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10 Reasons Why Space Exploration Matters to You

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At the time of the moon landing in 1969, many people envisioned that by the beginning of the 21st century, space travel would become routine, and we would be visiting other planets in our solar system and perhaps even daring to venture into interstellar space.

That future didn't arrive as planned. In fact, humans haven't made it any deeper into space than when we landed the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s, though we have operated a manned orbital outpost, the International Space Station, which has been continuously occupied for more than two decades [source: Howell ]. NASA currently is planning to resume human missions to the moon in the mid-to-late 2020s, as a prelude to astronauts eventually traveling to Mars [source: Dvorsky ].

We've also seen the rise of private space entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk, who has described his dream of building a rocket capable of reaching Mars and supporting a permanent human settlement there [source: Torchinsky ]. And other countries are looking to reach Mars as well. China, for example, aims to send its astronauts to the Red Planet by 2033 [source: Kharpal ].

But those who've long dreamed of humans becoming a truly spacefaring race argue that exploring space provides down-to-earth benefits in areas such as health, mining and security. And more inspirational benefits, too. Here are some of the most compelling arguments for continuing the exploration of space.

• Protection From a Catastrophic Asteroid
• It Will Lead to More Great Inventions
• It Will Be Good for Your Health
• Space Exploration Is Inspirational
• It's Important for National Security
• We Need Raw Materials From Space
• Nations Can Work Together Peacefully
• It Could Help Answer a Really Big Question
• Humans Need to Fulfill Their Urge to Explore
• We May Need to Colonize Space to Survive

10: Protection From a Catastrophic Asteroid

If we don't want to go the way of the dinosaurs someday, we need to protect ourselves against the threat of being hit by a big asteroid. According to NASA , typically about once every 10,000 years, a rocky or iron asteroid the size of a football field could smash into our planet's surface and possibly cause tidal waves big enough to inundate coastal areas.

But it's the real monsters — asteroids about 328 feet (100 meters) across or bigger — that we really have to fear. Such a collision would unleash a firestorm of heated debris and fill the atmosphere with sun-blocking dust, which would wipe out forests and farm fields and starve the human and animal life that it didn't immediately kill [sources: NASA , NSS ].

That's why it's vital to develop a way to neutralize such a threat to Earth. NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test , set for launch in late September 2022, will be the first mission to demonstrate a technology called asteroid deflection by kinetic impactor. A robotic spacecraft will be crashed into the binary asteroid system Didymos, in an effort to show that it's possible to slightly alter the path of an asteroid. That would enable NASA to redirect potential threats to miss Earth [sources: DART , Mann ].

9: It Will Lead to More Great Inventions

A very long list of gadgets, materials and processes originally were developed for the U.S. space program but found other applications back on Earth — so many that NASA has an office that looks for ways to repurpose space technology as products. We all know about freeze-dried food, but there are plenty of others. In the 1960s, for example, NASA scientists developed a plastic coated with a metallic reflecting agent. When used in a blanket, it reflects about 80 percent of a user's body heat back to him or her — an ability that helps accident victims and post-marathon runners to stay warm.

Another more obscure but valuable innovation is nitinol , a flexible but resilient alloy that was developed to enable satellites to spring open after being folded into a rocket. Today, orthodontists equip patients with braces made from the material [source: Independent ].

According to NASA, other inventions spawned by the space program include CAT scans, LED lights, memory foam, freeze-dried food, shock absorbing materials used in artificial limbs, the computer mouse and portable computers, and a key nutritional ingredient in baby formula [source: JPL ].

8: It Will Be Good for Your Health

The International Space Station alone has generated scores of medical innovations with uses on Earth, such as a method for delivering cancer-fighting medication directly to tumors; gadgetry that a nurse can hold to perform ultrasounds and transmit the results to a doctor thousands of miles away; and a robotic arm that can perform delicate surgery inside an MRI machine.

NASA scientists, in an effort to protect astronauts from losing bone and muscle in the microgravity environment of space, also helped a pharmaceutical company to test Prolia, a drug that today helps protect elderly people from osteoporosis. Although mice and humans don't have identical physiology or biology, it made sense to test this drug on mice in space, since astronauts lose around 1.5 percent of their bone mineral density each month in microgravity, which correlates to the 1.5 percent yearly bone density loss of an elderly woman on Earth to osteoporosis [source: Kiger ].

7: Space Exploration Is Inspirational

If we want a world in which our kids aspire to being great scientists and engineers instead of reality show hosts, rappers or Wall Street financial tycoons, having a great enterprise to attract and inspire them is crucial.

As astrophysicist, author and lecturer Neil deGrasse Tyson told National Public Radio in 2012, "I could stand in front of eighth graders and say, 'Who wants to be an aerospace engineer so you can design an airplane 20 percent more fuel-efficient than the one your parents flew?' That doesn't usually work. But if I say, 'Who wants to be an aerospace engineer to design the airplane that will navigate the rarefied atmosphere of Mars?' ... I'm getting the best students in the class." This still holds true today and inspiring kids will always be the key to future space exploration.

6: It's Important for National Security

The U.S. needs to detect and prevent a hostile nation or terrorist group from deploying space-based weapons or attacking its navigational, communications and surveillance satellites. And while it and other major powers such as Russia and China are signatories of a 1967 treaty that forbids nations from claiming territory in space, it's not hard to think of examples of past treaties that were tossed aside when someone saw a benefit in doing so.

Even if the U.S. privatizes much of space exploration, it still wants to ensure that companies can mine the moon or asteroids without worrying that interlopers will usurp their claims or steal their production [source Minter ]. That's why it's crucial to back up diplomacy with a NASA spacefaring capacity that could be converted to military use, if needed. In 2019, a law passed by Congress with bipartisan support created the U.S. Space Force, a new branch of the U.S. armed forces devoted to protecting U.S. interests in space [source: Space Force ].

5: We Need Raw Materials From Space

There's gold out there in the cosmos, and silver , platinum and other valuable substances, too [source: Letzter ]. A lot of attention has been given to a private-sector venture that envisions mining operations on asteroids, but space miners wouldn't have to go that far to find riches.

The moon, for example, is a potentially lucrative source of helium-3 , which is used for certain MRIs and a possible fuel for nuclear power plants. The moon also is believed to be a potential source of rare earth elements such as europium and tantalum, which are in high demand for use in electronics, solar panels and other advanced gadgetry [source: Ouellette ].

4: Nations Can Work Together Peacefully

Earlier, we mentioned the ominous notion of international conflict in space. But it doesn't have to be that way, as evidenced by the cooperation of multiple nations on the International Space Station . And a U.S. space program could allow other countries, large and small, to join in their exploration efforts.

A 2018 paper from NASA points out the benefits of international cooperation . For one, the hefty costs could be spread around. For another, it could forge stronger diplomatic ties between nations such as the U.S. and India, and help create new jobs in both countries, for example.

In 2020, NASA awarded the first contracts to four companies to collect small amounts of lunar regolith, the loose rock and dust that sits atop the surface, when missions to the moon eventually resume in the 2020s. It could be the first step toward mining of raw materials from the moon. "Space resources are the fuel that will propel America and all of humanity to the stars," Mike Gold, NASA's then-acting administrator for international and interagency relations, explained at the time [source: NASA ].

