Archive for the ‘Wait a Minute!’ Category
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May 24th, 2023
Wait a minute!
Photo credit: Barbara David
If you’re following the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon trajectory, it’s an enigma wrapped in a riddle, seemingly packaged like a cosmic scene investigation (CSI) wanting of true detective work.
A new paper provides a detailed roadmap to tackle the swerving UAP issue that has resisted explanation and received little formal scientific attention for countless years – tied, perhaps inappropriately, to Unidentified Flying Objects that often bubbles up to “flying saucer” status.
Shown at Congressional hearing, Video 1 2021 flyby movie showing a purported UAP.
Credit: Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Subcommittee/Inside Outer Space screengrab
True detections
“The use of multispectral instruments and multiple sensor modalities will help to ensure that artifacts are recognized and that true detections are corroborated and verifiable,” states the paper. “Data processing pipelines are being developed that apply state-of-the-art techniques for multi-sensor data fusion, hypothesis tracking, semi-supervised classification, and outlier detection.”
Image credit: Galileo Project/Avi Loeb
The peer-reviewed and open access paper – “The Scientific Investigation of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Using Multimodal Ground-Based Observatories” – has been published in the Journal of Astronomical Instrumentation.
“The gold standard of scientific work is to make quantitative measurements using well-calibrated instruments under well understood conditions, and this is the approach taken in this work,” the paper explains.
Recognize anomalies
Highlighted in the research paper is the Galileo Project, an effort led by Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb to build an integrated software and instrumentation system designed to conduct a multimodal census of aerial phenomena and to recognize anomalies.
“UAP present a long-standing mystery that can and should be investigated by the tools of contemporary science,” the paper notes.
The primary science goal of the Galileo Project’s UAP investigation is to determine whether there are measurable phenomena in or near Earth’s atmosphere that can be confidently classified as scientific anomalies.
For access to the paper, led by Wesley Andrés Watters of the Whitin Observatory, Department of Astronomy at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, go to:
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/epdf/10.1142/S2251171723400068
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Wait a minute!
Image credit: Barbara David
How to cut to the chase regarding reported Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) – now linked, for better or worse, to Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs)?
That’s at the underbelly of a recent paper authored by Harvard University’s Avi Loeb, conducted in partnership with Loeb’s Galileo Project and the newly established Department of Defense, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.
Image credit: Galileo Project/Avi Loeb
“We derive physical constraints on interpretations of ‘highly maneuverable’ Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) based on standard physics and known forms of matter and radiation,” notes the paper, published in “Draft Under Review” status on a Harvard website.
Interpretations of data
Claims of objects exceeding the transonic to supersonic range should be evaluated against the known physics of ionization, radar reflectivity, temperature, sonic booms, and fireballs, according to Loeb.
“All of which can more effectively and accurately bound the velocity, and hence drive the range calculation. This will, in turn, when matched with the specifics of the sensor, allow for better estimates of the size, shape, and mass of the object in question,” the paper concludes.
Shown at Congressional hearing, Video 1 2021 flyby movie showing a purported UAP.
Credit: Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Subcommittee/Inside Outer Space screengrab
The draft research paper, dated March 7, 2023, implies a “useful limit on observations of UAP which bound the hypothetical explanations and can support limitations on interpretations of data.”
What is distinctive is that the paper is authored by astrophysicist Loeb and Sean Kirkpatrick, Director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.
Comments and criticisms
The Loeb/Kirkpatrick paper “Physical Constraints on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” has spurred a variety of comments and criticisms.
Responding to the jabs, Loeb told Inside Outer Space:
“I am not trying to be popular, just speak the truth about reality which so far follows known physics to exquisite precision.”
Mick West, debunker, skeptic, writer.
Credit: Mick West/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Says Mick West, a noted debunker, skeptic, writer, UFO investigator, and former video game programmer: “Loeb and Kirkpatrick risk alienating the broader UFO community by excluding the possibility that a UFO might employ principles of physics that are, as yet, unknown to humans.”
“Insisting that visiting spacecraft must be understandable effectively debunks several famous UFO sightings reported to involve very high speed, and in particular, the Nimitz encounters,” West told Inside Outer Space. “It would also seem to exclude high-speed “transmedium” craft that supposedly transition from air to water travel without slowing down.”
