Much like a wave on the surface of water, it propagates from point to point.
Sound Waves and Noise in Space
A sound wave needs matter to propagate, through a succession of compressions and expansions in the medium in which it is produced. This medium can be solid, liquid, or gaseous.
In interstellar space, the density of matter is far too low — on the order of one particle per cubic centimeter, compared to around 10²⁰ particles per cubic centimeter on Earth — for sound to have any medium to travel through. This is why no sound can be heard in space.
Blaise Pascal aptly spoke of the “eternal silence of infinite spaces.”
It is also worth noting that the denser a body, the faster sound can propagate through it. For example, in air, the speed of sound is about 340 meters per second (m/s), in water, it rises to around 1,500 m/s, and in iron, it reaches 5 kilometers per second!
For a long time, astronomers have suspected: There must also be intermediate-mass black holes. But reliable observations have not been successful until now. Now, an international research team led by Maximilian Häberle from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg has presented the best evidence yet for exactly such a black hole.
In the archive data of the Hubble Space Telescope, the team detected seven stars moving at extremely high speeds in the center of the globular cluster Omega Centauri. Only the gravitational pull of a black hole could explain the movement of the stars, the researchers write in the journal “Nature.” From their data, they conclude: The black hole at the center of Omega Centauri has 8,200 times the mass of our sun.
The newly described black hole is, considering the vastness of space, close to Earth. It is about 18,000 lightyears away, explains co-author Nadine Neumayer. This makes it the closest known example of a massive black hole. The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, is at a distance of about 27,000 lightyears.
Search for Racing Stars
To find new black holes, astronomers had repeatedly searched for such racing stars, unsuccessfully until now. Häberle set out to search again. To calibrate his instruments, he used previously unutilized data from the Hubble telescope, which had repeatedly photographed Omega Centauri. In total, Häberle had access to 500 archive images spanning a period of 20 years. In these images, the researcher meticulously measured the movement of approximately 150,000 stars.
In the end, Häberle not only created the most comprehensive catalog of stellar movements in Omega Centauri to date but also identified seven stars moving at high speeds. At this speed, Häberle believes, the stars should fly out of the star cluster. Only the gravitational pull of a black hole with 8,200 times the solar mass can hold the stars in place, his calculations show.
Detecting a black hole with such a mass is of great importance for astronomers. Until now, sky researchers only knew of two types of black holes. So-called stellar black holes with up to 150 solar masses are formed when large stars have exhausted their nuclear energy supply and collapse helplessly.
And then there are the supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies with millions or even billions of times the mass of the sun.
These supermassive black holes are presumed to have formed through the merger of smaller black holes with a few thousand solar masses. Some of those intermediate-mass black holes should still exist in the cosmos today. Indeed, sky researchers have come across a whole series of candidates for such objects in smaller galaxies and globular clusters. But direct evidence was lacking until now: the movement of stars in such distant objects is simply too difficult to observe.
Galaxy Swallowed by the Milky Way
This is where Omega Centauri comes into play: With ten million stars, it is the largest globular cluster in the Milky Way. Even the naked eye can spot it in the southern sky. Omega Centauri is probably the former central region of a small galaxy that collided with the Milky Way billions of years ago, losing its outer regions in the process.
The idea was that if this collision happened, Omega Centauri should still contain an intermediate-mass black hole that was once present in the center of the small galaxy. The globular cluster’s proximity to Earth allows us to observe the movement of stars there.
The stars now detected by Häberle and his team confirm this consideration. However, the Hubble images only show the movement of the stars in the sky and not the movement towards or away from us. The researchers now want to measure the radial movement of the seven racing stars with the James Webb Space Telescope and thus eliminate any last doubts about the existence of the black hole in Omega Centauri.
DNA building blocks, amino acids, and maybe even proteins used in the creation of life on Earth might have originated in space. However, how can such intricate biomolecules form in the harsh environment of space? Where exactly are the molecular reactors of the cosmos? Scientists are following the clues that each time lead them to the icy dust grains in distant molecular clouds.
Several organic molecules, including some complex ones, have been discovered in such interstellar clouds. Researchers have found promising findings in the laboratory studying the polymerization events leading to longer-chain compounds like peptides, which can only occur when energy is provided.
Where Did the Building Blocks of Life Come From?
Whence did the elements necessary for the first forms of life on Earth originate? Hydrotherma vents, hydrothermal pools, and even fluid-filled crevices in rocks have long been suspected as the birthplace of more complex organic compounds like DNA building blocks, peptides, and amino acids.
However, another option is becoming more likely in the meanwhile. This one suggests that both extraterrestrial and terrestrial factors could have contributed to the beginning of life on Earth. Organic molecules produced in space and sent to Earth may have provided the building blocks that eventually developed on Earth, leading to the creation of the first protocells, in contrast to the panspermia theory, which suggests that life itself was brought to Earth from the cosmos in the form of basic cells.
A plethora of interplanetary transport options existed: The nascent Earth was bombarded by comets and other debris from the cold outer regions of the solar system during the early stages of planet formation. Analyses of Antarctic snow samples in 2021 revealed that nearly half of the 15,000 tons of interplanetary dust that rains into Earth’s atmosphere each year penetrates the Earth’s surface.
First the DNA Building Blocks
What about the formation of organic molecules in space? If we can answer this question, we can better understand how life first formed on Earth. Because it establishes whether or not comets, meteorites, or space dust may have delivered the building blocks of life to Earth, and, if so, which ones.
Answers to these problems have recently been provided for the first time thanks to investigations of meteorites, laboratory experiments, and space missions. The chemical building blocks of DNA, called nucleobases, were first discovered in 2011 by NASA scientists studying meteorite samples. There were three kinds of DNA bases that are either completely absent or found only in very minute quantities on our planet. Finding nucleobases that don’t fit Earth’s biochemical profile is compelling evidence for an alien origin. After that, in 2022, scientists discovered that meteorites included two of the five DNA bases present in RNA and DNA.
Under space conditions, comet nuclei created in the lab indicated that sugar molecules, the hereditary molecule’s backbone, could develop in the ice of these fragments. Experiments conducted using a research rocket in 2014 demonstrated the viability of DNA after an unprotected trip to space.
Second the Amino Acids
Rosetta spacecraft found glycine and other organic compounds on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. (Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM, CC BY-SA IGO 3.0)
Space missions like Rosetta, which investigated comets up close and analyzed comet dust, provided even more indirect evidence. The amino acid glycine, a fundamental component of proteins, was found by the probe in the Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet’s gas and dust envelope. Comets have also been shown to contain alcohols and other organic compounds.
However, how complicated may these molecular components of life become in the vastness of space? Where exactly do they begin to cluster?
Interstellar Clouds as Factories of Life
Molecular clouds are the birthplaces of stars and planets; therefore, it stands to reason that organic molecules would be present in these environments. Stars are produced at the center of these interstellar clouds when their thick, cold gas collapses under the force of gravity. These then offer the raw materials for the formation of new planets in the disk of gas and dust that orbits them.
Amazingly, sophisticated organic compounds have been found in space, including in protoplanetary disks, comets, and early meteorites. These molecules may be created in a number of different ways on the bodies whose pieces eventually make their way to Earth as meteorites, including through gas-phase interactions, on the frozen dust particle surfaces, and in the aqueous areas.
Recent years have shown that there is mounting evidence that interstellar cloud dust may be an especially prolific “factory” for more complex organic compounds. Dust grains are generated in the interstellar medium, while some are created in the outer layers of cold stars and in supernova explosions. It has been estimated that around half of the molecular clouds in the interstellar medium are really dust.
Typically smaller than a millionth of a meter in size, interstellar dust is made up of carbon or silicon atoms packed together in clusters. However, the ice layers that grow around these dust grains are the key to understanding cosmic chemistry. They have a low surface tension, allowing molecules like water and carbon monoxide to “stick” to their surfaces and come into close enough contact to react. As a result, the ice caps serve as a kind of astronomical chemical lab.
Membrane Building Block in Cold Clouds
Such interstellar dust clouds have already yielded the detection of a wide range of complex organic compounds. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were first detected in the Taurus molecular cloud, 450 light-years distant, in 2021. PAHs are ring-shaped organic molecules connected by double bonds. A short time later, in yet another molecular cloud, scientists uncovered a chemical molecule that proved to be a crucial component of the earliest life, the cell membrane, which contains proteins and genetic material.
The group identified the spectral signature of ethanolamine, the hydrophilic head of the simplest and second most prevalent phospholipid in biological membranes, in the interstellar cloud. This finding is complementary to the observation of ribonucleotides and amino acids in the void between stars. Therefore, it’s possible that interstellar chemistry could have synthesized the building blocks of all three subsystems of life.
How Did Long-Chain Biomolecules Form in Interstellar Space?
Complex, longer-chain building blocks of life like DNA, proteins, and cell membranes emerge from simple organic precursor molecules, but they require more than just raw materials to do so; they also require energy. This is due to the fact that endothermic chemical reactions are not spontaneously occurring when chain-like biomolecules are formed.
However, heat and, most importantly, the high-energy UV light that is thought of as the “ignition spark” for such processes, are in scarce supply in the chilly interstellar molecular clouds or on the ice-covered dust grains at the outer rim of protoplanetary disks. Some of the simplest organic compounds have reaction pathways previously discovered by scientists that do not involve the use of such energy sources. Polymerization of biomolecules is an exception to this rule.
As an example, consider the polymerization of amino acids. In order for this to occur, the water molecules must first be detached from the amino acids. A high energy barrier means that this process can only happen at very high temperatures or with very vigorous processing of the material, according to Serge Krasnokutski of the University of Jena and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. Therefore, the likelihood of each of the steps necessary for this to occur is minimal.
For living things, this is a simple issue to remedy: The cellular organelles known as ribosomes are responsible for this process inside our bodies, with energy coming from our metabolism. But how could such a reaction take place on the ultracold dust of interstellar clouds? This seems improbable at first look.
Aminoketene Instead of Amino Acids
Krasnokutski and coworkers came up with a creative solution by taking a step backward in their thinking and chemistry: what if polymerization does not take place with amino acids at all, but with aminoketene, a molecular variation already liberated from the interfering water? If ammonia, carbon monoxide, and isolated carbon atoms are available as starting materials, then the aminoketene may be produced spontaneously even under ice-cold circumstances and without external energy input, according to quantum chemical calculations.
There are a lot of each of these three chemicals in the space between stars: The frozen layers of interstellar dust grains include 10 percent ammonia and 40 percent carbon monoxide. Half of all carbon in the interstellar medium is found in the form of atomic carbon, and it is these atoms that play a pivotal role in the processes.
Even at very low temperatures, individual carbon atoms exhibit astonishing reactivity. They may bind molecules together and turn inorganic materials into organic ones, functioning as a kind of “molecular glue.”
How Peptides Are Formed on Space Dust
Shorter chains of amino acids are also referred to as peptides because amino acids in proteins are joined together in lengthy chains through peptide bonds. After discovering theoretically that such peptides may also be generated by the polymerization of aminoketes rather than amino acids, Serge Krasnokutski and his colleagues subsequently wondered whether this reaction also takes place under the circumstances of interstellar dust clouds.
The scientists replicated the settings in the lab to find out. The INter-Stellar Ice Dust Experiment (INSIDE), created at the University of Jena over a number of years, was utilized to recreate the crucial features of a grain’s surface covered with ice dust in space. The arrangement relies on an ultra-high vacuum chamber to mimic the interstellar medium’s low-density condition, as seen in molecular clouds.
