Category Archives: Space Exploration

Nearly 55 years ago, when actress Nichelle Nichols graced the screen as Lt. Nyota Uhura on the television series Star Trek, it illustrated the importance of representation. The 88-year-old trailblazer was recently honored by NASA for driving diversity in STEM forward, People reported.

Throughout her entire career, Nichols used her artistry to show Black women and girls the limitless possibilities that awaited them within the realm of space exploration. The Robbins, Ill. native made history as the first African American woman to play a lead character on television as Lt. Nyota Uhura.

A songstress and dancer, Nichols went on to be featured in different projects under the Star Trek franchise, including Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. In the 70s, Nichols founded the company Women in Motion, Inc. to use education as a vessel to empower people of color to pursue careers in the space industry.

During this years Los Angeles Comic Con festivities, Nichols was honored for her impactful and transformative work on and off the screen through an array of panels. She was diagnosed with dementia three years ago, making the commemoration even more memorable.

As part of the convention, she was awarded the NASA Exceptional Public Achievement Medal for playing an instrumental role in diversifying the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. After accepting the medal presented by NASA Astronaut Appearance Specialist Denise Young, Nichols received a standing ovation.

This is an exceptional recognition, and Im of course very proud of her for all that shes done, and the value and the meaning of her work, her son Kyle Johnson said after his mother received the award. Not just as an actress, but very real and important work that she inspired and enabled people to understand.

Nichols also received heartwarming messages from those who she has inspired, including actress Sonequa Martin-Green and Dr. Mae C. Jemison. This isnt the first time Nichols has been honored by NASA. In 1984, she received the agencys Public Service Award.

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Star Trek Trailblazer Nichelle Nichols Caught In Messy Conservatorship Battle

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Legendary Actress And Activist Nichelle Nichols Honored By NASA - NewsOne

In a new MasterClass, over 13 lessons, Nye shares a timely reminder: Science isstilleverywhere.

Say the name Bill Nye, someone might yell "the science guy," and a nearby millennial will unlock a memory. They're sitting in a classroom as their teacher rolls out a cart holding an outdated television. The lights dim, the room cools. They're buckled up for what feels like the apex of all science videos.

An unforgettable theme song, "Bill, Bill, Bill" starts ringing in their ears. Wearing a snazzy bow tie, the former mechanical engineer appears on screen with a gooey experiment to explain how science permeates everything.

But since childhood, kids who grew up on the show -- myself included -- haven't all had time to think about volcanoes, comets and electric currents. We're too busy worrying about taxes, deadlines and politics.

The world has progressed since then too. Space exploration is opening up to the megarich and there's talk of settling Mars and planting a science base on the moon. The climate crisis is in full force, and for the last two years, a deadly pandemic has been imperiling the globe.

But in a new MasterClass, over 13 lessons, Nye shares a timely reminder: Science is still everywhere.

"Look around the room where you are," he said over the phone in the same enthusiastic tone of Bill Nye, the Science Guy episodes. "Every shape you can see came out of somebody's head. Somebody thought of that." That someone, he says, was likely an engineer trained in science.

To Nye, science isn't just awesome, it offers a way to look at the world. "It's about philosophy," Nye said in a much more serious tone. "It's about a way of thinking."

If there's one thing I've learned from Nye, it's that the scientific method isn't just for science.

The format goes something like this: You notice a phenomenon, come up with a hypothesis for why it's happening, design an experiment to test that hypothesis, run the experiment and see how the results stack up. Then you start over to strengthen your evidence.

"I've asked people, 'When you paint a wall, does the paint get dry from the top before the bottom or does it dry from the bottom up?' People say to me, well, which is it? And I say, try it. Don't take my word for it, try it. You can know this."

After several trials, if your hypothesis turns out to be wrong, you can make a new one. Being wrong isn't a bad thing, Nye insists, but a productive step toward truth -- and the beginning of any process is key to fostering a better outcome.

"We all want to hurry; we all want to just get started," he said of anyone painting the walls of a room. "But I claim there's great value in figuring out how much paint you're going to need, what color it's really going to be, what size and style of brush you're going to need and taking all the time to cover the furniture and the floor and everything else before you start painting."

When it comes to scientific topics, scientists perform this method with infinitesimally great detail over many, many years. As such, Nye distinguishes between matters we should personally study from the bottom up and those we must trust experts on.

At the crux of public discussions right now are two undeniably scientific topics: the global pandemic and the climate crisis. But in an era of misinformation, those discussions don't always align with scientific truth.

"We have an enormous number of people here, in the world's most technically advanced society, who don't want to get vaccinated because they believe that their online research is every bit as valid as scientific research conducted by medical professionals," Nye said, calling it his "mission in life" to help people filter past false information on the internet.

To date, over 5 million people worldwide have died of COVID-19, but according to Our World In Data, only 57% of the global population has received at least one dose of the life-saving vaccine. Among other things, the low number is the result of hesitancy and insufficient supply, particularly to low-income nations.

"We would be done with this pandemic if our society had embraced the importance of it and not only gotten vaccinated, but exported vaccines to the developing world so that we wouldn't have the omicron variant, by way of example," Nye said.

He emphasized that right now is a terrific time to place value in the work of scientists. "People are scared," he said. "And that's where knowledge is of great value -- that's how you can overcome fear."

From the lab to your inbox. Get the latest science stories from CNET every week.

Climate change, on the other hand, grows more concerning by the day. Having already heavily impacted developing regions like Bangladesh and threatening large swaths of richer countries like the US, it's responsible for an increase in forest fires, cyclones, droughts, animal extinction and several other forms of devastation.

In Climates,a season 3 episode of Bill Nye, the Science Guy, Nye uses a replica of Earth and a space heater to demonstrate global warming. "The globe is getting too warm," he said. "So, we've gotta be careful."

Twenty-six years and many fractions of a degree later -- in tandem with the conclusion of the COP26 conference, where government representatives intended to come up with a plan to cut carbon emissions that contribute to Earth's warming -- Nye says leaders "were unable or unwilling to propose and adhere to the extraordinary measures we almost certainly need to exercise."

In a nod to 2006 documentary film An Inconvenient Truth, which follows Al Gore's quest to educate the public about climate change, Nye suggests representatives express a limited reaction because it's just too "inconvenient" to stop burning coal, for instance, even though science shows coal burning could contribute to the erosion of Earth's atmosphere.

Science says climate change isn't a future possibility -- it's already happening.

Still, Nye exuded a familiar air of optimism, paralleling the mood of his MasterClass lessons. "The world is slowly changing," he said, "and I'm excited about the future because young people are not going to keep this up."

Enjoying the measuring, Nye says, is just as important as distilling a conclusion; a grand understanding of basic science can aid us on smaller scales, even serendipitously.

"We each have ancestors that took the risk of going over the hill into the unknown valley, just to see what was over there -- and made some extraordinary discovery," he said.

Nye calls the cost of endeavors like space exploration "tiny" compared with the benefits they'll one day afford us. Whether it be finding life on another world, which he believes will change our world, or something relatively simpler, "basic research is almost priceless."

"There's a hexagonal storm on the north pole of Saturn -- a six-sided storm," Nye pointed out. "You know why it has six sides and it's at the north pole of Saturn? Nobody knows. But once that's figured out, I guarantee you it will inform our understanding of weather on Earth."

Spanning 20,000 miles and whipping up winds of 200 miles per hour, this massive six-sided storm clustered around Saturn's north pole captured by NASA's Cassini mission is a sight to behold.

One reservation he has is with the concept of creating a civilization on Mars, calling it "much harder than it looks -- there's no air, there's no food." In particular, he compares a settlement on the red planet to living in Antarctica. Though humans have sailed all over the world for centuries, he said, no one has set up camp to live long-term in Antarctica.

"I'm open-minded, but Mars is really cold. I just don't think you want to settle. Having a science base where they're going outside in their spacesuits looking for stuff, that I am on board with."

In line with his dreams of a lunar base, Nye's love and curiosity for science is as potent as it was when I watched his show in science class. However, though he peppered his statements with fascinating facts -- like how cool it is that our Zoom call is powered by a multitude of transistors -- he acknowledged that over time, "you get fatigued."