West said that while Loeb and Kirkpatrick are likely correct, their paper has not been well received in certain saucer circles.
Artist’s concept of interstellar object1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua) as it passed through the solar system after its discovery in October 2017. The aspect ratio of up to 10:1 is unlike that of any object seen in our own solar system. Image Credit: European Southern Observatory / M. Kornmesser
Interstellar interlopers
Robert Powell, executive board member of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU), has read the yet-to-be-peer-reviewed draft of the paper, noting that the authors delve into those interstellar interlopers: meteor IM2 and that cosmic oddball named ‘Oumuamua.
The paper states a possible hypothesis: “Nevertheless, the coincidences between some orbital parameters of ‘Oumuamua and IM2 inspires us to consider the possibility that an artificial interstellar object could potentially be a parent craft that releases many small probes during its close passage to Earth, an operational construct not too dissimilar from NASA missions.”
Powell said that in his personal view, and not necessarily that of SCU’s, there’s nothing wrong with a hypothesis as it is simply a possible explanation for something that is observed.
Credit: Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU)
“Nonetheless, this is a hypothesis that surely stretches the imagination. A scientist may consider such a hypothesis and quickly drop it when the information that becomes available changes. But the media and the public have difficulty with that concept and what begins as a hypothesis is soon expressed as a fact or a likely fact.”
Important turning point
Powell said such a statement in the draft of an academic paper can result in media articles such as this recently published eye-catcher in Tell Me Best:
“Government Officials Say An Alien Mothership Is Close To Earth”
“The study of UAP is at an important turning point,” Powell adds. “The stigma related to the subject has been reduced. More and more scientists are becoming involved in investigating the subject. But in investigating UAP, unnecessary and provocative hypotheses should be avoided whenever possible,” he told Inside Outer Space.
To view the draft paper – “Physical Constraints on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” – go to:
Wait a Minute! Image credit: Barbara David
Image credit: NASA
NASA is set next week to unveil the Artemis II crew that will sojourn around the Moon, now eyed for November 2024. The four-person team would make the trek secure in their Orion spacecraft – the first piloted spacecraft to travel to the Moon, or beyond low Earth orbit, since Apollo 17 in December 1972.
But there appears to be a tad more look-see at the results of the uncrewed Orion on its Artemis I flight last year. Orion’s heat shield took on the 25,000 miles per hour re-entry, but NASA and contractors are wrestling with the results.
Engineers and technicians conduct inspections of the heat shield on the Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft after splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on Dec. 11, 2022.
Image credit: NASA/Skip Williams
The heat shield features the same ablative material called AVCOAT used in Apollo lunar outings and return-to-Earth missions. However, the building process has changed, according to Lockheed Martin that fashioned Orion’s thermal protection system.
Timesaver
“Instead of having workers fill 300,000 honeycomb cells one by one with ablative material, then heat-cure the material and machine it to the proper shape, the team now manufactures AVCOAT blocks – just fewer than 200 – that are pre-machined to fit into their positions and bonded in place on the heat shield’s carbon fiber skin,” the aerospace firm’s website explains. That process is a timesaver in putting on the AVCOAT – about a quarter of the time.
Image credit: Lockheed Martin
As NASA stated, pre-Artemis 1 liftoff: “The primary goals for Artemis I are to demonstrate Orion’s systems in a spaceflight environment and ensure a safe re-entry, descent, splashdown, and recovery prior to the first flight with crew on Artemis II.”
So what’s up with the Orion heat shield and how concerned is NASA?
Heat shield hiccups
Inside Outer Space contacted the Orion program office at NASA Johnson Space Center for comment regarding the heat shield hiccups.
Completion of Avcoat block bonding on Artemis heat shield.
“During Artemis I post-flight inspection, engineers observed variations of Avcoat material across the appearance of Orion’s heat shield. Some areas of expected charred material ablated away differently than computer modeling and ground testing predicted, and there was slightly more liberation of the charred material during re-entry than anticipated,” the program office stated.
“We expect the material to ablate with the 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit the spacecraft encounters on a re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere, and to see charring of the material through a chemical reaction, but we didn’t expect the small pieces that came off, versus being ablated,” the NASA statements adds.
