Space Cases, Con't

NASA will be holding a public meeting on UFOs ahead of an official report later this summer.

 

A NASA panel formed last year to study what the government calls “unidentified aerial phenomena,” commonly termed UFOs, was due to hold its first public meeting on Wednesday, ahead of a report expected in coming weeks.

The 16-member body, assembling experts from fields ranging from physics to astrobiology, was formed last June to examine unclassified UFO sightings and other data collected from civilian government and commercial sectors.

The focus of Wednesday’s four-hour public session “is to hold final deliberations before the agency’s independent study team publishes a report this summer,” NASA said in announcing the meeting.

The panel represents the first such inquiry ever conducted under the auspices of the U.S. space agency for a subject the government once consigned to the exclusive and secretive purview of military and national security officials.

The NASA study is separate from a newly formalized Pentagon-based investigation of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs, documented in recent years by military aviators and analyzed by U.S. defense and intelligence officials.

The parallel NASA and Pentagon efforts — both undertaken with some semblance of public scrutiny — highlight a turning point for the government after decades spent deflecting, debunking and discrediting sightings of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, dating back to the 1940s.

The term UFOs, long associated with notions of flying saucers and aliens, has been replaced in government parlance by “UAP.”

While NASA’s science mission was seen by some as promising a more open-minded approach to a topic long treated as taboo by the defense establishment, the U.S. space agency made it known from the start that it was hardly leaping to any conclusions.

“There is no evidence UAPs are extraterrestrial in origin,” NASA said in announcing the panel’s formation last June.

In its more recent statements, the agency presented a new potential wrinkle to the UAP acronym itself, referring to it as an abbreviation for “unidentified anomalous phenomena.” This suggested that sightings other than those that appeared airborne may be included.

 

Too much out there in the universe to discount the notion of life on other words, but as a man much smarter than I am once said:

 

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

― Arthur C. Clarke 

  

We'll see what the NASA panel has to say.

Last Call For Grays And Greens

The Pentagon isn't about to confirm the existence of aliens, but the Defense Department's new Office Of Weird Crap will go over all the reported encounters with unidentified "anomalies" just in case.

 

A new office at the Pentagon is scrutinizing hundreds of reports of unidentified objects in air, sea, space and beyond, senior U.S. defense officials said Friday, and while it has discovered no signs of alien life, the search is set to expand.

The issue has taken on increasing seriousness as a bipartisan group of lawmakers presses the Defense Department to investigate instances of unidentified phenomena and disclose publicly what they learn. Established in July, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office is evaluating recent reports and soon could evaluate accounts that date back decades, officials said.

The Pentagon’s top intelligence official, Ronald Moultrie, told reporters during a news conference, the first to discuss the office and its ongoing work, that “At this time … we have nothing” to affirm the existence of space aliens.

The proliferation of drones, including those operated by foreign adversaries and amateur hobbyists, account for many of the reports, officials said.

“Some of these things almost collide with planes,” said Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of the new office, who spoke to the media alongside Moultrie on Friday. “We see that on a regular basis.”

The U.S. government employs sophisticated sensors around the globe to collect data, and the office analyzes it for relevant information, they said, declining to elaborate.

While most of the reports the Pentagon investigates are about aerial objects, defense officials are increasingly concerned about unusual activity below the surface of the ocean, in space and on land. For that reason, the Pentagon now uses the term unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP, rather than previous descriptions such as “unidentified flying object.”

Moultrie said that, “Unidentified phenomena in all domains … pose potential threats to personal security and operational security, and they deserve our urgent attention.”

Unidentified “trans-medium” objects, he said, is a class of phenomena that would jump between domains, like from the air to the sea. None has been documented yet, Moultrie noted.

The research is likely to expand next year. Congress wrote a provision into the next defense policy bill, which is awaiting President Biden’s signature, that requires the Defense Department to complete a “historical record report” about detailing unidentified phenomena observed and documented by the United States. If approved by Biden, the National Defense Authorization Act will then trigger “quite a research project, if you will, into the archives,” Kirkpatrick said.

Defense officials already are digging through old reports. Kirkpatrick, a physicist and career intelligence officer, said he will “adhere to the scientific method — and I will follow that data and science wherever it goes.” Some past reports, he acknowledged, may be highly classified and not yet known to him.

 

So yeah, Mulder and Scully are on the job in this era of instant information, deepfakes, drones and conspiracy theories. Even the Pentagon has to admit publicly now that the truth is out there.

Has to be a really wildly compelling job though if all my years watching X-Files, Special Unit 2, Warehouse 13 and Alien Nation meant anything.

 

 

Getting Out Of A Space Jam

NASA's unmanned, proof-of-concept Orion mission to the moon was an unqualified success as the Orion capsule splashed down in the Pacific on Sunday afternoon.

 

NASA completed a significant step Sunday toward returning astronauts to the lunar surface with the successful completion of a test mission that sent a capsule designed for human spaceflight to orbit the moon and return safely to Earth.

The Orion spacecraft, which had no astronauts on board, splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at 12:40 p.m. Eastern off the Baja California peninsula of Mexico under a trio of billowing parachutes.

Orion’s homecoming came 50 years to the day after the Apollo 17 spacecraft landing on the lunar surface in 1972 at the Taurus-Littrow valley, the last human mission to the moon. And it heralded, the space agency said, a series of upcoming missions that are to be piloted by a new generation of NASA astronauts as part of the Artemis program.

The flight was delayed repeatedly by technical problems with the massive Space Launch System rocket and the spacecraft. But the 26-day, 1.4 million-mile mission went “exceedingly well,” NASA officials said, from the launch on Nov. 16 to flybys that brought Orion within about 80 miles of the lunar surface and directly over the Apollo 11 landing site at Tranquility Base.

“From Tranquility Base to Taurus-Littrow to the tranquil waters of the Pacific, the latest chapter of NASA’s journey to the moon comes to a close. Orion, back on Earth,” NASA’s Rob Navias said during the agency’s live broadcast of the event.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said it was “historic because we are now going back to space, to deep space, with a new generation.” The successful mission augurs a new era, he added, “one that marks new technology, a whole new breed of astronauts, and a vision of the future.”

Now that the spacecraft is safely home, NASA will immediately begin to assess the data gathered on the flight and prepare for the Artemis II mission — which would put a crew of astronauts on the spacecraft for another trip in orbit around the moon. NASA hopes that mission would come as early as 2024, with a lunar landing to come as early as 2025 or 2026. That would be the first time people walk on the moon since the last of the Apollo missions.

 

Any manned mission to another planet in our Solar System was going to require us going back to Luna as a testing ground, and Orion proved we can test the testing ground in the next few years.  It's exciting to see us getting back to exploring space in my lifetime, and yeah, the next big step is that Mars landing I hope I get to see.

Great job, NASA.

Oh, and I'm damn glad to see Bill Nelson as NASA admin. Like John Glenn and Mark Kelly, Nelson was an astronaut himself before joining the US Senate, and now he's been running the rocket show for 18 months. Orion is a great feather for his cap.