"You've got to get to work, you've got to meet the writing deadline, you've got to go to the grocery store ... you don't take time to absorb and remain curious. But I would say if that's really what's happening, fight that."

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Bill Nye calls it his 'mission in life' to help people filter out false information - CNET

Ever since the first astronauts left Earth, they have been profoundly moved by the awesome view of our planet from space. Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human to reach space, spoke of the immense beauty of our planet, a sentiment that has been echoed by numerous off-Earth travelers over the 60 years since his historic flight.

The experience of seeing Earth as one entity, gorgeous yet fragile, is known as the Overview Effect, a term coined by the space philosopher Frank White, who shares dozens of interviews with astronauts in his book The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution, now in its fourth edition.

The life-changing paradigm shift is also inspiring people who have never left Earth, including Rachel Lyons, the executive director of Space for Humanity, a non-profit that aims to democratize human spaceflight. White and Lyons discussed the Overview Effect, and the future of human spaceflight, in an episode of Motherboards Space Show.

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How the View of Earth From Space Is Changing Humanity - VICE

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. The Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral previewed plans Thursday for a new attraction focusing on the latest innovations in space exploration.

>>> STREAM CHANNEL 9 EYEWITNESS NEWS LIVE <<<

Already under construction and scheduled to open in March, Gateway: The Deep Space Launch Complex will offer an immersive experience featuring a collection of modern-day spacecraft, a 4D motion theater, and unique launch viewing opportunities.

READ: Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit bringing art to life at Orange County Convention Center

The Space Centers Visitor Complex offered an early look inside the attraction Thursday.

Chief Operating Officer Therrin Protze credits the Space Centers partnership with SpaceX for making some of the displays that will be available possible.

Thank you for joining us for today's Facebook LIVE event! We are so excited announce our latest attraction, Gateway: The Deep Space Launch Complex, slated to open March 2022. This attraction is about the future of collaborative space exploration and includes a showcase of NASA and commercial spaceflight hardware with engaging displays and a "journey" through space. Stay tuned for more information to be released soon! : bit.ly/3f1idKY

This is all about the next thing, and the future of NASA and Commercial Crew, and all the great companies that are coming to the Space Coast to really highlight the next chapter for space exploration, Protze said.

In addition to showcasing actual space flown artifacts and full-scale models, the 50,000 square-foot attraction will also offer visitors interactive experiences simulating a journey through space.

READ: Icon Park to celebrate end of Hanukkah with parade, menorah lighting, specially colored Wheel

Former NASA astronaut Bruce Melnick was along for Thursdays behind-the-scenes tour. He says the experience is unlike any other.

Theres no such thing as a zero-gravity room or anything like that, Melnick said. But to experience the simulation that we have here, and the fact that we are going to be able to have a total immersion in the simulatorsthis is about as close as you can get.

Gateways rooftop will have its own telescope that can be used for launch and landing viewings. It will also be available for special events.

There are great things happening on the space coast to highlight, Protze said. That is something we want to show you now, and we cant wait to show you the finished product.

READ: Central Florida International Auto Show drives into the OCCC this weekend

Click here to download the free WFTV news and weather apps, click here to download the WFTV Now app for your smart TV and click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.

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Kennedy Space Center previews new attraction highlighting the future of space exploration - WFTV Orlando

To the Editor:

A number of nations are in or about to go into space for a variety of reasons such as military, scientific, adventure, and tourism, in search of mineral wealth and even agriculture.

For example, it has been reported that the American company Heinz ketchup had proposed to grow tomatoes on Mars. It also has been reported that diapers would be needed by the astronauts for these long space expeditions.

Human feces can contain bacterial, fungal, and protozoan pathogens, which may find a way to reproduce in some of these foreign environments.

They will face different selective pressures causing them to change as they adapt to that environment. Some of the changes might actually make the organisms more disease causing.

In my 41 years as wildlife pathologist for the states Department of Environmental Conservation, part of my job was to monitor for exotic diseases coming into the state. That led me to finding a number of diseases such as the epizootic hemorrhagic disease and the West Nile virus.

However, when you consider the possibility of organisms that could be introduced from space and from Earth to space, I realize that at this time we have an even greater threat.

We should have a number of scientists in different disciplines take a look at some of the potential effects of biota introduced into space. And also, the possibility of biota already in space that can adapt to Earth, grow, and compete with organisms here on Earth.

I suggest that congressional hearings be held as quickly as possible on the potential for Earths existing biota to become a problem in space and vice versa.

Biota doesnt need to be disease-causing to be a massive problem but could be invasive and outcompete the Earth species. The United States already has a lot of scientifically skilled people who should be consulted on potential threats by evolving biota from space.

These people include academic biologists and ecologists from universities, state agencies, the U.S. military medical corps and scientific personnel from the departments of the interior, health, and agriculture.

We have seen what not being prepared for COVID-19 has cost us in human mortality and it is possible that introduced organisms from space could cause bigger problems than weve ever seen. We have thoroughly polluted Earth and we should not follow with the pollution of space.

Ward Stone

Troy

Originally posted here:

Space exploration poses threats to space and Earth - The Altamont Enterprise

In episode 14 of Knights Do That, we speak with Phil Metzger 00MS05PhD, a planetary scientist and UCF alum with nearly 30 years of experience at NASA. During this episode, Phil shares stories from his time working on the space shuttle missions, his controversial research on whether Pluto is a planet or not, and what the future of space exploration will look like.

Produced by UCF, the podcast highlights students, faculty, staff, administrators and alumni who do incredible things on campus, in the community and around the globe.

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Phil Metzger: The future is amazing. If I could look into the future and tell you what I see this is it; I see civilization reaching beyond planet Earth. So were no longer just doing exploration in space.Were actually doing the economic activities of life beyond planet Earth, and thats going to happen in this century. Were already in the process of starting that and its accelerating. Its really exciting to be a part of making that happen right now. This is the generation of graduates from UCF, and from other schools, this is the generation that is going to make all that happen during their careers. Right now, I understand UCF puts more graduates into aerospace engineering than any other university in the United States. So were going to continue pumping students into this, and those aerospace engineering students and business students and every other field is going to have a lot to work on in space.

Alex Cumming: Theres just so much we dont know about space. So thats why today Im bringing you a very interesting and insightful episode where I discussed space exploration with planetary scientists and UCF alum Phil Metzger. Phil share some really incredible stories and experiences from his nearly 30 years of work at NASA explains his research as to why Pluto is indeed a planet, and shares what the future of space exploration will look like.

Lets launch right into the episode.

Youre a planetary scientist with the Florida Space Institute at UCF. Can you share with us how you got into that position that youre in today?

Phil Metzger: Yeah. So I started as an engineer at NASA and worked on the Space Shuttle Program and then later the Space Station Program working on the navigation and the communication systems. And while I was working I really wanted to go back to school and get a Ph.D. in physics or in some field of physics. It turned out to be planetary science. So I was going to school at UCF while I was working at the Kennedy Space Center. I did that for many years, driving back and forth from the coast to the campus and finally got into a full year of graduate school where I was on campus for a full year and eventually graduated. Then co-founded a lab at NASA to work on planetary surface technologies; mining the moon, and asteroids, and Mars; and using the surfaces of those planets to build things, landing pads, and habitats; learning how to work with the materials on those planets.

Eventually I left NASA to come and be faculty here at UCF. So Im part of the Florida Space Institute, still doing the same sort of work I was doing at NASA towards the end of that career.

Alex Cumming: To commute from all the way from the Space Coast to here I mean, there is such a great back and forth of students, I assume traveling out there and learning and getting ideas.

Phil Metzger: Yeah. It was a lot of driving for some years, but I loved it. I loved going to school here. Great professors. They were flexible with me to help make it work. Like some of the professors would put my papers in a box and I would drop by in the evening and pick up my papers out of the hallway. That went on for years before I finally said, Ive just got to take a year off of work and finish.

Alex Cumming: Were you drawn back to UCF because of the programs available to get your Ph.D. and its proximity to the Space Coast?

