Category Archives: Space Exploration

Russians are prouder of the annexation of Crimea than they are of their nations achievements in space exploration, provided this years results of a Levada Center survey held annually since 1999.

In January 2017, victory in the Second World War (called the Great Patriotic War in Russia) retained its leading position as the proudest moment of the Russian people. This option was selected by 83 percent of respondents.

Second place with support from 43 percent of respondents was Russias annexation of Crimea. This item was introduced to the survey in 2017.Space exploration dropped downed to third place with 42 percent support from respondents. For comparison, space exploration garnered 60 percent support in 1999.

Further down in the rankings were Russian literature, industrialization during the Soviet era, the achievements of Russian scientific research, and the glory of Russian weapons.

When asked about what they are most ashamed of, most chose the option of a great nation, a rich country, but [one who people] live in eternal poverty and instability. In second place was the collapse of the USSR; in third place was callousness and rudeness.

By Meduza

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Annexation of Crimea beats space exploration as Russians' proudest moment - StopFake.org

Space exploration aficionados experienced the thrill of anticipationin the hours before President Trumps speech Tuesday night, with advance word that he was going to call for a return to the human exploration of space.

Sure enough, in his closing words Trump declared that for a country soon to celebrate its 250th anniversary, American footprints on distant worlds are not too big a dream.

Trumps brief, offhand comment had the tone of an impulsive notion that, like so many of his other policy pronouncements, wont get any follow-through. Lets hope so, because the idea of sending humans to explore distant worlds is loopy, incredibly wasteful, and likely to cripple American science rather than inspire it. And thats assuming that Trumps notion doesnt have the ulterior motivation of diverting American scientists from their Job One, which is to fight climate change right here at home.

The idea of sending humans back into planetary exploration, with Mars as the prime target,has been a crowd-pleasing dream of presidents ever since Gene Cernan became the last American to set his footprints on the moon in 1972. As the author Ken Kalfus toted up the record, during the Reagan administration a congressional commission called for a return to the moon by 2005 and a Mars landing by 2015;George H.W. Bush declared that the American flag should be planted on Mars by the 50th anniversary of the first Apollo moon landing (2019);andGeorge W. Bush moved the deadlineout to a moon landing by 2020 in preparation for a leap to Mars and other destinations.

Barack Obama canceled the Constellation program that might have fulfilled the latter Bushs dream, but eased the pain by calling for sending astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, orbiting humans around Mars by the mid-2030s, and landing them on the surface soon after that within his own lifetime.

The romance of human space exploration doesnt belong only to politicians. Its been exploited, for example, by the industrialist Elon Musk, who last year unveiled a vision of human colonization of Mars to turn humankind into a multiplanet species to safeguard against an extinction event on Earth. Musks private rocket company, SpaceX, recently announced that it has taken deposits from two customers for orbital voyages around the moon.

The exhortations by presidents shareseveral assumptions. One is that the manned moon exploration programs Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo have yieldedstupendous returns in science, engineering, and economics and that the exponentially more challenging voyage to Mars will yield exponentially greater benefits. Another is that humans are needed to perform some functions in space that robots cant do. A third (seldom voiced directly) is that only the drama and romance of human spaceflight can attract the public interest and support needed for such an expensive program. At the peak of the space race, NASA commanded fully 4% of the federal budget, a share that couldonly be sustained by tapping into public excitement.

None of these assumptions is warranted, even though the scientific and economic returns from the space programs are invariably invoked as articles of faith. Typical is this claim madein October by two Trump campaign advisors, former GOP Rep. Robert S. Walker of Pennsylvania and UC Irvine economist Peter Navarro: Our past investments in space exploration have produced brilliant returns for our economy, our security and our sense of national destiny. In their article, Walker and Navarro dont actually mention any specific economic returns, brilliant or otherwise. Thats unsurprising, because its hard to identify any that would not have been produced by an unmanned moon program.