Here's to more success.

Sunday Long Read: The Big Sleep

If we're ever to go to Mars in my lifetime, we're going to have to find a way to get astronauts from Earth to the Red Planet and back, and that's a three-year round trip. The biggest concern is safety, food, and water. and cracking the hibernation code could provide the answer, as Wired's Brendan Koerner explains.

ONE DAY IN 1992, near the northern pole of a planet hurtling around the Milky Way at roughly 500,000 miles per hour, Kelly Drew was busy examining some salmon brains in a lab. Her concentration was broken when Brian Barnes, a zoophysiology professor from down the hall at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, popped by her bench for a visit. With a mischievous grin, he asked Drew—a neuropharmacologist early in her career—to hold out her hands and prepare for a surprise. A moment later, she felt a hard, furry lump deposited in her palms. It was some sort of brown rodent with dagger-like claws, curled up into a tight ball and so cold to the touch that Drew assumed it was dead. To her astonishment, Barnes gleefully explained that it was actually in perfect health.

The creature, an Arctic ground squirrel, was just hibernating, as it does for up to eight months of the year. During that span, the animal's internal temperature falls to below 27 degrees Fahrenheit, literally as cold as ice. Its brain waves become so faint that they're nearly impossible to detect, and its heart beats as little as once per minute. Yet the squirrel remains very much alive. And when spring comes, it can elevate its temperature back to 98.6 degrees in a couple of hours.

Drew cradled the unresponsive critter in her hands, unable to detect even the faintest signs of life. What's going on inside this animal's brain that allows it to survive like this? she wondered. And with that question, she began to burrow into a mystery that would carry her decades into the future.

AT THIS POINT, in the year 2022, no fewer than three major entities—NASA, the Chinese National Space Administration, and SpaceX—are vying to put the first human on Mars by 2040 or so. To win that race, a team must first solve a series of vexing design riddles. As an executive at SpaceWorks, an Atlanta-based engineering firm that tackles ambitious research projects for NASA, John Bradford has spent the past decade running the brutal math on one of them.

Unfortunately for the engineers trying to get humans to the Red Planet, we're a pretty high-maintenance species. As large endotherms with active brains, we burn through copious amounts of food, water, and oxygen in our daily quest to survive. All that consumption makes it extra hard to design a spacecraft light enough to reach—and eventually return from—a planet some 140 million miles from our own. Based on the eating habits of the astronauts aboard the International Space Station, for example, a crew of four will need at least 11 tons of food to complete an 1,100-day mission to Mars and back. Those meals alone would weigh nearly 10 times more than the entire Perseverance rover, the biggest payload ever to reach the Martian surface. Add in all the other life-support essentials, to say nothing of the engines and the tools necessary to set up camp, and the weight of a fully fueled Mars-bound ship could easily exceed 330 tons as it departs Earth's atmosphere—more than two fully grown blue whales. It's nearly impossible to see how a vessel that massive could generate the power necessary for its entire round-trip journey.

The obvious solution to this problem—at least to anyone who's read any Arthur C. Clarke novels or watched Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey—is to slow the metabolism of crew members so they only need to ingest a bare minimum of resources while in transit. In 2001, astronauts lie down in sarcophagus-like hibernation pods, where their hearts beat just three times a minute and their body temperature hovers at 37 degrees Fahrenheit. Bradford has devoted a huge chunk of his 21-year career at SpaceWorks to investigating a question that Kubrick had the artistic license to ignore: How, exactly, can we safely power down a human body so it's just one step removed from death, then revive it on demand?

Early on in his research, Bradford glimpsed some promise in therapeutic hypothermia, a medical technique in which people who have experienced cardiac arrest are chilled—typically with intravenous cooling fluids—until their internal temperature reaches as low as 89 degrees Fahrenheit. This decreases their metabolism so much that their cells can function on roughly 30 percent less oxygen and energy—a lifesaver for a damaged body that's struggling to heal amid reduced blood flow. Patients are usually kept in this hypothermic state for only a day or two, mostly because the cold triggers intense shivering that must be controlled with powerful sedatives and neuromuscular-blocking drugs. But Bradford identified a few rare cases in which patients were kept hypothermic for as long as two weeks. “And we started asking, why can't you do that for longer?” he says. “How long can you sustain that comatose-like state?”

Bradford was wary of going public with his curiosity, fearing he'd be branded a crank for suggesting astronauts be put on ice—a concept uncomfortably similar to the one touted by the dubious cryonics industry. But in 2013 he persuaded NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program to fund a project assessing the feasibility of “human torpor.” His successful pitch centered on the potential weight savings: He estimated that if astronauts could be kept frigid for the bulk of their trip to Mars, the mass of their life-support resources could be cut by as much as 60 percent. Bradford also hypothesized that torpor could help astronauts fend off a number of serious health hazards, ranging from radiation to the psychological perils of extreme boredom and isolation. (“You're in the blackness of space, you don't have real-time communications,” he says. “A lot of people will say, ‘Oh, I'll just read a lot of books.’ But I think that will get old quick.”)

A lot of space sci-fi books and movies have tackled the concept over the years, from the Alien films to hard sci-fi from authors like Alastair Reynolds and Peter F. Hamilton. But if we can conquer death in a way, it may help us explore the solar system and beyond. 

Sunday Long Read: You've Got To Be Kid-ding Her

This week's Sunday Long Read from Business Insider's Julia Black is even more evidence that Elon Musk is a wealthy multi-billionaire James Bond supervillain, engaging in white supremacist eugenics with a thin veneer of techno-futurist bullshit.

Court documents obtained by Insider show that the tech mogul Elon Musk quietly had twins last November with one of his top executives, Shivon Zilis. Musk, who has been an outspoken advocate of bringing more babies into the world, now has nine known children.

In April, Musk, 51, and Zilis, 36, filed a petition to change the twins' names in order to "have their father's last name and contain their mother's last name as part of their middle name." The order was approved by a judge in Austin, Texas, this May. (Insider is withholding the children's names to protect their privacy.) The twins were born weeks before Musk and Claire Boucher, the musician who performs as Grimes, had their second child via surrogate in December.

Musk and Zilis did not respond to requests for comment.

Musk is the wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of about $220 billion. He's at the helm of four companies: the electric-vehicle maker Tesla, the spacecraft manufacturer SpaceX, the tunnel-construction startup The Boring Company, and the brain-machine-interface implant company Neuralink, where Zilis works. This year he announced plans to purchase Twitter for $44 billion, though the deal has been held up over what the Tesla CEO has described as several unresolved matters. In May, Insider reported that SpaceX had paid a company flight attendant $250,000 to stay quiet after she alleged that Musk exposed himself and propositioned her for sex.

Zilis is a rising star in Musk's empire. Born in Markham, Ontario, Zilis received her bachelor's degree in economics and philosophy in 2008 from Yale, where she also played goalie on the women's ice-hockey team. A lifelong athlete, she has been pictured on social media surfing, zip-lining, and ice climbing. After beginning her career at IBM, she joined the early-stage venture-capital fund Bloomberg Beta, where she led investment efforts in data and machine learning. She was on Forbes' 30 Under 30 list in the venture-capital category in 2015.