Phil Metzger: Yeah. UCF was founded to be near the Space Coast to support the workers in the Space Program. My father went to the school when it was Florida Technological University. It was a family heritage, I guess. There was a great planetary science program here, great physics program. And it just worked out.

Alex Cumming: At the time when your father and the Florida Technological University, was he also involved in aspects of working on the Space Coast as well? Because thats like the primary focus of what the school was back then, correct?

Phil Metzger: He was, yeah. He worked on the Apollo Program. He was a technician and worked on the ground systems in the VAB and then out of the launchpads and helped to do the Apollo Missions. Hes got a certificate, hes deceased now, but he had a certificate that thanked him for his role in Apollo 11. He was so proud of that certificate. So I grew up going to open house events and watching all the rocket launches. All the kids in my neighborhood were the same. Everybodys parents worked on the Space Program, or we had connections. And so we all grew up just assuming we would all work in the Space Program because thats what grownups do. I was originally going to do other things, but somehow I made my way back to the Space Program and came back to the Space Coast.

Alex Cumming: Thats awesome to hear that there was such a culture of space education going on there. My mom also went to UCF. She was in education and now Im in theater, little bit of a disconnect there between the generational UCF for myself at least.

So while you were at NASA, you convinced them to develop guidelines for protecting the historic sites on the moon. Can you describe those sites?

Phil Metzger: So on the moon, weve got a number of Apollo landing sites. Weve also got surveyor spacecraft that we landed on the moon during the 1960s. There are also crash sites on the moon where the boosters from the Apollo rockets have crashed, actually the asset module, which is part of the lunar module. Those brought the crews back up to the spacecraft in orbit around the moon to come back home and then those spacecraft crashed into the moon. So there were a number of crash sites, as well as the landing sites. And these are all deemed archeological, anthropological, historical interest. Very unique sites. These are the first places where humanity has explored and walked on another planet. And I am calling the moon a planet because in planetary science, we do that. But that is the first place for humans walked on another world. So, anthropologists have told me that these are the most important anthropological sites in our human sphere now Im sure other anthropologists will disagree with that.

But I was working on how rocket exhaust blows soil so we could protect the gas stations that we plan to build on the moon. And one day, I got a call from one of the companies, Astrobotic Technologies, and they said, We want to go visit the Apollo site with our lander, how can we land near it without sandblasting it? And I realized, wow, that is a really important question because they are going to seriously damaged this historic site. But when I took the issue up to my management at NASA, they told me, Dont touch this because we dont own the moon. We cant write rules for the moon. If we try to take it to the United Nations, we dont know what the UN will say, and we dont want to touch it. So you are not allowed to try to create rules to protect the Apollo sites.

So a couple of years later, I was freaking out over this because the clock was ticking and I realized what we really need is voluntary guidelines. Maybe thats the best we can get for now. But if we can at least publish voluntary guidelines, then these companies will know how to visit the sites without damaging them.

And so through a series of offense, I was able to get NASA headquarters attention and they agreed to do it. So we eventually developed these guidelines.

Alex Cumming: Can you emphasize the importance of why we should protect these sites?

Phil Metzger: They represent a unique period in the history of the world, it was the Cold War. The United States and the Soviet Union were terrified that each other was going to drop nuclear bombs. And we were afraid of weaponizing space. We wanted there to be treaties. We wanted there to be some sort of international agreements on how do we treat space? But the United States was negotiating from position of weakness because the Soviets had rockets and could fly spacecraft and we couldnt. And so they decided the way to address this was by having a civilian space program and were going to try to beat the Soviets to prove to them that they need to bargain with us. And were going to do a civilian space program so its non-threatening, so were not going to be putting weapons in space.

And that was what it was all about from the Cold War perspective. And it really worked because during the Gemini Program we had made so much progress that the Soviets came to the bargaining table and we got the Outer Space Treaty signed. So now weve got this treaty. Weve agreed. Were not going to weaponize space, but the treaty was a 1960s treaty and space has advanced so much farther that the treaty doesnt address all the issues.

And now its coming up again, how are we going to handle the new situation? So can we put blast zones on the moon? If we do that, are we claiming territory because were not allowed to claim territory? So theres a whole lot of new issues coming up. But they originally came out of that Cold War era where the world was terrified. Like every day when I was in high school, if an airplane flew over, growing up next to the space center, my friends and I thought it was going to drop nuclear bombs on us because we all knew that as soon as the bombs fell, they were going to bomb the space center first.

And so I really grew up in that culture of fear expecting nuclear war at any time. And so the Apollo program is a unique historical point in history representing that among many other things.

Alex Cumming: Wow. Thats so interesting. I, personally, I had no idea about the way that were going to have to rework these treaties that even though its only been 60-something years or even now just in that short period of human history have become antiquated by how fast things move.

Phil Metzger: Yeah. There are a lot of people that want to mine in space. If were going to do things in space beyond planet Earth, we need to use the resources that are in space. But that raises all kinds of questions that the Outer Space Treaty doesnt address. So, theres a lot of discussion internationally right now.

What do we do with the Outer Space Treaty? Do we update it? Can we work around it? Can we work within what it gives us? Its a hot issue.

Alex Cumming: I imagine, NASA is under the branch of the government, so do you find that you have to reach out to people who work in the government who probably dont have as well of an understanding as the scientists coming up?

Phil Metzger: Theres a surprising amount of understanding about these issues. People in the state department, people in the military, people in NASA, the government is quite aware that things are happening in space. And I think people have become educated over the last decade.

When I talked to people from Washington D.C., who are in any branch of the government or in Congress, they really understand these issues about what are we going to do with the moon?

Alex Cumming: Well, theres the Space Force now, which is a recent military addition. Im not certain exactly how its perceived nationwide, but to live in a time where you can see the groundwork of a branch of the military based around space exploration, its so interesting to think about and how that develops.

Phil Metzger: Yeah. Well the general idea is we want to make sure that we have good international policy about space. And in order to help affect international policy, we have to be a player. So we need to have a strong space program. We need to be present in space so that we can affect the direction the world chooses to go.

Alex Cumming: When you see UCF being referred to as Space U and you see that all these young people and the football game that just happened, you see this absolute just adoration of space and what it means to UCF, does that get you inspired for this upcoming generation of young people and how theyre going to develop space exploration?

Phil Metzger: It absolutely does. When I go speaking I always talk about how we can use space to solve global problems, like climate change, and how we can actually use space to solve problems about global development and making sure people all over the world have the benefit of developed economies, while at the same time not burdening the planets environment anymore.

So in order to solve a planetary problem, we have to have a position of being extraplanetary. And so Ill go and talk about this. And after the talk, Ill typically get surrounded by young people who say they thought they had to choose between solving the worlds problems or doing cool space robots. And now they realize they dont have to choose one or the other. They can do both. And that gets them really excited.

Alex Cumming: I love that. I love that idea. You dont have to pick between the either. I have friends who are very involved in the study of space and other planets, and I have friends who were very involved in the study of the environment. And firsthand Ive seen how they kind of get torn between the two of I want to develop the future, but I dont want to leave behind the planet that we have. So to know that theres a healthy overlap that they help one another.

Phil Metzger: Yeah. Its a stretch for people to grasp it. Were talking about how do we put industry off the planet into space? And it is a stretch because how are you going to do manufacturing in the Earth? Youre going to have trucks driving up and down to space bringing all the manufactured goods. But weve been working on these concepts for decades and we really believe that by the end of the century, we should be able to put at least a half of our industrial footprint off the planet by the end of the century.And so even if its only a half, thats going to be really helpful to our planet. So there are actual strategies and most of the people I know in the Space Program are really pro-Earth and they really want to use space to benefit the planet. Theres a lot of very idealistic people doing space.

Alex Cumming: Do you find that a lot of young people have this, they like mythologize this grand idea of space and space travel, and then when they get into it theyre maybe spending more time behind a computer screen than theyd like to get involved with?