The presidential visions of human space exploration all hark back, of course, to President Kennedys 1961 call to send a man to the moon and bring him back alive by the end of that decade, a quest that was fulfilled. That was a different time, however: America was in the heat of technological and economic battle with the Soviet Union, the 1957 Sputnik flight still stung, and the Soviets had recently sent cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in orbit around Earth. Back then we were all vulnerable to the cult of the astronaut; as a kid I knew the names and personal stories of all the original seven Mercury pilots. Today few can summon up the names of shuttle astronauts with the exception of Christa McAuliffe, who is recalled chiefly because of her tragic end on the shuttle Challenger.Todays sense of the limitations of public funding of science and heightened awareness of competing demands on the federal budget closer to home didnt exist in 1961.

Are humans necessary for space exploration? Less now than ever, with the vast advances in robotics achieved since the last moonwalk in 1972. Astronomers and other scientists long have been skeptical of the need for human exploration. In 2010, then-Astronomer Royal Martin Rees of Britain said, The practical case gets weaker and weaker with every advance in robotics and miniaturization. It's hard to see any particular reason or purpose in going back to the moon or indeed sending people into space at all."

As physicist Steven Weinberg observed more than a decade ago, placing humans on a space mission makes it so much more expensive than an unmanned flight that some elements of the mission get jettisoned and those are almost always scientific projects. The public obviously considers the human participants to be indispensable, so much so that a loss of life can almost destroy a space program, as happened with the space shuttle program after two human catastrophes. Accordingly, protecting human lives and health becomes paramount; the cost of those arrangements will be much greater on a Mars flight, which is estimated to take as long as nine months.

Weinberg makes short work of the best example made for the necessity of humans in spaceflight. This is the series of repair missions on the Hubble Space Telescope performed by shuttle crews, the last time in 2009. The Hubble is one of several orbiting observatories that have added immeasurably to our knowledge of distant space. But because it was launched by the shuttle, it was also uniquely expensive. Weinberg quotes Riccardo Giacconi, the former director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, as estimating that had the telescope been launched by unmanned rockets instead of the shuttle, seven Hubbles could have been launched for the same price as the one we got. It would then not have been necessary to service the Hubble, Weinberg writes; when design flaws were discovered or parts wore out, we could just have sent up another Hubble.

What really underlies the lure of human space exploration is its romance and drama, fostered in part by decades of popular culture, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek and Star Wars, and The Martian. The characters in these space operas are our heroes, but whats often overlooked is that many of these are disaster stories. The thrill we feel from the interplanetary rescue of the stranded astronaut of The Martian obscures the more fundamental question of why he had to get stranded up there in the first place.

Among the dangers of cavalier calls for publicly-funded human space exploration is that monumentalBig Science programs like the space race tend to suck resources away from any science left on the outside looking in. A multitrillion-dollarprogram to put an American on Mars, endorsed by a president, will get first call on the federal budget, leaving behind programs aimed at disease cures, chemistry, and physics far behind.

In the current political climate, the biggest threat is to Earth science, which is increasingly devoted to climate change. It may not be a coincidence that conservatives in Congress have been systematically trying cut NASAs Earth Science budget in favor of planetary exploration, albeit unmanned exploration. They argue that the goal is to refocus NASA on its traditional mission. But thatsa smokescreen, because research in climate science has become a major part of NASAs mission.Theyre really displaying their hostility to research that could undermine the fortunes of their patrons, the fossil fuel industry. If Trumps call for manned planetary exploration is another puff of that smokescreen, it would hardly be surprising.

Sending humans into space would give Americans a sense of mission and grandeur, but thats mostly a sign of civic immaturity. Take the same sums and spend them on curing disease whether the biological malady of cancer or the social maladies of poverty and hunger and pride will surely follow. Keep the astronauts at home, and there will be much more money available to send robots farther out than humans could ever go, and to bring back immeasurably more knowledge.

Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow@hiltzikmon Twitter, see hisFacebook page, or emailmichael.hiltzik@latimes.com.

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Trump's call for human space exploration is hugely wasteful and pointless - Los Angeles Times

Oscar-nominated filmHidden Figures tells the incredible (previously) untold story of three brilliant African-American women who worked at NASA.Through their pioneering work, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jacksonwere, in fact, the brains behind John Glenns orbit into space.