Zilis met Musk through her work with OpenAI, the artificial-intelligence research-and-deployment nonprofit Musk cofounded in 2015. She serves as the youngest member of OpenAI's board of directors. In 2017, Zilis moved to Tesla, where she was a project director, deploying her AI expertise on the Autopilot and chip-design teams. Today she holds the title of director of operations and special projects for Neuralink, where Musk is a co-CEO. She previously worked as a project director in the CEO's office. She's recently been floated as one of the people Musk could tap to run Twitter after his acquisition.

During Zilis' tenure at Neuralink, the company has conducted surgical trials of its Bluetooth-enabled brain chips on monkeys and pigs and enabled a nine-year-old macaque to play the video game Pong using its brain. Musk has suggested human trials could start by the end of 2022.

Zilis lived in San Francisco before buying a home in a gated community in Austin in August, about three months before the twins were born. The real-estate website Zillow estimates the home is worth more than $4 million. Musk has said his primary residence is a $50,000 modular house in Boca Chica, near SpaceX's launch facility in South Texas, but in the court documents Musk and Zilis listed the same address — the multimillion-dollar home — in Austin. Musk has been spending more time in Austin after opening Tesla's new Gigafactory Texas on the outskirts of the city.

Zilis shares many of Musk's intellectual passions, including space travel, transportation, and, most of all, artificial intelligence. They appear to have a similar sense of humor — they've both tweeted AI puns and tongue-in-cheek references to Musk's favorite cryptocurrency, dogecoin.

She has been an ardent defender of Musk in the face of criticism. In 2020, when a California State Assembly member, Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, tweeted "F*ck Elon Musk" after Musk tweeted about moving Tesla out of California over COVID-19 restrictions, Zilis responded: "This makes me sad. No one's perfect but I've never met anyone who goes through more personal pain to fight for an inspiring future for humanity - and has done so tirelessly for decades. Everyone's entitled to their opinion but mine is that there's no one I respect and admire more."

 

If this all sounds like Musk is selectively breeding babies with the "right" white women in order to "save humanity", it's because he is absolutely doing that, and he thinks other "right" people should be doing the same in order to "advance" the human race.

The guy is basically terrible.

Sunday Long Read: Star-Crossed Distances

This week's Sunday Long Read comes to us from Rivka Galchen at the New Yorker, detailing the most powerful space telescope NASA has ever produced, the James Webb, expected to launch in a September mission. Once the space telescope goes online, scientists will have their clearest view yet through a time-travel machine as light from stars that took billions of years to reach us will be on display like never before.

Next month, the James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled to take a slow boat from Los Angeles, spend a few days traversing the Panama Canal, and arrive at a spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The telescope will have been twenty-five years and ten billion dollars in the making. Thousands of scientists and engineers from fourteen countries will have worked on it. It could have flown, sure, but it’s a tight squeeze—plus the telescope weighs seven tons, and Kourou’s airfield is connected to its spaceport by seven bridges not built to endure such a load. The telescope will be put into Ariane 5, a European rocket named for a mythical princess who helped a man she loved defeat the Minotaur and escape a maze. Ariane 5 will carry the telescope some ten thousand kilometres in thirty minutes. The J.W.S.T. will then continue on its own, for twenty-nine days, toward a lonely, lovely orbit in space, about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, where we will never visit it, though it will stay in constant communication with us. From Earth, it will appear ten thousand times fainter than the faintest star.

On its way, the telescope will slowly unfurl five silvery winglike layered sheets of Kapton foil, about as large as a tennis court. These sheets, each thinner than notebook paper, will function as a gigantic parasol, protecting the body of the telescope from the light and the heat of the sun, moon, and Earth. In this way, the J.W.S.T. will be kept nearly as dark and as cold as outer space, to insure that distant signals aren’t washed out. Then eighteen hexagons of gold-coated beryllium mirror will open out, like an enormous, night-blooming flower. The mirrors will form a reflecting surface as tall and as wide as a house, and they will capture light that has been travelling for more than thirteen billion years.

This is the hope, at least.

“Oh, gee, I worry all the time,” said Marcia Rieke, an infrared astronomer based in Tucson, who has devoted much of the past two decades to the J.W.S.T. “Even the rocket, which is the most reliable rocket out there, it still has some tiny chance of exploding at launch.” Rieke, who has astrology-blue eyes and a no-nonsense ponytail, is the scientific lead for the near-infrared camera, known as the nirCam, which is one of four main research instruments on the telescope. She is an expert on the formation of galaxies, and the nirCam will allow us to see light from billions of years ago, when the earliest galaxies and stars were formed. I spoke with Rieke over Zoom, where she had as a background a lunar eclipse she photographed in Sabino Canyon, which is near her home but looks like it’s on Mars. “I’ve spent decades in this field, and there’s still so much I don’t know,” she said.

In 2017, Rieke and her team went to the Johnson Space Center, in Houston, where tests would be performed on the nirCam and other Webb instruments. They wanted to expose the telescope to the extremely cold conditions of outer space. Hurricane Harvey hit while they were there. “While I was at the airport waiting to fly out to Houston, I was watching the forecast and fortunately was able to change my car rental to an S.U.V.,” Rieke said. “So I was able to ferry the members of the team between their hotels and the Space Center. They brought in really nice catering for us. I’m not sure how they managed that.” Imagine sealing one’s gold-plated work of decades in a giant pressure cooker and then pouring liquid nitrogen on top of it—that resembles the exposure test. The telescope was in Chamber A, the gigantic vacuum chamber at the Space Center where the command module for Apollo was tested. Remarkably, Rieke’s team accomplished its mission. Rieke has seen the J.W.S.T. survive not only Hurricane Harvey but also numerous threats of cancellation, along with delays that have serially shifted the launch from an original date of 2010 to late 2021. I asked Rieke what she was most looking forward to seeing. “I’m looking forward to seeing that it works,” she said. “I’ll start sleeping better about thirty days after it’s been launched. Launch isn’t even the riskiest step in deploying the nirCam.” Once the telescope is up and running, Rieke will return to studying events that happened in our universe billions of years before Earth was formed.

It’s easy to forget that light takes time to travel. But when we see the moon we are seeing it as it was 1.3 seconds earlier; Jupiter we see as it was forty minutes ago; the Andromeda galaxy—the nearest major galaxy to ours, and the most distant object we can see without a telescope—2.5 million years ago. “My students are often frustrated to think that they can’t see the things in space as they are today,” David Helfand, an astronomer at Columbia University, said. “I tell them it’s this great advantage. It means that the universe is laid out like a book. You can turn to any page you want. If you want to see ten billion years into the past, you look out at ten billion light-years away.”

Helfand, a former president of the American Astronomical Society, looks like Socrates. He attributes much of his success in life to a background in theatre, and he spends a lot of his time teaching science to nonscientists—the only prerequisite for his perennial class Earth, Moon, and Planets is “a working knowledge of high-school algebra.” He taught me about the J.W.S.T.