3: It Could Help Answer a Really Big Question

Nearly two-thirds of Americans (close to 65 percent) believe that intelligent life exists on other planets, according to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey. In general, the public does not view UFOs as a major threat to the country. When asked to think about U.S. national security, 51 percent of Americans say that UFOs are not a threat at all, and 36 percent believe they are a minor threat.

But so far, sweeps of the sky with Earth-based telescopes for signals that might be beacons from distant civilizations have proven fruitless, possibly because the Earth's atmosphere interferes with such messages reaching us. That's why searchers for extraterrestrial civilizations are eager for the deployment of more orbital observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope. That satellite, which was launched on Christmas Day 2021, has the ability to search for the chemical signs of life in the atmospheres of distant planets outside our solar system [sources: Kramer , Howell ]. That's a start, but an even more aggressive space-based effort to look for clues of extraterrestrials might finally help us to answer the question of whether we have company out there.

2: Humans Need to Fulfill Their Urge to Explore

Our primitive ancestors spread from east Africa to all over the planet, and since then, we've never stopped moving. We're running out of fresh territory on Earth , so the only way to meet this ancient urge is to find somewhere new to go — whether it's making brief jaunts to the moon as a tourist, or signing up for an interstellar voyage that will take multiple generations.

In a speech , to the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, former NASA administrator Michael Griffin differentiated between "acceptable reasons" and "real reasons" for space exploration. Acceptable reasons would be issues like economic benefit and national security. But real reasons include concepts like curiosity, competitiveness and monument-building.

"Who among us does not know the wonder and mystery and awe and magic of seeing something, even on television, never seen before, an experience brought back to us by a robotic space mission?" Griffin added that "when we do things for real reasons as opposed to acceptable reasons, we produce our highest achievements."

1: We May Need to Colonize Space to Survive

Already, our ability to put satellites in space is helping us to monitor and combat pressing problems on Earth, from forest fires and oil spills to the depletion of aquifers that people depend upon for drinking water [source: Fowler ].

But our burgeoning population, rampant greed and thoughtlessness about environmental consequences have already done pretty severe damage to our planet. According to a 2012 survey of research, most scientists estimate that Earth has a carrying capacity of between 8 and 16 billion — and we already have a population of nearly 8 billion [source: UNEP ]. That's led some futurists to argue that we should be preparing to colonize another planet, and soon. Your life — or those of your descendants — might depend upon it.

Why Space Exploration Matters FAQs

Why is space exploration important, what are the cons of space exploration, how has space exploration benefited health and medicine, how is space exploration important for national security, what resources can we get from space, lots more information, author's note: 10 reasons why space exploration matters to you.

I was a child in the 1960s, a time when many of us believed that someday we would be flying off into the cosmos in search of adventure. I can't say precisely when that dream ended for me, but I remember that back in the mid-1990s, the British folk singer Billy Bragg recorded a song that seemed to capture some of what I felt. In "The Space Race is Over," Bragg sang of staring at the moon as a child, and dreaming that night of walking on the Sea of Tranquility.

But decades later, he stood staring at the same sky with his young son, who asked him, "Why did they ever go?" As Bragg lamented, "The space race is over, and I can't help but feel that we're all just going nowhere." Despite the beauty of his lyrics, I must differ with him respectfully on that last point. I continue to believe that humanity still has a chance to become a truly spacefaring race, and that we must find a way to do so.

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• Austen, Ben. "After Earth: Why, Where, How, and When We Might Leave Our Home Planet." Popsci.com. March 16, 2011. (July 4, 2022) http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-02/after-earth-why-where-how-and-when-we-might-leave-our-home-planet
• Bragg, Billy. "The Space Race is Over." Genius.com.. 1996. (Sept. 14, 2014) https://genius.com/Billy-bragg-the-space-race-is-over-lyrics
• Colucci, Lamont. "America Must Retake Lead in Space Exploration." Usnews.com. Dec. 11, 2012. (July 4, 2022) http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2012/12/11/america-must-retake-lead-in-space-exploration
• DART. "Double Asteroid Redirection Test. " Jhuapi.edu. (July 4, 2022) https://dart.jhuapl.edu/
• Dvorsky, George. "NASA's Artemis Moon Landing Program: Launches, Timeline, and More." Gizmodo. May 14, 2022. (July 4, 2022) https://gizmodo.com/nasa-artemis-program-moon-landing-launch-dates-1848906821
• Fowler, Wallace. "Anniversary Shows Us that NASA and Space Exploration are Worth Their Costs." Utexas.edu. July 21, 2014. (July 4, 2022) http://www.utexas.edu/know/2014/07/21/anniversary-shows-us-that-nasa-and-space-exploration-are-worth-their-costs/
• Government Accountability Office. "Actions Needed to Improve Transparency and Assess Long-Term Affordability of Human Exploration Programs." Gao.gov. May 2014. (July 4, 2022) http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/663071.pdf
• Independent. "50 years, 50 giant leaps: How Nasa rocked our world." Independent. July 29, 2008. (July 4, 2022) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/50-years-50-giant-leaps-how-nasa-rocked-our-world-879377.html
• Griffin, Michael. "The Real Reasons We Explore Space." Air & Space Magazine. July 2007. (July 4, 2022) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/the-real-reasons-we-explore-space-18816871/
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• Kramer, Miriam. "Want to Find Alien Life? It Will Take A Lot of Luck." Space.com. May 26, 2014. (July 4, 2022) http://www.space.com/25999-alien-life-search-tools-luck.html
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Everything you need to know about space travel (almost)

We're a long way from home...

Paul Parsons

When did we first start exploring space?

The first human-made object to go into space was a German V2 missile , launched on a test flight in 1942. Although uncrewed, it reached an altitude of 189km (117 miles).

Former Nazi rocket scientists were later recruited by both America and Russia (often at gunpoint in the latter case), where they were instrumental in developing Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) – rockets capable of carrying nuclear weapons from one side of the planet to the other.

It was these super-missiles that formed the basis for the space programmes of both post-war superpowers. As it happened, Russia was the first to reach Earth orbit, when it launched the uncrewed Sputnik 1 in October 1957, followed a month later by Sputnik 2, carrying the dog Laika – the first live animal in space.

The USA sent its first uncrewed satellite, Explorer 1, into orbit soon after, in January 1958. A slew of robotic spaceflights followed, from both sides of the Atlantic, before Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin piloted Vostok 1 into orbit on 12 April 1961, to become the first human being in space . And from there the space race proper began, culminating in Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin becoming the first people to walk on the Moon as part of NASA's Apollo programme .

Why is space travel important?

Space exploration is the future. It satisfies the human urge to explore and to travel, and in the years and decades to come it could even provide our species with new places to call home – especially relevant now, as Earth becomes increasingly crowded .

Extending our reach into space is also necessary for the advancement of science. Space telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope and probes to the distant worlds of the Solar System are continually updating, and occasionally revolutionising, our understanding of astronomy and physics.

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But there are also some very practical reasons, such as mining asteroids for materials that are extremely rare here on Earth.

One example is the huge reserve of the chemical isotope helium-3 thought to be locked away in the soil on the surface of the Moon . This isotope is a potential fuel for future nuclear fusion reactors – power stations that tap into the same source of energy as the Sun. Unlike other fusion fuels, helium-3 gives off no hard-to-contain and deadly neutron radiation.

