Category Archives: Space Exploration

NASAs Curiosity rover landed in Gale Crater on Mars on Aug. 6, 2012 at 1:32 a.m. 10 years ago this week. It is in good shape, and expected to continue its climb up Mt. Sharp for years to come.

Its successor, the Perseverance rover, set down in Jezero Crater in February, and Chinas first Mars rover, Tianwen-1 landed at Utopia Planitia in May.

Mars is currently in our morning sky, just one in a line of four planets (Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) extending from north-northeast to southwest. In recent weeks, Ive made a point of getting outside around dawn to catch a few views, but had to jockey for position in various places on the street to see out between the trees and their mid-summer foliage. The neighborhood was utterly quiet in the morning twilight, so this did not present a problem.

Elusive Mercury was in this planet parade in early July, but low in the glow of sunrise. Uranus and Neptune are still in this line up, but too distant and dim to see without telescopes.

The planets constantly shift position in our sky and against the backdrop of distant stars because they are so much closer to us. Each world follows its own schedule, and shows little regard for our calendar an unruly behavior that prompted the ancient Babylonians to call them wild goats.

Now that we understand the planets and their orbits in fine detail, Mars, the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, has somehow managed to gained an outsized status. My Google search for Mars produced 1,750,000,000 results more than 2-1/2 times its nearest competitor Venus, with 650,000,000 results.

There are many reasons for this popularity. While not the brightest of the bunch, its unique rusty hue prompted its ancient designation as the god of war, and its modern nickname, The Red Planet. Remember when you look that we are seeing the actual color of Marss surface rocks and dirt through its mostly clear atmosphere.

(Only three celestial objects visible to the naked eye show us their bare rocky surfaces: The moon, Mars, and Mercury. Curiously, their names all start with the letter M, making them easy to remember.)

Mars also varies more in distance and brightness than any other planet. As Earth swings nearer to it in the coming months, we will see it brighten and move into our evening skies.

While its unique color and dramatic changes in brightness have intrigued people through the ages, our modern fascination got a kick start in the 1800s when Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli described its contrasting light and dark areas as seas and continents. He called the channels he saw through his new generation telescope canali. This was soon mistranslated into canals along with the idea of intelligent life there.

Enter Percival Lowell, an astronomer from Boston, who, from his private observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, mapped hundreds of canals he believed Martians made to carry water from the poles to the equatorial regions. He promoted his ideas in several books.

These were the inspiration behind H.G. Wells The War of the Worlds in 1898, and Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom series starting with the novel A Princess of Mars. Burroughs used Schiaparellis names for Martian regions, and decided to make his Martians green the reason people still refer to aliens as little green men.

On Halloween Eve in 1938, Orson Welles and The Mercury Theater on the Air famously broadcast a radio version of The War of the Worlds, which convinced thousands that Martians were invading America.

Although most experienced astronomers never saw Marss supposed canals, questions persisted into the space age. I actually remember when the controversy was finally settled to everyones satisfaction in 1964 with the first ever close up images of Marss surface sent back by NASAs Mariner 4 fly-by probe. My Dad opened the glossy pages of Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine with me as soon as it arrived, but I could not see much in the grainy black and white images.

When he walked across the room and held up the pictures, craters emerge from the noise. This was history. The alleged network of lines crisscrossing the surface of Mars were merely an illusion due to the human tendency to connect faint groups of dark smudges, such as those seen on Mars through telescopes, with imaginary straight lines.

The deep sense of disappointment many felt at this discovery was short-lived because a new era of Mars exploration was underway, and new surprises awaited. When the twin Viking landers touched down on opposite sides of the planet in 1976, they essentially revealed Mars as we know it today. Color images and data from an array of scientific instruments transformed our understanding of that world and proved that robots would be capable explorers of the Solar System.

By 2015, with New Horizons flight past Pluto, NASAs probes had visited of every major planet in the Solar System.The beautiful dynamic world we found at Pluto was just the latest in a long string of crazy revelations about the worlds of our Solar System.

Why does Mars still beckon? Of all the planets in our solar system, it is, in some ways, the most Earth-like. Roughly halfway in size between Earth and the moon, it has characteristics of both. With so little atmosphere, it has craters like the moon, yet there is enough for weather, including clouds like on Earth.

Mars seasons span a Martian year roughly equal to two Earth-years, but the Martian day, or sol, is only slightly longer than a day on Earth: 24 hours and 39 minutes. Mars is half again as far from the sun as earth, so it gets about 40% of the sunlight reaching Earth although a person standing there would hardly notice the difference.

The reduced sunlight does affect temperatures however, exacerbated by Marss lack of a significant heat-retaining atmosphere. At ground-level the mostly carbon dioxide air is less than one percent as dense as Earths nitrogen-rich atmosphere. The weak sun and thin atmosphere allow temperatures to drop to minus 200 degrees Fahrenheit. The ground can reach a balmy 70 degrees Fahrenheit in summer, but temperatures rarely surpasses the freezing point.

We can relate strongly to those alien hills and valleys because the sky is not black like on the airless moon. More significantly, the Mars sky sometimes appears blue. Pictures of such obtained by the Curiosity rover are particularly striking to those of us still struggling with the fact that this is another planet! (See above picture.)

Most of the time however, Marss sky is some variation on salmon, brown, or butterscotch depending on the angle of the sun, the direction you are looking, and the amount of dust in the air. Sunsets on Mars are blue, as opposed to our reddish sunsets.

Curiosity found strong evidence that in the distant past, Mars had warmer temperatures and enough water in liquid form to support primitive life. Whether any ever existed remains a mystery, but Curiosity has found intriguing hints including this years discovery of a kind of carbon that on Earth is associated with life.

All these things and more make it easy to understand why Mars, with eight active orbiters, three rovers, and one stationary lander, is the busiest place in the Solar System other than Earth.