Most of the light spectrum is not visible to the human eye. When we look up at the night sky, it’s as if we were listening to Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with ears able to hear only the occasional middle C and maybe a tinny D. We have no biological receptors for radio waves, or microwaves, or ultraviolet radiation, or infrared radiation. If an object is moving away from us—and most everything in the universe is, because the universe is continuously expanding—the wavelength of its light is, in effect, stretched out, eventually rendering it infrared. Helfand said, “The atmosphere blocks out a lot of energy—that’s why we can live on Earth. But it’s not good for astronomy. And our atmosphere is particularly ugly for infrared.” On Earth, there are a number of telescopes larger than the J.W.S.T., but they can’t see the range of infrared light with the level of resolution and sensitivity that the new telescope will achieve.

“It will have many capacities, but the two big ones are ‘Very Far Away’ and ‘Very Close,’ ” Helfand said. The Very Far Away component will look back about 13.5 billion years, to when the universe was some quarter of a billion years old. “If you compare the universe’s life to that of a human, that’s like seeing the universe at, well, we’d have to calculate it, but it’s seeing the universe as a baby,” he said. After the big bang, the universe was a nearly uniform soup of matter and radiation. But by the mysterious epoch that the telescope will examine—sometimes called the Dark Ages—gravity had managed to amplify tiny irregularities in that soup, causing a kind of clumping. “So what we are on is the quest for the very first stars.” When did they turn on? What are they like? Did stars form before galaxies? How did black holes with masses millions of times greater than that of the sun form so quickly?

“The Very Close capacity is in some ways the most exciting,” Helfand told me. “It’s about looking at planets that are not too different from Earth.” The J.W.S.T. will study exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. Exoplanetology is a young field. The first exoplanet (outside science fiction) was discovered only twenty-five years ago. By 2005, about two hundred exoplanets had been found. Today, more than forty-four hundred are known, and it seems likely that such planets are ubiquitous. Though they don’t emit light, Helfand explained that “when these planets pass in front of a star they leave a sort of fingerprint,” and that fingerprint can be read for clues. The J.W.S.T. will be able to describe the atmospheres of these planets, possibly detecting free oxygen or other gases—potential signs of life.

 

Exciting stuff here, if humanity survives on this rock long enough to be able to reach these exoplanets. We'll see, quite literally.

NASA Gets The Full Nelson

Longtime NASA proponent and former Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson is reportedly being tapped to fill the space agency's head honcho position by the Biden administration.

President Biden has tapped former Democratic Senator Bill Nelson for NASA administrator, according to three people familiar with the decision. Nelson, a politically experienced ally of the administration, would command the space agency as it races to return humans to the Moon, bolsters climate research, and expands its reliance on a flourishing commercial space industry.

A former congressman and three-term US senator from Florida, Nelson would succeed former President Trump’s NASA chief, Jim Bridenstine, whose past experience in Congress proved key in rallying support for the Artemis program, an ambitious campaign to use the Moon as a stepping stone for future astronaut missions to Mars.

Senate and NASA staffers who were informally briefed this week on Biden’s decision were told that a formal announcement on Nelson’s nomination would come later this week, three sources said, speaking under anonymity to discuss private conversations before the announcement is made. Former astronaut Pam Melroy is being considered for Nelson’s deputy, one of the sources said.

Rumors that Biden was considering Nelson to lead NASA had been swirling openly among space industry circles for roughly a month, but it wasn’t until this week that the White House and NASA cemented the choice. The decision comes nearly two months after Biden took office and as the White House remains silent on rolling out any space policy agenda while it focuses instead on more pressing issues, like vaccinating Americans from the coronavirus. In the past, new presidents have spent several months mulling their NASA nomination.

Nelson represented Florida’s Space Coast as a state legislator in the 1970s and championed NASA through his time in Congress. In 1986, he became the second sitting member of Congress to fly to space, riding aboard Space Shuttle Columbia as a payload specialist. The centrist Democrat served three terms in the Senate until losing his bid for reelection in 2018 to former Florida Gov. Rick Scott.

As a member of the Senate Commerce Committee that oversees NASA, Nelson laid into then-nominee Bridenstine during his confirmation hearings, criticizing his record on climate change and stressing that a politician shouldn’t run NASA. “This committee has heard me say many times: NASA is not political,” Nelson said. “The leader of NASA should not be political.” Bridenstine was eventually confirmed on a party-line vote, and he used his political savvy to win bipartisan support for the Artemis program.

Biden’s choice to tap Nelson has prompted mixed reactions in the space industry, with both optimism and dismay over the former senator’s past space policy stances. Some had hoped Biden would pick a woman to lead NASA, which has only been led by men in the past. Other people considered for the role included Melroy and Ellen Stofan, the director of the National Air and Space Museum, two people familiar with internal personnel discussions said. Stofan accepted a different position earlier this month as the Smithsonian’s Under Secretary for Science and Research.

Sen. Marco Rubio, who was Nelson’s Republican colleague from Florida, was pleased to hear Biden’s decision for NASA administrator, saying in a statement “I cannot think of anyone better to lead NASA than Bill Nelson.”

“His nomination gives me confidence that the Biden Administration finally understands the importance of the Artemis program, and the necessity of winning the 21st century space race. I look forward to supporting Bill’s swift confirmation, and working with him in the years to come,” Sen. Rubio said.

 

Not even Rubio is going to try to clown show Bill Nelson. 

I expect this nomination will sail through.

 

To Boldly Go And All That

Donald Trump established the US Space Force as a division of the US Armed Forces, much to the chagrin of absolutely everyone, and it looks like Joe Biden will keep them around.

Why it matters: After President Biden's election, some advocated that the incoming administration disband the newest branch of the military, first established by President Trump.

What's happening: "We are not revisiting the decision to establish the Space Force," Psaki said at a press briefing, adding that the Department of Defense's focus on securing space is a bipartisan issue.

Background: Psaki came under fire Tuesday when a top Republican lawmaker saw remarks she made in response to a question about the Space Force as dismissive of the guardians enlisted in the force. In response, Psaki tweeted Tuesday night that she would welcome Space Force officials to come speak to the press about their work.

"I'm very proud of the guardians in the Space Force," Gen. John Raymond, the chief of space operations, said during a press call Wednesday morning. "I see the value of this force each and every day, and I'm happy to talk to anybody about the great work that they're doing. I would welcome the opportunity." Raymond also said that he has not yet spoken with President Biden about space.

The big picture: Many experts within the space industry see the Space Force as an essential means of keeping satellites and other key assets safe from attack. From GPS to photos of difficult-to-reach parts of Earth, the U.S. is increasingly reliant on space. This is particularly true when it comes to fighting wars, and the Space Force is expected to shore up defenses and capabilities in orbit.

I mean I did just point out how vulnerable our GPS satellites are to hackers and sabotage, so I mean I guess somebody should be in charge of that, and even without Space Force, the Air Force's US Space Command would be doing it anyway, so frankly yeah, somebody should keep it.