However, for this to happen the first challenge to overcome is how to build a base on the Moon. In 2019, China's Chang’e 4 mission marked the beginning of a new space race to conquer the Moon, signalling their intent to build a permanent lunar base , while the NASA Artemis mission plans to build a space station, called Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway , providing a platform to ferry astronauts to the Moon's surface.

Could humans travel into interstellar space and how would we get there?

It’s entirely feasible that human explorers will visit the furthest reaches of our Solar System. The stars, however, are another matter. Interstellar space is so vast that it takes light – the fastest thing we know of in the Universe – years, centuries and millennia to traverse it. Faster-than-light travel may be possible one day, but is unlikely to become a reality in our lifetimes.

It’s not impossible that humans might one day cross this cosmic gulf, though it won’t be easy. The combustion-powered rocket engines of today certainly aren’t up to the job – they just don’t use fuel efficiently enough. Instead, interstellar spacecraft may create a rocket-like propulsion jet using electric and magnetic fields. This so-called ‘ ion drive ’ technology has already been tested aboard uncrewed Solar System probes.

Another possibility is to push spacecraft off towards the stars using the light from a high-powered laser . A consortium of scientists calling themselves Breakthrough Starshot is already planning to send a flotilla of tiny robotic probes to our nearest star, Proxima Centauri, using just this method.

Though whether human astronauts could survive such punishing acceleration, or the decades-long journey through deep space, remains to be seen.

How do we benefit from space exploration?

Pushing forward the frontiers of science is the stated goal of many space missions . But even the development of space travel technology itself can lead to unintended yet beneficial ‘spin-off’ technologies with some very down-to-earth applications.

Notable spin-offs from the US space programme, NASA, include memory foam mattresses, artificial hearts, and the lubricant spray WD-40. Doubtless, there are many more to come.

Read more about space exploration:

• The next giant leaps: The UK missions getting us to the Moon
• Move over, Mars: why we should look further afield for future human colonies
• Everything you need to know about the Voyager mission
• 6 out-of-this-world experiments recreating space on Earth

Space exploration also instils a sense of wonder, it reminds us that there are issues beyond our humdrum planet and its petty squabbles, and without doubt it helps to inspire each new generation of young scientists. It’s also an insurance policy. We’re now all too aware that global calamities can and do happen – for instance, climate change and the giant asteroid that smashed into the Earth 65 million years ago, leading to the total extinction of the dinosaurs .

The lesson for the human species is that we keep all our eggs in one basket at our peril. On the other hand, a healthy space programme, and the means to travel to other worlds, gives us an out.

Is space travel dangerous?

In short, yes – very. Reaching orbit means accelerating up to around 28,000kph (17,000mph, or 22 times the speed of sound ). If anything goes wrong at that speed, it’s seldom good news.

Then there’s the growing cloud of space junk to contend with in Earth's orbit – defunct satellites, discarded rocket stages and other detritus – all moving just as fast. A five-gram bolt hitting at orbital speed packs as much energy as a 200kg weight dropped from the top of an 18-storey building.

And getting to space is just the start of the danger. The principal hazard once there is cancer-producing radiation – the typical dose from one day in space is equivalent to what you’d receive over an entire year back on Earth, thanks to the planet’s atmosphere and protective magnetic field.

Add to that the icy cold airless vacuum , the need to bring all your own food and water, plus the effects of long-duration weightlessness on bone density, the brain and muscular condition – including that of the heart – and it soon becomes clear that venturing into space really isn’t for the faint-hearted.

When will space travel be available to everyone?

It’s already happening – that is, assuming your pockets are deep enough. The first self-funded ‘space tourist’ was US businessman Dennis Tito, who in 2001 spent a week aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for the cool sum of $20m (£15m).

Virgin Galactic has long been promising to take customers on short sub-orbital hops into space – where passengers get to experience rocket propulsion and several minutes of weightlessness, before gliding back to a runway landing on Earth, all for $250k (£190k). In late July 2020, the company unveiled the finished cabin in its SpaceShipTwo vehicle, suggesting that commercial spaceflights may begin shortly.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s SpaceX , which in May 2020 became the first private company to launch a human crew to Earth orbit aboard the Crew Dragon , plans to offer stays on the ISS for $35k (£27k) per night. SpaceX is now prototyping its huge Starship vehicle , which is designed to take 100 passengers from Earth to as far afield as Mars for around $20k (£15k) per head. Musk stated in January that he hoped to be operating 1,000 Starships by 2050.

10 Short Lessons in Space Travel by Paul Parsons is out now (£9.99, Michael O'Mara)

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The Planetary Society • Aug 30, 2021

Why space exploration is always worthwhile

Your guide to advocating for space in a complicated world.

Most people who love space and believe in exploration have probably heard this once or twice: “We shouldn’t waste money on space exploration when there are problems to deal with here on Earth.”

While public health concerns, social injustices, climate change, and other urgent issues are important to address, solving these problems doesn’t depend on defunding space programs.

This can be a difficult conversation to navigate, so we’ve outlined a few ideas here that you can share when advocating for space.

Space research isn’t as expensive as people think

Many countries around the world invest in space science and exploration as a balanced part of their total federal budget. Public opinion research has shown that people estimate NASA to take up as much as a quarter of the U.S. federal budget, but in fact,  NASA’s budget only represents about 0.5% of the total federal budget and the proportion is even smaller for other spacefaring nations . The correct information may go a long way to reassuring critics that space spending isn’t eating up as many public resources as they think.

The United States government spent approximately $6.6 trillion in fiscal year 2020, of which just 0.3% ($22.6 billion) was provided to NASA. In this chart, shades of blue represent mandatory spending programs; shades of orange are discretionary programs that require annual appropriations by Congress. "Defense and related" includes both the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs. Source: Office of Management and Budget Historical Tables 8.5 and 8.7.

Space spending pays off

If someone is arguing that public funds should be spent on solving the world’s problems, they should know that money spent on NASA positively impacts the U.S. economy . We get the same kind of payoff for space spending in other countries. Spending on space supports highly skilled jobs, fuels technology advancements with practical applications, and creates business opportunities that feed back into the economy. This in turn grows the pool of public money that can be spent on solving the world’s most pressing problems.

Space research directly impacts Earthly problems

When people apply themselves to the challenges of exploring space, they make discoveries that can help the world in other ways too. Studying how we might grow food in orbit or on Mars yields insights into growing food in extreme conditions on Earth , generating knowledge that can help mitigate the impacts of climate change. Medical research conducted on the International Space Station helps us understand the human body in new ways, helping save lives and improve quality of life .

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Studying space helps us understand our own world

Studying the cosmos gives us an important perspective shift. When we learn about what lies beyond Earth, it gives us context for understanding our own planet. Studying the other worlds of our solar system and beyond makes it clear that Earth is a precious oasis for life. When we sent spacecraft to Venus we saw how a runaway greenhouse effect turned the world from a habitable planet to an absolute hellscape. When astronauts travel into space they see just how thin and tenuous Earth’s atmosphere is, appreciating the fragile balance in which we live . A cosmic perspective underscores the importance of protecting our planet’s habitability and encourages investment in that effort.

Studying space may one day save us all

All the social and environmental progress in the world won't help us if an asteroid impacts the Earth. We have to explore space to find and study the asteroids and comets in our cosmic neighborhood if we want to make sure we can  defend our planet  if an object ever heads our way.

