Monthly Archives: April 2017

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NASA to Rely on Commercial Partners for Deep-Space Exploration Wall Street Journal (subscription) Responding to mounting criticism over inadequate funding and technical planning for sending astronauts to Mars, NASA leaders say they are counting on commercial participation as one means toward a sustainable strategy to explore the solar system over ... NASA OIG: NASA's Plans for Human Exploration Beyond Low Earth ...Space Ref (press release) Orion EFT-1 flown spacecraft joins display in 'NASA Now' exhibit ...collectSPACE.com NASA inspector general foresees additional SLS/Orion delaysSpaceNews Florida Today all 8 news articles »

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NASA to Rely on Commercial Partners for Deep-Space Exploration - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Florida State Universitys High-Performance Materials Institute and the Florida A&M UniversityFlorida State University College of Engineering are joining a major multiuniversity project funded by NASA that will focus on developing technologies crucial to human exploration in deep space.

We are really happy to participate in a project that supports NASA and its future work, HPMI Director Richard Liang said.

Added Vice President for Research Gary K. Ostrander: This is a wonderful opportunity for our faculty researchers and students to participate in a project that pushes the boundaries of science and will have a major impact on space travel and exploration. FSUs High-Performance Materials Institute was designed to explore the possibilities and uses of next-generation materials, and this project will allow them to apply their expertise in an exciting way.

The work is part of an overall initiative from NASA to create the first-ever Space Technology Research Institutes (STRI), one on biological engineering in space and one on next-generational materials. Each institute will receive $15 million over a five-year period that will be distributed among the partner universities.

HPMI is a multidisciplinary research institute at Florida State University largely staffed by faculty from the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering. Because of HPMIs leadership, both FSU and FAMU will receive funding from the STRI focusing on next-generation materials and manufacturing. The money will help fund multiple graduate students at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and one postdoctoral researcher.

The High-Performance Materials Institute is a leader in developing advanced nanocomposites and additive manufacturing that will be critical for mans extended presence in deep space, FAMU-FSU College of Engineering Dean J. Murray Gibson said. Because of this grant, our students will have unique opportunities to participate in an exciting future major space program.

Liang, who is also a professor at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, will serve as principle investigator at the college and an area leader for the STRI. Six faculty from the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering will participate in the project. The STRI will be led by Professor Gregory Odegard at Michigan Technological University.

At HPMI and the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, scientists will specifically work on the development of carbon nanotube-based structural materials that can help create next-generation space vehicles, power systems and potentially even habitats.

Its exciting to know that I could have a student who could get experience here on this project and then potentially work on the mission to Mars in the future, said Tarik Dickens, an assistant professor at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering who is also working on the project.

HPMIs mission is to develop next-generation materials that can be used in a variety of technologies and industries. Its been designated as an Industry/University Cooperative Research Center by the National Science Foundation and as a Center of Excellence by Floridas public university governing body, the Florida Board of Governors.

The other universities participating in the project are University of Utah, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Minnesota, Pennsylvania State University, University of Colorado and Virginia Commonwealth University. Industrial partners include Nanocomp Technologies and Solvay, with the U.S. Air Force Research Lab as a collaborator.

More here:

High-Performance Materials Institute to play major role in deep space exploration - Florida State News

Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides

If you go

What: Space Ethics: Asking the Tough Questions

When: 9 to 10:20 a.m. Friday

Where: UMC West Ballroom

More info: colorado.edu/cwa/

As human exploration of space extends mankind's reach beyond even the edges of our solar system, the difficult ethical questions only continue to mount.

Michelle Thaller has heard them all as well as the ones that aren't so difficult.

"Sometimes I am amazed at what some people think are ethical problems, that I think are not ethical problems at all such as, would scientists tell us if an incredibly destructive comet was headed our way?" said Thaller, the deputy director of science for communications at NASA headquarters.

