be much more obvious, yet as Garrett says, our experiments “sort of rule out the idea that there are civilizations that are extracting energy from all the stars in their galaxy, and then using it to do stuff, because there would be a lot of waste heat and I don’t think there’s much evidence for that kind of civilization.”

Maybe the challenges to becoming a type III civilization are insurmountable.

Interstellar travel, for one, has to be achieved. Theoretically, it is possible, if we’re willing to put up with extremely long journey times between stars. Then there’s the issue of not being able to build Dyson swarms around every star — some stars are just too big. Time is also working against prospective type III civilizations. Are they immortal? Do they eventually die off?

The lack of type III civilizations has some researchers worried that we are indeed alone in the Universe, and that spells bad news for us. The so-called ‘great filter’ must be lurking around the corner, ready to snuff us out, like all those other would-be civilizations. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Perhaps we just need to re-adjust our ideas about how to become a type III civilization. Or a type II. Or even question whether the Kardashev scale is the right way to think about technologically advanced civilizations. When it comes to the future of humanity, we still have the power of choice: we still get to decide whether we grow as a civilization, or stop.

Choose wisely, and the stars could very well be in our favor.

SpaceX Nears First Flight of Starship Super Heavy

2023-01-10T19:00:00.000Z

Starship's much-anticipated orbital flight test could happen as soon as late February or early March according to Elon Musk.

The mission is a critical milestone for both the company’s Mars ambitions and for their partner NASA, who needs Starship to finally return its astronauts to the moon.

The Superheavy booster dubbed B7 — scheduled for the inaugural flight attempt — was rolled out of the Starship’s production facility to the orbital launch pad this week, located just 4 kilometers away. The booster was lifted onto the launch mount. The next day, Starship prototype Ship 24 was mated with Booster 7, completing the full stack configuration of the Starship Launch System.

Together standing 120 meters (394 feet) tall, Starship Super Heavy is the largest and the most powerful launch system in development.

The fully stacked Starship Super Heavy is expected to undergo Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) tests soon, during which the launch vehicle will be loaded with propellants, simulating all the steps needed for a launch without the actual ignition. Final tests will include a static fire of all 33 Raptor engines which will produce 5 times the thrust of the Falcon Heavy, and twice that of NASA’s Space Launch System, currently the world’s most powerful rocket.

According to an official FCC document, Starship’s Orbital test flight will launch from Starbase Launch Facility in Texas. All 33 engines onboard the Superheavy booster will burn for about 170 seconds before separating from the Starship and maneuvering to orient and perform a water landing in the Gulf of Mexico, just 32 kilometers (20 miles) from the shore of Texas. Raptor engines on the Starship will continue to burn until the spacecraft reaches orbit, after which it’ll perform a targeted water landing approximately 100 kilometers (62 miles) off the northwest coast of the Hawaiian Island of Kauai.

This much-anticipated mission has been delayed due to multiple complications, ranging from the reliability of the first iteration of the Raptor engines to operational issues with multiple Starship & Superheavy systems, and the launch pad itself. The company has done away with the cowboy style of build and test during the initial phase of development which included a higher tolerance of risk and failure and is proceeding more carefully and deliberately. Elon Musk said in a tweet that a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (RUD, aka, an explosion) at this stage of testing would set progress back by around 6 months.

Development

In development for over 5 years, SpaceX is continuously testing, fixing, and retesting launch vehicles and the launch pad itself in the remote Texan village of Boca Chica. Over the years, this town has witnessed a rapid pace of technological developments including numerous high-altitude test flights of Starship without its Super Heavy booster.

Prototypes SN8, SN9, Ship 10, and Ship 15 were launched by 3 Raptor sea-level engines to an altitude of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) before performing a belly flop maneuver and landing near the launch pad. These ostentatious albeit crucial tests helped SpaceX iron out kinks in their Raptor engine, avionics, aerodynamic control, and tank pressurization systems which are essential for the teams to improve their understanding and development of a fully and rapidly reusable transportation system.

SpaceX’s iterative and hardware-rich strategy during Starship development has helped them achieve rapid technological progress, all because of a rapid production ramp at the Starbase production facility which includes two large High Bays, a Mid bay, and numerous production tents, allowing multiple processing flows in parallel. Elon expects the Starship production facility to produce a full stack (a Starship and a Superheavy) every two months.

Since the last successful launch and landing of Ship 15, the teams shifted their focus on developing Starship’s first stage booster, Superheavy. Standing 70 meters (230 ft) tall, Superheavy is powered by 33 Raptor engines, together producing over 76 mega Newtons of force (17 million lbf) and will launch Starship to space. However, building a booster with 33 of the most complex engines ever developed was a challenge that even SpaceX wasn’t ready for.

The first Superheavy prototype to enter testing was Booster 4, having moved to the launch pad on August 4, 2021. Although there was no engine testing involved with this prototype, it did undergo various cryogenic tests from December 2021 to March 2022, helping teams build, test, and perfect launch procedures for not only the Superheavy but also the newly built Orbital Launch Pad and its tank farm, which holds large amounts of cryogenic propellant needed for its planned rapid launches.

Booster 4 was also stacked along with Ship 20 on August 6, 2021, marking the first time the Starship launch system was fully stacked on the launch pad.

As teams made swift but constant improvements, SpaceX switched over to Booster 7 for further testing. Rolled out to the pad in March 2022, B7 underwent several cryogenic tests as a part of its initial test campaign but suffered a series of setbacks which included damage to its methane transfer tube during one of the cryogenic tests.

Despite failures, the teams reworked the problem with the cryogenic propellant loading procedures. B7 was rolled back to the production facility where teams worked on fixing the booster for future tests. At the same time, SpaceX had already begun the construction of the next Superheavy prototype dubbed Booster 8. However, B8 hadn’t undergone any notable tests, and the focus was shifted to Booster 9, which included several design changes, including the ability to isolate any engine if it exploded mid-flight.

With repairs complete, Booster 7 was rolled out to the orbital launch pad and its testing campaign was well underway. The teams conducted two cryogenic tests successfully, bringing it one step closer to a static fire and eventual launch. To gain additional data and confidence in hardware readiness, SpaceX conducted a spin prime test of all the 33 Raptor engines installed on the Booster. During such a test, the fuel flows into the engine, but is not ignited in the gas generators. The cold gas spins the turbines at operational speeds and the turbopumps operate at nominal pressure, before spewing out the cold gasses instead of a flame. It’s basically a test of major components of an engine without an actual ignition.

However, an anomaly occurred during this test as the Raptor engines unexpectedly ignited and resulted in a huge flame, causing serious damage to the Booster and the launch pad.

Elon Musk clarified on Twitter that this was an issue with the spin start test for the Raptor 2 engines, which has a complex ignition sequence. Previous generation Raptor engines used an electric spark plug to ignite methane and oxygen. But to make the engine simpler, the spark plug was scrapped in favor of stoichiometrically igniting the engine, however, Elon has remained secretive about the details of such a complicated engine start-up sequence. The teams moved on, fixing and replacing some of the Raptor engines on Booster 7. A large amount of work was also carried out on the Orbital Launch Mount, which included the test of a water deluge system.

The test campaign progressed to static fires which started out with a single Raptor engine fire on August 9, followed by a 20-second firing of the same engine. As teams gained confidence in Superheavy and the launch pad systems, B7 successfully conducted a 7-engine static fire, achieving a good chamber pressure on all engines.

Meanwhile, Ship 24 was rolled down to the launch site and was stacked with Booster 7. The pair is still slated for their first orbital flight. B7 has received numerous reliability upgrades and the engine isolation system was retrofitted, however, Elon said it is still not as good as the B9. Throughout further testing, Booster 9 might be promoted to the first orbital flight, but that is yet to be seen.

On October 26, the fully stacked Starship launch system underwent a successful cryogenic proof test of the loading procedures during an actual orbital launch.

Ship 24 was then destacked as both vehicles proceeded further into their individual testing campaigns.

On November 15, B7 successfully performed a full-duration static fire of 14 of its Raptor engines. 15 days later, It performed another static fire with 11 Raptor engines to test out the Autogenous pressurization system which uses a self-generated gaseous propellant to pressurize the liquid propellants in the rockets, eliminating the need for helium, which is commonly used by other launch vehicles, including the Falcon 9, to maintain pressure in the rocket’s propellant tanks.

Following this successful 14-engine static fire, the teams rolled back Booster 7 to the production site for the final upgrades needed for orbital launch. Meanwhile, the launch pad received repairs in preparation for future tests. This included the replacement of concrete directly under the orbital launch mount which experiences the direct flames and forces of the Raptor engines when fired. During the latest test, the concrete was shattered and small chunks of it were seen raining down around the launch site. Workers ripped up the old concrete and poured in a new batch.

With the launch pad completing repairs and Booster 7 sporting further upgrades, all sights are set for more testing, including a 33-engine static fire, whose success will dictate a more precise date for an orbital launch.

System Testing

While most of Starship’s systems were matured during the high-altitude test campaign, SpaceX continued to make the systems robust and ready them all for orbital launch.

What was learned from the Ship 20 testing was incorporated into Ship 24, which sported numerous design changes, including a Starlink payload door designed to specifically deploy Starlink satellites. However, the payload door was later sealed shut. Its testing began in June 2022 with a series of cryogenic tests to verify the structural integrity of the vehicle. Teams moved to perform several Spin Prime tests with all 6 Raptor engines installed, 3 sea-level and 3 vacuum-optimized.

In August 2022, Ship 24 conducted the first successful static fire with 2 Raptor engines. These tests were being conducted in parallel with Booster 7 at the Suborbital Pad B.

In September, all 6 Raptor engines were static fired for the first time on S24, verifying the engines’ readiness to support the orbital launch. While these tests were ultimately the test of engines and the launch vehicle, the teams also used this opportunity to refine countdown procedures.

On December 15, teams conducted a 7-second single-engine static fire and SpaceX shared an overhead view of this test.

In parallel to the test campaign, construction continued on the next Starship prototype, dubbed Ship 25, which includes various updates, including a functional Starlink payload bay. The prototype underwent numerous cryogenic tests at Suborbital Pad A.

Leadership Shakeup

Amidst the setbacks in the Superheavy testing campaign and a delay in the orbital flight, SpaceX reorganized the leadership within the Starbase launch facility in response to a sense of urgency building up within the company to get it flying. As reported by CNBC’s Micheal Sheetz, SpaceX’s president and Chief Operating Office Gwynne Shotwell and vice president Mark Juncosa will now oversee the facility and operations around the company’s south Texas facility.

For the past two years, Starship’s development operations were headed by Sam Patel, Senior director of Starship operations. As a part of a company shakeup, Patel — who was previously based at the company’s Cape Canaveral facilities — will be leaving the south Texas site to move back to the Cape. SpaceX also brought in Omead Afshar as a vice president of Starship production who previously worked at Tesla’s Gigafactory in Austin as an operations lead.

According to CNBC, this shuffle came up when Juncosa visited Starbase over the summer. What was supposed to be a two-week stint to update and bring a new perspective to the leadership, resulted in him finding alarming details, with an orbital launch attempt further away than expected.

Starship for Artemis

Following the success of Artemis-1, NASA is in full momentum to return humans back to the Moon and onto Mars. The agency’s plan is heavily dependent on the success of Starship's launch architecture, which not only includes a nominal orbital launch, but also a host of promised features such as a high launch cadence, fast turnaround time, and most importantly, the in-flight propellant transfer.

On a regular Artemis mission, the Orion spacecraft will only go as far as the Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) around the Moon. To reach the lunar surface, NASA has tasked SpaceX with developing a lunar variant of Starship and the supporting architecture which the astronauts will utilize to land on the surface of our nearest celestial body.

The first such mission is scheduled to be Artemis III which will begin with the launch of the Starship propellant depot in low earth orbit. This depot will be gradually refilled by tanker versions of Starship until it has enough propellant to support a lunar mission. SpaceX will then launch the lunar-optimized Starship, officially known as the Starship Human Landing System (HLS), from the historic Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It’ll rendezvous with the propellant depot to refuel and maneuver itself to the NRHO around the Moon.

NASA will then launch 4 astronauts onboard the Orion spacecraft and the SLS rocket. The Orion spacecraft will execute a series of burns to place itself in the NRHO and rendezvous with the Starship HLS to dock with it. 2 Astronauts will board the Starship and descend down to a designated landing site at the Shackleton crater, located at the Moon's south pole. Once the surface mission is complete, Starship will launch from the surface of the moon and dock with the Orion spacecraft. The two astronauts will return to the Orion spacecraft and use it to finally return to Earth with a splashdown in the pacific ocean.

The next Artemis missions will have a similar architecture but it’ll involve the use of the Gateway Space station, placed at the NRHO around the Moon. Artemis IV mission and beyond are scheduled to use the upgraded SLS Block-1B rocket, which will be equipped with a much more powerful second stage named, the Exploration Upper Stage, consisting of much wider and taller propellant tanks and 4 RL-10 engines. This extra thrust will also allow NASA to launch some additional cargo along with the regular Orion spacecraft with 4 astronauts.

Artemis IV will deliver the third module of the Gateway space station, named I-HAB. An abbreviation for International Habitation Module, it’ll be the second and the main habitation module for Gateway, primarily built by the European Space Agency and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

The refueled Starship HLS will be docked to Gateway, awaiting the Orion spacecraft. Once Orion reaches the Moon, it’ll dock to Gateway. Two crew members will transfer to Starship and two will remain on the space station. Similar to Artemis III, Starship will land at a designated landing site for science operations and return back once completed.

Aside from the NASA-funded Artemis missions, SpaceX has also secured 3 privately funded missions with Starship, 2 of which will journey around the Moon.

Starship’s first planned crewed mission will be the third and the last Polaris mission, funded by Shift4 Payments founder and CEO, Jared Isaacman. The Polaris program seeks to rapidly advance human spaceflight capabilities that will serve as building blocks to enable private human exploration missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond while continuing to raise funds for St. Jude Children’s Hospital.

The second crewed flight of Starship and the first one to traverse to the Moon could be the dearMoon mission. Funded by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, the mission will fly him and 8 artists in a single circumlunar trajectory around the Moon.

The third mission could fly Dennis Tito and his wife Akiko, along with 10 other people on a trajectory similar to the dearMoon mission. Who those 10 other passengers will be is still unknown. Dennis Tito, aged 82, already has flight experience when he became the first private person to go to the International Space Station in 2001 onboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

The Supercluster team will be heading down to Starbase for Starship's historic orbital launch attempt. Download our launch tracker app for more information and updates on the mission.

The Threat of Space Radiation

2023-01-03T11:00:00.000Z

NASA is preparing to return astronauts to the lunar surface. And this time with more ambitious goals.

Those missions, which had a successful kickoff with Artemis-1, will establish the groundwork for months-long human habitation on the Lunar surface. Proposed base camps will present unique opportunities to test technology, unravel scientific secrets about the Moon's past and present, search for the presence of water, and more.

But before our sci-fi Moonbase becomes a reality, astronauts must perform a variety of tasks on the lunar surface, including site exploration, construction, and resource extraction. For all of these tasks and the operations in between, space radiation poses a threat to the space farers performing them.

Between 1968 and 1972, the Apollo missions carried a dozen astronauts to the Moon and back. But all of these missions were brief — the longest lasted only about 12 days. We’ve been there before, but the effects of space radiation are still little-known, and understanding their effects on the human body is vital for months-long missions.

A Fusillade of Powerful Particles

Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere shield it from dangerous radiation and safeguard life on the planet. The outer worlds that humanity has targeted are incredibly hostile by comparison. Even an hour without adequate protection could be lethal, as charged particles pass constantly through human skin. This paints a bleak picture for future exploration.

Even our Moon is a hazardous, desolate place — devoid of atmosphere, and lacking protection from a constant rain of radiation emitted by our Sun. Apart from the Sun, astronauts are also subjected to other sources of radiation on the Moon.

First to consider are the galactic cosmic rays (GCR) released by exploding stars out in deep space. And then there are particles created in the lunar soil, as a result of the interactions between solar energetic particles from the Sun and galactic cosmic rays. Solar particles are less energetic than galactic cosmic rays, “but when there is a solar particle event, then their flux can be much higher than that of galactic cosmic rays,” said Robert F. Wimmer-Schweingrube from the University of Kiel in Germany.

In the annals of human spaceflight, August 1972 is unforgettable. A series of intense solar flares exploded intermittently for more than a week. A solar flare is an outburst of charged particles from the Sun’s turbulent surface. There are five classes: A, B, C, M, and X, ranging in size from the smallest to the most dangerous. The intense solar storm of 1972, which was an X-class flare, originated from a sunspot named MR 11976.

The crew of Apollo 16 had landed on Earth in April, and the final Apollo 17 trip was scheduled for December. A potential disaster was narrowly avoided. Astronauts stepping onto the lunar surface would have died from radiation, and the storm's fury was felt on Earth as well — it disrupted the energy and communication grids in several parts of North America.

Dangerous Passage

Space radiation poses a concern not just on the surface, but on the round-trip journey. Around Earth, there are hazardous radiation rings, the Van Allen Belts, consisting of highly charged particles captured by the planet’s magnetic fields. The more time spent passing through these belts, the greater the risk of radiation poisoning.

There are two radiation rings. The first one starts at a height of 600 km and extends to 6,000 km. The second deadly ring stretches from between 10,000 and 65,000 kilometers above Earth. The intensity of the latter only gets worse as solar storms rage. Thankfully the Space Station remains untouched and shielded in low-Earth Orbit at 230 miles, but though our lunar spacecraft are designed to shield their crew, the flood of lethal particles can still seep inside.

So how did earlier Apollo missions manage to navigate this challenging area? Speed. The past Apollo missions followed a tight trajectory to avoid the most radioactive part of the belts and traversed at a high speed. Scientists determined the optimal speed for crew-carrying spacecraft to be roughly 25,000 km/h with a total transit period of 68.1 minutes.

Radioactive Baker’s Yeast

In this new space age, the dread of radiation still looms. And new answers are needed. The Artemis-1 mission carried mannequins and other biological experiments to study exposure.

Yeast cells flown on the mission require little upkeep for factors like water, temperature, or nutrients. Yeast acts as a model organism in DNA damage studies, and its response has been well studied. A near-perfect analog for human genes is the baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). This single-celled microorganism can give information on how living organisms cope with dangerous cosmic radiation.

The experiment tries to unravel complicated space radiation-related puzzles. What effects do charged particles have on DNA, cells, and tissues in humans? What degree of DNA damage is there? Which genes were radiation-resistant?

Peter Guida, a biologist with NASA explains in a statement: “DNA bases (adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine) can also be knocked out. The cell will make an attempt to repair these damages. Sometimes it’s effective and sometimes it’s not, and sometimes it can be misrepaired. Genes that have been misrepaired can become mutations, and the accumulation of these mutations over time can potentially lead to cancer.”

To study this accumulation, a collection of bar-coded yeast cells traveled to the Moon and back. Yeast cells were supposed to grow and divide throughout the mission after the samples have been launched to space and activated remotely by the addition of water.

With Orion’s return to Earth, scientists from the University of British Columbia will retrieve the samples to carry out a laboratory study. Once the genes have been identified, scientists could use this information to develop drugs or treatments that can tolerate radiation shocks and reduce the likelihood of adverse health effects.

Meanwhile, another deep-space biology experiment will carry more yeast samples to orbit around the Sun for about six to nine months. BioSentinel — a shoebox-sized CubeSat — which also hitched a ride on Artemis-1. A new biosensor is used in the experiment to examine how living yeast cells respond and adapt to prolonged exposure. Scientists will track the experiment in real time via NASA’s Deep Space Network.

How Much is Too Much?

The 1972 event is sometimes used as a reference point to comprehend the "what ifs" of sending astronauts to the Moon. The astronauts would have experienced radiation sickness, at minimum, if they had been exposed to those lethal radiation doses.

According to NASA, the standard radiation dose for a person on Earth is about 0.0036 Sv/ year (0.36 rad). The Apollo astronauts received an average radiation dose on the skin of 0.38 rad — equivalent to two head CT scans. Overall, Apollo 14 received the skin dose of 1.14 rad, which was the highest. All this during missions not longer than 12 days.

The daily radiation dose on the surface of the Moon could be substantially higher during a longer mission, and it is impossible to quantify from Earth. To find out how high, the Lunar Lander Neutron and Dosimetry (LND), onboard the Chinese lunar lander Chang’E 4, traveled to the Moon. LND recorded the first-ever measurements of radiation levels on the Moon.

According to estimates, astronauts in a spacesuit would be exposed to around 60 microsieverts of radiation every hour. Overall, the radiation level exposure could shoot up to 150 times higher than on Earth.

Have you ever wondered about the acceptable space radiation exposure limit for humans? "We don't really know," according to co-author of the LND study, Dr Wimmer. “We don't yet have experience with deep space radiation, there are different ways that radiation affects our body and different parts of our body.”

Female Body More Vulnerable

Without any protection, astronauts are more likely to have both acute and chronic health problems, such as cataracts and heart diseases. Additionally, they may suffer from short-term radiation illness, and risks of cancer development in long-term.

Based on a person's age and gender, NASA has estimated career exposure limits. Presumably, early-career astronauts could have higher health risks in their later years due to radiation exposure. And studies have suggested that females could be more vulnerable to radiation.

“Females have a much higher risk of cancer from radiation due to the additional risks to the breast (one of the highest), ovarian, and uterine cancers. For males, the risk of prostate cancer appears from radiation exposure, however, it has a low mortality probability,” said Professor Francis Cucinotta, an expert in radiation biology from the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, in an email response to Supercluster.

That’s why NASA has flown an experiment to understand the implications of radiation on the female body, for the first time. As NASA works to send a female astronaut to space, this experiment is crucial.

The Artemis-1 mannequins — named Zohra and Helga — have been designed to measure and test the effect of radiation on internal organs. The damage encountered by internal organs depends on energy absorbed, particle density, and time spent outside the protective habitat.

34 detectors and more than 5,000 sensors were placed all over these mannequins to measure radiation levels during Orion's flight. The mannequins, which are made of epoxy resins, replicate an adult female's bones, soft tissues, and organs.

One of the mannequins wore AstroRad, a brand-new radiation vest. The vest's main purpose is to protect sensitive organs against solar particle events. Through this test flight, scientists will learn more about the belt's efficiency as well as how it protects internal organs by contrasting the two subjects. The experiment is known as the Matroshka AstroRad Radiation Experiment (MARE). Radiation sensors incorporated into Orion monitored radiation levels throughout the flight, especially in areas where they are at their highest.

Research from this experiment is expected to be published soon.

Lunar Shielding

Artemis’ Orion has been designed with an array of features to protect both humans and hardware in a worst-case scenario. A stowage bag or other material found onboard might be used to construct a temporary radiation shelter inside the spacecraft.

As per NASA, the crew might need to stay in this storm shelter for at least a day. Extreme space weather would not prevent the crew from carrying out "critical mission activities," though, thanks to the protective radiation vests.

During periods of severe solar activity, astronauts might potentially construct a shielded habitat using local resources, such as lunar soil, dirt, and rocks. For instance, walls about one meter thick can be built by 3D printing building blocks from lunar dust (regolith).

“Another way to construct a shielded habitat is to simply "pile dirt" onto a solid construction that can support its weight,” suggests Dr. Wimmer. In addition, it would be useful to forecast space weather and issue early storm warnings for stays longer than a month.

The first Artemis mission is considered an initial success as we await published results from various experiments. If things go well with the next few crewed Artemis missions, NASA will soon be preparing for humanity’s next radiation challenge: Mars.

The War in Star Wars

2022-12-20T22:00:00.000Z

Star Wars has been, and always will be, deeply political. It’s also inspired by and rooted in history.

That’s the thesis of historian Chris Kempshall’s newest book, The History and Politics of Star Wars: Death Stars and Democracy— all the ways our own history, wars, and politics have been reflected in a 45-year-old space opera. And, how those historical and political ideas and events inspired the galaxy far, far away.

“What I’m hoping it’s going to give to Star Wars fans…is that understanding and that acceptance…that Star Wars has always been historical; Star Wars has always been politics, and it’s fine,” Kempshall said. “People can disagree on the history or politics or the analysis. But the fact remains: Star Wars is trying to transmit something to us.”

Kempshall’s book examines the cultural and political influences that made it into nearly every piece of Star Wars media from 1977 to 2022’s Obi-Wan Kenobi series. That includes hundreds of books both new canon and Legends, video games, nine movies, and several live-action and animated television shows.

Though Kempshall’s book was published right before the release of Andor, the UK-based historian — and many other social scientists and history buffs alike — have been enthralled with the series’ bold statements on fascism, authoritarianism, over-policing, the prison industrial complex, and the high cost of rebellion.

There's no such thing as an apolitical war.

It’s widely known that Lucas was inspired and influenced by the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa and the adventures of space cowboy Buck Rogers in crafting the space opera-western-samurai-fairy tale that is Star Wars. But Lucas’s feelings about real-world issues of the 1960s and 70s, especially the Vietnam War, were also reflected heavily in his entertainment work.

“Partly this book, in 100,000 words, is saying: Star Wars has always been political; George Lucas has never hidden this,” Kempshall said. “But also, why wouldn’t it be political? There’s no such thing as an apolitical war.”

In a broad sense, the Lucas-crafted original trilogy and prequel films explored and reflected his own ideas about empire, rebellion, and the causes of effects of collapsing democracies. It’s not hard to see the real-world ideas and events reflected in Star Wars.

As Lucas has said in countless interviews, many of which are referenced in Kempshall’s book, “the films were always political.” The veritable Maker of Star Wars emphasized the saga’s elaborate cultural and political context in which it rests, and that it’s up to the audience to notice and understand these inspirations.

But Lucas wasn’t the only Star Wars story creator explicit in their fusion of real-world politics with space politics. Kempshall said one of the surprising things he found in his work for the book was just how pronounced those inspirations and influences were.

He cites Darksaber by Kevin J. Anderson, published in 1995 — four years after the end of the decades-long Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

“I wondered if this is a book about nuclear proliferation because it’s like Death Star tech has gone out to this criminal gang of Hutts and they’re making their own mini Death Star. It feels like nuclear weapons,” Kempshall said. “And then I found this interview with him and he’s super annoyed that everyone doesn’t realize (the book) is about nuclear weapons.”

Fans like Kempshall have also praised Star Wars books like Alexander Freed’s Alphabet Squadron trilogy for infusing classic Expanded Universe elements into the post-Disney new canon stories – including bold messages about real-world history and politics.

“(The trilogy) is a bleak, depressing view of warfare and it is fascinating,” he said. “And I believe at the end of the first book, the droid in it gives the most cutting critique of Palpatine as being just a petty, vengeful, cruel, miserable man, and reading that (thinking), you are clearly talking about Adolf Hitler.”

In the book’s penultimate chapter, a reprogrammed Imperial torture droid, who’s now an unlikely therapist for the ragtag squadron of wartorn soldiers, debunks the long-held myth that Emperor Palpatine was “a man of secret brilliance and foresight.”

The droid says Palpatine ordered the genocidal Operation Cinder and built two Death Stars, and “oversaw countless genocides and massacres and created an Empire where torture droids were in common use.”

The root of Palpatine’s behavior and power is that he was cruel and spiteful, “in the most ordinary of ways.”

It’s a simple yet brutal takedown of a man who ruled the galaxy for two decades. And it can be a tough pill to swallow for “true believers” of the emperor – and in the real world, propaganda-wielding fascists like Hitler and their followers.

“It is a perfect description of a fascist dictator. It’s a beautiful, really impressive, in-depth, well-conceived criticism of fascism, dressed within the Star Wars universe,” Kempshall said. “And to quote Grand Admiral Thrawn, it’s just so artfully done.”

Andor and the making of revolution

Then there’s Andor, which premiered its first episodes weeks after The History and Politics of Star Wars was published.

While Kempshall said Andor “would’ve been ripe for going in” the book, he agrees that any analysis of the real-world historical and political influences in the show could fill an entirely separate book.

The series is a character study of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) in the years before he dies for the cause alongside Jyn Erso moments after transmitting the Death Star plans to the Rebel Alliance. It’s also a sweeping and poignant exploration of the makings of revolution — told via a spy thriller set in space.

Through its 12-episode first season, Andor has tackled concepts like the moral grayness of the rebellion spectrum and the depth of tyranny for the sake of order. It’s also narrowed its scope to touch on the psychology of fascism and authoritarian regimes, class division, and prison labor systems.

“...this is about oppression. This is about colonialism. This is the abuse of power. This is about revolution. It’s been happening from the time that people first started gathering together in a town square,” Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy said in an interview with Rolling Stone.

In the same interview, Gilroy said he was inspired by reading nonfiction histories, in particular a book titled Young Stalin. While episode 10’s prison break wasn’t directly inspired by Joseph Stalin’s early life, Gilroy points to a rebellion-funding bank robbery in 1907 led by the Soviet leader.

“If you look at a picture of Young Stalin, isn’t he glamorous? He looks like Diego! We’re not doing [the] Stalin show. But, it’s fascinating. All through every revolution, it’s the same thing. It takes coin,” Gilroy said.

Andor is not your typical Star Wars story – leaning more into dystopian science fiction even as it dives deeper into classic space opera themes of good guys vs. bad. Still, because of its affecting statements mirroring real-world history and politics, it’s been lauded by critics and fans as one of the freshest, darkest, and most intriguing pieces of Star Wars storytelling we’ve seen so far.

“In the case of Andor, you have a show that is committed not just to showcasing the internal politics of the Star Wars universe but also to fairly overtly indicating where it is drawing on our history as well,” Kempshall said. “This willingness to use one to inform the other is a perfect example of how Star Wars and the real world reflect onto each other. I just wish it had been out in time for me to include it in the book!’

Star Wars, though set in space, doesn’t exist in a vacuum

The contextualized examples in Kempshall’s book seem endless – from clear references to the Cold War and the War on Terror in the Expanded Universe books of the 1990s and early 2000s, to current issues of diversity and political polarization reflected in The High Republic.

“Stuff that’s happening right now in the world is still making its way into Star Wars,” Kempshall said. “You can definitely see elements of Star Wars reacting to things like the presidency of Donald Trump in more recent things.”

