Monthly Archives: June 2020

Although the possibility of exploring space has long excited people in many walks of life, for most of the latter 20th century and into the early 21st century, only national governments could afford the very high costs of launching people and machines into space. This reality meant that space exploration had to serve very broad interests, and it indeed has done so in a variety of ways. Government space programs have increased knowledge, served as indicators of national prestige and power, enhanced national security and military strength, and provided significant benefits to the general public. In areas where the private sector could profit from activities in space, most notably the use of satellites as telecommunication relays, commercial space activity has flourished without government funding. In the early 21st century, entrepreneurs believed that there were several other areas of commercial potential in space, most notably privately funded space travel.

In the years after World War II, governments assumed a leading role in the support of research that increased fundamental knowledge about nature, a role that earlier had been played by universities, private foundations, and other nongovernmental supporters. This change came for two reasons. First, the need for complex equipment to carry out many scientific experiments and for the large teams of researchers to use that equipment led to costs that only governments could afford. Second, governments were willing to take on this responsibility because of the belief that fundamental research would produce new knowledge essential to the health, the security, and the quality of life of their citizens. Thus, when scientists sought government support for early space experiments, it was forthcoming. Since the start of space efforts in the United States, the Soviet Union, and Europe, national governments have given high priority to the support of science done in and from space. From modest beginnings, space science has expanded under government support to include multibillion-dollar exploratory missions in the solar system. Examples of such efforts include the development of the Curiosity Mars rover, the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and its moons, and the development of major space-based astronomical observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope.

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1957 used the fact that his country had been first to launch a satellite as evidence of the technological power of the Soviet Union and of the superiority of communism. He repeated these claims after Yuri Gagarins orbital flight in 1961. Although U.S. Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower had decided not to compete for prestige with the Soviet Union in a space race, his successor, John F. Kennedy, had a different view. On April 20, 1961, in the aftermath of the Gagarin flight, he asked his advisers to identify a space program which promises dramatic results in which we could win. The response came in a May 8, 1961, memorandum recommending that the United States commit to sending people to the Moon, because dramatic achievements in spacesymbolize the technological power and organizing capacity of a nation and because the ensuing prestige would be part of the battle along the fluid front of the cold war. From 1961 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, competition between the United States and the Soviet Union was a major influence on the pace and content of their space programs. Other countries also viewed having a successful space program as an important indicator of national strength.

Even before the first satellite was launched, U.S. leaders recognized that the ability to observe military activities around the world from space would be an asset to national security. Following on the success of its photoreconnaissance satellites, which began operation in 1960, the United States built increasingly complex observation and electronic-intercept intelligence satellites. The Soviet Union also quickly developed an array of intelligence satellites, and later a few other countries instituted their own satellite observation programs. Intelligence-gathering satellites have been used to verify arms-control agreements, provide warnings of military threats, and identify targets during military operations, among other uses.

In addition to providing security benefits, satellites offered military forces the potential for improved communications, weather observation, navigation, timing, and position location. This led to significant government funding for military space programs in the United States and the Soviet Union. Although the advantages and disadvantages of stationing force-delivery weapons in space have been debated, as of the early 21st century, such weapons had not been deployed, nor had space-based antisatellite systemsthat is, systems that can attack or interfere with orbiting satellites. The stationing of weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies is prohibited by international law.

Governments realized early on that the ability to observe Earth from space could provide significant benefits to the general public apart from security and military uses. The first application to be pursued was the development of satellites for assisting in weather forecasting. A second application involved remote observation of land and sea surfaces to gather imagery and other data of value in crop forecasting, resource management, environmental monitoring, and other applications. The U.S., the Soviet Union, Europe, and China also developed their own satellite-based global positioning systems, originally for military purposes, that could pinpoint a users exact location, help in navigating from one point to another, and provide very precise time signals. These satellites quickly found numerous civilian uses in such areas as personal navigation, surveying and cartography, geology, air-traffic control, and the operation of information-transfer networks. They illustrate a reality that has remained constant for a half centuryas space capabilities are developed, they often can be used for both military and civilian purposes.