There are probably many worlds orbiting other stars that are more like Earth, but Mars may be the closest example we humans will ever see in detail. The few images of extrasolar planets so far obtained are unresolvable dots, and no telescope will resolve the continents and oceans of a planet like ours even around the nearest stars for a very long time.

The Curiosity rover has raised Mars exploration to a whole new level, and we are well on our way to making The Red Planet a part of our world.

Find rise and set times for the sun and moon, and follow ever-changing celestial highlights in the Skywatch section of the Weather Almanac in The Republican and Sunday Republican.

Patrick Rowan has written Skywatch for The Republican since 1987 and has been a Weather Almanac contributor since the mid 1990s. A native of Long Island, Rowan graduated from Northampton High School, studied astronomy at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in the 1970s and was a research assistant for the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory. From 1981 to 1994, Rowan worked at the Springfield Science Museums Seymour Planetarium, most of that time as planetarium manager. Rowan lives in the Florence section of Northampton with his wife, Clara, and their cats, Eli and Milo.

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Patrick Rowans Skywatch: Curiosity rover marks 10th year exploring Mars - MassLive.com

Another actress who is getting a lot of meaty material from For All Mankind is Cynthy Wu.

Cynthy plays Ed and Karen Baldwin's daughter, Kelly. Kelly is on Mars with her father and one of her best friends, has fallen in love with a Cosmonaut and is having his baby. That's a lot to unpack!

We jumped on the phone, and Cynthy shared her thoughts on everything Kelly has been experiencing.

So this is a huge season for Kelly, as her dreams are finally realized beyond her imagination. Can you talk about what it's been like for her to get this opportunity to actually go to Mars to test her project?

Oh man, it's been incredible and mind-blowing for Kelly. When we see her at the top of season three, she's camped out in McMurdo Station in a lab, studying bacteria and she's a happy little camper.

And then she gets an opportunity to take all of that research and go to Mars. So I think that she was pretty excited. And then I think as the season progressed, as you saw, she got to experience all the highs and lows along with the crew.

Oh, that's for sure.

Yes.

What challenges has Kelly experienced being on a different Mars mission from her father? They had always imagined that they would do that together, and then that took a left turn.

Well, I think certainly being on the NASA mission, it's her independent mission, right? So it's not having Ed or dad there to guide her at every step, which I think is natural for a young woman who's already out in the world with her own professional career.

So she's hitting the bumps along the road that any young woman in a field would be coming across.

But the difference then is the race aspect that she's competing against her dad to see who gets there first, which is both fun and also like, "Oh gosh, dad is not going to love it if he really doesn't get to be there first, because that's been his whole lifelong thing."

But yeah, we do get to see throughout the season too, how Ed does show up and how all the teams work together to help each other out because Steph goes down and they need each other's help to survive.

I thought it was interesting that she calls him out whenever she finds out about the water project.

Oh yeah. That was a big moment because, well, first of all, the Russians wouldn't be alive without NASA's help because Helios, under Dev Ayesa's guidance, chose not to rescue the Russians who were in distress.

And so then to find out that Helios and the Russians have been working together with their secret of liquid water, you kind of go, "Well, okay, that's a big betrayal because you guys need to bring us in on your findings because you wouldn't even be alive without us."

So that was definitely a huge moment. But obviously Kelly uses that to her advantage.

Sure, sure.

Because, hey, it's like, "Well, dad, obviously, that sucks finding that you guys have been working together behind our backs, but bring me in. I can do this. I have the research, and I know how to handle this to gather what we need." So yeah, like any smart person, she uses that connection to her advantage.

Kelly's also managed to fall in love, which whenever you have close quarters like that, it's probably going to happen.

Yeah.

And she also lost him, which, I mean, it's a nightmare scenario to be someplace that's going to remind her of him nonstop. How's she going to navigate that loss? And that's not even considering that other big moment.

Right. Oh my gosh. So I didn't see it coming, but yes, you're right. She's a young woman; they're living in close quarters, and she found a connection with an unlikely match, but it's a Russian guy.

So I think it was very human, and I love that the writers wrote that because things like this do happen. And I think they had a great connection.

I think Pawel, who plays Alexei did a wonderful job, and we had such great chemistry working together. And so when he was killed off, oh my gosh, I think I actually cried when I got the script.

Aww.

I was like, "Oh my God." We had so much fun working together. He is just the nicest guy. And his journey came to a close on our show, as it often does for folks because space exploration is dangerous, so that part was sad.

Gosh, Kelly's world was just turned upside down because it's like, oh, she fell in love. And then her dad is injured, and she's going out to look for him. And she's going with essentially this new love connection.

And then she comes back, her dad is found, but then her lover dies. And then the big spoiler, like you said, we find out that she's pregnant with his child.

I can't even imagine.

Oh, my gosh.

I mean, nobody planned for a baby on board.

Nobody planned for someone to get pregnant.

Let alone Kelly.

God, when I got that script, I was just floored. And my jaw fell to the ground. I was like, oh my God, is this really happening? I literally felt the implosion, like shit hitting the fan. Are we going there? And it was like, yep, we're going there.

So yeah, it was hard for Kelly to wrap her mind around that, a youthful connection, something that's so human as falling in love and making a mistake that you got pregnant in space, but not just your life, but all of your crew members at risk.

And that's a huge, huge responsibility and such huge guilt that I certainly carried as Kelly towards the end of the season of just, God, of all places to get pregnant. How the fuck did I get pregnant in space? And now, what do we do? You know?

And I have to ask too, I mean, Danny is responsible for all of it; how is she going to wrap her head around the fact that one of her best friends just did this, and now, she lost somebody she fell in love with and who was going to be the father of her child.

Everybody is so close up there. I just imagine that explosion that we saw is going to be nothing compared to the emotional explosions that go through the last two episodes of the season. What can you tease about them?