“We don’t know yet exactly how much was liberated, which is why we’re analyzing the data, but there was a healthy margin remaining of virgin Avcoat, and temperature data inside the cabin remained at expected levels, so if crew were on board they would not have been in danger,” explains the program office statement.
Artwork depicts Orion spacecraft plowing through Earth’s atmosphere at high speed.
Image credit: NASA
Dedicated investigation
What kind of efforts, testing, are underway to try to understand what happened?
NASA responded that there are 186 blocks of Avcoat and their team is looking at each block. “We have a dedicated investigation underway that includes planned testing, detailed analysis, extensive sampling of the heat shield, and review of data from sensors.”
Data was collected from images and videos from the Orion’s spacecraft’s re-entry. Those are being correlated with the heat shield sensors onboard Orion, “then looking at our computer models to see how we can understand what we experienced on re-entry,” the Orion program office said.
“We’ve extracted samples from the heat shield, which will be X-rayed, and we’re also getting a more precise understanding of how much Avcoat is still remaining on the heat shield—which is significant,” the NASA statement continues. “As we get all these pieces of information together, we’ll arrive at an assessment to determine what additional testing is needed in finding the root cause or to better understand the phenomenon.”
On Dec. 11, 2022, the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission splashed down in the Pacific Ocean after a 25.5-day mission to the Moon.
Image Credit: NASA/James M. Blair
Avcoat changes?
Is it possible that changes in the Avcoat may be needed?
“It’s still too early in our testing and analysis to arrive at any potential recommendations or solutions that address additional char liberation,” NASA responded. “It’s possible the phenomenon may just [be] part of what the heat shield is, and what we would expect as we return from the Moon, but we’ll let the data inform us.”
Lastly, the NASA Orion program office stated: “We’ll continue to protect for variations that could happen during re-entry as we want to ensure we have significant margin against the various types of uncertainties that might occur as the spacecraft re-enters the atmosphere. Our teams want the confidence that we have the best heat shield possible to fly humans going forward.”
Wait a minute!
Image credit: Barbara David
The highly productive NASA New Horizons mission is on “extended leave” after departing Earth in January 2006 – and the agency is now considering a new assignment for the nuclear-powered craft after over 6,267 days in space.
New Horizons was built by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratotry.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Steve Gribben/Alex Parker
New Horizons zoomed past Pluto and its moons in July 2015, before conducting the first reconnaissance of a Kuiper Belt object (KBO), Arrokoth, on New Year’s 2019.
With the completion of the New Horizons prime mission to Pluto, and its extended mission to Arrokoth, mission operations of the spacecraft would be terminated at the end of its second extended mission at the end of fiscal year 2024 (FY24).
Pluto flyby of New Horizons continues to offer a scientific bounty of new findings.
Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/SwRI/James Tuttle Keane
“However, it is in the best interest of NASA, the New Horizons mission, the scientific community, and the American taxpayer for the New Horizons mission to continue operations and utilize its unique position in the solar system to answer important questions about our heliosphere and its interaction with the interstellar medium, while allowing for scientific opportunities that present themselves beyond Heliophysics.”
That’s the word from a just-issued NASA Request for Information regarding a New Horizons Interstellar Mission (NIHM).
Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) Arrokoth as viewed by New Horizons.
Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/SwRI
Level of interest
NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) is exploring whether interested science teams have a set of science objectives to propose to the space agency for use of the mission beyond FY24.
The Request for Information (RFI) issued on March 15 is designed to gauge the level of interest of the wider science community in pursuing the next phase of science leadership for the mission, and to estimate appropriate annual costs.
That RFI seeks to define three years of science goals for a new mission concept utilizing the New Horizons observatory, including the definition of operations modes of the spacecraft and its instruments to address these science goals. The New Horizons mission carries seven scientific instruments.
The RFI emphasizes that NASA is obtaining information for planning purposes only, and the Government does not intend to award a contract at this time.
All responses to the RFI must be received by 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on April 17, 2023.
