Space: wonders from within our solar system - and beyond!

Soon I will be flying to DC for the annual orientation meeting of NASA's Innovative & Advanced Concepts program - (NIAC). Have a look at some of this year's seed grant award-fellowships to study possible technologies just this side of science fiction!

Of course last month's most exciting news was NASA's successful launch and deployment of the James Webb Space Telescope - the largest space telescope, which will help illuminate the mysteries of the cosmos! Here's amazing video of the observatory's separation from the Ariana 5 rocket in space. We are already getting the first images. 

This was the step that had me tense: the latching of the secondary mirror - and the unfurling of its tennis-court sized sunshield. The telescope has now reached its final destination at L2, a million miles from Earth. First public light - last week - was fabulous!

One thing I learned: in order to zero in on a target, the whole spacecraft rotates, but must keep the shield blocking any sunlight or Earthlight. That means Webb will not have much freedom to choose targets at-will, but rather will study distant vistas on an opportunity basis, during its yearly solar orbit. Unlike Hubble, it won't normally be available to swing around toward just any transient phenomena. In a given week, it will have a pretty narrow, ring-like array of possible targets to sample-study. Inside those rings, it will likely be magnificent! So next time there's some transient event out there, like an 'Oumuamua, don't go shouting 'give us the Webb view!' A good reason to keep Hubble.

And more.... NASA will further extend our vision of the cosmos with the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, which will provide data on magnetars, supernovae and black holes. And NASA has an ambitious launch schedule for 2022.

LISA- Laser Interferometer Space Antenna - will be an ESA-led and NASA supported mission to deploy laser interferometer arrays into an orbit that follows Earth’s, bouncing beams across distances much larger than our planet. The Europeans have been working on the concept and testing it for decades. Now we may be ready soon to study gravity ripples vastly more sensitively than the already magnificent (and Kip Thorne-led) LIGO array.

Meanwhile, we have fantastic results from our Juno probe orbiting Jupiter and probing the storms down below even 500 km. Helping to illuminate our own weather patterns, these discoveries are simply amazing… almost as amazing as the spectacular competence of an enlightenment civilization that does such things… and the cosmic unlikeliness that citizens of this civilization simply shrug off or ignore such wonders.

And for the first time, a NASA spacecraft has 'touched the sun.' The Parker Space Probe, launched in 2018, first reached the sun's corona a few months back. The probe will approach the sun 24 times over its lifetime, sending back data about our sun... A good reason to revisit my first novel, Sundiver!

== Wonders beyond our solar system ==

We've long known that the planets of our own Solar System emit powerful radio waves as their magnetic fields interact with the solar wind, but radio signals from planets outside our solar system had yet to be picked up. Till now. “This discovery is an important step for radio astronomy and could potentially lead to the discovery of planets throughout the galaxy." Red Dwarf stars have much more powerful magnetic fields than the Sun's, and the exoplanets we've found orbiting them can be much closer than anything in the solar system; hence interaction might generate powerful radio emissions. This promises a powerful method added to the quiver of planet hunters.

Astronomers caught a 2020 supernova in the act way earlier than ever and the data will be powerfully revelatory. “This is a different situation, because we really know what’s going on and we actually see the death in real time.”

Observations of circumstellar material in close proximity to the star were made by Hubble just hours after the explosion, which, wow. The star shed this material during the past year, offering a unique perspective of the various stages that occur just prior to a supernova explosion.

A bright red dwarf system just 150 light years away has planets orbiting perpendicular to each other. Creepy. 

Intriguing... Scientists find dark matter “bridges” that may reveal the future of our galaxy. A new AI-generated map of dark matter shows previously undiscovered filamentary structures connecting galaxies.

Black hole star destroyers: When a star gets so close to a black hole that the tidal force results in material being stripped from the star… simulated eight ways vividly (!) in this video.

== And finally ==

The BBC did a 5 part history of Earth’s evolution and I am in this final episode: The Anthropocene. It’s very entertaining and lively and informative. Very well-edited! Glad to participate.