Since the Christmas Day release of this film, you may have been asking yourself: How can such remarkable contributions made by women in the fields of science and space exploration be forgotten by history?How are we supposed to tell our daughters and granddaughters that they can be anything they want to be,that there are no limits in what they can accomplish, when our own nations narrative fails to acknowledge the work of these remarkable female scientists and engineers?

When retired mathematician Johnson, 98, the only surviving employee of the three, made her appearance at this Sunday nights Oscars, it was one of the most moving moments of the awards ceremony. Introduced as a true NASA and American hero, she sat in her wheelchair, alongside the lead actresses of the film, while the crowd erupting in a stand ovation. She simply responded, Thank you very much.

Youre welcome, Katherine. We are all just so sorry that this acknowledgement is long overdue.

Girls Pose for Powerful Recreation of Hidden Figures Poster

Rocket ships dont launch themselves, and they dont take off from the merits of men alone. The year is 2017, right? Its about time we demanded that the overlooked achievements made by the women of NASA be celebrated. We need to provide these role models for all the little girls out there who dream big.

Thankfully, LEGO agrees.

This holiday season, a new LEGO set called Women of NASA will be hitting shelves. The exciting news was announced yesterday, congratulating science editor and writer, Maia Weinstock,came up with the idea for the project. The deputy editor of MIT News pitched this set as part of the LEGO IDEAS series which allows fans to propose new set concepts.

Weinstock reveals that she was inspired to create the setto help young ones and adults alike learn about the history of women. In this case, those [women] whove made a big impact through their work at NASA.

The set will feature five notableWomen of NASA including Sally Ride (the first American woman in space), Nancy Grace Roman (known as the mother of the Hubble Space Telescope), Mae Jemison (the first African-American woman in space), Margaret Hamilton and Katherine Johnson (whose work helped put the first people on the moon).

Havent heard of those other four women of NASA before now? Nope, neither have I. We have a long way to go in our own race for recognition, ladies. Thats why I think I speak for all women, and mothers, when I (in turn) say to LEGO,Thank you.

Thank you for paying tribute to the great minds who contributed to our milestones in space, thank you for making certain that history will never again forget the leaps and bounds these women have made in their respective fields, and thank you for giving us all another reason to tell fellow women in our life to never stop shooting for the stars.

I Took My Son to See 'Hidden Figures,' and We Both Walked Away Changed

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LEGO Announces 'Women of NASA' Set Celebrating Female Pioneers in Space Exploration - Babble (blog)

President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of the U.S. Congress on February 28, 2017 in the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. (Getty)

During his address to Congress on Tuesday evening, President Donald Trump delivered a brief line suggesting that America should resume its human exploration of space.

Towards the conclusion of Trumps remarks, the president talked about Americas centennial in 1876, when citizens gathered in Philadelphia to celebrate and inventors showed offtheir creations, including the telephone and the typewriter.

Trump then looked ahead to Americas 250th anniversary, listing off a number of things that America may be able to celebrate by then, including cures to illnesses and millions being lifted from welfare.

The president then said, American footprints on distant worlds are not too big a dream.

Before Trumps address, it was reported that the president would officially call for new manned space exploration. In actuality, there was only a brief reference to space travel, and Trump did not propose anything specific or place much emphasis on this statement.

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What Donald Trump Said About Space Travel During His Speech - Heavy.com

Rachael D'Amore, CTV Toronto Published Tuesday, February 28, 2017 6:21PM EST Last Updated Tuesday, February 28, 2017 7:14PM EST

A local nuclear plant is stepping up to ensure NASAs ongoing exploration of deep space continues for years to come.

CTV News Toronto has learned that the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station in Clarington, Ont. will produce and harvest Plutonium-238, a spacecraft fueling agent, for NASA.

Ontario Power Generation (OPG) and its venture arm, Canadian Nuclear Partners, have teamed up to fill the gap left after the United States stopped producing the glowing oxide pellet back in 1988.

Since then, their main source of Plutonium-238 dwindled and, aside from two remaining fuel packs, have practically dried up.

Now, NASA is teaming up with OPGs nuclear facilities to replenish their inventory and fuel their existing (and future) fleet of space probes.