Phil Metzger: Thats probably true. So I spent a lot of time writing code. I do FORTRAN code cause Im an old timer, but I spent a lot of time writing code to model the physics heat transfer in the lunar soil. And its not really that glamorous to write equations of how heat spreads out through dirt. But I always have it in my mind that the reason Im trying to model how propagates heat is because were trying to extract ice from the lunar soil. Because were going to turn the ice into rocket fuel. And by making rocket fuel in space, weve changed the economics so that it now becomes possible to do much more in space than we could ever do before. So although Im behind a computer screen doing this boring task, that vision has always motivating me and keeping me working and keeping me excited.

Alex Cumming: I had no idea. You could make rocket fuel from ice.

Phil Metzger: Yeah. Well its just add electricity to electrolyze it and you split it into hydrogen and oxygen. And then you burn the hydrogen and the oxygen together to get thrust.

Alex Cumming: In my acting classes, they didnt teach me that. And I think thats the one thing Im missing.

I want to emphasize that UCFs tie to the space industry is no secret. We know UCF loves space. I love space as most all UCF student. Twenty-nine percent of Kennedy Space Center employees are UCF alumni, and we have two alumni who are astronauts. Whats your favorite part about UCFs relation to space?

Phil Metzger: Oh, its hard to just say one thing. I think I love the faculty in the planetary science department, its in the physics department. I love that group of faculty because theyre so creative working on so many diverse ideas and they all love space.

Alex Cumming: Its just so cool to know that you see these alumni who have left the planet and explored. As somebody who doesnt have this incredible grasp on the defining details of space travel, its just so cool to know and to think about when you see some of the richest people in the world, were talking to Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk types, and it seems that at the forefront of their mind is space. What does that make you think?

Phil Metzger: Well I think like everybody, they want to look back on their lives and know that theyve done something important, something they can feel good about. And the reason I think they have gravitated towards space is because technology has now reached the point that we can actually do amazing new things in space that we could never do before. And they see that and they think, well, I can use my resources to make a big difference in that field. Jeff Bezos wants to do lunar industry and put industry in free space, you know, not on a planetary body around the Earth, in order to save the Earth, to move industry off the planet. Elon wants to put human settlements on Mars to make human civilization multiplanetary. Theyre very complimentary objectives. And Im glad that they both have their own idea of what to do and that they are complimentary because by having more people trying different things, I think were more likely to have success. And also, Im more of a save the Earth kind of person. And so Im more into put industry around the Earth rather than settling Mars so much. However, they dovetail so nicely. The industry that you need to support humans living on Mars, its 95% the same that youre going to need to work on the moon or in free space working with raw regolith to extract elements and do the mining and manufacturing.

And then also people who want to go back and forth to Mars, theyre going to need to fill up their rockets. Theyre going to need rocket fuel, and CisLunar Industries will economically interact with Martian settlement. So I think it all works together in a grand big picture.

Alex Cumming: Im glad to hear that coming from yourself. I know a lot of people in my life have had this sort of question of, going back to you saying that space travel and saving the Earth can co-exist, is that theyre under this impression that theyre leaving Earth, leaving Earth to go to colonize Mars, leaving Earth to exist on the moon and in the cosmos, leaving the Earth in its wake which its good to hear from somebody whos far more versed in it than I am thats not the idea.

In your time and all those years you worked at NASA and as a student studying the stars, did you ever think that the individual privatization of space would be a reality in your lifetime?

Phil Metzger: It was not something that ever crossed my mind until somewhere in the 1990s. Before then it was always the government who did space because it took so much money. It took so much technological prowess that only large government agencies could participate in that field. We started to notice things had changed around in the 90s when NASA could no longer develop the technologies faster than the commercial market was developing them.

Like, for example, one time we had this heat shield delivered to the Kennedy Space Center and it had to have this perfect shape. So NASA developed a laser scanner to measure the shape of that heat shield. But they delivered their laser scanner, it costs them $10 million to develop the laser scanner. It was super advanced new high-tech, but when they went to measure the heat shield with it the technicians at the space center said, Why are you using that? Weve got this one that we bought commercially, which is far more accurate, and it only costs $100,000. So thats the kind of thing thats been going on in the world of tech. These single use applications can no longer keep up with the technology engine of the commercial market. And that has been revolutionizing the landscape of space.

So now people have started to realize we can build rockets and we can do it with not that much funding. And we can actually put people in space. So access to space is being revolutionized, and now people have started to envision business models. How can we make this self-sustaining? What are things we can do in space to sustain this effort so that then we can go farther and farther and actually put industry in space and save the Earth and settle Mars and do all the other great things.

Alex Cumming: Industry and space. That is a phrase that seldom has crossed my mind. But then we spoke about claiming territory on the moon so if we are commercializing in space are we going to have to implement our capitalist economic ideas into the economy that goes into space?

Phil Metzger: Well I dont have any easy answers for this. This is a great question. And there are people working this all the time. I have friends who are policy people and people that are attorneys, politicians. There are a lot of people arguing about these issues. Its going to have to be worked internationally. Its going to have to involve the United Nations. And in some way or another were going to figure it out as we go along. But I think we can be optimistic about it. I think that space not only has all these challenges that we need to solve, but as we find ways for making space more participatory and more inclusive, then were bringing in all the greater creativity of our whole globe. And that is what I think is really going to drive space forward make it happen in this century, as we make it more inclusive and more participatory for everybody.

Alex Cumming: I liked that the creativity and inclusivity of the world because space is not just American, Russian, Chinese, Canadian endeavor, its the world. And it makes me think that in the past centaury Id say probably the man and the American mythos that sort of embodied the idea of space travel is probably JFK with his great, famous speeches about within the decade of the 60s to travel to the stars. And you said that its gone from sort of the government and the overarching to sort of the individual company. And there hasnt been a president I can think, maybe except for the previous one, who has placed such an emphasis on the importance of space travel and how for the American future it is a great piece of it. And now were going to these American companies, SpaceX and Amazon are the two that weve been talking about, that are really reinvigorating the idea that space travel is within our reach and we are going to do it within our lines.

Phil Metzger: Yeah. So there are other themes that we have to consider too. Theres a robot revolution going on. So robotics are threatening to take everybodys jobs away, even people in creative fields. What if robots can write or AI can write poetry better than humans? At what point

Alex Cumming: Then Im out of a job.

Phil Metzger: Yeah. At what point are we all going to be put out of a job? But I like to point out that space is limitless. Theres literally billions of times more resources accessible in our solar system than there are on the Earth. And this provides a sphere for us to expand into so that we can end the zero-sum game that causes us to fight over resources here on the Earth. And we can leverage this automation of robotics to access those millions and billions of times greater possibilities in the solar system and create a much more vibrant civilization. So were going to have to face these issues, whether we go to space or not, because of the changes of technology. But by adding space into the picture, weve opened up the possibilities so much more greatly that I think we can see a lot of optimistic roads ahead.

Alex Cumming: Thinking about robots and our technology, the Mars rover, we know that technically, if were going to, an American robot has touched down and has already made contact on Mars. Does that make you feel some kind of way?

Phil Metzger: Well, people joke around and they say weve discovered a planet thats entirely inhabited by robots and thats Mars because theres like seven or eight or something robots driving around and flying around Mars right now. Only robots live there as far as we know. But yeah, its really cool. Another thing thats really cool is that it used to cost something like $200 billion to do one of these flagship missions to another planet. And its getting to the point where you can do it for a $100 million, like the group in Israel almost landed on the moon. They got within like a hundred meters of the surface before they lost control and fell the last bit. But that mission was only a $100 million. So the prices coming so low that were able to see more groups starting to put robots on other planets now.

Alex Cumming: I hadnt even thought about it that way. So I want to move into a controversial topic because the robot revolution isnt controversial. You made quite the waves a couple of years ago when you insisted through your research that Pluto is indeed a planet and I want talk about that. Can you give us an insight onto what your research was for that?

Phil Metzger: Sure. And this is really timely because we have a new paper that just got accepted at the journal about four days ago and its going to be even, I think, bigger than the last one. So, weve we spent about five years researching this topic and we finally put our big paper out there. But yeah, we started out by addressing this issue. Like, why would an object not be a planet simply because it is in a swarm of other objects? Like they say, Well, we used to think the asteroids were planets, but then we discovered they are in a swarm. And obviously things in a swarm cant be a planet. So therefore they arent planets. And now we used to think Pluto was alone, but now we see its in a swarm. And so by analogy to the asteroids, therefore Pluto should not be a planet.