Yeah. I think for Kelly's purposes, in the remainder of the season in Episodes 9 and 10, I don't think she is aware that Danny Stevens is the one who almost killed her father or got him killed. I don't think she's aware.

Obviously, the viewers were watching, and we know. You guys all know what's going on and how Ed came to be in that place. But I think for Kelly, I don't think Danny would be able to walk into a room without getting smothered if we all knew. You know what I mean?

Right.

But no, Danny Stevens is in Episodes 9 and 10, and he's still a part of the crew and working with everybody to figure out how to help Kelly and how to help deliver Kelly's baby. And that's the end of the season: do they make it? Are we able to help her deliver her baby safely? Yeah.

Oh, nightmarish.

Oh, every day, I was walking in like, "Oh gosh, here we go. Are we going to survive?" It was really just like, oh my God. Forget about exploring space just as non-pregnant humans. Yeah. Strap on a belly and see if you can make it out alive!

Oh my gosh, I can't wait to see it. I mean, this show is just so incredibly written and has so many unexpected turns that I'm sure we're in for yet another amazing finale.

Our writers do such an incredible job of marrying the wonders of exploration and how exciting and forward thinking it all is with the emotional realities of when you're out there fighting in space -- fighting the elements, fighting the unknown.

All of the emotions definitely come to a head, I feel, throughout the season, but certainly to the end of the season. And I can't wait for you guys to watch. It's really remarkable.

For All Mankind Season 3 Episode 8 premieres on Apple TV+ on Friday.

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Carissa Pavlica is the managing editor and a staff writer and critic for TV Fanatic. She's a member of the Critic's Choice Association, enjoys mentoring writers, conversing with cats, and passionately discussing the nuances of television and film with anyone who will listen. Follow her on Twitter and email her here at TV Fanatic.

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For All Mankind's Cynthy Wu on Kelly Baldwin's Triumphs and Tragedies - TV Fanatic

At the recent Space Renaissance Festival held in Berlin, I attended a talk by Michael Waltemathe from the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany on the so-called overview effect, a term coined by author Frank White in his 1987 book of the same name. Science writer Jeffrey Kluger has described this effect as the change that occurs when [astronauts] see the world from above, as a place where borders are invisible, where racial, religious, and economic strife are nowhere to be seen.

That feeling has been experienced by many travelers to space, regardless of gender, ethnicity, or nationality. After spending 20 days in orbit, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Makarov reported, Something about the unexpectedness of this sight, its incompatibility with anything we have ever experienced on Earth elicits a deep emotional response Suddenly, you get a feeling youve never had before That youre an inhabitant of the Earth.

Edgar Mitchell, who walked on the Moon during the Apollo 14 mission in 1971, described it this way:

You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the Moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say: Look at that, you son of a bitch.

Not everyone is likely to feel the same way as Makarov or Mitchell. But the overview effect has been experienced by many professional and non-professional space travelers, including the American-Iranian multimillionaire Anousheh Ansari, who described her experience as life-changing. Given the current state of affairs on our planet, we clearly could benefit from more people gaining this perspective.

At the same time, space exploration, especially human space exploration, seems to have slowed down or at least become less ambitious over the past couple of decades. Yes, there are still triumphs like the recent launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. But in the nearly half-century since the Viking mission, there hasnt been a single spacecraft sent to Mars or any other planetary body explicitly devoted to detecting life.

For the cost of the Iraq War, we could already have a station on Mars with 10-12 inhabitants.

New missions to Venus and the outer Solar System are on the drawing board, but all too often these plans get delayed or even cancelled. I was on the preliminary science definition team for a planned mission to Europa about 20 years ago. During our discussions, we concluded that a basketball-sized lander to analyze the Europan ice for remnants of organic compounds and possibly life should be included in the mission. A Europa lander remains stuck in the conceptual stage.

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In the 1980s, plans for a lunar outpost never materialized. Instead, we launched space shuttles and built the International Space Station (ISS). While the ISS did maintain a presence in Earth orbit, it did not fulfill early hopes of propelling us to become a space-faring society (which may only now start to happen due to the initiative of private space companies).

Interest in a human mission to Mars has rekindled after a long hiatus. But even that effort seems stalled. When I attended NASAs First Mars Human Landing Site Workshop in Houston in 2015, the first astronauts were expected to arrive on the Red Planet in the mid-2030s. Current NASA estimates are way less optimistic, although SpaceX still talks about that as a realistic timeline.

Even projects we might consider much more pressing have gotten bogged down. The survival of our species may depend on our ability to detect threatening asteroids, yet progress on this front has been slow. While more asteroids are detectable today than 20 or 30 years ago thanks to programs like the Near Earth Object Observation Program, we are still not doing everything we can to reduce that risk or any other existential risks to our planet. Nor have we prepared for how to react if and when we detect intelligent extraterrestrial life.

Space exploration is certainly expensive, but it has brought us many new inventions used in daily life. LEDs, asphalt roofing shingles, water filters, smoke detectors, and freeze-dry technology are only a few examples. And expensive is a relative term. In a conversation I once had with my colleague and friend, the late Rob Bowman from New Mexico Tech, he mentioned that for the cost of the Iraq War, we could already have a station on Mars with 10-12 inhabitants.

Another colleague, Ed Guinan from Villanova University, used to do a lot of work in the developing countries of Africa. He once told me that students from those countries want to be inspired, to be part of the global community that reaches for the stars. Astronomy programs have now started in many African countries like South Africa, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and several others. Space always triggers humanitys dreams and aspirations. Personally, I like that about our species. Exploration is in our blood, and it brings out the good in us.

No doubt, there are many other problems on our planet to resolve more every day, it seems. But the overview effect gives us perhaps the most important perspective of all. We are living on a fragile planet with a thin veneer, our atmosphere, as our only lifeline. We need to overcome our petty differences and realize our vulnerabilities. Maybe more of us need to experience, or at least fully appreciate, the overview effect.