Plutonium-238 acts like a battery to space craft. By emitting steady heat through natural radioactive decay, it produces electricity aboard the craft to fuel it and keep scientific equipment warm enough to function in space.

Space probes like the illustrious Voyager 1 -- which left Earth more than 40 years ago to explore Jupiter and Saturn and now floats beyond Pluto -- requires Plutonium-238 for power.

With more than 19 billion kilometers between Voyager 1 and the sun, it can take hours for the craft's signals to reach the station on Earth.

Without the spacecrafts Plutonium-238 batteries, none of this would be possible.

"Spacecraft's usually use the sun to provide electricity to solar panels but that only works in the inner solar system," Randy Attwood, of the Royal Astronomical Society, told CTV News Toronto.

"Once we send spacecrafts out beyond Jupiter, there's not enough sunlight out there to provide enough electricity to allow the spacecraft to work."

A source tells CTV News Toronto that the proposed plan would have rods produced by Pacific Northwest National Laboratories (PNNL) in Washington State and shipped to Darlington where they would be inserted into the reactor core to produce the Plutonium-238.

The next time the rods need to be refueled, the new partly-Canadian made space batteries would be inserted.

The collaboration with PNNL is expected to be more efficient both for costs and timing than alternative routes.

Unlike Plutonium-239, the 238 isotope is not weapons grade, thus practically impossible to use for a nuclear bomb and safe to move when handled properly.

Though it will take several years before the process gets underway, one day, Ontarians will be able to look up into the night sky and know that local technology played a role in the exploration of space.

With files from Paul Bliss.

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Darlington power plant helps fuel NASA's space exploration - CTV News

During his address to Congress Tuesday night, President Donald Trump will make a call for Americas space program to reemphasize human spaceflight and exploration, reports PBS NewsHour report citing an unidentified senior administration official.

PBS NewsHours John Yang wrote on Twitter that Trump will call for return of manned space exploration. Its entirely unclear what is meant by a return to human space exploration, and exactly what that entails different from current operations being pursued by NASA, which still regularly sends astronauts to the International Space Station.

Those remarks, if true, could go a number of ways during Trumps speech. The president may be referencing the fact that America itself has not been able to launch any astronauts into space from U.S. soil since 2011, when the Space Shuttle program was shuttered. The agency has since relied on Russian Soyuz launches to get its astronauts to the ISS even while U.S.-Russian relations have deteriorated to a new low since the Cold War.

The agency is seeking to rectify the problem with the Commercial Crew Program, which would hand over the task of ISS launches to U.S. spaceflight companies like SpaceX and Boeing. Unfortunately, the two companies have repeatedly forced delays on the program, which could put NASA in a fraught position of having reopen negotiations with Russias space agency to secure more seats on future Soyuz launches for another year or so.

So Trump may be calling for the United States to speed up the process of conducting its own crewed launches once again.

Tuesdays speech also comes a day after SpaceXs surprise announcement that it intends to send two private citizens on a flight around the moon and back in 2018. His remarks may be a simple allusion to this mission. Given how bullish many in his administration are on the prospect of increased commercialization of space, the president might simply plan to reflect positively on SpaceXs plan.

Another thread that these remarks might weave into may have to do with the idea of going back to the moon. Internal chatter in the administration suggests the president wishes to redirect some NASA resources toward a crewed mission to the moon. That plot thickens with NASAs recent initiation of a feasibility study that will consider turning its uncrewed 2018 Orion mission to the moon, into a crewed one.

Trump is expected to deliver his speech at 9 p.m. Eastern. Itll be on every channel, probably.

Photos via Getty Images / Pool

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Donald Trump Will Call For a Return of Human Space Exploration - Inverse

Space is a cruel place. It's cold, it's airless, it's riddled with deadly radiation, and most cruelly of all it's just so darned big. NASA's Apollo missions aside, it's why almost all space exploration is done by robots, who are stronger, more resilient, and easier to maintain. We're not going to stop exploring space using robots. Instead, we're going to wear them, with some claiming that incredible advances in wearable technology could help spread humanity to the very furthest reaches of the galaxy.