By continuing the New Horizons mission operations and utilizing its unique position in the Solar System, important questions can be answered about the heliosphere and its interaction with the interstellar medium “while allowing for scientific opportunities that present themselves beyond Heliophysics,” the RFI adds.
Scientific leadership
While on the face of it, the RFI is welcomed news for deep diving space exploration. But there seems to be a bit of disconcerting news too.
“The solicitation may allow teams and/or organizations to propose for scientific leadership of a New Horizons Interstellar Mission.” In non-NASA speak, what appears to be afoot is the disbanding of the current New Horizons science team that scored over the years milestone-making observations by the spacecraft – a group shaped by some 20 years of work to assure the scientific output from the probe.
As noted in the RFI: “It is expected that spacecraft operations will continue to be conducted by the existing operations team.”
So as New Horizons continues to fly outward, those bureaucratic wheels of space science at NASA are likely to hit a speed bump within certain scientific community circles.
Stay tuned!
For a look at the RFI, go to: https://go.nasa.gov/NewH23IMRFI
Wait a Minute!
Wait a minute!
A number of Moon exploration missions by numbers of nations are planned for the next decade. The target areas of the Moon being eyed are likely to be a handful of small sites of interest, to carry out science investigations as well as process lunar materials to churn out construction materials, rocket fuel, oxygen and water, etc.
Image credit: NASA
Is there potential for creating risks of crowding and interference at these special lunar locales?
A research paper explores that prospect.
“Concentrated lunar resources: imminent implications for governance and justice,” has been made available by The Royal Society in the United Kingdom. The paper appeared in a special issue of the journal Philosophical Transaction A, published in 2020.
Image credit: JAXA/NHK/Paul Spudis
Small regions
“Many of the useful and valuable resources on the Moon are concentrated into a modest number (tens) of quite small regions (in the order of a few kilometers),” the research paper notes.
Locations of interest include the Peaks of Eternal Light, the coldest of the cold traps on the Moon and smooth areas on the lunar far side.
“Over the next decade, forms of interference and related disputes and conflicts over these concentrated resources may arise, as many actors, sovereign, philanthropic and commercial, descend onto just a handful of small, high-value sites on the lunar surface,” the research paper suggests.
Image credit: NASA
Lead author is astrophysicist Martin Elvis of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Need for action
“The need for action is perhaps most acutely felt by the astronomy community,” the paper explains. “If astronomers do not take the initiative to identify and raise awareness of the scientific and public interest in protecting unique lunar features now, they may find themselves unable to do so once these features are under threat from interference and crowding.”
Concept art credit: Volodymyr Vustyansky
Astronomers will find common cause with other scientists, such as astrobiologists, and other researchers for whom planetary protection measures are crucial. “The scientific community today faces both an opportunity and a responsibility to help guard precious lunar sites from the irreversible damage threatened by crowding and interference,” the paper observes.
Extraterrestrial commons
When is the appropriate time to begin developing a governance framework? Now says Elvis and colleagues, suggesting that a study of commons on Earth can provide lessons applicable to efforts at governing lunar sites of interest.
Lessons from the management and mismanagement of terrestrial commons, the paper adds, suggest that “action should be taken now rather than later, or at least now as well as later, to develop the governance structures needed to prevent (and later on contain) avoidable and undesirable problems of crowding and interference.”
Image credit: For All Moonkind
Diverse actors
How to responsibly coordinate diverse actors’ activities on the Moon requires recognizing and accommodating their distinct interests and purposes.
“Any proposed governance arrangement may have to contend with irreducible practical and conceptual tensions between different actors’ designs: scientific, commercial and human-exploration activities may often be incompatible with each other,” the paper explains. “Moreover, it is likely that these varied actors’ plans are best served by different governance arrangements.”
To read the full paper – “Concentrated lunar resources: imminent implications for governance and justice” – go to:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2019.0563
Image credit: USNI NewsFor the past week or so, the public has been witness to an aerial assault of sorts, flying objects that are, for the most part, labeled as unidentified, take on different shapes and sizes, are shot down with recovered pieces being analyzed, even “back engineered” to cough up the goods as to where they come from and what they are doing drifting about in our atmospheric firmament.