The scientists utilized a potassium bromide surface chilled to within a few degrees of absolute zero to stand in for the cosmic dust. Carbon monoxide, C atoms, and ammonia were then added, creating a thin layer no more than a few hundred atoms thick. Mass spectrometry and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis confirmed the presence of aminoketene.
From Aminoketene to Peptide
After that, Krasnokutski and his colleagues progressively heated their dust analog and watched for chemical changes. The material formed on the synthetic cosmic dust grain underwent a transition at temperatures of -163 degrees. Peptides had been produced in the laboratory, as shown by the presence of fingerprints characteristic of peptide bonds when infrared spectroscopy was performed.
The research demonstrated that the peptide polyglycine was synthesized from simple components under these circumstances. They identified these strands as glycine chains of varying lengths. The largest specimens had eleven units of the amino acid.
Building Blocks of Life Even in Space
Therefore, it seems that peptide production may also occur under space circumstances, and that very little is needed other than ammonia, carbon monoxide, and carbon. Carbon’s constituent atoms catalyze a chemical landscape that is both expansive and varied. That chemistry is significantly closer to what is required for life to emerge than was previously assumed, even under the circumstances that exist in space.
The findings suggest that essential building blocks of life might have been produced even on dust grains in interstellar space. When these dust particles are heated, the aminoketene within them converts into peptides. If a dust particle is heated, it might be because a new star is forming nearby, or because it was transported by interstellar medium currents to a planetary system.
More than half a century after the race to the moon, space is once again the venue for a rivalry. China is doing everything it can to become a superpower in space as well. Already, manned and unmanned Chinese missions have passed a number of milestones. But what does this mean for the rest of the world and the previously leading space nations?
The first landing of a space probe on the far side of the moon, a rover on Mars, and a manned space station in orbit: In recent years, China has caught up tremendously in space travel and is getting closer and closer to the previous leader, the USA. China’s government leaves no doubt that it is also striving for supremacy in space—whether in Earth orbit, on the moon, or on Mars.
At the same time, however, the political divide between China and Western countries seems to be widening, at least in terrestrial matters. As a result, a new competition for space may be brewing in spaceflight as well.
China as a new space nation
China has launched more probes and satellites in 2021 than any nation before.
Until just a few years ago, the U.S., Russia, and the EU were the undisputed pioneers in space travel. They launched the most rockets, sent space probes through the solar system, and carried the lion’s share of the International Space Station (ISS). But the skies have become more crowded in the meantime. More and more countries are launching their own satellite and space programs.
Enormous progress in a short time
At the forefront of this is China. President Xi Jinping is striving to make his country a superpower in space as well, and is well on his way to achieving this. After lagging behind the two major space nations, the United States and Russia, for a long time, China has now caught up. No other country has made so much technological progress in space in such a short time and in so many different areas. And no other country has such ambitious plans and such a good chance of implementing them.
“It’s becoming more and more clear how dominant China wants to be with regard to space and the space economy,” says Steve Kwast, a U.S. Air Force veteran and space strategist. “They see the profit margin, they see the economic revenue stream, and they see the national security implications.”
To achieve this, the Chinese government is investing huge amounts of money in the largely state-run space industry; more than 300,000 people are said to work for the Chinese space agency alone—far more than for NASA. In addition, there are semi-private companies working on behalf of the state.
From orbit to Mars
And the successes are impressive. Within a few years, China completed its own global satellite navigation system, Beidou, and set a new record for satellite launches in 2021. In one year, Chinese launchers put 55 satellites into orbit; the record previously held by the U.S. was 51 satellites in one year. The Chinese space agency is also already working on its own mega-constellation of some 13,000 Internet satellites.
China has also reached new milestones in the exploration of the moon and Mars. Chang’e 4 was the first space probe to land on the far side of the moon in 2019. In 2020, its successor, Chang’e 5 brought back to Earth the first lunar rock samples since the Apollo missions. In May 2021, China became the only country after the United States to successfully land a Mars rover on the Red Planet with its Tianwen-1 mission. The Zhurong rover has since been exploring an area in Utopia Planitia, a plain northeast of the landing area of NASA’s Perseverance rover.
China’s Mars probe Tianwen-1 with the Zhurong rover. (Image: China News Service)
China is now also competing with the U.S. and Russia in manned spaceflight. After launching its first astronaut in 2003, the country now operates a space station in low-Earth orbit, becoming the third nation after Russia and the U.S. to do so. In April 2021, the core module of the Tiangong station was launched into orbit, followed by the first laboratory module, Wentian, in July 2022. The second laboratory module, Mengtian, followed in October 2022. 14 Chinese astronauts have already spent time at the station as part of its construction and testing.
Just the beginning
For Xi Jinping and China’s space agency, however, this is just the beginning. They see an expanding space presence and space technology as an essential part of China’s development. “To explore the vast cosmos, develop the space industry, and build China into a space power is our eternal dream,” Xi stressed in a recent “white paper” on China’s space program. The space industry is a crucial element of the national strategy, he said.
Competition for space supremacy
For decades, things in space were largely cooperative and peaceful. Exploration of the solar system and research in Earth’s orbit were primarily characterized by cooperation rather than competition. Even old archenemies like Russia and the United States worked together on joint projects like the International Space Station (ISS).
However, this was not the case for China. Unlike Russia, which did maintain close relations with the Western space nations, the country remained relatively isolated even in space. For example, the U.S. blocked its participation in the ISS out of fear of industrial espionage by the Middle Kingdom or China. There was also little interest in cooperating on space probes.
Rival blocs
But the former pariah, China, has become a full-fledged rival. Thanks to its technological advances, China has also become a power in space that other spacefaring nations can no longer ignore. China’s undisguised striving for power, but also the Ukraine war and the associated conflicts between Russia and the West, have drawn new fronts—a new cold war is brewing.
As was the case a good 70 years ago, superpowers are vying for records, technologies, and resources in space. And as in the first “Space Race” in the 1950s and 1960s, two blocs with largely contrasting ideological and political views are facing each other. “One bloc includes more authoritarian states led by China and Russia, and the other is made up predominantly of democracies allied with the U.S. and “like-minded” countries,” Alanna Krolikowski of Missouri University tells The Guardian.
A new eastern alliance?
After decades in which Russia and China barely cooperated with each other in space, a new rapprochement between the two formerly communist states now seems to be on the horizon. There are declarations of intent for future joint projects on the moon and demonstrative mutual visits by Putin and Xi to their national spaceports. An alliance would bring advantages to both: China benefits from Russia’s greater space expertise and experience; Russia, in turn, could benefit from China’s greater financial strength and more advanced technology.
However, it remains to be seen how close this cooperation will actually be.
After all, Russia and China have another thing in common: Their governments are striving for global supremacy and a new old greatness for their empires. This also implies a more rivalrous than cooperative attitude with potential competitors. Some experts are therefore rather skeptical about the new “bromance” between Putin and Xi. The techno-nationalist attitudes of both states could stand in the way of genuine cooperation in space.
Return of the Sputnik trauma
For the U.S., long the undisputed leader in all areas of space, new rival China is a problem: “We are back to where we were in 1957. This is not a Sputnik moment in the strict sense, but it comes very close to its spirit,” U.S. intelligence expert Mike Rogers recently stated. “China is racing ahead in space, while we are unfortunately resting on our laurels, impressive as they may be.”
General David Thompson, vice chief of the U.S. Space Force, takes a similar view: “We are absolutely in a strategic competition with China, and space is a part of that,” he told in early 2022. China, he said, is expanding its space capabilities twice as fast as the United States. “If we don’t start accelerating our development and delivery capabilities, they will exceed us.”
The new space rivalry could become particularly problematic for the closest celestial body to us, the moon.
China’s plans for lunar missions
The lunar rover Yutu-2 and its mother probe Chang’e 4 completed the first landing of a man-made vehicle on the far side of the moon. (Image: CSNA/Siyu Zhang, Kevin M. Gill/CC-BY-SA 2.0)
Everyone wants to go to the moon. After a break of almost 50 years, the Earth’s satellite has once again become the focus of interest in space travel. The moon also has great strategic importance as a stopover to Mars, as a location for space telescopes, and as a lucrative destination for space tourists.
And here, too, China is playing a major role. China’s lunar program initially relies on unmanned probes to test and develop technologies and locations for later manned lunar missions. The first major success came in 2013 with Chang’e 3, the first landing of a Chinese space probe and small rover on Earth’s satellite. Chang’e 4 followed in 2019 with the first landing on the far side of the moon—the first space probe ever to do so. A satellite placed at lunar Lagrange Point 2 will serve as a relay for the radio signals; a second relay satellite is to be added in 2024.
Lunar South Pole as a priority target
This means that China is present even before the USA in a lunar region that is considered particularly suitable for future lunar stations. This is because data from orbital probes suggests that there could be 3-foot-thick layers of water ice in the deep shadows of some craters in the South Pole-Aitken depression located at the lunar south pole, an important resource for future lunar astronauts. Metals and other resources could also be found in the regolith of this region.
China plans to use the Chang’e 6 lunar probe to determine whether this is actually the case. It is scheduled to launch in 2024 and take samples from the South Pole basin and bring them back to Earth. The two follow-up missions, Chang’e 7 and 8, are also to land in this region and conduct geological investigations and technical tests there. Among other things, experiments are planned on the use of regolith as a building material.
But China also wants more than just robotic flying visits to the Earth’s satellite; its long-term goal is a manned lunar base. According to current plans, the unmanned construction phase for such a station is to begin around 2030, and the first Chinese astronauts could then land in 2036. According to the Chinese space agency, the lunar base will primarily serve research purposes and will also be open to other nations.
A joint lunar station between Russia and China
The first partner for this venture could be Russia. In the summer of 2021, the Chinese and Russian space agencies signed a memorandum of understanding for a joint International Lunar Research Station (ILRS). In July 2022, Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin told Russian broadcaster Russia-24: “We are now almost ready to sign the contract for a joint lunar base with China.”
In parallel, Russia has resumed its Luna program, which had been paused for nearly 50 years. In September 2022, the Luna-25 spacecraft was scheduled to initiate the Russian return to the moon, also landing in the lunar south polar region. The piquant thing about this is that the newly launched Russian Luna missions were originally planned in cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA). However, the latter terminated the cooperation after the start of the Ukraine war. Luna 25 is scheduled to launch no earlier than 2023.
Dispute over the Artemis Accords
According to the report, lunar exploration is also seeing a new edition of the old space race, with the Chinese-Russian ILRS on the one side and the Artemis program of the U.S. and Europe on the other. The latter plan is to land astronauts on the Earth’s satellite again as early as 2025 and to launch a lunar space station into lunar orbit. This could threaten a conflict over lunar sites and resources, in part because space law has so far not contained any clear regulations for this scenario.
To change this, the U.S. has drawn up the so-called Artemis Accords, a set of agreements intended to regulate the dealings of various players on the moon. In the Accords, signatories agree to abide by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, avoid mutual interference, share information, and use the most compatible technologies possible. “What we’re trying to do is make sure that there is a norm of behavior that says that resources can be extracted and that we’re doing it in a way that is in compliance with the Outer Space Treaty,” Bridenstine says. In addition to the U.S., 20 countries have signed the treaty so far.
