This week’s picture shows SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour carrying Crew-2 to the International Space Stations (ISS) in April 2021 as seen through a window of the docked SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience. The Resilience brought Crew-1 to the ISS in November 2020. You can read more about the ISS and the SpaceX mission here.
You may have remembered my earlier post showing all of the items already in orbit around the Earth. Well, it appears Elon Musk believes we can handle billions of satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO). And while the current number of orbiting satellites is only in the thousands, Mr. Musk’s SpaceX has already placed 1,700 Starlink satellites in LEO, with plans for a total of 42,000 such satellites under the program.
Not everyone agrees with unchecked growth. Josef Aschbacher, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) director-general, stated, “You have one person owning half of the active satellites in the world. That’s quite amazing. De facto, he is making the rules.” I agree with the ESA about the need for some rules in this area given the rapid growth. And we may need to look a little deeper into that “billions” number. Mr. Musk has been known to overstate things.
Mr. Musk is part of the move fast and break things club. Yet that can lead to problems when the things breaking up are expensive satellites leaving debris in their wake. We may need to find a better way.
I remember the image above from Mars One and thinking that maybe the private sector could find an innovative way to beat governments to Mars. I also remember the profiles of individuals volunteering for a one-way trip to Mars to be part of the proposed Martian colony. So much for that idea. Mars One ran out of money and appears to be little more than a website at this point, where you can read the following:
In 2016 Mars One ran out of funds and was unable to continue the selection program and the technical studies. In the years after that, several attempts were made to raise additional funds, but they were unsuccessful. Despite that, Mars One has had an impact on Mars exploration by promoting the idea of permanent settlement. We, Mars One’s co-founders, are still convinced that the first crews that go to Mars should (or will have to) go there to stay.
So Mars One still believes a one-way trip is the best approach. If so, it appears Mars One did not have the secret for a very long existence on Mars. An MIT study discussing the venture said the new martians would have survived a short time before expiring as they attempted to grow their food:
As the air inside the habitat continued to leak, the total atmospheric pressure would drop, creating an oppressive environment that would suffocate the first settler within an estimated 68 days.
I am not sure how that would have helped the drive to Mars if the first spot we established was a graveyard.
So give Mars Once credit for keeping the dream alive, and even being optimistic about the technology someday appearing to make it possible, though not in time for its scheduled mission. Fortunately, it went out of business before derailing our hopes for a successful manned mission to Mars.
Take a look at the image above. Can you determine where in the solar system this image originated? Take a guess and then check your answer by going to the menu and selecting the “Where is this?” page.
A 4-billion-year-old meteorite from Mars did not show any signs of life, according to The Guardian newspaper. That said, the 4-pound rock found in Antarctica in 1984 that presumably broke off of Mars’ surface billions of years ago does have compounds that could lead to life.
More samples should be on their way if NASA’s Perseverance Rover mission on Mars can assist with the return of Martian samples back here to Earth for additional study. So there is still hope that we will find more interesting results down the road.
Extra: The origin (now debunked) story on this rock from a NASA research team of scientists at the Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, and at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, was titled “Meteorite Yields Evidence of Primitive Life on Early Mars.”
Our Awesome Universe 