But it's going to take a lot more than a souped-up smartwatch.

Today the most famous space robot is Curiosity. The Martian rover has plenty of company on the red planet, most notably Opportunity, while dozens of robotic space probes are buzzing around Jupiter, Saturn and the dwarf planet Ceres. Here on Earth we also have exploration robots, including robotic submersibles (even underwater humanoid robots) and maintenance droids in the oceans, with autonomous industrial drones and self-driving cars almost upon us.

Such robots are extensions of ourselves, and both wearables and robots are already being trialled on the International Space Station (ISS). French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, currently orbiting Earth on the ISS, is wearing BodyCap's Blood Pulse Wave sensor and e-TACT patch, while set to join the ISS crew this year or next is both Astroskin and a robotic cube called Astrobee. Russian cosmonauts on the ISS will get a humanoid robot called FEDOR in 2021.

Must-read: Being better than human with bionics

"NASA has a long history of building humanoid platforms, and has Robonaut 2 on the ISS, which is just an upper torso," says Sethu Vijayakumar, Professor of Robotics at University of Edinburgh and Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics, which owns one of NASA's Valkyrie humanoid robots. Although Robonaut 2 comes packed with image recognition systems and sensors galore, its main use is to take care of repetitive tasks to clear astronauts' clogged to-do lists. Robonaut 2, whose development also led to a 'human grasp assist' device called Robo-Glove, could potentially hop outside the ISS to do repairs. Dextre, another 'robotic handyman' on the ISS, has already conducted repairs to the spaceship's batteries, saving the crew from risky spacewalks. Such robots could be used on Mars to assemble a habitat in advance of a manned mission. And it's on missions to Mars and beyond where wearable technology comes in.

Robotics on Mars is a different beast to working on the ISS. "Robots on the ISS work in zero gravity, but when you go to Mars they will have to work in varying gravity environments, and will need to have bipedal locomotion, so we need dextrous manipulations, sensing and walking, and that's where we come in," says Vijayakumar, who is working on the ultimate in space wearables: exoskeletons.

Exoskeletons are basically wearable robots that make astronauts stronger or more mobile in different environments, but they'll be crucial long before man gets to the surface of Mars. Since micro-gravity makes muscles work less, the crew of the ISS need to work-out 2.5 hours per day, six days a week just to keep minimum muscle performance, but they're still weaklings when they descend back to Earth. "Astronauts on the ISS have to strap themselves to a treadmill," says Vijayakumar. "But instead of providing assistance, exoskeletons can act as a resistive device."

That will be crucial if astronauts are to arrive at Mars in any fit state, but some serious miniaturisation is needed. "The exercise device on the ISS is 2,000lbs and wouldn't fit in the crew vehicle that would go to Mars, so they will need a new kind of exercise equipment," says Dr. Peter Neuhaus, Senior Research Scientist at Florida's Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC), which works on technology to extend human capabilities. However, the IHMC is also working on exoskeletons purely for space exploration, developing the X1 Mina with NASA, and more recently Mina V2, which has motors on the ankle, hip and knees.

The X1 Mina exoskeleton

Motors embedded on 'soft' exoskeletons essentially space suits would help make up for the differing gravity on Mars, and the fact that space suits are pressurised. "On Mars the gravity is less, so that will help astronauts support their own bodyweight when they try to stand and walk, but they will have spent between six and nine months in micro-gravity getting to Mars, so they might need an exoskeleton for their space suit," says Neuhaus. He explains that the pressurised Apollo space-suits used by NASA on the Moon acted like a spring, making it difficult for the astronauts to bend their legs. Cue motors at all joints to achieve a customised gait.

"With reduced gravity we could assist them with different gaits," says Neuhaus." Apollo astronauts used a hopping gait on the Moon's surface, but with exoskeleton devices we could help them to do a more bounding gait, which could help them travel further on the surface."