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The overview effect is another reason to speed up space exploration - Big Think

STS-115 mission specialists Astronauts Daniel C. Burbank and Steven G. MacLean, representing the Canadian Space Agency, participate in the second of three scheduled space walks on the International Space Station on September 13, 2006. As satellites and other manmade bodies proliferate in space, so does space junk.

Photo: NASA/Getty Images

As space exploration from both the private sector and governments continues to grow, not only does the number of orbiting satellites increase, so too does the amount of space junk, or debris.

Every mission to space leaves a debris signature. For example, small fragments of paint are released as a natural consequence of the separation activities between a launcher and its payload. Some debris incursion is unavoidable, but debris mitigation is fast becoming a priority for regulators that license commercial activity.

We have already witnessed the incursion of pollution in general into the Earths oceans. Now is the time to take steps so that space does not suffer the same fate and remains sustainable.

The proliferation of debris in space, which has virtually doubled in the past 10 years (see Figure 1), is the equivalent of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. The Western Garbage Patch, located near Japan, and the Eastern Garbage Patch, located between Hawaii and California, are vortices of debris bound by the massive North Pacific Subtropical Gyre.

Figure 1: The Number of Objects in All Orbits Has Grown Significantly Between 1960 and 2020

Polluting the sea causes damage to marine life and the marine environment. For humans, this manifests itself in the food chain.

Space is different. Debris, which performs no function, is simply a hazard to another object that is intended to be in space. Orbital paths cross one another, and launching new satellites into space is similar to crossing a three-lane road. There needs to be a gap in each lane to be able to cross safely. If traffic increases significantly, crossing the road becomes difficult.

In simple terms, too much debris would spell the end of access to space.

The International Telecommunications Union describes space exploration as the backbone of modern communication technologies. Behind every phone call, internet search, remote financial transaction, and many other daily activities is space technology.

The presence of space debris may not lead to large hunks of metal falling from the skies. Still, it poses a significant threat to our day-to-day lives. Information from satellites provide our transport systems with global positioning, our banking systems with transaction timing, and our aircraft and shipping sectors with up-to-date and accurate positioning services. We rely significantly on satellites, and most of us engage with 20 to 30 satellites before we finish our morning coffee or send our first work email.

Further commercialization of space will bring even more benefits. There are a host of new applications, including environmental and crop monitoring, more accurate weather forecasting, and the manufacturing in space of industrial and pharmaceutical materials that cannot be manufactured on Earth. These will bring huge benefits to society.

Space agencies regulate the activities of commercial actors that operate from their given state. Recently, we have seen increased focus on finding the best way to promote sustainability by mitigating the risk, managing the way space objects are dealt with, and removing debris.

Ideally, operations should be conducted in a way that the mission produces minimal debris and leaves little, if anything, behind in space. Operators should be encouraged to commit to behaving as good citizens and construct their spacecraft in a way that reduces the debris signature during launch, operation, and at the end of the missions life. The ability for a satellite to be able to maneuver is an important consideration because it means it can avoid a collision. It also means the satellite can be moved to a safe graveyard orbit or deliberately de-orbited at the end of its life.

Keeping as much debris out of space as possible may necessitate coordinating activity to avoid collisions by using tracking and positioning equipment that can determine the precise location of objects. A number of commercial entities are now able to accurately locate the position of objects that are just 1 millimeter in size. This level of accuracy will help operators avoid collisions, which would otherwise increase the amount of debris in space.

The process of active debris removal entails seeking out known hazards, capturing them, and removing them from their orbits so that they no longer pose a hazard to other spacecraft. A live spacecraft connects to a defunct piece of debris and then transports it to a graveyard orbit. This type of mission is more suitable for low earth orbit activity. The debris is dropped off in a very low orbit, which causes it to enter the Earths atmosphere and burn up on re-entry.

Alternatively, debris can be stored in space. In this scenario, the debris is picked up and placed in a safe orbit to make a compact and managed debris cloud. Debris in the cloud may even be held in orbiting trash can-type structures. The debris can then be salvaged and materials recycled for manufacturing new hardware in space. While this may sound farfetched, and there are considerable legal challenges to overcome, it is a very real prospect.

The U.K. Space Agency is one of the global space agencies leading the way in these matters: The U.K.sNational Space Strategysets out a bold vision for the sector, recognizing the need of making space safe and sustainable.

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As we move toward greater commercial exploitation of space, with all of the benefits that it may bring, let us not forget one of the most fundamental aspects funding. The space sector has a new breed of entrepreneurs who bring fresh ideas that will benefit society in ways that we have never imagined. They are in touch with their sustainability and environmental credentials and, therefore, expect more from their suppliers and partners and want the people they work with to share their values.

The prioritization of sustainability features strongly when it comes to accessing financing for space missions. Lenders and investors are today far more focused on environmental, social, and governance issues when it comes to deciding whether to participate in projects. With ambitious sustainability targets, lenders and venture capitalists need to demonstrate to their shareholders and investors that they are making strong ethical decisions.

Access to space is imperative to our day-to-day lives, underscoring the importance that it is protected. The good news is that those involved seem to be engaging with the issue in a more timely manner than we have when it came to protecting the High Seas.

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Does Space Exploration Have a Sustainability Problem? BRINK Conversations and Insights on Global Business - BRINK

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Science Voice: Is space exploration a waste of money? - Herald Review

Three big hunks of space junk have been found in rural Australia, suspected to be detritus from a SpaceX mission launched in 2020. Now it's time for the less exciting part of space exploration: the cleanup.

The unidentified fallen objects were found between July 14 and 25, scattered across the Snowy Mountains region of the state of New South Wales. The latest piece, discovered by sheep farmer Mick Miners, stands nearly 10 feet tall and is firmly embedded in a paddock by one end.

