Monthly Archives: March 2017

Artwork of the Mars Rover leaving its lander.

NASA

On Wednesday, March 8, Future Tensea partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State Universitywill host an event in Washington called Will Collaboration or Competition Propel Humans to Mars and Beyond? For more information and to RSVP, visit the New America website.

When young Charles Darwin stepped onto the Beagle, he wasnt planning to gather data for science, eventually changing the way humans view life. He had been a mediocre student in school and simply was hired on to be the gentleman companion of the captain. The main purpose of the Beagles voyage was to survey and produce better maps for trade.

Ferdinand Magellan, Christopher Columbus, and everyone else who tried to find the Indies were doing so for trade and national expansion. Sure, they stumbled upon parts of North America and a lot of other handy things and places along the way, but those discoveries were accidents. Sir Francis Drake, John Cabot, and everyone else who tried to find the Northwest Passage were also doing so for trade and national expansion. They also discovered a lot of science along the way, but not by primary purpose.

We often connect exploration with discovery; unexplored wilderness; new understanding; data; and, of course, science. But science has seldom been the motivator for exploration. Science has been an add-on until very recently, when inquiry and wealth and an interesting twist in perception has made science appear to lead expeditions, at least in space. All our robotic missions beyond our planet appear to be motivated by scientific discovery. We plan our mission to Europa to discover whether life has arisen there. We send rovers to Mars to look for water and the potential for life. We seek scientific answers.

At core, robotic space exploration is more for inspiration than it is for science. Orbiters, landers, and rovers inspire people to dream and to take bigger steps in their own lives. More practically, robotic missions are preparation for human missions. We Americans pay for NASA willingly because we are inspired and proud of our national achievements and technological wonders.

And although robotic space exploration is inspiring, human space exploration is far more personal, far more narrative, filled with more relatable challenge and risk. Human space exploration is a way for nations to flex their muscles and compete without having to resort to war. Its our substitute for mutual assured destruction, and that has not changed since the Cold War. (Thankfully, it is an uplifting and constructive substitute.)

Why Are India, Luxembourg, and Other Countries Getting Into the Space Race?

Your Cheat-Sheet Guide to the New Space Race

When Youre Exploring Space, Going It Alone Isnt an Option

If India or China Beats the U.S. to Mars, It Will Feel Like a Military Defeat

Americans have been thrilled by our Apollo successes. For 47 years, we have been the only nation to put a person on another celestial body, and we have been resting on that glory all that time. But that is about to change. The Chinese have an ambitious, progressive plan for landers, humans, and finally a colony on the moon. Multiple private companies, from the United States, India, and elsewhere, have lunar plans. What is going to happen to the American psyche when the Chinese, the Indians, and the European Union put people on the moon, and we are no longer the only ones? How will we react if other nations beat us to Mars?

After the Apollo era, we let the technology that enabled travel to the moon go out of production, in particular the Saturn V, the huge rocket needed to lift the big loads. Not until 2004 did that change, when President Bush announced we were going back to the moon, as a stepping stone for Mars. We began to build the Ares I and V rockets to enable those big launches. But then that program, in whole called Constellation, was canceled in 2010.

Next, also in 2010, the NASA Authorization Act laid out a plan to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars in the 2030s. NASA, the science community, and the aerospace engineering powerhouses jumped on this new vision and began work. The graphic designers outdid themselves with inspirational timelines and visions of transport and habitation.

And now the Trump administration says we are going back to the moon perhaps helped by some increasingly influential and inspirational private companies, Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, Orbital, Blue Origin, Bigelow, and the like.

But wait! Where are we going? The moon, asteroids, Mars, space stations? What are we really striving for? If we cant commit to one human exploration target in our solar system, then we must conclude that there is no single overriding purpose compelling humanity to reach one celestial target over another. Yet we feel compelled. Science, clearly, is not the driving impulse. Not even commerce is driving it, despite speculation about riches in asteroids.