That was the argument people were using back in 2006. And so we thought, well lets address that. I mean its begging the question, why should something not be a planet because its in a swarm, but is it really true that that was why asteroids became non-planets? It doesnt make any sense as an argument. Why would scientists use that as an argument? Its just a question begging argument. So did they really make a question begging argument in the mid-1800s as they tell us they did?

We did the research and we found out, no, they absolutely did not. Thats not what happened. In the mid-1800s. They started to discover lots of asteroids and they realized theyre all in a swarm and scientists kept calling them planets and we would write textbooks. There are three types of primary planets. A primary planet is a planet that orbits the sun directly. So they would say there are three types of primary planets. Theyre the terrestrial planets, like the Earth and Mars and Venus. There are the giant planets, like Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Saturn. But theres also the small planets which exist in a band between Mars and Jupiter. So they were listed as one of the three types of planets along with the other two types. And this continued all the way into the 1950s. It was actually relatively recent that scientists stopped considering asteroids to be planets. So we did research to find out then why did they stop calling them planets? It had nothing to do with them being in a swarm.

You know, in the 1950s, we knew there were thousands and probably millions. And they would say there are hundreds of thousands of planets in this band and theyre planets. So why then did we make the switch? And it turns out that there were some key papers written by Gerard Kuiper, he was possibly the leading planetary scientist of his day. And he wrote a series of seminal papers where he argued that planets conformed by multiple processes. We used to think they could only form by disc instability, where the gas thats orbiting the sun in a disc has gravitational instability causing it to break up into clumps and these little round balls of gas then condense into liquid and then eventually they harden into solid. And so they thought all planets are spherical and they all formed this way. But Kuyper argued no, some of them could form from the bottom up from dust specks and dust specks collect other suspects and become gravel. And the gravel collects other gravel and becomes a rock and rocks collect other rocks and becomes a boulder. And eventually youve got a planet. And so he said that process also takes place and the objects that are formed are not round, theyre lumpy. And so he proposed that because there are two processes.We should say that the round ones that are, like the Earth, planets because originally that was what a planet was. It was and all the objects that are other Earths, geological bodies like the Earth are the planets. So he said, Lets say all the round ones that formed by disc instability or the planets, the ones that formed by accretion from the bottom up, are non-planets. Well later, we realized that accretion can actually go all the way up to become a round body. And so now weve changed it and said even if its formed by accretion but it got large enough to become round, it ends up having the same geology, all of these complex geological process, as the objects that formed the other way from the top down. So weve said its the end size that matters because that determines if its a living active geologically, active body versus a dead lumpy rock, like an asteroid. So that was what actually happened in the literature. But unfortunately the story has been lost and this false story has taken its place.

We call this historic presentism. Its the presentism fallacy where people take a modern perspective and they assume that people in the past had the same view and they reinterpret history with that untested assumption. So people would say, well, obviously people in the 1800s wouldnt think a small lumpy object is a planet because we know thats not a planet. So they must have stopped considering them planets back when they were like about 15 of them. And so they created this false story about them becoming non-planets in the 1800.

Alex Cumming: Thats yeah. I like the term lumpy, for the lumpy description of it. Wow. The idea of presentism, I didnt even thought about that and all those different things. To think that arguments from modern day or 15-something years ago

Phil Metzger: Yeah. Well, can I tell you about the new paper? Because it gets even better

Alex Cumming: Fire away.

Phil Metzger: Okay. So our new paper, our old paper disgust asteroids, our new paper discusses moons. Now heres the story that you get told all the time. This is in every textbook. They will say before the Copernican revolution, there were seven planets. The sun was a planet. The moon was a planet and there were five other planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The Earth was not a planet, but they will always say at the Copernican revolution the sun stopped being a planet, the moon stopped being a planet because it orbits the Earth and the Earth became a planet, but thats not what happened. Okay. Theres absolutely no question in the historical records. What actually happened was the moon stayed a planet and all moons were considered planets, and being a planet had nothing to do with what an object orbits. And so all the way until the 1920s, everybody said large moons or planets. And that may seem like an unimportant little detail, but its actually very important because we know that planets can change orbits, like Triton the largest moon of Neptune was captured. It was a primary planet, like Pluto, and it got captured and became a satellite. So whatever orbit theyre in right now is a human perspective bias. Were looking at it the way it is right now, rather than looking at fundamentally what these objects are. But unfortunately this idea that to be a planet you have to orbit a star directly, it actually came from astrology in the 1800s. And so we were able to track how it developed in astrology and then how scientists accidentally fell into that belief in the 1920s. And then again, historical presentism has covered over the history.

And so now were told a false story about how it developed. So what were arguing is that the useful concept of a planet, the one that scientists doing planetary science actually prefer doing, considers that any large geologically active body, including moons like Titan or Triton or Europa, these are planets. Theyre secondary planets. Theyre satellites. They are satellites, but its a satellite thats large as a planet that is satellite of another planet

Alex Cumming: Your work is being argued against by ideas from the 1800s and just how that evolved over history, I can imagine thats probably a little frustrating.

Phil Metzger: Well, weve had a lot of fun with this. Like nowadays when I go to the store, if I see the Farmers Almanac, Im like, oh, an almanac, and Ill grab it off the shelf. And Ill go to the list of planets that well see, because they always have a list of planets. And so Ive got almanacs from the 1700s and Ive been collecting almanacs now. Every time I go to a used bookstore, if theyve got some old almanacs, Im like,Oh, Ive got to get that. Its interesting to see how the list of planets in popular culture and astrology differed from the scientific concept. And thats where the split really came from.

Alex Cumming: Wow.

Hey there, Knights Giving Tuesday is almost here and we know that there are many groups in causes that you can choose to support on this global day of giving. And we hope that UCF is one of them to learn more and help us reach our goal. Visit ucf.edu/givingtuesday.

Why do you think that the idea of Pluto being a planet or not is so hotly contested with the public, even just general individuals? People who maybe went to school 15-something years ago, theyll still believe that Plutos not a planet because they havent been updated on modern science. Why is it so controversial?

Phil Metzger: Well I think a lot of people just love Pluto. I love Pluto. The big irony of the flyby of Pluto a few years ago was that Pluto turned out to be so darn interesting. Its probably the second most interesting planet in our whole solar system. Only the Earth is more interesting than Pluto. Theres just so much geology. Theres active glaciers flowing down mountain sides into the valleys on Pluto. There is convection in the eyes causing all these fascinating patterns of pits and cracks. Theres mountains as tall as the Rocky Mountains, and these mountains are made out of water. Its water thats as hard as rock. So water is hard as granite. The ice is made out of nitrogen. Theres also organic material on Pluto. We can see this brown rust or orange colored material, which is organic molecules, the stuff that life is made out of. Theres probably a liquid ocean under the surface of Pluto, which is still liquid, which is remarkable. So apparently theres more radioactive material in Pluto than we thought, keeping it warm so that the ocean can stay liquid. And you could go on and on about how fascinating Pluto is.

So its really ironic that people were saying it shouldnt be a planet because its in a swarm, but then it turns out its the most planetey planet of all the planets. So of course we love that, you know. That was just too good to be true. And I was at the flyby with my daughter. Alan Stern, the head of the mission asked me to come up and out of my family only my daughter could come with me. Shes now studying physics. But we were standing there waiting for the first picture of Pluto to come back and they told us the night before, OK, the radio signal is now crossing the orbit of Uranus and its going to be so many hours. And the next day we come in, OK, the radio signal just past Mars. So were like 20 minutes away. And then, OK, the radio signal is halfway to the Earth from Mars and were waiting for the radio signal to arrive.

And then it came in and they started saying, OK, weve got signal locked. OK, weve got. symbol locked on the symbols in that radio wave. OK, now weve got data lock. Weve done the pseudorandom code deconvolution and were getting actual data out of it. And now were actually seeing the data from the different systems.

