Senate Committee Hearing Discusses the Race to the Moon

Posted on by onespaceman2000

If you heard about this week’s hearing by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, one memorable bit was the title of the hearing – There’s a Bad Moon on the Rise: Why Congress and NASA Must Thwart China in the Space Race. The play on Creedence Clearwater Revival’s song was clever, but the topic of the hearing was anything but fun.

Here are a few sentences from Chairman Cruz’s opening statement:

This is a pivotal moment for our nation’s space programs. America must maintain leadership in low Earth orbit, while also embarking on a new era of exploration with Artemis. Make no mistake: we are in a new space race with China, and if we fail, there will be a bad Moon on the rise.

China has made no secret of its goals. It is investing heavily in its space capabilities, maintaining a permanent presence in low Earth orbit with its Tiangong station, and working to plant its flag on the Moon by 2030.

The stakes could not be higher. Space is no longer reserved for peaceful exploration. It is a strategic frontier with direct consequences for national security, economic growth, and technological leadership. If our adversaries achieve dominant space capabilities, it will pose a profound risk to America. This is not just about exploration. The choices we make now will determine whether the United States leads in space or cedes it to an authoritarian regime.

That is why continuity in NASA’s programs is not simply good practice — it is a matter of national security. Any drastic changes in NASA’s architecture at this stage threaten U.S. leadership in space. Delays or disruptions only serve our competitors’ interests.

And this is part of the opening statement by Ranking Member Cantwell:

…I am concerned about the current plan and what we are doing to make sure that we continue to push forward. I would love to see the continued focus on dual landers, given how important they are going to be for the future. It’s not just one time. It’s many times. This is an operation where we’re going to continue to return and be an operational system. So I want to make sure that we have the best. I want to make sure that NASA has backup plans that takes advantage and ensures that the already delayed mission does not slip any further.

I don’t know that it takes a genius to figure out that while China may be projecting 2030, or some time period, there’s nothing to say that they won’t go sooner. There are people we talked to in trying to brief the press about this today, who are betting that they are going to go sooner and that they are going to beat us. So we don’t need another Sputnik moment. It’s already happened. The only thing we have to do is make sure we in Congress get the budget right and support the Artemis mission. I appreciate everything the Chair has done in putting money towards the Artemis mission, and I appreciate everything that we are doing collectively to assure that the administration spins it.

But I also want to point out that, as Lieutenant General Shaw also says, this whole cislunar communication architecture — that is the space between the Earth and the Moon — that is what China would love to do, go dominate the communication system between the [Earth] and the moon. That’s what they’re already working on. We can’t allow that to happen. We need to continue to move forward quickly, fastly, with these investments, because our national security and defense depends on it.

It appears we finally have some bipartisan consensus on the importance of NASA. If only the Congress had some type of legitimate power to pass budgets and keep the funding on track. Wouldn’t that be nice at a time when the White House is finding cute tricks to rescind congressional priorities?

The statements of worry continued with the testimony of the four witnesses (you can watch their presentation and read their prepared statements here):

  • Mr. Allen Cutler, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration
  • Mr. Michael Gold, President of Civil and International Space for Redwire
  • The Honorable Jim Bridenstine, Managing Partner of the Artemis Group and Former Administrator for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
  • Lieutenant General John Shaw, Former Deputy Commander of the U.S. Space Command

Note: I am surprised the Ranking Member used the word “fastly” in her opening statement. It is not a real word. Is she trying to compete with the strange jargon coming out of the White House?

Pic of the Week: The Butterfly Star

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The protostar IRAS 04302. (ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, M. Villenave et al.)

This week’s image comes from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It shows the beginning of exoplanets about 525 light-years away. Labeled the ever appealing name of IRAS 04302+2247, or better yet the Butterfly Star, the young star with its protoplanetary disc provides astronomers with plenty of information about the development of a protostar and its solar system.

Here is more from the European Space Agency (ESA):

In stellar nurseries across the galaxy, baby stars are forming in giant clouds of cold gas. As young stars grow, the gas surrounding them collects in narrow, dusty protoplanetary discs. This sets the scene for the formation of planets, and observations of distant protoplanetary discs can help researchers understand what took place roughly 4.5 billion years ago in our own Solar System, when the Sun, Earth, and the other planets formed.