I dunno if I'd want to be the US military force established by Trump though.

Last Call For Sunny Side Up

This weekend is the scheduled launch of the joint NASA/European Space Agency Solar Orbiter project to take a look at the sun and in particular, the sun's magnetic poles.

The mission, which is a joint collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency, is currently expected to launch shortly after 11 p.m. ET Sunday. This is the first mission that will provide images of the sun's north and south poles using a suite of six instruments on board that will capture the spacecraft's view. Having a visual understanding of the sun's poles is important because it can provide more insight about the sun's powerful magnetic field and how it affects Earth. 

It will take Solar Orbiter about two years to reach its highly elliptical orbit around the sun. Gravity assists from Earth and Venus will help swing the spacecraft out of the ecliptic plane, or the space that aligns with the sun's equator, so it can study the sun's poles from above and below. 

This follows the Ulysses spacecraft, another collaboration between ESA and NASA that launched in 1990 and also flew over the sun's poles. Ulysses completed three passes of the sun before its mission ended in 2009, but its view was limited to what it could see from the sun's equator. 

"Up until Solar Orbiter, all solar imaging instruments have been within the ecliptic plane or very close to it," said Russell Howard, space scientist at the Naval Research Lab in Washington, D.C. and principal investigator for one of Solar Orbiter's ten instruments. "Now, we'll be able to look down on the sun from above."

"It will be terra incognita," said Daniel Müller, ESA project scientist for the mission at the Agency's European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands. "This is really exploratory science." 

Solar Orbiter is equipped with ten instruments that can capture observations of the sun's corona (which is its atmosphere), the poles and the solar disk. It can also use its variety of instruments to measure the sun's magnetic fields and solar wind, or the energized stream of particles emitted by the sun that reach across our solar system. 

Understanding the sun's magnetic field and solar wind are key because they contribute to space weather, which impacts Earth by interfering with networked systems like GPS, communications and even astronauts on the International Space Station. The sun's magnetic field is so massive that it stretches beyond Pluto, providing a pathway for solar wind to travel directly across the solar system. 

The mission will work in tandem with NASA's Parker Solar Probe, which is currently orbiting the sun on a seven-year mission and just completed its fourth close approach of the star. It launched in August 2018 and will eventually come within four million miles of the sun -- the closest a spacecraft has ever flown by our star.

Here's hoping the project has a safe launch and a fruitful mission.  Lord knows we need all the additional science knowledge we can get right about now.

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Space Farce:The Next Degeneration

I hate everything.

Trump just announced the new logo for the Space Force. The other is Star Trek Starfleet Command. pic.twitter.com/S7NeYdjR4C

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) January 24, 2020

I hate this so much it physically hurts.

Buzz Lightyear Of Spaced Command

Space.

The final frontier of grifting and resource exploitation, and taking it over is a top priority of the Trump regime.

President Donald Trump on Thursday formally established a new military headquarters for space operations as part of his efforts to ensure the Pentagon maintains an edge over potential adversaries like Russia and China.

The U.S. Space Command will be responsible for defending military satellites and other space systems and will draw on troops from other branches of the military as well as Trump's proposed Space Force, which is awaiting approval from Congress.

"It will ensure that America’s dominance in space is never questioned and never threatened because we know the best way to prevent conflict is to prepare for victory,” Trump said during a Rose Garden ceremony with his top national security team.

He added that the move "will soon be followed very importantly by the establishment of the United States Space Force as the sixth branch of the United States armed forces. That’s really something, when you think about it."

The new Space Command will be on par with other military headquarters that are responsible for different geographic regions of the world or have distinct missions such as cyber operations.

Gen. John Raymond, the current head of the Air Force Space Command who has also been tapped to run the new outfit, told reporters at the Pentagon earlier that a top priority will be to build new alliances with other militaries that similarly view space as a potential conflict zone.

“Historically, we haven’t needed allies in space," he said. "It was a benign domain. We absolutely are open for new partnerships.”

The Pentagon decided to reestablish the U.S. Space Command, which existed in another form between 1985 and 2002, after a review concluded the military's increasing reliance on space technologies required a dedicated "combatant command" due to advances in weaponry by China and Russia that could destroy satellites in orbit or disable them through other means such as cyberattacks.

Trump so badly wants to be remembered for US Space Force that it physically pains him that it'll never happen, but reestablishing Space Command to keep an eye on all the satellite junk in Earth orbit is useful up to a point, I guess.

Of course, considering how the Trump regime is more than happy to leave the door open to cyberattacks from Russia, one has to wonder what the point of Space Command actually is going to be, other than a cosmic joke.

Faster Than A Speeding Bullet

Three asteroid whizzed by the Earth this week, and one missed the planet by less than the distance from the Earth to the moon, in a demonstration of just how lucky we've been so far from a cosmic perspective, according to Alan Duffy, the science head at the Royal Institution of Australia.

This asteroid wasn’t one that scientists had been tracking, and it had seemingly appeared from “out of nowhere,” Michael Brown, a Melbourne-based observational astronomer, told The Washington Post. According to data from NASA, the craggy rock was large, an estimated 57 to 130 meters wide (187 to 427 feet), and moving fast along a path that brought it within about 73,000 kilometers (45,000 miles) of Earth. That’s less than one-fifth of the distance to the moon and what Duffy considers “uncomfortably close.”

“It snuck up on us pretty quickly,” said Brown, an associate professor in Australia with Monash University’s School of Physics and Astronomy. He later noted, “People are only sort of realizing what happened pretty much after it’s already flung past us.”

The asteroid’s presence was discovered only earlier this week by separate astronomy teams in Brazil and the United States. Information about its size and path was announced just hours before it shot past Earth, Brown said.

“It shook me out my morning complacency,” he said. “It’s probably the largest asteroid to pass this close to Earth in quite a number of years.”

So how did the event almost go unnoticed?

First, there’s the issue of size, Duffy said. Asteroid 2019 OK is a sizable chunk of rock, but it’s nowhere near as big as the ones capable of causing an event like the dinosaurs’ extinction. More than 90 percent of those asteroids, which are more than half a mile wide or larger, have already been identified by NASA and its partners.

“Nothing this size is easy to detect,” Duffy said of Asteroid 2019 OK. ″You’re really relying on reflected sunlight, and even at closest approach it was barely visible with a pair of binoculars.”

Brown said the asteroid’s “eccentric orbit” and speed were also likely factors in what made spotting it ahead of time challenging. Its “very elliptical orbit” takes it “from beyond Mars to within the orbit of Venus,” which means the amount of time it spends near Earth where it is detectable isn’t long, he said. As it approached Earth, the asteroid was traveling at about 24 kilometers per second, he said, or nearly 54,000 mph. By contrast, other recent asteroids that flew by Earth clocked in between 4 and 19 kilometers per second (8,900 to 42,500 mph).