One theme seen throughout all of Star Wars is the idea of “forever wars” and conflicts that span multiple generations – coupled with the traumatic cost of waging those wars paid by everyone from soldiers and generals to their children and civilians.

In his book, Kempshall explores how Finn and Rose Tico of the sequel trilogy of films embody the children of war trope. Finn, formerly a stormtrooper, defects from the First Order after being traumatised in battle. And Rose witnessed the shelling of her community at an impoverished outpost, which pushed her to join the Resistance with her sister.

Explored further is the parallels between decades-long conflicts in Star Wars and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the Star Wars sequel trilogy, many of the soldiers and leaders of the Resistance fought in the Galactic Civil War or had parents or even grandparents in it.

In our own world, the 20-year war in Afghanistan, which ended in 2021, also saw the children of soldiers take up the same fight as their parents. And at the same time, the changing cultural and political landscape in the United States before and after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

“But going back to the stuff on the War on Terror – just before September 11th and after – how quickly and in different ways Star Wars began reacting to that,” Kempshall said. “The very explicit ways it gets dragged into the Star Wars universe. You end up with the equivalent of the Department of Homeland Security…in some of the Star Wars books.”

“The ideas of secret police and racial profiling and extraordinary rendition; enhanced interrogation and torture. It doesn’t take very long at all for some of that stuff to start appearing in the books.”

Then there’s the goosebumps-inducing Citizens Fleet – tens of thousands of civilian ships led by Lando Calrissian in the final assault on the reanimated emperor’s Sith Eternal on Exegol in The Rise of Skywalker.

Alongside decorated but war-weary fighters are thousands of volunteers and “just…people,” as one First Order officer says in the film.

“The Citizen’s Fleet which wins the war is composed of ordinary people who took the final step to ensure their own freedom,” Kempshall wrote. “In that sense it holds contemporary resonance as a rallying cry against modern authoritarianism but also harkens back to both Vietnam and the American Revolution.”

Kempshall also noted the depiction of Tusken Raiders in The Book of Boba Fett, which premiered at the end of 2021 and ran through the early months of 2022.

“They spend several episodes basically depicting Tusken Raiders as Indigenous people having their land rights and resources stolen by foreign settlers,” he said.

The Book of Boba Fett was as much entertaining fan service as it was a reintroduction and rebirth of the quiet, badass bounty hunter and the Tusken Raiders formerly known as “Sand People.” It reflected the ramifications of a life filled with violence and trauma and touched on Boba’s legacy as the son/exact clone of his father.

The stories of the Tusken Raiders were also a clear nod to movements and efforts to return land, artifacts, art, and other cultural pieces back to Indigenous peoples around the world.

“This is pure, modern understanding of Indigenous rights and struggles happening at the moment in America and elsewhere around the world,” Kempshall said.

Maybe we need Star Wars more than ever

Kempshall’s book, particularly the last chapter, also explores the many ways current and ongoing Star Wars projects have put a mirror to our own world’s issues of systemic racism, misogyny, and homophobia.

“If your starting point is, Star Wars uses real-world history and politics for its own purposes, then the natural conclusion is that the real world does exactly the same thing,” he said. “It reflects in both directions. And you see that on Twitter and other places on the internet that have ongoing culture wars; that utilize Star Wars as a battleground.”

“The idea of who’s being represented and who isn’t. Star Wars becomes something to fight over or to debate over. They’re doing it quite overtly for various political reasons whether it be left or right.”

“So, Star Wars itself doesn’t exist in a vacuum from the real world-politics that it’s trying to draw from.”

Two stark examples of that reflection in both directions is the Aftermath trilogy of novels and The High Republic era of books and comics.

As our own society continues to become increasingly more diverse, so too has our culture reflected that diversity and inclusion. Though far from perfect, Disney and Star Wars’ efforts to reflect the myriad ethnicities, genders, and sexuality of humans can be lauded as well as criticized.

“Because it doesn’t always do it well; there are issues with how Star Wars digs into real world politics and history,” Kempshall said. “Some of the portrayals of aliens and women and people of color are not…universally brilliant. And that can be critiqued as well as anything else can.”

Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath books were not the first Star Wars stories to include more diversity, but the writing of them and their publication came during a contentious moment in American political and cultural history – the election of Donald Trump as president and the resurgence of neo-Nazis and white supremacist ideals, especially in open internet spaces.

“Something I tell my students…the date that something is created can sometimes be more important than what that thing actually says,” Kempshall said. “The person who created it is going to be influenced by the world around them.”

The Aftermath trilogy is a transition point both within the Star Wars universe and without – the pivot from the fascistic Empire to the First Order and the Darth Vader-idolizing Kylo Ren. But when Wendig, and in turn the creators of the sequel films, included people of color and LGBTQ+ characters in these new Star Wars stories, the “fandom menace” took aim.

But Wendig fired back on Twitter and in his blog, TerribleMinds.com. In an August 2017 post following the release of Empire’s End, Wendig wrote:

“I think about Rey and Finn and Cassian and Jyn and Poe, I think about Sinjir and Conder and Rae and Eleodie, and I think about how white guys (like, well, me) are no longer finding pop culture to be as perfect a mirror for them as it used to be…

After so long of having not to share, we’re being made to share. That excites some people. And it enrages others. Because children don’t always like to share. We no longer have the mirror to ourselves. We no longer have toys that are ours and ours alone…

To some, that’s amazing. The chance to widen the doorway, to see more than just yourself in the glass. Others hear that and they just want to break the mirror.

If they can’t have it all to themselves, then nobody can have it.

That’s the Empire.

That’s the First Order.

Maybe we’re living just a little bit of Aftermath right here, right now.

And maybe we need Star Wars more than ever.”

More recently, The High Republic publishing campaign has become a veritable safe space for authors and creators to further explore the galaxy far, far away from the original, established canon. Set some 200 years before the events of The Phantom Menace, The High Republic is dubbed a Golden Age of the Jedi Order and the Republic.

Kempshall writes that the pages of The High Republic books and comics is where we’ll continue to find explorations and reflections of the current world. Since its launch nearly two years ago, The High Republic has provided more ideal and authentic portrayals of people of color and the LGBTQ+ community as well as veered away having all the heroes be white and human.

The High Republic has also provided a space to reflect and examine current issues like the COVID-19 pandemic and the evolving nature of conflict. In Light of the Jedi, a hyperspace disaster shut down large swaths of intergalactic travel, stranding millions on their homeworlds or elsewhere.

At the time the book debuted, January 2021, we were nearly a year into a pandemic that shutdown travel worldwide.

The Rising Storm and The Fallen Star adult books also depicted what were essentially large-scale terrorist attacks on the Republic Fair and then on Starlight Beacon – which was a space station and safe haven for travelers as well as a symbol for intergalactic relations.

Parts of these attacks were broadcast live to the entire galaxy.

And as Kempshall writes, “both of these chime not just with existing memories of 9/11 and the ability to watch terrorism play out in real-time, but also with more recent examples – such as the attacks across Paris in 2015 – that moved conceptions of terrorism away from grand scale events…to something that can spread across a city leaving death and destruction in its wake while simultaneously being trackable on both television and social media.”

No matter what’s being reflected, mirrored, or explored in a piece of popular culture or entertainment, the creation of art is a psychological and political act. That’s what art, culture, and entertainment is – franchises like Star Wars, films, television shows, books, and the like are trying to tell us something; trying to send a message about human nature and society.

“Anything that is created is trying to tell us something, and it’s fine to just accept that not everything is trying to exist in some kind of vanilla beige vacuum bubble,” Kempshall said. “When Star Wars is talking to us, what is it trying to say? When Star Wars speaks, when it draws on examples when it tries to point us at things, there’s a reason for it.”

In Photos: SpaceX Launches Water-Monitoring Satellite for NASA and CNES

2022-12-20T22:00:00.000Z

Early Friday morning, December 16th, SpaceX launched the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite for NASA and French space agency CNES that will survey nearly all the water on Earth. The mission includes contributions from the Canadian Space Agency and the UK Space Agency.

SWOT launched atop SpaceX's Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and will complete its primary mission over the next three years. According to NASA, the satellite's instruments will measure the height of water in freshwater bodies and the ocean on more than 90% of our planet's surface using instruments that will provide higher-resolution images than previous missions.

The collected data will help inform water equity and water management policy from local to national levels, add to the knowledge of Earth's water and energy cycles and help prepare cities, towns, and communities across the world for rising seas.

Photographer Pauline Acalin was on-site for Supercluster at Vandenberg to shoot the launch of the critical science mission.

“For freshwater, this will be a quantum leap in terms of our knowledge,” said Daniel Esteban-Fernandez, KaRIn instrument manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "Researchers currently have good data on only a few thousand lakes around the world; SWOT will increase that number to at least a million."

According to JPL, KaRIn will measure the height of water in the ocean, “seeing” features like currents and eddies that are less than 13 miles (20 kilometers) across – up to 10 times smaller than those detectable with other sea-level satellites. It will also collect data on lakes and reservoirs larger than 15 acres (62,500 square meters) and rivers wider than 330 feet (100 meters) across.

“Warming seas, extreme weather, more severe wildfires –these are only some of the consequences humanity is facing due to climate change,”

said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “The climate crisis requires an all-hands-on-deck approach, and SWOT is the realization of a long-standing international partnership that will ultimately better equip communities so that they can face these challenges.”

Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Harmed the Global Space Industry

2022-12-13T11:00:00.000Z

The space powers are divided, and with a bitterness not seen since the cold war.

The impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is being felt around the world. Europe and the US saw an increase in energy prices, food scarcity threatens the middle east and north Africa, and manufacturers around the globe are constrained by critical supply chain issues. Ripples from the war have also been felt by an international space industry dominated by the same giants who are actively or passively involved in the conflict.

During the Soviet era, the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, also known as Rocket City, was home to Soviet space rocket manufacturing centers, and the cities of Kyiv and Kharkiv provided ground control and tracking services along with various technological support. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the remnants of the Soviet space program in Ukraine were reorganized into their own space agency.

Fast forward to the 21st century — and Ukraine plays an active role in resupplying the international space station. Under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Service contract, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft delivers over 3000 kilograms of cargo to the orbiting laboratory, launched aboard the Antares rocket, whose first stage is supplied by Ukraine.

Antares was developed by the Orbital Sciences Cooperation and Ukraine’s Yuzhnoye Design Bureau specifically to resupply the ISS. In 2018, Northrop Grumman acquired Orbital Sciences and took over its operations. A two-stage medium launch vehicle with an optional third stage, Antares is 27.6 meters tall and 3.9 meters in diameter. The first stage is powered by aerospace-grade kerosene (RP-1) and liquid oxygen (LOX) while the second stage is powered by Orbital ATK’s (now Northrop Grumman’s) Castor 30 series solid-fueled rocket. Since Orbital Sciences primarily had experience with solid propellants, the first stage’s development and manufacturing was outsourced to Yuzhnoye SDO and Yuzmash’s facility in Dnipro, Ukraine, which also designed the Zenit family of rockets during the Soviet era.

Initially, the first stage was powered by twin Aerojet Rocketdyne’s AJ26 engines, which were essentially NK-33 engines imported from Russia with improved electrical harnessing, US electronics, and modified steering systems. The Antares with these engines was designated as the 100 series. However, numerous design flaws with the engines resulted in a huge explosion on October 28, 2014, during a launch at Wallops Island, Virginia.

Going forward, Orbital Sciences announced it would use the NPO Energomash’s newer RD-181 engines and this version would be named the 200 series. Since then, the Antares has flown flawlessly to orbit, helping them win a second Commercial Resupply Services contract. Under the new contract, Antares was updated to Antares 230+, which included structural changes to the intertank bay (between the LOX and RP1 tank,) the forward bay of the LOX tank, a more powerful second stage engine, and trajectory improvements via a load-release autopilot to increase launch mass capability.

Casualties of War

With engines imported from Russia and a first stage from Ukraine, this launch vehicle was always at the mercy of shaky geopolitics. Apart from manufacturing Antares’ first stage, the Yuzhmash manufacturing plant also produced satellites, ballistic missiles, and industrial products which made it a potential target for the Russian forces. The fears of the facility being destroyed were realized when a Russian missile strike decimated the manufacturing hub in July, killing three civilians.

To keep the launch vehicle flying, Northrop Grumman announced a collaboration with Firefly Aerospace to develop a newer and more powerful first stage. Named the Antares 300 series, the new proposed beefed-up first stage will be powered by 7 of Firefly’s Miranda engines, aiming to produce over 7200 kN (1,600,000 lbf) of thrust. A major thrust increase and a new composite structure like Firefly’s next-generation Beta launch vehicle will substantially increase the mass capability of the rocket. The company is targeting late 2024 for its debut launch, but like all rocket developments, delays and failures are extremely likely.

As for the 200 series, Northrop Grumman has only enough components for 1 more launch, after launching the SS Sally Ride Cygnus spacecraft aboard Antares to the ISS on November 7, 2022. The Ukrainian first stage will reach space for the final time in the second quarter of 2023, and after that, Cygnus will have to look for other rides to reach orbit. To fulfill NASA’s contractual agreements, the company has sought launch services from SpaceX to ensure uninterrupted Cygnus space station cargo deliveries.

Other Joint space programs with Russia have also been jeopardized, including the European Space Agency’s ExoMars — a joint astrobiology effort between the two space agencies. The first mission of the program was the launch of ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and the Schiaparelli lander onboard Russia’s heavy launch vehicle Proton, in March 2016. The TGO is still operational as an atmospheric gas analyzer and a telecommunications orbiter. However, the Schiaparelli Entry, Descent, and Landing Demonstrator Module (EDM) were unable to land safely on the surface of the red planet.

Learning from this failure, the second mission of the ExoMars program would have seen ESA landing their Rosalind Franklin rover using Roscosmos’ Kazachok lander. Initially scheduled for launch in 2020, problems arose with the landing parachute which couldn’t be resolved in time, delaying the mission until the September 2022 Hohmann transfer window. After two years, the lander and the rover were technically ready, but the sanctions imposed by the European Union meant ESA engineers couldn’t work with their Russian counterparts to prepare the rover for launch.

By March 2022, ESA’s ruling council unanimously mandated a suspension of cooperative activities with Russia and began looking for ways to complete the mission without Russian resources. The agency began discussions with NASA to replace the Russian elements of the mission. “Our teams are working with the teams in NASA about the technical steps that need to be [completed],” said Josef Aschbacher, director general of ESA at the panel of space agency leaders at the 37th Space Symposium.

This was a serious setback for Europe’s Mars program. Their rover was left without a lander, a resource not easily or commercially available. “Realistically, we would be looking at a launch in 2028,” said Jorge Vago, ExoMars Project Scientist at NASA’s Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group meeting.

Launching during this period poses another challenge. One trajectory would get the rover to Mars quickly but just a month before the dust storm season, while an alternate path will take two years longer, but 6 months before the next storm.

“We have been trying very hard to convince the engineering team that the dust storm season is not death,” Vago said. “We should concentrate on making the rover more robust and able to weather [the storm.]”

The political support for the ExoMars rover remains strong from the ESA’s member states. On Wednesday, November 23, ESA’s Council at the Ministerial level in Paris passed a record-breaking €17 billion budget over the 3 years, which among others, includes the €360 million needed to rebuild the landing platform for the rover. This includes a 17% increase compared to what had passed at the previous member-state gathering in 2019 but fell short of €18.5 billion requested.

Delayed for nearly 10 years now, Astrobiologists still see value in ESA’s Franklin rover. According to a study published in Elsevier on November 22, the long ridges along the rover’s landing site – Oxia Planus – may be the tracks of ancient Martian waterways. ExoMars’s two-meter-long drill can be used to collect underground samples from a depth where researchers hope to find traces of past or present martian life.

Private Industry

Private entities have also been caught in the crossfire. Internet satellite constellation operator OneWeb had contracted Roscosmos to launch their satellites to orbit using Soyuz. Sanctions from the West and OneWeb’s potential use in the war resulted in Russia refusing to launch the company's satellites. Roscosmos’ ex-director general Dmitry Rogozin demanded the UK Government sell its stake in the company and guarantee that its technology won’t be used for military purposes if the space agency were to proceed with the launch. This came after SpaceX’s Starlink started supporting Ukraine by providing high-speed and reliable internet connections after Russia destroyed most cell network infrastructure during the initial days of the war. OneWeb had to suspend all their satellite launches, a decision that was fully supported by the British, whose spokesperson denied any intention of selling their stake in the company.

36 OneWeb satellites — delivered to Baikonur Cosmodrome for launch — still remain in storage, and Russia is refusing to return them. This, along with the suspension of OneWeb launches has resulted in over $229 million in losses, according to the company’s annual report.

Russia’s loss was a big gain for SpaceX and Indian Research Space Organization (ISRO) which were tapped by OneWeb to complete their satellite constellation. The company’s 8-month launch hiatus finally ended on October 23 when ISRO launched 36 OneWeb satellites to orbit onboard the Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III (GSLV Mk III). Having previously supported the Chandrayaan-2 mission, GSLV Mk III has launched successfully 4 times and is designed specifically for human spaceflight.

It was followed by SpaceX’s launch of 40 OneWeb satellites onboard the Falcon 9 on December 8 from Florida, a mission that represented vital cooperation between the two competitors in space.

Roscosmos suffered further losses after ESA suspended all Soyuz launches from French Guiana. The Russian workhorse rocket was frequently launched from the European spaceport by Starsem, a European-Russian partnership, and was scheduled to launch the agency’s 3 science satellites: EarthCARE, Hera, and Euclid, 2 of the European Union’s Galileo navigation satellites, and several commercial payloads. The war has left them without a launch vehicle. ESA turned to SpaceX to launch their Euclid astrophysics mission next year, and an asteroid mission, Hera, in 2024 onboard the Falcon 9. The EarthCARE will now launch on the recently-upgraded Vega-C rocket. However, the decision on how to launch the Galileo satellites is still pending, given the fact that the maiden launch of Europe’s upcoming rocket, Ariane 6, has slipped to the last quarter of 2023.

International Divisions

Divided on Earth, but still united in space. The US and European Union may be moving away from Russian cooperation, but each country still maintains a working relationship to keep the International Space Station operational.

But there’s been friction.

NASA issued a rare condemnation of Russia’s actions when it released a photograph with cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev, and Sergey Korsakov posing with the flags of the Luhansk People’s Republic and Donetsk People’s Republic, territories occupied by Russian forces in the eastern part of Ukraine, recognized only by Russia and Syria. In a statement, NASA said it strongly rebukes Russia for using the International Space Station for political purposes and to support its war against Ukraine.

A similar statement came in a tweet from Aschbacher, “It is unacceptable that the ISS becomes a platform to play out the political or humanitarian crises happening on the ground. The purpose of the ISS is to conduct research & prepare us for deeper exploration. It must remain a symbol of peace and inspiration.”

In late April, Russia doubled down on its threat to pull out of the ISS. “The decision on the timing of the end of Russia's participation in the ISS program has already been made, but will not be announced yet,” said Rogozin in an interview with Russian media. This came after a threat that joint operations in orbit are at risk due to sanctions imposed by the Western nations.

Rogozin is well known for his blusterous anti-West rhetoric. The Director-General of the European Space Agency (ESA) later said that they don’t expect Russia to be withdrawing from the ISS, as currently, all its 15 international partners have agreed to operate the station until 2024. In July, Putin replaced Rogozin with Yuri Borisov, a deputy prime minister in charge of developing weapons industries.

Through public discourse, Russia maintains that it plans to exit the space station by 2024 to focus on the domestically built Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS), whose construction is scheduled to begin in 2028. However, NASA nor any international partners haven’t received exit notices from their Russian counterparts. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson issued a statement later saying the agency is “committed to the safe operation of the International Space Station through 2030” and “NASA has not been made aware of [termination] decisions from any of the partners, though we are continuing to build future capabilities to assure our major presence in low-Earth orbit.”

“On the station are Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts, and they are all very professional. The relationship between the mission control in Houston and in Moscow is very professional,” said Nelson during a press conference.

Further signs of cooperation came in September after NASA and Roscosmos finalized a seat barter agreement which saw NASA Astronaut Frank Rubio launching aboard Soyuz, while Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina launched aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, as a part of expedition 68.

NASA’s Kathy Lueders said that NASA and Roscosmos "are operating just like we were operating" before the invasion. "Our teams are still talking together, we're still doing training together, we're still working together.”

Webb's Early Findings Are Remarkable

2022-12-06T21:00:00.000Z

Almost a year after launch and five months into its mission, JWST has been working non-stop, peering into space and discovering the unexpected.

Astronomers are finally able to realize the promise of this extraordinary, long-awaited telescope, decades in the making.

“We really are full steam ahead for science,” said JWST operations project scientist Jane Rigby at a recent press briefing. “This telescope is a gift that has taken months to unwrap.”

Included in that gift are some significant surprises. Rigby noted how virtually across the board, the observatory is more powerful than prelaunch expectations, as the images are sharper, the pointing and guidance are more stable, and overall, the telescope has better sensitivity than predicted.

Already JWST has delivered on its promise of seeing galaxies from the earliest epochs of the universe, helping us to understand how galaxies assemble over billions of years. It’s peered into massive clouds of dust, showing how stars and planetary systems are born. It has provided details about the atmospheres of distant extrasolar planets while searching for the building blocks of life. And it has studied objects in our own solar system — even watching another spacecraft slam into an asteroid.

“It's remarkable how well JWST is performing less than a year after launch,” says Mark McCaughrean, the European Space Agency’s Senior Advisor for Science & Exploration and part of JWST’s Science Working Group. “It surely is the most complex scientific space telescope ever, with many new technologies and ways of operating, and with very sophisticated instruments to collect and analyze the light.”

McCaughrean has marveled at how the six-month-long deployment, alignment, cooling, and commissioning process went so smoothly, rapidly giving way to full scientific operations.

“With just a few minor hiccups, JWST is now delivering huge amounts of data that are giving us a whole new view of the Universe,” he told Supercluster, “from our solar system to exoplanets, star-forming regions, and galaxies strewn across time. It's a real testament to the teams in North America and Europe that built it and operate it, a superb demonstration of what we can achieve when we work together.”

That said, McCaughrean cautioned, it is still early days for the new space observatory, and out in deep space, hazards loom everywhere. A larger-than-expected meteoroid slammed into one of the telescope’s mirror segments, causing more damage than expected — although engineers say this one hit hasn’t diminished JWST’s observing ability overall. Then, an issue arose with the telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) where excess friction was detected in the operational wheels, requiring a shutdown of one of the observing modes.

McCaughrean said the sensitive infrared detectors have well-known "quirks" which lead to all sorts of artifacts that need to be characterized and removed, requiring a huge effort to turn the raw data from JWST into reliable scientific results. Additionally, obtaining precise calibrations of the observatory is a time-consuming process that will continue for months and years.

Heidi Hammel, an interdisciplinary scientist with the JWST project agrees.

“There have been some bumps along the road,” she said via email. “We had to wait some time for the MIRI situation to sort itself out, but the engineering team came through on that, and we have some sweet mid-infrared data under analysis now. Similarly, some of the instrument calibrations are still a work in progress, but that is to be expected in the first months of a brand-new facility. It is all getting sorted out.”

“Yes,” McCaughrean said, “none of this is bad and none of it is unexpected by the astronomy community — we're used to debugging state-of-the-art observatories and solving complex data analysis problems.”

But with the jaw-dropping images and surprising findings JWST has already provided so early in its tenure, McCaughrean believes expectations might be a little too high going forward.

“The sheer beauty of the relatively few images released publicly so far has perhaps raised an expectation that a flood of paradigm-changing findings is imminent,” he said. “In reality, in many areas, it's going to take us a bit longer to make sure we have a completely solid understanding of how the telescope and its instruments work, and thus be able to deliver not only exciting but also reliable results.”

For example, McCaughrean’s own data from JWST observations — namely the Orion Nebula and two protostellar jets, HH211 and HH212 — are providing challenges.

“They're spectacular and everything I dreamed of when I got involved with JWST more than 24 years ago and became a member of the Science Working Group in 2002,” he said. “But they're also fairly raw and I suspect that it'll take us many months to calibrate them, analyze them, and tease out the discoveries they hold. It's what we all signed up for, however, and it still seems quite surreal that we're finally at this point.”

Amidst the difficult and time-consuming work, astronomers have also experienced some incredible highlights in the first few months of observations. Rigby and Hammel both cited the DART spacecraft’s intentional impact on an asteroid as tops on their list. JWST was able to track and image the Double Asteroid Redirection Test’s refrigerator-sized robotic probe as it crashed into a 560-foot-wide asteroid called Dimorphos on Sept. 26. The impact caused a larger-than-expected change in the asteroid’s orbit. This outcome bodes well for any future potential asteroid redirection that might be necessary for a space rock that threatens Earth, and JWST’s observations helped confirm the results.

“I was logged into the telemetry and watched it come down,” Rigby recalled. “That was exciting because we had worked so hard to get those observations to work. In doing so, we were able to support another NASA mission, providing insights into how asteroids are put together and what we might need to do to protect ourselves. That made my day.”

The observations were incredibly difficult and required a huge amount of coordination.

“We needed JWST to track the moving asteroid target at a rate more than three times the ‘upper limit’ we thought the telescope could perform,” Hammel explained. The telescope performed spectacularly, and the engineering team has now increased the ‘speed limit’ for the fastest target they can track.

As members of JWST’s Science Working Group, astronomers like McCaughrean and Hammel have what is called Guaranteed Time Observations (GTO), early observation time provided to scientists who helped develop the telescope from the beginning. As a planetary scientist, Hammel’s coveted targets include objects in our own solar system, such as Mars and Jupiter.

“Mars is one of the brightest objects in the night sky,” she said, “however, JWST was designed with the sensitivity to detect the faintest objects.”

Also, because solar system objects are so close, they move incredibly fast, relative to the rest of the universe. All of that provides challenges in observing, and a juxtaposition of this powerful telescope’s abilities. But with the help of the teams at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) — the institution that operates JWST — and some clever planning and analysis work by the Mars Principal Investigator Geronimo Villanueva, Hammel said she and her team of observers were able to get spectacular images and spectra.

“Overall, my team has been getting fantastic data,” she said. “It has been so exciting and gratifying to watch them dig into the images and spectroscopy! After more than 20 years of anticipation, JWST has exceeded my expectations, and I give credit to the fabulous engineers who built it, the crackerjack team at STScI operating it, and my top-notch GTO team members for crafting such a great observational program of Solar System observations.”

One of those engineers, Lee Feinberg, the Optical Telescope Element Manager for the mission — whose 20-year career in developing JWST we profiled in February — said it’s been gratifying to see the results of the telescope in action.

“I think the first highlight for me was our first engineering image of a star which had so many galaxies in the background — we didn’t expect that,” he said. Another highlight came in the first official images released from the telescope because they were so striking.

“I think we are all surprised at how well everything is working, especially the optical and pointing performance because that means even better science,” Feinberg said via email. “I’m super proud of our entire team, especially the many individuals who worked so hard for so long, many of whom you would never even know about.”

But now that the fledgling telescope is out on its own, so to speak, there are also some mixed emotions for Feinberg.

“The one thing that is a bit bittersweet is that much of the development team has now moved onto other projects, but they have passed the baton to an incredibly capable operations team flawlessly,” he said.

For the engineering teams who now operate the telescope and the scientists who are making observations, the fun is just getting started.

“As one of the people who helped commission this telescope,” Rigby said, “it's lovely to see the joy and excitement of the teams, now that the early data are in the hands of scientists around the world, and we’re seeing the discoveries come out. The teams are analyzing the data, churning out science, and making discoveries, and now they are proposing follow-up discoveries to deepen our understanding. That’s exactly what we wanted to see.”

And when we discover the unexpected, we really learn something new about the universe.

Launching Scottish Rockets with Recycled Plastic Fuel

2022-11-29T11:00:00.000Z

Rocket launches are massive energy guzzlers.

Tons of pounds of fuel are required per launch, and over 50 tons of carbon dioxide is typically emitted. But Edinburgh-based private space company Skyrora is working on a novel solution to minimize the environmental impact of the space industry while tackling one of the world’s biggest environmental issues — the disposal of plastic waste.

The world produces about 400 million tons of plastic waste per year, most of which ends up in landfills, or is incinerated. This amount could triple by 2060 according to an OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) estimate. Only about 9% of plastic waste is recycled.

Much of this plastic waste, including PVC (used in tubing, kids’ toys, trays, and furniture), LDPE (used in plastic wrap and coating for food cartons), and polystyrene (used in disposable cutlery) cannot be easily recycled and ends up clogging landfills. But what if this unrecyclable plastic waste could be given a new life and turned into something useful?

Skyrora is developing technology that can convert previously unrecyclable plastic waste into high-performance rocket fuel, similar to premium kerosene. “This all came about with Skyrora looking for ways to become a greener launch company. We wanted to see if we could [make our launches] smaller, cleaner, and better for our environment,” says Derek Harris, Business Operations Manager at Skyrora.

“One of our chemists came back with the idea of using a system that used pyrolysis to treat previously unrecyclable plastic waste and they went through hydro treatment for catalysis to turn it into usable fuels. What makes it really significant in our point of view, is the fact that we can produce different types of fuel with this as well, from aviation fuel, rocket fuel, to the fuel used in regular vehicles and even heating oils,” he adds.

Pyrolysis is the thermal degradation of plastic at various temperatures, in the absence of oxygen, to produce liquid oil, and is usually performed in a pyrolysis plant.

Using plastic waste collected from local municipal authorities, Skyrora’s Ecosene technology uses low-temperature catalytic pyrolysis to convert it into Ecosene fuel, which is similar to kerosene and can be used as rocket propellant, or in regular vehicles. Each ton of plastic, depending on the quality, can produce between 650 liters to 750 liters of usable fuel.

While pyrolysis and other processes that convert plastics into fuel have been attempted before, what sets Ecosene technology apart is the ability to process even low-grade plastics, that are usually not accepted for recycling and may not be suitable for other forms of pyrolysis. This includes polyesters and polystyrenes, and metalized packaging from snacks or chips, as well as plastic that has been impacted by UV rays or salt water.