Understandably, Miners was initially baffled by his unexpected find. His neighbour Jock Wallace, who also found some debris, was told by Australia's Civil Aviation Safety Authority to talk to NASA about it.

"I'm a farmer from Dalgety, what am I going to say to NASA?" Wallace asked Australia's ABC News. Dalgety is a small town by the Snowy River, with a population of 252.

Fortunately, these humble farmers won't have to figure out what to do with the space junk themselves. The Australian Space Agency is working with the U.S. to determine exactly what the chunks of metal are and who they belong to. The piece found by Miners at least appears to have a serial number, which should help.

While the formal identification process is still underway, informally it's believed Australia's surprise installation art comes courtesy of SpaceX specifically its Crew Dragon Resilience.

SpaceX's Crew-1 flight transported four astronauts to the International Space Station in November 2020, successfully conducting the company's first operational crewed mission. The same capsule subsequently returned them to Earth in early May last year, with jettisoned debris from the mission expected to reenter the atmosphere approximately two months later.

As noted by astronomer Jonathan McDowell, Dalgety is near the Dragon's July 8 re-entry path (or July 9 in Australia, as it's across the international dateline from the U.S.). Several Australians reported hearing a sonic boom and seeing a fast-moving object in the sky at the time.

Though this particular piece of plummeting death landed in an empty field, a recent study found there's a one in 10 chance somebody will be killed by falling space debris within the next 10 years. People in the Global South are also at higher risk that is, areas such as Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania, as opposed to Western and European countries. Australia is considered part of the Global North.

SpaceX hasn't yet acknowledged or claimed its alleged space litter. Yet even if CEO Elon Musk continues to pretend he does not see it, he may not necessarily have to pick up after himself.

According to Article 7 of the UN's Outer Space Treaty and the Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects, the country from which a rocket is launched is responsible for any damage it causes. These agreements have been ratified by both Australia and the U.S., meaning that the American government may be left to clean up Musk's suspected mess.

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Space junk found on Australian farms suspected to be from SpaceX - Mashable

OSHKOSH - Hey there, Delilah, what's it like in Oshkosh, kitty?

The Experimental Aircraft Association's annualAirVenture convention and fly-in draws aviation-lovers from all over the world including a new four-legged plane enthusiast who snuck into a camper to make the almost 1,400-mile drive from Saint Albans, Maine, to Oshkosh.

Delilah, who made noise among the AirVenturecrowdon social media by being the #stowawayoshkoshcat, wasn't discovered until her family made their first stop after 15 hours of driving in Toledo, Ohio.

"She's having the time of her life," said one of her owners, Andrea Scholten, who came to AirVenture with her husband, Jason, and kids.

Backin Maine, Andrea said, Delilah normally doesn't venture far from home, especially compared to the Scholtens'other three cats. Delilah is more of a homebody.

That is, Andrea's daughtersAmber and Marissa Scholtentold USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin, besides that one timeshe tried to board the school bus with them. She was less successful that time.

The Scholtens weren't sure how Delilah would do after they finally found her, but they scrambled to get all the feline necessities and said she's enjoyed just watching the planes go by from the beds inside their camper.

Word spread fast of Delilah's attendance, even prompting one pilot to draw a cat in the sky with the white contrails his plane left in its wake.

The biggest question people keep asking, Andrea said, is if they are going to bring her again next year.

"We might have to," she said.

While the stowaway cat added a layer of unexpected joy for the Scholtens and other AirVenture-goers, the week was jam-packed with memorable moments.

At a media briefing Saturday morning, Dick Knapinski, EAA's director of communications,gave a conservative total of more than 2,000 international guests from 83 countries over the span of the week.

As of the end of the day Friday, there were over 15,500 take-offs and landings just on-site in Oshkosh there were over 22,000 when including the site in Fond du Lac.

This year's conventionhad highs and lows over the course of the week and was blanketed by beautiful weather nearly the entire time.

Here's a look back on some of the highlights fromAirVenture 2022.

The week started off with somber news thatTom Poberezny, 75, a longtime EAA president and son of EAA founder Paul Poberezny, died around 2 a.m. Monday after a brief illness.

Poberezny was known as the man who elevated the convention to a "world-level aviation event." His recognizableVolkswagen Beetle, "Red 3," was displayed during the week, alongside other memorabilia from his time with the association.

And while AirVenture is overflowing with planes quite literally becoming the busiest control tower in the worldfor the week the aviation celebration is just as much about the people who fill the grounds.

LikeMargaret Viola, a 2006 Oshkosh West High School graduatewho started selling T-shirts at AirVenture when she was 14 and has gone on to dedicate her career to the aviation industry.

As a high schooler, Viola witnessed the start of WomenVenture 15 years agothat turned into an annualeventthatdraws hundreds of women together each year during AirVenture.

Viola wasn't the only Wisconsin woman who got her start at EAA at a young age before soaring off to a successful flying career.

A northern Wisconsin native,1stOfficer Sheila Baldwin, returned to EAA this year for the first time since she attended 35 years ago as a kid to be part of the flight demonstration. This time, she was flying the Team USA Delta Airbus.

Speaking of young attendees, EAA's Young Eagles celebrated 30 years of taking kids on their first flights. The programintroduces and inspires children between 8 and 17 to consider aviation and is now even seeing some of its earliest fliers coming back after making their own careers in aviation, such asDavid Leiting, who helps coordinate flights after taking his own as an 8-year-old in 2002.

Although hundreds, if not thousands, of airplanes were on the grounds this week, there were conversations during the convention about the pilot shortage driven by work conditions, low wages and disrupted schedules.

There was also thoughtful conversation and questioning of the environmental cost of the beloved hobby.

Greenhouse gas emissions may just be a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of global emissions, but the lead emissions from aviation gasoline accounted for about70% of lead air emissions in the United States, according to a 2021 study.