Having no consistent target means that the going is the point, not the getting there. And if making the journey itself is the point, then the purpose is showing courage and innovation and being first and fastest and bestin short, its a competition. Human space exploration is about national greatness as compared to other nations. Were still firmly in the Cold War mindset.

When other countries succeed, then, rather than joining together in a positive view of human progress, we will feel that we have failed, and we may be angry and bitterand dangerous.

One concrete solution is not to fail, that we as a nation need to go to the moon and to Mars.

And another solution is to collaborate. Imagine the Americans, from NASA and SpaceX and other private organizations, and the Chinese, and the Indians, and the Russians, and the European Union, are all living in nonstandardized modules at some safe distance from one another on Mars. Would they want to stay apart in such an extreme environment, or would they want to communicate and collaborate (even if thats not the case back on Earth)?

Lets not just hope for collaboration. Lets take more and better steps now to create and foster a space collaboration. We can make private-public space partnerships easier, including those that cross national borders. We can work harder at the international meetings on space topics to create multinational collaborative bodies. We can work harder at developing globally beneficial international standards.

Exploration started out about nations and wealth. Space exploration could be about moreit could be about our species. When we go to Marsit will happenlets make sure it is a step deeper into human civilization as we do it.

This article is part of the new space race installment of Futurography, a series in which Future Tense introduces readers to the technologies that will define tomorrow. Each month, well choose a new technology and break it down. Future Tense is a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate.

Go here to read the rest:

If India or China Beats the US to Mars, It Will Feel Like a Military Defeat - Slate Magazine

Members of the Expedition 50 crew aboard the International Space Station celebrated the 2016 holidays together with a festive meal, among them NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet.

NASA

On Wednesday, Future Tensea partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State Universitywill host an event in Washington called Will Collaboration or Competition Propel Humans to Mars and Beyond? For more information and to RSVP, visit the New America website.

The next NASA rover to Mars will launch in 2020. It will be built in the United States, and it will measure wind with a tool from Spain, study rock chemistry with an instrument partially built by the French, and examine the subsurface with a sounder from Finland. This kind of international mashup is actually fairly typical for space missions, which are typically composed of scientists and instruments from countries all over the world.

Partnerships with international space agencies have always been key to NASAs success. (Little-known fact: The first flag deployed on the moon was that of Switzerland, as part of a solar wind experiment with Apollo 11.) When you are exploring space, going it alone has never been, and will never be, an option.

When you are exploring space, going it alone has never been, and will never be, an option.

When it comes to peering outside our solar system, the partnerships continue. The stunning recent announcement of a seven-planet system around the star TRAPPIST-1, a mere 39.5 light-years away from Earth, involved a multinational team and telescopes, both in space and on the ground. A Belgian astronomer originally discovered some of the planets using a telescope in Chile, then further observations with the Paranal telescope in Chile and NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope confirmed the seven-planet system. Three of the planets are located in the habitable zone, where liquid water, critical for life, could be stable on the surface.

The flagship example of partnerships in space is literally the flagship: the International Space Station. The U.S., Russian, Japanese, Canadian, and European space agencies have been operating this amazing orbiting laboratory for more than 16 years, continuously human tended. The astronauts have come from 18 different nations, and experiments from 93 countries have been carried out on the ISS. Every day, astronauts on the International Space Station carry out research that will enable humans to travel to Mars and back. In the microgravity environment of space, our bones lose density, our muscles waste, our cardiovascular system undergoes change. Research carried out on the ISS is helping us develop ways to mitigate these human health effects, which will make it possible for humans to arrive at Mars, after a seven- to eight-month journey, healthy and ready to cope with any potential emergency.

Why Are India, Luxembourg, and Other Countries Getting Into the Space Race?