Image credit: Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies
For the past week or so, the public has been witness to an aerial assault of sorts, flying objects that are, for the most part, tagged as unidentified, take on different shapes and sizes, are shot down with recovered pieces being studied, even “back engineered” to cough up the goods as to where they come from and what they are doing drifting about in our atmospheric firmament.
The language and grammar whirlpool about these lofty incursions should give rise to more reflection about Unidentified Flying Objects as well as the new nomenclature, Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon, or UAP for short.
The on-going reveal regarding these sky-high visitations means what to the UAP/UFO community?
Are there any lessons learned from these incidents and takeaways from pilot descriptions of the objects?
UAP have been reported by Navy pilots unlike anything they have ever witnessed.
Image credit: Enigma Labs/Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich
There are those that will surely portray these new close-encounters as part of an ultra-classified government plan to prepare the citizenry for “full-disclosure.” That is, yep, Earth is on the receiving end of stopover vessels from the vastness beyond sight, sound, and dimension of mind.
But just how much shadow, how much substance, are we dealing with here?
Eyewitness accounts
A leading doubting Thomas and nemesis of all the uptick in UFO and UAP uproar is Mick West, a writer, skeptical investigator and a former video game programmer.
“The varied pilot reports we’ve seen in the media illustrate how difficult it is to get information about encounters with slow-moving objects from eyewitness accounts,” West told Inside Outer Space.
“The difficulty of judging the speed of an object without knowing its distance is greatly compounded in an encounter with unfamiliar balloons where the pilots do not know how big they are,” West says.
West points to both congressional testimony and the recent output and on-going work of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the newly established All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).
Released in January, the ODNI’s 2022 Annual Report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena is available at:
https://www.odni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Unclassified-2022-Annual-Report-UAP.pdf
Low information zone
Balloons are a common source of pilot reports of UFOs/UAPs, says West.
A wayward balloon is a likely explanation for the “GoFast” UFO video, released in 2018, which seems to show an object moving at high speed over the ocean, but actually shows a much slower object, West adds.
GOFAST
Credit: DOD/U.S. Navy/Inside Outer Space screengrab
UFO reports emerge because of a lack of information, West continues, existing in the so-called “Low Information Zone” or LIZ – the set of conditions where an object is just too far away, small, fast, blurred, or out of focus to determine exactly what it is.
“NORAD’s radar has always had a significant LIZ, where radar returns of low quality, or that resembled birds, balloons, or other airborne clutter, have been filtered out as distractions to the primary mission of detecting incoming conventional aircraft and missiles,” West says.
Expensive, dangerous shoot downs
“The furor over the large Chinese balloon has prompted NORAD to modify or eliminate the filters to attempt to better capture similar incursions,” West says. “This has resulted in low-information objects being selected from the LIZ for investigation. Many of these will be innocuous items, like stray balloons, potentially even of U.S. origin.”
Some items may be previously undetected adversary incursions, West concludes. “Disambiguating these will represent a significant challenge. Unfortunately, the perceived need to take rapid action will result in expensive and dangerous shoot-downs of a variety of objects based on limited information.”
Shown at Congressional hearing, Video 1 2021 flyby movie showing a purported UAP.
Credit: Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Subcommittee/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Aerial excitement
All the chatter related to balloon shoot downs and UAP talk has also caught the attention of noted UFO disbeliever Robert Sheaffer. He’s an author, freelance writer, and skeptical investigator of all manner of bogus claims.
The ongoing aerial excitement involving balloons means, either that the Chinese have just now dramatically increased their balloon-launching activities, or else that such balloons are no longer being ignored,” Sheaffer explains, “and it’s more likely the latter.”
Sheaffer points out that the pilots, and other official personnel, seem quite clueless about what is being seen.
As noted in one CNN report, there have been some pilots claiming to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object. Those pilots could not explain how the object was staying in the air, despite its cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet.
“An object that is lighter than air does not need ‘propulsion’ to remain aloft,” Sheaffer responds.
FLIR
Credit: DOD/U.S. Navy/Inside Outer Space screengrab
GIMBAL/“Tic Tac”
Credit: DOD/U.S. Navy
“In recent years the Chinese have developed small inflatable drones that could possibly account for some sightings,” Sheaffer adds.