Space is inspiring

Not every child who dreams of becoming an astronaut will get that opportunity. This is a sad truth that many of us know from experience. But to be inspired to aim for something so grand gives kids the motivation to study hard and gain skills in science, engineering, medicine, or other fields that benefit humanity and directly help overcome problems that we face as a species.

And inspiration isn’t just for kids. When we marvel at the beauty of Jupiter’s clouds or the mystery of Enceladus’ oceans , we get an opportunity to appreciate the wonder and majesty of this cosmos that we inhabit. The idea that life might exist elsewhere in the universe reminds us that we might not be the only planet struggling to achieve balance, justice, and sustainability. And even in the bleakest of times, there’s something beautiful about still striving to achieve something great and discover something that could change how we see ourselves and our cosmos forever.

There’s plenty of room at the table

There’s no denying that there are many important issues facing humanity that need fixing. But to deal with those problems doesn’t mean we have to stop looking up, stop exploring, and stop making discoveries.

Human civilization has astonishing capacity, and we can do more than one important thing at a time. If someone thinks that a particular issue should get more attention and investment, they can and should advocate for that. The problems we face don’t persist because we’re spending money on space science and exploration. And there’s no reason to pit our aspirations against one another.

Let’s Go Beyond The Horizon

Every success in space exploration is the result of the community of space enthusiasts, like you, who believe it is important. You can help usher in the next great era of space exploration with your gift today.

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AIR & SPACE MAGAZINE

The real reasons we explore space.

Ambition, curiosity, and a reason the NASA Administrator admits has nothing to do with economic benefit.

Michael Griffin

I am convinced that if NASA were to disappear tomorrow, if we never put up another Hubble Space Telescope, never put another human being in space, people in this country would be profoundly distraught. Americans would feel that we had lost something that matters, that our best days were behind us, and they would feel themselves somehow diminished. Yet I think most would be unable to say why.

There are many good reasons to continue to explore space, which most Americans have undoubtedly heard. Some have been debated in public policy circles and evaluated on the basis of financial investment. In announcing his commitment to send the country back to the moon and, later, on to Mars, President Bush quite correctly said that we do it for purposes of scientific discovery, economic benefit, and national security. I’ve given speeches on each of those topics, and these reasons can be clearly shown to be true. And presidential science advisor Jack Marburger has said that questions about space exploration come down to whether we want to bring the solar system within mankind’s sphere of economic influence. I think that is extraordinarily well put.

But these are not reasons that would make Americans miss our space program. They are merely the reasons we are most comfortable discussing. I think of them as “acceptable reasons” because they can be logically defended. When we contemplate committing large sums of money to a project, we tend to dismiss reasons that are emotional or value-driven or can’t be captured on a spreadsheet. But in space exploration those are the reasons—what I think of as “real reasons”—that are the most important.

When Charles Lindbergh was asked why he crossed the Atlantic, he never once answered that he wanted to win the $25,000 that New York City hotel owner Raymond Orteig offered for the first nonstop aircraft flight between New York and Paris. Burt Rutan and his backer, Paul Allen, certainly didn’t develop a private spacecraft to win the Ansari X-Prize for the $10 million in prize money. They spent twice as much as they made. Sergei Korolev and the team that launched Sputnik were not tasked by their government to be the first to launch an artificial satellite; they had to fight for the honor and the resources to do it.

I think we all know why people strive to accomplish such things. They do so for reasons that are intuitive and compelling to all of us but that are not necessarily logical. They’re exactly the opposite of acceptable reasons, which are eminently logical but neither intuitive nor emotionally compelling.

First, most of us want to be, both as individuals and as societies, the first or the best in some activity. We want to stand out. This behavior is rooted in our genes. We are today the descendants of people who survived by outperforming others. Without question that drive can be carried to an unhealthy extreme; we’ve all seen more wars than we like. But just because the trait can be taken too far doesn’t mean that we can do without it completely.

A second reason is curiosity. Who among us has not had the urge to know what’s over the next hill? What child has not been drawn to explore beyond the familiar streets of the neighborhood?

Finally, we humans have, since the earliest civilizations, built monuments. We want to leave something behind to show the next generation, or the generations after that, what we did with our time here. This is the impulse behind cathedrals and pyramids, art galleries and museums.

Cathedral builders would understand what I mean by real reasons. The monuments they erected to the awe and mystery of their God required a far greater percentage of their gross domestic product than we will ever put into the space business, but we look back across 600 or 800 years of time, and we are still awed by what the builders accomplished. Those buildings, therefore, also stand as monuments to the builders.

The return the cathedral builders made on their investment could not have been summarized in a cost/benefit analysis. They began to develop civil engineering, the core discipline for any society if it wishes to have anything more than thatched huts. They gained societal advantages that were probably even more important than learning how to build walls and roofs. For example, they learned to embrace deferred gratification, not just on an individual level, where it is a crucial element of maturity, but on a societal level, where it is equally vital. The people who started the cathedrals didn’t live to finish them. The society as a whole had to be dedicated to the completion of those projects. We owe Western civilization as we know it today to that kind of thinking: the ability to have a constancy of purpose across years and decades.

It is my contention that the products of our space program are today’s cathedrals. The space program satisfies the desire to compete, but in a safe and productive manner, rather than in a harmful one. It speaks abundantly to our sense of human curiosity, of wonder and awe at the unknown. Who can watch people assembling the greatest engineering project in the history of mankind—the International Space Station—and not wonder at the ability of people to conceive and to execute the project? And it also addresses our need for leaving something for future generations.

Of course the space program also addresses the acceptable reasons, and in the end this is imperative. Societies will not succeed in the long run if they place their resources and their efforts in enterprises that, for whatever reason, don’t provide concrete value. But I believe that projects done for the real reasons that motivate humans also serve the acceptable reasons. In that sense, the value of space exploration really is in its spinoffs, as many have argued. But it’s not in spinoffs like Teflon and Tang and Velcro, as the public is so often told—and which in fact did not come from the space program. And it’s not in spinoffs in the form of better heart monitors or cheaper prices for liquid oxygen for hospitals, although the space program’s huge demand for liquid oxygen spurred fundamental improvements in the production and handling of this volatile substance. The real spinoffs are, just as they were for cathedral builders, more fundamental.

Anyone who wants to build spacecraft, who wants to be a subcontractor, or who even wants to supply bolts and screws to the space industry must work to a higher level of precision than human beings had to do before the space industry came along. And that standard has influenced our entire industrial base, and therefore our economy.

As for national security, what is the value to the United States of being involved in enterprises which lift up human hearts everywhere? What is the value to the United States of being a leader in such efforts, in projects in which every technologically capable nation wants to take part? The greatest strategy for national security, more effective than having better guns and bombs than everyone else, is being a nation that does the kinds of things that make others want to do them with us.

What do you have to do, how do you have to behave, to do space projects? You have to value hard work. You have to live by excellence, or die from the lack of it. You have to understand and practice both leadership and followership. You have to build partnerships; leaders need partners and allies, as well as followers.

You have to accept the challenge of the unknown, knowing that you might fail, and to do so not without fear but with mastery of fear and a determination to go anyway. You have to defer gratification because we work on things that not all of us will live to see—and we know it.