Read next: The best stargazing apps for your smartwatch

For Vijayakumar it's all about the user interface between man and machine. That means exoskeletons with haptic feedback and 'multi-model sensory information'. "One of our projects is how to provide sensory feedback to amputees who have lost a limb," says Vijayakumar, explaining that his work for NASA is based upon the same technology he's developing for real-time control of exoskeletons for stroke patients, amputees, and for prosthesis. "We have an artificial limb they wear, but they currently don't have ownership of the device because of the lack of feedback."

Perhaps the ultimate wearable exoskeleton-like device was shown off recently by South Korean robotics company Hankook Mirae Technology, whose 1.5-ton Method-2is a manned bipedal robot that can travel forwards and backwards, though only on flat ground. As you might expect, this bipedal robot is controlled by someone sitting inside, and apparently 'shakes the ground' when it takes a step, though it reportedly has balance issues.

To visualise what engineers will be able to achieve in a decade or so takes some deep thinking. "Future exoskeletons will be much better," says engineer and futurist Dr Ian Pearson, describing a 'Spider-Man' suit a few millimetres thick that uses either electro-active polymers or folded graphene capacitors to create electromagnetic muscles enabling super-human strength. "It wouldn't look like metal armour, more like a wetsuit and it could be done in 10 years if you had the kind of development budget that a spacesuit normally has," he says.

How successful exoskeletons can be in space depends on the gravity of the situation. "Your legs are only of use on Mars and the Moon," says Neuhaus. "They're the only places with gravity, aside from some of the bigger planets, which we're not going to send humans for a very long time."

On asteroids, which astronauts will probably have to mine for resources to fuel any long-term space exploration outside the Solar System, gravity is insignificant. "On an asteroid it would be all about an astronaut's arms," says Neuhaus. "Astronauts would probably be in some kind of floating device around the asteroid, and have use of their arms either directly, or via robotic arms that respond to their motions." That could be done in two ways; the wearable arms could be an exoskeleton, or the user could be an avatar for those arms.

Ah yes, avatars. "I look at avatars as a sister to robots, but robots powered by human intelligence," says Dr. Harry Floor, CEO at Jupiter 9 Productions and curator of the upcoming ANA Avatar X prize. "The Avatar X prize concept is that we don't just want robots with artificial intelligence, we want to power them using human intelligence so people can teleport themselves anywhere in the world by transferring their consciousness," he said at January's CES 2017. "But it's not like in the movie you are seeing and hearing through a virtual reality headset, and using haptics gloves you can move, control and touch there needs to be a marriage between robots and avatars."

The German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) has successfully operated its robot AILA in Germany using its upper-body exoskeleton CAPIO located in Russia. That kind of teleoperation would allow hands-off exploration of a planetary surface by astronauts, though it would have to be a short-range data link, probably on the planet's surface. "You cannot do tele-operations from Earth because of the delays it takes about 30 minutes for a signal to come back from Mars so you have to build significant autonomy into robots," says Vijayakumar.

"It's not like the robot has a mind of its own, but it needs to able to take care of low-level operations." He also points out that communications channels in space are typically unreliable, so tele-operating an avatar-robot while orbiting of Mars would likely be disrupted. The use of lasers to create 'space broadband' could change all that, though British ESA astronaut Tim Peake already remotely operated a Mars rover in an Airbus facility in Stevenage, UK while aboard the ISS last year.

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Space is just too big to make real-time control of anything remote possible. So why waste time working on ways to send humans safely to other planets when you could just, you know, directly upload their brains to tiny 'space fairies'? "Once we can do a full direct mind-link and put the human mind inside a computer, we could fit about 10,000 human minds in the volume of a cubic millimetre a pin-head," says Pearson, explaining that nanotech devices could theoretically be put beside every neuron and synapse in your brain and create a deep neural network in silicon that's an exact copy.

But space fairies? Pearson's predictions of advances in genetic engineering, IT and consciousness development go way further. "You could make a fairy-sized space farer just a few centimetres tall or smaller, which would make space travel so much easier and it would also be much easier to build wormholes if you wanted to have high-speed space travel." It all sounds bizarre, yet Pearson thinks that it will be possible this century, probably around the year 2090. "Nobody expects us to be doing interstellar travel before then anyway," he reasons. He's right.