But China’s government sees the Accords as an attempt by the U.S. to impose regulations on other space-faring nations, and China, in particular, that unilaterally benefit U.S. interests. “The Accords are an attempt to seize the moon for themselves and colonize it,” criticized Chinese military expert and commentator Song Zhongpin in the Global Times in 2020. Reports on Chinese state broadcaster CGTN were in a similar vein. However, there are also Chinese experts on space law who concede that international guidelines for lunar exploration and exploitation are needed and that the primarily bilateral accords could at least be a precursor to those.
In any case, one thing is clear: The next few years will see competition for lunar milestones, sites, and resources, and China will be at the forefront.
China’s new Tiangong space station
The Chinese space station Tiangong in July 2022, with the core module Tianhe in the center and the laboratory module Wentian on the left. Also docked outside are a freighter on the right and the manned Shenzhou space capsule below.
In parallel with the new race to the moon, the balance is also shifting in manned spaceflight in Earth orbit. After Russia and the USA as leading operators of space stations, China now also has its own space station in Earth orbit.
In principle, there was little else for the country to do because, in 2011, at NASA’s instigation, China was expressly excluded from participating in the International Space Station (ISS) because industrial espionage was feared.
Tiangong is modular and as big as Mir
Like the Russian Mir space station and the ISS, the Chinese Tiangong station has a modular design and is gradually being added to orbit. It orbits in low Earth orbit between 340 and 450 kilometers above the Earth, roughly the same range as the ISS. When it was completed in October 2022, the station consisted of a core module and two laboratory modules and weighed around 80 to 100 tons. In terms of size and weight, it is roughly equivalent to the former Russian Mir space station but has only one-fifth of the mass of the ISS.
The station’s core module, Tianhe, was successfully launched into orbit by a Long March 5B launch vehicle on April 29, 2021. The module, which is nearly 17 meters long, contains a service section with life support systems, a power supply, propulsion systems, and systems for position and navigation. The second part contains quarters for three astronauts, computer and control systems, and communications equipment. In addition, the Tianhe module has a docking system and a robotic arm.
The laboratory modules
On July 24, 2022, another mission brought the first of two laboratory modules to the station. This initially docked to the docking site located at the forward end of the core module so that the two modules are in line. However, subsequent transposition gave the approximately 20-ton laboratory module its final position transverse to the core module. Wentian contains quarters for three additional astronauts and space for scientific experiments, as well as a second robotic arm and backups for key core functions such as navigation, propulsion, and attitude control.
The Wentian laboratory module also contains the station’s future main airlock. Astronauts will disembark through it when they need to perform outboard missions. These will be necessary, for example, to maintain and service measuring instruments attached to the outside of the station in the future. The laboratory module has special holders for this purpose, into which large instruments can also be latched. These could include a small reflecting telescope from 2023 and, from 2027, a four-ton instrument for measuring cosmic radiation, which was developed with the participation of European scientists.
In October 2022, the basic structure of the space station was completed with the second Mengtian science module. This module contains additional space for experiments as well as an airlock for supplies and other payloads. Unmanned supply capsules of the Tianzhu type can dock with it. It is unclear to what extent the docking mechanism, which is based on the Russian system, is also compatible with the systems of the ISS and the space capsules of other countries, as, with many technical details, China’s space agency is keeping a low profile.
First ion propulsion system in manned space flight
Test of a Hall-effect ion thruster at NASA. Tiangong is the first manned space vehicle with ion propulsion. Image: NASA
The Tiangong station’s propulsion system is a major feature. In addition to classic thrusters, the Tianhe core module also has an ion propulsion system—the first manned space vehicle ever to do so. The four Hall-effect thrusters generate their thrust from a stream of positively charged particles, presumably xenon ions, accelerated by an electric field. A ring current of electrons controlled by a magnetic field provides additional thrust and neutralizes the ion current after it exits the propulsion nozzle.
The advantage of such ion drives is their small size and long operating life. They can generate less thrust than chemical thrusters, but a small amount of xenon gas is sufficient to propel them. On the Tiangong space station, the Hall thrusters are expected to operate for at least 15 years and maintain the station’s orbital altitude at a stable level. One disadvantage of ion propulsion, however, is the highly corrosive effect of the accelerated ions. To prevent them from damaging the thrusters and the space station’s hull, they are surrounded by an additional shielding magnetic field and a protective ceramic shell.
Other nations may also join in
At present, China’s new Tiangong space station is mankind’s second “outpost,” alongside the ISS, but it could soon be the only one. That’s because the ISS is already relatively old, and its funding is on the line. In the wake of the Ukraine war and increasing conflicts with Western countries, Russia has announced the end of its participation in 2024. Whether the International Space Station will continue to be operated then, and in what form, is still unclear.
In the future, however, Tiangong—the “Heavenly Palace”—could also become a place of international cooperation, the Chinese government emphasizes. Some of the scientific experiments currently installed on the space station are already being carried out in cooperation with other countries or were developed entirely by research institutions in Europe. Among others, Norway, Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany are involved. There is also particularly close cooperation between China and the Italian Space Agency. It is developing the cosmic ray measurement instrument, which is expected to be installed in 2027.
“After our space station is completed in the near future, we will see Chinese and foreign astronauts flying and working together,” Ji Qiming of China’s manned spaceflight agency said in a recent press conference. The participation of astronauts from other countries is guaranteed, he added. Whether and in what form this participation will take place, however, remains to be seen.
What also seems clear, however, is that if China’s rapid development in space travel continues at this rate, most other countries may have little choice but to join in. “The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not,” said then-U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1962 during his famous moon speech in Texas.
One of the main issues throughout the Cold War was the race to the Moon, which the Soviets and Americans clashed in a race that led one of them to the Moon in July 1969. From 1957 through 1969, the Cold War’s focus was mostly on the race to conquer space. It’s where the US and the USSR squared off in a heated technical duel, with both sides looking to prove their mettle. After the launch of Sputnik-1, the first artificial satellite, in 1957, the focus shifted to human missions and the goal of landing a man on the Moon.
Before the 1950s, interstellar travel was more science fiction than reality. The notion of transporting an item or a man beyond the atmosphere was not a priority for the Russian or American governments, even if Wernher von Braun collaborated with Walt Disney in the United States to publicize and propagate his ideas of space conquest. However, military engineers on both sides, particularly those specializing in ballistics, were giving this idea significant thought.
V2 missiles give the necessary boost
V2
During WWII, Nazi scientists created a brand-new kind of missile known as the V2. They were employed to bomb London towards the conclusion of the war, and their rocket propulsion made them particularly effective. This revolutionary technique allowed for the destruction of the enemy at a great distance (350 kilometers), at high speed (Mach 3.5), and without the need for airplanes.
The Cold War’s armaments competition prompted massive expenditures in research, including this promising new area. The V2s did get attention from both the East and the West. Wernher von Braun, the Nazi engineer who developed the V2, later joined the SS and the American army, and it was he who, together with Walt Disney, educated the American public about space.
The Sputnik 1 satellite, a world first
Despite some lag in the nuclear industry, it is the USSR that has made the greatest use of this innovation. In the 1950s, it began the development of an ICBM that could deliver an atomic weapon. The A-bomb is much larger than the H-bomb. They were dropped from an aircraft over Japan. That’s why it was such an ambitious project: to create a missile with an intercontinental range (a few thousand kilometers as opposed to the V2’s 350) and the ability to deliver a payload weighing several tons. The Ukrainian engineer Sergei Korolev, who was rescued from the gulag during World War II for his expertise in aeronautics, was given the task of leading the project.
He was granted permission to construct a tiny satellite and attempt to launch it into orbit after seeing the potential of such a rocket and sharing von Braun’s passion for space exploration. Korolev’s rocket design is a step in the right direction. While it had its share of problems during the first testing, it eventually worked well enough to launch Sputnik-1 into orbit on October 4, 1957. What started as a side project has become a significant technical and symbolic achievement, marking the crossing of a new boundary in the human environment. A little unit broadcasts a radio signal—just a beep—that anybody, anywhere may use to verify the Soviets’ claims.
The Sputnik 2 satellite and the dog Laika in space
This is a genuine embarrassment for the United States. This Soviet triumph has serious military implications, but it also severely undermines American faith in its technical dominance. The political power of the symbol is not to be underestimated, as the Soviet Union has always credited its success to the unique character of its own government. Therefore, in the United States, a crew has been assembled to be ready for the first launch. On the other hand, Sputnik-2 was launched by the Soviet Union on November 3, 1957. To further prove the Soviet Union’s progress, it carries a dog by the name of Laika. But unfortunately, the animal does not make it, and Russia is not quite ready to launch a human into orbit just yet.
Explorer-1, the first U.S. satellite
Despite the pressing need, the United States did not want to engage with former Nazi engineer Wernher von Braun, who was developing medium-range missiles, for obvious grounds of public perception. The official Vanguard project had initially failed, but on January 31, 1958, Braun’s crew was given the green light to attempt again with the Explorer-1 launch. It made the identification of the Van Allen radiation belt possible. Wernher von Braun, together with his rival Serguei Korolev, would thereafter play pivotal roles in the conquest of space. The USSR, on the other hand, decided to keep his identity a closely guarded state secret, so he would never get the same praise as his American counterpart.
The Luna to the Moon program
The U.S. eventually caught up and started investing in the long run. With this in mind, at the close of 1958, Eisenhower established NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration). However, with the help of its Luna program, the Soviet Union goes on to become the undisputed leader in space exploration in the years that follow. Leaving Earth’s orbit and heading for the Moon, spacecraft Luna-1 took off on January 2, 1959. The Luna-2 spacecraft successfully landed on Earth’s satellite on September 13. After more than a month of searching, Luna-3 has finally revealed the Moon’s secret side to Earth.
It sends pictures with an uneven face superimposed on the real one. The Russians are encouraged by their accomplishments and decide to restart the Sputnik program, which aims to launch a man into space. Multiple launches occur, each time with a dog on board; unlike Laka, most of the dogs survive the trip back to Earth’s atmosphere. The United States is opposed to the Sputnik program and favors the Mercury program instead. Also in January 1961, thanks to these advancements, a chimpanzee named Ham was sent into space.
So the Americans go to the Russians and plot to get back at them by launching the first human into space. On April 12, 1961, however, the Soviet Union surpassed them with the launch of Yuri Gagarin on Vostok-1 from the Tyuratam spaceport. At an average height of 250 km, he flew in orbit around the Earth for 1 hour and 48 minutes. The Soviet Union continues to bolster its reputation for excellence in space exploration. As a response, on May 5, the Americans sent Alan Shepard into space, although at a far lower height and for a much shorter duration (15 minutes only).
The American Apollo program’s inception
This was the beginning of the Apollo project, which Kennedy first declared on May 25, 1961, when he said that an American would walk on the Moon by the end of the decade. The Gemini program ran concurrently, enabling a number of experiments in human spaceflight to be conducted in low Earth orbit. The Soviet Union kept working on the Luna project. In a nutshell, the race between the two nations to put a man on the Moon is the ultimate prize.
Therefore, all of 1960 was spent working towards this ultimate goal. There were as many phases to the programming as there were events. It took John Glenn about five hours and twenty minutes to complete three orbits of the Earth on February 20, 1962. In December of that year, thanks to the Mariner program, a U.S. satellite came within a few hundred miles of Venus. The Mariner-4 probe makes its way through Mars in July 1965. On March 18, 1965, the Soviet Union successfully completed its first spacewalk with Alexei Leonov. A few months later, in the context of the Gemini program, the Americans accomplished an identical feat.