“It’s faint for a long time,” Brown said of Asteroid 2019 OK. “With a week or two to go, it’s getting bright enough to detect, but someone needs to look in the right spot. Once it’s finally recognized, then things happen quickly, but this thing’s approaching quickly so we only sort of knew about it very soon before the flyby.”

The last-minute detection is yet another sign of how much remains unknown about space and a sobering reminder of the very real threat asteroids can pose, Duffy said.

“It should worry us all, quite frankly,” he said. “It’s not a Hollywood movie. It is a clear and present danger.”

Duffy said astronomers have a nickname for the kind of space rock that just came so close to Earth: “City-killer asteroids.” If the asteroid had struck Earth, most of it would have probably reached the ground, resulting in devastating damage, Brown said.

“It would have gone off like a very large nuclear weapon” with enough force to destroy a city, he said. “Many megatons, perhaps in the ballpark of 10 megatons of TNT, so something not to be messed with.”

One of these days, a city is going to get erased off the map by an asteroid.  It may not happen in my lifetime, but it's going to happen.  I just hope we have the technology to predict and deal with the situation when it does.

Last Call For Space Cases, Con't

Donald Trump wants his cool Space Force as the sixth branch of the US military, a legacy he figures that will put in down in world history for centuries or something, and he expects Congress to give it to him.

President Donald Trump plans to go ahead with asking Congress to establish a Space Force as an independent branch of the military, according to a draft presidential directive obtained by POLITICO — committing to the biggest restructuring of the U.S. military in seven decades despite bipartisan skepticism on Capitol Hill.

The draft, produced after months of internal review, outlines much-awaited details for what would be the first new military service since 1947. It indicates that Trump, who has championed the standalone Space Force, is still interested in pursuing an entirely new branch, despite criticism of the proposal on Capitol Hill and even initial opposition within the Pentagon.

The White House directive provides no estimate of what the Space Force would cost, although previous estimates have ranged from less than $5 billion to as high as $13 billion over five years.

Under the proposal, the Department of the Space Force would be headed by a civilian secretary — just like the Army, Navy and Air Force — and either a four-star general or admiral. The latter person would also serve as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to the draft directive dated Nov. 19.

"Under this proposal, the Space Force will organize, train and equip national security space forces of the United States to ensure unfettered access to and freedom to operate in space, and to provide vital capabilities ... in peacetime and across the spectrum of conflict," the draft directive says.

The Space Force's priorities, the draft says, would include "protecting the nation's interests in space and the peaceful use of space for all responsible actors"; "deterring aggression and defending the nation, U.S. allies and U.S. interests from hostile acts in and from space"; and "projecting power in, from and to space in support of the nation's interests."

The White House and Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment on the draft, which is still awaiting final review.

The new branch would draw troops from across the military, including the National Guard and Reserves, that are dedicated to a broad range of military tasks, including intelligence, weapons acquisition and cyber operations. It would also be responsible for overseeing the acquisition of all space technologies and weapons, including a new Space Development Agency.

The president also intends to carry out plans already underway at the direction of Congress to establish a U.S. Space Command, according to the draft. The command would absorb all space-related responsibilities now carried out by U.S. Strategic Command and would train space forces from all the military branches until a Space Force is established.

Let's just build orbital ion cannons and start killing people we don't like.  From space!

To recap, things America has to have under the Trump regime:

• A militarized, "sealed" border with Mexico
• Mass deportations and detainment facilities
• Militarization of outer space
• New oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and offshore
• Trillions in tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy

Things we can't possibly afford because they are unserious, Socialist proposals:

• Health care
• Clean air and water
• Roads, bridges, and streets
• High-speed rail and mass transportation
• Social Security

Any questions?

Star Wreck: The Trump Generation

The country that first put a man on the moon 50 years ago will be completely out of the space exploration business in just a few years, and you can thank Trump for that travesty.

The Trump administration wants to turn the International Space Station into a kind of orbiting real estate venture run not by the government, but by private industry. 

The White House plans to stop funding the station after 2024, ending direct federal support of the orbiting laboratory. But it does not intend to abandon the orbiting laboratory altogether and is working on a transition plan that could turn the station over to the private sector, according to an internal NASA document obtained by The Washington Post. 

“The decision to end direct federal support for the ISS in 2025 does not imply that the platform itself will be deorbited at that time — it is possible that industry could continue to operate certain elements or capabilities of the ISS as part of a future commercial platform,” the document states. “NASA will expand international and commercial partnerships over the next seven years in order to ensure continued human access to and presence in low Earth orbit.” 

In its budget request, to be released Monday, the administration would request $150 million in fiscal year 2019, with more in additional years “to enable the development and maturation of commercial entities and capabilities which will ensure that commercial successors to the ISS — potentially including elements of the ISS — are operational when they are needed.”

Don't expect any help from Republicans in NASA states like Texas or Florida, either.  They're definitely on board for "commercializing" the ISS.

The plan to privatize the station is likely to run into a wall of opposition, especially because the United States has spent nearly $100 billion to build and operate it. Last week, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said he hoped recent reports of NASA’s decision to end funding of the station “prove as unfounded as Bigfoot.” He said the decision was the result of “numskulls” at the Office of Management and Budget. 

“As a fiscal conservative, you know one of the dumbest things you can to is cancel programs after billions in investment when there is still serious usable life ahead,” he said. 

When asked about the possibility of a public-private partnership, he said, “I think all of us are open to reasonable proposals that are cost effective and that are utilizing the investments we made in a way that maximize their effectiveness."

Quite the fold there from Ted Cruz.  Of course he wants the ISS to continue and to use NASA mission control in Houston.  He just doesn't want taxpayers footing the bill.

And so China, the European Union, of course Russia, and even India will continue their national space programs while we turn over everything to Elon Musk and whoever follows him, and hope for the best.

Space isn't worth it if there's no immediate profit, I guess.

Challenging Both Stars And Minds

For 80's kids like me, there was nothing more shocking growing up than this day 32 years ago when the space shuttle Challenger exploded a minute after launch.  Across the country kids were watching live as the first teacher in space entered orbit, and I remembered being pretty excited at the fact that we would be getting science lessons from space.

The excitement turned to horror pretty quickly.  But the good news is 32 years later, those lessons from space will finally be taught.

McAuliffe's lessons have remained untaught and forgotten, until now. Astronauts will film some of her original lessons on the International Space Station, continuing McAuliffe's legacy 32 years after they were initially planned. 

It's fitting that the two astronauts, Joe Acaba and Ricky Arnold, are both former educators. Acaba is currently on the space station, and Arnold will launch in March.
Arnold tweeted that he, Acaba and former educator astronauts Barbara Morgan and Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger were honored to help celebrate the legacy of Challenger, and the Teacher in Space Mission. Morgan was McAuliffe's back-up for the Challenger mission. She went on to become the first educator astronaut in 2007. 

It's part of NASA's Year of Education on Station and the original lessons, as well as new ones modified for the space station's unique environment features, will be "STEMonstrations." 

The lessons will touch on liquids in zero gravity, Newton's law, effervescence (bubbles or fizz in liquid) and chromatography, or the separation of a mixture. 