They were calling this out as it was happening in real time. And then they went through all the spacecraft systems. Everybodys looking at their own data. So the propulsion system looks good. Comps looks good. Instrumentation looks good. And then they finally go to the person whos in charge of looking at all the data. And that person says we see all the flags are set that tells us we have the proper amount of data that we expected. And then everybody just erupted and [was] cheering because theyve actually captured a full buffer of data. Then the next morning we came back, and they said, Were going to reveal the picture. This is the picture we got back from Pluto.

And they put it up there and it was that big, beautiful picture with the pink heart on it. And everybody was crying in the room. It was like a couple of hundred people in the room and everybody was just crying because it was so beautiful. Nobody had any idea. In fact, let me tell you this. Alan Stern used to be the director of the Florida Space Institute here at UCF and before I was hired, he actually hired me to come work here. And so he was coming back visiting and we all went out to lunch and I was in the back seat of the car with him and he said, Hey, you cant tell anybody this, but Im going to show you we got a picture back from the mission. The mission was almost to Pluto, it wasnt quite there yet. And he showed me the picture and it was a little white sphere with a gray smudge on it. And he was so excited that there was a smudge on it because it proved that there was some geology on Pluto. And so then when we got this picture back and its, whoa, this is more than we could have ever imagined, more than we could have hoped for. In fact, I talked to one of the heads of the Planetary Science Program at NASA at dinner one night and he said, Yeah, we were all terrified that it was going to be a white cue ball of just snow and nothing else. And after 10 years and all these millions and millions of dollars, we just get a white cue ball. So when we got those pictures back and it turned out to be so amazing, it was better than we could have hoped for.

Alex Cumming: Thats outstanding. I know exactly the photo youre talking about. Ive seen it as a casual spectator on the internet and youre right it is. Its such a sight to behold. It is so beautiful. Thats an awesome story. Thats so cool.

Did he have it like on his phone or did he have like, like what, like a Polaroid, just kind of like slid it over to you?

Phil Metzger: Yeah. He showed me on his phone. He goes, You know you cant tell anybody this.

Alex Cumming: But what would you say? Would you say theres a little dot?

Phil Metzger: Yeah. I was a little underwhelmed, you know, Im like, Oh, nice. Its got a smudge on it, nice.

Alex Cumming: But then when you saw the actual photo, you were like, Oh, that white smudge is actually

Phil Metzger: Yeah, its amazing complex geology. And thats what were arguing, is from Galileo. The way that Galileo redefined planets was that they are other Earths and he made that decision based on seeing mountains on the moon. He was the first person that we know to point a telescope to the moon, at least the first to publish it. And he said, Look, its got mountains and that means its got geology like the Earth. That means its not made out of unchanging ether. It follows Earth, physics, geophysics, or geology and because of that we know that theres not a separate physics for the heavens. The heavens follow the same Earthly physics that the Earth follows. And therefore, the Earth is in the heavens too. And therefore, the Earth moves. If the planets are the same as the Earth and the Earth is the same as the planets, he made this argument based on the moon, which is a satellite. But the key argument that pushed the Copernican revolution forward was the planethood of the moon, comparing it to the Earth.

So the essence of planethood, according to Galileo, was complex geology. And now we know that planets are the special things in the cosmos where complexity naturally emerges all the mass in the galaxy comprises something like 0.5% of the energy of the galaxy or of the cosmos. And that 0.5% is half of that is in the interstellar meteor, intergalactic meteor. And the other half is in the galaxy, right? Of that, most of it is stars and gas clouds. And a tiny, tiny fraction of that tiny fraction is planets. But those planets represent the great flourishing of complexity throughout the cosmos. And because they are just this amazing, special thing where you put enough mass together, it retains heat, it melts, it begins convecting. And then suddenly all these processes occur. You get mountains, you get minerals, you get crystals, you get fluids outgassing, yet lakes and oceans and rivers and atmospheres. You get convection cells. And you get storms. And you get jet streams. And then you have chemistry happening. And lightening storms. And chemical reprocessing. And complex organic material. And here on Earth, at least weve got life and weve got civilizations and weve got technology. And this happens on planets.

So this tiny, tiny little fraction of the cosmos is the great flourishing of complexity and thats essentially what Galileo saw. When he looked in his telescope. He said, Whoa, the moon is one of these Earth. And he leapt to the idea that thats what all the planets are. And so all the planets became known as other Earths. And so were saying thats the essence of what a planet is. Its so important to see this, that it needs a taxonomical category. And historically, since Galileo, that term has always been planet. So were arguing that thats what it should be. Planets are complex other Earths, regardless what they happen to be orbiting right now during human observation.

Alex Cumming: So this paper, all this information that I thank you for sharing with me, its awesome. You think that this is going to stir the waters? This is going to get some feathers ruffled?

Phil Metzger: What were trying to do is tell planetary scientists dont be cowed by people telling you that you cant call Titan a planet. Planetary scientists call Titan a planet all the time. We review the literature and we found out planetary scientists call large moons planets. Naturally we call Pluto a planet. We found hundreds of examples, just in a cursory review of the modern literature since 2006, since the IAU voted to say Plutos not a planet.

And to say, Titan is not a planet, planetary scientists are continuing to call them planets. And the reason we do that is because its useful. Its useful to have a category to describe this amazing phenomenon in the cosmos. And so were doing it. And so we wrote the paper to tell planetary scientists dont feel ashamed of that. This is actually the historic meaning of the word, and we should call these planets because thats the most useful definition of a planet. Its the scientifically useful and its the scientific, historical definition of a planet.

Alex Cumming: Its bringing history into the present and using the present to reflect on history. How cool.

So with that, I want to transition and ask you this, in the wealth of your career and all that youve done and accomplished, what are some of your greatest accomplishments? What are the things that stick out to you?

Phil Metzger: Its been an amazing ride.

Alex Cumming: Dont hold back.

Phil Metzger: It was, it was better. It was a great experience working in space. So Ive, been able to fly in reduce gravity. Ive flown 450 parabolas of reduced gravity on airplanes, similar to the Vomit Comet on NASA research flights. So Ive got to float around in zero G and Ive got to experience Martian gravity, lunar gravity, testing various technologies.

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Knights Do That: The Future of Space Exploration - UCF

Illustration: NASA GSFC/CIL/Adriana Manrique Gutierrez

In less than three weeks, NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency will finally launch the James Webb Space Telescope into orbit. And its been a long time coming.

The new observatory has been created as a successor to the aging Hubble Space Telescope and will be the largest and most powerful space science telescope ever constructed by NASA.

The machine comprises a 21-foot mirror made up of 18 golden plates. This primary mirror reflects infrared rays to a small mirror, which then directs them to an array of four sensors. These include infrared cameras, near-infrared spectrographs and other infrared-sensitive instruments.

All this will help the James Webb Telescope observe parts of space that have never been seen before. It will be able to observe infrared light that could hold clues to the beginning of the universe, and could help locate habitable planets in our galaxy. If it all works out according to plan.

This impressive creation is set to launch into space on December 22. Once at its point of orbit more than 1 million miles away from Earth, it will undergo six months of commissioning before it can actually get to work.

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That means that by the time it begins capturing its first images of the cosmos, it will have been more than 30 years since its design process began. And thats a long time.

In that time, the Earth has travelled more than 19,272,000,000 miles and the population of our planet has grown by 2 billion to more than 7 billion people.

But what about in the world of space travel, what breakthroughs have we witnessed in 33 years of space exploration?

Photo: NASA / Handout (Getty Images)

In 1989, one year before NASA launched the Hubble Space Telescope, the U.S. space agency was already thinking about its successor. That year, the Space Telescope Science Institute and NASA co-hosted a workshop to begin deciding what capabilities a new space telescope needed.

But that wasnt all NASA was working on in the late 80s. After the disaster of the Challenger explosion in 1986, the space agency was back to running regular flights of the Space Shuttle.

1989 was also the year that the first spacecraft flew past Neptune, the Voyager 2. It also saw the Soviet Union expand its Mir space station by adding a third module to the floating observatory.