“How to improve the sustainability of plastics is a big engineering problem,” says George Huber, researcher, Harvey Spangler Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Director at the Center for Chemical Upcycling of Waste Plastics. “I think pyrolysis is a very promising technology for making oil from waste plastics. The biggest challenges I see are getting enough feedstock and being able to scale large enough to be economical."

While a gallon of rocket fuel costs about $13, Ecosene can be produced for less than a fifth of that. Skyrora plans to make Ecosene plants commercially available in a few years, once all licenses and certifications are in place.

In contrast with incinerating a ton of plastic waste, which releases about 900 kilowatt hours of energy, Ecosene fuel produced from a ton of plastic can generate up to 10 times more energy. Although this is yet to be independently verified, tests have indicated that Ecosene has a cleaner burn than traditional fuels such as kerosene, and produces fewer sulfur emissions.

“Every technology has emissions – it’s just about trying to minimize them,” says Huber. “Pyrolysis can be very clean. There are very few emissions, and it’s a lot cleaner than incineration of plastics."

In October this year, Skyrora attempted their first space launch from the Langanes peninsula in Iceland, with the launch vehicle Skylark L. Although the rocket fell back into the water 500 meters from the launch pad, it marked a significant milestone for the company, especially since the launch happened amidst severe storms and freezing temperatures.

“We proved that we were able to launch basically between two storms — we just needed a very small window to do so. And that was all because of our fuel, our oxidizer and the agility of our mobile launch complex. So for me, it was very much a success, even if the vehicle didn't get as high as we wanted,” says Harris.

Earlier this year, Skyrora also opened the UK’s largest rocket engine manufacturing and testing facility, in Midlothian, inside a used quarry. The facility will aid in accomplishing Skyrora’s goal of becoming the first British company to complete an orbital launch from UK soil.

“We managed to go from design to building to testing in under 12 months, which is just unheard of,” says Harris.

“One of the biggest things that has made me happy is having the local community involved. People could get upset very easily if you are doing something like this near their homes. But I have sat in on community meetings, we have tried to bring them for site visits, basically we try to demystify things for the local community, to show them that there is no danger, no noxious gasses or anything to be worried about,” he adds.

The next step for Skyrora is to try licensing Ecosene technology and sell it commercially, allowing plastic waste to be collected and processed on site, and the fuel to be produced and used locally.

“I think we’ve got a good 40 to 50 years before the plastic problem is really solved. [Ecosene technology] can work with polystyrene (like the kind used in packing peanuts), low and high density polyethylenes, and more. To be able to give [all that plastic] a second life as fuel is a big deal," concludes Harris.

Artemis Takes Flight

2022-11-17T21:00:00.000Z

On Wednesday, November 16, NASA successfully launched their most powerful vehicle ever developed: the Space Launch System, from historic Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, home to the Apollo and Space Shuttle missions to the Moon and Low Earth Orbit, respectively. Built on the legacy of the space shuttle, the SLS is propelled by four hydrogen-powered RS-25 engines and a pair of five-segment solid rocket boosters. Together they produce over 6.56 million lbs of thrust, propelling the Orion spacecraft to the Moon.

Two minutes into the flight of SLS, the two solid-rocket boosters separated while the core stage continued its journey. Approximately a minute later, the aerodynamic elements protecting the Orion spacecraft from Earth’s atmosphere were safely jettisoned. The 4 RS-25 engines continued to burn for another 6 minutes after which they shut down followed by the separation of the core stage and the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion System (ICPS) second stage.

The core stage is designed to target an unstable orbit which ensures that it safely reenters during its first orbit and breaks apart over a designated area in the Pacific Ocean. ICPS’s onboard RL-10-B-2 engine performed its first of two burns to insert the Orion spacecraft into a stable orbit and avoid the same fate as the Core stage.

During this phase, Orion’s 4 solar arrays deployed, charging the spacecraft’s onboard batteries and providing it with much-needed power. An hour and 30 minutes after the launch, the second stage engine reignited to place the Orion spacecraft in a Trans-Lunar Injection trajectory. Since Artemis I is a test flight for SLS and Orion, it’ll instead place itself in a Distant Retrograde Orbit, a stable orbit where the spacecraft will orbit in the direction opposite to the direction in which the Moon orbits the Earth.

It is “distant” in the sense that instead of being near the Moon, it’ll pass beyond the Lagrange point of our celestial neighbor. Orion will travel over 386,243 kilometers (240,000 miles) from Earth and over 64,374 kilometers (40,000 miles) beyond the Moon at its farthest point in the orbit, making it the furthest distance a human-rated spacecraft has traveled beyond Earth.

By December 1, Orion will start its return journey back to Earth. When it approaches back to Earth, it’ll be traveling at nearly 40,000 kilometers per hour and experience temperatures up to 2,800 degrees Celsius during atmospheric re-entry, much faster and hotter than a return from Low Earth Orbit. While the heat shield has been extensively tested by Lockheed Martin and NASA, no test facility can recreate the conditions the heat shield will experience returning at lunar return speeds and the Artemis I mission will validate its performance being crews can fly aboard it.

After checking off all the required objectives, NASA will work towards the launch of Artemis II which will launch 3 American and 1 Canadian Astronaut to the Moon onboard the Orion spacecraft and SLS rocket. Orion will perform a lunar flyby test and return back to the Earth and is currently planned to be the first crewed mission beyond low earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972.

Artemis II will be followed up by Artemis III, which will be the first crewed lunar landing mission of the Artemis program. The second crewed launch will see 4 astronauts being launched into the NRHO orbit around the Moon. The Orion spacecraft will dock to the Starship Human Landing System (HLS) stationed in the orbit before the launch of SLS. 2 Astronauts will move to the lander while the other two will remain on the Orion.

Starship will descend down to the south pole of the moon where the astronauts will remain on the surface for at least 6.5 days and conduct up to 4 spacewalks to perform scientific observations, including sampling water ice.

The Lunar Optimized Starship is being developed by SpaceX under NASA’s Option A Human Landing System program. It’ll be launched onboard the Super Heavy booster into low earth orbit from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Once stationed in a parking orbit, it’ll be refueled by multiple tanker Starships before boosting itself into a lunar near-rectilinear halo orbit. SpaceX is expected to launch the first orbital test flight of Starship very soon.

While Artemis-1 might be NASA’s first step back to the Moon after the Apollo program, it's not their first attempt. The dwindling space shuttle program called for a need for a new space program, one which can not only call for uninterrupted access to space from American soil but also return the country back to the Moon and ultimately land the first humans on Mars. Named the Constellation Program, it was introduced by President George W. Bush as the country wanted to rehabilitate its superiority in human spaceflight after the Challenger disaster. A key requirement was to retire the space shuttle and use its funding to develop a fleet of launch vehicles and crewed spacecraft.

However, the program — heavily reliant on cost-plus contracts — suffered from major delays and was well over budget. Under a cost-plus contract, a contractor is paid for all their expenses — including the failures — removing the incentive to innovate and complete the project, in contrast to the fixed price contract where the payment is made after achieving a milestone.

After 6 years and over $230 billion spent, the program yielded minimal progress and was canceled by President Barack Obama. America was once again left with no major space program and the morale of the whole industry was at an all-time low. Constellation might’ve not made much progress but it still gave hope that the leadership was still determined to achieve something that was previously made possible in 1969.

Constellation was canceled but one of its remnants still remained in active development: the Orion spacecraft. Originally, multiple versions of the spacecraft were planned for development. Block 1 Orion was planned to rendezvous and dock with the ISS, while the Block II and III variants were designed for deep space exploration. However post-cancellation, Orion underwent a heavy redesign for use in crewed missions to Mars while its LEO version was canceled and was replaced by a highly successful Commercial Crew program.

Orion’s launch vehicle was supposed to be the Ares I which was then replaced with the Space Launch System. Since the shuttle program was retired and the constellation program was canceled, politicians were worried about a huge layoff of contractors and engineers employed by the program. In 2010, Congress passed the “NASA Authorization Act of 2010” which was also signed by President Obama, directing the space agency to develop a new launch system based on the components and supply chain of the Space Shuttle and the Ares program.

Developing SLS seemed like the fastest and the one with the lowest risk to get back to the Moon. Most of the components were already developed and heavily used during the Shuttle era, which included the two solid rocket boosters and most importantly, the hydrogen-powered RS-25 engines. The newest part of the rocket was the large orange core stage with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tanks to feed into the four main engines and even this component was derived from the Shuttle’s external tank.

In September 2011, NASA had projected the development cost for the SLS to be at $18 billion, out of which $10 billion was for the SLS rocket, $6 billion for the Orion spacecraft, and $2 billion for upgrades to the launch pad and other facilities at the Kennedy Space Center.

A product not of NASA’s leadership but of congressional legislation, SLS is seen as a project designed not by the engineers but by the senators, even jokingly called the “Senate Launch System.” The Artemis program has evolved greatly to integrate commercial partners into the program to make it more sustainable but SLS and Orion are still the only launch systems to launch astronauts to the Moon.

Future rockets like Starship are currently under development and still quite a few years away from supporting deep-space human spaceflight.

Would Global Conflict Follow First Contact?

2022-11-16T00:00:00.000Z

Imagine, if you will, James Bond stalking the dark corridors of some hostile foreign power.

Or maybe the secret underground lair of some crazed (aerospace?) billionaire, searching for secret technology that threatens the world. Only this time, the technology came from a neighbor in the cosmos.

This depiction may be sensationalized and considerably campy, it highlights the concerns of two researchers from the University of Texas at Austin. Anthropologist John Traphagan and geothermal physicist and former United States Air Force Major General, Ken Wisian, published a paper in the journal Space Policy, suggesting that SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, could be dangerous. However, the threat wouldn’t come from invading aliens, but from ourselves and our messy geopolitics.

The modern expectation is that if SETI does succeed, it will be through something nondescript: overhead radio leakage, raw energy from power beaming, an indecipherable technosignature. If we’re really lucky, however, the detection of a signal might carry more information than just a simple sign that there’s somebody out there. Maybe we’ll catch a deliberate signal, an encyclopedia galactica, loaded with information about advanced technology, extraterrestrial culture, and science way beyond our current knowledge. Or maybe we won’t. It matters neither way, say Traphagan and Wisian. What is important, they argue, is the perception that a signal could be valuable, and that nations may seek to co-opt and monopolize it to gain a strategic advantage over others.

“It’s perception that matters,” says Wisian. “The perception that a signal could contain important information, that’s the driver. The actual facts are almost irrelevant.”

If Traphagan and Wisian are correct, then the momentous moment of first contact could ultimately be overshadowed by human paranoia, selfishness and suspicion, potentially leading us down a very dark road. Even more so now that the world is currently a powder-keg just waiting to explode.

“I’d worry if we received a message tomorrow,” adds Traphagan. “I don’t see how it wouldn’t lead to increased tensions and, in the worst-case scenario, could even end up in World War Three.”

That sounds dramatic, but it’s the fear of this existential risk that has driven Wisian and Traphagan to issue this stark warning. However, before we panic and down tools and radio telescopes, we need to put things into context. Even Wisian and Traphagan accept that it is an unlikely scenario.

“I am an optimist at heart,” says Wisian. “But the key point is that we don’t say it will happen, or even that it’s a likely scenario, but only that it’s a possible scenario. And because of the risk level it must be taken into account and thought about in a serious way.”

Securing SETI

To protect from the espionage that might ensue if one nation thought another nation or organization was holding something back about SETI, Wisian and Traphagan suggest that those in the SETI community, and the facilities that they use, should take security precautions, but not everyone has welcomed their suggestions with open arms. Some have reacted with umbrage.

Leading the criticism of Wisian and Traphagan’s viewpoint is Jason Wright, a professor of astronomy and a SETI researcher at Penn State University, who issued a sharp rebuttal of their work. He’s now returned to the topic with a new paper in Space Policy, co-written with professor of philosophy Chelsea Haramia of Spring Hill College and Harvard lawyer Gabriel Swiney, who is the Senior Policy Advisor in NASA’s Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy.

What Wisian and Traphagan see as important security precautions, Wright, Haramia and Swiney see as far-reaching intrusions that will prevent radio astronomers from going about their business.

“They’re recommending locking down radio observatories like you would lock down a nuclear facility,” protests Wright. “That would make radio astronomy much harder, maybe even end it as we know it.”

Wisian feels this reaction is overblown; perhaps it simply highlights the difference between a civilian and a military mindset. Wisian does think that it’s possible to reach an appropriate level of security that doesn’t interfere with the regular lives and jobs of scientists, and points out that we take these precautions all the time.

“Any government building or function takes basic precautions like active-shooter training, and stand-off distance from your building so people can’t just drive right into the lobby,” Wisian says. “Unfortunately in our world today a lot of these things have become standard operating procedure. Any large organization now should have some sort of liaison with local law enforcement agencies, they should have basic procedures for locking down and being able to account for everybody.”

In their paper, Wisian and Traphagan do suggest taking measures such as perimeter guards, but Wright points out that if guards suddenly appear at the gates of Green Bank Observatory, it could create the perception that something has been detected, creating the very paranoia that Wisian and Traphagan hope to avoid.

It would also be redundant, thinks Wright, since there is already guidance in place about what to do if a real extraterrestrial signal is detected, in the guise of the First SETI Protocol. More properly known as the Declaration of Principles Concerning Activities Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence, the protocol states that if you detect a possible alien signal then the first thing you need to do is try and confirm that it is real and not local terrestrial interference. This involves getting the message out to other radio observatories all around the world to track the signal.

“The protocol is to share it, and you share it before you’ve confirmed it because that’s the point of sharing it, to confirm it,” adds Wright. “Once you’ve shared the location and frequency, which is what you need to confirm it, then there’s nothing else to protect. You can take over the observatory but you can’t guard the coordinates and frequency with guns.”

It means well, but the problem with the First SETI Protocol is that it has no teeth in law. It’s not a signed document or international treaty, and no one is forced to adhere to it. So while it describes how to act responsibly in the aftermath of a detection, until it becomes signed into international law, Wisian and Traphagan believe that it is inadequate in the face of geopolitical ructions.

International Affairs

Wisian and Traphagan are worried about China, for instance. China is the location of the world’s largest single-dish radio telescope, called FAST (Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope). FAST is doing SETI, and its sensitivity is so great that it could very well be the first to make a detection.

At present there is no grounds to worry about China locking things down. Western radio astronomers, among them the group at UC Berkeley as well as at Jodrell Bank in the UK, are working closely with Chinese radio astronomers and form a tight-knit bunch.

“They’ve helped the Chinese develop the hardware and analyze all the signals, and most importantly had access to all the data,” says Wright.

A concern is that this state of affairs might not last forever. If one day China decides to boot out all western involvement in FAST, then red flags might be raised, but until then Wisian and Traphagan argue that it’s wise to be prepared, just in case. Tensions are high and recent relations between China and the US have been strained over the question of Taiwan’s sovereignty and the threat that China will invade the island nation.

A more immediate problem could be the geopolitical situation between Russia and the rest of the world. Historically Russian, or Soviet, scientists were a powerhouse in SETI, although in recent decades this seems to have scaled back. But consider this hypothetical situation: were Russian scientists to detect an extraterrestrial signal tomorrow, given the current international situation and sanctions against Russia, would that information be shared with the rest of the world?

While space cooperation and cohabitation of the International Space Station remains stable between the US and Russia, there’s no guarantee that goodwill will extend into a SETI discovery, especially if any party sees it as a national security issue.

“Geopolitics could certainly get in the way,” says Michael Michaud, who for three decades was an officer of the US Foreign Service, where among other things he served as Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Science and Technology, and the Director of the State Department’s Office of Advanced Technology. “If the Russians or the Chinese were the first to detect the signal, they might not inform everyone else until they had extracted what was most useful to them.”

It’s not just Russia and China that we need to be concerned about, says Michaud. Western military and intelligence agencies might also want to keep the information to themselves if one of their sophisticated listening programs coincidentally picks up an extraterrestrial signal.

“Officials in charge of classified defense and intelligence programs may withhold the discovery because they might not know what to do with it and don’t want to reveal their technical capabilities,” says Michaud, who has also worked extensively in SETI, sitting on the IAA’s SETI Permanent Committee and helping to draft the First SETI Protocol.

Listening In

Let’s remind ourselves that it’s a narrow range of possibilities that could lead to such outcomes. If a multitude of nations can access the signal then there’s no way for a single nation to monopolize it.

“It crucially depends on how faint the signal is,” says Wisian.

This is a somewhat vague statement. How faint is faint? How narrow a range of signal strengths is there that FAST, for example, could detect but that no other telescope could? For their part, Wisian and Traphagan have acknowledged that quantifying this could be a next step for them.

There’s also the fact that detection and follow-up on any signal are two different beasts. “We have to bear in mind – and this is our main point regarding our ability to detect signals – that after detection, the resources required to receive a signal shrink dramatically in comparison to what was needed before detection,” counters Chelsea Haramia. Once you know where to look in the sky and on what frequency, you don’t necessarily need a telescope as large as the one that discovered the signal – you just need to listen carefully for longer. “This means that many more parties are in a position to potentially detect and communicate once we know where to look.”

Many more parties, yes, but not everybody, because not every country has the resources or technical know-how to do SETI work.

“SETI is one of many illustrations of technological inequality, since the vast majority of nation-states don’t have SETI programs,” says Michaud.

You can count the number of countries that currently actively do SETI on the fingers of one hand, with digits to spare. There are numerous other nations that have the technology to do SETI, but choose not to. But there are many more nations that don’t have the capability, so even if all the information from a signal is shared, these countries would not be able to directly access that information and would have to rely on trusting other nations.

The proof, though, is in the pudding. Every now and then, amidst all the radio static that it detects, SETI does occasionally come up with a false alarm, a signal that promises much but turns out to be something very down to Earth. One example is the fabled signal from Proxima Centauri that Breakthrough Listen picked up between April and May 2019, and reported in December 2020. While SETI scientists were highly dubious that it was real, to the outside world it appeared that this could be it. Eventually a team led by Sofia Sheikh of Penn State University were able to confirm that the detection was terrestrial interference.

“Many people knew about the signal, and the coordinates and the frequency ended up in the press before any confirmation had taken place,” says Wright.

Another example was the claim of a signal detected by FAST earlier this year, which was publicized in both a press release and a scientific paper, and which involved astronomers at Berkeley. The claim quickly turned out to also be false, but “both examples are empirical evidence that the situation is more like what we describe than what Wisian and Traphagan imagine it to be.”

Yet even Wright admits there’s a caveat. “The situation could change, of course, but even then, a communication monopoly would not really be possible unless it’s a one-way ‘encyclopedia galactica’.”

The encyclopedia galactica is an old concept in SETI; the idea that extraterrestrials would beam out information-rich signals from powerful beacons with the intent of being heard. Because of the vast light delay between the stars, two-way conversation is impractical unless you’re lucky to have another civilization on your doorstep, within a dozen or two light years. So, it seemed to make sense that aliens would want to cut to the chase, and load the signal with all the knowledge and valuable information that they have. However, years of searching have failed to find any bright beacons, and the idea of receiving an encyclopedia galactica isn’t so in vogue as it was in the 1960s and 70s.

“It’s a logical possibility that we could still find an encyclopedia galactica, and it’s the most exciting possibility, but there’s no reason to think that it’s likely,” says Wright.

Let’s remember, though, that Wisian and Traphagan are arguing that perception is more important in the geopolitics of the situation than actual facts; it only requires someone to believe that such a signal has been found. Perceptions often spring from the base cultural knowledge, and the idea of an encyclopedia galactica is still prominent among the public when they think of SETI.

The discussion revolves around radio SETI, but there are other types of SETI. Optical SETI – that is, looking for laser signals – is far more democratic in the sense that all you need is an off-the-shelf amateur telescope of medium aperture and a tailored photometer. Searches for technosignatures – that is, technological artifacts such as Dyson swarms – and biosignatures such as disequilibrium gasses or pollutants in the atmospheres of exoplanets, are passive methods. Hunting for alien probes in our own Solar System is more problematic, and possibly a more immediate danger, since a detection would be there was alien hardware in our backyard, and an almighty race to be the first to retrieve it might ensue. Both sides of the argument agree that such a discovery could cause a dangerous scenario.

“That does worry me,” says Wright. “But it’s totally different to what Wisian and Traphagan are talking about.”

Common Ground

For decades scholars and scientists have debated the pros and cons of contact; this discussion is another round at it. But is there any hope for agreement?

For all their differences, both teams agree that as a civilisation, our various nations are wholly unprepared for meaningful contact.

“Acknowledging the worries that arise from misperceptions is a place where we are in agreement with Wisian and Traphagan,” says Haramia. “Where we diverge significantly is in our recommendations of what to do about it.”

Haramia, Wright and Swiney argue that the best way of preventing misperceptions from creating geopolitical strife around any detection is to dispel those misperceptions before they cause a problem.

“Correcting current misperceptions about how contact is likely to occur is one important way of lowering the risk of a realpolitik scenario,” Haramia adds.

Wright sees Wisian and Traphagan’s solutions to the problem as playing on those misperceptions about, in particular, the technical capabilities of radio SETI. That’s why Wright felt so compelled to write his response paper.

“We were concerned that [Traphagan and Wisian’s] paper would be the last word on it,” says Wright. “Some general somewhere might use that as a roadmap, and see it as a peer-reviewed paper on what SETI is like and what concerns they should be having as someone in charge of national security. We wanted to make sure that the misconceptions in their paper were corrected.”

Cynics, and possibly realists too, would argue that Wright and Haramia are being too optimistic. Misperceptions, and sheer ignorance, can be hard to shake. Case in point, look at how epidemiologists warned governments of the dangers of pandemic, and how those warnings mostly fell on deaf ears when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Wisian and Traphagan are more skeptical that governments and intelligence agencies will listen and be prepared to be educated. For them, the solution is to not take any chances that common sense will prevail.

Wisian thinks that the best solution to avoid draconian measures such as locking down a radio observatory is if there are “rock-solid methods of making sure that the information is not locked down by a single entity or country.” This would involve simultaneous data sharing to all countries around the world. As we have seen, the sharing of data in an informal manner between collaborating scientists already happens, but even if there were more formal rules placing the responsibility for looking after and analyzing the data into everybody’s hands, it still wouldn’t solve the problem of a military or intelligence agency detection not being shared.

“I’m puzzled by the statement that all relevant information gets shared automatically,” says Michaud. “I know of no universally accepted practice that achieves this, especially since radio astronomers might not be the first to detect an interesting signal."

Meanwhile, work continues by the IAA SETI Permanent Committee to keep updating the First SETI Protocol. Perhaps one day it will get the attention of someone at the UN and get signed into international law, but so far there has been a complete lack of interest, a fact greatly lamented by the SETI Institute’s Jill Tarter, who has worked tirelessly but ultimately futilely to enthuse politicians of the value of SETI.

We should be careful, too, to not allow these discussions to create their own misperception that SETI is inherently dangerous. It is not. The problem, if one exists, is with ourselves, which would be entirely in our power to fix. And certainly, despite what he sees as risks, Wisian is of no doubt that it is imperative that we continue doing SETI.

“I strongly favor continuing SETI of all types,” he says. “I think it is vitally important to know if anybody is out there, but I think we can do a lot better job of planning for it.”

Ukraine's First Starlink Terminal

2022-11-08T11:00:00.000Z

As an engineer and tech nerd, I was always interested in new technologies.

That's why the Starlink project captured my attention from the first day. Space, antennas, and a lot of cool electronics. What could be better? I started following the Starlink project by collecting all the available public information. It was pure academic interest. Very quickly the "Starlink research" directory on my PC became huge.

I managed to buy my first Starlink terminal (Dishy) back in December 2021. I bought it on eBay and had it delivered to Kyiv, Ukraine, where I live. It may have been the very first terminal in my country.

Of course, there was no Starlink service in Ukraine, but I never expected to use this terminal for any specific purpose. I bought it to disassemble my Dishy, to see what's inside, and to figure out how it works. It was an exciting process that took months, but it was worth it. I collected a lot of exciting information. And it helped me to find new interesting people on Twitter.

Then came February 24th. I woke up at 5 a.m. to the sound of calls and notifications. The Russian army had crossed the border and attacked Ukrainian cities. We heard an air raid siren for the first time.

The gray February morning made it feel even more apocalyptic. It was scary. My wife and I started to pack all our documents and necessary stuff, and then decide what to do. We went to an improvised bomb shelter in the basement of our apartment house. By reading the news, I found that many people were leaving Kyiv. They headed west. It's created traffic jams and chaos.

We decided to stay home.

We had nowhere to go and didn't want to be stuck somewhere out on the road. I went to a local grocery store to get some food and additional water. We had electricity, warmth, and internet.

Then I contacted my colleagues, and we coordinated our next steps. 2020 taught us how to work remotely. This helped to save and continue our work. It was crucial. Some of my colleagues also decided to move west, but I decided to continue my work from home. Honestly, I had no idea how to move my electronic lab and computers — everything I needed for my work and personal projects. That work and my hobbies helped me stay calm and sane in the middle of a war.

During the following days, we saw and heard many scary things including cruise missiles and blasts. Enemy forces tried to parachute into Kyiv but were defeated. There were a lot of explosions and shots. We had to visit the bomb shelter multiple times, day and night. And still tried to continue my work.

Maintaining an internet connection has been critical. Here we receive all our crucial information from Telegram channels and Twitter. We have official government channels and bots. It's almost real-time information about the war. Telegram channels notify us about air raid alarms even before the actual alarm sounds. We can monitor the situation in the country and cities. Everyone is constantly posting something.

Then I saw Musk’s post that the Starlink service is now active in Ukraine — I looked at my disassembled Starlink terminal and decided to give it a shot. I thought it might be a good backup option for internet connectivity if something happened to our primary channels. But first I had to put my terminal back together. It was in pieces, and I had no idea if it still worked. And once I had it up and running, though Dishy appeared to be alive, I couldn't find a connection.

Luckily, SpaceX support helped me activate my US-origin terminal in Ukraine. Usually, You install the Starlink terminal outside, under the clear sky. The Dishy has motors that rotate the terminal to the most optimal position. I didn't have all of that. All I had was a half-assembled terminal and the window of my lab.

I installed the Dishy just outside my window and finally found a connection. It took only a few minutes to connect with a speed of more than 130 Mbps. It was amazing. I think I might be the first Starlink user in Ukraine. At least as a civilian.

I made more experiments and measurements and even shot a short video with a Speedtest record. The video went viral and was even liked by Elon Musk.

Next, my private messages on Twitter and Facebook exploded. I received a ton of questions from different people around the world, but most of them were Ukrainians who saw me in the news. Some people had already lost regular internet access — others were afraid that could happen soon. Many people didn't know what Starlink was. They asked where they could get the terminal, how to connect, and so on. I answered the same questions for everyone over the next few days.

Then I decided to create a Facebook community, "Starlink in Ukraine,” where I decided to share all my experience and knowledge, without the deep technical details that not every user needs. The group started growing fast. A lot of people were interested and I was able to answer their questions.

Our group now has more than 1600 members. It's a strong and active community, and I am proud of what we achieved. I met new people in the Starlink community, and we’re working together on Starlink-related projects to help other users.

We became the non-official Starlink tech support service.

After the liberation of some territories, ISPs and mobile operators started to rebuild their networks, and Starlink became very useful there as well. Starlink terminals on cell towers helped create channels instead of damaged fiber optics. And Starlink has become critical for the Ukrainian army, using Starlink for high-speed and secure communication in the field and on the front line.

Starlink is difficult to jam and track and it's used for everything: drones, video streams, communication with command centers, and even synchronizing attacks.

The war has forced the rapid development of Starlink for the field, and manuals have already been written for the safe usage of Starlink on the frontline — many with the help of the Facebook group we started.

Now we have more than 10000 active terminals in Ukraine. It's a record.

This space technology became a crucial part of life for those of us on Earth during this senseless and cruel war. It also changed my life and helped me to find new friends.

For more from Oleg, check out our interview with him on the Supercluster Podcast embedded below.

Falcon Heavy Versus the Fog

2022-11-01T21:00:00.000Z

On Tuesday, November 1st, SpaceX launched the most powerful operational rocket in the world, Falcon Heavy, on a classified mission for the Space Force. Supercluster photographers Jenny Hautmann and Erik Kuna were on-site to capture liftoff and the return of the rocket's twin side boosters but ended up battling a fog that covered Kennedy Space Center during liftoff.

Babylon 5 Should be Resurrected for Today's World

2022-10-25T20:00:00.000Z

Through five years of exceptional space operatic storytelling, Babylon 5 captured the hearts and minds of 1990s sci-fi fans.

Now, three decades since it premiered, those same fans wait in nervous anticipation for positive news about a proposed reboot from series creator J. Michael Straczynski. While the powers that be at The CW and Warner Bros mull over whether to bring back B5, cynics who are tired of reboots and re-imaginings might legitimately ask ‘why bring back Babylon 5?’

The short answer — it was great. The long answer is far more interesting.

First, some background for the uninitiated. Developed, written, and produced as a five-year novel for television, the story focuses on the titular space station, a massive O’Neill-class cylinder, five miles long, orbiting a planet in the Epsilon Eridani star system. It was built as a place of diplomacy and commerce where ambassadors, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers from a hundred different alien worlds could meet and work out their differences.

Of course, that doesn’t quite go to plan, as million-year-old alien species with ideological plans for the younger civilizations, and the rise of fascism in the Earth Alliance threatens to destabilize the entire galaxy. It’s an epic story on the scale of E. E. Doc Smith’s Lensman series, or Isaac Asimov’s Foundation.

Like Star Trek, B5 has passionate fans, who were engrossed not just by the narrative and special effects, but by themes the series explored: that we all have choices and that we must take responsibility for the consequences of those choices. At the same time, the show warned of the dangers of nationalism and showed how good people doing nothing can allow fascism to take hold.

Plus, it has cool spaceships.

Babylon 5 “was exciting, funny, thought-provoking and gripping,” says Anna Watts, who is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Amsterdam and a long-time fan of the show. She credits B5 for having a major impact on her scientific pursuits.

Because, just like Star Trek, Babylon 5 has inspired fans to become interested in space, physics, and technology — and for some to even take these up as a career.