The American Apollo program speeds things up significantly. There are three distinct stages of the curriculum. The first, which spanned 1960–1968, included equipment testing during pilotless flights. Since it was Wernher von Braun’s crew that created the Saturn V rocket, their contribution was crucial. During this time, Wernher von Braun oversaw the Mercury program, which allowed for piloted test flights.
Apollo 1 was the first mission of the second phase, but it was cut short on January 27, 1967, when a fire broke out during a mock launch, killing all seven men on board. Dramatically postponing the project, the mission’s failure adds more time to the process, since the capsule has to be redesigned. The first inhabited mission of the program, Apollo 7, did not take place until October 11, 1968. The testing lasted for 10 days, during which time the ship stayed in Earth’s orbit.
The Americans and the conquest of the Moon
When Apollo 8 successfully places a crew into lunar orbit in December 1968, the United States makes significant progress relative to the Soviet Union. Within the following six months, Apollo 9 and 10 successfully piloted mission scenarios for a potential lunar landing. On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 lifts off from Cape Canaveral with astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin on board, marking the beginning of the third phase.
His Eagle capsule touched down in the “Sea of Tranquility” on July 20. On July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin made history by walking on the Moon for the first time. The astronaut would have subsequently made the now-famous statement, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” after the successful landing. As a result, the United States now had the upper hand in its rivalry with the Soviet Union.
Moving toward Soviet-American collaboration
This was a decisive advantage, since Apollo 12 through 17 all accomplished the same thing (with the exception of Apollo 13, which was derailed by technical difficulties), but the Russians never stepped foot on the Moon. In addition, the setting of Détente (the thawing of relations between the superpowers) no longer justified such costly missions (the Apollo program cost the United States billions). They canceled the last four Apollo missions as a result of the economic crises in the 1970s. In truth, man’s historic moonwalk ended the Cold War-era rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union in the race to space.
Everybody’s objectives were scaled down because of the new political reality and the high price tag that came with it. The Apollo-Soyuz collaboration represented détente despite the continued competition in unmanned exploration missions. This one began in 1972 and involved two spacecraft meeting in orbit around each other. In addition, human missions diminished in importance and were eventually confined to low-Earth orbit. The United States intended to enable frequent round trips, which was why new space shuttles had been built since 1976. The USSR, meanwhile, was placing its chances on orbital stations, as seen by Salyut, the world’s first permanently occupied space station, which was launched in 1971.
Space stations, from Mir to ISS
It was a Soviet space station that entered orbit in 1971. After their failed attempt to conquer the Moon, the Russians view this as an opportunity to reclaim space for themselves. They conduct a wide range of research and development, as well as military tests. Several space stations, including the MIR station, may be launched under the Salyut program and placed into orbit before 1986.
The Americans, not wanting to be outdone, developed Skylab. They employed parts from earlier Apollo flights to construct the station, but it suffered extensive damage when it was launched in 1973. It was inhabited for several years before facing unexpected solar activity. It decayed in the Earth’s atmosphere in 1979. In 1983, the United States planned to begin a new project; it would be the beginning of the International Space Station (ISS). In 1985, the Soviet Union launched the MIR station’s first module into space. Counting the optional ones, there would be seven. MIR was inhabited for twelve years. It was deorbited in 2001.
In the meantime, the International Space Station was launched in 1998. Countries like Russia and the United States, as well as many others, took turns working on the project. In 2011, work on the International Space Station was finally wrapped up. For their first space station, the Chinese picked this year, and they have given it the name Tiangong. For the time being, the International Space Station is still the biggest manmade object in Earth’s orbit. The facility is expected to remain operational until 2024.
Conquering Mars is the ultimate future project
The American space program has been a complete success. The American space program has not only caught up to the Soviet space program but has surpassed it. Numerous scientific and technical improvements have been made possible by the large human and financial resources used to transport men to the Moon. However, the lunar conquest was rapidly abandoned despite the economic gains and the impression this conquest had on the cultural imagination.
Although it made great strides in astronautics and expanded the bounds of possibility, the focus of the space conquest has shifted from the Moon to Mars. SpaceX fits this description; they are working on the Starship rocket to colonize Mars, but first, they want to conquer the Moon. Even though the United States hopes to train on the Moon before commencing its mission to transport humans to Mars, the details of the program are still quite hazy at this point.
Upcoming experiments: A lunar base
The Moon is currently of little interest to the world’s largest space missions. With the cancellation of the Constellation program in 2010 at Obama’s direction, even the United States has lost interest in the Moon. The main astronautical nations’ priorities have shifted in the wake of China’s successful landing of an autonomous probe on the far side of the Moon.
However, in order to be ready for a future Mars colony, the United States has planned a voyage to the Moon called “Moon to Mars,” which would enable the construction of a lunar facility in the year 2034. It is expected that the first lunar colony would be possible thanks to the Artemis program (scheduled to launch in 2022). So, after more than 50 years since the previous passage during the Apollo 17 mission, humanity might make its epic return to the Moon.
The industry of space travel is booming
A number of programs have been established since the turn of the millennium to make space flight possible for regular people without requiring them to undergo the rigorous training required of astronauts. The first flight was made in 2001 during the TM-32 mission aboard a Soyuz spacecraft.
Dennis Tito, an American multimillionaire, was the first space tourist. He paid a relatively modest $20 million to spend almost a week in Earth orbit. Many private enterprises have taken the lead in developing space tourism in recent years, and this has sparked a new race to the top. It seems that three firms have the necessary resources to take the crown.
First, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic (established in 2004) sells $250,000-per-person tickets for rides in space aircraft to an altitude of more than 80 kilometers. Then there’s Blue Origin, founded by Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos, who takes things even farther by launching its New Shepard rocket over the Kármán line (100 km) for around 15 minutes.
Nonetheless, the price is substantially greater; $28 million was bid on the trip on July 20, 2021, with Jeff Bezos and his brother Mark. On September 15, 2021, tourists were finally able to ride SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to the Crew Dragon spacecraft for the first time. Elon Musk, CEO and co-founder of SpaceX and Tesla, has made no secret of his fascination with space, as seen by his hopes for the colonization of Mars.
TIMELINE OF SPACE EXPLORATION
June 20th, 1944, and the V2 rockets had just been launched
In the Second World War, the Nazis developed the V2 rocket, marking the beginning of humankind’s conquest of space. It is possible to launch them over 100 km into the air.
On October 4, 1957, Sputnik was successfully launched
The first man-made satellite was launched into orbit by a Soviet R-7 rocket. Sputnik, whose name translates to “co-wayfarer” in Russian, is a 58-centimeter satellite that tips the scales at 83.6 kg. The satellite is then launched into a 900-kilometer orbit around the planet. We owe this technical achievement to Serguei Korolev, who is developing an ICBM. It’s based on the fact that the Germans were responsible for making V2 possible.
For the United States, this happened smack dab in the thick of the Cold War and was a direct provocation. There would be a “race to the stars” between the two superpowers, and it all started with the launch of the little spacecraft Sputnik 1. On January 4, 1958, Sputnik 1 disintegrated upon re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
On November 3rd, 1957, Sputnik 2 and the dog Laika were launched into space
Sputnik 2 was launched with Laika in a pressurized container one month after the first Sputnik satellite (Russian for “co-wayfarer”) was launched. The first live organism to be satellited is a little dog. Seven days later, the animal succumbs to oxygen deprivation.
First American satellite launched on January 31, 1958
It’s 10:48 p.m., and the Juno 1 rocket is finally ready to take off. The first American artificial satellite, Explorer I, weighing 14 kilograms, was launched into Earth orbit seven minutes later. America takes its turn in the conquest of space three months after the Soviet Union launched “Sputnik.”
On July 29, 1958, NASA was established
In order to beat the Soviet Union in the “space race,” President Eisenhower passed into law the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA was in charge of coordinating the world’s aerospace and space exploration efforts. The United States was taken by surprise by the launch of Sputnik-1, and this organization was established in response. President Kennedy’s Moon program announcement in 1961 set the stage for NASA’s eventual success. In 1969, both parties honored the agreement to land a man on the Moon.
December 18, 1958, the world’s first communications satellite
This is the first experimental communications satellite launched by the United States, and the news came through a press release. The Atlas rocket launches the “SCORE” gadget into orbit for a 34-day test run. It sent seven transmissions to Earth, including a speech from President Eisenhower. In 1962, the first American television programs were sent via satellite to televisions throughout Europe.
The first space probe was launched on January 2, 1959
The Soviets are the first to successfully remove an artificial object from the pull of Earth’s gravity, after multiple failed efforts on both the Russian and American sides. The Lunik 1 spacecraft came within 6,000 kilometers of the Moon, but it ended up too far away from the Moon and instead entered a Sun-orbiting track a few months later. Even so, it sometimes broadcasted its scientific information. The American probe Pioneer made the same trip two months later.
A Soviet probe lands on the Moon on September 13, 1959
While the United States was still playing catch-up, the Soviets sent Luna II (or Lunik), the first lunar probe, to the Moon). This last one hits the Moon and leaves behind a Soviet flag shaped like a football. With this probe, scientists were also able to prove that solar winds do, in fact, exist.
October 7, 1959: First photos of the far side of the Moon
The first images of the far side of the Moon that cannot be seen from Earth were captured and sent back to Earth by the Soviet spacecraft Luna-3. Later, the world learned that it was far less uniform than the other side the Moon has always shown humans.
Yuri Gagarin launches into space for the first time on April 12, 1961
He was just 27 years old, yet his feat would live on in posterity. As the first human being to launch into space, Yuri Gagarin made history. He flew for 108 minutes on the rocket Vostok 1 (Orient in Russian), during which time he completed one orbit of the Earth. As a result, the Russians may rest certain that they are winning the space race against the United States.
May 5, 1961: Alan Shepard reaches space
Alan Shepard became the first American to circle the Earth a few weeks after Yuri Gagarin’s first voyage into space. This flight took just around 15 minutes and stayed at a low altitude (sub-orbital). John Glenn, on February 2, 1962, became the first true American astronaut.
On this day in 1961, man on the Moon by the end of the decade
The United States saw Yuri Gagarin’s orbital flight as a fresh insult; therefore, they made the strategic decision to strike back in the short term by achieving a goal that would demonstrate their technical dominance over the USSR. It was President Kennedy who made the public announcement that the Western powers wanted to put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. Mankind would set foot on the Moon on July 21, 1969, proving that the Apollo program was successful and meeting its objectives.
September 12, 1961: Our destination is the Moon
In his now-famous “We chose to go to the Moon” address, President John F. Kennedy reaffirms the American goals first declared in May. As a result, the Apollo program is given more funding and attention at a time when its goals are most lofty. As the country that launched the first satellite and later the first man into space, the United States aims to beat the Soviet Union to this milestone.
February 20, 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth
The first American to take part in a human space voyage was astronaut John Herschel Glenn. It took him 4 hours and 56 minutes aboard the “Mercury Friendship 7” spacecraft to complete three orbits of Earth, covering a total distance of 129,000 kilometers. The ocean landing was successful 65 kilometers east of the Bahamas, close to the predicted target zone established by NASA scientists. Almost a year after Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space on April 12, 1961, the United States finally accomplished a human mission.