Effects of perspective
Similar in view to West, the question of “balloons” is relevant to the UAP video release of the so-called “go fast” object, Sheaffer points out, which may well be a balloon that drifted out over the ocean.
“That object is indeed ‘going fast’ with respect to the camera — perhaps 400 miles per hour — but relative to the ground, it is almost stationary,” Sheaffer says. “The aircraft is passing the object at a high rate of speed, which makes the object appear to be moving rapidly in the opposite direction.”
The fact that Navy pilots did not realize this, says Sheaffer suggests that those pilots don’t understand simple effects of perspective. “And the fact that the Pentagon’s ‘UAP experts’ failed to realize what was happening demonstrates their complete incompetence in such matters,” he feels.
As for the other two publicly released videos — called the Tic Tac and the Gimbal – “they are probably the infrared signatures of distant jet aircraft, and have nothing to do with balloons,” Sheaffer concludes.
Credit: Piplsay
Image credit: NASA
Years ago I wrote a story for AIAA’s Aerospace America magazine.
In my view, the reasons and revelations that haunt me to this day about the tragedy are far from being revealed. I covered the loss of the crew for Space.com at the time, reporting on the investigation from my perspective as I attended a number of the “hearings” on the disaster from Houston, Texas.
To this day, the entire calamity — and how it could have been prevented — has never been fully reported.
Adding to my own views regarding the loss of Columbia and crew was a visit to Kennedy Space Center. I saw first-hand recovered, twisted, and scared wreckage of the vehicle.
I cried.
There are truths out there yet to be revealed.
Meanwhile, take a read of my story – and remember Columbia and the seven-person crew:
Wait a Minute!
Wait a Minute!
An old, two-ton + spacecraft made its uncontrolled and fiery nose dive into the Earth’s atmosphere over the Bering Sea – off the coast of Alaska, near the Aleutian Islands.
NASA and the US Department of Defense report that the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite, ERBS for short, reentered Earth’s atmosphere at 11:04 p.m. EST on Sunday, Jan. 8th.
ERBS deployment from space shuttle.
Image credit: NASA
Most of the 5,400-pound satellite was expected to “burn up” in its high-speed plunge through the atmosphere. Prior to its fall, NASA noted that some components of the satellite were considered likely to survive the reentry.
Deployed from the space shuttle Challenger on Oct. 5, 1984, the ERBS spacecraft was flown to measure the Earth’s radiative energy budget and measure stratospheric constituents, including ozone.
Image credit: The Aerospace Corporation/CORDS
Willy-nilly
The willy-nilly nature of the demise of the nearly 2.5-ton ERBS did trigger worries.
Due to the uncontrolled nature of the spacecraft’s demise, exactly where the craft was to auger in created a stir in Korea. ERBS predicted trajectory and possible reentry time took it across the Korean Peninsula.
“High Alert” – Seoul Incheon Airport
Image credit: CC BY-SA 2.0/Wikimedia
That being the case, the Korean Ministry of Science and Ministry of Knowledge Economy (ICT, Postal and Future Planning) had issued messages asking residents to stay inside and for Korean people to remain vigilant about satellite leftovers that might reach the ground.
According to local media reports, several airports, including Incheon International Airport, did for a short period of time suspend flights due to the prospect of incoming debris passing through Korean Peninsula airspace. Overall all, according to The Korea Times, 29 flights were delayed in the region, including 18 departures and 11 arrivals.
Wait a Minute!
A recent item caught my eye.
Late last month, the ocean-going cruise ship – Viking Orion – was not permitted to pull into dock in Australia.
Over 800 ocean goers have been stranded offshore for nearly a week due to “biofoul” – a condition in which marine growth, a fungus, was carried on the Viking Orion’s hull.
An Australian fisheries department labeled it a “potentially harmful” fungus. The worry was that by introducing this invasive species into a new habitat, that organism could hamper the local biological species thriving in the area.
Image credit: Viking Cruises
Ship-shape steps have been taken by Viking Cruises, although it’s not clear when passengers will set foot back on land.
But more to the point – a space exploration point of view about hauling back samples from Mars.