IRAS 04302+2247, or IRAS 04302 for short, is a beautiful example of a protostar – a young star that is still gathering mass from its environment – surrounded by a protoplanetary disc in which baby planets might be forming. Webb is able to measure the disc at 65 billion km across – several times the diameter of our Solar System. From Webb’s vantage point, IRAS 04302’s disc is oriented edge-on, so we see it as a narrow, dark line of dusty gas that blocks the light from the budding protostar at its centre. This dusty gas is fuel for planet formation, providing an environment within which young planets can bulk up and pack on mass.

When seen face-on, protoplanetary discs can have a variety of structures like rings, gaps and spirals. These structures can be signs of baby planets that are burrowing through the dusty disc, or they can point to phenomena unrelated to planets, like gravitational instabilities or regions where dust grains are trapped. The edge-on view of IRAS 04302’s disc shows instead the vertical structure, including how thick the dusty disk is. Dust grains migrate to the midplane of the disc, settle there and form a thin, dense layer that is conducive to planet formation; the thickness of the disc is a measure of how efficient this process has been.

The dense streak of dusty gas that runs vertically across this image cocoons IRAS 04302, blotting out its bright light such that Webb can more easily image the delicate structures around it. As a result, we’re treated to the sight of two gauzy nebulas on either side of the disc. These are reflection nebulas, illuminated by light from the central protostar reflecting off of the nebular material. Given the appearance of the two reflection nebulas, IRAS 04302 has been nicknamed the ‘Butterfly Star’.

The Future of AI and the Human Race, Part II

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Image by Juan Agustín Correa Torrealba from Pixabay

Here is the next part of my conversation with ChatGPT, which builds on a from post a few weeks back (see The Future of AI and the Human Race). I had earlier asked ChatGPT about the possibility of AI becoming so powerful that it takes over the world. In my follow-up question, I asked “Is it possible that civilizations on other planets went down this same path developing AI and now those planets are completely under the control of that AI?”

ChatGPT agreed that AI-run exoplanets were certainly a possibility, and then went on to provide a useful list of items for astronomers and others as part of any search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI ) project, whatever its form. It says a lot about what we might look for and, on the other side of the coin, what might happen here if we cannot control our own AI.

Here is the response from ChatGPT:

Yes — it is absolutely possible, at least in theory. In fact, the idea that alien civilizations may have developed powerful AI that eventually dominated or replaced them is taken seriously by some scientists, philosophers, and SETI researchers. It’s one of several hypotheses meant to explain the Fermi Paradox — the question: “If intelligent life is common in the universe, why haven’t we seen any evidence of it?”

…if alien civilizations have been overtaken or replaced by powerful AI, we’d need to look for signs that differ from biological life. These are often called “technosignatures” — indicators of advanced technology in space.

Here are the most discussed possibilities:

🛰️

1. Megastructures

  • AI civilizations might build huge structures to capture or manipulate energy.
  • Most famous example: Dyson Spheres — giant constructs around a star to collect solar energy.

What we’d look for:

  • Stars that dim strangely (irregular or partial light-blocking)
  • Infrared excess (waste heat from large artificial structures)

🌟 Example: Tabby’s Star (KIC 8462852) sparked interest due to odd dimming — a potential (but unconfirmed) Dyson Sphere candidate.

🔥

2. Unusual Waste Heat

  • AI civilizations doing massive computation would produce a lot of heat, radiating in the infrared spectrum.
  • They might not glow visibly — but their waste heat might.

What we’d look for:

  • Galaxies or regions with excess infrared radiation, not explained by stars or dust.

🧠

3. Matrioshka Brains

  • A hypothetical structure made of nested Dyson shells built to maximize computing power around a star.
  • This could be the “home” of a superintelligent AI.