"Filming Christa McAuliffe's lessons in orbit this year is an incredible way to honor and remember her and the Challenger crew," said Mike Kincaid, associate administrator for NASA's Office of Education. "Developed with such care and expertise by Christa, the value these lessons will have as new tools available for educators to engage and inspire students in science, technology, education and math is what will continue to advance a true legacy of Challenger's mission." 

Once the lessons are filmed, the videos and lesson plans will be available through the Challenger Center's website. The Challenger Center, which has 40 learning centers that include simulated environments, was created to honor the Challenger crew and works with students in the US, Canada and the UK to encourage STEM activities. 

I'll definitely want to tune in once these are ready.  I want to see what I missed in class three decades ago.  I'll bet I'm not the only one, either.

 

Sunday Long Read: A New World Record

Forty years ago this month, NASA sent Voyager I into the stars, with Voyager II following the month after, and probably the most famous passengers aboard each probe are a pair of golden record discs that contain sights and sounds of Earth.  Our Sunday Long Read is Timothy Ferris's New Yorker piece on the story of the creation of those records, and how they came to represent an entire planet.

I became friends with Carl Sagan, the astronomer who oversaw the creation of the Golden Record, in 1972. He’d sometimes stop by my place in New York, a high-ceilinged West Side apartment perched up amid Norway maples like a tree house, and we’d listen to records. Lots of great music was being released in those days, and there was something fascinating about LP technology itself. A diamond danced along the undulations of a groove, vibrating an attached crystal, which generated a flow of electricity that was amplified and sent to the speakers. At no point in this process was it possible to say with assurance just how much information the record contained or how accurately a given stereo had translated it. The open-endedness of the medium seemed akin to the process of scientific exploration: there was always more to learn.

In the winter of 1976, Carl was visiting with me and my fiancée at the time, Ann Druyan, and asked whether we’d help him create a plaque or something of the sort for Voyager. We immediately agreed. Soon, he and one of his colleagues at Cornell, Frank Drake, had decided on a record. By the time nasa approved the idea, we had less than six months to put it together, so we had to move fast. Ann began gathering material for a sonic description of Earth’s history. Linda Salzman Sagan, Carl’s wife at the time, went to work recording samples of human voices speaking in many different languages. The space artist Jon Lomberg rounded up photographs, a method having been found to encode them into the record’s grooves. I produced the record, which meant overseeing the technical side of things. We all worked on selecting the music.

I sought to recruit John Lennon, of the Beatles, for the project, but tax considerations obliged him to leave the country. Lennon did help us, though, in two ways. First, he recommended that we use his engineer, Jimmy Iovine, who brought energy and expertise to the studio. (Jimmy later became famous as a rock and hip-hop producer and record-company executive.) Second, Lennon’s trick of etching little messages into the blank spaces between the takeout grooves at the ends of his records inspired me to do the same on Voyager. I wrote a dedication: “To the makers of music—all worlds, all times.”

To our surprise, those nine words created a problem at nasa. An agency compliance officer, charged with making sure each of the probes’ sixty-five thousand parts were up to spec, reported that while everything else checked out—the records’ size, weight, composition, and magnetic properties—there was nothing in the blueprints about an inscription. The records were rejected, and nasa prepared to substitute blank discs in their place. Only after Carl appealed to the nasaadministrator, arguing that the inscription would be the sole example of human handwriting aboard, did we get a waiver permitting the records to fly.

In those days, we had to obtain physical copies of every recording we hoped to listen to or include. This wasn’t such a challenge for, say, mainstream American music, but we aimed to cast a wide net, incorporating selections from places as disparate as Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, China, Congo, Japan, the Navajo Nation, Peru, and the Solomon Islands. Ann found an LP containing the Indian raga “Jaat Kahan Ho” in a carton under a card table in the back of an appliance store. At one point, the folklorist Alan Lomax pulled a Russian recording, said to be the sole copy of “Chakrulo” in North America, from a stack of lacquer demos and sailed it across the room to me like a Frisbee. We’d comb through all this music individually, then meet and go over our nominees in long discussions stretching into the night. It was exhausting, involving, utterly delightful work.

In selecting Western classical music, we sacrificed a measure of diversity to include three compositions by J. S. Bach and two by Ludwig van Beethoven. To understand why we did this, imagine that the record were being studied by extraterrestrials who lacked what we would call hearing, or whose hearing operated in a different frequency range than ours, or who hadn’t any musical tradition at all. Even they could learn from the music by applying mathematics, which really does seem to be the universal language that music is sometimes said to be. They’d look for symmetries—repetitions, inversions, mirror images, and other self-similarities—within or between compositions. We sought to facilitate the process by proffering Bach, whose works are full of symmetry, and Beethoven, who championed Bach’s music and borrowed from it.

I’m often asked whether we quarrelled over the selections. We didn’t, really; it was all quite civil. With a world full of music to choose from, there was little reason to protest if one wonderful track was replaced by another wonderful track. I recall championing Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night,” which, if memory serves, everyone liked from the outset. Ann stumped for Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” a somewhat harder sell, in that Carl, at first listening, called it “awful.” But Carl soon came around on that one, going so far as to politely remind Lomax, who derided Berry’s music as “adolescent,” that Earth is home to many adolescents. Rumors to the contrary, we did not strive to include the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun,” only to be disappointed when we couldn’t clear the rights. It’s not the Beatles’ strongest work, and the witticism of the title, if charming in the short run, seemed unlikely to remain funny for a billion years.

The Golden Anniversary edition of the Voyage Golden Record is out, by the way, to celebrate these songs.   Good listening anywhere in the universe.

He's A Rocket Mensch

SpaceX's spectacular and catastrophic test fire failure Friday that resulted in the total destruction of the company's Dragon rocket and its satellite payload cost hundreds of millions of dollars, sure.  But what people haven't been talking about as much is the fact that SpaceX's client was effectively Israel's space program.

A large question mark looms over Israel’s space industry after its prized Amos-6 satellite blew up in last week’s failed SpaceX rocket launch.

Space Communication Ltd., the Israeli company that was to operate the Amos-6, is still picking up the pieces and deciding what to do next. The government will formulate a long-term national space program, and may help develop a communications satellite, the Science Ministry said late Sunday after an emergency meeting with representatives of the country’s space industries.

The Sept. 1 accident in Cape Canaveral, Florida was the biggest blow to Israel’s space program since the death of astronaut Col. Ilan Ramon in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003.

The setback imperils Space Com’s deal with China’s Beijing Xinwei Group for control of the company, but presents an opportunity for Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd., the state-owned weapons manufacturer that built Amos-6. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can allot some of the estimated $300 million to pay IAI to build another satellite for Space Com, its sole client for such products, but first must decide if satellites are an industry of national strategic importance.

“This is a traumatic experience for the industry, but allows us to hold this discussion that should have happened 10-15 years ago,” Yossi Weiss, IAI’s chief executive officer, said Sunday.