One of my colleagues is offering an onliner primer on black holes and how a small one might have… well… See “Tunguska Seminar 05” by Bill DeSmedt, author of Singularity and Dualism.

From the Portalist: a worthy collection of science fiction novels, old and new, that explore deep space... including tales by Poul Anderson, Samuel Delaney, Ursula K. Le Guin, Nnedi Ororafor, Christopher Paolini... and my own Startide Rising.

Diving into the sun...and ever outward. Expanding our horizons

Taking a pause from Earthly troubles... today we'll look right into the sun! Real-life missions and the big news that we're re-issuing SUNDIVER!  After a several year hiatus, my first novel - a murder mystery with cosmic implications, plunging into the furnace of a star - is available, revised and with a new introduction. See below!

Meanwhile, in other space news... Jason Derleth, head of NASA's Innovative and Advanced Concepts program (NIAC), is interviewed by Fraser Cain on Universe Today. Jason has done a terrific job developing NIAC into NASA's Venture or DARPA center, nurturing early stage concepts, some just this side of sci fi and others that took off skyward. I'm privileged to serve on the advisory External Council. 
     Watch the podcast and consider - do you know anyone who might want to apply for a NIAC grant? We're especially interested in space-related, bold projects in biology!

== Lunar obsessions ==

Many of you know I'm cool to the latest mania for returning U.S. astronauts to the moon's dusty, almost-use less plain. Oh, I am fine with someone keeping that  obsession going. Humanity will go there anyway, as the Chinese, Indians, Russians, billionaires and so on desperate desperately  pursue rites of adulthood we had 50 years ago... their "bar moonzvahs."  I'm also fine with American companies building advanced landers and such to sell! (NASA has put out a call for two different lunar landers, from two different sources.) 

Oh, I'll keep an open mind. Indeed, NIAC is funding concepts in getting that lunar polar water. Even though initial calculations suggest that we can get everything of value - including water - far more efficiently and copiously from asteroids. As Andy Weir makes clear, in his novel Artemis, the Moon is largely of use for tourism.

The absurd “race” to plant US footprints back on the moon’s dusty/useless plain does have positive aspects. I fully support U.S. unmanned exploration missions like VIPER… a lander rover that will do surveys and assays of lunar ice in deep, dark places near the lunar poles.

Still, let me say something nice: I well recall...  Reflecting on the second moon landing -- I remember Apollo 12 so vividly. Earlier, Armstrong & Aldrin almost died, flying almost blind and almost out of fuel. A few months later, the 12 crew glided in so smoothly and easily that they landed within meters of the planned site... less than 80 meters from the Surveyor probe... while joking all the way. The image of both Apollo and Surveyor in the same photo remains one of my top ten exemplars of human competence. 

With less computer power than we now have in some light bulbs. A nerdy, even impudent competence that only ever appeared in democracies, like Periclean Athens and Florence. And a major reason why enemies of our renaissance are waging all-out war on the fact-using professions. And why no despotism will ever make it to the stars.

== More space news! ==

NASA flew gas detecting aircraft across 10,000 square miles of California from 2016 through2018. Landfills accounted for 41% of the methane emissions it identified, manure management 26% and oil and gas operations 26%. If we were a species worthy of the stars... Seriously, is this what aliens are waiting for, before making contact? A sign we can stop fouling our own nest?

Meanwhile, NASA's first large-scale, piloted x-plane (or experimental aircraft) in more than three decades, the experimental X-59 jet, which could make supersonic commercial travel a reality, has been cleared for final assembly.

Studies of Jupiter’s gravity suggest a density distribution that’s a bit too diffuse to have occurred if the early, rocky core was left undisturbed to collect all the later gases in its giant envelope. One possible explanation, a fairly early collision with a super Earth-sized planet that stirred and mixed the core just right. We get to peer into epochs that we always thought invisible forever. Ah, to do with human hearts.

