“What makes this image so mind-blowing is how small it is, and how large it is, at the same time.
It’s small in the sense that this image represents only a teensy tiny portion of the night sky. Imagine you are holding out a grain of sand at arm’s length. The area of sky that grain covers — that’s the size of the area captured in the above image.
But it’s huge in the sense that nearly every object in this image is a galaxy (besides the bright spiky starbursts, which are stars in the foreground). Think about that: In every pinprick of sky, there are thousands and thousands of galaxies, at least.”
“In a July 2021 poll from YouGov/The Economist, a majority of Americans said the U.S. should send astronauts to the moon and Mars. This was true across political parties, with slim majorities for Democrats, Republicans and independents.
Most Americans are on the same page about funding space exploration, too. About a third of Democrats, Republicans and independents said government funding of space exploration should be kept the same, and about 40 percent of each group said funding should be increased.”
“In a 2012 paper, the Russian transhumanist Alexey Turchin described what he called “global catastrophic risks of finding an extraterrestrial AI message” during the search for intelligent life. The scenario unfolds similarly to the plot of A for Andromeda. An alien civilization creates a signal beacon in space of clearly non-natural origin that draws our attention. A nearby radio transmitter sends a message containing instructions for how to build an impossibly advanced computer that could create an alien AI.
The result is a phishing attempt on a cosmic scale. Just like a malware attack that takes over a user’s computer, the advanced alien AI could quickly take over the Earth’s infrastructure — and us with it. (Others in the broader existential risk community have raised similar concerns that hostile aliens could target us with malicious information.)
What can we do to protect ourselves? Well, we could simply choose not to build the alien computer. But Turchin assumes that the message would also contain “bait” in the form of promises that the computer could, for example, solve our biggest existential challenges or provide unlimited power to those who control it.
Geopolitics would play a role as well. Just as international competition has led nations in the past to embrace dangerous technologies — like nuclear weapons — out of fear that their adversaries would do so first, the same could happen again in the event of a message from space. How confident would policymakers in Washington be that China would safely handle such a signal if it received one first — or vice versa?”
“The nightmare scenario of a space monopoly isn’t too different from the fear of a monopoly here on Earth. If just one company gains too much control over the space market and gets too far ahead with its tech, it’s possible that future competitors could be blocked out of space for good. That means a single company, like SpaceX, could end up with an enormous amount of influence over how humans visit and utilize resources in space.”
“When energy from a solar storm reaches Earth, it causes the atmosphere to expand slightly, meaning that satellites flying in what would normally be a safe, 209 km parking orbit are suddenly encountering a lot of air resistance that can pull them back to the ground. SpaceX was aware of the problem as soon as the 49 satellites reached space and attempted to ride out the storm, positioning the relatively flat-shaped spacecraft edge-forward, to minimize air resistance.”
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“But in this case physics has a bigger vote than SpaceX, and the safe-mode maneuver worked for only nine of the fleet of 49. The others were effectively clawed out of the sky and are already reentering the atmosphere or will begin to do so by the end of the week.”
“Last year, NASA launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which is a car-size box outfitted with solar panels. It’s currently on its way to a 160-meter asteroid called Dimorphos. In the fall, DART will crash into Dimorphos at 24,000 kilometers an hour (about 15,000 miles per hour).
Dimorphos is a “moonlet” asteroid, which means it orbits a larger asteroid named Didymos, much like the moon orbits the Earth. If all goes according to plan, the collision will change its orbit, proving that it’s possible to redirect a big hunk of rock in the middle of space. (The larger asteroid’s gravitational pull will help ensure that Dimorphos doesn’t fly off in a new direction, say, toward Earth.)
DART is the definition of a long shot. “This has never been tried before,” Andrews explains on Unexplainable. If it doesn’t work, that doesn’t mean we couldn’t ever deflect an asteroid. But perhaps it will take more force than DART can supply.”
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“If DART works, NASA can build a similar strategy into its anti-asteroid game plan. If they spot an asteroid heading toward Earth, “they can send a precursor mission to observe it beforehand,” Andrews says. In those initial observations, scientists can study the asteroid’s composition and make calculations for how much force it will take to deflect the rock. “You could then send a DART-like mission.”
The problem of asteroids potentially crashing into the Earth is not yet solved. Still, a couple hundred years in the future, it’s possible that scientists like Fast will be hailed as forward-thinking heroes who laid the groundwork of a planetary defense system. “There’s no greater gift that America’s space agency can give” than protection for humans of the future, Fast says.
Even though these disasters might not arrive in our lifetimes, we can still feel good about the progress being made. It’s a way to be good ancestors to the generations that follow us. On the long list of problems to solve and disasters to mitigate, maybe we can actually solve one.”
“NASA wants to get out of the expensive business of running the ’90s-era space station. The ISS is the size of a football field and costs as much as $4 billion annually to operate, and NASA estimates that relocating its astronauts to commercial alternatives could save about $1 billion every year. Newer space stations will be smaller than the ISS and include newer tech, and NASA would only need to pay for the portion that it uses. And once these replacements are launched into orbit, the space agency can finally dispose of the ISS.
“We’re looking at ISS technology that was designed beginning in the ’80s, built in the ’90s, and launched in the ’90s and 2000s,” Wendy Whitman Cobb, a professor at the US Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, told Recode. “This is definitely aging.”
The plan is to deorbit the ISS right over an area called Point Nemo in the South Pacific Ocean, which is the world’s farthest point from land. This will be a delicate process, and could take up to three years. After letting gravity pull the ISS downward to a critical height of 155 miles above Earth, NASA will organize one final flight to remove any remaining research (or astronauts). Soon afterward, ISS operators will use a cargo spacecraft to push the ISS into the atmosphere. While most of the space station should burn off, “a number of high-density payload and structural components” are likely to break through intact, according to NASA spokesperson Stephanie Schierholz.”