Visualizing the Future

Robert Hurt is an astrophysicist and a space visualization scientist at Caltech. You may have seen some of his artwork accompanying press releases describing astronomical discoveries, particularly from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. In one NASA artwork depicting the Epsilon Eridani planetary system, he and his collaborator Tim Pyle even snuck in a Shadow ship from B5 (it’s subtle, and you’ll have to zoom in to find it near the bottom of the picture). And Hurt’s history with the show goes way back to before Babylon 5 had even been made.

“Living in Los Angeles, I attended a lot of science-fiction conventions around town in the late 80s and early 1990s,” Hurt says. “I discovered Joe Straczynski at these conventions, and found him to be a great speaker and fascinating storyteller, and for years he teased this project that he was working on, called ‘Babylon 5’. So I was kind of pre-sold on it.”

Studying astronomy at grad school, Hurt developed an interest in art and graphics, and in particular he thanks Babylon 5 for showing him the way.

“You can really point to Babylon 5 as a turning point in the way that science fiction approached space because they would design color palettes for different systems,” says Hurt. “The idea of creating a geography by using color and texture as part of the narrative tool of explaining where the characters were worked in combination with what they were able to achieve with computer graphics.”

Babylon 5 was only the second television show to produce all its special effects with CGI (the first being SeaQuest DSV, while The Last Starfighter, Tron and the Genesis experiment section in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan paved the way in movies the decade before). Babylon 5’s special effects were created by Foundation Imaging, led by British visual effects maestro Ron Thornton, using software such as NewTek’s Lightwave 3D, first on Commodore Amigas, and then on PCs.

“I was a Foundation Imaging groupie, and I’d go to computer conferences and hang out at the NewTek booth,” remembers Hurt. “I was so excited that this tool that they used to create this TV show was available for me to run on my home computer. Babylon 5 played a really critical role in my career in terms of giving me the idea that yes, this is possible, I can do this on my own desktop.”

Hurt began creating scientific visualizations for press releases using Lightwave and other similar graphics programs, and eventually landed a full-time job doing astro-visualization and infrared astronomy at IPAC, the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech, which has supported missions such as Spitzer.

Ron Thornton, who had previously worked on Doctor Who, Blake’s 7, and Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, and who sadly passed away in 2016, is one of the unsung heroes of Babylon 5. When other TV shows and movies were using models for their special effects, Thornton pushed for the use of CGI in Babylon 5, partly because it was a budget-friendly means of getting lots of spaceships on screen, but also because it allowed the show’s creators greater latitude to depict many things on screen that could not be achieved with models.

These depictions ranged from a record-breaking number of spacecraft on screen at the same time in B5’s pilot episode The Gathering (which garnered Thornton and Foundation Imaging an Emmy Award), to alien landscapes, the interior of Jupiter, dramatic nebulae, enormous armadas in battle and even the horrors of planetary bombardment. It was Thornton who designed the Babylon 5 space station and who pushed for more realism.

“The two most impressive features for me were the design of the station itself, and how the starfury fighters moved,” says Charles Adler, who is a professor of physics at St Marys College of Maryland and author of Wizards, Aliens and Starships: Physics and Math in Fantasy and Science Fiction, which extensively uses the Babylon 5 station as an example of good physics.

Babylon 5 was designed around the engineering concepts introduced in the 1970s by Princeton professor of physics Gerard K. O’Neill, who found fame with his book, The High Frontier.

Just like in O’Neill’s designs, Babylon 5 “was spun to provide artificial ‘gravity’ via centrifugal force,” says Adler. “There was mention in the show that gravity decreased as one approached the central hub, which was a plot point in one episode [the second-season finale, ‘The Fall of Night’] and which was absolutely correct. And the station rotated at the correct rate, based on the size of the station.”

The little starfury fighters, which looked like squat, snub-nosed X-wings, were flung out from their ‘Cobra Bays’ by the station’s rotational speed when they launched. And the passing resemblance to X-wings was less about homage and more about practicality. The main engines and maneuvering thrusters were positioned at the end of each of the four stanchions, while the cockpit (where the pilot was positioned vertically) was at the center to minimize g-forces. The design was so clever, NASA even took an interest.

“The starfury moved in accordance with Newton’s three laws of motion,” says Adler. “They moved at constant speed unless they fired their thrusters, they needed to fire thrusters in pairs to rotate, and there was no ‘up’ or ‘down’.”

“When they first introduced the starfury [in the season one premiere, ‘Midnight on the Firing Line’] I just squeed in delight when they launched and when they got to a point where they had to slow down, they fired their front thrusters to decelerate,” adds Hurt.

“I was like, ‘yeah, that’s how it works’!”

One early episode that displayed the maneuverability of a starfury involved Commander Sinclair having to take one of the fighters to try and latch onto a tumbling alien spacecraft that was threatening to crash into the station. By carefully firing short bursts of his thrusters, adhering to the laws of physics, Sinclair was able to match rotation with the tumbling craft and grapple it before hauling it to safety.

“That scene, in particular, was just outstanding,” says Hurt. “Foundation Imaging turned [the starfury’s capabilities] into an exciting, visual and dramatic storytelling element, and it just blew my mind. I’ve not really seen a show try to be that grounded in physics until The Expanse.”

Fast Forward

During its time on the air, Babylon 5 won two Emmy Awards (for Foundation Imaging’s special visual effects, and Optic Nerve’s alien make-up) as well as two coveted Hugo Awards, for the episodes ‘The Coming of Shadows’ in 1995 and ‘Severed Dreams’ in 1996. That’s the same number of Hugos that The Expanse has won, although in B5’s day it was also up against big Hollywood movies in the category of Best Dramatic Presentation before that category was split apart to give TV and movies their own awards. It shows the level of admiration that science-fiction fans held for B5, comparable to the dedicated modern-day following for The Expanse.

“The Expanse is the only show that I think has ever come close to matching [Babylon 5],” says Watts.

Both shows, along with Battlestar Galactica (2004–2009) are ‘grown-up’ science fiction – no cute robots or Klingon weddings. “The universe that Joe Straczynski created seemed much more believable than the bland society implied in the background of the Star Trek series of the time,” says Adler. “Babylon 5’s world had politics, religion, economics, sports, and moral ambiguity.”

Watts echoes those sentiments. “The thing I loved the most about B5 was just how expansive it was, in terms of culture, politics, science, exploration, technology, and the way that societies and individuals deal with these things,” she says.

This dedicated fan base, commitment to realistic physics, and rich world-building would be enough in itself to warrant a reboot — but Babylon 5 could also benefit massively from modern TV production value.

“B5 suffered from very constrained budgets, and was shot on sound stages that were basically set like theatrical set-dressing with first-generation TV computer graphics,” says Hurt, who was invited to visit the Babylon 5 set during season five. “There’s so much that can be gained from bringing it into the modern production era but still sticking with this amazing story that is about our choices as individuals and as cultures, and how the decisions that we make have implications that come back to haunt us, which from a narrative point of view is the thing that was so powerful about Babylon 5.”

Ultimately, Babylon 5 had a very specific message: we have to build the future together, and care for one other, because if we don’t, if we allow others to build it for us and if we don’t look out for each other, then we might end up with a future that is not what we hoped for. Given the horrors of war and disease, of hatred and poverty afflicting the world today, it’s a message that could not be more timely.

And if that’s not a reason to bring it back, I don’t know what is.

If you want to support J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5 reboot be sure to follow the hashtag #B5onCWin23.

The Extragalactic Alien Hunt

2022-10-18T10:00:00.000Z

Back when SETI began, we expected intelligent extraterrestrials to make things easy for us.

That they’d go out of their way, with all the energy and know-how of a civilization millions, perhaps even billions of years older than us, to build brilliant beacons in our galaxy that would be unmistakable.

After more than six decades of searching, we've detected no such beacons in the Milky Way galaxy. If our extraterrestrial neighbors are transmitting, then they’re doing so quietly.

But our galaxy is just one of hundreds of billions in the observable universe. Are there beacons in those galaxies? And despite the vast distances, could we detect them?

According to two heavyweights in the field, yes, we could detect them, but there’s a problem. Michael Garrett, the Sir Bernard Lovell Chair in Astrophysics at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester, and Andrew Siemion, Director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center and the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute, point out that SETI has spent the past six decades mostly ignoring all these other galaxies. Even when they’re right there in the field of view of our radio telescopes.

When a radio telescope listens to a star of interest as part of a SETI investigation, it’s not just observing that star, say Garrett and Siemion in a paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The telescope’s field of view not only includes other stars, both in the foreground and background, but a multitude of distant galaxies.

“Some of those background objects are stars in our galaxy, some of them are nearby galaxies, and some of them are incredibly distant galaxies,” Garrett tells Supercluster. “There’s a lot of interesting exotica in any given patch of sky: quasars and active galactic nuclei, radio galaxies, interacting galaxies, groups and clusters of galaxies, you name it.”

Garrett and Siemion broke down observations by the 100-meter-diameter Green Bank radio telescope in West Virginia to get a sense of what SETI is missing out on. In 469 pointings of the telescope, they counted 143,024 extragalactic objects, including 28,405 galaxies, 87,841 infrared sources, 8,016 ultraviolet sources, 401 X-ray sources, 398 radio sources, and 44 quasars, plus other assorted cosmic paraphernalia.

Yet when a radio telescope focuses on a chosen target star during a SETI survey, scientists tend to ignore everything around it.

“One thing that SETI has never really owned up to is that when we present things to the public and each other, we act as though we’re just observing one target star, and that’s not true,” says Garrett. “We’re doing a lot more than what we say we’re doing, and it’s annoyed me for a long time that we don’t recognize that.”

So, say Garrett and Siemion, why not start recognizing it? If our galaxy is sounding a little quiet on the extraterrestrial front, let’s expand our horizons and listen to all those faraway galaxies that are in the field of view too.

Welcome to extragalactic SETI.

But, you might ask, aren’t those galaxies really, really far away? We’re talking tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, or even billions, of light years away. Could a society of technologically gifted aliens really build a beacon powerful enough to span those distances?

Turns out it’s not beyond the realm of possibility. To understand how, we need to look at what astronomers call radio galaxies — galaxies with energetic cores, usually as a result of a supermassive black hole stirring things up and prompting the eruption of lobes of radio emission. Some of these radio galaxies have an effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) of 7.5 x 10^23 watts. The EIRP is an estimation of the isotropic output of a source of radio waves — in other words, how much energy it radiates in any given direction.

The smart money says aliens don’t use isotropic transmitters. They’d require too much energy to radiate that power in every direction. But a transmitter only needs to radiate in one direction. If the transmissions are targeted, or cycle across a number of different directions, then they can take advantage of what’s called ‘antenna gain’.

The gain is an energy boost that the transmitter gives the signal in one direction. A transmitter the size of the Square Kilometer Array would have an antenna gain of about 108 (the Square Kilometer Array, which is being built from millions of small dishes in South Africa and Australia, will be a receiver, not a transmitter, but the principle still works) so a transmitter that size would need only an intrinsic power of 1015–1016 watts, multiplied by the gain, to equal the typical EIRP of a radio galaxy.

All this means that if we can detect those radio galaxies — then we can detect artificial signals — even at intergalactic distances.

Even so, it’s going to be costly for an extraterrestrial society to keep continuously transmitting at this power. Too often SETI hasn’t really considered the limitations of alien economics. But in 2010 microwave physicist Jim Benford, his twin brother and science-fiction author Gregory Benford, and Jim’s son, NASA astronomer Dominic Benford, wrote a paper regarding the cost optimization of SETI signals. In other words, exploring how costly interstellar, and indeed intergalactic, signals are in terms of energy and resource, and what options aliens have for transmitting as inexpensively as possible. They concluded that short-duration pulsed beacons, perhaps cycling back and forth between different stars, was the way to go.

So, to get a grasp of what is actually feasible over extragalactic scales, Garrett and Siemion went to Jim Benford and asked for his opinion.

“We saw Jim a few months previously in California, where we talked to him about it,” says Garrett. “He’s worked on these very high-powered radio transmitters, so we asked him about the feasibility of creating something with these large powers, and he thinks we can get quite close to those powers with our current technology.”

But here’s the rub: it’s unlikely that an extragalactic signal would be in the form of a message, thinks Benford. There are a number of reasons why, such as detecting a bit rate that would be very weak over intergalactic distances, but principally because:

Why would they want to wait millions of years for a reply?

More likely, any powerful radio emission would be in the form of leakage from power beaming. Writing in the Astrophysical Journal Letters in 2016, Jim and Dominic Benford argued that the most observable emissions from an extraterrestrial civilization might be beams of microwave energy transmitting power to drive spacecraft forwards or to supply energy to a space station or asteroid habitat. In 2020, Jim Benford even suggested that the famous Wow! signal could have been an example of leakage from power beaming.

“This can explain the observed features of the Wow! signal: the power density received, the signal’s duration, and its frequency,” Benford told me in 2020. “It also explains why the Wow! source has not been observed again, despite many attempts.”

Suppose, though, that aliens did want to transmit a message from one galaxy to another. It’s one thing to have the ability, but to which of the hundreds of billions of galaxies should they send the message? And, on the flip side, how do those receiving the message — i.e., us — know which galaxy to listen to?

In game theory, the solution to this is known as a Schelling point, which is a kind of common focal point that multiple groups will arrive at without even knowing the other’s intentions. Naoki Seto and Yuki Nishino of Kyoto University in Japan realized that a big enough cosmic event could act as a Schelling point since astronomers will be guaranteed to be looking in the right direction. If an extraterrestrial civilization times its transmission just right, then those astronomers might also stumble across the signal while observing this cosmic event.

Seto and Nishino arrived at the conclusion that the best event, visible across the electromagnetic spectrum and indeed beyond in gravitational waves and maybe even neutrinos, is a binary neutron-star merger. Such events create a black hole and unleash a tremendous amount of radiation called a kilonova. One was observed on 17th August 2017 in the galaxy NGC 4993, which is 140 million light-years away. Gravitational waves were also detected from the event, as was a short gamma-ray burst (GRB). It’s the only time so far that the light of a kilonova, the burst of gamma rays, and gravitational waves have all been detected coming from the same event.

Seto and Nishino think that extraterrestrial life might ‘piggyback’ a signal on the emissions from a binary neutron star merger. The timing of when such collisions will occur could be calculated extremely precisely by monitoring the in-spiral of the two neutron stars, and how long it will take the light and gravitational waves to arrive at different galaxies at different distances can also be calculated with precision. The binary neutron-star merger doesn’t have to occur in the alien’s home galaxy — indeed, if it did and they were too close it might be bad news for them — they just have to beam a message to other galaxies in the opposite direction, knowing that their galaxy would be in the field of view when astronomers come to observe the neutron-star merger. They can also time their signals to arrive at the same time as the kilonova’s emissions.

“Receivers just need to search for signals around the time of the merger,” says Seto, who has also written about using a similar technique to search for SETI signals in the vicinity of supernova explosions.

It’s not a perfect plan. Binary neutron-star mergers with detectable afterglows and gravitational waves are rare — usually, we only detect the short blast of gamma rays, which can be seen from the other side of the Universe — perhaps a bit too far to detect an extraterrestrial signal.

“Considering the typical distances of short GRBs and their observed rate, it would be reasonable for us to limit the search only to nearby mergers, because of the required transmission power,” says Seto.

Seto’s not aware of anyone having analyzed the 17th August 2017 event for SETI signals, but suspects that the data is not in a ready format for SETI.

“For SETI, we need high-resolution data — both in frequency and time — which would require a huge amount of data storage, but this is not the case for afterglow-related studies,” says Seto. “Most of the existing radio data seem to be compressed in some form that is not suitable for SETI.”

Intriguingly, detecting an extragalactic SETI signal wouldn’t just tell us that we’re not alone in the universe. It would also tell us about how technological life develops because the amount of power required would need a particular type of society.

In 1964, the Soviet radio astronomer Nikolai Kardashev developed an energy scale that he believed extraterrestrial civilizations could be measured by, and it’s a scale that has caught hold of the imagination ever since. A type I Kardashev civilization is able to harness and consume all the energy available to it on a single planet, approximately 1016 watts, give or take depending upon the planet and the star it orbits. (Note that humankind has not yet achieved type I status.) A type II Kardashev civilization, on the other hand, is able to harness the entire power output of a star, which is approximately 1026 watts for a Sun-like star.

A type I civilization would have to use all its energy to maintain an intergalactic beacon. For a type II civilization, however, it would be just a fraction of its energy budget.

“You would expect that beacons that are really powerful would come from a Kardashev type II society,” says Garrett.

So, the detection of an extraterrestrial signal from another galaxy would be very strong evidence that the Kardashev scale is indeed a real trajectory for technological life, and that it is possible to reach at least type II, perhaps by building a Dyson sphere around a star. (Type III would involve interstellar travel, and the ability to harness the energy output of an entire galaxy.)

There’s one other corollary to all this. If we detect a signal from technologically intelligent life in our galaxy, then because of the light travel time, the signal would be hundred, thousands, or tens of thousands of years old in the worst-case scenario.

Especially for the closer stars, it is eminently possible that the senders would still be around. For extragalactic SETI, however, the signals will be many millions, even billions, of years old. Could societies survive that long, or would we be receiving a signal from the ghosts of the past?

Our Best Shots from SpaceX's Crew-5 Mission

2022-10-11T16:00:00.000Z

With the successful liftoff and docking of Crew-5 last week, SpaceX has now launched 30 humans to orbit since May 2020, when Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley became the first astronauts to fly aboard Dragon.

NASA astronauts Nicole Aunapu Mann, and Josh Cassada, along with JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina. Mann is now the first woman of Native American descent to reach space. Kikina is the first cosmonaut to fly on an American spacecraft in 20 years.

Supercluster photographer Erik Kuna was at Kennedy Space Center to capture the "walkout" of Crew-5 to the launch complex and shot the liftoff itself from NASA's Press Site while using remote cameras placed at the pad.

One noticeable change to Launch Complex 39A is the emerging Starship orbital launch tower.

Space Was Always the Plan for Hilton

2022-10-04T09:00:00.000Z

Luxurious space hotels are a classic Sci-Fi trope — but the dream could soon become reality.

American hospitality giant Hilton recently signed a deal with Voyager Space and Lockheed Martin to build the solar system’s first space hotel onboard Starlab, a space station currently under development. The deal, which came together during the International Astronautical Congress in Paris, will see Hilton designing the hospitality suits and sleeping arrangements for Starlab.

The partnership was first reported by CNBC's Michael Sheetz. Voyager Space CEO and Chairman Dylan Taylor said his company is "looking at space tourism with a fresh set of eyes" and reimagining the experience. The company will also work with Hilton to study opportunities for marketing astronaut experiences and for the space station itself.

Voyager Space and its operating company Nanoracks are developing the Starlab space station in collaboration with Lockheed Martin. Aiming to be operational as early as 2027, Starlab is one of three private space station projects which received funding from NASA as a part of the Commercial LEO Destinations (CLD) project. Nanoracks received $160 million from the program — the largest individual award — while the other recipients were Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef and Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus-based space station. The three CLD awards follow an existing $140 million contract with Axiom Space, but the partnership with Hilton is the first of its kind among the other stations in development.

Although this isn’t the first time the space and hospitality sectors have crossed paths.

Hotel of Future Past

Two years before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon, Hilton was already planning to welcome guests in orbit and beyond. At a time when space technology development seemed boundless, it was assumed that such concepts would be commonplace in the near future.

"Scarcely a day goes by when someone doesn't ask me, jovially, when the Lunar Hilton is going to be opened. They're joking, of course. But I don't see it as a joke at all,” said Barron Hilton, son of the founder of the Hotel chain, Conrad Hilton, at an American Astronomical Society Conference of 1967 in Dallas.

As an aviation enthusiast who could fly airplanes, gliders, helicopters, and even hot air balloons, Barron saw space as his next frontier. During the address, he laid out a roadmap for expanding into space-based hospitality.

“Where do we begin?” Hilton asked the audience, “With the Orbiter Hilton, or the Lunar Hilton?” He envisioned wall-to-wall televisions, and meals as good as those on Earth — maybe better. And, said Hilton, “If you think we're not going to have a cocktail lounge you don't know Hilton — or travelers.”

“Enter the Galaxy Lounge. Enjoy a martini, and see the stars.”

Orbital Hilton was designed to be a 14-level hotel in low earth orbit that could accommodate up to 24 people. Hilton said it was intended for “short trips in space,” such as stopovers on a journey to the moon or even another planet, and would welcome guests arriving in a “six-man ferry-craft”.

Once that simple project got up and running, the next step was to expand to the Moon by building a fully-fledged underground hotel, named the Lunar Hilton. Designed to burrow 30 feet below the surface, Lunar Hilton consisted of three levels: the top was a public space, designed for the guests to socialize. It included a lounge where they would gather around a piano bar in an observation dome that allowed them to gaze at the stars or at our home planet. The second level consisted of two 400-foot corridors with 100 guest rooms. The rooms would look remarkably like those in Earth-bound Hiltons, retaining a comfortable and familiar feel. The bottom level contained all the engineering equipment needed to keep the hotel up and running.

As if setting up a hotel on the Moon wasn’t enough, Lunar Hilton would include the most sci-fi amenities.

"The bartenders will have an easy job," Hilton said. "They will push a button and out will come a pre-measured, pre-cooled mixture of pure ethyl alcohol and distilled water. Into the mixture the bartender drops a tablet — martini, Manhattan, scotch, gin — you name it. Instant drink!"

Cooking, rather worryingly, would be done in a "nuclear-reactor kitchen, mostly by machines.”

Building the Lunar Hilton underground was necessary to help maintain a constant, comfortable temperature inside, while the surface temperatures on the Moon varied outside from 127 degrees Celsius (260 F) to -173 C (-280 F).

Hilton did in fact carry out a feasibility study with the help of the students at Cornell University, and even consulted with Don Douglas, then chairman of the McDonnell Douglas aircraft manufacturing company.

One of the things that the study also designed were keys to the Lunar Hilton, which were then distributed as a promotional item in hotels.

A year later, the idea was visualized in Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1968 film: “2001: A Space Odyssey” wherein there’s an office marked “Hilton Space Station 5” on the glass exterior. Here travelers could presumably make reservations for the Hilton hotel in the film’s orbiting space station.

In 1969, As the whole world was gripped with Moon fever, Hilton’s plans reappeared just days before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon. Barron addressed the American Astronomical Society about the premise of hotels on our nearest neighbor. “I firmly believe that we are going to have hotels in outer space, perhaps even soon enough for me to officiate at the formal opening of the first,” he told the assembled crowd.

It was an easy story for newspapers eager to cover every detail of the space race.

Hilton’s lunar hotel campaign was a mix of pure speculation and smart marketing, but it was also a genuinely serious vision for a future of privatized space tourism. It struck a chord with people all over the world and brought a lot of attention. The hotel group even printed promotional “reservation cards,” and hopeful customers all over the world wrote letters hoping to secure their spot.

Today, Hilton and industry partners can pursue their own vision in space without the help or fanfare of NASA, which is trying to return to the moon for the first time since the Apollo program. Debate persists whether the future of humans in space is aboard habitats like the one being pursued by Voyager Space or planet-based settlements being pursued by SpaceX. Hilton wants to focus on comfort for its guest.

“For decades, discoveries in space have been positively impacting life on Earth, and now Hilton will have an opportunity to use this unique environment to improve the guest experience wherever people travel," said Chris Nassetta, current president and CEO, of Hilton. "This landmark collaboration underscores our deep commitment to spreading the light and warmth of hospitality and providing a friendly, reliable stay – whether on the ground or in outer space.”

Firefly's Historic Launch in Photos

2022-10-03T16:00:00.000Z

Firefly's Alpha rocket lifted off on October 1st at 12:01 AM Pacific time from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, successfully reaching orbit and delivering its customer's payloads. Supercluster's west coast photographer Tom Cross was on-site to cover the "To The Black" mission that was delayed a couple of weeks due to scrubs brought on by weather and an auto-abort.

The mission marked the second test of the company's Alpha and now has become the first company in history to reach orbit on its second try. Firefly first attempted to launch the 1300kg payload vehicle class rocket on September 2nd, 2021 but the mission ended in a fiery explosion two and a half minutes into the flight. The failure was blamed on an early engine shutdown.

“With the success of this flight, Firefly has announced to the world there is a new orbital launch vehicle, available today, with a capacity that is pivotal to our commercial and government customers,” said Bill Weber, Firefly CEO. “Proving our flight and deployment capabilities on only our second attempt is a testament to the maturity of our technology and the expertise of our team. This is an exciting day at Firefly, and we have many, many more ahead. I could not be more excited for the Firefly team.”

"We've done the impossible, and that makes us mighty," - Captain Malcolm Reyolds

Detection of Venus Phosphine Survives Heavy Scrutiny

2022-09-20T10:00:00.000Z

It’s been two years since researchers made a stunning announcement.

The molecule phosphine had been found in the atmosphere of Venus, our nearest neighboring planet. At that time — admittedly — most of us had never heard of phosphine, but it’s a toxic, corrosive, smelly gas made up of one phosphorus and three hydrogen atoms (PH3).

On Earth, there are small amounts of phosphine in our own atmosphere — which may be produced by microbes — and it is produced industrially as a fumigant. Additionally, it’s found naturally in places like swamps where anaerobic (low oxygen-using) bacteria produce phosphine as a waste product. Occasionally it shows up in the intestinal bacteria of some animals, such as penguins.

But there it was, apparently floating amidst the middle layer of the atmosphere of Venus. How and why the phosphine was there has yet to be explained. The initial detection was based on observations by two Earth-based radio telescopes, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawai’i saw it in 2017, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope in northern Chile in 2019.

The detection surprised many Venus experts, including the team leader of the study, astronomer Jane Greaves from Cardiff University in the UK. The phosphine showed up in very low quantities, about 20 parts per billion – which is a thousand times more than the amount of phosphine gas in Earth’s atmosphere. And the signal seemed undeniable in the data.

Moreover, that amount of phosphine — plus the fact that it was detected twice nearly two years apart — meant that the phosphine was too abundant and persistent to exist without a replenishing source. Sunlight or sulfuric acid in the clouds should have annihilated the gas before it could accumulate.

Greaves and her team — which had grown to 19 scientists from around the world, experts in various disciplines — modeled every possibility, from tectonic to volcanic activity, meteor strikes, lightning or other known chemical processes, but none of their calculations yielded the amount of phosphine detected. The only plausible source would be some type of unknown Venusian chemistry, or most intriguing, some type of microbes living in the clouds.

However, when it comes to places considered habitable, Venus isn’t usually on that list. The hot, greenhouse-effect-gone-mad planet with toxic sulfuric acid clouds certainly isn’t friendly to life as we know it. And the planet’s crushing surface pressure has doomed the few spacecraft that have attempted to reach the planet’s mysterious landscape.

But about 40 to 60 km (25 to 37 miles) above the surface is a different story. The atmosphere of Venus is the most Earth-like of any other place in the Solar System. There, Venus has air pressure of approximately 1 bar and temperatures in the 0°C to 50°C range. Except for the acidic clouds and lack of oxygen, it would be quite livable by human standards. Several scientists, including Carl Sagan have theorized that anaerobic life could possibly exist in those conditions.

At a Zoom press briefing in September 2020, Greaves and her team first made the announcement of their discovery of phosphine. Their words were measured and they took pains to say that they had NOT detected life in the cloud tops of Venus.

"If no known chemical process can explain PH3 within the upper atmosphere of Venus, then it must be produced by a process not previously considered plausible for Venusian conditions," they wrote in the paper, published in Nature Astronomy. "This could be unknown photochemistry or geochemistry, or possibly life."

Unusual for a paper published in Nature, the team requested their data and work be freely available and open to the public.

Greaves said they wanted everyone — and they meant everyone — to be able to look at the data and work on it from different angles.

The news made a splash in the press, which not surprisingly focused on the aspect of potential life on Venus. The skeptical scientific community quickly began poring over the open data, where some problems arose, along with some unexpected backlash. First came grumblings from within the scientific community, expressing concerns the announcement was sensationalized and made too quickly — even though the team had spent three years analyzing the data before publishing their paper.

A statement posted on the International Astronomical Union’s website voiced such criticisms, but was quickly taken down, with apologies issued. Another rebuttal paper included a condescending tone towards Greaves and her team in the summary; it was quickly revised.

In just a few weeks, three different studies using the Greaves’ team data questioned the evidence of phosphine in Venus’ atmosphere. And then the ALMA observatory found an error in its calibration system used to collect the data Greaves and her team used. A re-working with corrected data still showed phosphine, but less of it.

However, other groups have since confirmed finding evidence for phosphine, while another group looked at old data from NASA’s 1978 Pioneer Venus Multiprobe. Their look back in time showed data consistent with phosphine, even though the probe’s mass spectrometer was not designed to look for that specific gas.

More recently, at the American Astronomical Society meeting this summer, Greaves had news to share in a keynote lecture. New data from observations in 2020 show that the signal for phosphine was still present. The observations were conducted again with JCMT, but with a new instrument and new technique.

“So, we have 2017 and 2020 data with the same telescope, but with different instruments and different [tools for] tackling the processing issues, and we got the same results,” Greaves said in the lecture. She also shared two other interesting confirmations: The ALMA data her team used previously has been reprocessed independently, confirming their findings, and the SOFIA airborne telescope has shown a hint of detection of phosphine when it turned its flying spectrometer towards Venus.

Now, in a recent radio interview, Greaves said her team has made a fourth detection of phosphine, again using the JCMT.

“[In 2021,] they allowed us to do what's called a legacy survey where we can use far, far more telescope time and collect a whole slew of data,” she told listeners to Planetary Radio. “I finally teased out the third detection of phosphine from the JCMT just this morning. In fact, your listeners are the first to know that because I haven't had time to email my colleagues yet.”

We can expect a new paper detailing the results in the near future.