Okay. Even a space posting can't escape politics completely. “Why the economies of Alabama and Mississippi have suddenly gone in opposite directions.” Well, one reason is the boom around tech enclaves like Mobile and especially Huntsville, where a big NASA center has drawn in talent from all over the nation, substantially altering cultural assumptions. 

== And that Solar News ==

Okay, I promised to get all sunny on you, starting with news that the solar sunspot cycle in at a weirdly deep minimum... but then...

...solar tsunami waves blare the harbingers of a transition from one sun cycle to the next.

Interesting results from the Parker Solar Probe as the spacecraft is starting its fourth close orbit around the Sun, edging closer to its scorching target.

Which brings us to...

... we've just re-released the novel that inspired it all… SUNDIVER! Now available as an ebook on Kindle and in paperback -- 

-- with a brand new author's introduction about the personal and scientific journeys leading to my first novel!

You'll come away from this suspenseful, fulfilling and often funny space mystery both entertained and... well... having learned a thing or two. What a deal.

Space marvels - and possibilities

I don't know how much longer I'll be able to offer science and space news, as the crisis of survival of civilization gets crazier and more dangerous, daily. I promise some cool space news, below!

But first... Donald Trump's possibly worst treason, hidden under so much else! I'd talk about how the troops sent to Saudi and the Iranian ship hit by "missiles" all point to a return to an Iran-US dog-wag war. (Remind all your friends of the terms "Tonkin Incident" and 'Gleiwitz' and Reichstag fire. BUT THERE'S NO TIME! I'd get you all to insist the nation's mayors demand huge deposits before any Trump rally gets permits, since they stiff the taxpayers. BUT THERE'S NO TIME! Because something far more important is up!

Yes, a bigger danger. Trump appears to be about to pull the U.S. out of the Open Skies Treaty, by far the most-important arms control compact and the one Dwight Eisenhower prayed for (for all our sakes) till the day he died. Like with the IRBM treaty Trump abrogated, the one wanting this to end is the puppet master Vladimir Putin. Dig it, the KGB (it's renamed version) can already track goings on in the US. The treaty favors us, vastly! And that's why Putin has ordered his puppet to end it. (The IRBM treaty also favored us, hence Trump went 'siegheil comrade' and pulled out.) It is time for eminent officers to tactically and carefully and slowly but emphatically resign-and-speak. This relatively unmentioned move - hidden by other headlines - may be the most dangerous Trumpian Treason of all.

== The Universe goes on, magnificently... though maybe soon without us... ==

A second confirmed visitor from interstellar space appears this time to be a comet about 10 kilometers across as it appears to have a visible tail. Unlike Ou'muamua, this one is not only about six times brighter but is also making its way into the Solar System at about 30 kilometers per second, giving us a much longer period of time to study it.

Didn't expect this for a couple of years. Water vapor has been detected in the atmosphere of a super-Earth in a red dwarf's goldilocks zone. We are amazing. And we should be capable of wresting back the revolution that led to all these wonders.

Hubble catches a dozen of Saturn’s moons in orbital dance. Wow.

Hayabusa! The Japanese spacecraft at asteroid Ryugo has done it again. Performed difficult sample collecting maneuvers flawlessly. They'd be great partners for NASA to head out and do valuable, exciting new things, instead of joining a crowded field of Apollo wannabes aiming to plant dusty footprints (with zero prospect for benefits) that our ancestors achieved half a century ago. Boldly go. Ikimasho!

Speaking of rocks. Japanese scientists have calculated that the dinosaur-killer asteroid would have ejected  billions of tons of life-bearing meteorites into space. Further, a A previous study found that more Earth ejecta must end up in interstellar space than all the other planets combined. As much ejecta would have ended up on Europa as on the Moon: around 100 million individual Earth rocks in some scenarios. That’s because the huge gravitational field around Jupiter acts as a sink for rocks, which then get swept up by the Jovian moons as they orbit. If life evolved at just 25 different sites in the galaxy 10 billion years ago, the combined ejecta from these places would now fill the Milky Way.