The satellite “Telstar” was launched on July 10, 1962
Florida’s Cape Canaveral was the site of the launch of the Telstar 1 communications satellite. It was created by the American telecom giant AT&T with the intention of keeping TV and phone lines open across the two continents. As a result of “Telstar,” the first transatlantic communications satellite, European viewers could tune in to a news conference held by President Kennedy, while American viewers could tune in to an entertainment show featuring Yves Montand.
Kennedy proposed space collaboration with the USSR on September 21, 1963
John F. Kennedy suggested to the United Nations that they organize a Soviet-American mission to the Moon as the United States and the Soviet Union entered a period of détente in the Cold War. The Soviet Union gave a neutral response. To the point where the Echo C satellite represents the culmination of their joint effort.
On March 18th, 1965, the first cosmonaut was launched into space
Alexei Leonov of Russia did a spacewalk for 15 minutes while still securely attached to his spaceship. The first human to ever float in space was him. On June 3, 1965, for around 20 minutes, American Edward White succeeded him.
The Space Race‘s first fatalities occurred on January 27th, 1967
Three astronauts perished in the burning capsule on Apollo 1, the first flight of the American space program. Spacemen Virgil Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee were all trapped aboard the burning spaceship on its first flight to Earth for preliminary ground testing. Initial plans called for launching the mission in February. According to the paper, the three astronauts died by breathing in a hazardous gas; however, the report did not specify what caused the fire. Before the Apollo program’s first human flight, several changes would be made.
October 18th, 1967: Venera 4’s mission was completed
Data on Venus’s atmospheric pressure and temperature are sent by the Russian space mission. There is a 94-minute window during which data is sent. The Soviet Union first sent a “Venera” probe to Venus in 1961. The first images of the surface of Venus were sent back by Venera 9 in 1975.
On December 24th, 1968, the first humans orbited the Moon
The Apollo 8 crew travels over the Moon three days after liftoff from Cape Canaveral. Frank Borman, James A. Lowell Jr., and William A. Anders make 10 times the turn of the star to conduct experiments for the future lunar landing, marking the first time that men have left Earth’s orbit to approach the Moon. On December 27th, after a successful six-day journey, they safely returned to Earth. The United States is getting ready to launch a mission to the Moon. For the first time, they made significant inroads against the Soviet Union.
Moon mission Apollo 11 lifted off on July 16, 1969
On July 16, 1969, on a mission to the Moon, astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and Michael Collins took off. The Apollo 11 mission was a success on July 21, 1969, when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the Moon.
The first human being landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969
At 02:56:15 GMT, Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the Moon at about 109 hours, 42 minutes after launch. He then said the thing that still remains engraved in our memories: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” The world watched as Russia lost its space superiority in an event that was broadcasted across the globe.
Apollo 13’s “Houston, we have a problem” aired on April 13, 1970
When the Apollo 13 space shuttle is getting close to the Moon, an explosion occurs in the service module’s oxygen tank. The three astronauts on board are forced to immediately return to Earth once the program is terminated. During their rescue by the technical teams located in Houston, James Lovell, John Swigert, and Fred Haise took sanctuary in the LEM Aquarius. They make it to the South Pacific without any problems. Ron Howard’s 1995 film Apollo 13 dramatized the ill-fated mission of the crew of that spacecraft.
On April 17, 1970, the Apollo 13 crew successfully returned to Earth
Three American astronauts make it through the Apollo 13 mission unscathed, and they all touch down in the South Pacific without incident. Their dream journey into space was shattered four days before, 56 hours after departure, when an oxygen tank suddenly exploded at over 300,000 kilometers from Earth. The astronauts retreated to the Aquarius lunar module, which had dwindling supplies of oxygen and energy. There is a complete 180-degree turn from scientific goal failure to genuine human achievement.
On February 6, 1971, astronauts landed on the Moon and played golf
The first guy to play golf on the Moon was Alan Shepard. On January 31st, Shepard left the Apollo 14 spacecraft with Edgar D. Mitchell and Stuart A. Roosa and headed for the Moon. His “lunar walk” lasted 4 hours and 34 minutes, and he took Mitchell along for the ride. During his second walk (after 4 hours and 48 minutes), he indulges in his great enthusiasm for golf by hitting several balls near the Fra Mauro crater. In addition to Armstrong, Aldrin, Cernan, and Bean, Shepard is the fifth human to set foot on the Moon.
April 19, 1971: First manned space station
After failing to conquer the Moon, the USSR develops an orbiting station program and launches Salyut-1, the first station to host a human crew. In a pressurization disaster that occurred between June 7 and June 30, all three astronauts who inhabit the station perished. Humans occupied Salyut for a total of 813 days, and over 2,500 scientific experiments were conducted until the program was officially closed in 1986.
Mariner 9 went into orbit on November 14, 1971
After 167 days in space, the American spacecraft Mariner 9 was already in orbit around Mars. Its mission was to send back images of Earth’s surface and weather data. A catastrophic dust storm delayed the realization of photographs until January 1972, and the probe didn’t begin observing Mars’ satellites, Phobos and Deimos, until that month. Once the dusty mantle was removed, Mariner 9 would have until the end of its mission on October 27, 1972, to take over 7,000 photos. The spacecraft probably crashed into Mars’s atmosphere in 2022.
The United States sent its last lunar probe on December 11, 1972
Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, who set out on their mission on the 7th, finally landed on the Moon. A total of 74 hours, 59 minutes, and 30 seconds, or more than three days, were spent on the Moon by the crew. Apollo 17 was the final human trip to the Moon for the United States.
Pioneer 10 beginning its first orbit of Jupiter on December 3, 1973
The American Pioneer 10 probe was the first to provide data about Jupiter when it flew within 130,000 kilometers of the gas giant. The American interplanetary probe Pioneer 10 is the oldest of its kind, having been launched on March 3, 1973. In January of 1998, it vanished off the face of the Earth.
Apollo-Soyuz: a handshake in orbit, July 18, 1975
The United States and the Soviet Union hold hands in orbit to commemorate their historic first joint space mission. When the American Apollo and the Russian Soyuz spacecraft collide in orbit, astronaut Thomas Stafford and cosmonaut Alexis Leonov team up. In addition to the technological advancements, the actual revolution is political: after competing against one another for almost a decade in the race to space, the opposing forces finally came to an agreement. However, a more sophisticated level of collaboration between the United States and Russia can’t begin until the Mir orbital station is operational.
The Viking 2 probe set out toward Mars on September 9, 1975
NASA sent the Viking 2 spacecraft to Mars as part of an exploration initiative to take pictures of the Martian polar caps. The Viking 1 mission departed exactly one month before this one. The Viking project has returned hundreds of breathtaking images and other data about Mars and its moon Deimos. In 1978, the probes lost contact and were no longer transmitted.
On June 13, 1983, Pioneer 10 was launched into interplanetary space
The American probe “Pioneer 10” is the first terrestrial object to leave the solar system. Though it was only meant to operate for two years after its March 1972 launch, the probe was still sending out signals as late as January 2003. In 1973, it was the first to fly above the gas giant Jupiter; in 1983, it was the first to cross beyond Pluto’s orbit. The spacecraft was 82 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun away from us when it lost communication with us at a distance of 12.2 billion kilometers. The probe contains a gold plaque with a human description, Earth’s coordinates, and the mission’s launch date engraved on it.
February 7, 1984: Two astronauts spacewalk
To accomplish the first spacewalk without being tethered to a shuttle, two astronauts used the MMU (Manned Maneuvering Unit), essentially a rocket chair in 1984. For about five hours, astronauts Robert L. Stewart and Bruce McCandless floated in space roughly 100 meters from Challenger.
Voyager 2 passed by Uranus on January 24, 1986
The Voyager-II spacecraft stayed at a distance of 101,000 km (63,000 mi) from Uranus. Its studies shed light on the planet’s nine-ring system and its very diverse satellites, Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon. After leaving Earth in 1977, Voyager-II arrived at Saturn in August 1981 before continuing on to Uranus. They got to Neptune on August 25th, 1989. After that, it left the solar system and continued its orbit. As of now, communication is still going on.
The shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28th, 1986
The American space shuttle “Challenger” disintegrated into fragments 1 minute and 13 seconds after liftoff at 11:38 a.m. There were witnesses to the accident at Cape Canaveral, and millions more saw it on television. Sadly, the Challenger’s seven astronauts—including two women—were all killed in the blast. According to NASA’s study, the disaster was caused by the joint of one of the auxiliary thrusters breaking.
The Russian space station Mir was launched on February 20th, 1986
The core of the Russian space station Mir (which means “Peace”) was launched into orbit by a Proton rocket at a height of 350 kilometers. The 2.20-meter-diameter sphere weighed 21 tons. As of then, it was only waiting for modules to be connected to it. On March 13, 1986, humanity’s first mission to the “Mir” was launched. But the equipment obsolescence and the station’s prohibitive cost to maintain led to its demolition in 2001.
The planet Venus was discovered on May 4, 1989
The U.S. scientific exploration of Venus was assisted by the shuttle Atlantis, which propelled the American Magellan probe. Almost a year after it was sent into orbit, it was the first to provide a detailed map of Earth’s surface. After two years, it offered a map of 98% of the Earth using its radar to highlight the various volcanoes throughout the globe. Before it was destroyed in Venus’s atmosphere in 1994, the probe was used to explore the planet’s gravity. Learning about Venus’s geology and drawing parallels to our own planet was made possible by the Magellan expedition.
On April 24, 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was sent into space
As a tribute to the late scientist Edwin Hubble, the space shuttle Discovery launched a telescope bearing his name into deep space. The first photographs that were sent to the scientists were a huge letdown. The primary mirror of the orbital telescope was flawed, resulting in very low picture quality.
In 1993, a crew of astronomers on the shuttle Endeavour were hopefully able to fix this flaw and make the system even better. There would be a series of subsequent missions to repair and upgrade this powerful orbiting observatory. Important findings made possible by these missions improve our understanding of how the cosmos works.
On August 28, 1993, Galileo discovered an asteroid with a moon orbiting it
On its approach to Jupiter, the American spacecraft Galileo found the first moon of an asteroid. A small satellite, just one kilometer in diameter, orbits the asteroid at a distance of around 100 kilometers from the surface. The asteroid measures 58 kilometers in length and 23 kilometers in width. Dactyl is a reference to a Greek god who ruled over Mount Ida.
On March 14, 1995, a Russian space shuttle carried an American astronaut
From Russia’s Baikonur spaceport first thing in the morning, astronaut Norman Earl Thagard takes off on the Soyuz TM-21 “Hurricane” rocket. For the first time ever, an American has flown on a Russian space mission. It is Thagart’s and his crewmates’ hope to make it to the Mir space station. Following 115 days in space, they have returned to Earth.
June 29, 1995: Assembly of Mir and Atlantis
Atlantis, a shuttle from the United States, arrived at the Russian space station Mir twenty years after Apollo and Soyuz first met. 395 kilometers above the ground, Vladimir Dezhurov and Robert Hoot Gibson did a handshake in a moment that went down in history. A total of ten astronauts share the spaceship until July 4 of the same year. The launch of international space cooperation and the building of a shared station called Alpha began with this gathering.