David Grinspoon

"We're all on this planet together. I am a person, too. I'm a human being. The idea that we would be on in some sort of ethical argument, if we knew something like this is coming, I am amazed. Of course we would tell you."

She recalled that much of her time at the end of 2012 was taken up with questions concerning the supposed "Mayan Apocalypse," a series of cataclysmic events that some feared would unfold on or around Dec. 21 of that year.

"People are asking me, 'Is the world ending?' I'm at work; I'm at my desk," Thaller would reply. "If the answer was yes, would I be here? I don't think so. All the scientists would buy up the all the good wine and max out their credit cards."

Thaller will be one of a trio of panelists Friday entertaining the topic, "Space Ethics: Asking the Tough Questions" one entry in a full slate of panels on the closing day at the University of Colorado's Conference on World Affairs.

Scientists are also not sitting on information that alien life is out there, Thaller said, although intriguing questions do persist around the 20 percent fluctuations of light observed at a star identified as KIC 8462852 in the constellation Cygnus also known as Tabby's Star, after Yale researcher Tabetha Boyajian.

Michelle Thaller

"It's very unlikely, but one of the possibilities is it could be artificial," Thaller said, meaning a sign of intelligent extraterrestrial life. "We would love there to be aliens. We would love to find a signal. We are not the people who would be covering this up. We would be running down the streets and cracking open the Champagne."

Setting aside Mayan cataclysms and alien contact, there are plenty of ethical conundrums, such as whether humans should employ genetic editing tools to render the species more sustainable in space or on other planets, or whether geoengineering should be used to change Earth's atmosphere, to counter the effects of global warming.

And, co-panelist David Grinspoon said, the list goes on.

"The topic of environmental ethics that we focus on, on Earth, take on a different dimension when we go to other planets," said Grinspoon, an astrobiologist who is senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute and adjunct professor of astrophysical and planetary science at CU.

"Is it a problem to pollute the moon? The Apollo astronauts left equipment on the moon, and tracks. Is that the same as leaving dune buggy tracks, and litter, and junk, on the beach, on Earth? I don't think it is the same, but it's an interesting question."

Another, he said, is, "How much should we worry about contaminating other planets that may potentially have life? Do we have to worry about the rights of Martian organisms? Another interesting one is, do we have to worry about endangering life on Earth by bringing dangerous materials back from space? And what are the rights of babies born in space who obviously had no choice in the matter?"

As the questions mount, there is also a question about who ultimately gets to answer them and, based on whose standards?

"What's the jurisdiction?" Grinspoon said. "How do we extend our laws and principles and possible enforcement elsewhere in the universe? What's the mechanism?"

Completing Friday's panel is Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides, an astrobiologist who, with her husband, was among the first people to buy a ticket for a suborbital spaceflight on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo.

Charlie Brennan: 303-473-1327, brennanc@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/chasbrennan

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CU's Conference on World Affairs: Exploring tough questions posed by space exploration - Boulder Daily Camera

Felipe Cervera April11,2017

Dear reader: I am going to invite you to do a quick exercise before you start reading this text. It will only take you a few seconds. These are the instructions: (1) Close your eyes. (2) Imagine what an extraterrestrial culture looks like. (3) Once you have a more or less clear image, continue reading.

Ready? Good. Did you think of the culture of an alien society? Well, that is not quite what I have in mind. What I actually mean is, the way our human cultures express themselves through space exploration, and therefore the ways in which we are already practicing an extraterrestrial culture.

This is not a new thing. Terrestrial cultures have (always) had a degree of extraterrestrial-ity in them. Cultural astronomers and archeoastronomers (historians and scientists that work with the history of extraterrestrial observation and its impacts on civilization) have demonstrated that this was already a constant in ancient civilizations, with examples such as the rituals performed in places like Stonehenge and Chichen Itza. Satellite technology and its impact on contemporary telecommunications may be the clearest example of this in our world today. Indeed, extraterrestrial space has been a constant feature in the human history.