Some have asked, why not unleash the power of the new James Webb Space Telescope to peer into Venus’ atmosphere to tease out even more data? While Webb’s infrared vision is perfect for looking at planetary atmospheres, especially those of distant exoplanets, it can’t risk looking at something as close to the Sun as Venus. Because the telescope and instruments have to be kept incredibly cold, Webb’s sunshield will be blocking the inner solar system from view. This means that the Sun, Earth, Moon, Mercury, and Venus, as well as any sun-grazing comets cannot be observed.

While the debate and data still churn, the unexpected finding of phosphine offered enough intrigue and wonder to change the tide of opinions and interest in our sister planet. Venus has been considered the forgotten planet, as it has been 30 years since NASA has sent a space mission to Venus, but that is about to change. At least six spacecraft are scheduled to visit Venus in the next ten years, including two NASA missions that could launch as early as 2028: DAVINCI will explore Venus' atmosphere and VERITAS will use radar to map Venus’ surface. India’s Shukrayaan-1 is scheduled to launch as soon as 2024 and will include an instrument that will be able to detect phosphine. A private company, Rocket Lab is hoping to send their own spacecraft to hunt for the source of phosphine in Venus’ atmosphere.

“An open science approach led to many new connections and colleagues,” Greaves said in her AAS lecture. “The phosphine project has stimulated curiosity about our neighbor planet. Venus is a planet we can benchmark as we work towards understanding a myriad of worlds.”

However the phosphine story eventually turns out, the road to its understanding tells the tale of the scientific method; about the collaboration of different fields and instruments that are required to address a problem, and the messy human interactions that are inevitably part of science.

How does Greaves hope the phosphine story turns out?

“I think I’d love for it to turn out to be life,” she said in response to a question after her lecture, “but what we really need is more and varied observations. In the end, I’d just be happy that we added something to the knowledge about Venus.”

When Will Artemis 1 Actually Launch? We Complain on the Podcast

2022-09-13T10:00:00.000Z

On this week’s podcast, we invite Supercluster photographers Jenny Hautmann and Erik Kuna to share their experiences covering Artemis 1 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center down in Florida.

We’re also joined by fellow Trekkies Chris Gebhardt and Swapna Krishna to celebrate Star Trek day. Chris fills us in on the technical side of the long, long Artemis Saga. Fuel leaks? Faulty temperature sensors? Politics with The Range? We speculate on what's to come and how the SLS program can find a way out of these delays amidst an increasingly cynical public. Swapna assesses whether the Vulcans would be pleased with our progress. Robin continues to disappoint fans of the Star Trek films.

Fuel Leak Delays NASA's Artemis 1 Mission

2022-09-06T16:00:00.000Z

On Saturday, September 3, 2022, NASA made a second attempt to kickoff their Artemis moon program but the embattled Space Launch System rocket remains tethered to Earth by technical problems still being assessed by the agency.

The first launch attempt was scheduled for August 29th with hundreds of reporters, VIPs, and politicians in attendance at Kennedy Space Center. Tens of thousands of onlookers gathered on Florida's Space Coast to catch the gigantic rocket's liftoff. The weather looked good as the Artemis I's Launch Director, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, gave a GO to begin loading fuel onto SLS.

Before the super cold liquid propellant can start to flow, the liquid oxygen (LOX) and hydrogen propellant lines are chilled down to prevent a thermal shock to the system. In under 6 hours, over 2 million liters (537,000 gallons) of liquid hydrogen and 742,000 liters (196,000 gallons) of liquid oxygen are loaded into the rocket's core stage step by step.

First, the propellant is slowly filled to thermally condition the tanks until the temperature and pressure are stable. This is known as the slow fill. This is followed by the fast fill operation, where the tank is filled at a quicker pump speed.

As the teams transitioned from slow to fast-fill liquid hydrogen operations, a hydrogen leak was discovered from the mating surface of the Mobile Launch Tower’s quick disconnect arm. The quick disconnect arm helps load the propellant in the core stage and disconnects safely once the rocket lifts off.

Since the leak wasn’t a substantial one, teams continued with the LH2 fast fill while troubleshooting the issue. It was later ratified as the launch controllers manually adjusted the propellant flow rate.

As propellant fill neared completion in the rocket's core stage, the mission management gave a GO to begin cryogenic load on the ICPS second stage. However, during its LOX load, engineers encountered yet another issue with one of four RS-25 engines on the core stage. Readings from the onboard temperature sensor showed that engine 3 was not properly conditioned for launch since it repeatedly failed the bleed test. RS-25 engines are required to be chilled at approximately -251 degrees Celsius (-420 degrees Fahrenheit) to handle the injection of super chilled liquid hydrogen and oxygen propellants.

Following the scrub, NASA’s program manager for SLS, John Honeycutt, explained that the engineering teams believe that the engine was actually cooled down to the required level but it was not properly measured by a faulty temperature sensor. "The way the sensor is behaving does not line up with the physics of the situation,” he said.

The sensor onboard engine 3 can’t be replaced while the rocket is still on the launch pad. To facilitate that, NASA would have to roll back the SLS back to the VAB, delaying the launch to at least October.

From a physics standpoint, igniting super-chilled propellants in a warmer-than-anticipated engine would likely severely damage the RS-25 engine's turbopump, at a minimum. This would cause a lot of delays to an already delayed program, but Honeycutt said that he’s confident that liquid hydrogen is flowing into engine 3 and this was corroborated by other sensors including the pressure measurements that indicated that the engine was in an environment that would’ve properly cooled it down.

"We will be looking at all of the other data we have and [will] use it to make an informed decision.”

Engineers continued to access the data after the scrub. Mission managers met on Tuesday, August 30th, to discuss findings and formulate a plan to address the issues that arose during the first attempt. The new plan called for a modified propellant loading procedure, similar to one followed during the Green run at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, and a flight rationale that would allow the rocket to launch without getting good data from the temperature sensor on engine 3.

This modified procedure called for an earlier chill-down test of the engines during the liquid hydrogen’s fast fill phase, allowing additional time to appropriately cool the engines needed for the launch. Teams also worked to fix the leak on the quick disconnect arm by replacing the components responsible.

These steps were enough to satisfy the launch officials and after convening with the meteorologists at the US space Force Space Launch Delta 45, NASA targeted Saturday, September 3rd for their next launch attempt.

With an updated plan and a better understanding of the issues which arose during the first attempt, Blackwell officially gave a GO for cryogenic operations for the second time. The fueling operations were going very smoothly until launch engineers again detected a liquid hydrogen leak from the 8-inch diameter line located in the quick disconnect arm and stopped the propellant flow to troubleshoot.

To resolve it, controllers first attempted to warm up the quick disconnect to achieve a proper seal but this didn’t work as they encountered another leak as soon as they resumed the propellant flow. Next, they tried increasing the pressure on a ground transfer line using helium to reseal the leak, but this attempt also went in vain as the leak remained. For the third time, the propellant loading was stopped. Engineers attempted to warm up the quick disconnect to reset the seal but this attempt was also unsuccessful.

Liquid hydrogen loading had plagued NASA’s second launch attempt to launch their rocket to the Moon and after trying and failing three times to seal the leak, the launch attempt was called off. Engineers continued to gather additional data to understand the nature of the leak and how much wasn’t detected during the first attempt.

NASA is familiar with liquid hydrogen leaks as they occurred frequently during the space shuttle era. On average, Shuttle launches were scrubbed nearly once every launch attempt. Some were scrubbed as many as five times before finally lifting off. The complex fueling process was almost always the problem.

Being extremely flammable, NASA has a tight tolerance for hydrogen leakage. Anything above a 4 percent concentration of H2 is considered a fire hazard.

"We were seeing in excess of that by two or three times," Mike Sarafin, NASA's Artemis I Mission Manager, said of the second attempt's hydrogen leak. "It was pretty clear we weren’t going to be able to work our way through it. Every time we saw a leak, it pretty quickly exceeded our flammability limits.”

The cause of the leak is still being determined but SLS engineers believe it may be due to an errant valve being opened, which might’ve happened during the process of chilling down the rocket before loading LH2. A command — along with a sequence of other commands — might’ve been sent to open a wrong valve.

Over the next several days, teams will establish an area to access the leak and decide whether to replace the seal on the launch pad or roll it back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). If the team decides to replace the hardware at the pad, they might have an option to perform a partial fueling test to determine the integrity of the fix while keeping the vehicle on the pad ahead of the next launch attempt.

It seems more and more probable that NASA will roll the SLS and the Orion spacecraft back to the VAB. Orbital dynamics of the Earth and the Moon dictate the launch windows of Artemis 1. Currently, the opportunity exists between September 19th and October 4th, but launching during this window would require a waiver from the US Space Force’s Eastern Range.

This issue here is the batteries of the Flight Termination System, which can destroy the rocket in a controlled manner if it goes off trajectory. FTS is powered independently of the rocket and its batteries are rated for 25 days, a requirement set by the range. If NASA wants to launch during this launch period, they’ll have to extend the rating to 40 days.

If the SLS is rolled back to the VAB — necessary to service the FTS or perform work at the launch pad — the next launch opportunity will fall between October 17 and October 31. Download the Supercluster app for more information on Artemis 1 and for updates on the mission's launch date and time.

Updated on Thursday, September 8th:

NASA decided not to roll back the SLS and Orion to the VAB and will instead carry out the repairs on the pad itself. Teams have decided to replace the seal on the quick disconnect arm's interface, between the liquid hydrogen feed line on the mobile launch platform and the SLS rocket.

Pad technicians will set up an enclosure around the work area to protect it from the elements while engineers will carry out the repairs. Additionally, teams will also inspect other umbilical interfaces to ensure no leaks arise from those locations. Not rolling SLS back to the pad will enable launch controllers to test out the repairs under the cryogenic conditions. However, this does not mean that the rocket will be ready for launch. NASA still might roll the SLS back to the VAB to comply with the range's requirement before the launch.

The Starlink Revolution

2022-08-30T19:00:00.000Z

Cell phones in even the most remote areas will soon be able to connect to the internet, using Starlink satellites.

In early 2014, SpaceX founder Elon Musk and Greg Wyler – founder of O3b Networks – were rumored to be working together to build a constellation of over 700 satellites. Called WorldVu, this constellation would be 10x larger than the size of the then largest satellite constellation, operated by Iridium.

These discussions didn’t last long and SpaceX secretly filed an ITU application courtesy of the Norway telecom regulator under the name STEAM. Later renamed Starlink, the mission was to provide high-quality internet bandwidth in the area where a fiber connection is unfeasible. This includes rural and remote areas all over the globe, including oceans, and even in the air for commercial and military customers.

Now, 8 years later, SpaceX and TMobile are promising to provide service in dead zones using the Earth-orbiting satellites, enough for texts and messaging apps to work. T-Mobile’s CEO Mike Sievert stated that operators of messaging apps like WhatsApp or iMessage will need to work with T-Mobile and Starlink for their services to recognize the satellite connection and work with it once it launches.

The move continues an aggressive debut of Starlink's service that has been making headlines around the world due to a rapid launch cadence, interventions in natural disasters, and the technology's critical role on the battlefield in Ukraine. While this article was being edited, SpaceX announced the TMobile deal, launched two Falcon 9 Starlink missions, activated the service in Norway, and announced a deal to provide Starlink on Royal Caribbean cruises.

The buzz might make it seem like Starlink is a new invention but beaming the internet using satellites isn’t a novel idea. Companies like HughesNet, Iridium, and Telesat already have satellites up in space servicing the unserviceable areas, but Starlink is fundamentally different from existing constellations. Traditional companies have just 4-5 huge satellites in geostationary orbit, where each of them services a large area of the globe. Geostationary orbit is a special orbit of Earth above 36,000 kilometers where the satellite’s orbit period is equal to the rotation of Earth, which allows the satellite to appear stationary relative to an observer on Earth.

Satellites in geostationary orbit allow planet-wide coverage with fewer satellites but the connection is usually spotty and the ping is very poor, mostly because of the large distance between the satellite and the receiver.

Starlink is attempting to fix these common issues by launching a large number of satellites — 12,000 — to Low Earth orbit. This not only significantly reduces the distance that the signal needs to travel from the receiver but also makes it easier to mitigate space debris as satellites in LEO can easily deorbit. Those in geostationary orbit are too far from the Earth to deorbit and have to be placed in a special orbit that lies away from common operational orbits, known as the graveyard orbit.

SpaceX first tested Starlink tech when they launched two identical test satellites named Tintin A and Tintin B in 2018. A year later, the company launched their first batch of 60 satellites. Used only for testing, SpaceX was able to communicate with all 60 but lost contact with 3. By October, Elon publicly tested the network when he sent his first tweet using Starlink.

The launch of the operational satellites began in November 2019. After the company placed sufficient satellites to provide internet in certain parts of the US, it introduced a paid beta service called “Better Than Nothing Beta,” charging $499 for the user terminal with an expected service of 50 to 150 Mbps and latency from 20 to 40ms. By January 2021, the beta service was extended to other countries, starting with the United Kingdom.

Washington is the home of Starlink’s research and development facility and was one of the first states to receive the beta services in the US. As part of that initiative, the Hoh Tribe became one of the first users of SpaceX’s broadband. Located in a remote part of the state, Starlink allowed the tribe of 28 households and 116 people to access a high-speed internet connection.

"It seemed like out of nowhere, SpaceX came up and just catapulted us into the 21st century," said Melvinjohn Ashue, vice chairman of the Hoh Tribe. "Our youth are able to do education online and participate in videos. Telehealth is no longer going to be an issue." At a time when the whole world was reeling from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, reliable access to internet connection couldn’t have come at a better time.

At the same time as schools were being closed due to the COVID outbreak, the Wise County Public Schools in Virginia received Starlink terminals to connect the students with high-speed and low latency broadband. This enabled over 90 Wise County families to have access to online educational resources.

The word from Virginia spread and a similar effort took place in the Appalachian Region in the US as the Appalachian Council for Innovation raised capital through a public-private partnership to connect students in the American Central Appalachian Mountains who were underserved by the terrestrial internet providers.

As the company iteratively improved their services and increased its coverage area with every launch, they prioritized extending the beta service to the emergency responders and areas without internet. In September 2020 as west coast wildfires wrecked numerous rural areas, Starlink helped both locals and emergency workers. One of the towns was Malden in Washington, where Starlink was supporting emergency responders who helped rebuild the scorched town.

The impact was not limited to the US. Starlink partnered with the Brazilian Government to operate satellites in the Amazon rainforest to connect over 19,000 unconnected schools in rural areas and monitor the forest. SpaceX’s satellite internet was also introduced in Tonga in February of this year when the teams provided emergency relief during the Hunga Tonga-Hunga eruption and tsunami disaster.

Starlink’s capability to provide internet isn’t limited to the ground. In 209, US Air Force Research Laboratory demonstrated that Starlink was able to clock over 610 Mbits/s of data rate onboard the Beechcraft C-12 Huron flight. They also successfully tested the terminal on a Lockheed AC-130 aircraft. In 2020, the Air Force used Starlink during a live-fire exercise to support their advanced battlefield management systems by connecting it to a variety of aerial and terrestrial assets, including the Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker.

Starlink became a critical asset in Ukraine as the Russians invaded, demonstrating how satellite internet can be used in a modern conflict. SpaceX was in talks to bring Starlink to Ukraine well before the war to improve connectivity in the vast rural regions, however, the war accelerated the process significantly when the vice prime minister and Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, Mykhailo Fedorov, tweeted a request for Starlink terminals and the service to be activated in the country. In around 10 hours, Elon confirmed that the service was active in Ukraine with the first batch of terminals arriving after just 2 days.

We hosted engineer Oleg Kutkov on the Supercluster podcast to share his experience testing Starlink on the ground in Kyiv, Ukraine as the Russians attacked.

SpaceX continued to upgrade its services to better suit the war. A firmware update enabled terminals to be powered by a car’s cigarette lighter. The company also devised a solution to Russian attempts to interfere with the Starlink signals. Dave Tremper, director of electronic warfare at the Pentagon, praised the speed with which SpaceX evaded that jamming with a software update. “How they did that was eye-watering to me,” he said at a conference on defence technology, lamenting that US military equipment was not so flexible. “We need to be able to have that agility.”

This speedy, widespread rollout of Starlink had been an unplanned experiment in providing connectivity to people suffering the privations of war or an authoritarian government. According to Fedorov, the fighting in the Chernihiv region northeast of Kyiv destroyed 10 kilometers of cable, however, a local ISP was able to bring all the people in the area online with a single Starlink terminal.

By April, SpaceX sent over 50k terminals to Ukraine to replace the internet services destroyed by Russia. Starlink played a key role in Ukraine’s new artillery fire coordination systems which gave Ukraine a surprising superiority in the initial months of the War. What enabled such reliable and low-latency high-speed service in remote and war-torn areas is the sheer number of Starlink satellites in orbit and SpaceX’s ability to get them to orbit as fast as possible.

As of the publishing of this article, SpaceX has launched over 3162 Starlink satellites to orbit. Out of this, only 2822 of them are operational or slowly raising themselves in the desired orbit. The launch of so many Starlink satellites in such a short amount of time is possible because of SpaceX’s high launch cadence and low turnaround time of its workhorse rocket: The Falcon 9.

On average, SpaceX is launching a Falcon 9 every 6.4 days, most of them being Starlink missions. In the first quarter of this year alone, SpaceX has placed nearly 1.16 tonnes of cargo in orbit, most of them being Starlink satellites.

The company aims to set up the Starlink constellation in two phases. Under phase 1, the satellites will be placed at 4 different altitudes — varying between 540 kilometers to 570 kilometers — with different inclinations to provide worldwide coverage, aiming to complete it by March 2027. The next phase will see Starlink satellites being launched to a lower orbit of around 330 - 340 kilometers, with an estimated time of completion being November 2027.

As of May, SpaceX had over 400,000 Starlink subscribers around the world, according to a company’s presentation which it shared with the FCC. This represents a whopping 100% increase from March and a 245% increase from the start of this year. This includes both individual consumers and businesses. The monthly cost for the Starlink connection is $110 a month, an increase from $99 due to inflation, however, new customers also have to pay an upfront fee of $599 for the hardware.

Apart from the standard offering, Starlink has also recently begun offering their premium option which costs $500 monthly, plus $2500 for the hardware. The company charges an additional $25 per month for the users who relocate their satellite antenna and an option for RVs, ideal for customers traveling to locations where the connectivity has been unreliable or completely unavailable, however it is not designed for use while in motion. Supercluster's Chief Photographer Erik Kuna just received a Starlink for his RV that he'll utilize when covering Starship's orbital launch from Texas.

Starlink is also looking to enter the inflight WiFi market and signed deals with Hawaiian Airlines and private jet operator JSX to add Starlink antennas on their aircraft. Pending approval from the FCC, SpaceX expects to begin delivering service to commercial aircraft in about a year.

With such fantastic results and speedy development of the internet constellation, in 2020, the FCC under the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, provided SpaceX with over $886 million in subsidies over 10 years to deliver high-quality broadband services to hardest-to-reach rural Americans. However, on August 10, the FCC rescinded the said subsidies, citing the high cost of the terminals and decrease in speeds over the last year. While Ookla speed tests showed a 38% increase in the download speeds, the median upload speeds have fallen from 16.29 Mbps to 9.33 Mbps. FCC said that it does not feel confident to fund a still-developing technology, even after the company demonstrated its worth in adverse situations.

So what’s next for Starlink? The company is currently filling in their 2nd shell of the constellation which exists at an altitude of 540 kilometres at a 53.2 degrees inclination. Currently, all Starlink satellites in orbit are either Starlink 1.0 or 1.5, but the company wants to get their next-generation satellites up to orbit as soon as possible. Dubbed Starlink 2.0, these satellites are more capable and are significantly heavier, weighing around 1.25 tonnes, compared to 300 kilograms for the previous generation satellite. The substantial increase in mass makes these satellites hefty for Falcon 9 to launch in large batches. Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy have neither the volume nor the mass-to-orbit capability required for Starlink 2.0 satellites and thus the company is banking on Starship to be up and running as soon as possible.

As this superheavy launch vehicle gets to orbit, it won’t be deploying the satellites using a retractable door which we’ve seen in numerous Starship presentations. Engineers have come up with a clever solution to use a narrow slit to allow a satellite at a time to exit the launch vehicle, like a gigantic shiny Pez dispenser.

"Maybe we should make an actual Starship model that dispenses Pez for our merch store,” tweeted Elon when he shared a 2-minute deck from a company’s all-hands update.

Currently, Starship is under development in SpaceX’s facility in Boca Chica, Texas and is gearing up for its first orbital flight in the next coming months, pending approval from the FAA. The payload for the maiden flight could be the first batch of the Starlink 2.0 satellites which have already been delivered to Starbase.

However, with the looming uncertainty of its Superheavy booster’s testing campaign – which involves multiple static fires of all 33 Raptor v2 engines – let alone its first successful orbital launch, SpaceX has modified their plans to deploy version 2 satellites which now involves the launch downsized v2 satellites on their workhorse launch vehicle Falcon 9 to accelerate deployment of the constellation. This modified version is technically identical to the v2 satellites but the physical structures are tailored to meet the physical dimensions of the Falcon 9.

Utilizing Starship has the potential to drastically reduce the cost of deploying satellites in orbit and might make the service cheaper for consumers, but SpaceX continues to emphasize the need for both launch vehicles to complete the constellation.

One Man’s Quest to Investigate the Mysterious "Wow!" Signal

2022-08-15T16:00:00.000Z

It is August 15th, 1977. A warm summer’s day at Ohio State University’s Big Ear radio telescope, in the countryside at the edge of the city of Delaware, Ohio. Other than the tweeting of birds and the flutter of butterflies, nobody is present.

Inside the control house – basically a shed – are some bulky computers and a printer producing a slow trickle of numbers: lots of 1s, 2s, 3s, indicating the detection of radio emission from space 1, 2 and 3 times the usual radio background. The occasional radio-emitting galaxy, or galactic hydrogen cloud. Nothing unusual. Nothing special.

All is quiet.

Then, all of a sudden, the printer bursts into life. The 1s and 2s are replaced by a flurry of higher numbers and then letters signifying radio signal strengths 10 or more times stronger than the background. The telescope detects this powerful radio blast for 72 seconds.

Days later, somebody – a technician, maybe a student – arrives at the telescope to collect the printouts and deliver them to Jerry Ehman, the Big Ear’s Project Scientist. He’s given a huge wad of perforated printer paper to sift through, looking for anything unusual. Finding the signal detected on August 15th, he’s amazed by what is the most powerful narrowband radio emission he has ever seen.

He circles the sequence of numbers and letters, writing ‘Wow!’ in the margin, and history is made.

Nobody knows what the Wow signal was. We do know that it was not a regular astrophysical object, such as a galaxy or a pulsar. Curious the frequency that it was detected at, 1,420 MHz, is the frequency emitted by neutral hydrogen atoms in space, but it is also the frequency that scientists hunting for alien life listen to. Their reasoning is that aliens will supposedly know that astronomers will already be listening to that frequency in their studies of galactic hydrogen and so should easily detect their signal – or so the theory goes. Yet there was no message attached to the signal. It was just a burst of raw radio energy.

If SETI had a mythology, then the Wow signal would be its number one myth. And while it has never been forgotten by the public, the academic side of SETI has, by and large, dismissed it, quite possibly because it hasn’t been seen to repeat, and therefore cannot be verified – the golden rule of a successful SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) detection.

One man, however, believed there was more to its story, and never gave up in his pursuit of the signal. His name was Robert Gray.

Bob Gray spent his youth building radios. Like most children of the Apollo age, he had a fascination for astronomy, and while studying at the University of Illinois Chicago for a master’s degree in urban planning, he’d spend as much time as possible in the astronomy department’s library keeping abreast with the latest developments in space. It was here that he came across an article about the Wow signal. Quickly, his mind was made up: he was going to search for the signal himself.

To do so, he needed a radio telescope. From a ‘hamfest’ – a kind of flea market for ham radio operators – he picked up a 12-foot dish previously used to relay telephone calls between microwave towers, plus a motorized base so that the dish could move to track the stars as they wheeled overhead. By 1983 the telescope was up and running, and his endeavors had got him noticed enough to be invited to a SETI workshop at the Green Bank radio observatory to give a presentation to the leaders in the field, including the formidable Barney Oliver, former head of R&D at Hewlett–Packard and one of the leaders of NASA’s SETI program.

Gray, though, once told me how he found this first foray into professional science to be a chastening one. His presentation didn’t go well.

“I was pretty green and came away a bit blistered,” he said. ”But I met many people in the field.”

Thirty-five years later, things had completely changed around. When professional astronomer David Kipping of Columbia University wanted to find out more about the Wow signal for a paper he was working on, the first person he reached out to was Gray.

“I became interested in the Wow signal and, as I dug around in it, obviously Robert’s name came up pretty quickly,” says Kipping. Gray became a co-author on Kipping’s paper. Yet tragedy was about to strike. It would be Gray’s final contribution to the puzzle of the Wow signal.

A Big Ear on the Heavens

First, let’s take a step back and really dig into what the Wow signal was. The Big Ear telescope didn’t look like your typical radio telescope. For starters, it didn’t have a dish. Rather, it was a huge plane of aluminum approximately 100 meters long and 30 meters wide, with a static reflector at one end and a tilting reflector at the other, which allowed the telescope to look over different declinations (up and down in the sky) but not in right ascension (left and right). The telescope was therefore limited to what was passing through that narrow strip of sky that it could see as the Earth turned. Radio waves would come down, bounce off the tilting reflector, and then be turned back by the static reflector, focusing at one of two feed horns – funnel-shaped boxes 1.5-meters apart in an east-west direction that housed the receivers. Radio signals would first be detected in one horn for 72 seconds, then there would be a gap in coverage until the radio-emitting object was then seen in the second horn a few minutes later for another 72 seconds.

That was the first weird thing about the Wow signal – it was only detected in one feed horn. Astronomers do not know which horn because the apparatus was not set up to distinguish between them – nobody was expecting sources to switch on and off between the horns!

The second weird thing was the sheer strength of the signal. The Big Ear’s receivers measured the Wow’s signal strength as 6EQUJ5, with the numbers 1 to 9 signifying signal strength 1 to 9 times the background, and then letters for 10 or more times the background level. At one point (signified by the letter U) the Wow signal reached a strength 30 times greater than the radio background. This was unprecedented.

The rise and fade of the signal is the result of the source of the signal moving into, across, and then out of the Big Ear’s field of view. Terrestrial interference doesn’t track with the stars – it would just be ever-present. So the source of the Wow signal had to be something in space. In 2015 Antonio Paris of St. Petersburg College claimed it was an emission from two comets, but this was dismissed by astronomers who study comets for their day job, and who pointed out that comets are unlikely to emit enough hydrogen to produce strong radio signals, and that even if they did, they should have been detectable in both feed horns.

Could it have been a satellite, perhaps? Possibly, but there are things wrong with that scenario too. A low-orbit satellite would pass through the field of view in less than a second. A high altitude, possibly geostationary satellite might do the trick, but none were in the vicinity at the time. What about a top-secret military satellite, kept off the books? Perhaps, but 1,420MHz is a protected frequency kept exclusively for astronomers around the world, so not only should satellites not be transmitting at that frequency, but as David Kipping rhetorically asks, “why would you send a secret communication on a channel that’s so heavily monitored?”

Gray’s Quest

It’s these discrepancies in human-based explanations that led Bob Gray in his belief that the Wow signal just might have been of extraterrestrial origin. Despite his experience at the 1985 Green Bank workshop, there were some positives because that’s where Gray met Paul Horowitz, who led Harvard’s SETI program. Impressed by Gray, Horowitz made him an offer: to search for the Wow signal by graduating onto using professional radio telescopes.

Horowitz allowed Gray to use the famous META (Mega-channel ExtraTerrestrial Assay) experiment on the 26-meter radio telescope at Harvard’s Oak Ridge Observatory. META was able to scan across eight million radio channels simultaneously and was partly funded by a donation from Steven Spielberg. Gray then won time on the Very Large Array in Socorro, New Mexico, made famous as the backdrop for Jodie Foster in the movie version of Carl Sagan’s novel, Contact.

Neither META nor the VLA turned up any fresh evidence for the Wow signal, but their observations were useful in helping to constrain how often the signal might repeat. However, telescopes in the Northern Hemisphere are not best placed to chase the Wow signal, which was detected in the constellation of Sagittarius, lying low in the sky from the north. Telescopes in the Southern Hemisphere have a far better view, with that region of sky high overhead for up to 18 hours per day. So Gray’s next destination was Down Under.

But Gray couldn’t get time on Australia’s biggest radio telescope, Parkes, even with popular Australian astronomer Ray Norris supporting him. “It was just a military satellite,” countered the Australian astronomical authorities. So Norris instead pointed Gray in the direction of a former student of his, by the name of Simon Ellingsen, who operated the University of Tasmania’s 26-meter radio telescope at Mt Pleasant, just outside Hobart on the Australian island state of Tasmania.

Ellingsen picks up the story from here, telling Supercluster about his recollections of how he met Gray back in the early 2000s.

“It’s stretching my memory a bit, but Bob sent me an e-mail about the Wow signal,” he says. Although Ellingsen had never done SETI before, “I was interested in his hypothesis,” he explains. ”The Wow signal looks quite different from most RFI [radio frequency interference], which is what made it worth following up, and our antenna was able to collect to necessary data.”

Terrestrial interference eventually curtailed Ellingsen and Gray’s efforts to re-detect the Wow signal, but again the observations provided important constraints for the signal’s possible repeat cycle, establishing that whatever the cycle’s period was, it was likely longer than 14 hours.

Gray continued his search over the years, most recently with the team at the SETI Institute on their 42-dish Allen Telescope Array, which further constrained the repeat cycle to longer than 40 hours.

Knowing the repeat cycle can offer important clues. If a transmitter is on a planet, then we might expect it to flash our way in time with the planet’s rotation. While most planets might complete one revolution in less than 40 hours, not all will – Venus spins so slowly on its axis that one Venusian day lasts 243 Earth days, for example. So the fact that we haven’t seen the Wow signal repeat yet doesn’t necessarily mean that it isn’t on a planet. Alberto Caballero, a citizen scientist from Spain, has explored the Gaia star catalog that contains precise positions of millions of stars as measured by the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite and found the most Sun-like star in the field of view at the time the Big Ear detected the Wow signal.