Another space application that began under government sponsorship but quickly moved into the private sector is the relay of voice, video, and data via orbiting satellites. Satellite telecommunications has developed into a multibillion-dollar business and is the one clearly successful area of commercial space activity. A related, but economically much smaller, commercial space business is the provision of launches for private and government satellites. In 2004 a privately financed venture sent a piloted spacecraft, SpaceShipOne, to the lower edge of space for three brief suborbital flights. Although it was technically a much less challenging achievement than carrying humans into orbit, its success was seen as an important step toward opening up space to commercial travel and eventually to tourism. More than 15 years after SpaceShipOne reached space, several firms were poised to carry out such suborbital flights. Companies have arisen that also use satellite imagery to provide data for business about economic trends. Suggestions have been made that in the future other areas of space activity, including using resources found on the Moon and near-Earth asteroids and the capture of solar energy to provide electric power on Earth, could become successful businesses.

Most space activities have been pursued because they serve some utilitarian purpose, whether increasing knowledge, adding to national power, or making a profit. Nevertheless, there remains a powerful underlying sense that it is important for humans to explore space for its own sake, to see what is there. Although the only voyages that humans have made away from the near vicinity of Earththe Apollo flights to the Moonwere motivated by Cold War competition, there have been recurrent calls for humans to return to the Moon, travel to Mars, and visit other locations in the solar system and beyond. Until humans resume such journeys of exploration, robotic spacecraft will continue to serve in their stead to explore the solar system and probe the mysteries of the universe.

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space exploration | History, Definition, & Facts | Britannica

The first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik 1, was launched by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957. The first human to go into space, Yuri Gagarin, was launched, again by the Soviet Union, for a one-orbit journey around Earth on April 12, 1961. Within 10 years of that first human flight, American astronauts walked on the surface of the Moon. Apollo 11 crew members Neil Armstrong and Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin made the first lunar landing on July 20, 1969. A total of 12 Americans on six separate Apollo missions set foot on the Moon between July 1969 and December 1972. Since then, no humans have left Earth orbit, but more than 500 men and women have spent as many as 438 consecutive days in space. Starting in the early 1970s, a series of Soviet (Russian from December 1991) space stations, the U.S. Skylab station, and numerous space shuttle flights provided Earth-orbiting bases for varying periods of human occupancy and activity. From November 2, 2000, when its first crew took up residence, to its completion in 2011, the International Space Station (ISS) served as a base for humans living and working in space on a permanent basis. It will continue to be used in this way until at least 2024.

Since 1957 Earth-orbiting satellites and robotic spacecraft journeying away from Earth have gathered valuable data about the Sun, Earth, other bodies in the solar system, and the universe beyond. Robotic spacecraft have landed on the Moon, Venus, Mars, Titan, a comet, and three asteroids, have visited all the major planets, and have flown by Kuiper belt objects and by the nuclei of comets, including Halleys Comet, traveling in the inner solar system. Scientists have used space-derived data to deepen human understanding of the origin and evolution of galaxies, stars, planets, and other cosmological phenomena.

Orbiting satellites also have provided, and continue to provide, important services to the everyday life of many people on Earth. Meteorologic satellites deliver information on short- and long-term weather patterns and their underlying causes. Other Earth-observation satellites remotely sense land and ocean areas, gathering data that improve management of Earths resources and that help in understanding global climate change. Telecommunications satellites allow essentially instantaneous transfer of voice, images, and data on a global basis. Satellites operated by the United States, Russia, China, Japan, India, and Europe give precision navigation, positioning, and timing information that has become essential to many terrestrial users. Earth-observation satellites have also become extremely useful to the military authorities of several countries as complements to their land, sea, and air forces and have provided important security-related information to national leaders.