== Steps toward Space Exploration ==

The Moon might be only 50 million years (an eyeblink) younger than Earth itself. The massive collision that tossed a lot of Earth’s crust into orbit, to settle into the Moon, appears to have occurred very early, not the 150 million years previously thought. The newborn Moon was covered in a magma ocean, which formed different types of rocks as it cooled. 'These rocks recorded information about the formation of the Moon, and can still be found today on the lunar surface,' says Dr Maxwell Thiemens, former University of Cologne researcher and lead author of the study. (Terrific work, Max!) Though it doesn’t change the fact that there are no “ores” on that barren dustpile, that is (for the foreseeable future) only good for tourism.

Hollow lava tubes almost certainly exist on the Moon and Mars – we count many openings – “skylights” whose bottoms aren’t plumbed by orbital scans. In fact NIAC has supported small research efforts aimed at exploring these potentially valuable cave systems, which could be crucial for supporting extended human presence, for much roomier habitats that are safer from temperature swings, radiation, meteorites and blowouts.  Most intriguing are pits inside Philolaus Crater near the north pole of the moon. "They might be skylights associated with a network of lava tubes formed not in volcanic lava flows, but in an impact melt sheet, the temporary pool of molten rock that ponded inside Philolaus Crater following the large impact that created the crater," combining the habitat attraction with water ice.

Caves may become important to the future of Mars exploration because they provide shelter from the entire range of harsh surface conditions while maintaining near-pristine interior surfaces and relatively stable microclimates. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter‘s (MRO) cameras have spotted hundred of “candidate” cave entrances, just in the area of the three Tharsis shield volcanoes. Many may just be shaded alcoves but even those offer opportunities for potential future explorers/colonists.  There’s also a chance that these sites have served as water-ice collection sites in places much more convenient than the polar craters where the sun never shines.

A pretty good article detailing how well-prepared humanity is, for discovering and appraising asteroids that might impact the Earth, especially two vital survey telescopes in Hawaii.  Alas, we are in more danger from comets, which can come in with little warning. But there’s work on that, as well. And the NGO-nonprofit you could join, to help prevent that particular catastrophe, is the B612 Foundation.

== Space tech ==

The Bigelow “inflatable” habitat modules keep getting more impressive.

Meanwhile, Collins Aerospace has unveiled its next generation spacesuit, which can be adapted to either micro-gee  or the lunar surface.

Vast sheets of ultra-light aerogel might be key to terraforming swathes of Mars. But there are tradeoffs. Strong enough to last decades? Then when they shred do they become ultimate pollution?

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach explores the irresistibly strange universe of space travel and life without gravity.

Soon to be released: Space Exploration: A History in 100 Objects - from Sputnik to Hubble and the Curiosity Rover, author Sten Odenwald visualizes the iconic objects that have enabled us to explore and see further into the cosmos. 

It’s widely believed that the Trump rush to get footprints on the moon is ego driven, to land before the end of his “second term.” But here we see another possible reason… An urgent hurry allows contracts to be given without abiding by competitive bidding and evaluation rules. I’m not saying this is so! But in light of what happened in Iraq, when Bush-Cheney family logistics companies were the beneficiaries of “emergency” no-bid contracts to the order of tens of billions, we should be wary.

Airbus, Boeing, and SoftBank are now developing stratospheric autonomous drones, capable of flying at (and even above) 60,000 feet. Intended to fly for months without intervention, the drones could deliver imaging and even internet services from above.

A new kind of space elevator would evade some of the safety and materials worries of earlier concepts. The Spaceline would be tethered to the surface of the Moon and dangle down into geostationary orbit around the Earth like a plumb bob. “Instead of rocketing all the way out of orbit, astronauts would only need to reach the end point of the Spaceline, cutting back the cost and challenge of rocket launches. Once it reaches the vacuum of space, free of terrestrial gravity and atmospheric pressure, the spacecraft would meet up with the cable and latch onto a solar-powered shuttle that would climb along its length."