We now believe that 95 percent of the universe consists of dark energy or dark matter, terms for things that we as yet know nothing about. Is it even conceivable that one day we won’t learn to harness them? As cavemen learned to harness fire, as people two centuries ago learned to harness electricity, we will learn to harness these new things. It was just a few years ago that we confirmed the existence of dark matter, and we would not have done so without the space program. What is the value of knowledge like that? I cannot begin to guess. A thousand years from now there will be human beings who don’t have to guess; they will know, and they will know we gave this to them.

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Why explore space?

Why should we explore space? Why should money, time and effort be spent researching something with apparently so few benefits? Why should resources be spent on space rather than on conditions and people on Earth?

Perhaps the best answer lies in our history. What made our ancestors move from the trees onto the plains? Did a wider distribution of our species offer a better chance of survival?

Nearly all successful civilisations have been willing to explore. In exploring, the dangers of surrounding areas may be identified and prepared for. Without knowledge, these dangers have the ability to harm us. With knowledge, their effects or consequences may be lessened.

While many resources are spent on what seems a small return, the exploration of space allows new resources to be created. Resources translate into success at survival. Resources may be more than physical assets.

Knowledge or techniques acquired in exploring or preparing to explore always filter from the developers to the general population.

Techniques may be medical applications, such as new drugs or ways of living to increase the quantity or the quality of time lived. Techniques may be social, allowing the people in a society to better understand those within or outside that culture.

ESA’s space programme is a strategic asset. ESA does what individual European nations cannot do on their own.

Scientists from European nations can function at world-class level in their specialist fields, in co-operation rather than competition.

By studying alien worlds, such as Venus, Mars or Saturn’s moon Titan, we can place our own world in context. ESA’s exploration of the Solar System is focused on understanding the Earth’s relationship with the other planets, essential stepping stones for exploring the wider Universe.

While space may hold many wonders and explanations of how the universe was formed or how it works, it also holds dangers. The chance of a large asteroid or comet hitting the Earth is small. But given time, it will happen.

Some explanations for extinctions and evolution include strikes by asteroids or comets. Our technology is reaching the point where we can detect such a threat and might be able to do something about it.

The dangers exist and knowledge can allow us as a species to survive. Without the ability to reach out across space, the chance to save ourselves might not exist.

Earth is the only planet known to sustain life, but our ability to adapt could eventually allow us to inhabit other planets and moons.

Our lifestyles would be different, but human life and cultures have adapted in the past and surely could in the future. Space allows us to expand and succeed.

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• Space Travel + Astronomy

13 Things Tourists Should Know Before Traveling to Space, According to Astronauts

We asked the pros for their best tips on handling a first trip to space.

For most of human spaceflight history, those lucky enough to reach the stars were professional astronauts hired and trained by government agencies around the world. But since the early 2000s, when seven intrepid travelers paid millions to spend a few days aboard the International Space Station (ISS), space tourism has begun to take off. We're now on the cusp of a new era of space exploration, with commercial companies like Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin launching spacecraft capable of taking paying travelers beyond the Earth's surface.

We spoke with former NASA astronauts Leroy Chiao and Scott Parazynski to get their tips for first-time spaceflight participants. During his 15 years with NASA, Chiao participated in four missions — three aboard the space shuttle and one to the ISS, in which he served as commander. Parazynski worked at NASA for 17 years, flying five shuttle missions throughout his career. Read on to discover what they think aspiring space tourists need to know.

Your only job on the flight will be to kick back, relax, and enjoy the ride.

If you're taking a suborbital flight, which is what companies like Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin have offered, your ride will be a quick up-and-down to reach space, rather than a full orbit of the Earth. The short journey is relatively easy compared to what professional astronauts experience. For starters, you won't need to worry about flying your spacecraft. That's all up to the spaceflight provider. "You won't have any responsibility other than to enjoy the experience — and not kick anyone else in the head," says Parazynski. "Their obligations on the flight are pretty straightforward."

As such, the training programs for suborbital space tourist experiences are relatively minimal, perhaps only a few days in length at most. "The downside of not having a lot of training is that you don't have the confidence that comes from lots of training," says Parazynski. "Contrast that with the training I had on the space shuttle, where we trained for hundreds and hundreds of hours for launching in space. If something were to go awry, we would know exactly what to do and our hearts wouldn't skip a beat."

So, other than learning to place your complete trust in your spaceflight provider, Parazynski recommends talking to people who have flown before in order to ease any nervousness. Chiao agrees: "The best advice I can give on launch — and it's easy to say, harder to do — is to try to relax and enjoy the whole process," he says. "Pay attention during your training, talk to other people who've been there if you can. And actually, you might be surprised — it's quite calm!"

Make sure you’re physically and mentally fit.

"I think people should treat this as their Olympics or Super Bowl. This is a really big life experience, and though you don't need to be an Olympic athlete or a Super Bowl champion to fly in space, it helps to be fit," says Parazynski. After all, your body will be experiencing quite a range of new sensations during your spaceflight."

But it's not just about physical fitness — mental fitness is key, too. "I think through fitness comes mental acuity as well," says Parazynski. "The more you can be engaged in the experience, the more you'll remember of it — it'll be more impactful to you."

The G-forces experienced on launch and reentry are not as intense as you might expect.

If you've ever watched a livestream of an astronaut launch, caught any Hollywood flick about space travel, or ridden Mission: Space at Walt Disney World's Epcot theme park, you know that during launch, astronauts get crushed back into their seats. (And, actually, during reentry, too!) They're experiencing strong G-forces, or a sensation of weight felt during acceleration. It's the same feeling you get when you speed up quickly in a car or zoom through a loop or a sharp curve on a roller coaster, but during a rocket launch, those forces are stronger and more sustained. While the experience might seem a little terrifying, the pros say it's quite manageable.

"The G-forces aren't nearly as bad as they show in the movies," says Chiao. "If you're good enough to be given medical approval to go on a trip like this, you're not going to have any problems handling the G-forces." He also notes that you'll likely go through centrifugal runs during your training to prep for the sensation — you'll be strapped into a spinning machine that lets you experience strong G-forces, just like that spinning amusement park ride where you're pressed against the wall and the floor drops.

But to make launch and reentry as comfortable on your body as possible, you'll want to physically relax your muscles so you don't fight against the G-forces. "If you relax and let your body sink into the launch couch, you're going to tolerate it much better," says Chiao. "If you're rigid, that's where you might hurt yourself. And make sure your limbs and arms are inside of the couch."

To prep for weightlessness, you should book a zero-gravity flight.

While it takes quite a bit of effort (and time and money) to get into space to experience weightlessness, you can actually experience the sensation right here on Earth — or rather, just slightly above it. All you need to do is book a zero-gravity flight , where a plane flies in a series of parabolas (or arch-like shapes) during which passengers experience simulated weightlessness through free fall.

It's physically the same as skydiving or even riding a roller coaster, but in those two instances, your senses tell you you're actually falling. "When you're in a zero-G airplane, the airplane is falling at the same rate you are, so you're floating inside the airplane," says Chiao. "That's what it's like in a spacecraft when you get up into space and the engines cut off."

Through commercial companies like the Zero Gravity Corporation , anyone who can spare the cost of a ticket can experience weightlessness — and anyone who's planning on making a trip to space should definitely give it a go. "If they have the means, they should get on a zero-G flight before they go on a suborbital flight," says Parazynski. "It would take some of the mystery out of 'what am I going to feel like?' and 'how do I move?'"

Learning how to scuba dive is good weightlessness training, too.