NASA

I am a theatre and performance maker and scholar. Loosely speaking, I think through big words like culture and knowledge by using terms like staging, enactment, performativity, and embodiment. Yet, when I speak about the enactment of space, I am not really referring to the space legend about Apollo 11s lunar landing being faked. Instead, I am much more interested in paying attention to what the utterance thats one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind performed. In theatre and performance, we care a lot for the symbolic meaning of words. In fact, we often refer to a book titled How to Do Things with Words (1962), where the author, John L. Austin, describes that a very important function of language is to perform actions. Memorable examples that Austin provides are weddings and baptisms, where saying I do or I hereby name you effectively perform the action of marrying and naming. We dont marry stars, but we do name them, and human cultures have done so since millennia ago. In naming a star, we perform space according to a determinate set of terrestrial cultural references. So unless the folks at SETI crack a signal open and discover a non-terrestrial intelligence, extraterrestrial culture starts with us. We share space with ourselves. And we do so, as sociologists Peter Dickens and James Ormrod explain in The Palgrave Handbook of Society, Culture and Outer Space (2016), by practicing space according to different social orders.

More recent examples of extraterrestrial culture appear in visual language. Like words, images have different degrees of performativitymeaning that more than simply communicating an idea, they are able to bring forth the action of that idea. For example, an excellent illustration of early Soviet extraterrestrial culture is given in Olesya Turkinas book, Soviet Space Dogs (2014), in which she demonstrates the extent to which the first animals in space impacted popular culture in the Soviet Union, by effectively creating an extraterrestrial sense to the patriotic mission of the Soviet mindset during the Cold War.

Another example is the wave of phenomenal interplanetary and intergalactic photography that instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope have produced. In respect to the specific case of the images produced by Hubble, these are coloured in such a way that the resemblance to the work of painters of the Romantic West is uncanny, thereby extending the visual imagery of the final frontier onto the cosmos. Elizabeth Kessler explains this point in Picturing the Cosmos: Hubble Space Telescope Images and The Astronomical Sublime (2012):

As with the Eagle Nebula, many of the Hubble images bear a striking resemblance to earthly geological and meteorological formations, especially as depicted in Romantic landscapes of the American West (p. 5).

NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI), and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Hubble images have had a remarkable impact in the ways in which extraterrestrial space continues to be represented in mass media and films. However, in the last twenty years we have seen an increase of extraterrestrial culture in locations other than the U.S. and Russia. As more space programmes get instituted in diverse cultural contexts, the markers of extraterrestrial culture are multiplying. Sometimes, like the case of the European Space Agency, the investment into cultural and artistic activities is much more deliberate. Other times, like the case of the Chinese or Indian space programmes, the cultural dimension of space research is somewhat more implicit.

For example, between 2005 and 2008, the European Space Agency commissioned the arts agency The Arts Catalyst to carry out a study on the cultural utilization of the International Space Station (ISS). The study aimed to design and suggest policies and projects that extended the cultural possibilities of space research beyond the usual scientific circles. Among the suggestions from The Arts Catalyst was the launch of a pilot project of artistic residencies that, once in place, hosted the production of really exciting experimental art and performance. In fact, space art is on the rise. This is not only in light of the occasional show that happens inside the ISS, like Chris Hadfields epic rendition of David Bowies Space Oddity. Many compelling artists are currently producing work that in relates to the scientific processes through which astronomical and cosmological knowledge is produced, often suggesting alternative ways to performatively relate to the universe. A great window to peep into this is Kosmika, a yearly festival that gathers an exciting range of Space artists and their work. The curator of the festival is the Mexican performance artist and musician Nahum, who is an associate curator with The Arts Catalyst, and also chairs the Committee for the Cultural Utilisation of Space (ITACCUS) of the International Astronauticall Federation (IAF).