Fun fact, 1989 was also the year Lexus and Infiniti launched at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

By the mid-90s, the design and development of NASAs next-gen space telescope was well underway. In 1996, a committee concluded that the satellite should be equipped with everything needed to observe infrared light, and called for the craft to be fitted with a mirror with a diameter of more than four meters across which is exactly what the James Webb Telescope now has.

Way back then, work was also underway to launch the International Space Station. In fact, the first sections of the station launched into orbit on the 20th November 1998 onboard a Russian Proton Rocket.

Other mid-90s milestones included the first French woman in space, Claudie Haigner, and the launch of the longest ever Space Shuttle Mission, which clocked in at 17 days, 15 hours, and 53 minutes.

It was also the year that the Nintendo 64 was released.

Photo: NASA / Handout (Getty Images)

In 2002, NASA decided to rename the Next Generation Space Telescope as the James Webb Space Telescope, after the former NASA administrator.

That year, the agency also launched five Space Shuttle missions, including one to service the aging Hubble Space Telescope, which NASA initially thought would only remain in service until 2005.

Also in 2002, Spider-Man was the highest grossing movie at the US box office, and we were all blissfully unaware that wed soon be inundated with superhero flicks.

Photo: NASA/Desiree Stover

Two years later, NASA began constructing the James Webb Telescope, including the 18 pieces that would make up its golden primary mirror.

This year also marked a turning point in the space race, as space travel was opened up to private individuals for the first time. In 2004, SpaceShipOne became the first privately funded manned spacecraft to achieve suborbital flight.

2004 was also the year that Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, initially exclusively for college students.

Photo: Handout / Handout (Getty Images)

More than 20 years after work on the telescope first began, Webb passed a design review to demonstrate that met all its science and engineering needs.

That year also marked the 10-year anniversary of the space station, and it was also the first and only time to date that four women were in space at the same time: Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson and Japans Naoko Yamazaki.

2011, the following year, also witnessed the final space shuttle flight.

Photo: NASA/MSFC/David Higginbotham

For the first time, all elements of the James Webb Telescope came together under one roof. All the parts were brought together in California, following final tests on the telescopes elements.

With the Space Shuttle now retired, innovation in space flight had, at this point, transitioned to the private sector. SpaceX successfully conducted the maiden flight of its Falcon Heavy rocket. It was also the year Blue Origin initially hoped to send its first passengers to space. Testing was also underway on Virgin Galactics ship, VSS Unity.

Back down on terra firma, 2018 was also the year Saudi Arabia allowed women to drive.

Photo: Joe Raedle / Staff (Getty Images)

The James Webb Telescope has now been shipped to Kourou, in French Guiana, ahead of its launch into orbit on December 22.

This has also been a big year for firsts in space, as NASA carried out the first powered flight on another planet when its Ingenuity helicopter flew on Mars.

In the land of the super-rich, Blue Origin completed its first manned mission to space with founder Jeff Bezos onboard, Richard Branson became the first billionaire to travel near space, and Elon Musk continued to fly astronauts into orbit with crafts operated by SpaceX.

Apparently, this means space is now for everyone, I think?

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What Three Decades Did for Space Exploration As NASA Worked To Build One New Telescope - Jalopnik

The Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) at Baylor College of Medicine, with consortium partners California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, announced today it is seeking scientific proposals for disruptive technologies, therapies and/or approaches to protecting astronaut health through enhancing pre-existing internal cellular repair functions.

The NASA-funded institutes Biomedical Research Advances for Space Health (BRASH) solicitation invests in emerging science with potential to reduce risks to human health and performance during future Artemis missions and beyond. Deep space exploration comes with multiple physiological and psychological stressors for astronauts, including increased radiation exposure, gravity changes, isolation and confinement, and an omnipresent hostile/dangerous environment. These stressors negatively impact health through tissue degradation, DNA damage, cell death, neurological changes and more.

The BRASH solicitation seeks ways to reduce multiple crew health risks while enhancing the bodys ability to control endogenous repair and maintenance processes to support optimal organ, tissue and cell function for astronauts.

TRISH is committed to finding new approaches to increase endogenous repair. This is needed to safeguard health in the extremes of space and has applications for Earth, through improvements to cellular repair, healing or normal wear-and-tear that occurs with physical and mental challenges as well as aging, said Dr. Dorit Donoviel, TRISH executive director and professor of space medicine at Baylor.

The solicitation is available online here and is composed of two phases. Step-1 proposals are due Jan. 26, 2022, by 5 p.m. EST. Step-2 proposals from selected investigations will be due April 19, 2022. Selections will be announced in October 2022.

TRISH encourages diverse candidates and underrepresented groups to participate in this research solicitation. Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, Tribal Colleges and Universities and small businesses and organizations owned and controlled by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals or women are particularly encouraged to participate in proposals as lead institution or co-institutions.

Personnel employed by United States-based institutions or companies may apply. Please see the solicitation for more information on eligibility.

TRISH is hosting a webinar for proposers on Dec. 17, 2021, at 2 p.m. EST to answer questions about the BRASH 2201 solicitation. Register for the webinar here.

As a partner to NASAs Human Research Program, TRISH helps solve the health challenges to human deep space exploration. The institute finds and funds disruptive, breakthrough research and technologies that can reduce risks to astronaut health and performance to help put the first woman and first person of color on the Moon and human boot prints on Mars.

The institute is funded through a cooperative agreement with NASA to Baylor College of Medicine and includes consortium partners Caltech and MIT. Learn more about TRISH by signing up for its monthly newsletter and following the Institute on social media @BCMSpaceHealth.

Originally posted here:

Space health institute seeks proposals to counteract spaceflight body wear-and-tear - Baylor College of Medicine News

When we gaze into the vast night sky from our terrestrial home, space certainly seems like an overwhelmingly wild and desolate place: an empty plain primed for settlement. When Star Trek debuted in the 60s and began calling space the final frontier, it was in the midst of a geopolitical race to the moon with the Soviet Union. Final frontier became synonymous with a spirit of space expansion that is deeply, perhaps distressingly, American.

Now, with an increasing number of billionaires whipping out spaceships for their own public rocket-measuring contest, a growing movement in the space industry inspired by de-colonialist ideas wants to ensure that places like Mars dont become the next New World for people in power to conquer and trash. In order to avoid repeating our historic mistakes, these scientists and policy makers argue that humans need to take a hard look at the laws weve established here on Earth before we boldly go where no person has gone before.

The three dominant myths of space governance right now are that theres no history, no victims, and no law, Cris van Eijk, a space policy adviser with the International Astronomical Union, told The Daily Beast. Far from being an empty, ahistorical void, space is chock-full of resources, scientific opportunities, and man-made artifactsincluding a rapidly accumulating pile of orbital junk. Far from being lawless, it is a place with a carefully crafted and evolving legal framework. And far from being victim-free, humanitys actions in space profoundly impact daily life on Earthboth for better and for worse.

For Britt Duffy Adkins, an urban planner at the University of Southern California, the need for a de-colonial mindset became apparent as soon as she started attending space policy conferences as a graduate student in 2018.

I was shocked, she told The Daily Beast. Speaker after speaker presented their idea for a Martian colony, but none seemed interested in sustainability development or inclusion. It felt like we were just taking a page out of some very dated history book.

Adkins looked around, and couldnt find anyone having the kind of discussions about sustainable infrastructure and development in space that she was looking for outside of very niche circles. So in 2020 she founded Celestial Citizen, a space media company dedicated to furthering conversations around inclusivity, equity, urban planning and research in space. Im very opposed to the idea of going and planting flags, said Adkins.

Van Eijk echoed those feelings. In an essay published last year in Volkerrechtsblog, an academic blog about international law, he called out SpaceX founder Elon Musk for sneaking a metaphorical flag into the terms of service for Starlink, his companys internet service that seeks to connect people around the world by launching and operating 42,000 satellites in orbit. Buried in a section called Governing Law is a little paragraph claiming that future Starlink satellites on Mars will be subject to California state lawthe same state where Musk happened to live at the time. Under international law, this could be interpreted as setting a critical date, a ticking clock counting down to a point after which other entities can no longer dispute a sovereignty claim.

In the future at some point, if were looking back on this as to when did SpaceX establish a claim on Mars, this would be part of that evidence, van Eijk said.