While being underwater isn't exactly like floating in space, it's a pretty good way to practice moving around in a weightless environment. In fact, NASA even has a life-sized replica of the ISS set inside a giant pool, so astronauts can train for spacewalks underwater.

"Moving in weightlessness comes to you very quickly when you spend some time underwater," says Parazynski. "Get neutrally buoyant underwater and very gently try and move yourself along the ocean floor or bottom of your pool. It doesn't take a lot of force, but it does take a lot of thought."

Come up with a game plan for your few minutes in space.

On suborbital flights, you're only going to have a few minutes in weightlessness, so you should plan exactly how you want to spend your time up there. Figure out if you'd like to bring a memento like a family photo or college pennant for a fun picture. (U.S. Naval Academy graduates and former astronauts Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford famously put a "Beat Army" sign in the window of their Gemini VI spacecraft, so there's a long tradition of this.) Decide in advance if you want to attempt what spaceflight veterans call "stupid astronaut tricks," like flips or spins. But most importantly, budget time to look out the window.

"The most important thing I would tell future astronauts is to savor the view out the window," says Parazynski. "It's, for lack of a better term, a God's-eye view, and so few people have ever had a chance to see it. It's really a beautiful thing to be hovering in space and looking down at your planet."

Don’t worry about taking your own photos.

"As far as taking photographs, I don't know that I would recommend it," says Chiao. "You're not going to be very good at it, first of all, because it takes a little bit of practice to get used to zero-G. Don't waste that time taking photos. Get your memories, look out those windows, and enjoy the whole experience of being weightless." Plus, given the price tag of these spaceflights, we're pretty sure that your operator will provide you with photos and videos of your journey anyway.

When you get into zero gravity, you might feel a little dizzy.

The body functions a bit differently when you remove gravity from the equation for a sustained period of time, and side effects may include dizziness and nausea. "You're going to feel full-headed because there's no longer gravity pulling fluid down into your legs," says Chiao. "And so all that fluid comes up into your torso, and you can feel it right away. It feels kind of like you're standing on your head."

But the good news is, on suborbital flights you might be able to avoid the worst of it. "The adrenaline and excitement are going to make you do OK at first, and by the time you might start feeling bad, it's time to strap back in and come back down," says Chiao.

If you’re spending a few days in space, be prepared for some bumps and bruises.

On a suborbital flight, you won't have a ton of time in space, so you won't really have to worry about acclimating to zero gravity. However, some private spaceflight companies are looking to send their clients up into orbit for longer stays and there are even talks of a space hotel within Voyager Station . If you're going to spend a few days or even a few weeks up in space, you're probably going to bump your head more than once, no matter how much you've trained for the experience.

"It's really funny watching rookie astronauts the first day or two up on a mission," says Parazynski. "We called them the bull in a china shop. They push off with full force and they crack their skull or bang their knee."

You’re also going to make a mess.

Doing routine tasks like brushing your teeth (you can't just spit your toothpaste into a sink), clipping your fingernails (you don't want them floating off into your space station), and going to the bathroom (have you ever thought about how to use a toilet without gravity?) are all very different experiences in weightlessness. Inevitably, you might have a few mishaps early on in your trip.

"Just sitting down for a meal, you put your fork down, and it's gone in 30 seconds," says Parazynski. "You may find it two days later in the cabin air cleaner because that's where the air currents have taken it." Luckily, a lost fork is an easy mess to clean up — and the situation can be prevented by tethering it down. Other messes are a different story.

"As far as using the restroom, that's what you need to pay attention to during your training. The toilet is not particularly simple and you have to be careful," says Chiao. (In case you were wondering, space toilets use airflow to guide things where they're supposed to go.) "But be prepared to make some messes," says Chiao. "And everybody has to clean up their own mess."

If you’re going to do a spacewalk, the stakes are much higher for you and your crew.

If you want to zip around space with a jetpack like George Clooney in "Gravity," sorry, but chances are that's not going to happen any time soon. Most private astronauts will be safely tucked inside their craft for the duration of their flight.

Unlike suborbital flights, future orbital flights with a spacewalk will require extensive training, given that spacewalks are inherently more dangerous than simply riding in a vessel. "If you're careless with your tethers and you float off into the void, there's not a whole lot anyone can come do for you," says Parazynski. It's possible that a crewmate may be able to head out to rescue you, but then you're endangering their life as well. "It's paramount for a spacewalker to think not just about their own health and well-being and their experience, but also that of their crewmates," he says.

If you’re in a capsule, be prepared for a bumpy landing.

While the only way up to space is by rocket, there are two ways to come back down: via a winged vehicle, like the space shuttle or Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, or a capsule, like Apollo, Soyuz, and Blue Origin's New Shepard. The experiences are quite different, as winged vehicles land like an airplane on a runway, whereas capsules descend beneath parachutes onto land or water. While both experience a range of G-forces during reentry, capsules have a bit of a rougher ride, particularly at the very end.

"When the parachute comes out, you can expect to get jostled around a fair amount, so that can be disorienting," says Chiao. "Then, whether you're hitting the water or the ground, you're gonna get a good bump. There are shock-absorbing mechanisms, of course, that make it not too big a deal. But on Soyuz, you smack the ground pretty darn hard. It was kind of surprising!"

It’ll be worth every penny.

Sure, it's going to cost a small fortune to go into space as a tourist — for now, that's somewhere in the ballpark of several hundred thousand dollars for a suborbital flight and millions of dollars for longer-duration orbital stays. But ask any astronaut, and they're sure to tell you it'll be worth the investment.

"What I would tell prospective astronauts is that it's going to change their lives forever," says Parazynski. "It's a perspective that can't be captured in emotion on film. Even in 3D IMAX, there's no way to capture the way it's going to make you feel, the connectedness you feel to planet Earth, and the awe you have when you look out into the universe."

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The Future of Space Tourism Is Now. Well, Not Quite.

From zero-pressure balloon trips to astronaut boot camps, reservations for getting off the planet — or pretending to — are skyrocketing. The prices, however, are still out of this world.

By Debra Kamin

Ilida Alvarez has dreamed of traveling to space since she was a child. But Ms. Alvarez, a legal-mediation firm owner, is afraid of flying, and she isn’t a billionaire — two facts that she was sure, until just a few weeks ago, would keep her fantasy as out of reach as the stars. She was wrong.

Ms. Alvarez, 46, and her husband, Rafael Landestoy, recently booked a flight on a 10-person pressurized capsule that — attached to a massive helium-filled balloon — will gently float to 100,000 feet while passengers sip champagne and recline in ergonomic chairs. The reservation required a $500 deposit; the flight itself will cost $50,000 and last six to 12 hours.

“I feel like it was tailor-made for the chickens like me who don’t want to get on a rocket,” said Ms. Alvarez, whose flight, organized by a company called World View , is scheduled to depart from the Grand Canyon in 2024.

Less than a year after Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson kicked off a commercial space race by blasting into the upper atmosphere within weeks of each other last summer, the global space tourism market is skyrocketing, with dozens of companies now offering reservations for everything from zero-pressure balloon trips to astronaut boot camps and simulated zero-gravity flights. But don’t don your spacesuit just yet. While the financial services company UBS estimates the space travel market will be worth $3 billion by 2030, the Federal Aviation Administration has yet to approve most out-of-this-world trips, and construction has not started on the first space hotel. And while access and options — not to mention launchpads — are burgeoning, space tourism remains astronomically expensive for most.