But Pearson's point is that the technology to upload our brains will come a long time before conventional Star Trek or Passengers-style interstellar missions into the cosmos aboard vast spaceships. Uploading a brain to a tiny 'space fairy' has other intriguing possibilities. "Once you've digitised a human mind, you could make as many copies of you as you like, and send them out all over the cosmos," he says, adding that if we identified a particularly good astronaut-explorer, we could clone them, and generally use cloning to more quickly colonise other planets. Small astronauts, in small space-ships, would go a lot faster. "Space travel will become a lot easier," says Pearson.

And a lot weirder, too.

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Why the 'ultimate wearables' lie in the future of space exploration - Wareable

This editorial was first published in The Providence (Rhode Island) Journal, a fellow GateHouse Media publication. Guest editorials don't necessarily reflect the Daily Messenger's opinions.

Humans once thought they were alone in the universe (with gods watching over them). The gradual discovery of new planets in our solar system, and thousands beyond, has proved that our world is only one of many.

In fact, NASA announced an astonishing discovery at a news conference last week that has helped intensify our world's interest in space travel, exploration, habitation and the possibility of life on other planets.

The story began last May, when researchers in Chile using the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope, or Trappist, discovered three new planets. They named the new exoplanet system Trappist-1 (for obvious reasons), and began to use the powerful Spitzer Space Telescope to confirm their findings.

According to NASA's Feb. 22 news release, the "Spitzer, an infrared telescope that trails Earth as it orbits the sun," was a good device to examine these new planets "because the star glows brightest in infrared light, whose wavelengths are longer than the eye can see." Trappist-1 was observed "nearly continuously for 500 hours" and the Spitzer was "uniquely positioned in its orbit to observe enough crossing transits of the planets in front of the host star to reveal the complex architecture of the system."

What the research team found was remarkable.

Two of the original planets were eventually identified along with, much to their surprise, five other planets, including three in the so-called habitable zone where life might exist. All of them were similar in size to Earth, and orbit around a single star described as an "ultra-cool dwarf."

"The discovery sets a new record," according to NASA, "for greatest number of habitable-zone planets found around a single star outside our solar system."

But there's more to this story, which has been simultaneously published in the pre-eminent scientific journal Nature.

All seven planets located in Trappist-1 are reportedly rocky like Earth, and not made of gas. Hence, they could all potentially contain liquid water which is, of course, one of the keys to life. (The three planets located squarely in the habitable zone have the greatest potential for having water.)

It should be mentioned that this exoplanet system is well outside our solar system. Scientists have estimated the planets are 39 light years, or roughly 235 trillion miles, away from Earth.

Until our technology is much more advanced, we won't be visiting them anytime soon.

Yet, with the James Webb Space Telescope, a far more powerful scientific tool than the Hubble Space Telescope, about to go into space in 2018, we can already start learning about Trappist-1.

Sean Carey, manager of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California, said this is "the most exciting result I have seen in the 14 years of Spitzer operations." In his view, "Spitzer will follow up in the fall to further refine our understanding of these planets so that the James Webb Space Telescope can follow up. More observations of the system are sure to reveal more secrets."

This could potentially mean that human beings could visit, or live on, other habitable planets one day. It's also possible, however strange it may sound to some ears, that we could find evidence of microbic or primitive life forms in Trappist-1 and beyond.

It's important that President Donald Trump who has previously mentioned his support for further space exploration work with Congress to ensure that funding for NASA is maintained. Humans have a great interest in unlocking the mysteries of the universe, and looking for ways to explore planets that are currently beyond our reach.

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Guest view: Aliens in Earth's neighborhood? - Irondequoit Post

NASA

A NASA statement that says that it's examining the prospects of flying a crew on the first Space Launch System launch, is not only nave, but counterproductive.

Space exploration is not a human game, not if what we want to glean is our chances of actually getting off our planet and inhabiting another world.

There's very little chance that this writer's generation will see little more than the beginning of a manned Mars mission project. Humans heading to the Jovian or Saturnalian moons is a few generations away, at the least.

What we need is to revisit is the Von Neumann probe model that will not only allow us to expand our scientific knowledge of the moons and the speculated oceans beneath the layers of vacuum- and radiation-hardened ice, but also allow the foundation of future human biomes to be laid.