Extraterrestrial goodies
Now in the works is the multi-nation, multi-billion dollar Mars Sample Return (MSR) campaign – a “cache and carry” project for the 2030’s to haul to Earth select specimens of Red Planet soil, rock and atmosphere.
Newly revised Mars Sample Return campaign makes use of a set of machines, including use of helicopters, to collect Martian soil, rock and atmospheric specimens for return to Earth.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The plan is for the Mars samples – roughly a pound of extraterrestrial goodies — to be plopped into the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) in west-central Utah.
The MSR campaign team is developing specific transportation, storage, and curation protocols for the Mars samples, including transportation from the UTTR point of recovery to the yet-to-be-determined site of an MSR sample receiving facility.
Public comment
For its part, NASA recently posted for public comment a draft MSR “Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement” or PEIS for short. A 45-day public comment period began on November 4, 2022 and ended on December 19, 2022.
Proposed Utah landing zone (red ellipse) for the Mars sample return mission.
Image credit: NASA
As a result, the PEIS spurred nearly 75 comments.
There’s a mixed bag of support for rocketing back Mars collectibles to our planetary home, and a goodly number of those comments urged not bringing samples back to our home base before testing or studying them on Mars itself.
Others responded by being supportive of using an off-Earth lab, perhaps on the International Space Station, to use “protocols similar to ones described in the Andromeda Strain, minus the nuclear device.”
Another comment remarks: “The arrogance of scientists thinking their containment system is unbreakable reminds me of how the Titanic was supposedly unsinkable. The difference is that at least the Titanic had some lifeboats when it sank; the Earth has none.”
The Andromeda Strain – the 1971 movie, but how real for a 21st century return to Earth of Mars samples?
Credit: Universal Pictures
Miniscule risk
On the other hand, there were those supportive of the MSR endeavor.
“Risk is so small it is not worth it to go about this in a different way that wouldn’t be incredibly expensive. The entire point of this mission is to get the samples back to our state of the art labs, not some makeshift lab in LEO or cis-lunar space,” wrote one commenter.
“I am good with the miniscule risk in the name of science,” continued the person’s remark, “for anything to go wrong there would A) need to be dangerous live pathogens B) could interact with us and C) need to get through all containment protocols. The chances of all that happening is one tick above zero, we have found no life on Mars so the idea these samples would contain dangerous life that can infect species from another planet (Earth) is a bit absurd. Let’s go get them!”
Image credit: NASA/PEIS
Ongoing work
Chiming in on the draft environmental impact statement is the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
“Based on the review of the draft PEIS, EPA did not identify significant environmental concerns to be addressed in the Final EIS,” the December 7, 2022 EPA comment explains.
However, the EPA does note that the draft PEIS references in multiple places that studies regarding burnup/breakup, atmospheric release, contingency planning, and the possibility that Mars material will be distributed outside of the landing site radius are ongoing, and actions to recover MSR Earth Entry System (EES) fragments, if it is damaged upon reentry and landing, are still being worked.
Perseverance rover deposits select rock and soil samples in sealed tubes on Mars’s surface for future missions to retrieve and bring back to Earth for detailed study.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Ship-to-shore signal?
In summary, observes the EPA, more work is to be done.
“We welcome the opportunity to discuss appropriate response authorities with NASA and are available to assist with additional information if required,” the EPA communiqué to NASA concludes.
In the meantime, NASA’s Perseverance rover is busy at work on Mars, scouting about for primo samples that are being cached for eventual pick-up and delivery to Earth-situated labs for intensive scientific inquiry.
Harkening back to the good ship Viking Orion, one wonders whether there’s a strong ship-to-shore signal.
What’s your view?
For more information on the Mars Sample Return and environmental impact comments/studies, go to:
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nepa-mars-sample-return-campaign/
Wait a Minute!
Space hardware tumbling out of orbit may lead to new unforeseen impacts on the environment and climate.
Due to the growing scale and pace of launch activities what is needed is better monitoring of the situation, as well as regulation to create an environmentally sustainable space industry.
Space debris plunges to Earth, burning its way through the atmosphere.
Image credit: The Aerospace Corporation
For more details, go to my SpaceNews story – “Studies flag environmental impact of reentry” – at:
https://spacenews.com/studies-flag-environmental-impact-of-reentry/