As the many benefits of space activity have become evident, other countries have joined the Soviet Union and the United States in developing their own space programs. They include a number of western European countries operating both individually and, after 1975, cooperatively through the European Space Agency, as well as China, Japan, Canada, India, Israel, Iran, North Korea, South Korea, and Brazil. By the second decade of the 21st century, more than 50 countries had space agencies or other government bodies carrying out space activities.

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Space exploration - Major milestones | Britannica

Why explore space? Its an expensive arena to play in, between the fuel costs and the technological challenge of operating in a hostile environment. For humans, a small mistake can quickly become fatal something that we have seen several times in space history. And for NASAs budget, there are projects that come in late and over budget, drawing the ire of Congress and the public.

These are some of the drawbacks. But for the rest of this article, we will focus on some of the benefits of going where few humans have gone before.

Spinoffs

Perhaps the most direct benefit comes from technologies used on Earth that were first pioneered in space exploration. This is something that all agencies talk about, but well focus on the NASA Spinoff program as an example. (NASA will be used as the prime example for most of this article, but many of these cited benefits are also quoted by other space agencies.)

The program arose from NASAs desire to showcase spinoffs at congressional budget hearings, according to its website. This began with a Technology Utilization Program Report in 1973, which began as a black-and-white circular and progressed to color in 1976 following public interest. Since that year, NASA has published more than 1,800 reports on spinoffs.

The agency has several goals in doing this. Dispelling the myth of wasted taxpayer dollars is one NASA cites, along with encouraging the public to follow space exploration and showing how American ingenuity can work in space.

There are many commercialized advances the program says it contributed to, including memory foam (first used for airline crash protection), magnetic resonance imaging and smoke detection. In many cases, NASA did not invent the technology itself, but just pushed it along, the agency says.

But as counterpoint to NASAs arguments, some critics argue the technology would have been developed anyway without space exploration, or that the money spent on exploration itself does not justify the spinoff.

Job creation

Another popularly cited benefit of space exploration is job creation, or the fact that a space agency and its network of contractors, universities and other entities help people stay employed. From time to time, NASA puts out figures concerning how many associated jobs a particular project generates, or the economic impact.

Heres an example: in 2012, NASA administrator Charles Bolden published a blog post about the Curiosity Mars rover landing, which was picked up by the White House website. Its also important to remember that the $2.5 billion investment made in this project was not spent on Mars, but right here on Earth, supporting more than 7,000 jobs in at least 31 states, he wrote.

But the benefit can cut in a negative way, too. NASAs budget is allocated by Congress, which means that the amount of money it has available for employment fluctuates. There are also some programs that are highly dependent on grants, which can make stable jobs challenging in those fields. Finally, as the priorities of Congress/NASA change, jobs can evaporate with it. One example was the space shuttles retirement, which prompted a job loss so massive that NASA had a transition strategy for its employees and contractors.

Its also unclear what constitutes a job under NASA parlance. Some universities have researchers working on multiple projects NASA-related or not. Employment can also be full-time, part-time or occasional. So while job creation is cited as a benefit, more details about those jobs are needed to make an informed decision about how much good it does.

Education

Teaching has a high priority for NASA, so much so that it has flown astronaut educators in space. (The first one, Christa McAuliffe, died aboard the space shuttle Challenger during launch in 1986. Her backup, Barbara Morgan, was selected as an educator/mission specialist in 1998 and flew aboard STS-118 in 2007.) And to this day, astronauts regularly do in-flight conferences with students from space, ostensibly to inspire them to pursue careers in the field.

NASAs education office has three goals: making the workforce stronger, encouraging students to pursue STEM careers (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), and engaging Americans in NASAs mission. Other space agencies also have education components to assist with requirements in their own countries. Its also fair to say the public affairs office for NASA and other agencies play roles in education, although they also talk about topics such as missions in progress.