EAA has a rich history, but this year's convention also carved out time to talk about the future, particularly the future of space exploration.Crew of the Polaris Dawn mission, which plans to put civilians in a low Earth orbit, were on-hand, as well as representativesfrom the Artemis I mission, which plans to land the first woman and first person of color onthe Moon.

This year marked the return of EAA's honor flight. Before Friday, there hadn't been one since 2019 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The flight, which left EAA ground at 5 a.m. Friday, took veterans to Washington, D.C., to visit, among other sites, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.For many of the veterans involved, it was their first time visiting the memorial.

The special day was made possible by Old Glory Honor Flight, a nonprofit based in Appleton that flies veterans to Washington, D.C., as well as hosts special missions to Vietnam and Pearl Harbor, in conjunction with EAA AirVenture and American Airlines.

So whether you came to reminisce with old war planes or marvel at the prospects of space exploration or fuel your child's dream to fly their own plane someday, AirVenture 2022 went off without a hitch and is in position for a smooth landing.

Reach AnnMarie Hilton at ahilton@gannett.com or 920-370-8045. Follow her on Twitter at @hilton_annmarie.

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EAA AirVenture 2022 in Oshkosh featured stowaway cat, other takeaways - Oshkosh Northwestern

The world recently saw a glimpse of something weve never seen before: the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the early universe ever taken. And it was all thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope.

This is a magnificent achievement, and it wouldnt have been possible without the help of several Utahns all of whom deserve some recognition:

Working with NASA nearly 20 years ago, Materion engineered a special grade of gas-atomized beryllium from a mineral mine at Spor Mountain in Juab County to construct the telescope. Beryllium is one-third lighter than aluminum, extremely stiff, and stable at very low temperatures. This metal helped scientists engineer the telescopes primary, secondary, and tertiary mirror segments that allow us to see deeper into the universe.

If it wasnt for the beryllium mined in Utah, you wouldnt see the images youre seeing today, says Keith Smith, Materions vice president of nuclear and science. Ive worked on this for 25 years everything good is worth waiting for. And, throughout the company, were all just so excited.

Materion also supplied highly-engineered metals that make up the telescopes energy-producing solar panels, new bands for the NIRCam instrument, filters for the Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph, and NIRCam coronographic occulting masks that help block out things that scientists dont need to see.

Through partnerships with federal, state, and local partners, Materion has been able to mine and process beryllium while also reclaiming its land and creating a robust local workforce.

Materion has been excellent for the Delta community and for Utah in general, says Tom Henrie, global operations sustainability manager for Materion. Were really proud of the work being done here.

Were continually impressed by the forward-facing technology Materion engineers and are thankful for the hard-working crews who help provide these materials!

Moxtek also contributed to the James Webb Space Telescopes groundbreaking mirror.

The Orem-based company collaborated with 4D Technology in Arizona to develop a wire-grid pixelated polarizer used to measure the flatness and quality of the telescopes mirrors.

Moxtek became involved with this project over a decade ago when NASA approached 4D Technology to develop an optical tool to measure the flatness of the JWSTs telescope mirrors. 4D Technology successfully developed their approach using Moxteks advanced pixelated polarizer.

Theres so much we dont know about the universe that were going to be learning from this telescope, and we at Moxtek take a lot of pride in our contribution to this project, says Shaun Ogden, senior product manager at Moxtek. Without Moxteks polarizers, measuring the telescope mirrors with the required accuracy wouldnt have been possible.

Moxteks products have been used more than 10 times by NASA and the European Space Agency for space flight. Were thankful for this collaborative effort and look forward to seeing what else Moxtek accomplishes in the future.

Northrop Grumman, the largest aerospace and defense company in Utah, also played a big role in the production of the James Webb Space Telescope.

Northrop Grumman worked with then Magna-based aerospace manufacturer Orbital ATK to build the backplane structure that holds the telescopes mirrors and optical instruments in place.

Northrop Grumman is proud to lead our industry partners in the design, build, and total system integration of the observatory, said Tom Wilson, corporate vice president and president, Space Systems Sector, Northrop Grumman. Were opening a new era of space exploration with [the telescope images], thanks to the groundbreaking engineering and partnership with NASA and the science community.

Northrop Grumman has since acquired Orbital ATK and continues to work with NASA on projects that Utahns and people around the world can be proud of.

NASAs James Webb Space Telescope, created out of a partnership with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, launched Dec. 25, 2021, from Europes Spaceport in French Guiana, South America.

After completing a complex deployment sequence in space, the telescope underwent months of commissioning where its mirrors were aligned, and its instruments were calibrated to its space environment and prepared for science. All this led to the jaw-dropping images released on July 12, 2022.

Congratulations to everyone who has put so much effort into this. This administration joins the world in celebrating the science that brought us this incredible imagery.

Thank you all, and keep up the good work!

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How Utahns helped launch the James Webb Space Telescope - Utah Governor

For a planetary scientist, Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University has what is perhaps a particularly eclectic resume.

She has worked in business, raised sheep and border collies, and taught math, among other jobs. Today, she's the principal investigator of NASA's Psyche mission, a spacecraft designed to explore the asteroid of the same name, which appears to be primarily made of metal. She tells the story of all of these experiences and much more in her new memoir, "A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman (opens in new tab)," (William Morrow, 2022).

Space.com sat down with Elkins-Tanton to discuss her new book, how she came to planetary science, why she fights harassment in academia, and more. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Related: Best space and sci-fi books for 2021

Space.com: How did the book come about for you?

Lindy Elkins-Tanton: I was contemplating writing a book about the history of exploration. I'm very interested in the roles of wealth and gender and society and nationality in the history of exploration. I started talking to an agent about it, and she said, "You know, that's interesting, but your story is way more interesting." So we started talking about a different book, and I was so excited that anybody would be interested.