Incident at the Mir Space Station on June 25th, 1997
The Progress supply ship and the Russian space station Mir, whose core component was launched in February 1986, have been involved in a collision. Two Russians and an American astronaut work together to plug the leak and restore power. Due to the station’s many problems and the exorbitant expense of keeping it operational, the Russians made the decision to blow it up in March of 2001.
October 29, 1998: John Glenn returns to service
To begin a new mission aboard the shuttle Discovery, the 77-year-old man who was the first American in space in February 1962 prepared to lift off. He carried out experiments on the effects of ageing in space. After 9 days and 134 orbits around the Earth, John Glenn returned.
The Columbia space shuttle exploded on February 1, 2003
After 16 days in orbit, the shuttle Columbia was lost from NASA’s radar when it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere. Over Dallas, there are white streaks in the sky. There were seven fatalities; six Americans and an Israeli astronaut. A flaw in the heat shield has been discovered after extensive testing.
Launch of the Spitzer Space Telescope, 25 August 2003
NASA has launched its biggest infrared space telescope into orbit. The American astronomer who inspired its name is Albert Spitzer. Because of its superior sensitivity to infrared light, it can identify objects in the furthest reaches of the universe. Since infrared light cannot reach ground-based telescopes due to Earth’s atmosphere, it was crucial to launch such equipment into space.
The IRAS and ISO satellites were also able to examine star formation since they were launched before it. In fact, after stars are produced, they stay in a cloud state where they are completely hidden from view. Infrared radiation, however, may be used to pinpoint their location.
On October 15, 2003, China successfully launched its first cosmonaut
Yang Liwei, also known as a taikonaut, became the first Chinese cosmonaut after a 21-hour mission. After completing fourteen orbits of the planet, the Shenzhou V spacecraft returns to Earth and makes an emergency landing in a large Chinese plain. Forty years after the Soviet Union and the United States, China joins their ranks as the third nation with access to outer space.
July 1, 2004: Exploration of Saturn
Finally, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft arrived at Saturn. Since its 1997 launch, it had traveled a long way to reach its current orbit, and during that time it had supplied some valuable data, especially on Jupiter. The probe’s objective was to learn more about Saturn and its surroundings by analyzing its rings, moons, and other features.
Cassini, which investigated Saturn and its moons, and Huygens, which examined Titan’s atmosphere, made up the spacecraft. Two modules broke apart in December 2004. On January 14, 2005, as scheduled, the Huygens module entered Titan’s atmosphere at a depth of 65,000 km as Cassini drew near. By the end of 2008, the mission was complete.
On July 4, 2005, the Deep Impact spacecraft collided with the Tempel 1 asteroid
A month after its launch in January, NASA’s Deep Impact space mission successfully impacted comet Tempel 1 at a speed of 37,000 kilometers per hour, as predicted. This results in a massive crater and a cloud of dust. The Deep Impact probe’s goal is to study the comet’s interior composition by analyzing the ejected debris, crater surface, and impact results. Researchers are hoping to fill in some gaps in their understanding of how our solar system came to be.
Titan was first seen by the Huygens spacecraft on January 14, 2005
In 1997, NASA launched the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft into space. The mission’s goal was to investigate Saturn and its moons. The Cassini orbiter has resumed its survey of Saturn’s moons while the Huygens probe has touched down on Titan. The mission, which had already been extended twice due to its overwhelming success, finally ended in 2017.
The last Space Shuttle launch occurred on July 8, 2011
The US’s Atlantis was the last space shuttle to launch to the ISS. Once the shuttles retired, conventional launchers were to take their place.
On November 12th, 2014, a probe touched down on the comet’s surface
Using the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as a target, the European space probe Rosetta deployed a miniature lander called Philae on the comet’s surface. It studied the comet’s structure and soil composition. The Ariane 5 rocket successfully launched Rosetta in 2004.
The New Horizons mission flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015
The American spacecraft New Horizons was launched in 2006 to investigate Pluto and its satellites. In 2015, it completed its mission and moved on to investigate other planets in our solar system.
The first lunar landing on the Moon’s dark side occurred on January 3, 2019
The Chinese spacecraft Chang’e 4, which was launched on December 7th, 2018, completed an orbit of the Moon on December 13th. The Chinese lander landed on the far side of the Moon on January 3, 2019. The Yutu 2 rover was dropped off to study this part of the Moon.
May 30, 2020: First manned space flight by a private company
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is the first private business to be contracted by NASA to transport humans to the International Space Station (ISS). Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, the mission’s protagonists, used SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to successfully lift off. The Dragon V2 (or Crew Dragon) capsule separated from the rocket’s first stage and continued on its way to the ISS. U.S. President Trump was there at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to see the launch.
When oxygen was synthesized on Mars on April 20, 2021
As part of NASA’s Mars exploration program, the Perseverance rover successfully converted carbon dioxide into oxygen on April 20, 2021. This marks a first in the annals of space exploration: the creation of oxygen on a distant world.
The CO samples collected from Mars’s atmosphere, (which is 96% carbon dioxide) made this procedure feasible. Five grams of oxygen were produced during the reaction, which was enough for an average person to breathe for around ten minutes and make tiny amounts of rocket fuel.
The Ariane 5 rocket carrying the James Webb Space Telescope lifted off from Kourou. A space telescope of this magnitude has never been attempted before. It was a joint effort between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency that resulted in the James Webb Space Telescope.
How big exactly is the universe? Can we put a number on it? Does the universe have borders? There are still many mysteries that modern science has not solved. The Sun, around which Earth revolves, is only one of the Milky Way’s 200 billion stars. Additionally, the latter is only one galaxy out of the 100 billion that make up our universe. The “observable universe” is only a small fraction of the whole cosmos. This is a tiny world we live in. In this reality, science often exceeds the bounds of fantasy.
There are a few questions that immediately spring to mind while contemplating the universe: where do we come from? Where are we going? Are we alone? Scientists are equally curious in another topic: how big is the universe? This question, like the other three, may remain unanswered forever, at least for our generation. This, however, does not prohibit us from speculating based on what we currently know.
Our universe is only one among many
Is there a limited amount of space-time or an endless amount of matter in the universe? It may come as a surprise, but there simply aren’t enough scientific facts to address this issue yet. There is room for both infinity and finiteness in the universe.
The visible universe, however, exists amid this vast unknown. It’s what we can see when we look up at the sky.
The one that incorporates all the locations in space-time is “near” enough to us for their light to have reached our planet.
As for what lies beyond this horizon, it’s hard to say. Alternate dimensions? Many scientists are giving this route, popularized by science fiction, considerable thought. Even renowned astronomer Stephen Hawking, who passed away on March 14, 2018, at the age of 76, worked on this hypothesis until his death.
Indeed, the universe is described as “a mosaic of microscopic pocket universes where each pocket is distinct from the others” by Thomas Hertog, a cosmologist at KU Leuven University in Belgium and co-author of Stephen Hawking’s last paper. Our current understanding of the universe must be radically revised.
If the concept of a “multiverse,” or a number of parallel worlds, is not new (it can be traced back to the sixth century BC and the Greek philosopher Anaximander), it has until recently been kept within the realm of philosophy.
The concept of the multiverse has been around since the beginning of philosophy, but has only recently entered the realm of theoretical physics. We are now able to imagine a wide variety of parallel worlds.
The size of the universe is inconceivable
Countless other worlds are possible. The very thought of it is disorienting. We must bear in mind that the visible universe, as depicted by the standard cosmological model, is a sphere with a center at Earth and its radius is around 45 billion light-years. This is a distance of 450,000 billion billion kilometers. And the radius we’re discussing is the visible universe’s horizon. According to that, the diameter of the universe is around 90 billion light years. Approximately 900,000 billionbillion kilometers in length.
Once again, this just accounts for the extent of the visible universe, or the part of the universe that we can actually see. As far as we can tell, the total extent of the universe is at least 250 times greater than the visible one. Still, this is the bottom of the range. It’s possible that it’s 15 million times bigger than anything we can see.
Try to conceptualize it
The planets of the Solar System at their scale. (Image: Pixabay)
The human brain just cannot conceptualize such vast distances. Visualize yourself moving across space at the speed of light (300,000 km/s; 1.08 billion km/h) to get a sense of just how vast our universe is. Traveling to the Moon would take just 1.3 seconds at this speed. It will take you around 8.5 minutes to get to the Sun.
It will take you four years to get to Proxima Centauri, the Solar System’s closest star. To travel to the vast majority of Milky Way stars might take hundreds of years or perhaps millennia. Also, you’ll have to travel for a very long time indeed if you want to see other galaxies.
Once again, we are reminded that our galaxy is just a speck in a universe whose boundaries we cannot fathom. Furthermore, we have a better grasp as to why intelligent life may flourish across the universe without leaving a trace.
Among the planets of our solar system, Earth is relatively tiny.
Even if the Sun is 100 times larger than Earth, it is still dwarfed by more massive stars.
Everything only highlights how pathetically puny human beings really are. Like little plankton floating aimlessly in a huge ocean, we’ll never be able to cross.
An observable space
Many methods exist for determining how far apart things are. In the beginning, lasers can capture the nearest things. It is planned to send a beam in the direction of the object and then wait for the beam to return to Earth. Astronomers may get an accurate distance estimate for a planet or star based on the amount of time it takes light to reach Earth from a distant star.
Further away objects provide greater challenges. In order to record its return, you would need a very strong laser and wait for many human lifetimes. However, we cannot afford to lose several people’s lives.
Therefore, scientists resort to a different strategy. It is common knowledge that stars and galaxies fade to different colors over time. Even if both stars have the same amount of energy and brightness, the one that is farthest away from us will look brighter and more energetic. The farthest one will look less bright. This variation in luminosity will allow us to calculate the star’s distance.
These methods do have some temporary success, however. Because space in the cosmos is so enormous, we have not yet seen the light from certain distant objects. That’s the dilemma astronomers confront.
The observable universe fits within this little bubble. What are its dimensions? The age of the universe has been estimated at 13.8 billion years. But the fact that it’s growing is something to keep in mind. The diameter of this viewable “bubble” has been calculated to be about 93 billion light-years by integrating this parameter, according to the best estimates of modern astronomers. To be precise, it’s 880,000 billion billion kilometers.
Unreachable realm
This information will allow us to make an educated guess as to the extent of the world beyond. At least 250 times bigger than our apparent “bubble,” according to one study. It’s worth emphasizing that this is just conjecture. Nowhere does it state that the universe is limited in size. It has the potential to persist indefinitely. Certainly, there’s no reason why not. There’s nothing to suggest otherwise.
We may never find out the answer. For the simple reason that the currently observable universe is as huge as it can ever be. The visible universe is expanding faster than the speed of light because the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating and growing. It follows that we know for sure that no light from those parts of the universe will ever reach Earth.
It feels like seeing a friend reach for your hand, only to have something yank it away from them just a little quicker. It’s impossible to grab hold of someone’s hand while they’re being pushed back by a stronger force.
This may seem surprising insofar as the theory of general relativity allows us to describe the evolution of the whole universe since its birth. Except that the theory is not very clear about the geometrical properties of the cosmos.
Even with the most precise observations, it is finally able to pronounce only one thing: the curvature of the universe, which would be zero. This simply means that if we take three points in space-time, we obtain a flat object—a triangle, not a pyramid.
According to the rules of topology (the study of spatial deformations), this information is insufficient to establish the size of the universe, which might be finite or infinite. Inflation theory, which has been used to round out the big bang model for the last three decades, suggests that the universe may have had a period of severe expansion in its early moments, allowing it to grow to an infinite size.