But its hard to figure out how well the education efforts translate into inspiring students, according to a National Research Council report on NASAs primary and secondary education program in 2008. Among other criticisms, the program was cited as unstable (as it needs to change with political priorities) and there was little rigorous evaluation of its effectiveness. But NASAs emphasis on science and discovery was also praised.

Anecdotally, however, many astronauts and people within NASA have spoken about being inspired by watching missions such as Apollo take place. And the same is true of people who are peripherally involved in the field, too. (A personal example: this author first became interested in space in the mid-1990s through the movie Apollo 13, which led to her watching the space shuttle program more closely.)

Intangible benefits

Added to this host of business-like benefits, of course, are the intangibles. What sort of value can you place on better understanding the universe? Think of finding methane on Mars, or discovering an exoplanet, or constructing the International Space Station to do long-term exploration studies. Each has a cost associated with it, but with each also comes a smidgeon of knowledge we can add to the encyclopedia of the human race.

Space can also inspire art, which is something seen heavily in 2014 following the arrival of the European Space Agency Rosetta mission at Comet 67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko. It inspired songs, short videos and many other works of art. NASAs missions, particularly those early space explorers of the 1950s and 1960s, inspired creations from people as famous as Norman Rockwell.

There also are benefits that maybe we cannot anticipate ahead of time. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is a network that advocates looking for life around the universe, likely because communicating with beings outside of Earth could bring us some benefit. And perhaps there is another space-related discovery just around the corner that will change our lives drastically.

For more information, here is a Universe Today article about how we really watched television from the moon. We also collected some spin-offs from the Hubble Space Telescope. You can also listen to Astronomy Cast. Episode 144 Space Elevators.

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What Are The Benefits Of Space Exploration? - Universe Today

I never look at the Moon without being reminded of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and of the day, July 20, 1969, when they left their first footprints on its dusty surface. The exploit seems even more heroic in retrospect, when we realise how primitive the technology was: Nasas entire suite of computers was less powerful than a single smartphone today.

Apollo 11 was only 12 years after the USSRs first Sputnik satellite launched into orbit around the Earth. Had the pace of missions been sustained in the subsequent half-century, there would surely have been footprints on Mars long before today.

But this has not happened.

The reason, of course, is that Apollo was motivated by the US strategic imperative to beat the Russians; it consumed up to four per cent of the US federal budget. Once US primacy was achieved, continuing gargantuan levels of funding was not justifiable, and the Apollo Programme ended in 1972 with the safe return of Apollo 17.

Hundreds more people have ventured into space in the ensuing decades, but anti-climactically they have done no more than circle the Earth in low orbit, mostly in the International Space Station.

Space technology has nonetheless burgeoned. There is participation from more than 70 nations, as well as the commercial sector. We routinely depend on orbiting satellites for communication, navigation, environmental monitoring, surveillance and weather forecasting. And space technology offers a huge boost to astronomers, lifting telescopes into orbits far above the blurring and absorptive effects of Earths atmosphere.

The sector has been energised by private companies, such as Elon Musks SpaceX and Jeff Bezoss Blue Origin. These ventures bring a can-do Silicon Valley culture into a domain long dominated by Nasa and a few aerospace conglomerates. They have developed the techniques to recover and reuse the main launch rocket, presaging real cost savings.

Machine learning is advancing quickly, as is sensor technology. In coming decades, the entire solar system planets, moons, and asteroids will be explored by fleets of tiny, automated probes interacting with one another like a flock of birds.

Giant robotic fabricators will construct, in space, solar energy collectors, telescopes and other giant structures. Indeed, much industrial production could eventually happen away from Earth.

Ever more capable instruments have been sent to Mars to orbit around the red planet or land on its surface. They will be joined next year by the UAEs Hope spacecraft to study the Martian climate hopefully a pathfinder for other projects, both inspirational and practical, from the Middle East.

But the extra cost of sending humans and returning them safely remains significant. So will humans once again venture into what we call deep space, rather than simply orbiting the Earth?