Humans are a slow, ponderous species. We're not Stephen Baxter's Xelee, nor even are we Dan Simmons' Ousters, we're us...bureaucratic, fragile, and somehow scared shitless (SpaceX notwithstanding).

Neumann probes can use resources found on the moons to replicate, and then not only explore the moons, but seek out and analyse any life forms they might find.

The second wave of far more advanced Neumann probes could also begin to build biomes, and begin a primitive sort of terraforming on Europa and Enceladus, for instance (maybe by melting the ice to sow the seeds of a primordial atmosphere).

These probes could lay the groundwork for a manned mission later in the century, or early in the 22nd. To think man, with his feeble flesh and bone is suited to intersolar, or even interstellar exploration is laughable and myopic.

The hard vacuum of space is no country for old men (and trust me, the human species is exactly that). What we need are machines at the vanguard. Glory lies in the end, not the means.

NASA, Elon Musk, et al, should be looking at boosting AI to the extent that Neumann probes have the wherewithal to not only traverse the distance between Earth and the ice moons, but while there, actually lay the foundations for a human settlement.

Trappist-1 is all well and good, but let's face it, we ain't gonna get there till the human race has transformed into something quite unique and different from what we are now...a sort of proto human; half AI-half sentient.

What we need now is pragmatism, not species-specific jingoism. NASA needs to play the long game...the game that is played for millennia, not decades!

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NASA's focus on using humans in space exploration is myopic at best, apocalyptic at worst! - International Business Times, India Edition

According to NASA, humanity has seven new possibly livable planets to dream about inhabiting.

Before you get your bag ready for an Interstellar-like journey, the Editorial Board has something for you to consider. The space travel excitement is a little premature. Our current planet has larger problems to handle before we make plans to inhabit other worlds. Namely, we need to invest in curbing climate change to sustain life on Earth.

First of all, NASA believes the system of planets may orbit a dwarf star that is 40 light years away. Because we cannot travel anywhere near the speed of light yet, thats a little far-fetched for the Editorial Board.

Forty light years roughly translates to 235 trillion miles, which would take us just over 11 thousand years to traverse with current technology.

Furthermore, NASA seems more focused on finding alien life than finding humans a new planet to inhabit.

Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASAs Science Mission Directorate, said that Answering the question are we alone? is a top science priority shortly after the exoplanets were found.

This discovery reminds us on Earth that we are likely not alone or special.

While this is all exciting, its kind of hard to be completely excited when you think about the state of our own planet.

The Portland Press Herald reported that global warming is linked to the shrinkage of the Colorado River. With rising temperatures, precipitation is happening less and more states are experiencing drought.

Yes, it is important to fund space travel and exploration, but if we dont first take care of the issues at hand, we will really need to leave Earth and find a new home.

Its hard to believe that President Trump is quick to fund and support NASA, which for all he knows could be making up its data, yet he wont do the same for climate change something most respected scientists agree on.

We can applaud Trump for his ideas of expanding NASAs scope. While campaigning last October, Trump said I will free NASA from the restriction of serving primarily as a logistics agency for low earth orbit activity.

With this expansion, he hopes to create more jobs and further space exploration. This is great and all, but we wish he had the same sort of passion for things rooted on Earth.

We want to be a likable species who takes care of its planet so that if aliens ever do make contact with us, they wont want to immediately vaporize us.

In order to do that, we need to be mindful of the well-being of Earth, the well-being of each other, and the well-being of ourselves. Its crunch time on Earth and something needs to be done.

Think about how much you have enjoyed the weather these past few weeks. Warm, sunny and clean air makes us all happier people, but at a cost.

Remember that weve been enjoying this weather in the middle of February. Remember that on Valentines Day, a lot of us didnt need love to warm us up when the weather was already in the 60s.

Instead of looking at these seven planets as a backup plan, we should look at them as a goal in the distant future. We can hope to reach them one day, but we need to focus more on keeping our home planet healthy.

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EDITORIAL: Jumping at space travel - Indiana Daily Student