That wasnt the first time Musk made a contentious claim about Mars. In January of 2021 he announced a plan to entice working-class folks to his future Mars colony; non-wealthy settlers would be assigned jobs in order to pay off their travel debt. Critics quickly pointed out that this sounds a lot like indentured servitude. Its also a concerning example of what social scientist Linda Billings calls the ideology of space colonization and exploitation.

How do you quit your job in space? Billings told The Daily Beast. You cant just get in your car and go home.

Billings, a longtime NASA consultant, started out as a journalist covering space business and policy under the Reagan administration. However, she eventually became disenchanted with what she felt was the governments Manifest Destiny approach to the space sector.

If we dont think that space is a place ruled by law, then we know how that ends. The richest win.

Cris van Eijk

These days, Billings believes that human beings simply arent ready to settle in space yet. To try, she said, would risk bringing along an environmentally destructive mindset, extracting resources at an untenable rate and basically just exporting our current problems elsewhere.

But while shes against settling places like the moon or Mars, she isnt against exploring them. And she said we already have a perfectly good framework in place for that.

The Outer Space Treaty is widely considered the foundational document for space law. Drafted in 1966 (the same year Star Trek first hit the airwaves) by the UN and initially signed by the United Kingdom, United States, and the Soviet Union, the agreement establishes space as an international commons, the providence of all mankind. It explicitly prohibits things like military maneuvers in space or ownership of territory beyond Earths atmosphere. At least 111 countries are bound by its terms, and another 23 are signatories but have not yet ratified it.

But some legal experts think that the Outer Space Treaty doesnt go far enough. It is insufficient, because its a very specific law, John Tziouras, a space policy consultant at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece, told The Daily Beast. When it was first written, there were only two countriesthe United States and the Soviet Unionwho could get to the moon, as part of a geopolitical project. The idea of a single, SpaceX-style company sending people to Mars was unthinkable. But now we have private corporations whose goals are to specifically send people to these worlds to establish permanent communities.

Tziouras advocates for the world to model its space-faring approaches on a different document: the Antarctic Treaty. Written in 1959, seven years before the Outer Space Treaty, the Antarctic Treaty also prohibits military action and private land ownership on, obviously, Antarctica. But crucially, it also outlaws resource extractionan activity that is technically allowed under the Outer Space Treaty. To avoid private companies or nations extracting resources from celestial bodies like Mars or asteroids, he thinks that space policy needs to establish clear boundaries.

Antarctica is a harsh, largely inaccessible yet resource rich environment, much like the surface of Mars. Yet the Antarctic Treaty has provided a solid framework for humans to conduct research there, safely and peacefully, for half a century without any commercial mining. In Tziourass view, it makes sense to use it as a basis for humanitys next great exploration.

Billings countered that this approach could leave too many regulatory loopholes openafter all, while the continent itself has never been mined, the seas around Antarctica have been dangerously overfished. Rather than overhauling the Outer Space Treaty, she favors creating a whole regulatory body to oversee resource extraction. The treaty has preserved space for peaceful purposes for decades and decades, she said. We dont need to mess with it.

Others argue that humankind should look beyond legal documents as a way to conceptualize life in space. Instead, they want to transform the culture around space exploration by turning to a different kind of organizing body: grassroots movements.

Danielle Wood, a systems engineer at MITs Media Lab with a focus on justice, sustainability and inclusion, believes in the power of social movements to change society. She dreams of melding grassroots activism with policy to craft a healthier future in space. I spend a lot of time studying the activism and struggles of communities that have experienced oppression, she told The Daily Beast. Obviously, theres a lot of work to do, but we have made some progress.

To Wood, the very idea of space as a frontier to be settled is a damaging one. Historically, she said, the U.S. and other colonial powers have used the romantic notion of frontiersman-ship to expand their territory, encouraging individuals to land grab under their countrys flag. But she sees a better way forward; for all its policy imperfections, she cites the spirit of the Outer Space Treaty as a beautiful example of how nations once came together and opted for peace, even during the Cold War.

Instead, Wood wants to push forward space technologies that arent designed to help us escape Earth, but rather make it a better place to live. This is already happening through tools like GPS that help us navigate. And space exploration has yielded other major advances, improving communications with satellites, medicine with microgravity research, food shelf stability with more advanced vacuum-seals, and green technology like solar panels. Modern solar power systems owe much of their development to NASA engineers trying to keep satellites running. Studying the atmospheres of Venus and Mars helped scientists on Earth address the hole in our ozone layer. In fact, an important part of de-colonizing space, Wood says, is making all of these technologies available to everyone, equally across the globe.

At 62 miles (100 kilometers) overhead, space is nearer to our rooftops than New York City is to Philadelphia, both literally and figuratively close to home. As humanity moves towards a sci-fi future, it might be time to reframe how we see it: not as a frontier to conquer, but more like a campsite to leave better than we found it.

If we dont think that space is a place ruled by law, then we know how that ends, said van Eijk. The richest win.

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Scientists and Space Lawyers Are Squabbling Over What Kind of Society to Build on Mars - The Daily Beast

Artist's concept of new fission power system on the lunar surface.

Electricity has revolutionised the world like nothing ever has, and it's impossible for humanity to imagine a life on Earth without it. Now, what if we could generate electricity in space? Can it revolutionise space travel?

The US space agency NASA has now announced its decision to put a "durable, high-power, sun-independent" fission reactor onto the Moon, positively before 2030. So, by any chance, if you've been sketching blueprints for a portable nuclear fission power plant, this is your time to shine. The only condition is that NASA should be able to carry it to the Moon in a 12-foot-long by 18-foot-wide rocket!

NASA collaborates with the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to invest in this multibillion-dollar project. And even though humanity will visit the Moon after a nearly 50-year hiatus via the Artemis mission, one could say that this is still an incredibly bold statement to make, considering how the groups' plan to make this work remains a grey area.

On November 19, the INL released a statement saying they are "seeking industry partners to design nuclear power systems for lunar applications." The request for reactor designs on behalf of NASA and a contractor of the DOE is open until February 19, 2022.

The US hopes to have the first long-term presence on the Moon in the near future. To succeed, they will most likely need a power source. Wind or hydro-powered sources are impossible because of, well, the absence of both wind and water on the Moon. Fossil fuels are far-fetched, too, because of how expensive it would be to carry them off to the Moon.

In comparison, solar power is a lot more plausible, but again, it could probably only provide energy for the few hours when the panels are exposed to sunlight.

So, the only option that remains is nuclear power.

"Plentiful energy will be key to future space exploration. I expect fission surface power systems to greatly benefit our plans for power architectures for the Moon and Mars and even drive innovation for uses here on Earth," said Jim Reuter, an associate administrator for NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate.

And NASA plans to employ specially constructed small modular reactors (SMRs) to supply consistent power in any environment, just like they do on the ground. However, the units will have to be designed to withstand the most adverse of environmental conditions.

According to the press release, the proposed reactor needs to be a uranium-powered fission reactor capable of splitting heavy atomic nuclei into lighter nuclei, releasing energy as a byproduct. The reactor must weigh no more than 6,000 kilograms and be small enough to fit into the rocket (12-foot-long by 18-foot-wide).

The reactor will be built on Earth and then launched to the Moon, where it will be required to generate 40 kilowatts of continuous electric power for ten years. The reactor must include temperature controls as well to keep the device cool. Lastly, it must have the structural integrity to hold out against its launch from Earth and landing on the Moon.

It would be reasonable to question NASA's decision to dive into this decade-long project, especially because the US will be spending several billion dollars on it.

According to reports, scientists at the Beijing Research Institute of Uranium Geology were conducting rather peculiar experiments on moon rock samples. And the tests indicated that the super-power was probably trying to see if they could build a nuclear power plant on the Moon.

If this is true, it certainly explains why the US would want to get a headstart on such a lucrative expedition.

Anyhow, irrespective of the motive, if NASA pulled this off, it would be incredible and mean that we could take more such technologies to the Red Planet.

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Electricity on Moon: NASA Starts Accepting Proposals for Establishing Lunar Nuclear Power System by 2030 | The Weather Channel - Articles from The...