The visible universe is a “bubble” whose size is known despite the fuzzy nature of the rest of the universe. In other words, the portion of the universe that can be seen encompasses everything in the cosmos that is near enough to us for its light to have reached us. Let’s perform some fast math to figure out how big it is.
Since the speed of light is limited by the age of the universe (about 13.8 billion years), the light that has traveled the farthest to get to us must originate in the most remote parts of the visible universe. One could be inclined to respond that the size of the visible universe is 13.8 billion light-years.
The universe goes far beyond its visible portion
As the universe has expanded, the point of origin of these light particles has receded from us, even as they have been traveling toward us. Current cosmological models place its limits at 45 billion light-years distant, spherically defining the visible universe as a sphere centered on Earth and having a radius of 45 billion light-years (450,000 billion billion kilometers). Or double that amount to 90 billion since the universe expand in not one but all directions.
However, neither the magnitude of this visible region nor the observations made inside this enormous cosmic sphere provide any information on the proportions of the whole or on the presence of a putative border. As a result, when considering the whole cosmos, the size of the universe becomes considerably more expansive. However imprecise, it is the best we have at the moment to provide in response to this age-old query.
The American space agency NASA was founded more than 60 years ago, making the United States the undisputed leader in the exploration of space. Let’s analyze how it came to be, how it operates, and what it hopes to accomplish on the Moon and Mars. NASA is the iconic agency of space exploration, yet it was founded in a completely different era from the one we know today. NASA was established to compete with the Soviet Union, which had the lead in space at the time. In only ten years, NASA was able to overtake the Soviets.
After successfully landing men on the Moon, it was able to revitalize existing initiatives and propose more ambitious new missions. It is not only the source of much of what we know about the cosmos and our solar system today, but also of many of the modern conveniences we take for granted.
Some of NASA’s most recognizable accomplishments include the Apollo program, which made Neil Armstrong’s Moonwalk possible, the Curiosity rover, which has been exploring Mars since 2012, and the Hubble telescope and its successor, James Webb, which have given us breathtaking views of the cosmos. Now that a permanent station orbits our natural satellite, NASA can return to the Moon for extended human exploration. It also hopes to send people to Mars to continue exploring the red planet.
What is NASA?
The Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center,
To keep the American space program on track, the federal government established NASA. The group was established in 1958, and its members have been hard at work ever since, creating tools and sending probes into space to learn more about the cosmos. NASA is the leading space exploration agency, with vehicles, telescopes, human flights, research, and publications all having global impacts in the scientific and technological sectors.
What does “NASA” stand for?
It is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, for short. NASA is not only involved in the aerospace industry, but also coordinates important space exploration and research initiatives.
What exactly does NASA do?
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s job is to implement the civilian space program for the United States. In 1958, a civilian agency was established to oversee all of the nation’s space endeavors. So, NASA is not only in charge of the space program, but also of several aeronautics projects. In outer space, NASA focuses on many distinct areas:
Perhaps the most well-known is the International Space Station (ISS), a symbol of the human spaceflight program that has been in operation since its launch in 1998. The group has 44 astronauts and is still accepting applications for 2022.
NASA’s scientific program encompasses a wide range of endeavors with the Sun and the rest of the solar system as its ultimate targets. It is also curious about Earth, especially its atmosphere, gravitational field, and temperature.
Finally, a portion of NASA’s funding is allotted to aeronautical and space-related research. This last point is crucial, yet it is largely unknown.
What is NASA’s mission to the Moon?
In 1969, the Apollo program was a success because NASA was able to land men on the Moon for the first time. Now, half a century later, with the Artemis program, the American agency is on the cusp of replicating this accomplishment, but this time it’s only the beginning.
The goal of the Artemis program is to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon. Lunar Gateway is a proposed NASA space station that would be permanently stationed in Moon orbit, providing astronauts with a launch pad for frequent and easy trips to the Moon. This outpost will serve as a research facility and a jumping-off point for missions to the Moon and, eventually, Mars.
NASA’s plans for Mars
For decades, NASA has shown that it can successfully send probes and, later, rovers, to the red planet. The latter have conducted several tests and observations at the scene, enhancing our understanding of Earth.
Yet, the return of the materials to Earth presents NASA with its greatest challenge. We may know how to go to Mars now, but there’s no way we can ever get home again. Thus, the problem of how to bring back Martian samples is crucial to the investigation of Mars.
An actual human expedition to Mars, scheduled for sometime between 2030 and 2040, is at the center of NASA’s future programs. As a result, the space agency is looking at the Artemis program as the beginning of a far more audacious undertaking, with the future Lunar Gateway station serving as a launchpad for such missions.
The NASA headquarters
The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex exhibits the shuttle Atlantis that flew between 1985 and 2011. Image: Kennedy Space Center.
The United States capital of Washington, D.C., is home to NASA’s main office. In addition, it operates ten space centers in various locations. Some of them have achieved widespread recognition thanks to their extensive public outreach and groundbreaking programming.
For example, the Goddard Space Flight Center serves as NASA’s primary facility and is situated in Maryland, close to the nation’s capital.
An impressive amount of space-related scientific research is being conducted at the institution. It’s responsible for the creation of more than 50 spacecraft, many of which have achieved legendary status. Some of its best-known products are the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes and the Parker Solar Probe.
The Lyndon Baines Johnson Space Center is a legendary NASA facility. It is located in Texas, not far from Houston. Although it is well-known as a control center for human flights, it is also one of the primary locations for astronaut training. Formerly known as the “Manned Spacecraft Center,” it played a pivotal role in the Apollo missions that first put humans on the Moon.
In addition to Cape Canaveral, another launch site often cited when rockets lift off is the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which is located west of Orlando. The facility is situated only a short distance from the launch site and the world-famous Cape Canaveral launch pads. For the 2022 Artemis 1 mission, the Space Launch System (SLS) was built at the Kennedy Space Center.
NASA has come up with a lot of telescopes since it was founded in 1958. They are built on a variety of technologies, each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages depending on the task at hand. Telescopes built specifically for use in space can see distant objects and gather data that would be impossible to get on Earth.
There has never been a more advanced telescope than the James Webb Telescope. The first photographs were captured in June 2022, after the satellite had been in operation for more than 5 years (it was launched in December 2021). These are very stunning, and they promise to aid in our future knowledge of the cosmos.
The illustrious Hubble Telescope, which preceded the James Webb Telescope by 15 years after its 1990 launch, was a forerunner of the James Webb Telescope. In spite of its advanced age, Hubble will continue to complete its tasks until its deorbit in 2030 or 2040. Meanwhile, it keeps surprising us in new ways.
The James Webb Space Telescope’s exciting journey has only just started, and now NASA teams are hard at work on a new telescope, the Roman Space Telescope. The planned liftoff date is 2026 from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. It is hoped that this instrument will better grasp the mysteries of dark matter or dark energy, but the mission is also expected to find hundreds of new planets.
What is NASA’s APOD?
The acronym for “Astronomy Picture of the Day” (APOD) describes a NASA-run photo archive that is updated daily. The site suggests an image of the cosmos and an astronomer-written explanation every day. The APOD has been around since 1995, and its site has retained its original format ever since.
Who created NASA?
On July 29, 1958, President Dwight Eisenhower reorganized the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). When the United States was trying to catch up to the Soviet Union in space, it was in the midst of the Cold War, and this is when NASA was founded. The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite, into orbit in 1957.
Then, in April of 1961, Yuri Gagarin took the plunge and made history as the first human to orbit Earth.
It was in reaction to this that NASA was established in 1958. In a now-iconic speech, President John F. Kennedy said in 1962, “We have chosen to go to the Moon in this decade and to accomplish still other things, not because it is easy, but precisely because it is difficult.” With that sentence, he rallies the public behind the endeavor and sets in motion a genuine race to our natural satellite, the Moon.
Who owns NASA?
The uniqueness of NASA is that it is neither publicly nor privately owned. The United States government funds this organization, which is headquartered in the United States. The annual budget of the United States is set by Congress and must be approved by the President.
Who funds NASA’s space programs?
Budgetary support for NASA originates in the United States. The government support its many initiatives. The annual budget is set by Congress. The budget is set in accordance with the space agency’s proposed programs and the money it asks for.
What is NASA’s budget?
The budget for NASA is flexible. The United States makes an annual adjustment. Congress, by means of a vote that, depending on the year, may generate some debate. This funding period runs from October 1 to September 30 of the next fiscal year. The figure for 2022 was $24.04 billion.
Can you visit NASA?
The Kennedy Space Center in Florida is open to the public as one of NASA’s space centers. In fact, the Apollo rockets took off from this same site. Although many individuals labor at NASA sites, visitors are only allowed to see reenactments. The Kennedy Space Visitor Complex is where guests can see exhibits and ride buses to see everything from the launch pad to the rocket assembly facility.
The European counterpart to NASA
ESA, the European Space Agency, serves as Europe’s version of NASA. More ambitious than any one European nation could ever hope to do on its own, this one brings together 22 nations to plan, select, and carry out joint initiatives. Together, they have been able to construct ambitious missions like Gaia, which has spent the last 7 years mapping the heavens and refining Hipparcos’s database of 120,000 stars.
One of the four major instruments for the James Webb Telescope was created by ESA in collaboration with NASA. The telescope was launched with extreme accuracy using the Ariane 5 rocket, which was also constructed by ESA.
How can I work at NASA?
NASA is always looking for talented people to fill a broad range of roles, but unfortunately, only U.S. citizens are eligible to apply. There are very few opportunities for non-Americans to work at the organization. As an example, astronauts must meet this requirement as part of their profession.
NASA offers a wide variety of careers, but all of them need experts in a certain sector. In most cases, higher education experience and/or a terminal degree (e.g., a PhD or an engineering degree) are expected from applicants. In addition, you’ll need a strong background in the area. NASA has a wide variety of open opportunities that can be applied for on its website.
How to follow NASA live?
If you go to the NASA website, you may find one of the agency’s official YouTube channels, NASA Live. As an added bonus, the article details the future space activities that will be covered live on the channel.
Was NASA on the Moon? Of course, most people — including myself — will respond in that manner. However, some critics question if Apollo 11 really landed on the Moon. We provide reasons why the “Moon hoax” idea is false. The theory of a “Moon landing conspiracy” has been popular since a 2001 documentary aired on the American television channel Fox TV. It claims that NASA manufactured the whole event for media impact in an effort to persuade the Russians and the rest of the world at the same time of their dominance in space. The photographs and video recordings made by the astronauts are allegedly full of proof of this fraud, according to skeptics supporting this hoax. But how credible is the whole argument?
Is the whole Moon landing just fake?
Even though the Moon landing remains one of the most impressive and successful feats in the history of human spaceflight, this very fact has been called into question more and more recently.
A “documentary” and its consequences
In a reenacted environment, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin practiced the lunar landing. Credit: NASA.
The program “Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon” that was shown on February 15, 2001, by the American television network Fox-TV served as both the catalyst and the culmination of the campaign started by certain “skeptics.” In it, self-proclaimed experts attempt to demonstrate that the Moon landing could not have occurred and that all images and media stories are consequently faked based on supposed faults and hints in NASA photographs and interviews.
The creators of the idea claim that NASA simply lacked the technological capacity to carry out such a landing in the 1960s. The whole event was just fabricated in order to win the “race to the Moon”; Hollywood had plenty of acceptable backgrounds.