This star, named 2MASS 19281982-2640123, is an estimated 1,800 light years away. It’s not currently known if any exoplanets orbit it, but even if the Wow signal was a bonafide alien message, there’s nothing to say that it came from this star, or even that it came from a planet around any star at all – perhaps the beacon is located in deep space.

A Faint Glimmer

Yet, after decades of searching, no further evidence for the signal had been found, and most interested parties had moved on from it. As Kipping says, “I do get the feeling that the Wow signal is not considered as anything other than a curiosity at this point.”

Even Bob Gray was beginning to feel downhearted despite writing a book (‘The Elusive Wow’) on the subject. In 2019, Gray told me in an email that “the mounting absence of evidence (and funding) moderates my enthusiasm.” It seemed the end was drawing near in the search for the Wow signal.

Enter David Kipping.

As an exoplanet scientist, Kipping is the Principal Investigator at Columbia University’s Cool Worlds Lab, where astronomers study planets that are on longer orbits around their star. But Kipping’s interest in astronomy is fairly wide, and he was fresh from writing a paper about ‘Black Swans’ in astronomical data – how to statistically analyze one-off or nearly one-off events with small data sets – when his thoughts turned to the Wow signal. Kipping wanted to apply his statistical analysis techniques for black swans to the Wow signal, but he needed the original observing logs, which Gray had.

So, after years of Gray going to professional astronomers and trying to persuade them to work with him, things had come full circle, and professional astronomers were now coming to Gray and asking for his help.

Kipping’s idea was that the Wow signal may be stochastic in nature. Think of a bunch of radioactive isotopes. We know they have a half-life, and therefore we can ascribe a probability function to their decay, but we can’t predict exactly when they will decay – hence we describe them as stochastic. Kipping wondered if the same principle might apply to the Wow signal – that there’s a probability function that it will flash in our direction in a given timespan, but when exactly it appears is unpredictable.

There is actually a good reason why aliens might want to be so obtuse.

“It’s to avoid observing gaps,” says Kipping. Earth rotates once every 24 hours, so in the case of the Big Ear telescope (it was knocked down in 1997 to pave way for new homes and a golf course), it only saw the region of sky where the Wow signal was detected once per day. If the beacon were on another planet, then it would align with the Big Ear once per day only if it also had a 24-hour rotation period, which would seem like an unlikely coincidence. Otherwise, it would be sending its signal at a different time to when Big Ear was watching.

“If you really wanted to make sure someone detected [the Wow signal], you wouldn’t set it on a regular schedule,” says Kipping. Instead, you’d mix the transmission times so they cater to a variety of observing modes.

So Kipping and Gray modeled a stochastic beacon and the probability that the Big Ear could detect it. The results were surprisingly optimistic.

“We found that the probability is quite high,” says Kipping. “About 1 in 3 of the simulations match what Big Ear saw.”

In other words, the Big Ear had a 33% chance of detecting a stochastic beacon. However, when you factor in all the other subsequent observations – META, the VLA, the Hobart radio telescope in Tasmania, the Allen Telescope Array – and all their non-detections, the probability drops substantially.

“We found that when you fold in those other observations, the 33% drops to a 1.8% chance, so it becomes improbable, though not implausible, that it was a stochastic repeating beacon that has managed to slip through all these subsequent observations,” says Kipping.

Robert Gray died in December 2021, aged 73. Though he never got to see the finished product, his final contribution to the search for the Wow signal was the paper he began writing with Kipping, and it may have done just enough to reignite some new interest in the Wow signal, showing that there is still a chance that there is more to it than meets the eye. Now, the stage is set for somebody else to take on the task of determining whether this mysterious blast of radio waves was humanity’s first contact with extraterrestrial life or just some rogue human activity.

“We all love mysteries, and every so often an astronomer like myself comes along and takes a stab at it, and I was just pleased for Bob that his last paper actually had some kind of glimmer of hope that it was an extraterrestrial signal,” says Kipping. “It’s a faint glimmer of hope, but it’s something.”

The Road Ahead for Webb

2022-08-09T10:00:00.000Z

Researchers are finally doing the science they’ve wanted to for decades.

Webb is the largest space observatory ever built and it enables us to see light emitted just after the big bang, providing a sneak peek into the early development of the universe. Just like Hubble, Webb will also have annual calls for scientists all over the globe to send in proposals for the observatory. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) handpicks the science programs for each year of observations.

"The first year of science observations has already begun. We have already taken data for scientists who want time in the first year," Klaus Pontoppidan, chief Webb project scientist at STScI, said during a media event in July.

"We're just going full steam ahead."

Pontoppidan also emphasized that the early observation program selected the science targets based in part on efficiency — such that the time taken for moving from target to target is minimized.

Webb beams a huge amount of raw data down to Earth, so much so that NASA has arranged for extra server space to be available in anticipation of heavy traffic attempting to download and access the new data.

"The point is to make sure that there's even more data available from all the instruments, and all the modes are spanning a wide range of science, that is public immediately [and] has no exclusive access period," said Pontoppidan. "And so they get priority, because we want the community to have as much data available, in particular by the time they get to propose again."

"I just want to make it clear that this is just the very beginning,” said Jane Rigby, operations project scientist for Webb at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. "The data demonstrates that the telescope works, but the science results are going to be rolling out from here on in. People are going to use lots of different techniques to get as much science as they can out of the data.”

Webb has 4 major instruments onboard which receive and process ancient photons from the far reaches of the universe, namely the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), and Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph / Fine Guidance Sensor (NIRISS/FGS).

While they allow researchers to study a wide range of objects and phenomena, what makes these instruments unique is their specific combination of components, observing modes, wavelength ranges, field of view, and resolutions. Some investigations may be conducted with a single instrument and observing mode, but most will rely on multiple, used in concert.

As NASA's new flagship observatory enters its operational phase, what can we hope to learn?

Protoplanetary Disks

New Stars are born inside clouds of gas and dust. When the force of gravity pulling in on the cloud is greater than the internal pressure pushing out, this cloud collapses. Its material then falls inward which quickly flattens into a disk that surrounds the newly-born star.

If these disks are massive enough, they lead to the formation of planets and moons. They are relatively cooler and emit most of their light in mid-infrared while blocking most of the visible spectrum, making the Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) crucial for their observation. MIRI’s imaging and spectroscopy capabilities allow the researchers to get an insight into the composition of these protoplanetary disks.

MIRI will obtain spectroscopy of three protoplanetary disks, known to contain traces of water. These deep spectra will be used to search for water and important carriers of nitrogen and carbon. The volatility of such compounds will help determine the amount of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen available for accretion onto such planets, and provide a comparison to other exoplanets' atmospheric chemistry.

Insights from these studies will provide clues to where and how planets form, how they become habitable, whether they change orbits after formation, and will shed light on the formation of our own system.

Brown Dwarfs

Brown dwarfs are substellar objects that exhibit properties of both planets and stars. These astronomical bodies weigh significantly more than our largest planet Jupiter, but are not massive enough to sustain the fusion of hydrogen like a regular star — thus, they're commonly referred to as “failed stars.” Such similarities make their formation process uncertain. Scientists want to know if it’s like a star where the gasses are heavily compressed, or like a planet, formed by the accretion of material in a protoplanetary disk.

Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectroscope (NIRSpec) will obtain low and medium-resolution near-IR spectra of known and candidate brown dwarfs in two nearby star-forming clusters. The Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) will conduct a survey of the inner regions of the Orion Nebula Cluster to detect cool brown dwarfs and other objects to provide selection criteria based on factors like age and surface gravity.

These studies might help achieve a deeper understanding of the nature of brown dwarfs — their formation, atmospheres, temperature, and even the nature of clouds on a brown dwarf world.

Exoplanets

NASA has been conducting a long term campaign to search and catalog planets which exist outside the Solar System. Building off this work primarily from the Kepler and Spitzer Space Telescopes, researchers specifically plan to use spectral capabilities in the mid-infrared to observe and determine the atmospheric composition of the 55 Cancri e exoplanet, also known as Janssen. Located 41 light years away, Janssen orbits a star called Copernicus.

That’s not all. Webb will observe tens of hundreds of exoplanets to study their atmospheres, determining which elements are present and what they indicate about those worlds, including their potential to support life. Another interesting target is HD 206893 B, located 125 light years away. Ever since its discovery back in 2016, its distinct red color has been a mystery. Researchers plan to use Webb’s NIRISS instrument to study the composition and size distribution of the dust grains which cause the red color. Moreover, they aim to unravel its formation history and resolve the uncertainty about its age and mass.

Webb already observed the transit of WASP-96b as it passed in front of its host star. As the starlight filtered through the atmosphere, the telescope's instruments measured the wavelengths of light, light that is full of information to help understand the complicated chemistry of this planet's atmosphere. The spectrum indicates the presence of water vapor in the atmosphere.

“These bumps and wiggles reveal the telltale signature of water vapor,” Collon said, “as well as evidence of clouds and hazes. While this hot, giant planet is nothing like our solar system’s planets, that’s ok. This is just the beginning, Webb’s observation demonstrates the telescope’s ability to analyze atmospheres of planets hundreds of light-years away, and we’ll be able to look at smaller planets soon.”

Star Formations

Webb’s instruments can investigate spatial variations in spectra, and capture individual spectra of dozens of objects at once using a micro shutter array, making it ideal to study extremely distant and faint stars and galaxies. This will help researchers piece together the lifecycle of the earliest stars.

The observatory will use MIRI and NIRCam to image several star-forming clusters in the distant Digel Cloud 1 and Digel Cloud 2. The data from the images will be used to estimate their mass, luminosity, and evolutionary status, allowing the researchers to study star formation activities. Researchers are hoping to answer questions not only about their formation, but also about the deviation of stars’ life cycles over the course of deep time.

Webb will help us fill in the blanks in the earliest chapters of our history, improving our understanding of how the universe functions.

Galaxy Assembly and Dark Matter

Astronomers estimate that all massive galaxies may have undergone at least one major merger during the early period of universe formation. Webb’s spectroscopic instruments can help researchers figure out the driving force behind this activity, and the cause of its sudden decline, while also shedding light on the formation of heavier elements and entire galaxies.

Webb will be observing Draco and the Sculptor dwarf galaxies using NIRCam to study their internal motion. It’ll help reveal details about the merging process and shed light on the rotation rate, mass, and the process of formation of such galaxies, including how stars came together to form the very first galaxies in the universe. From this data, astronomers can also determine the total mass of the galaxy needed for gravity to keep it from springing apart. The difference between this and the observed mass will give us another clue about dark matter.

Dark Matter — which we can’t detect yet — plays a key role in holding the galaxy together and determining its shape and structure. Better understanding it will tell us how galaxies changed over time and what role black holes play in the evolution of early individual stars and galaxies like our own.

Deep Fields

Canadian-made Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph / Fine Guidance Sensor (NIRISS/FGS) can help perform deep field observations similar to the Hubble Space telescope.

The first image released by the JWST committee was a deep field observation of a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length. Webb’s capabilities to observe in infrared will push the boundaries of what is observable in the universe back much farther, and help us get the first images of the chaotic galaxies that existed 10 billion years ago.

"Everything we planned through Cycle 1, the astronomical community, was bold, but it wasn't bold enough," said Eric Smith, chief scientist at NASA's astrophysics division and program scientist for JWST. "So I'm really excited for what people now plan to do for the second cycle, seeing just how capable the facility is.”

That second cycle, which will begin next summer, could lead to some surprising discoveries thanks to the new levels of scientific detail that Webb will be able to capture.

"We're turning the page now on several new chapters, on exoplanet atmospheres, early universe, cloud formation, you name it," René Doyon, principal investigator of Webb's Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) instrument, said during the news conference. "And we don't even know what we're going to find. It's exciting."

Space Update

2022-08-02T20:00:00.000Z

Buzz Aldrin Sells Prized Artifacts to Highest Bidder

August 2nd, 2022

“I know the sky is not the limit, because there are footprints on the Moon – and I made some of them!” tweeted Buzz Aldrin, who famously took those first steps in 1969 along with astronaut Neil Armstrong, sporting a white lunar space suit that now resides at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.

On July 26th, the jacket that Aldrin wore underneath his suit sold for an astounding $2.77 million – the highest bid for any American space-flown artifact sold at an auction. The custom-fitted “FLOWN Inflight Coverall Jacket” has patches of both NASA and the Apollo 11 mission logos, as well as the American flag on the left sleeve, and Aldrin’s own name printed across the left breast. It was estimated to sell for between $1-2 million.

The unidentified winning auctioneer, who participated by phone, held the bid for over 9 minutes before closing the deal, calling it “the most valuable American space-flown artifact ever sold at auction.”

Aldrin, who is now 92 years old, is a hero beyond the realm of space exploration, known for flying on both the Apollo 11 and Gemini 12 missions. After a long and promising career, Aldrin said that “the time felt right to share these items with the world, which for many are symbols of a historical moment, but for me have always remained personal mementos of a life dedicated to science and exploration.”

The Buzz Aldrin: American Icon auction was handled by Sotheby’s in New York City, where 69 pieces of Aldrin’s personal memorabilia, spanning his career as an astronaut, were sold for a total of $8 million.

Among the other items sold included flight plans, space-flown artifacts, and all sorts of Earthly items from Aldrin’s private collection. An MTV Music Awards statuette modeled to depict the iconic image of Aldrin placing the American flag on the moon’s surface sold for $88,200, a Presidential Medal of Freedom bestowed to Aldrin by President Richard Nixon sold for $277,200, and gold-colored lifetime passes to Major League Baseball games sold for $7,560.

There was only one item that did not sell, which is interesting considering its “small but mighty” significance: the famous broken circuit breaker switch that nearly ended Armstrong and Aldrin’s lives as well as the pen that was used to save them.

The story goes that as Armstrong and Aldrin were preparing to lift off from the Moon to return to the Command Module in orbit, where crewmate Michael Collins was waiting for them, a circuit breaker switch had broken off the instrument panel. In order to ignite the engine, Aldrin used the tip of a felt pen.

The auction came just less than a week after the 53rd anniversary of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission. “July 20, 1969, the world witnessed one of the most important achievements in history – humans walking on the moon,” wrote Aldrin in a tweet. “Neil, Michael & I were proud to represent America as we took those giant leaps for mankind. It was a moment which united the world and America’s finest hour.”

Congress Seeks to Streamline UAP Reporting

July 30th, 2022

The House voted for an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act to create a secure government system for which reporting UAPs will be a much smoother process and which will hopefully help in unifying the disconnect between Congress and intelligence officials in regards to such spoken phenomena.

In May of this year, the House Intelligence subcommittee held the first hearing on UFOs in over 50 years and this new referendum comes just weeks after NASA announced plans to finance an independent UAP study of their own.

The amendment, which has strong bipartisan support, would create a secure reporting system for military-observed UAP sightings and would “prevent unauthorized public reporting or compromise of properly classified military and intelligence systems, programs, and related activities.”

Essentially, the bill would allow government personnel to report UAPs without fear of any type of retaliation. “I believe it’s possible that folks may be precluded from being fully transparent with Congress due to their being bound by non-disclosure agreements,” said Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) regarding why an amendment is necessary. The hurdles of NDA’s make it almost impossible for officials to report UAPs today, which many believe is stunting scientific study on the phenomena.

The amendment would require an internal reporting system for the immediate sharing of information related to UAPs. It would also require the Department of Defense inspector general to conduct an independent assessment of compliance with the provision, one year after final passage.

Alongside Gallagher, Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) has been very vocal in pressing the Pentagon and intelligence officials to take UAP sightings more seriously and to be more transparent with Congress and the American public in their findings.

Former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo referred to the Gallagher-Gallego amendment as “one of the greatest efforts in recent history to foster transparency on this topic.” Elizondo, who is now a consultant to the U.S. Space Command on UAPs added that “this legislation may open the floodgates.”

In the words of Gallagher himself, Congress “must ensure the military and intelligence community are armed with the best possible information, capital, and scientific resources to defend our enemies and maintain military and technology superiority.”

Roscosmos Enters the War

July 13th, 2022

Independent Russian-language media outlet Meduza is reporting that Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin may step down from the space agency for a high-level post in the presidential administration of the Russian Federation. Meduza says they were given this information by three sources close to the Kremlin and it was confirmed by an associate of Rogozin.

According to the report, Rogozin could be installed by the Kremlin as a "curator" with oversight of the self-proclaimed DPR (Donetsk) and LPR (Luhansk), as well as the territories of Ukraine occupied by Russian troops." The post would make Rogozin the assistant to the president or deputy head of the Presidential Administration, taking the place of Dmitry Kozak, who has apparently angered Putin.

Rogozin has been vocal regarding his support for his country's invasion of Ukraine and has called for the removal of wartime sanctions placed on Russian officials and the country itself by western nations. Rogozin has publicly threatened to end cooperation with NASA numerous times while continuing to work with the agency behind the scenes. He even feuded with famed retired year-in-space NASA astronaut Scott Kelly on Twitter.

Meduza claims that Rogozin is loved by Putin and has been for a long time. Putin and Rogozin were seen together on two separate occasions since the invasion, on February 27th at the National Space Center in Moscow and on April 12th to celebrate Cosmonautics Day.

Just last week, Roscosmos released two photos of cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station holding both the tri-color flags of the Russian-controlled republics, Luhansk and Donetsk, the first public acknowledgment of Russia's invasion of Ukraine from the space station. The celebration of wartime victory by the cosmonauts goes against the understanding and acceptance that the ISS remains a platform for peace and cooperation between all nations.

Reported numbers have been largely unreliable but there is a consensus among embedded reporting agencies and the United Nations that thousands of civilians have died since the invasion with tens of thousands of soldiers killed on both sides.

The cosmonauts, Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev, and Sergey Korsakov, posed in photos that were published on the official Roscosmos Telegram channel, with the accompanying message: “Liberation Day of the Luhansk People’s Republic! We celebrate both on Earth and in space.”

The self-proclaimed territories of Luhansk and Donetsk are Ukrainian provinces that declared independence back in 2014. “The people of Donetsk have always been part of the Russian world, regardless of ethnic affiliation,” said Denis Pushilin, co-chairman of the separatist government, following the declaration. “For us, the history of Russia is our history.”

On Feb. 21, 2022, President Putin signed a presidential decree recognizing the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Eastern Ukraine as independent republics. And on July 3rd, 2022, Russia claimed total control over Luhansk when Ukrainian troops were forced to retreat from Lysychansk, the last major city in the region.

“Citizens of the allied Donetsk People’s Republic, wait!” continued the accompanying message, as Russian soldiers are still fighting to capture Donetsk.

NASA issued a statement citing the space agency “strongly rebukes Russia using the International Space Station for political purposes to support its war against Ukraine, which is fundamentally inconsistent with the station’s primary function among the 15 international participating countries to advance science and develop technology for peaceful purposes.”

With additional reporting from the Supercluster editorial team.

CAPSTONE Experiencing Comms Issue After Successful Launch

July 5th, 2022

On June 28 at 9:55 p.m. local time, Rocket Lab launched the CAPSTONE lunar mission for NASA from New Zealand.

After a successful deployment a few days later on July 4th, CAPSTONE or Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment spacecraft, “experienced communications issues while in contact with the Deep Space Network.” According to NASA, the mission’s team is attempting to determine what the issue is and re-establish a connection with the craft.

“The team has good trajectory data for the spacecraft based on the first full and second partial ground station pass with the Deep Space Network,” said a statement from the agency. “If needed, the mission has enough fuel to delay the initial post separation trajectory correction maneuver for several days. Additional updates will be provided as soon as possible”

The satellite will test a unique lunar orbit that has never been flown before, a near rectilinear halo orbit, as part of NASA’s Artemis expedition to return to the moon.

“We are going,” declared NASA in 2017 when they finally announced they would finance a program that returned humans to the moon’s surface by 2024....then updated to 2025 recently. Artemis, according to the agency's messaging, “will land the first woman and first person of color on the moon, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before.”

The uncrewed Artemis-1 mission, a test launch of the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft, is expected to launch this fall from Kennedy Space Center. Meanwhile, at Starbase in Texas, Starship–NASA's choice for the Artemis Human Landing System–will be flown on its first orbital test flight when SpaceX receives the license to do so. Musk says July, we are predicting August.

In September 2020, NASA released a 74-page document detailing the specific intentions and agenda of Artemis.

Artemis Base Camp is a concept in which NASA wants to establish an outpost on the lunar South Pole. This will give astronauts and robots alike a place to live and work on the moon, where long-term exploration will be easily facilitated. Building local habitats will challenge humans to utilize the local resources they find, with the first step, of course, being to find and purify water to make it drinkable.

Beyond the campsite, and in collaboration with commercial and international partners, NASA wants to establish a multi-purpose space station around the moon called Gateway, which will serve as “the future space outpost that will support visiting astronauts on their way to the moon and beyond.” Gateway will orbit the moon and will function as a transfer station for astronauts between Orion and Starship. NASA proposes that Gateway will remain in orbit for more than a decade, giving scientists plenty of time to familiarize themselves with the laws of the moon.

At the beginning of the long road to NASA's Artemis dreams, CAPSTONE will do its part by orbiting the moon and testing the navigation system that will allow Gateway to thrive. The near rectilinear halo orbit requires the precise balance of gravity between both the moon and Earth. It will show future Artemis mission planners the behaviors of a spacecraft in a near rectilinear halo orbit, “validating the innovative navigation technologies and verifying the dynamics of this halo-shaped orbit.”

The orbit will bring CAPSTONE within 1,000 miles of the moon’s surface from one lunar pole and roughly 43,5000 miles from the other end. The tiny satellite will elapse roughly one rotation per week, gathering information about the uncharted flight path and sending signals down to scientists on Earth.

CAPSTONE will spend four months cruising to reach its halo path after launch, where it will then go on to remain in orbit for at least six months.

Six Months of Webb Anxiety

June 28th, 2022

The James Webb Space Telescope's dramatic adventure continued in space following its launch from the jungles of French Guiana. Let's recap the journey as the first extraordinary images will soon be made public.

Just under 30 minutes after liftoff on Christmas morning, Webb began a complex deployment process, first by separating itself from the launch vehicle. At 33 minutes, Webb’s solar array began to open up.

The unfolding process was a meticulous operation that went step-by-step through each instrument of the telescope. Engineers sent commands to deploy the mirrors on the space observatory and then latch them into place. This was followed by the deployment of antennas and the unfolding of various limbs, including the tennis court-sized plastic sheet that wraps around the base to shield the telescope’s hypersensitive camera sensors from heat radiation.

On Dec. 27, the telescope crossed the moon’s orbit of Earth as it passed 240,000 miles.

The few weeks before Webb reached its arrival point was considered “29 Days on the Edge.” During this time, Webb continued traveling at a cruising speed of 720 miles per hour towards its destination.

On Jan. 8, at around 10:30 AM EST, Webb completed the final step of its complex deployment phase by unfolding the last section of its golden mirrors and hearing them click into place. With this complete, Webb was deemed “fully deployed.”

The telescope finally reached its destination on Jan. 24, just one month after launch. “Webb, welcome home!” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson once the telescope reached L2 or Lagrange Point 2.

“A way to describe the orbit is that the Lagrange points always stay aligned with Earth as it orbits the Sun,” Dr. Stefanie Milam, Webb Deputy Project Scientist for Planetary Science told Supercluster in a previous feature. “Therefore, JWST’s orbit around L2 will go around the Sun with the Earth. It’s like we have a small puppy doing circles at the end of a leash as we walk around the Sun.”

NASA revealed that Webb captured its first images of starlight on Feb. 11th. The team identified light from the same star, HD 84406, a star in the constellation Ursa Major, in each of Webb's 18 primary mirrors.

“The entire Webb team is ecstatic at how well the first steps of taking images and aligning the telescope are proceeding. We were so happy to see that light makes its way into NIRCam,” said Marcia Rieke, principal investigator for the NIRCam instrument.

On June 8th, NASA announced Webb was hit by a micrometeoroid but thankfully escaped any major damage as engineers had already prepared for the possibility of a meteor strike. The telescope was likely hit between May 23rd and 25th and all mission requirements were still performing at higher-than-expected rates.

"Impacts will continue to occur throughout the entirety of Webb’s lifetime in space; such events were anticipated when building and testing the mirror on the ground," wrote NASA's Thaddeus Cesari. After a successful launch, deployment, and telescope alignment, Webb’s beginning-of-life performance is still well above expectations, and the observatory is fully capable of performing the science it was designed to achieve."

And although Webb was designed to have a mission lifespan of 5-10 years, experts say that due to the amount of jet fuel preserved from the launch and insertion, that timeline can double, with enough fuel to last more than 20 years.

Supercluster will be producing a second edition of our Webb "Reflection" Mission Patch. You can join the waitlist here.

The FAA Gives SpaceX Homework

June 21st, 2022

SpaceX moved one step closer to launching Starship into orbit when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a long-awaited assessment of the company’s proposed operations at Boca Chica (dubbed Starbase by SpaceX) in South Texas. In the assessment, SpaceX was met with an extensive list of peculiar action items which must be completed.

The FAA's concerns stem from locals who have had complaints about operations at Starbase, particularly from residents of the neighboring community, Boca Chica, where impacts could be seen on the surrounding wildlife and general quality of life.

SpaceX’s Starship prototypes are massive and are powered by the still-evolving Raptor engine. The launch system is an amalgam of the proven reusability technology being pioneered with numerous Falcon 9 and Dragon flights and is being designed to carry both crew and cargo to the moon and soon after, Mars. The reusability is key to Starship and making the vehicle's flight economically feasible.

And with all these aspirations, preparation has been long underway. Since November 2020, SpaceX has conducted numerous high-altitude flight tests with Starship prototypes. The vehicles are launched no more than 30,000 to 40,000 feet in the air before returning to land. Only one has successfully landed to live another day. The rest have ended in fiery explosions that spread debris across the area.

While SpaceX has been able to freely launch their testing prototypes without failure, they need to obtain a launch license from the FAA if they wish to actually launch Starship into orbit. On June 13, after a thorough investigation, the FAA concluded that SpaceX will be required to make 75 different environmental adjustments for this to even be considered.

The 43-page press release includes a broad scope of mitigation measures, including protections for water resources, limits on noise levels, and how to better control hazardous materials. Among the list of action items, SpaceX is required to coordinate with a “qualified biologist” to conduct lighting inspections in minimizing the lighting impacts to sea turtles, particularly during nesting season.

The FAA is also requiring SpaceX to operate and encourage the use of an employee shuttle between the city of Brownsville and Starbase to reduce the number of vehicles traveling to and from the project site.

Additionally, SpaceX will be required to perform quarterly cleanups of the local Boca Chica Beach, presumably due to the mass amount of rocket debris that lands in the ocean, as well as enhance access to fishing opportunities in the Gulf of Mexico. The company will collaborate with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to restore wildlife habitats and even participate in wildlife photography. The report highlighted several species that may be endangered due to Starbase’s operations, including the ocelot, jaguarundi, piping plover, and red knot.

One of the more odd mitigation items requires SpaceX to prepare a book report of sorts detailing the events of the Mexican War and the Civil War battles that took place in the area that is now Starbase. The FAA also issued new rules for closing highway SH 4, ensuring the public road stays open for 18 listed holidays and most weekends. Beat reporters do appreciate this one as it may result in major operations being paused during these holidays.

Despite the out-of-the-box demands, SpaceX celebrated the FAA's assessment as a victory by viewing it as “one step closer” to receiving their launch license, as they were originally wanting to conduct orbital test flights starting last summer.

CEO Elon Musk thinks they could launch as early as July and says the company will aim for a monthly cadence. Supercluster is tracking the mission and our team will be on-site for Starship's historic orbital launch.

NASA and Tom Delonge Walk Into a Bar

June 17th, 2022

NASA recently announced plans to finance an independent study on the UAP phenomenon from a science and data-collecting perspective.

The term UAP was coined after the heavily stigmatized term “UFO” greatly fell out of fashion with defense-industry professionals. While they both mean essentially the same thing, referring to sightings of unexplainable airborne objects, the term UAP is being used by the Department of Defense so that their witnesses and reporting are taken seriously by the national media.

Princeton Astrophysicist David Spergel will lead the team and they will begin in the fall for a duration of nine months. The study, which is to cost less than $100,000, “will focus on identifying available data, how to best collect future data, and how NASA can use these data to move the scientific understanding of UAPs forward,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA. The agency says any findings will be shared publicly.

According to a NASA press release, “there is no evidence that UAPs are extraterrestrial in origin.” However, it is not ruled out. In fact, it was only a month ago that a team from NASA’s JPL created a new message with hopes to reach foreign intelligence. Their message, called “Beacon in the Galaxy,” is just one of many attempts of METI, Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence. NASA is also supporting the search for alien megastructures.

Unlike many topics in today's political climate, UAPs seem to be a greater bipartisan issue as it relates to national security. U.S. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), as well as Congressman Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), came together to include a UAP amendment in the FY22 NDAA. “We always need air dominance to defend this country,” said Sen. Gillibrand.

When we observe something flying that cannot be explained, and when the government has no answer, we have nothing to do but speculate. Could it be China? Russia? Or is it possible that we are witnessing something beyond the capabilities of human technologies? Russia's perceived military might is now under question following its invasion of Ukraine and China has formed its own UAP working group and has been uncharacteristically vocal about its concerns regarding the phenomena. It is fair to say that China, Russia, the United States, and SpaceX have relatively the same public-facing spaceflight capabilities at this point.

Fascination with UFOs skyrocketed alongside rocketry development during World War II. This inspired “Project Blue Book" the code name the United States Air Force gave to secrete their own investigation of UAPs, in which they compiled over 12,000 sightings, during the years 1947-1969.

In 2017, the New York Times published two videos recorded by navy pilots in 2004 and 2015 depicting what seemed to be aircraft defying the laws of physics. A few months later, To the Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences, "a transmedia aerospace, and entertainment company," co-founded by self-proclaimed UFO researcher and Blink-182 front-man Tom Delonge, released a third. And in 2020, the Pentagon confirmed all three videos were real.

Less than a year later, Congress ordered the Pentagon to compile an extensive transcript of their data on UAPs in order to assess the threat posed by UAPs and the progress made by the Department of Defense Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) in understanding this threat. The nine-page report mentioned 144 UAP sightings from 2004 to 2021.