In contrast to the European investment into the cultural utilization of space, the Chinese space program is better known for its more hermetic attitudes, so we dont really know a lot about the countrys space technology until it is announced or launched. Yet, as other countries, space research in China is embedded into a specific cultural milieu that is more clearly expressed in straightforward examples, like naming its lunar missions after the Chinese goddess of the Moon, Change. In the case of India, in 2015 the scientists at the Mars Orbiter Mission presented the world with perhaps one of the most significant images of space science in recent times: a group of women scientists dressed in sari celebrating the successful orbit of their Mars satellite, Mangalyaan. Against the more common picture of male scientists dressed in shirts and ties, this image certainly contributes to the idea of space as a diverse place and extraterrestrial culture as an exemplary practice of humankind.

Space research is a human practice, and as such, it carries cultural values within. These are expressed more visibly in examples like the ones that I have been listing in the last few paragraphs. But a deeper and closer reading or appreciation of these and other examples will reveal the philosophical structures and principles that we use to relate to the universe at large. Not only will issues about the boundaries of geopolitics and astropolitics might then be revealed, but also, we may see more philosophical and aesthetic questions about our cosmic agency and role. These questions trouble space scientists as much as they trouble scholars working in the humanities and in the arts. In continental and analytic philosophy, for example, there are long-standing traditions of looking up to the stars as a way to address complicated questions about the meaning of being and knowing.

Indeed, the cultural dimension of space research is a bit more complex than outreach and science communication. Yet, why is it important today to think about space in cultural terms? In short: because we are in the cusp of an extraterrestrial cultural revolution.

Humankind has practiced outer spacethat is, we have performed itsince time immemorial. Through science, philosophy and the arts, we have practiced extraterrestrial culture since the first time we took a star as a reference to life on EarthPtolemy, Copernicus and Galileo were all already practicing extraterrestrial culture. However, today extraterrestrial culture acquires a much more material potential. In an age of climate change and orbital trash, of planetary stewardship and satellite telecommunication, of interplanetary colonialism and orbital cosmopolitanism, the performativity of our extraterrestrial culture is no longer exclusively a projection for the future, but rather the pressing expression of the material relationality between us, our planet, and with the universe at large. How we enact space now is therefore a determinant factor in the ways in which we will continue to practice space in the future.

Today, we might have an ideal moment to reevaluate how space science is practiced, how it percolates into society at large, and how it determines and is determined by the cultures in which it is takes place. Today, thinking extraterrestrial-ly might no longer need to mean breaking the final frontier (arent we tired of breaking things?). Instead, an emphasis on how we, as terrestrial beings, are always in relation and interaction with the extraterrestrial beyond seems much more pressing. Even when human presence in the solar system seems to be an irrevocable tendency, the ways we start to practice that presence today will determine how we envision ourselves as planetary advocates for this Earth now and in the future. The discovery of gravitational waves has already demonstrated just how connected we are with the universe at large. What we do next will have a great impact on the ways we continue to conceive our planetary condition. Meanwhile, we can continue imagining what an extraterrestrial culture might look like.

Myself? I want to stage Waiting for Godot in orbit, and have Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye play Vladimir and Estragon. The play is a seminal work in the history of theatre in general, and an exemplary case of a genre called theatre of the absurd. This particular genres main characteristics are that the storyline is often circular and the characters live through a cyclical, almost nonsensical existence. In Waiting for Godot, Vladimir and Estragon spend the entire play waiting for Godot, whose complete identity we never really learn and who actually never shows up. The play has often been interpreted as a poetic representation of humans existential agony, and the search for a meaning in a world that may not have one at all. The end of the play encapsulates this:

Estragon (Neil): Well? Shall we go?

Vladimir (Bill): Yes, lets go.

They dont move.

Imagine Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye playing these characters and saying these lines...in orbiton board the ISS...wouldnt that be something?

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Extraterrestrial culture: How we express ourselves through space exploration - The Planetary Society (blog)