Contradictory evidence is abounding
View of the Eagle lander that has just been detached from the command module. Credit: NASA and KSC.
NASA and independent astronomers responded to the claims and categorically and unambiguously denied the purported “proof” before the episode ever aired. The majority of critics’ claims were just the result of poor research or ignorance of the lunar surface’s basic characteristics.
For instance, Bill Kaysing, one of the most persuasive proponents of a lunar landing conspiracy, said that NASA scientists had estimated the likelihood of a successful lunar landing at 0.017 percent, making it improbable that the project would really be implemented. However, even though these estimates could have been popular during the early stages of the Apollo program, various analyses carried out in the middle of the 1960s anticipated a success rate of at least 90%. Kaysing, of course, keeps this information private.
Persistent and long-lasting
Unmistakable evidence: The lowest portion of the Apollo 11 lander is still in place on the Moon. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft captured this in 2009. Credit: NASA
However, despite the evident ridiculousness of their claims, the “skeptics” were still able to unnerve at least some of the American public, which did not lessen the effectiveness of the “conspiracy theory.” The “Moon Hoax” theme persisted, especially in the USA, where more and more books and websites about it were produced.
These notions, which had long ago been disproven as illogical, were even spread in Europe, where they are genuinely taken seriously. The media businesses acquired the “documentary” from Fox and aired it on their networks many times, unmodified and often without any commentary.
The issue was ultimately brought up in court in the USA, where Bill Kaysing even charged NASA with purposefully causing the Apollo 1 catastrophe in an effort to silence any dissidents inside its own ranks. Jim Lovell, the commander of the Apollo 13 mission, was outraged by these ridiculous claims and referred to Kaysing as a maniac; Kaysing then filed a defamation suit against Lovell. But the presiding judge decided not to hear the case after the first hearing of the evidence.
Shadows and starry skies
The “indications” of a forgery put forward in the Fox documentary and the books of the “moon landing skeptics” can, in principle, be summarized as a handful of phenomena. Here, we’ve laid out the most important arguments for and against the Moon landing conspiracy theories.
The direction, duration, and form of the shadows in the NASA astronaut images are among the pillars of the doubters’ case. Kaysing argued that the pictures had to have been shot in a studio rather than on the Moon.
Shadow direction argument
These rock crystals have a crystal character that is easily discernible, however, this is not true of all of them. Credit: Ngsoft/pixabay
The shadows cast by various items and individuals on the surface of the Moon do not run parallel in the photos, and their lengths vary. The shadows of both astronauts seem to be leaning toward one another in the photo of Armstrong and Aldrin hoisting the American flag, and Aldrin’s shadow is also longer. Skeptics claim that this is a blatant indication that the “studio” employed various light sources.
Answer: This argument fails to take into account fundamental principles of perspective and vanishing point distortion. Every time parallel lines are shown in a picture, a photograph, or other two-dimensional media, they seem to converge on a three-dimensional surface. This idea may also be seen in action on Earth, such as while seeing a road heading in its direction.
The shadows of Aldrin and Armstrong are similarly distorted. The fact that the ground is not level but somewhat undulating accounts for the variations in the length of the shadows. A slope visually shortens a shadow on a sloping plane while optically lengthening it. There is a tiny drop between where Armstrong is standing and the modest elevation in front of him.
Each rise would have had numerous shadows if the photos had really been shot in a studio with various light sources; this effect may be seen, for instance, at a soccer stadium when a game is played under floodlights: Each player is encircled by four shadows.
Shadow depth argument
On the lunar surface, Buzz Aldrin exits the lunar lander. Credit: NASA and KSC
Why are the places that are under darkness still so brilliant if there is actually just one source of light, the sun, and no air to disperse the light? While Aldrin departs the LEM, for instance, why is he so easily visible when the ladder ought to be in deep shadow?
In response, this reasoning fails to take into account the fact that the lunar surface is extremely reflective due to its brightness and abundant microglass. As a result, it bounces the sunlight that strikes it back in its direction, illuminating the shadows.
Starry sky argument
This picture of the ISS space station also doesn’t show any stars. Credit: NASA
None of the NASA photos show any stars in the sky. But they ought to be present.
Answer: Although the skeptics’ main argument is the simplest to disprove, it is often raised. The photographic method is to blame for the alleged absence of stars: On the sun-lit, dazzling surface of the Moon, the astronauts recorded the happenings. They had to choose a short exposure time and a narrow aperture in order to make sure that these photographs weren’t overexposed. The stars, which were just extremely dim in comparison to the high-reflecting surface, were simply too faint for this exposure period.
Other conspiracy theories
Aldrin is seen next to the US flag. Credit: NASA and KSC
Waving flag argument
The American flag is another long-time favorite of conspiracy theorists: In certain TV scenes, the flag seems to be blown by a breeze or wind, and in photographs at least, it still exhibits unmistakable waves. However, because the Moon has no atmosphere, there is no wind.
Answer: If one carefully examines the TV records, they reveal that the flag only waves when a straight astronaut positions himself at its stalk. The vibrations produced by slamming the stem into the lunar surface are longer lasting than they would be on Earth because of the absence of an atmosphere.
The alleged ripples in the still photographs are not caused by the flag moving in waves, but rather by a setup error: The astronauts were unable to completely extend the pole that distributes the top of the flag widely, causing the flag fabric to hang down in folds rather than being taut. Later, NASA was so taken with the “natural” appearance of this folding that the crossbar was purposefully cut shorter on all following Apollo flights.
Moon dust argument
The time Aldrin spent on the surface was brief. Credit: NASA and KSC
Although the “Eagle’s” touchdown created dust, the landing module’s foot pads are absolutely dust-free.
Answer: Because the Moon lacks an atmosphere, there is also no drag, which on Earth causes the whirled-up dust to hover for a very long period until it ultimately settles. On the Moon, the dust does not go far before falling back to Earth in a ballistic arc. As a result, the landing’s dust was blown away from the module and did not physically rest on the lander’s feet.
Footprints argument
The lunar rovers’ tracks and the astronauts’ footprints are both very distinct and crisply detailed. But without water, dust is unable to leave these traces.
Yes, it is true. if the dust has very few grains. This is also conceivable with Moon dust, just as an impression is plainly discernible even in perfectly dry flour.
Backgrounds and crosshairs
Many different things can be argued about when it comes to photography techniques and hints of supposed retouching.
Crosshairs argument
In order to make it easier to determine the magnitude of the things being shot in the future, crosshairs were included in the cameras’ design. But how else can this be explained, if not by shoddy post-processing, since in some images the crosshairs are hidden by items in the frame?
On the one hand, cameras with crosshairs might have been utilized in research right away, thus, even a hoax wouldn’t have required a second application of such crosshairs.
Second, these occlusions seem to always occur when a crosshair is close to a starkly white or brilliant item. Printers and photographers are aware of the “bleeding” effect: The thin black line seems to vanish because the white region is brighter than the black area on the film material. Using a camera, one may easily recreate this phenomenon on Earth.
Identical backgrounds
The same background, the mountains, and their placement appear in two NASA footages that were supposedly filmed three days and a few miles apart. Was this scene perhaps staged using a studio background? Similar patterns may be seen in two photographs, where the landing module is sometimes visible in the foreground and other times it is not.
Answer: The first “argument” once again stems from the filmmakers’ shoddy research: They did not directly copy both segments from NASA, but rather from another documentary where it was wrongly claimed that they were both filmed three days apart. This error may have been resolved with a quick NASA study. The sequences were captured during a lunar outing at roughly the same location and three minutes apart, as the astronauts’ accompanying voice remarks further demonstrate.
On the other hand, physical effects are the reason the landing module seems to be “missing” in the pictures: Since the Moon lacks an atmosphere, it also lacks a feature that allows humans to estimate distances on Earth—the blurring of landforms or objects as they get closer to the viewer. Even if a shot is taken a few meters in front of the lander and another a few meters behind it, the mountains in the distance that seem to be so near are really kilometers distant and consequently scarcely alter.
Micrometeorites, radiation, and weak computers
Voyager 1 is now traveling across interstellar space after leaving our solar system. Credit: NASA/ESA, G. Bacon (STScI)
Was the Apollo mission technically possible?
The onboard computer of the Apollo lander module was incapable of controlling the lunar landing and had less processing capability than the microprocessor in a contemporary washing machine. Even the construction of such a compact but capable onboard computer was not possible in the 1960s due to the lack of computer technology.
Answer: While there were no current microprocessors in use in the 1960s, there were microchips that could do basic arithmetic calculations. Supercomputers on the ground handled a large portion of the intricate calculations required for navigation. A modest memory was adequate to temporarily retain the outcomes of the ground computations for the remainder of the navigation, leaving just a very small portion of the navigation to be handled by the onboard computer.
Radiation argument
Lunar landscape as seen via the lander Eagle’s window. Credit: NASA and KSC.
The Van Allen radiation band surrounding Earth, in particular, exposed the Apollo missions to lethal radiation without any safeguards. According to Kaysing, if the astronauts had really gone to the Moon, the radiation would have been so intense that they would have either died from radiation poisoning or suffered serious radiation damage.
The Apollo astronauts needed nearly an hour to get through the Van Allen belt, in response. The dosimeters indicate that they got a radiation dosage of roughly one SEM during the procedure.
Only at levels of 100 and more than 300 SEM may radiation illness or even death occurs.
However, if a solar storm had happened while the journey was in progress, the cosmic radiation would have considerably risen. But happily, for NASA and the crew, there were no significant radiation bursts or plasma ejections throughout the lunar trip since the sun stayed quiet.
Meteorites argument
Inadequate shielding prevented the spacecraft from withstanding the continual barrage of micrometeorites. Therefore, if the spacecraft had really been launched, thousands of holes would have been carried away.
Answer: Despite having a relatively little mass, micrometeorites are quite quick. Therefore, they may be stopped by even a small covering of metal. Such micrometeorite defense layers were included in both the spacecraft and the crew’s spacesuits.
Conclusion
The actions of the Moon landing deniers are terrifying in two ways: In addition to the space that such theories obtain in the media without response, numerous comparable Internet sites and book releases make pseudoscientific claims that mostly avoid debate.
Even while the documentary’s creators instruct the audience to “make up your own opinion based on all the facts” at the outset, the spectator regrettably does not obtain this precise information throughout the program. The purportedly damning images or video clips are often shown and discussed.
The arguments put forward by NASA or other objective astronomers, as outlined below, do not, however, find much room. When compared to the in-depth interviews with doubters, the remarks of NASA officials are at most brief, noncommittal, and dismissive, which must create the impression that NASA has nothing to really contradict or may even have something to conceal.
In reality, NASA doesn’t generally reply to many charges since it doesn’t have to because it doesn’t take the doubters seriously. Because the plethora of images, videos, and background information that the space agency has provided online, among other things, speaks a language that is really adequately clear and disproves many arguments on its own.
Dissemination without reflection
Nevertheless, people who see such material without a lot of background information might sometimes get confused. especially when it is broadcast on apparently legitimate TV channels. The viewers’ confidence is exploited to provide a platform to a loud but doubtful minority.
The Apollo astronauts were on the Moon, and the “Eagle” truly landed. Certainly, one may debate the wisdom or folly of human space flight, particularly the Moon landing, but at least this fact is undeniable among the worldwide scientific community.