Now I find this all intriguing that the end result of a major technical disaster appears to be moving Israel's satellite program away from a joint commercial venture with Beijing and towards a Israeli military takeover in the name of national interest, something that's been discussed for ten or fifteen years.

The government could push to build a new satellite and maintain the independence of Israel’s space industry, according to Tal Inbar, head of the space and UAV research center at the Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies, based in Herzliya, Israel.

Keeping the country’s space industry in-house shields it from pro-Palestinian activists who apply political pressure on foreign companies to stop doing business with Israel, Inbar said. Satellites also serve as backup for Israel’s communications infrastructure in the event of war or technical malfunction, he added.

"There’s a synergy in the triangle between Space Com, its biggest client, and its supplier, in that they’re all Israeli companies," Inbar said in an interview. "They understand each other and would be responsive to each other, so that they could amend issues in the satellite, if need be, in no time."

You don't say.  Gosh, that's quite the long-term benefit if you're the Israeli military. 

Just throwing that out there.

The Challenger Of The Stars

It's interesting that Americans often define themselves in part by what disasters they were witness to, anyone in their twenties remembers where they were when 9/11 happened (and I do as well) but being older, my seminal disaster memory happened thirty years ago today, as CNET's Eric Mack accounts.

Thirty years ago Thursday, I watched in real time, along with millions of other schoolchildren, as my first real heroes died in an awful explosion over the Florida coastline. The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster took the lives of seven astronauts on January 28, 1986, including a schoolteacher named Christa McAuliffe, who was meant to be the first civilian astronaut sent to space.

While I was in first grade thousands of miles away at the time, Challenger is the first news event I can actually recall experiencing on the day it unfolded. A few years ago, a survey found the Challenger disaster is the fourth most memorable moment in the history of television.

Even three decades later, it represents some sort of a beginning in my memory, a premature loss of a certain kind of innocence.

Two concepts are often introduced in the early school grades with the potential to exponentially expand young minds: space and dinosaurs. I'm now a father of an 8-year-old, so I can confirm this is still the case. Space and dinosaurs are literally otherworldly ideas that hint at the full span of time and the universe. They're the first indications that there's much more to life than cartoons and backyards and school and shopping with Mom.

Dinosaurs are long gone, of course, except for the bones and fuel. But space...that's something that can send a mind into orbit. In a thoroughly explored world, astronauts are like the modern equivalent of 15-century explorers, only possibly cooler. Part of that inherent coolness is that they're just like the adults from daily life, like a mom or a teacher. McAuliffe only served to drive that impression home.

Before Challenger, life was literally all just child's play for me. After Challenger, I was not only aware of the unthinkable breadth of the world and the universe, but also of how brutal and cruel it all can be. I still remember some of the hideous jokes kids and even some remarkably crass adults told in the wake of the tragedy. They're not worth repeating here, but they still make my stomach hurt.

I was among those grade-school kids watching the event on TV, as teachers across America tuned in to watch Christa McAuliffe go into space.  We knew that she was going to be teaching us lessons in science from space, for crying out loud, and that was the coolest thing possible that could happen at school for a young science nerd like myself.

And then it all went horrifically wrong as we watched.

I remember talking with ZandarDad about the incident.  He told me about the Apollo 1 fire that happened back in 1967 when he was a teenager, when Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chafee all died in a horrible fire that happened during the craft's launch test. When you jump, how high to you go, he asked me. A couple of feet into the air even with all your strength? Now remember that anything powerful enough to launch people into space can be lethal if something goes wrong, he told me.

I learned that day that science can be dangerous, and that the forces humanity are trying to master can be disastrous if uncontrolled.

Oh, yeah, and the jokes the kids told.  Ugh.  Let's just say they involved a particular brand of soda and the number of shuttle astronauts lost that day.

Seeing Stars Late At Night

Well here's what I call smart television: Neil DeGrasse Tyson is bringing his Star Talk radio/podcast show to TV.

On Wednesday, the National Geographic channel announced that Tyson would be hosting the network's first ever late-night talk show, Variety reported. It will be loosely based on Tyson's popular podcast, Star Talk, and feature the cosmologist in the starring role. Few other details have so far been announced, but if it is anything like the podcast, you can expect a slew of comics, celebrities and fellow scientists to join Tyson to discuss "astronomy, physics and everything else about life in the universe." 

"Cosmos allowed us to share the awesome power of the universe with a global audience in ways that we never thought possible," Tyson reportedly said. "To be able to continue to spread wonder and excitement through Star Talk, which is a true passion project for me, is beyond exciting." 

Star Talk will also mark NatGeo's continuing expansion into such original programming (they're also planning an upcoming comedy from the creators of HBO's Silicon Valley). And as an educational channel that actually still has educational programming (unlike some other guys) hopefully they'll make this expansion carefully and deliver something good.

"We continue to bolster our programming with series and event specials that are brand definitional, andStar Talk is the perfect opportunity to offer our audience an edgy, late-night alternative with the credibility and authenticity that are the hallmarks of our network," National Geographic Channels CEO Courteney Monroe reportedly said.

I enjoy watching The Nerdist on BBC America, and SyFy's The Wil Wheaton Project is also a good time, so I know there's room out there in the vast cable spectrum for smart late-night hosts and talk shows. Hell, Craig Ferguson was brilliant on The Late Late Show.

Looking forward to watching this, as the Star Talk podcasts I've listened to have been pretty good. Neil is a natural and here's hoping it's even better.

Super Powers Not Included

A meteor went screaming over the Ural Mountains near the Russian border with Kazakhstan early this morning, leaving behind hundreds injured from the impact wave as it detonated over the city of Chelyabinsk. 

People heading to work in Chelyabinsk heard what sounded like an explosion, saw a bright light and then felt the shock wave, according to a Reuters correspondent in the industrial city 1,500 km (950 miles) east of Moscow.

The fireball, travelling at a speed of 30 km (19 miles) per second according to Russian space agency Roscosmos, had blazed across the horizon, leaving a long white trail that could be seen as far as 200 km (125 miles) away.

Car alarms went off, thousands of windows shattered and mobile phone networks were disrupted. The Interior Ministry said the meteor explosion, a very rare spectacle, also unleashed a sonic boom.

"I was driving to work, it was quite dark, but it suddenly became as bright as if it were day," said Viktor Prokofiev, 36, a resident of Yekaterinburg in the Urals Mountains.

"I felt like I was blinded by headlights."

The meteor, which weighed about 10 tons and may have been made of iron, entered Earth's atmosphere and broke apart 30-50 km (19-31 miles) above ground, according to Russia's Academy of Sciences.

No deaths were reported but the Emergencies Ministry said 20,000 rescue and clean-up workers were sent to the region after President Vladimir Putin told Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov to ease the disruption and help the victims.

The Interior Ministry said about 1,200 people had been injured, at least 200 of them children, and most from shards of glass.

Meanwhile, we dodged an even larger rock this afternoon as asteroid 2012 DA14 missed the Earth by 17,500 miles...considerably less than the circumference of the planet we're on.

It's raining things, man.  Things.

[UPDATE]  Heh.