First, what counts as space travel?

Sixty miles (about 100 kilometers) above our heads lies the Kármán line, the widely accepted aeronautical boundary of the earth’s atmosphere. It’s the boundary used by the Féderátion Aéronautique Internationale, which certifies and controls global astronautical records. But many organizations in the United States, including the F.A.A. and NASA, define everything above 50 miles to be space.

Much of the attention has been focused on a trio of billionaire-led rocket companies: Mr. Bezos’ Blue Origin , whose passengers have included William Shatner; Mr. Branson’s Virgin Galactic , where tickets for a suborbital spaceflight start at $450,000; and Elon Musk’s SpaceX , which in September launched an all-civilian spaceflight, with no trained astronauts on board. Mr. Branson’s inaugural Virgin Galactic flight in 2021 reached about 53 miles, while Blue Origin flies above the 62-mile mark. Both are eclipsed by SpaceX, whose rockets charge far deeper in to the cosmos, reaching more than 120 miles above Earth.

Balloons, like those operated by World View, don’t go nearly as high. But even at their maximum altitude of 18 or 19 miles, operators say they float high enough to show travelers the curvature of the planet, and give them a chance to experience the overview effect — an intense perspective shift that many astronauts say kicks in when you view Earth from above.

Now, how to get there …

Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, which are both licensed for passenger space travel by the F.A.A., are open for ticket sales. (Blue Origin remains mum on pricing.) Both companies currently have hundreds or even thousands of earthlings on their wait lists for a whirl to the edge of space. SpaceX charges tens of millions of dollars for its further-reaching flights and is building a new facility in Texas that is currently under F.A.A. review.

Craig Curran is a major space enthusiast — he’s held a reserved seat on a Virgin Galactic flight since 2011 — and the owner of Deprez Travel in Rochester, N.Y. The travel agency has a special space travel arm, Galactic Experiences by Deprez , through which Mr. Curran sells everything from rocket launch tickets to astronaut training.

Sales in the space tourism space, Mr. Curran acknowledges, “are reasonably difficult to make,” and mostly come from peer-to-peer networking. “You can imagine that people who spend $450,000 to go to space probably operate in circles that are not the same as yours and mine,” he said.

Some of Mr. Curran’s most popular offerings include flights where you can experience the same stomach-dropping feeling of zero gravity that astronauts feel in space, which he arranges for clients via chartered, specialized Boeing 727s that are flown in parabolic arcs to mimic being in space. Operators including Zero G also offer the service; the cost is around $8,200.

You can almost count the number of completed space tourist launches on one hand — Blue Origin has had four; SpaceX, two. Virgin Galactic, meanwhile, on Thursday announced the launch of its commercial passenger service, previously scheduled for late 2022, was delayed until early 2023. Many of those on waiting lists are biding their time before blastoff by signing up for training. Axiom Space, which contracts with SpaceX, currently offers NASA-partnered training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center. Virgin Galactic, which already offers a “customized Future Astronaut Readiness program” at its Spaceport America facility in New Mexico, is also partnering with NASA to build a training program for private astronauts.

Would-be space tourists should not expect the rigor that NASA astronauts face. Training for Virgin Galactic’s three-hour trips is included in the cost of a ticket and lasts a handful of days; it includes pilot briefings and being “fitted for your bespoke Under Armour spacesuit and boots,” according to its website.

Not ready for a rocket? Balloon rides offer a less hair-raising celestial experience.

“We go to space at 12 miles an hour, which means that it’s very smooth and very gentle. You’re not rocketing away from earth,” said Jane Poynter, a co-founder and co-chief executive of Space Perspective , which is readying its own touristic balloon spaceship, Spaceship Neptune. If all goes according to plan, voyages are scheduled to begin departing from Florida in 2024, at a cost of $125,000 per person. That’s a fraction of the price tag for Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, but still more than double the average annual salary of an American worker.

Neither Space Perspective nor World View has the required approval yet from the F.A.A. to operate flights.

Unique implications

Whether a capsule or a rocket is your transport, the travel insurance company battleface launched a civilian space insurance plan in late 2021, a direct response, said chief executive Sasha Gainullin, to an increase in space tourism interest and infrastructure. Benefits include accidental death and permanent disablement in space and are valid for spaceflights on operators like SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, as well as on stratospheric balloon rides. They’ve had many inquiries, Mr. Gainullin said, but no purchases just yet.

“Right now it’s such high-net-worth individuals who are traveling to space, so they probably don’t need insurance,” he said. “But for quote-unquote regular travelers, I think we’ll see some takeups soon.”

And as the industry grows, so perhaps will space travel’s impact on the environment. Not only do rocket launches have immense carbon footprints, even some stratospheric balloon flights have potentially significant implications: World View’s balloons are powered by thousands of cubic meters of helium, which is a limited resource . But Ted Parson, a professor of environmental law at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that space travel’s environmental impact is still dwarfed by civil aviation. And because space travel is ultra-niche, he believes it’s likely to stay that way.

“Despite extensive projections, space tourism is likely to remain a tiny fraction of commercial space exploration,” he said. “It reminds me of tourism on Mt. Everest. It’s the indulgence of very rich people seeking a transcendent, once-in-a-lifetime experience, and the local environmental burden is intense.”

Stay a while?

In the future, space enthusiasts insist, travelers won’t be traveling to space just for the ride. They’ll want to stay a while. Orbital Assembly Corporation, a manufacturing company whose goal is to colonize space, is currently building the world’s first space hotels — two ring-shaped properties that will orbit Earth, called Pioneer Station and Voyager Station. The company, quite optimistically, projects an opening date of 2025 for Pioneer Station, with a capacity of 28 guests. The design for the larger Voyager Station , which they say will open in 2027, promises villas and suites, as well as a gym, restaurant and bar. Both provide the ultimate luxury: simulated gravity. Axiom Space , a space infrastructure company, is currently building the world’s first private space station; plans include Philippe Starck-designed accommodations for travelers to spend the night.

Joshua Bush, chief executive of travel agency Avenue Two Travel , has sold a handful of seats on upcoming Virgin Galactic flights to customers. The market for space travel (and the sky-high prices that come with it), he believes, will evolve much like civilian air travel did.

“In the beginning of the 20th century, only very affluent people could afford to fly,” he said. “Just as we have Spirit and Southwest Airlines today, there will be some sort of equivalent of that in space travel, too. Hopefully within my lifetime.”

52 Places for a Changed World

The 2022 list highlights places around the globe where travelers can be part of the solution.

Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram , Twitter and Facebook . And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places for a Changed World for 2022.

What’s Up in Space and Astronomy

Keep track of things going on in our solar system and all around the universe..

Never miss an eclipse, a meteor shower, a rocket launch or any other 2024 event  that’s out of this world with  our space and astronomy calendar .

Scientists may have discovered a major flaw in their understanding of dark energy, a mysterious cosmic force . That could be good news for the fate of the universe.

A new set of computer simulations, which take into account the effects of stars moving past our solar system, has effectively made it harder to predict Earth’s future and reconstruct its past.

Dante Lauretta, the planetary scientist who led the OSIRIS-REx mission to retrieve a handful of space dust , discusses his next final frontier.

A nova named T Coronae Borealis lit up the night about 80 years ago. Astronomers say it’s expected to put on another show  in the coming months.