Your Cheat-Sheet Guide to the New Space Race

When Youre Exploring Space, Going It Alone Isnt an Option

If India or China Beats the U.S. to Mars, It Will Feel Like a Military Defeat

The International Space Exploration Coordination Group comprises 14 space agencies, including the expected bodies like NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Russian space agency. But it also involves space agencies from China, India, South Korea, and Ukraine. The group has produced a road map for human exploration beyond Earth and provides a forum for space agencies to coordinate efforts. While some nations are more focused on the Moon and some on Mars, all realize that no single agency is capable of such a large undertaking alone.

In addition to multilateral efforts like ISECG, NASA has bilateral cooperation with individual space agencies. For instance, the European Space Agency is providing the service module for the Orion capsule that will fly on the Space Launch System rocket to take humans beyond low Earth orbit. The first uncrewed test flight was to be in 2018, but NASA is now investigating how soon it could conduct the first test flight of SLS and Orion with a crew onboard.

The only space agency NASA cannot have bilateral agreements with is China, thanks to U.S. law. The Chinese space agency does work closely with most of NASAs foreign partner space agencies, and the previous NASA administrator, Charles Bolden, spoke publicly about his frustration with the policy. At a public forum with other space agencies in 2015, he stated, If we are not collaborating with everybody, well be on the outside looking in.

One of the chief barriers to international cooperation between space agencies is the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. Some space technologies are covered under these regulations, which were put in place to prevent the export of weapons systems and related technologies. U.S. companies that sell launch services or satellites have complained about the restrictions, which they feel cause them to lose business to international competitors. Even NASA has come under scrutiny for possible ITAR violations. The ITAR restrictions are confusing and seem overly broad, making it more difficult to set up cooperation with international scientists on missions. The ITAR regulations are set up under U.S. law, making it ultimately the responsibility of Congress to decide how much to loosen or tighten the restrictions. Despite these challenges, when it comes to overall goals in exploration, NASA will lead, in part because its budget far exceeds the budgets of its partner space agencies.

While the head of the European Space Agency has called for a moon village to be the exploration priority, NASA continues to set its sights on Mars, with a plan for the first crewed mission to Mars in the early 2030s. NASA does plan to put the precursor for a Mars transfer vehicle in orbit around the Moon in the mid-2020s, providing a stepping stone for international or commercial partners that want to venture down to the lunar surface. But Mars remains the priority goal, with the first orbital mission followed by astronauts to the surface in the late 2030s, to search for evidence of past life on Mars. The private sector will play a key role in this venture, with SpaceX planning to send an uncrewed Dragon capsule to the Martian surface in 2018 in partnership with NASA. SpaceXs capability to land its first-stage rocket boosters back on Earth is helping them to develop the needed entry, descent, and landing capabilities for Mars.

Observing this planet is also a closely coordinated effort. The Committee on Earth Observation Satellites and the Group on Earth Observations provide forums for space agencies or offices from around the world to discuss open data policies, coordinate observations, inter-calibrate instruments, and allow data comparison and validation. These coordination efforts are becoming even more critical, as we cope with changing weather and patterns of growing food, and sea level rise due to human-caused climate change. There can be more immediate payoffs, too, particularly when it comes to disasters. During humanitarian crises and natural disasters, the space agencies (more than 15 of them right now) with Earth-observing satellites that have signed the International Charter for Space and Major Disasters can shift their focus and prioritize processing of satellite data to aid rescue and recovery efforts.

While people often think of space exploration as a way to promote national pride, the truth is that the future of space is international. These partnerships are expanding our knowledge of the universe, helping us search for life on other worlds, making critical observations of our own planet, and moving humans outward into space in a much more rapid time frame, and more comprehensively, than would be possible otherwise. In addition, innovations in technology and science are not restricted to one country. Diverse, innovative teams solve problems, and no one country or company can go it alone when it comes to the final frontier of space.

This article is part of the new space race installment of Futurography, a series in which Future Tense introduces readers to the technologies that will define tomorrow. Each month, well choose a new technology and break it down. Future Tense is a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate.

Read more from the original source:

When We Explore Space, We Go Together - Slate Magazine