Tag Archives: space resources

Across the Universe: Astronomy domine

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This entry is part of 190 in the series Across the Universe

This column from The Tablet was first run in December 2018 December 2018 was a busy month in space. The Japanese Hayabusa II mission was orbiting Ryuku, a tiny near-Earth asteroid. A Chinese probe was about to place a lander on the far side of the Moon. NASA’s Insight mission had just arrived on Mars to measure marsquakes and the heat flowing from its interior. Virgin Galactic was testing a ship that can take tourists above the stratosphere. Of all these, my attention was on OSIRIS-REx. (The name is a typical NASA acronym; don’t ask.) This probe had also just arrived at a near-Earth asteroid, named Bennu, with essentially the same mission as Hayabusa II. It was the dream of the late Mike Drake, my first PhD advisor at the University of Arizona; after his death, the science team lead fell to Dante Lauretta, whose PhD director was my MIT classmate Bruce Fegley. And the rest of the science team … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Patrolling the Final Frontier

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This entry is part 188 of 190 in the series Across the Universe

This column first ran in The Tablet in May 2018 Compared to the student riots and political assassinations of 1968, the United Nations Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space that year caused relatively little stir. Back then, of course, only two nations were in any position to explore or use outer space. It was easy for the rest of the world to give lip service to the ideal that the space resources were the heritage of all humankind. Fifty years on, though, things are changing. In June, 2018, the UN’s Office of Outer Space Affairs held a fiftieth anniversary meeting: UNISPACE +50. To set the stage, the organizers decided to hold a small workshop where their diplomats could meet informally with scientists and engineers active in understanding how we’ll be using space resources, from satellite data to actual asteroid mining, in the near future. They asked the Vatican Permanent Mission to the UN for help organizing … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: The Impact of Asteroids

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This entry is part 9 of 190 in the series Across the Universe

This column first ran in The Tablet in November 2016 When I first arrived at the Vatican Observatory, more than 20 years ago, I decided to take advantage of its extensive meteorite collection by doing a systematic measurement of meteorite densities. Why? Mostly because no one else had done it before; no one had ever had both the access to such a collection, and the time to make such a survey. (It’s taken more than twenty years, and the work continues.) Soon after I started publishing my first results, spacecraft began visiting the asteroids that were the source of these meteorites, measuring their densities as well. The first surprise was that the asteroids were far less dense than the meteorites derived from them… showing that the asteroids were not solid rocks but rather, loose piles of meteoritic rubble. Our meteorite data allows us to make specific, quantitative estimates of the actual rock and metal content to be found within a … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Rocket Science

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This entry is part 118 of 190 in the series Across the Universe

This column first ran in The Tablet in April 2012 “This isn’t rocket science…” It’s a common reproach, heard when we make a simple task too complex. Of course, making a rocket work is not science; it’s engineering. The difference between the two is like the difference between theology and liturgy. Both are important, and each informs the other, but it’s dangerous (in both directions) to substitute the one for the other. Another flaw in the cliché is that it assumes launching a rocket is the height of complexity. In fact, it’s a well-understood piece of engineering. Today’s rockets are marvelous pieces of machinery, and getting it right can indeed be harder than it looks (see the recent failure of North Korea’s attempt). But the basic principles are nothing new. The rockets that lift supplies to the International Space Station today are Soviet designs dating from the cold war, more than half a century old. The issue, as the North Koreans … Continue reading →