The Pentagon defined their research as “largely inconclusive,” and was only able to identify one of the reported UAPs with high confidence. The outstanding 143 remain unexplained.

NASA's announcement comes just weeks after Congress held a landmark hearing about UAPs, something that hasn’t been done in over 50 years. Previously classified images and videos were released depicting suspicious phenomena, though Pentagon officials testified under oath that the government has not collected materials from any alien landing on Earth.

One video, in particular, captivated the committee. The footage, recorded from a fighter pilot’s cell phone shows a spherical object floating across several frames. As a whole, the congressional hearing served as a chance for lawmakers to acquire more information, as well as to vouch for greater transparency surrounding the broader investigation on UAPs.

While NASA’s study will remain independent from that of the Pentagon, the quest to declassify UAP research is certainly gaining traction. And although extraterrestrial speculation was once a topic of pure conspiracy, the government seems to be keeping an open mind about the verity of aerial phenomena, leaving the public wanting more.

SETI in the Age of UAP

2022-07-29T10:00:00.000Z

It’s taken many years, but despite best efforts, it seems there’s no longer any way to avoid it.

Looming large before the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is the UFO/UAP phenomenon. And the two ways of thinking about aliens are heading toward one another on an inevitable collision course.

The clash could forever change the way we do SETI.

Over the past few years, there’s been a sea-change in attitudes towards ufology. Maybe it’s just that The X-Files generation has now grown up, but believing in UFOs (or UAP, unidentified aerial phenomena, an acronym that apparently carries less stigma than UFOs or flying saucers but which really refers to the same thing) has become buzzy.

The topic reached critical mass after Harvard Astronomer Avi Loeb’s contestable claims that the interstellar object 1I/‘Oumuamua was a spacecraft rather than an asteroid or comet. And whereas once upon a time you were made a social outcast for even suggesting that aliens could be real, today you could be mocked on social media if you don’t believe that the infamous videos released by the Pentagon show alien spacecraft buzzing US Navy fighter jets.

How to confront this new reality is a challenge for the SETI community. With the announcement that NASA has launched their own study into UAPs, but on the back of a US Department of Defense investigation and hearings in the United States Congress where earnest politicians were imploring Pentagon officials to make UAP research a priority, SETI could suddenly find itself playing second fiddle in the minds of politicians and the public. With funding for SETI being as scarce as it is, losing out on funds to ufology is not a place SETI wants to be.

The key difference between SETI and ufology, frankly, is that one is grounded in the scientific method, whereas the other is frequently based on wishful thinking. And grainy footage.

We’ve seen how SETI approaches a potential detection of alien life in recent years, with the saga of the mysterious radio signals detected by the Breakthrough Listen project that was apparently coming from Proxima Centauri. The media and public became very excited, but Breakthrough Listen scientists remained calm. In science, a hypothesis is created to attempt to explain a dataset. In order to validate that hypothesis, one then tries everything possible to disprove it, because that’s the only way you can be confident that it is correct. After all, you don’t want to claim you’ve discovered aliens, only to later be shown that you were wrong. So terrestrial explanations for the Proxima Centauri signals were sought and eventually found, and the mystery was explained away. It might not have made headlines, but it was good science.

Unfortunately, UAP enthusiasts rarely adhere to the same rigor. One only has to look at the sensationalist reaction to the Pentagon videos to realize that people leap like an Olympic hurdler to their desired conclusions without even giving the slightest thought to more mundane, but more likely, explanations, of which there are several. (These include incursions into US air space by advanced drones belonging to a foreign power, products of the United States’ own black projects, ‘ghost’ images produced by forms of electronic warfare or laser infrared countermeasures that neatly describe what was actually observed.)

So the SETI community may be forced to follow the crowd, but it shouldn’t sacrifice its scientific principles in doing so.

However, now is the perfect time for an old idea in SETI to get its share of the limelight. It may surprise some readers, but SETI scientists have been talking about interstellar visitors to our Solar System for as long as they’ve been doing SETI.

The year 1960 was a groundbreaking one for the scientific search for extraterrestrial life. Not only was it the year when SETI became an experimental science with Frank Drake’s historic Project Ozma radio search, but it was also the year for two crucial theoretical advances in the field too. One was Freeman Dyson’s eponymous concept for spherical swarms of solar collectors encapsulating stars. The other was devised by renowned Australian physicist Ronald Bracewell, who speculated in a paper in Nature that extraterrestrial societies may have sent robotic probes to our Solar System.

Like the Dyson sphere, this concept was also named after its progenitor, and such hypothetical probes became known as Bracewell probes.

This, remember, was just three years after the launch of Sputnik. While the world was still lauding the achievement of reaching Earth orbit, Bracewell was already thinking on an interstellar scale.

“Each probe would be sent into a circular orbit about one of [a] thousand stars, at a distance within the habitable zone of temperature,” Bracewell wrote in his 1960 paper. “Armored against meteorites and radiation damage, and stellar powered, the probes could contain durable radio transmitters for the purpose of attracting the attention of technologies such as ours.”

His ideas sparked the imagination of a few scientists — Bracewell probes became merged with John von Neumann’s idea for self-replicating robots — and even more science-fiction writers, such as Fred Saberhagen and his novels about destructive Berserker probes, and Arthur C. Clarke’s more peaceful Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey and its sequels. But the SETI community focused on radio searches and largely left the idea on the sidelines.

Though Bracewell probes occasionally featured in blue-sky thinking about how long it would take for self-replicating robots to settle the entire galaxy, actual experimental searches for them in our Solar System were few and far between, with the work (and occasional controversial claim) of Scottish amateur astronomer Duncan Lunan being the most notable.

Yet the concept of Bracewell probes is proving more valid than ever. After all, we explore our own Solar System with robots — the Voyagers are still communicating with us having left the heliosphere — and we have plans to send probes across interstellar distances at some point this century. Even a species just a few hundred years more technologically developed than we are could have launched probes to explore the galaxy.

So to stay in the game, SETI needs to embrace searches for Bracewell probes in the Solar System just as it does searches for techno signatures beyond our Solar System. Put them front and center, and let them be SETI’s answer to the UAP craze. It would certainly be different compared to listening patiently for a radio message, but it might just be the shot in the arm SETI needs to face this attention and funding challenge from UAP.

Indeed, some scientists have already begun looking. Previously I wrote about one such search for anomalous objects in Earth orbit, scouring archived data from before the dawn of the Space Age. That search did find some odd sightings that deserve to be investigated further — following the scientific method, of course.

But where do we stop? If we accept that the possibility of there being a Bracewell probe, or probes, in our Solar System is scientifically valid, is it then such a huge stretch to imagine that they might occasionally enter our atmosphere to take a closer look? And if we accept that, is it a slippery slope to accepting reports of abductions or cattle mutilations or crop circles as being worthy of our time for scientific study?

Clearly, the lines are about to get seriously blurred, and it will be fascinating to see how things play out over the next few years, and how scientists and the media will handle it. Where should the line be drawn between valid scientific inquiry and wasteful science fiction speculation? Can there even be a clean dividing line anymore? And, depending on how far SETI strays into UAP investigations, will it harm SETI’s reputation in the scientific community at large? (And let’s face it, SETI has not always been held in the highest regard by other scientists, even at the best of times.)

There’s another wrinkle. There’s been a big debate about whether we should reply to a SETI signal if we ever detected one, or whether we should be transmitting our own messages into space. That debate becomes even more pertinent when we’re talking about an alien correspondent not light years away, but in our own Solar System. If we’re serious about searching for Bracewell probes, then we have to consider what would happen if we found one, particularly if it was still active.

Say an advanced extraterrestrial probe was discovered lurking, watching us, from the Moon, or a near-Earth asteroid, or a Lagrange point, what would our reaction be to an essentially first-contact situation?

There are a lot of ways that things could go wrong. Nations and billionaires and multinational companies will race to retrieve the probe, take it apart, learn its secrets, and profit from it. Yet the probe might not willingly be captured or dismantled and may be programmed to defend itself if necessary.

Accidentally starting a war would hardly be ideal first contact.

And how would we feel if we discovered that another civilization was effectively spying on us? Would we consider it an invasion of our privacy? Would we be suspicious of the entities that sent the probe?

Interestingly, while David Spergel — the world-renowned astrophysicist heading up NASA’s UAP study — has described how the study’s “first task is simply to gather the most robust set of data we can … from civilians, government, non-profits, companies …” he doesn’t mention utilizing astronomical data. Yet he could do a lot worse than to dust off Bracewell’s old concept of interstellar probes.

“Such a probe may be here now, in our Solar System, trying to make its presence known to us,” wrote Bracewell in 1960. Six decades later, SETI could now finally embark on a thorough search for one.

Just in case Bracewell was right.

Mattel Will Create SpaceX Toys and Collectibles

2022-07-26T10:00:00.000Z

Next year, kids and collectors can get their hands on SpaceX toys thanks to a recent deal with Mattel.

The global toy brand announced a multi-year deal to produce and market toys and collectibles of the Elon Musk-founded company’s space technology. There are no details yet on what vehicles or rockets will debut, but Mattel said the SpaceX-inspired toys will arrive under its Matchbox brand and collectibles will come from Mattel Creations.

“As space exploration advances more quickly than ever before, we are thrilled to work with SpaceX, and help spark limitless play patterns for the space explorer in every kid,” said Nick Karamanos, SVP Entertainment Partnerships at Mattel, in a release.

The deal is a first for SpaceX, which previously only sold toys and collectibles through its online company store. There, space nerds could buy desktop-sized versions of SpaceX vehicles like the Falcon 9 rocket. The shop doesn’t have any collectibles for sale but is mostly SpaceX-branded clothing and accessories.

Mattel, on the other hand, has been producing space toys for years. One of the company’s most iconic, but short-lived, space products is Major Matt Mason — dubbed Mattel’s Man in Space.

Major Matt Mason was introduced at the height of the space race in 1967. The fictional figure lived and worked on the Moon and sported an astronaut uniform inspired by early NASA designs. Major Matt Mason was joined by a crew of fellow space explorers, several alien figures, and a three-story moon base with various lunar and aerospace vehicles.

Mattel dropped the toy line in the mid-1970s, amid a decline in space exploration interest. But, Major Matt Mason will return to toy shelves soon, starting with his reintroduction at San Diego Comic-Con this weekend.

Around the same time in the mid-1960s, Mattel launched a Miss Astronaut Barbie in its new career Barbie line. Nearly 60 years later in April 2022, Barbie finally made it to space when two dolls flew to the International Space Station for the Mission DreamStar project.

“From launching action figures like Major Matt Mason and astronaut Barbie during the height of the space race — to more recent initiatives like Hot Wheels’ partnership with NASA celebrating the landing of the Perseverance Rover — this week’s news is the latest in a long history of iconic Mattel brands celebrating humankind’s reach for the stars,” Mattel said in an email to Supercluster.

Besides the upcoming SpaceX line, Mattel has also produced other space-themed toys and collectibles under its Hot Wheels and Matchbox brands, including a miniature “Chariot” — NASA’s Space Exploration Vehicle — and toy vehicles for NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers.

And, following the historic SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch in February 2018, Hot Wheels came out with a toy car Tesla Roadster with Starman in the front seat, a much smaller version of Musk’s real Roadster, currently in orbit around our Sun.

“Mattel’s ambition in partnering with SpaceX is that the products we create together will, through play, bring out the inner space explorer in all kids,” Mattel said.

Humans Advance into a Profound Study of the Universe

2022-07-14T20:00:00.000Z

The first full-color images and spectra captured by the James Webb Space Telescope have now been shared with the world, allowing humanity to peer into the known universe with both higher resolution and deeper wavelengths than ever before. In a global event, NASA, ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency shared Webb’s first data, which was taken over a period of just five days.

The new data is already expanding our knowledge of the cosmic horizon.

“This is a very special day,” said astrophysicist John Mather, from Goddard Space Flight Center. Mather is a Nobel prize winner and Chief Scientist for Webb. “I’m just so thrilled and relieved, and we are all so proud. We are now going to see what happened just after the Big Bang, how the first galaxies and black holes formed and grew, and more. This new observatory is a time machine and I’m so happy to be part of it.”

The five new images and data sets reveal the deepest image of the universe ever taken, the spectrum of an exoplanet’s light – which provides clues to its composition -- a gorgeous stellar birthplace, a stunning nebula surrounding a dying star, and a group of closely interacting galaxies. All these images are a glimpse of what Webb will continue to reveal over its expected 20-year mission.

This first image from Webb, seen above, was revealed by the White House on Monday. It is the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date, showing thousands of galaxies, some over 13 billion years old, from the earliest days of the cosmos. In homage to the previous deepest images ever taken, known as Hubble Deep Field images, Webb’s First Deep Field shows thousands of galaxies where other observatories showed just a few or none.

“We can’t take blank sky images with this observatory,”

said JWST Operations Project Scientists Jane Rigby, at the July 12 briefing. “Everywhere we look there are galaxies just absolutely everywhere. And we’re seeing so much detail, we’re seeing these galaxies in a way we’ve never seen before. This is what we built the telescope to do.”

Rigby said Webb was able to gather spectra on some of the galaxies that showed how they looked 13.1 billion years ago.

The galaxy cluster, called SMACS 0723, is so massive that it bends the very fabric of space-time itself, creating a gravitational lens that allows us to see even more distant galaxies, including the faintest objects ever observed in infrared.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson explained that this image covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length. “It’s just a tiny sliver of the vast universe,” he said.

While Hubble took an image of this same galaxy cluster, the difference in the new Webb image in regards to resolution and the number of visible galaxies is absolutely astounding. While the Hubble image was a 10-day exposure, Webb’s was just 12 hours.

The second data set from Webb showed the wiggly lines of spectral data, representing the composition of a distant exoplanet’s atmosphere. WASP-96b is a hot gas giant about half the size of Jupiter. This exoplanet orbits a star about 1,150 light-years away, every 3.4 days.

“Webb is an infrared observatory, and infrared is great for gathering spectrum,” explained Knicole Collon, JWST deputy project scientist for exoplanets. “The spectrum is like breaking the light into a rainbow, and each of those colors can tell us something.”

Webb observed the transit of WASP-96b as it passed in front of its host star. As the starlight filtered through the atmosphere, the telescope's instruments measured the wavelengths of light, light that is full of information to help understand the complicated chemistry of this planet's atmosphere.

Most enticingly, the spectrum indicates the presence of water vapor in the atmosphere.

In the coming days and months, Webb will also be looking at planets in our own solar system from Mars outward as well as asteroids and comets.

The third new image features the Southern Ring Nebula, a planetary nebula 2,000 light-years away. This is a well-studied nebula, and making this an early target for study will allow scientists to see how Webb’s new data will help inform the previous data from other observatories.

This planetary nebula shows the very late state of a sun-like star after it has died, leaving a white dwarf star near the center. The surrounding nebula entails complex and delicate layers of dust surrounding the white dwarf. Astronomer Karl Gordon explained the new near-infrared image from Webb shows incredible detail of this nebula, with the dying star producing waves that create a ‘foamy’ appearance (in orange) revealing how the star lights up the gas and dust in the nebula.

The blue haze is hot ionized gas, heated by the leftover core of the hot star. Something never seen before are rays of light coming from gaps in the inner nebula, coming from the central star’s light to come out and light up the nebula.

“We’re seeing a different kind of physics,”

Gordon said. “The surprise for us in this new image is that even though we knew this was a binary star system, we could never see both stars in previous images. Now we can see both stars very clearly.”

Another newly revealed ‘Easter Egg’ for the scientists is the narrow filament of light near the top. It is actually a background, edge-on galaxy, which has never been seen before.

The fourth image is a wondrous view of Stephan's Quintet, a group of five very interesting galaxies, doing a delicate merging dance. Stephan’s Quintet lies about 300 million lightyears from Earth, and again, is a well-studied group of galaxies. But new details from Webb reveal how the interactions between galaxies are driving star formation, and the new observatory’s ability to see through dust unveil a previously unseen population of older stars.

“If you zoom in, you can see gas and dust being heated up in the collisions, where new stars are being born today,” said Mark McCaughrean, the European Space Agency’s Senior Advisor for Science & Exploration and part of JWST’s Science Working Group. McCaughrean explained how the new image reveals the cosmic evolution of galaxies, along with several objects never seen before: new bright blue galaxies and newly formed active black holes, visible only because of the stars and dust swirling around them.

“With Webb, we can see in thousands of wavelength channels to understand the composition of the gas, the velocities, and the temperatures,” McCaughrean said. “This shows the power of this telescope. And to paraphrase a famous rock star, we are ready to turn this telescope up to 11.”

The final image shows a stunning vista of the Carina Nebula, one of the largest nebulas observed, and it contains a variety of stars at different stages of formation. With the new image from Webb, scientists are seeing brand new stars that were previously hidden from view.

“There is so much going on in this image, it’s so beautiful!” said Amber Straughn, Deputy Project Scientist for JWST Communications. “There’s a sense of depth and texture from this new data.”

The Carina Nebula is a nearby star-forming region about 7600 lightyears away. Straughn said there are hundreds of new stars that have never been visible before, along with bubbles, cavities, and jets from all the newborn stars. Every dot of light in an individual star is not unlike our sun, and many of them likely have planets. Straughn added that the image's data is so rich, that scientists haven’t had the chance to unpack most of it yet.

“We were formed out of this same stuff,” Straughn said,

“we are connected to the universe. We saw amazing things in this nebula with Hubble but in a different kind of light. When you zoom into this new image you can see so much more. I’m excited to see what these two amazing observatories can do in tandem with each other.”

Several of the scientists in the briefing noted how this new mission has been in the works for 30 years, and that it has taken thousands of people and multiple space agencies to make this moment a reality.

“It is bigger than any one of us,” said the event’s host, astronomer Michele Thaller,“ and it truly takes a planet to accomplish this. The Webb mission is truly about the people.”

As for the data, earlier this week, Mark McCaughrean said that as lovely as Webb’s first science views are, remember that they’re from only five days of data.

“Every five days, we’ll be getting the same amount again,” he said. “They’re just the pictures painted on the dam. And the dam is about to break.”

Seeing the Universe in a New Light

2022-07-07T13:00:00.000Z

Until now, information about the James Webb Space Telescope’s first full-color images and science data — which will be publicly released on July 12th at 10:30 AM ET — has been a closely guarded secret. But during a media briefing on June 29th, scientists and officials shared a few enticing details.

First, there won’t be just one image, as has been common in “first light” releases for previous telescopes.

“We will have a package that will consist of a number of full-color images,” said Klaus Pontoppidan, JWST project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, home to Webb’s science and mission operations. “Each of them will reveal different aspects of the infrared Universe in unprecedented detail and sensitivity.”

One of those images will be the deepest image of our universe that has ever been taken, said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Just think about that,” he pondered, “this is farther than humanity has ever looked before. And we're only beginning to understand what Webb can and will do.”

So, think of the previous deepest image, the Hubble Space Telescope’s Ultra Deep Field – which revealed over 10,000 previously unseen distant galaxies in a tiny region of the sky thought to be devoid of objects. These ancient galaxies existed between 400 and 800 million years after the Big Bang. But as the universe expands and the older and most distant galaxies speed away from us, their light gets redshifted farther into the infrared, making them dimmer and invisible to the capabilities of previous telescopes.

That’s why JWST was built.

Its ability to see longer wavelengths in the infrared with incredible sharpness will bring those early stars and galaxies into focus, revealing details of how our universe began and formed.

“In comparison to Hubble, Webb does go deeper and certainly sharper in the infrared, especially the longer wavelengths like mid-infrared, bringing the universe into high definition,” said Jonathan Gardner, Webb deputy senior project scientist, at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center. And in terms of the visual appeal of the images, Gardner added, if you like looking at Hubble images, you’re going to REALLY like seeing the new Webb images.

“But the real difference is the new scientific information,” he said, “and opening up the universe in a way that we've really never seen before.”

In another surprise at the briefing, Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, revealed what to expect for the first non-image science data from JWST.

“I can confirm that part of the July 12th release, we will share Webb’s first exoplanet spectrum,” Zurbuchen said. “Right from the beginning, we are going to be looking at these worlds out there, the ones that keep us awake at night as we look into the starry sky and wonder if there is life elsewhere.”

When Webb was initially designed, scientists had only found a few exoplanets — planets that orbit other stars. Now, we know of over 4,000 exoplanets, and one of Webb’s major focuses will be to study the atmospheres of these distant worlds. Webb’s instruments can look for signatures of water, carbon dioxide, and even methane, all of which could point to the possibility of life.

And Pontoppidan revealed even more details of what awaits: Webb’s first images will also show colliding galaxies, and how these cataclysmic collisions drive the process of star formation. There will be images of young stars being born in their natal clouds of gas and dust, as well as stars dying spectacularly in a supernova.

“I'm really looking forward to revealing the first color images to the world,” Pontoppidan said. “But I also want to emphasize this is really only the beginning; we're only scratching the surface, we have in the first images, just a few days’ worth of observations. We’ll have many more years of observations, and we can only imagine what that will be. The next exciting phase is really to get the data out to the thousands of scientists around the world so they can dig into it. And then we can start a shared journey of discovery.”

Careful planning for Webb’s first full-color images and data release has been underway for a long time, conducted in secret by a small committee. In fact, Massimo Stiavelli, head of the Webb telescope mission office at STScI told me just a few months ago that even he didn’t know what the proposed targets would be. All he knew was that the main goal of the first images would be to illustrate the capabilities of the new observatory, showcasing the telescope’s powerful instruments and previewing the science mission to come.

The committee is made up of members from the international partnership behind the telescope: NASA, ESA, the Canadian Space Agency, and STScI. One of the challenges of planning the first images far in advance is that Webb can only see certain parts of the sky at a given time. The timeline of what Webb would be seeing when the instruments were finally ready to start taking data would depend on what day the spacecraft launched from Earth.

Additionally, the committee had to account for the possibility of any snafus in the telescope’s month-long journey to Lagrange point 2, 1.5 km (1 million miles) from Earth, or the six-month-long period of aligning the 18 segments of the 6.5 meters (21 feet) wide mirror and commissioning the four science instruments. (In case you haven’t been following the news, the entire process has gone perfectly.)

The committee came up with a potential list of 70 targets, taking inspiration from what previous space telescopes like Hubble and the Spitzer Space Telescope have done before. Could possible targets be the Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula, the Crab Nebula, Andromeda, or the Sombrero Galaxy?

“The committee essentially prioritized this list in such a way that once we knew when we would be able to take the data,” Pontoppidan explained, “We could go down that prioritized list and make the highest prioritized targets that were visible at that time.”

The first science images were actually taken on the summer solstice, June 20th, and the team is still gathering images and data with the new telescope. But taking images with Webb is nothing like taking a picture with your smartphone. It includes a complex process of commanding the telescope to get in position, acquire the data, send the data to Earth, process that data, then assemble them into colorful images.

“We have a team of absolutely amazing people, of experts, who have been working round the clock on this project,” Pontoppidan said, “so that we can deliver a fantastic package on July 12.”

What will we see on July 12? NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy said she had a chance to preview just a few of the images that will be showcased. “What I have seen just moved me,” Melroy said, “as a scientist, as an engineer, and as a human being.”

Zurbuchen said he was moved to tears.

"It’s really hard to not look at the universe in a new light and not have a moment that is deeply personal," he said. "It’s an emotional moment when you see nature suddenly releasing some of its secrets. And I would like you to imagine and look forward to that."

Update: On Friday, July 8th, NASA released the targets for Webb's first wave of full-color scientific images that mark the official beginning of Webb’s operations. They were selected by an international committee of representatives from NASA, ESA, CSA, and the Space Telescope Science Institute.

Targets are listed below, courtesy of NASA.

Carina Nebula. The Carina Nebula is one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the sky, located approximately 7,600 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. Nebulae are stellar nurseries where stars form. The Carina Nebula is home to many massive stars, several times larger than the Sun.

WASP-96 b (spectrum). WASP-96 b is a giant planet outside our solar system, composed mainly of gas. The planet, located nearly 1,150 light-years from Earth, orbits its star every 3.4 days. It has about half the mass of Jupiter, and its discovery was announced in 2014.

Southern Ring Nebula. The Southern Ring, or “Eight-Burst” nebula, is a planetary nebula – an expanding cloud of gas, surrounding a dying star. It is nearly half a light-year in diameter and is located approximately 2,000 light-years away from Earth.

Stephan’s Quintet: About 290 million light-years away, Stephan’s Quintet is located in the constellation Pegasus. It is notable for being the first compact galaxy group ever discovered in 1877. Four of the five galaxies within the quintet are locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters.

SMACS 0723: Massive foreground galaxy clusters magnify and distort the light of objects behind them, permitting a deep field view into both the extremely distant and intrinsically faint galaxy populations. Update: On Sunday, NASA announced that the White House would reveal one of the images early on Monday afternoon July 11th at 5:00 PM ET. The event will be streamed live.

We have restocked a limited number of our Webb "Reflection" Mission Patch. We will also be embedding NASA's reveal from Goddard on the Supercluster app in our Webb launch tracker.

Contenders Line Up to Challenge Falcon 9

2022-07-06T17:00:00.000Z

On January 24, 2021, Falcon 9 launched the first ride-share mission to Sun Synchronous Orbit.

It was delivering a record-setting 143 satellites to space. And while this was an important mission for SpaceX in itself, it was also the moment Falcon 9 overtook United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V for the total number of consecutive successful launches.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 had become America’s workhorse rocket, launching 31 times in 2021. It is all set to beat that record this year, launching almost an average of once a week. While most of the launches deliver Starlink satellites to orbit, the company is still launching the most commercial payloads to orbit, too, thanks to its low cost and high launch cadence.

Falcon 9 is a medium-lift launch vehicle, with the capability to launch over 22.8 metric tonnes to low earth orbit. Unlike any other rocket, its first stage lands back on Earth after separating from its second stage. In part, this allows SpaceX to offer the cheapest option for most customers with payloads that need to reach orbit. Under its ride-share program, a kilogram can be placed in a sun-synchronous orbit for a mere 1.1 million dollars, far cheaper than all other currently operating small satellite launch vehicles.

The reusability and fast booster turnaround times have made Falcon 9 the preferred choice for private companies and government agencies. This has allowed SpaceX to capture a huge portion of the launch market.

So what about its competitors?

Right now there aren’t any which can affect the company’s growing launch manifest. However, many companies are close to adopting reusability techniques to effectively compete in the launch market

VULCAN

Let’s talk about the United Launch Alliance. ULA is an amalgamation of Boeing Space and Lockheed Martin, a merger in 2006 to manage costs in a then-dwindling launch market. The company offered its Atlas V for quite a few years, but that rocket is close to retiring once its launch manifest is complete. Powered by the Russian RD-180 engine, the most powerful version of the Atlas V can place over 18.8 metric tonnes of payload to low earth orbit. There are over 19 versions of the Atlas V, due to options for 5 additional solid rocket boosters, RL-10 upper stage engines, and a 4 or 5-meter fairing.

Falcon 9 has a $50 million launch cost, but an Atlas V can cost upwards of $109 million, and due to this, this rocket was never a contender for commercial launches. However, it consistently won NASA’s Launch Service Procurement and the Space Force’s highly lucrative launch deals for classified missions, securing over 60 percent of such launches in the latest National Security Space Launch contract.

Due to these high costs, and the US Congress's concerns about dependence on Russian engines, ULA started working on their next-generation rocket, named Vulcan. Designed to replace the Atlas V and the Delta IV Heavy, it sports various manufacturing and technological advancements, making it considerably cheaper, and it’s powered by an American-made Blue Origin BE-4 engine.

BE-4 is an oxygen-rich, closed-cycle engine powered by Liquid Methane and Liquid Oxygen. Vulcan’s upper stage is essentially a beefed-up version of the centaur stage. Named Centaur V, it sports 2 RL-10 engines, powered by liquid hydrogen and oxygen. Similar to Atlas, Vulcan’s ascent can be assisted by up to 6 Northrop Grumman’s Solid Rocket Boosters, depending on the payload being launched. The most powerful version of the Vulcan can place over 27 metric tonnes to low earth orbit.

Vulcan will also be partially reusable, but its methodology is nothing like the Falcon 9. The company plans to salvage the BE-4 engines through a mid-air recovery, and reuse it for future launches, saving over 90% of the propulsion costs. ULA calls this the Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology — or SMART recovery. Once the second stage separates from the core, the engine section will detach from the rest of the booster and deploy an inflatable heat shield to survive the atmospheric re-entry. Once in the thicker parts of the atmosphere, it’ll deploy a parachute, and a helicopter will catch it in mid-air, and return it for refurbishment.

ULA released this concept back in 2015, and apart from some vague updates from their CEO Tory Bruno on Twitter, nothing else was released to the public regarding this concept. Many thought it was never going to happen — and it made sense — Falcon 9’s continued dominance meant little to no commercial launches for ULA’s newest launch vehicle, and it’ll mostly serve government contracts that provide no incentives to lower the cost. But one commercial contract changed everything, giving everyone — apart from SpaceX — a much-needed thrust to complete the development of their upcoming rockets and incorporate reusability.

On April 25, 2022, Amazon signed a billion-dollar launch contract with ULA for their internet satellite constellation, called Project Kuiper. Under the contract, ULA will launch over 38 Vulcans, making it one of the largest deals ever signed.

Suddenly SMART made so much sense. It will not only drive down costs but also increase the launch cadence of the Vulcan rocket. There are no public figures for how much the Vulcan will cost after taking into account reusability, but it remains to be seen if it’ll compete with Falcon 9, since launch costs are not the only reason SpaceX isn’t launching satellites for Project Kuiper.

New Glenn

Also launching Kuiper’s satellite is Blue Origin. Amazon and Bezos’ space company have signed the deal to carry out over 27 launches. From conducting regular sub-orbital flights to developing a new space station, Blue Origin wants to live up to its name and prove its a real contender. And the company intends to reach orbit with their New Glenn rocket. In development since 2012, New Glenn is still quite far from its first launch. The company plans to get it up and running by the end of next year, which — like most timelines in the aerospace industry — is overly optimistic.