Space.com: How did you decide to make it so personal?

Elkins-Tanton: To me, that human experience is just the more interesting and useful part. You can read facts about science and things like that lots of places. But when I'm reading even a book that's mostly about science or mostly about exploration or mostly about space I really want to know what the person is doing, what they were thinking, how they got there, why they made the choices that they did. I feel like that's what makes it really pertinent and interesting.

And to me, that's the part of my story that may be unusual and interesting to others that I didn't have some kind of straight shot, I didn't know where I was going from the beginning. In high school, I really thought, "Do I want to pursue music? Or is it really science that I'm interested in?" And then when it was science, I was really thinking I wanted to do animal behavior. I ended up in geology, which is also a thing that I really love, but then my curiosity about the world was stronger than my confidence in myself as a scientist. And so I was very curious to learn about business and that's when, after my undergrad, I went and worked in business for a number of years. And it was so interesting to see the many ways that people organize teams and try to get things done and what motivates people and it was very different than academia.

Space.com: You mentioned your roundabout path how has that lived experience informed the work you do?

Elkins-Tanton: When I went back to academia for grad school, I had some people say to me, things like, "It's too bad that you spent all this time doing business, but now you're back on track." There was this feeling that it was late and I'd done myself a disservice.

I had people say, "Wasn't it awful working in business where everyone's so cutthroat?" And I would say that's not so much my experience actually. A high-powered academic place can be more cutthroat than anywhere else that I know.

I saw the power of having a common goal, which in business is often the bottom line, sell the product, whatever it is. But having a bottom line does unite people and that's something that has been so motivating to me in the larger projects that I've put together. And of course, the biggest of them all is the Psyche mission. Everyone on the team wants to build this robot to go to space and find out what this asteroid is that no humans have ever looked at before. And that motivating commonality pulls the whole team together. I feel like it's those moments when humans are at their best. So that's one of the things that I really brought with me from the business world: That having a world where each person is really out for themselves, the way it is in some parts of academia, is not actually the best way to make either progress or a nice workplace.

Space.com: There's a chapter where you write about several years of fieldwork you conducted in Siberia looking for geologic signs of what caused the massive end-Permian extinction. What was it like to look back on that fieldwork?

Elkins-Tanton: Going back and thinking about all that Siberia work was so much fun. I think in retrospect, it even seems more exotic and more fantastical than it did at the time. It was really almost the sweetest kind of revisiting. It's not that far in the past I just published another paper about all that stuff just last year but 2006 is a little while ago now and revisiting what it smells like to be there and how things tasted, the food that we ate and the ways that we got transported around and just seeing Russia on the inside and thinking about that in today's context all of it was so much fun to revisit for me.

Space.com: Throughout the book, you write about dealing with harassment in academia. Why was it important to you to include those experiences?

Elkins-Tanton: The things that I really wanted to write about, I found, were the things that were very emotionally resonant to me. Either they had been difficult or surprising or they'd led me to some little realization about people. Those were the parts of the story that felt to me like they were just itching to get out onto the page.

Learning about how organizations and teams make themselves function better and be safer for more people has been a crazy learning experience. One of the things I've really learned about it is something that might seem completely obvious: Not everyone cares about that stuff. People who do not feel endangered or don't empathize with those who are harassed or bullied, those few people who've never been harassed or bullied, may not feel super motivated to take care of that kind of team culture problem.

The other thing I've learned is that to make change in human organizations is slow. I think in this case, in particular, you need both ends of the hierarchy to be working toward a common goal. You need the rank and file, so to speak, all of us doing the day-to-day work, to be willing to report and to be willing to press for a better culture, to hold leadership accountable. That's scary and hard to do.

And then on the other hand, the leadership has to be determined to make an ethically correct, well-functioning organization. It's so much easier a lot of times for leaders to find a way to pass somebody by and not censure them, not reprimand them, not fire them when they have misbehaved, because often those are the people who have power and have benefit to the organizations. The leaders have to be determined that creating a situation where people don't get harassed and don't get bullied is more important. It's almost like you need a little perfect storm of many elements to get an organization to really work on it.

Space.com: You mentioned earlier that you had been thinking about writing a book on the history of exploration. How do you think about the idea of exploration?

Elkins-Tanton: I wonder if we take a little bit for granted, especially those of us who are interested in space exploration, that we are able to do so much exploration of our solar system purely in the service of science and the knowledge that we accrue to humankind this way.

When you look backward in time, science was never the motivator for big exploration. Science came as a ridealong, right? Charles Darwin was the gentleman companion to the captain of the ship who was going out to do surveying and create a better economic environment for England. It had nothing to do with discovering evolution or any kind of science, that's what Darwin basically did in his spare time.

There are so many examples where exploration was really all about nationalism, or heroism, or most importantly about commerce and business. And now we live in this amazing world where we can actually do exploration just in the service of learning more.

As a kid, I was so taken with stories of exploration: The first Europeans to go to Africa, what animals do they find, this kind of thing. I just ate those books up, I still have them, the same copies of the books that I read.

It wasn't until I got to college that I realized that women basically were never invited to do that work. Having a world now where it's a little more possible for women to lead explorations is pretty amazing. And of course, it's not just women, it's where are you in the socioeconomic ladder, what is the color of your skin compared to other people around you, all those things that can hold people back.

But exploration's history of exclusion doesn't mean that the rest of us don't want to go learn and discover and explore. There's this sort of shiny world that we imagine ourselves in that's a little more complicated once you scratch the surface.

Space.com: What do you hope people get out of the book?

Elkins-Tanton: The thing that I'm really hoping is that there'll be some human connection for everybody, that we will all have had some common experience, and so it'll almost feel like meeting a person and knowing them a little bit. I would really love that. And also maybe there is an aspect of encouragement for people who are coming along in their careers that you don't have to know all the answers from the beginning and that you can trust yourself. Where your joy takes you is a good place.