My own concept for a moon-anchored space elevator goes in the opposite direction… outward away from Earth, and yet it would serve a similar function… plus one more, over the course of millions of years. Saving the Earth!

We can do all those things! But first -- save civilization.

Apollo at 50. Plus updates from space

I was 18 years old, had just survived my frosh year at Caltech, envious of those I heard were heading to a rock concert back east while I worked the unner hauling a radio astronomer's tapes on and off an IBM360-75... and I recall watching Walter Cronkite interview Robert Heinlein and Ray Bradbury, with all of them in tears of joy. And seeing Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov hold forth on other networks, as a nation and world came to realize that Earth is not enough. The rest of the universe is palpable and real; you can step on it! And a literature that looks forward just might have some relevance.

Apollo 12 would be the stunning display of utter competence and Apollo 8 had just given us one of two great artworks of the 20th Century, changing human hearts without needing a word of persuasion. But it was Neil and Buzz and Mike and the tens of thousands who got them there, and tens of millions who paid for it, and a billion or so watching - thrilled - who got a boost to our inner confidence, at a time when we would need it most.

Draw from it now! That competence and confidence matters. Don't let enemies undermine -- or worse, hijack -- that pride in a scientific, pragmatic, progress-oriented and change-willing civilization. Those of our neighbors who are helping to wage war on facts... remind them that those inconvenient truths help us to revise and to learn and to become greater than we were.

(Reporting from Comicon!)

== Space News! ==

Organoids in space: Will human cells differentiate and proliferate and organize themselves properly - if development takes place in micro-gravity? Finding out is the aim of a human-brains-in-a-dish experiment created by UCSD researchers and about to be shipped up to the Space Station. I am tangentially part of the team led by Alysson R. Muotri, PhD, in cooperation with UCSD's Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination.

After a brief embargo, I can now link you to the announcement of new phase III grants by NASA’s Innovative and Advanced Concepts program. (I was in DC last month as a member of NIAC’s External Council.) Phase One offers small seed grants to explore an idea that’s just this side of science fiction, and sometimes beyond that line. Phase Two allows the best-demonstrated Phase One concepts to develop more tech/sci readiness across 2 years. Phase Three is brand new.  Substantial funding to demonstrate real feasibility for a space mission. The first two P3 grants can now be viewed here. Both involve the quest to access lunar and asteroidal resources.

At that meeting in DC, we discussed NIAC’s difficulty in attracting brilliantly conceptual proposals from underrepresented groups or categories. Some of the finest ideas have been in areas like biology, life support or habitation… and a number of these came from just Lynn Rothschild and her students!, so we know there are great innovators in those fields. We just need to get the word out, better. Your suggestions for groups or conferences, startups or companies that might have a stunning notion potentially applicable to spaceflight would be welcome, below. (Under-represtnted groups welcome.) Better yet, share with those folks links to the NIAC information pages!

And if NIAC’s brash innovativeness is way too-sane for you, then try this gonzo-paranoid techno tall tale about high ISP rocketry by my colleague Charles Stross. It's like if NIAC got really, really mad and turned from mild-mannered Bruce Banner into the Hulk. 

Oh, and here are some images from my June talk to a packed auditorium at Goddard NASA Spaceflight Center. There I offered a trio of slides that portray distinctly why  readily accessible riches are available on asteroids, but only one kind of any likely near-term value exists on the moon: lunar polar ice. (And even water will likely be better accessed from certain kinds of asteroids.)

Metals, in particular, are unlikely to be a “lunar resource.” Want to know where to find them out there? See how NASA has given go-ahead to the Psyche Mission! “While most asteroids are rocky or icy bodies, scientists think Psyche is composed mostly of iron and nickel, similar to Earth's core. They wonder whether Psyche could be the nickel-iron heart, or exposed core, of an early planet maybe as large as Mars that lost its rocky outer layers through violent collisions billions of years ago.” And a lot more than nickel-iron.