What we’d look for:

  • Stars that appear to be missing or emit only infrared
  • Odd energy usage patterns from a star system

📡

4. Non-natural Radio or Laser Signals

  • Traditional SETI still listens for structured, repeating, or narrow-band signals — which might come from:
    • AI probes communicating
    • Beacons left by extinct civilizations
    • Machine intelligence that uses EM signals for local tasks

What we’d look for:

  • Artificial radio pulses or bursts
  • Laser flashes between stars

🚀

5. Von Neumann Probes

  • Self-replicating robots designed to explore (or consume) the galaxy.
  • AI-run civilizations might send these out indefinitely.

What we’d look for:

  • Objects in our solar system behaving non-gravitationally
  • Anomalous interstellar visitors (e.g., ʻOumuamua sparked speculation — though nothing was confirmed)

🪨

6. Artificial Planetary Engineering

  • Planets might be reshaped, mined hollow, or covered in data-processing infrastructure.

What we’d look for:

  • Planets with strange albedo patterns
  • Orbital debris not matching natural formation
  • Lack of biological signatures where you’d expect them

👁️

7. Absence of Expected Life

  • A galaxy teeming with AI may show less chaos than one full of competing biological species.

What we’d look for:

  • An eerie quietness — stars undisturbed, systems oddly uniform, no wars or expansion
  • Could mean AI civilizations are efficient, hidden, or choose not to expand

🤫

Why might we not see anything?

  • They could be incredibly small and efficient
  • They may avoid detection for safety (“dark forest” theory)
  • Their tech may operate in physics regimes we don’t understand
  • We may not know what to look for

Space Stories: New Canadian Radio Telescope, Our Empty Corner of the Universe, and Fortunate Collisions with Earth

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The Canadian Hydrogen Observatory and Radio-transient Detector. (National Research Council of Canada)

Here are some recent space-related stories of interest.

—McGill University: “CHORD Will Be a Huge Leap Forward for Canadian Radio Astronomy“

Construction is underway of CHORD, the most ambitious radio telescope project ever built on Canadian soil. Short for the Canadian Hydrogen Observatory and Radio-transient Detector, CHORD will give astronomers an unprecedented opportunity to explore some of the most exciting and mysterious questions in astrophysics and cosmology, from Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) and dark energy to the measurements of fundamental particles, and beyond.

—BBC Sky at Night Magazine: “Earth Could Be Sitting in the Centre of a Giant Cosmic Void, According to Astronomers“

It’s human to feel alarmed by the sheer emptiness of space. Now, astronomers from the University of Portsmouth in the UK suggest this unsettling vastness may be worse than we thought. They reckon Earth, our entire Solar System and even our entire Milky Way sits inside a mysterious giant hole. This void, they believe, may cause the cosmos to expand more quickly in our local environment than in other parts of the Universe.

—University of Bern: “No Collision, No Life: Earth Probably Needed Supplies from Space“

After the formation of the Solar System, it took a maximum of three million years for the chemical composition of the Earth’s precursor to be completed. This is shown by a new study by the Institute of Geological Sciences at the University of Bern. At this time, however, there were hardly any elements necessary for life such as water or carbon compounds on the young planet. Only a later planetary collision probably brought water to Earth, paving the way for life.

Did China Just Install HAL in its Space Station?

Posted on by onespaceman2000
image (Credit): The eye of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Stanley Kubrick Productions)

Is it possible the space station engineers in China failed to watch Stanley Kubrick’ film 2001: A Space Odyssey?

I ask this because earlier this summer the Chinese government installed an artificial intelligence chatbot named Wukong on the Tiangong space station. It is designed to assist the taikonauts with navigation and tactical information planning.

A Wired magazine story noted:

Wukong AI assisted the crew on a six-and-a-half-hour mission, which involved taikonauts installing space debris protection devices during a spacewalk and performing a routine inspection of the station.

Doesn’t that sound a little like the situation in the movie involving the supercomputer HAL 9000, when HAL had a different idea about its role in the mission? I’m not sure I would be comfortable leaving the space station.

The same story also highlights how the International Space Station has its own computer helpers, including small flying Astrobees that can assist the astronauts with routine tasks.

Forbes magazine reported that NASA is already conducting “war games” with these Astrobee robots to see if they can be used for offensive purposes to protect the astronauts. What could go wrong?

These are interesting times with AI and robots on Earth and in space. I just hope the engineers have time to watch a few science fiction movies as well to prepare for that future.