Nasa astronauts Doug Hurley, foreground, and Bob Behnken call down to mission controllers for a report on their second flight day onboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on Nasa's SpaceX Demo-2 mission approaching to dock to the International Space Station (ISS). Nasa TV / EPA

SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft approaches to dock to ISS. Nasa TV / EPA

SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft approaches to dock to ISS. Nasa TV / EPA

SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft approaches to dock to ISS. Nasa TV / EPA

The SpaceX Dragon crew capsule, with Nasa astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken aboard, docks with the International Space Station. Nasa TV / AP

The SpaceX Dragon crew capsule, with Nasa astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken aboard, docks with the International Space Station. Nasa TV / AP

The SpaceX Dragon crew capsule, with Nasa astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken aboard, docks with the International Space Station. Nasa TV / AP

SpaceX Crew Dragon is seen from the International Space Station during the spacecraft's approach to the orbiting laboratory. Nasa TV / EPA

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft launched from Launch Complex 39A on Nasas SpaceX Demo-2 mission to the International Space Station with Nasa astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley onboard, at Nasa's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. Nasa / AFP

To todays young people, the Apollo programme is ancient history. It was all over long before they were ever born. Of the 12 men who walked on the moon, only three are still living. We could be nearing a time when no human has a first-hand memory of standing on another world.

Along with millions of others, I would be saddened if human exploration of deep space faded into history.

Mars is a more alluring target than the Moon, albeit more remote. I hope that some people alive today will walk on the red planets surface as an adventure, and as a step towards the stars.

Nasas Space Shuttle, when it was operational, was launched more than 130 times. Its two crashes were national traumas because it had been promoted unwisely as a safe vehicle for civilians (and because a schoolteacher, Christa McAuliffe, was one of the casualties). Test pilots and adventurers would readily accept much more risk than the two per cent implicit in the experience of the Space Shuttle programme.

China has the resources, the dirigisme and maybe even the willingness to undertake an Apollo-style programme. It already achieved a first by landing on the far side of the Moon, and will surely follow this up with a manned Lunar base. But a clearer-cut great leap forward in Chinese space exploration would involve footprints on Mars, not just on the Moon.

Looking further ahead, the UAE envisages that, by 2117, there could be a real "city" on Mars, and it is welcome to have this inspirational goal to inspire interest among the next generation and inspire innovation in the region.

I think the future of manned spaceflight also lies with privately funded adventurers who are prepared to participate in a cut-price programme far riskier than the kind Nasa has been able to impose upon its astronauts thus far.

The phrase space tourism should be avoided. It lulls people into believing that such ventures are genuinely safe. And if that is the perception, the inevitable accidents will be as traumatic as those of the Shuttle. These exploits must be sold, so to speak, as dangerous sports, or intrepid exploration.

So I hope that adventurers and thrill-seekers later this century might establish a fragile base on Mars. But do not ever expect mass emigration from Earth. And here I disagree with Mr Musk and with my late Cambridge colleague Stephen Hawking, who enthuse about a rapid build-up of large-scale Martian communities.

Space does not offer an escape from all of Earths problems. We have got to solve these here. Coping with climate change may seem daunting, but it is simple compared to terraforming Mars. No place in our solar system offers an environment as clement as even the Antarctic, or the top of Everest. There is no Planet B for ordinary, risk-averse people. We must cherish our Earthly home and our global heritage but continue to seek inspiration from the stars.

Martin Rees is the UKs Astronomer Royal and the author of On the Future: Prospects for Humanity

Updated: June 6, 2020 10:46 AM

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Space exploration is about adventure, but also responsibility - The National

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, Opinion columnist Published 11:32 a.m. ET June 3, 2020

This is huge, but in a sense nothing new: We were launching people into orbit over 50 years ago, after all. But SpaceX is doing it for much less, and thats revolutionary.