Space.com: Is there anything else about the book you'd like to share?

Elkins-Tanton: One thing that I wasn't even super clear about myself when I started writing the book, and then it became really obvious to me, was that when I was in my late 20s, I was really in a mess. I had lots of anxiety and depression and all these nightmares and I was a single mom, and I had different kinds of things going on that I needed to work on. At that moment, I don't think there was much about me that said I was going to be effective or make a path of any variety.

And so I think it's good for me, at least, to remember that sometimes people don't shine as brightly as they might and that with some support and encouragement, amazing things can happen. Maybe the lesson is always look past that first impression you have of a person and see what else they have to offer.

You can buy "A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman" on Amazon (opens in new tab) or Bookshop.org (opens in new tab).

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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In 'A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman,' a personal story of coming to planetary science - Space.com

For ages, AI has always been portrayed as the antagonist in pop culture and movies, be it the iconic HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Auto in Wall-E, T-1000 in the Terminator series, or Ultron in Avengers: Age of Ultron. But is this the future of AI that we are really heading towards? Will every AI program become sentient, self-aware, go rogue, and cause massive destruction?

Well, no! The future of AI brings endless possibilities and applications that will help simplify our lives to a great extent. It will help shape the future and destiny of humanity positively. So, how will the future of AI affect humans? Lets find out.

7 Ways AI Will Affect Humans In Our Future

AI has already made deep inroads in the transportation sector. Autonomous vehicles are everywhere already. Major auto manufacturers and tech giants like Tesla, Google, General Motors, and others have already developed reliable autonomous vehicles that enable a safe driverless driving experience.

The future of AI will further increase and enhance the applications of AI in autonomous vehicles. For example, while we currently see autonomous driving restricted mostly to cars, we can see the technology being used in trucks, buses, motorcycles, and others. Similarly, we can also have true driverless automobiles with enhanced safety and user experience. The future of AI in transportation is truly exciting and enticing!

AI is the next big frontier in the education sector. It is poised to change offline and online education, helping students and teachers explore new realms in the field. The future of AI in education will see robot tutors that will assist teachers and help enhance the quality of education imparted. For example, if a teacher accidentally skips an important concept, the AI tutor will quickly alert the teacher. AI robot tutors will also take control of repetitive tasks like checking the students homework or taking class attendance. This can help save time and resources.

Stanford Universitys panel of leading AI academics has this to say about the future of AI in education, Over the next 15 years in a typical North American city, the use of intelligent tutors and other AI technologies to assist teachers in the classroom and in the home is likely to expand significantly.

Healthcare is one of the most crucial sectors where AI is making a huge impact, simplifying processes and helping save millions of lives. Its impact is set to increase further in the future. As per Deloitte, the future of AI in healthcare will:

Enhance the quality of care and improve productivity

Improve patient engagement levels and streamline their access to patient care

Increase the speed and reduce the costs of developing new procedures and treatments

Personalize healthcare facilities and treatments with data analytics tools to provide better diagnosis and treatment

Hopefully, we will also find the balance between medical data access and privacy to ensure patient data confidentiality, which currently poses a major hurdle in implementing AI in healthcare.

We already have AI home robots that can do various tasks like cleaning, mowing, and vacuuming. However, in their current form, these robots are not that intelligent. Their capabilities are also limited.

The future of AI will see home robots having enhanced intelligence, increased capabilities, and becoming more personal and possibly cute. For example, home robots will overcome navigation, direction, and object detection issues, enabling them to carry out tasks more efficiently. General Electric states, "The home robot will be not just a capable assistant, but something with personalitylife-like, a companion in the home that you actually like having around.

The 1987 sci-fi movie Robocops perhaps provided a glimpse into the future of using AI robots as cops. Robocops will be seen fighting and investigating crimes. Moreover, the future of AI robocops will also see them being used for other police duties, such as safeguarding prisons, taking over administrative tasks, controlling crime scenes, or answering 911 calls.

However, the most exciting application of AI in policing is predicting crimes, somewhat along the lines of the future shown in Minority Report. Thanks to advanced facial and behavior recognition, object detection, pattern recognition, and other capabilities, AI tools will help prevent crimes from occurring in the first place. This will help save countless lives, property damage, and other crime-related losses.

Major space exploration organizations, like NASA, are already using AI for unmanned shuttles, rovers, and probes to explore distant galaxies. These AI robots can detect objects and obstructions, find safe paths, and help discover new locations that werent otherwise possible.

In the future, the use of AI in space exploration will help right from mission planning, to execution, to operations, to the completion stage. Moreover, they will also detect and help prevent catastrophic events, like a meteor impact or spacecraft component failure. This will help enhance space exploration missions' efficiency, output, and safety. We can safely conclude that the future of AI in space exploration is bright as the stars and galaxies it is helping us to find!

Robotic soldiers are not a sci-fi concept anymore. They are already being used autonomously in various war missions to aid human soldiers. They are helping change the way wars are fought, in a good as well as a bad way. For example, on the one hand, they are helping reduce human casualties. On the other hand, they are causing more destruction. Then, there is also the question of the ethics of using robots without any human control in wars.

However, the use of robots in wars will only increase in the future. We can see entire wars being fought using AI robots. However, rules and regulations will be developed by international bodies regarding the type and role of robot soldiers that can be used in wars. Moreover, we believe that using complete autonomous robot soldiers in wars will never see the day of light. Some human control will be required to ensure that robots dont go rogue and cause significant mass destruction.

So, what is the future of AI, and how will it affect humans? Well, we can see that the use of AI will keep on increasing as the technology becomes more advanced. It will help streamline various operations and simplify our lives to a great extent.

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7 Ways AI Will Affect Humans In Our Future - Forbes