Powered by 7 BE-4 engines, New Glenn can deliver over 45 tonnes to low earth orbit, outperforming not only Falcon 9 but also Falcon Heavy in its reusable configuration. Its 7-meter fairing is the largest of its kind, providing over 2 times the payload volume of any existing launch vehicle. New Glenn will launch from Blue Origin’s Launch Complex 36 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Similar to Falcon 9, New Glenn’s first stage will separate from the second stage, and return back to Earth on their ship, Jacklyn. If it works, New Glenn will be a game-changer once it’s up and running, as the company looks to compete with SpaceX in both commercial and governmental payloads.

Terran R

It’s not only the incumbents who’re trying to reduce overall launch costs. A new wave of companies is planning their entry into the launch market, with the promise of bringing huge changes to the industry. Starting out with a small satellite launcher, most are planning to enter the medium launch market as soon as they can launch payloads reliably.

One of the most promising companies is Relativity Space, founded by Tim Ellis and Jordan Noore. Relativity is betting big on additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing. 3D printing allows for faster design iterations, significant part count reduction, and a simple and vertically integrated supply chain.

The company is developing a fully reusable medium launch system capable of launching over 20 tonnes to low earth orbit. Similar to their smaller but yet-to-fly Terran-1, Terran R will be fully 3D printed, which not only includes the first and the second stage but also the payload fairing and the engines. 3D printing will allow faster compounding progress and iteration, which not only speeds up their development but thereby also reduces launch costs.

Once operational, Terran R will directly compete with Falcon 9 for not only commercial missions but also government ones under NASA’s Launch Service Program, and the US Space Force’s National Security Space Launch Program. The company is targeting 2024 for its first orbital launch attempt from Cape Canaveral, but that might be too optimistic for a company that still hasn’t flown anything.

Relativity is planning an upcoming test flight that we are tracking.

Beta

Another new company already looking to develop a medium-lift launcher is Firefly. Founded by Tom Markusic, Max Polyakov, and Kaan Gunay, the company aims to address high launch costs using the simplest approach to technology, leveraging diverse design teams and commercial, off-the-shelf components to reduce risk, maximize reliability, and minimize development time.

Firefly is planning to develop the capability to place over 11 metric tonnes to low earth orbit, using their Beta launch vehicle. Based on their small satellite Alpha’s design, Beta is powered by 5 Reaver 2 engines. Although a lot isn’t known about the engine, it’ll be powered by RP-1 and Liquid Oxygen, similar to the Reaver. No word on whether the rocket will be reusable or not, since the company is focused more on getting Alpha to orbit.

Neutron

Providing reliable launch services since 2017 with their Electron rocket, Rocket Lab is also looking to enter the medium launch market, with a focus on serving the ever-growing needs of massive internet constellations. Named Neutron, the rocket will be capable of placing over 8 tonnes in Low Earth Orbit. It’ll be partially reusable with the first stage returning back to land on a drone ship. What makes it different from Falcon 9 is its fixed Hungry Hippo captive fairing, which does not separate from the launch vehicle. These fairings open up like a blooming flower, releasing the second stage, which will be housed inside their fairing. Once released, the fairings will close before the rocket re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere. The whole rocket makes use of carbon composites, something the company has extensive experience working with via their Electron launch vehicle.

Rideshare

While mostly launching medium to heavy satellites to orbit, Falcon 9 also competes in the small satellite market via their rideshare program to numerous orbits. This is a market most commonly targeted by new entrants with their new small satellite launch vehicles. However, the launch costs of such vehicles are considerably more expensive than SpaceX.

So how are they even competitors? Numerous companies prefer flying their payloads on a solo mission over a rideshare. If Falcon 9 is a big bus for such satellites, small sat launchers are an uber, placing the satellites precisely in the required orbit and not needing the satellites to conduct their own in-orbit burns or launch on a separate tug, which in turn reduces costs.

But will these Incoming companies, with their simpler manufacturing techniques, ever be cheaper than Falcon 9?

They don’t have to. They just need to be close. If these launchers cost just a bit more, companies might prefer the uber instead of the bus. With more and more small satellite launches coming online, more competition will incentivize lower launch costs.

Rocket Lab’s Electron is leading the small satellite market, becoming the second most launched vehicle. As the company starts to refly returned boosters, it will have an increased launch cadence and thereby reduce its launch costs.

Starship

Most of these rockets mentioned may edge out the Falcon 9, but one rocket which will most certainly take over its dominance is SpaceX’s own Starship. Designed from the ground up to achieve airline-like operations, the fully-reusable superheavy launch vehicle is planned to replace Falcon 9 once it becomes operational.

With no expendable stages and low maintenance required between flights, Starship will be orders of magnitudes cheaper if all goals are met. And if certified for crewed launches, it’ll drastically reduce the cost of human spaceflight, a necessary step to achieve the company’s goals of landing humans on Mars.

SpaceX is planning to achieve $1 Million per launch for Starship. That would be over 50 times cheaper than the Falcon 9. If they get anywhere close, this price point would make Starship the cheapest way for any payload to achieve orbit, no matter how small they are.

Mike Massimino is Blessed by the Pope

2022-07-04T16:00:00.000Z

With a fear of heights and a medical disqualification due to poor vision, it seemed like the odds were against Mike Massimino, whose childhood dream was to become an astronaut.

Born in 1962, Massimino grew up in New York City where he fell in love with space travel after watching Neil and Buzz walk on the lunar surface through his television set. Massimino wanted to follow in their footsteps.

After three unsuccessful applications, Massimino was accepted to NASA as an astronaut candidate in 1996 and would go on to fly as a mission specialist in 2002 and again in 2009, to perform maintenance on the Hubble Space Telescope.

Today, Massimino is a professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia University, where he also serves as the faculty advisor for Columbia Space Initiative, a student space, technology, and outreach club.

We called him up for a chat.

Less than 700 people have been to space. While that number is growing, how does it feel being one of the few people who to do so?

I feel very fortunate.

Traveling into space was a wonderful opportunity for me, but you know, it was a job. I was an astronaut for 18 years at NASA…So it wasn’t just the experience of flying in space that I loved. It was also the training and the engineering and science that went into it and being a part of the astronaut office and camaraderie. It was a wonderful career. So the opportunity to fly in space is great, but there’s so much more to the job that I had.

What was it about seeing Neil Armstrong take those steps that just made you say ‘I want that to be me?'

For me, it was not just seeing that, but also learning about who Neil Armstrong was and what he did. I was little, you know, I was six years old when this was going on back in 1968. There was just so much attention given to that mission [Apollo 11]. And I must have been in an impressionable age or something because it really hit home with me. I wanted to grow up to be like Neil Armstrong.

I wanted to be one of those guys who dedicated their lives to exploration.

You got rejected from NASA three times. Did you ever doubt your dreams?

Oh yeah, I mean I still can’t believe it happened. But yeah, I constantly thought "is this going to work out?" There was no guarantee of it, I knew there were thousands and thousands of people who wanted the job and only a few spots available. The third time I got rejected, I was actually medically disqualified from my eyesight and I went through vision training to improve my vision. but I was able to overcome that and at least get a chance to be considered again.

But even after going through all of it, I still knew that it was going to be a long shot, just the odds are stacked against you. But what I try to keep in mind is that the odds may be against you, but it’s not impossible. Anything is possible as long as you try.

I think we all owe ourselves the chance to achieve our dreams.

Did your friends and family have concerns for you, specifically regarding safety?

Certainly. I was selected in 1996 by NASA, and the first shuttle accident [Challenger] occurred in 1986, 10 years earlier, but it was still fresh in everyone’s mind. When I was first selected, no one ever discouraged me from it.

I think that they were really proud of me. Though I do think people were worried. When I was actually assigned my first flight, you’re allowed to take some small items. It’s called your personal preference kit. So I reached out to my family and said, "hey, would you like me to fly something for you?"

And just about everything that came in was a religious artifact because they were afraid I was going to get killed. I got Christopher medals, I got Our Lady of Loreto, something about Padre Pio, I got a special blessing from the Pope, believe it or not. I got a baby Jesus from a nativity set in Italy.

They were all worried about me getting killed.

What is your favorite memory from space?

My favorite memory in space was the spacewalks, particularly, those moments where I was able to view our planet. Seeing the Earth and how beautiful it was from up there during the spacewalks in your own little spacesuit, in your own little spaceship really is what the spacesuit is, being able to look anywhere, looking at the stars, looking down at the planet, I just thought, ‘this is a view from heaven.’

And it changed the way I think of our planet.

I do think we’re living in an absolute paradise. I can’t imagine any place being more beautiful than planet Earth. I think we’re extremely lucky to be here. And we need to appreciate it and take care of it. It’s also very fragile, you can see the thinness of the atmosphere.

The other thing that set in at those moments, during the spacewalks, when I did have a chance to look at our planet was, ‘that’s a place we all share.’ There was one point during one of my spacewalks where I looked down and I realized that’s home. That’s where everything is. That’s where every place I’ve ever been, everything I’ve ever known. Anybody that we know of that’s ever lived has lived there. That’s where my children and grandchildren, whoever comes after me, that’s where they're going to be. This is home. I think of home as Earth.

As a kid, my home was Franklin Square, and as I got older, I was a New Yorker. And then when I was an astronaut, I think I identified more as an American as I traveled around the world. But of all those things, I now think of myself more as a citizen of the Earth, which is a place no matter where you’re from.

We all share that same place.

What was it like returning to Earth?

Space requires a lot of training and we were challenged on how to work together, but it’s more orderly. Even when you make mistakes, there are checklists to help you and a control team to help you. I think life on Earth is generally a lot tougher…When I got home from my second flight, one of the first things I noticed was there were shingles missing from the roof in our garage.

I asked my wife what happened and she said we had a storm and some of the shingles and I said, you know, ‘I gotta call the guy,’ and she’s like, ‘well, guess what, you’re the guy.’ So the next day I was on the phone with the insurance company and a roofer figuring out what I needed to fix.

Earth is not easy.

Do you think space should be widely accessible? Do you think efforts from the private sector to open space to the broader community delegitimizes the formal training process of becoming a NASA astronaut?

I think that greater access is better.

In order to become a NASA astronaut, you were pretty much dedicating your life to doing that. And NASA was going to tell you pretty much what you were going to do. But I think what this [space tourism] opens up opportunities for people who have been successful in business, not in just making lots of money, but also scientists who have been entrepreneurs and have made some great discoveries and breakthroughs can now go to space and try some of these ideas that they have out in the zero-gravity environment, I think it’s great for research and for opportunities for people and for people who just want to go out there and experience it.

I do think though we probably need to make a distinction.

When I was selected by NASA, I was selected as an astronaut candidate, as are all astronauts when they’re first selected. And as you go through the years of training, and as you’re given the title, the job title as ‘astronaut’ before you fly into space. So for me, there are things about being an astronaut that are important, but that doesn't necessarily mean you float in a spaceship. It’s understanding the job and what it comes with. It was a job title. It was an occupation. I think now in some cases, it’s more of an experience.

So I think that will all settle out and there’ll be clarity…but I think the more people that get a chance to go, the better.

If you were asked to fly on SpaceX’s upcoming Dragon or Starship missions, would you?

Yeah, I would. But I’m not paying $50 million to do it. I don’t have that much. I probably wouldn’t pay anything. I’ll pay for my airfare though…but certainly, if I had a chance to go to space again, I would love that.

What are your favorite depictions of space in film and TV?

As long as the astronaut is cool, I’m happy. I think Ryan Gosling was a cool astronaut as Neil Armstrong. I think George Clooney was a cool astronaut. I think Matt Damon portrayed a very cool astronaut…I think we need to remember that a lot of these movies are make-believe, so as long as the astronaut is cool, I’m happy with it.

Supercluster previously hosted Massimino and 'For All Mankind' star Joel Kinnaman for a fascinating conversation on being a real-life astronaut and playing one on television.

We Defeated The Vandenberg Fog

2022-06-28T16:00:00.000Z

The last time we sent photographer Tom Cross to Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, we got absolutely owned by the fog. As is the case every time.

Almost every time.

For SpaceX's SARah-1 mission, we rolled the dice yet again on covering the launch and landing, and with some skills, learned lessons, and a dash of luck, we captured the Falcon 9. Check out our shots below with commentary from Tom.

There is a foggy dilemma for every photographer. Do you gamble staying nearby to get a close-up shot of the launch or travel an hour away to drive up a mountain to get above the fog and capture the landscape?

One way around that decision is to set up remote cameras at the launch pad, but there's usually not enough time to travel back to the base for the convoy to collect those cameras. And sometimes those remote camera shots just don’t work out, like last time.

The press site is about 3 miles away with a view of the launch and the landing pad. The fog was noticeably burning off T-60 minutes while setting up for launch. A half-dozen photographers were there, three of them for the Space Force with insanely large 800mm and 1000mm lenses.

At T-20 minutes, the entire area was enveloped in fog and visibility was about 1000 yards in front of you.

SpaceX has the closest cameras to the pad, and on their webcast, the cameras could barely see the rocket. The landing zone view looked promising, however. And nowadays, that's the money shot.

At T-0, it wasn’t visibly clear if the rocket had launched as we couldn't see any flames through the three miles of ground clouds. The Falcon's nine engines then crackled with an intensity that I haven't heard in a long time. It was loud.

Learning lessons from previous missions, I developed some ‘fog settings’ to compensate for the interference. Fewer exposure stops did the trick, and 50% of the remotes succeeded. I placed two cameras on the hill to capture the launch and two on the road to capture the landing.

Only the landing remotes delivered results.

Controversy Surrounds Effort to Signal Extraterrestrial Civilization

2022-06-21T10:00:00.000Z

About 48 light years from us, coursing through space, is a blast of radio waves heading towards a distant globular star cluster.

Encoded in this radio signal is a message, written in the 1s and 0s of binary, transmitted from a giant radio telescope that once existed in the jungles of a blue planet orbiting a nondescript yellow star.

I refer, of course, to the Arecibo Message, a pictogram of humanity: what we’re made from, what we look like (roughly — the picture was a stick figure), where we can be found, how many of us there were in 1974 when the message was beamed into space, how we transmitted the message, and a blocky depiction of our Solar System that looks like it’s come from some ancient version of Minecraft.

The message’s destination, Messier 13, is located 22,000 light years away. If anybody’s living there, we’re going to have to wait 44,000 years for a reply.

The vastness of space means that interstellar communication is never going to be like making a quick phone call. Yet despite the daunting timespans, we’re not put off trying to contact whatever is out there. Since the Arecibo message there have been a handful of efforts to send messages to the stars, and now a team of scientists led by astrophysicist Jonathan Jiang from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, have joined the fray by creating a new message that they call the ‘Beacon in the Galaxy’.

METI

Designing and transmitting messages into space falls into a field we call ‘METI’ — Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence. If SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, is about passively and patiently watching for signs of life, then METI is the unruly sibling, determined to kick over anthills and find out if there’s any little green men hiding beneath.

It’s a hot topic, one that’s often controversial and divisive among the SETI community. For many years, METI’s main man was Russian radio astronomer Alexander Zaitsev, who launched four messages into space from the 70-meter Evpatoria radio dish in the Crimea. I remember, 12 years ago, attending a SETI conference hosted by the UK’s Royal Society in a manor house in the leafy Buckinghamshire countryside. Zaitsev made his case for transmitting, while the SETI Institute’s Seth Shostak (pro-METI) went head-to-head with the outspoken astronomer and science-fiction writer David Brin (anti-METI). Meanwhile other, calmer, voices tried to maintain decorum while still passionately arguing for or against transmitting.

The debate centers around what the consequences of making contact could be. Those pro-METI believe that contact would be hugely beneficial for humankind. Those cautious of advertising our existence to the Universe warn that we don’t know anything about what aliens might be like, or what unpredictable consequences our societies might face from interacting with them.

As a science journalist, I’m drawn to scientific disagreements like a moth to a flame, and the debate surrounding METI is one so fascinating that I even wrote a book about it. The Beacon in the Galaxy message is another opportunity to examine the various facets of this debate, so in April I spoke with Jiang and two of his colleagues, JPL’s Kristen Fahy and Stuart Taylor of the SETI Institute, to find out more.

Best Foot Forward

To be clear, the Beacon in the Galaxy has not yet been transmitted into space, nor are there any immediate plans to. The idea for now is to spark discussion and hone our interstellar-message-crafting skills.

“We want to send positive images, positive messages about humans into space,” says Jiang when I ask about his motivations for designing a message for aliens. He comes across as articulate and enthusiastic, a twinkle in his eye as he chats about how he sees the Beacon as condensing humanity’s better points into a short stanza of binary code.

This intrigues me from the outset. Although Jiang’s team have aimed to create a very basic message focused on scientific details, it feels to me that their intent is to subtly shape an aliens’ opinions about us — to present only a positive portrayal of humanity. The Beacon in the Galaxy is designed to give the impression that we are explorers interested only in science and knowledge, but if aliens could tune in to our television broadcasts, they’d get a different picture.

“We’ve been broadcasting a pretty bad representation of ourselves,” admits Taylor.

“We need to try and represent ourselves better.”

As Rebecca Charbonneau, a science historian at Harvard, comments when I ask her later about the Beacon in the Galaxy message, “[how to present ourselves] Is a problem SETI scientists have been tackling for decades.” She cites the example of the Voyager Golden Record, for which Carl Sagan and his team had to decide whether to provide an accurate picture of life on Earth, including all its horrors of war, poverty, discrimination and so on, or whether to tailor the contents of the record to only portray our best features. “They decided to pursue the latter, in part because they did not want to send what might be interpreted as a hostile message to the cosmos.”

Despite this intent to provide a sanitized presentation of humanity, the Beacon is not laden with messages and images of love and peace. It’s more abstract than that, because ET isn’t going to know our languages, understand our cultures, or even necessarily experience and interpret the Universe in quite the same way we do. So any successful interstellar message must first find common ground, and more often than not, METI approaches that through pure science. Concepts such as the quantum physical underpinnings of hydrogen atoms are universal across the cosmos, and so technological aliens should understand them, too.

Once that common ground has been ascertained, the message moves on to explaining concepts such as the biochemistry of life on Earth, and human DNA. There’s also a map.

“We want to send the message that we’re all citizens of the Earth,” Jiang tells me. “That’s why we included a world map. It tries to develop the message that everybody is equal, man or woman.”

To reiterate the point, the Beacon in the Galaxy also includes a modified version of Linda Salzman’s drawing of a nude man and woman that was originally etched onto the plaques attached to the Pioneer 10 and 11 space probes, which are now racing out of the Solar System having flown past Jupiter and Saturn in the 1970s. Back then, NASA was criticized by prudes for sending drawings of nudes into space, but there were also more pertinent concerns. Although not the intention, the two figures ended up looking Caucasian, and only the man’s hand was raised in greeting, making the female appear subservient at his side.

A few years later, when the drawings were included on the Voyager Golden Record, they were changed to show the woman’s hand raised in greeting, and the man’s hand lowered. Now, in the newly modified version in the Beacon to the Galaxy, both the man’s and the woman’s hand is raised.

Of course, what aliens would make of them is anyone’s guess — a raised hand in greeting is a human cultural affectation, and aliens might not even recognize the appendage as a hand.

“We want them to know what we look like,” explains Fahy when I mention these old criticisms of the drawings. “They might not decipher what they’re looking at, but it’s worth a shot.”

Jiang, though, has a more specific reason for including the drawings, saying that they are “to indicate how humans have two different sexes for reproduction.”

This prompts me to raise an eyebrow. The intention is a worthy one — to show that man and woman are equal. But I wonder, does it really tell ET how we reproduce? There’s no description of the act of reproduction, and would the aliens recognize the drawings as representing two different biological sexes? Indeed, alien reproduction may be quite different. For all we know, the aliens might have more than two sexes, or none at all.

I wonder if the Salzman drawings, however modified they are, have become sketches out of their time. The twenty-first century view on sex and gender is far more fluid than the conservative viewpoints of the past. Those who identify as non-binary and the trans community may have a difficult time seeing themselves in those drawings.

I ask Douglas Vakoch, President of an organization called METI International, to give his opinion of how the drawings relate to our modern viewpoints. “A twenty-first century depiction of gender diversity could be quite different from the Pioneer plaque,” he says.

Nevertheless, Vakoch acknowledges that communicating our human forms in such messages is difficult. “The pictures we send of ourselves may be the most difficult parts of the message to understand, but that doesn’t mean we should stop trying,” he says, echoing Fahy’s resolve.

METI International transmitted a message called Sónar Calling in 2018 that targeted the nearby exoplanet GJ 273b; they plan on beaming another message into space, from the Goonhilly Earth Station in Cornwall, UK, towards the TRAPPIST-1 system in October 2022. Both messages feature music as well as scientific information, and the Goonhilly message will detail our climate crisis, contrasting somewhat with the Beacon in the Galaxy by showing that perhaps not everything is rosy on Planet Earth.

Ones and Noughts

Like the Arecibo Message, the Beacon in the Galaxy is written in binary code, which Jiang believes is the mathematical system most likely to be understood by aliens.

“Binary, we think, is universal,” says Jiang. “It’s a language that can be understood by any intelligent being, and by a computer, because it’s just yes or no, true or false, 0 or 1. Our consciousness is the result of millions of years of yes and no combined together to make decisions. So binary is essential for communication with intelligence.”

Encoding a message in binary code is itself uncontroversial. After all, the Arecibo Message was transmitted in binary all those years ago. Vakoch wonders though whether binary encoding alone is enough to communicate the signal’s significance, or whether it’s also worth including geometric constructs such as pi and its relation to the circumference of a circle.

“There’s a serious problem in assuming that the use of binary code will, in and of itself, make mathematics intelligible,” he says. “It ignores one of the most important principles for creating meaningful messages: make the messages redundant. If aliens don’t understand one formulation of our math or science, they might recognize another.”

Jiang’s team argue that the message doesn’t need to include geometric concepts because they see geometry as “a logical progression from more basic concepts of mathematics” and that their inclusion would only lengthen the message with content that the aliens likely already know.

Vakoch, though, thinks that we need to let our interstellar messages breathe, to have space to include more information in case our assumptions about what aliens understand is incorrect.

“I can just imagine, after months of trying to make sense of our math, one alien pointing at part of the message and saying to their colleague, ‘I think that’s supposed to be a circle. And they seem to know that there’s a precise relationship between the distance around the circle and its radius’,” he says. “How unfortunate it would be if we skimped on our geometry tutorial, when it might be just what’s needed to establish common ground.”

Beyond these debate points, the Beacon in the Galaxy message does contain a lot of cool concepts, such as the way it time-stamps itself — in other words, lets the receiver know when, in a cosmic context, the message was transmitted.

Telling aliens that the message was beamed in the Earth-year 2022 isn’t going to be all that informative — seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, these are all human constructs native to our planet. So the message needs a universal time-keeper, and they found it in the quantum behavior of hydrogen atoms. When a hydrogen atom changes its quantum spin — a process known as the ‘spin-flip transition’ — it emits radio waves with a precise wavelength of 21.106114054160cm, which is recognizable to astronomers as the 21cm neutral hydrogen line that radio telescopes routinely observe. This can also be expressed as a frequency, 1.4204 billion periods per second (more recognizable to us as 1420MHz), and this can be broken down further, to give a base unit of time: 70.403 billionths of a second for each period. Jiang’s team then count how many of these base units of time have passed since the Big Bang, and the message will then include that figure to indicate when it was sent.

There is a bit of a problem, in that we do not know, down to the second, when the Big Bang occurred. “Usually we would want a clock with a precisely defined starting point,” says Vakoch. “In this case, the starting point of the cosmic clock is zero, give or take 20 million years.”

Now that Arecibo has collapsed, and Western astronomers are unlikely to be able to use the Yevpatoria radio transmitter in the Crimea anytime soon, how can the Beacon in the Galaxy be beamed to the stars? Jiang’s team suggest that either China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), or the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array of 42 dishes, could be modified and turned into transmitters.

The Great Transmission Debate

The Beacon in the Galaxy has reignited the debate about whether humanity should be transmitting into the cosmos. Taylor, however, doesn’t think that’s a bad thing. He suggests it might prompt us to reconsider our place in the cosmos, our likelihood of surviving into the deep future, and what we might learn from any extraterrestrial civilizations we contact.

To enter the debate they’ll need a thick skin. As I’ve witnessed myself, those discussions can quickly become fraught, but Jiang’s team are confident that transmitting our presence into deep space for whomever lurks there isn’t only safe, but is the right thing to do on behalf of humanity.

“We’ve been sending out radio signals for the past 100 years,” says Fahy. “If there is a civilization so technologically advanced that they can travel to Earth and potentially annihilate us, then they probably know about us already.”

Hmm. This is a well known fact, oft repeated as rationale for doing METI. Ipso facto, if they already know we’re here, then sending deliberate messages can’t be any more dangerous.

Except that if you dig a little deeper, it doesn’t appear so clear cut.

Radio waves, like all electromagnetic radiation, lose power with distance by the inverse square law. The light from the Sun is 16 times weaker on a planet four times as far from the Sun as Earth. So by the time our radio signals reach interstellar distances, they’re extremely faint, particularly TV signals that aren’t exactly being blasted into space by powerful transmitters. The SETI Institute’s Seth Shostak has shown that an Arecibo-sized radio telescope could not detect our TV and radio leakage even at the distance of Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun, at 4.2 light years away.

To quantify things further, in 2011 Jim Benford and John Billingham showed that the message content of a transmission from a typical terrestrial radio telescope, such as the 70-meter Yevpatoria dish, would only be detectable by a similar-sized receiver out to a distance of just three light years, while the raw radio energy of the message would be detectable out to 108 light years. Scale that up to a transmitter and receiver the size of the Square Kilometer Array, and the ranges increase to just 19 and 648 light years, respectively. And what of the Arecibo message — how far away could another Arecibo detect it? It seems that nobody can agree on this — Frank Drake has suggested it would have a range of 25,000 light years, far enough to be detected at M13. H. Paul Shuch, of the SETI League, called this the ‘Arecibo Myth’, and said that it would have a range of just 10,000 light years. Shostak is even more pessimistic, and calculates that one Arecibo could detect another Arecibo out to a distance of 400 light years, and no farther.

All of which calls into question the likelihood anyone out there knows we’re here.

It’s not impossible, though. If the aliens have a radio telescope the size of, say, a small moon, then they are going to be able to detect fainter signals from farther away, including our messages and leakage. That’s a big ‘if’, however. Radio telescopes are not free — they cost energy to run, and Jim Benford has calculated that a Chicago-sized radio telescope would cost a lot of energy, equivalent to $70 trillion US dollars in human terms. Plus, I would ask, to what end would aliens have need of such an unfeasibly large telescope? Why, to be able to hear our faint signals, of course! But if they already know we’re here, then why do we need to message them? If they want to get in touch, they will — we wouldn’t need to prompt them.

But Jiang reminds me of the motivation behind the Beacon in the Galaxy. “Humans are still selfish, still fight wars, still behave like children, so we want to send positive images,” he says. It’s a charm offensive for aliens who may have already formed a negative opinion about us in the unlikely event they’ve picked up our television signals.

That mindset makes the assumption that these aliens will be virtuous. It’s an opinion that Jiang can get behind. “If any civilizations can live long enough, and are able to reach the stars and us, then we think that they will not behave like kids anymore,” he tells me. “They will have survived, and surviving means being at peace for millions of years. So we don’t think anybody who is able to travel to the stars is dangerous.”

Saviors?

The overwhelming likelihood is that ET will be far older than we are, potentially by millions or even billions of years, because we’re new on the scene and there’s been plenty of time for other species to evolve in the Universe. So the language of SETI has often been about communicating with ‘higher powers’ far older than we humans. Carl Sagan used this argument to persuade the Democratic Senator William Proxmire to support SETI, when he pointed out that ET could teach us how to avoid nuclear armageddon, as they must surely have done to have survived for so long.

“We have to consider that we may need to be rescued,” says Taylor.

It’s a concept that echoes the eco-themed message to be transmitted from Goonhilly. “If they are more like our modern, progressive, liberal democratic free-world society, then I think they will be more likely to help us,” he adds. “So, by receiving a message, we can learn how to survive.”

I wonder if this is describing a true picture of how Western society operates in relation to the rest of the world, or if it’s more of a fairy tale. Don’t get me wrong, there are many truly wonderful, generous people who freely give advice and resources to help others, but governments tend not to, at least not without strings attached. I’m not sure I want humanity to become indebted to an extraterrestrial civilization.

Charbonneau says that human history also tells us otherwise. “It is arrogant folly to assume that Western civilization, with all its historical horrors, would be the standard for intelligent civilizations,” she says. Furthermore, SETI researchers in general should be wary of conflating advanced technology with advanced ethics. After all, some of the most technologically-advanced human civilizations of history have committed unspeakable horrors: the Roman Empire, Imperial Britain, the Nazis in World War Two. “I think it is quite naive to believe that alien civilizations would be ‘more progressive’ than human society,” says Charbonneau. “This falls into the trap of believing that progress moves in a line, from worse to better. We certainly shouldn’t equate technological achievements with moral ones.”

Charbonneau actually thinks creating interstellar messages is a good idea, since the chances of aliens actually detecting them are very slim, but we can learn a lot about ourselves in the process — by figuring out what we want to say about ourselves, why we want to say it, and who gets to say it. Interstellar-message design is still at a very early stage, and we’re bound to make mis-steps along the way. What is required to make progress is discussion, not just among western SETI scientists, but among people from all backgrounds all across the world, so that our interstellar messages can become more representative of who we all are.

“We encourage discussions,” agrees Jiang. “We should discuss this as citizens of the Earth. We don’t want to transmit this message in secret. We want to discuss this openly.”

And we have time. Assuming that aliens are not already here, then distance protects us. “It’s not like we’ll be texting them back and forth,” says Fahy. “It would last generations, hundreds of thousands of years. So that should decrease the fear that we’re broadcasting too much or receiving messages from them that would negatively impact our planet.”

“It’s something in our distant future,” admits Jiang. “Our children’s children’s children’s children may get lucky.”

Let’s hope that when that day comes, they don’t regret their ‘luck’.