Space Roundup : heading into 2025

We haven't stopped moving ahead. Nor will we.  And hence, with the aim of ending a tumultuous year on a high note... very high... here's my roundup of recent space science news - and upcoming missions... and so on...

== Lots of stuff out there! ==

Asteroid 5748DaveBrin

First, here's Asteroid 5748DaveBrin, kindly named by discoverer Eleanor "Glo" Helin, back in the 20th Century. Since then, many thousands more have been tracked, but so many more must be, in order to ensure our safety (from dinosaur-killers or city-smashers) and to assay future wealth! 

 See the montage of images of my rock!

In an era of Big Government and Big Commercial Science, the B612* Foundation has a special niche, software-mining massive old datasets, and thusly finding and cataloguing more rocks out there than anyone!  Consider B612 for your list of save the world donations! (*I am on the B612 advisory council.)

(If this is your season for general philanthropy or giving, or investing in a better tomorrow, here's my annual appeal that you consider the win-win-win of Proxy Activism! And again, do include potentially world-saving B612!)

But sure, the Big Guys will also help. 

In fact, there are high hopes and expectations for the Vera Rubin (formerly Large Synoptic Survey) Telescope opening in Chile, next year. It will scan the sky in vast sweeps, comparing images from night to night, for transients and changes, discovering far more supernovas and novas, for example...

... but also possibly millions of previously undetected asteroids. See this chart provided by the Asteroid Institute and B612. Together, we are finding thousands of objects and appraising their potential to endanger our planet. Or else to make our children rich.

Even before the Vera Rubin scope commences to tally many new objects in the Kuiper belt beyond Neptune, some surprises are already emerging about that cold, dark region (of which Pluto is a part.)   Astronomers have just found hints of an unexpected rise in the density of Kuiper Belt objects or KBOs, between 70 and 90 AU from the Sun. In the region between 55 and 70 AU, however, next to nothing has been found.

== So, who should do the exploring, out there? ==

  Well, if you are talking about just exploring – poking at new places and doing science – then robotics wins, hands-down. 

Sorry but machines are better for poking at the edges. That’s what NASA/Japan and Europe should do with respect to the Moon, instead of silly footprint stunts. For 5% of the cost of “Artemis” we could robotically seek and verify, or else (more likely) refute those tall tales of ‘lunar resources.’

But there’s another mission for astronauts – plus tourists and researchers – in space. And that is studying how humans can learn to actually live and work out there. 

For the near term, that’ll entail a lot of work in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), where issues of supply, recycling and radiation safety are easier to control. And above all, we should (must!) finally build spinning facilities that can tell us (at long last) what gravity conditions humans need, in order to survive and stay healthy. 

Over 60 years since Gagarin, we still haven't a clue how to answer that simple question! It’s the fascinating topic that Joseph Carroll elucidates in "What do we need astronauts for?" published in in Space Review.  

He follows that up with a more detailed article, "How to test artificial gravity" - about near term missions to experiment with spinning artificial gravity (SAG), starting with a simple test using just a Crew Dragon and the upper Falcon stage that launched it. Then moving on to a highly plausible path toward making space a vastly more welcoming place. 

== Looking ahead.... Future Space Missions ==

Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin plans to skip from the tiny-but-self-landing New Shepherd, leaping way past sturdy-reliable self-landing Falcon9 and triple self-landing Falcon Heavy, all the way to landing sub-Starship New Glenn on a barge. Or so they say. I guess we'll see - maybe soon.

Rocket Lab’s twin probes to study aurorae and the atmosphere of Mars were made super-inexpensively. They’ll head out there soon (NOT cheaply) on the New Glenn heavy. 

Among many terrific initiatives seed-funded by NIAC (where I was an advisor for a decade), one getting attention in the New Yorker is the Farview radio telescope to be set up on the Moon’s far side. Though the article made an error in the name; it’s NASA’s Innovative & Advanced Concepts program – (NIAC). But yeah, look at the range of incredible, just-short-of-science-fiction concepts! 

One of my favorite NIAC concepts of the last few years was the Linares Statite, that would hover on sunlight, way out at the asteroid belt, ready to fold its wings and dive like a peregrine falcon past the sun to catch up with almost anything, such as another 'Oumuamua interstellar visitor. Slava Turyshev's Project Sundiver has shown that you get a lot of speed if you plummet to graze just past Sol, then snap open your lightsail at nearest passage. In fact it is the best way to streak to the Kuiper Belt. And beyond!

That's just one of many potential uses of lightsails that are described - via both stories and nonfiction - in the 21st Century edition of Project Solar Sail! Revised and updated, then edited by me and Stephen W. Potts, this great new version will be featured by the Planetary Society next month!

Finally....

Beautiful images of the hot place. The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission has successfully completed its fourth of six gravity assist flybys at Mercury, capturing images of two special impact craters as it uses the little planet’s gravity to steer itself on course to enter orbit around Mercury in November 2026.

And an Ai piloted F-16 (with human observers) outperformed regularly piloted F-16s in tests including 'dogfights.'

My friend and former NIAC colleague-physicist John Cramer (who just turned 90; happy birthday John!) two decades ago used data from NASA’s WMAP survey to produce "The Sound of the Big Bang.”  … A recent topic of Brewster Rockit!

And yeah, may you and yours... and all of us... manage to persevere... and yes thrive(!) through "interesting times."  

And may we meet and party hearty eventually... out there.