== News from the Solar System ==

Partly inspired by earlier NIAC grants, NASA will fly a billion-dollar quadcopter to Titan, Saturn’s methane-rich moon. Acetylene-butane co-crystals might form rings around Titan's lakes as liquid hydrocarbons evaporate and the minerals drop out—in the same way that salts can form crusts on the shores of Earth's lakes and seas. Huh, I had envisioned the Titanian shore-dwellers mad of wax. Shows what I know.

The Deep Space Atomic Clock experiment will test miniaturization of super accurate time keeping in space, so future missions (mars & beyond) can self-navigate. 

Cool. NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft has been orbit-spiraling close to asteroid Bennu. See images  from just 690 meters away. The spacecraft is designed to reach out to Bennu, snag a sample of surface material and bring it back to Earth in 2023. The recent impressive Japanese sampler mission to another asteroid shows who we should be partnering with, to do things out there that none of the Apollo-wannabe lunar dust-tourists can dream of. Possibly accessing the riches that would enable greatness while paying for a restored Earth.

Speaking of which. Even stony asteroids are moist – testimony from samples returned by Japan’s first (of two) Hayabusa probes, supporting the notion that other kinds – like carbonaceous C-type or extinct comets – will likely be very rich in the stuff of life (and of rocket fuel).

While asteroids offer the greatest (vast) trove of available wealth to a nascent interplanetary civilization, there are rocks along the path. Both Planetary Resources (PI) and Deep Space Industries have scaled back their immediate ambitions to access metals like Platinum, and PI’s assets have been acquired by one of the founders of Etherium. (A thought provoker, that news.)

Meanwhile, Joel Sercel’s TransAstra Corp. Keeps winning grants to pursue the nearer term profitable resource, water, on both asteroids and the lunar poles.  He has competition there! The Chinese have declared lunar polar ice to be their goal, as has George Sowers of the Colorado School of Mines and even – officially, at least – The current U.S. administration.

== Politics of space ==

SpaceX has successfully deployed sixty production versions of the Starlink Satellite. They are targeting 360 through the next six months, aiming at a lot of revenue for service to North America, Europe and Asia, by reducing latency in financial trading communication.

That obscure but lucrative revenue source is crucial since it will flow almost immediately once the constellations prove reliable. In fact, it could be why folks still lend Elon money for Tesla, because (yet again) one of his businesses will be able to pay off debt for another at a critical moment. It also would give Starlink time to build its more general internet access business.

Two factors though. First, Bernie Sanders has raised the prospect of a potential transaction tax on financial trades. In fact, it is a very important reform that could save all of us from genuine dangers from the worst kinds of AI. But fortunately for Elon, it won’t happen for at least two years. By then, Starlink will have other sources of revenue.

The other factor is China. The arrival of these new low-orbit internet constellations will mean citizens of the Central Kingdom may have another chance at a free infosphere. Daunted by this prospect, at times the PRC has threatened to “shoot down” such constellations.  An impractical threat and a sign of desperation. So, will they seek to make a deal with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and others?  Or will they try to get control over that situation by going over their heads, through their friends in American high places?

Meanwhile the current head of Roscosmos – the Russian Space Agency – has laid down a vision for moon landings by 2030, by creating a launch system more powerful than NASA’s in-development SLS. This article, while conveying his slides, is justifiably skeptical. More likely would be a Russia-China partnership. Perhaps and/or India. I hope not snaring in ESA, Japan, or the U.S., who have better things to do, elsewhere. Best case? Commercial tourist junkets leave them in a cloud of mood dust.

NASA is giving the public an opportunity to send their names — stenciled on chips — to the Red Planet with NASA's Mars 2020 rover. And sure, I recommend you sign on! I give odds of a bazillion to one against anything bizarre happening as a result (as in my short story “Mars Opposition,” published in Insistence of Vision.