Though the news is filled with stories of riots and a pandemic, the most transformative things going on at present are in a totally different sphere.One of those things is pretty obvious, the other less so.

The obvious transformation involves SpaceXs successful launch of a human crew into orbit, the first such launch involving an American spacecraft in nearly a decade, and the first such launch everby a commercial spacecraft.

At the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on May 30, 2020.(Photo: Craig Bailey/FLORIDA TODAY)

This is huge, but in a sense, nothing new:We were launching people into orbit over 50 years ago, after all. SpaceXs Crew Dragoncapsule is bigger and fancier than a Gemini, but the mission profile is not all that different.And of course, our last mission to orbit, on board a space shuttle, was basically old hat itself.

But SpaceX is doing it for much less, and thats revolutionary.To get a kilogram into orbit on the space shuttle costs $54,500. To do the same thing with SpaceXs newest rocket, the Falcon 9, costs $2,720. Thats basically a twenty-fold reduction in cost.

Lots of things that are too expensive to do at $54,500 become doable at $2,720.And SpaceX isnt standing still.Its Starship reusable rocket, under development now, is to cost a mere $2 million per launch, and Elon Musk says its cost per kilogram to orbit will be at least 10 times lower than the Falcon 9.There are a lot more things that become doable at $272 per kilogram.At those prices, things like space tourism, space hotels, lunar minesand asteroid mining become feasible.

As Robert Heinlein once said, once you get to Earth orbit, you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system.

Editorial Board: SpaceX, launching to space station, rockets to new age of entrepreneurial orbital flight

Which brings me to the second, less obvious transformation of this spring: President Donald Trumps opening outer space for business. "The executive order, Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources, is meant to createa new industry: the extraction and processing of resources from the moon and asteroids toward thesettlement of the solar system," as I wrote in April.

Theres a lot of wealth in spaceas I wrote back in 2013, "A 79-foot-wide M-type (metallic) asteroid could hold 33,000 tons of extractable metals, including $50 million in platinum alone. A 23-foot-diameter C-type (carbonaceous) asteroid can hold 24,000 gallons of water, useful for generating fuel and oxygen.Larger asteroids could be worth as much as the GDP of a superpower. Asteroid 1986 DA is a metallic asteroid made up of iron, nickel, gold and platinum. Estimates of its value range between $6 and $7 trillion. Something that size won't be retrieved anytime soon, but the figure gives some idea of just how much wealth is out there."

People have been talking about asteroid mining for awhileand even started companies with that in mind, but theyve been slowed down by two problems:The expense of getting into outer space, and the legal uncertainties around extracting lunar and asteroid resources.Musk is addressing the expense; Trump is addressing the legal uncertainty.

The executive order makes clear that Americarejects the failed 1979 Moon Treaty which the United Statesnever joined, and which banned private property rights in space and that it will recognize and defend the rights of its citizens in developing space resources.

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In doing so, its pretty bipartisan:In 2015, President Barck Obama signed the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, which provides that a U.S. citizen engaged in the commercial recovery of an asteroidresource or a space resource ...shall be entitled to ...possess, own, transport, use, and sell the asteroid resource or space resource obtained in accordance with applicable law, including the international obligations of the United States.

Trumps order ensures that international obligations will be supportive and not destructive of such efforts.

Rather than the Moon Treaty, the administration is working on a new set of agreements with other spacefaring nations, known as the Artemis Accords, in which participants will agree to respect each others rights in outer space. Theres already interest from other nations, though the Russians, whose space-launch business has collapsed in the face of competition from SpaceX, arent happy.

At any rate, it may well be that future historians will remember 2020 much more for being the second beginning of a wave of human expansion into space, than for the grubby earthbound problems that occupy the news on a daily basis. I certainly hope so.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor and the author of "The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself," is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.

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A new era: The Space Age is making a comeback, but it's cheaper this time with SpaceX. - USA TODAY