Is Pluto a planet? And what is a planet, anyway? Test your knowledge here .

Why go to space?

Executive Summary

Space enthusiasm can be baffling to the uninitiated.

Why are some nerds so enamored with space exploration? Why should society spend any resources to go there? Why are billionaires jockeying to realize their visions for space development?

In this research in focus piece, CGO Senior Research Fellow Eli Dourado explores the many ways space investments improve our quality of life and allow us to innovate in ways that would be impossible without space. 

According to Dourado, “We must continue to invest in space if we want to flourish as a society and as a species.” 

He breaks down important space investments into four categories: 

Improving daily life on Earth

Protecting and preserving democracy.

• Enriching science and research

Satisfying humanity’s need for a frontier

This forward-thinking piece details the essential role space plays in both maintaining and elevating our quality of life.

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Space enthusiasm can be baffling to the uninitiated. Why are some nerds so enamored with space? Why should society spend any resources to go there? Why are billionaires jockeying to realize their visions for space development? Why do we give NASA over $20 billion per year, and the Space Force nearly as much? Why should we do any of this if we still have problems on Earth?

Imagine a switch that turned off American space capabilities.

If you flip it, there’s no more NASA. Space Force and SpaceX disappear. All the weather and climate data that National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) collects from space goes offline. The National Reconnaissance Office is suddenly blind.

What would happen? The quality of life on Earth would rapidly degrade. Democracies would find themselves increasingly threatened by authoritarian powers. We would lose vital scientific resources. Our institutions would experience a slow decline.

We must continue to invest in space if we want to flourish as a society and as a species.

Space already has a surprising impact on modern life. This is particularly true for satellites. Global satellite communication systems are used by the broadcast industry, but also for critical safety-of-life functions aboard planes and ships, which sometimes travel out of range of other communication methods. Workers on board oil platforms use satellites to connect to civilization. As SpaceX’s Starlink broadband satellite megaconstellation continues to grow, millions of rural households may soon get access to speedy Internet service for the first time. 1 “Home,” Starlink, https://www.starlink.com .

It’s not just communication. Consider the value that satellite positioning adds. If you are on board a plane traveling through storm clouds or if you have cargo on a ship crossing the Pacific, the Global Positioning System (GPS) keeps you and your goods on track and safe. Without GPS, a lot of your smartphone’s functions would go away. Forget about the entire business model of Uber and Lyft. Say goodbye to in-dash navigation.

An underrated way that satellites improve our lives is through accurate weather forecasting. As weatherman Al Roker notes in his book The Storm of the Century , the death toll was high during the 1900 Galveston hurricane in part because there was no official warning, a decision fueled by distrust of Cuban weather forecasts passed along via telegram, concern about falsely alarming the public, and the director of the US Weather Bureau’s desire to closely control information.

With today’s reliable weather forecasts, Galveston could have prepared for the storm and saved thousands of lives. Today’s forecasts in the US are powered by NOAA’s continually improving Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) system. Although some of the improvement in today’s forecasts are attributable to gains in computing, NOAA officials say “no change has had as big of an impact on weather prediction as the invention and improvement of environmental satellites.” 2 Derek Hanson, James Peronto, and Douglas Hilderbrand, “NOAA’s Eyes in the Sky – After Five Decades of Weather Forecasting with Environmental Satellites, What Do Future Satellites Promise for Meteorologists and Society?,” World Meteorological Association, November 12, 2015, https://public.wmo.int/en/resources/bulletin/noaa%E2%80%99s-eyes-sky-after-five-decades-of-weather-forecasting-environmental .

Beyond satellites, space technology has contributed to our quality of life on Earth in countless ways. NASA’s technology transfer program has generated thousands of spinoffs across dozens of areas. 3 “Home” NASA Spinoff, https://spinoff.nasa.gov/ .

To highlight just one area where NASA research has generated new possibilities and commercial opportunities on Earth, consider vertical farms, which are now delivering fresh produce to grocery stores all over the country while economizing on soil, land, pesticides, and water. Being able to grow food in orbit is essential if we want to support large populations living there, but we will have to do it with limited space, water, and supporting mass.

To meet this challenge, NASA funded research to mature next-generation aeroponic growing techniques. 4 “Aeroponics,” in Wikipedia , June 9, 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aeroponics&oldid=1092342468 . NASA also contributed to vertical farming by pioneering LED growing systems and the “light recipes” that enable them to produce edible plant mass as efficiently as possible. 5 “LED Systems Target Plant Growth,” 2010, NASA Spinoff, https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2010/cg_1.html . Beginning in 2002, the agency even successfully tested these growing systems onboard the International Space Station. 6 Biomass Production System (BPS) Fact Sheet , June 2002, NASA, https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/background/facts/bps.html .

The commercial space industry is also on the cusp of providing new benefits to human beings on Earth. Gravity is one of the four known fundamental forces. The ability to operate in orbital microgravity is like having an off switch for one of the laws of physics. This capability is so fundamental that it would be shocking if it had no applications.

It turns out that some articles—certain pharmaceuticals, carbon nanotubes, and silicon wafers used in semiconductor manufacturing—can only be manufactured or can be manufactured with better tolerances in zero gravity. 7 J. M. Afford, G.R. Mason, and D.A. Feikema, Formation of Carbon Nanotubes in a Microgravity Environment , NASA Glenn Research Center, https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20010074067/downloads/20010074067.pdf .

The low cost per kg of SpaceX’s Starship rocket could make space manufacturing at scale viable for the first time. Varda is a startup that is offering zero-gravity manufacturing as a service. 8 “Home,” Varda Space Industries, https://varda.com/ .

Perhaps the first commercial product that will be manufactured in space for use on Earth will be ZBLAN optical fiber. ZBLAN is a fancy fluoride glass with a theoretical attenuation 20 times lower than the silica fiber optic cables we use today. Today’s undersea cables address the attenuation problem by placing a repeater every 100–150 km along the cable, at a cost of $1 million per repeater. 9 Ioana Cozmuta, Solenn Cozic, Marcel Poulain, Samuel Poulain, Jose R. L. Martini, “Breaking the Silica Ceiling: ZBLAN-Based Opportunities for Photonics Applications,” Proc. SPIE 11276, Optical Components and Materials XVII , 112760R (March 3, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2542350 .

ZBLAN fibers would require fewer repeaters, cutting the cost of undersea cables, which connect our portion of the Internet to Europe and Asia, by tens of millions of dollars. The catch is that manufacturing ZBLAN in gravity causes crystals to form in the glass. 10 Anthony Torres, Jeff Ganley, and Arup Maji, “Understanding the Role of Gravity in the Crystallization Suppression of ZBLAN Glass,” Journal of Materials Science 49, no. 22 (November 1, 2014): 7770–81, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-014-8488-5 . Fibers manufactured in zero gravity feature much less crystallization and therefore less attenuation. 11 Dave Dooling, “ZBLAN Continues to Show Promise,” NASA Science , February 5, 1998, https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1998/msad05feb98_1 . These better fiber optics will improve long-distance connectivity and lower the cost of our information infrastructure.

Space investments enable democratic countries to continue to defend themselves against space-capable authoritarian regimes like China and Russia. The military importance of occupying the high ground has been understood for millennia, and space is the ultimate high ground.

From space, we can survey every battlefield and peer behind enemy lines. Satellite imagery from both commercial and government programs is being used extensively in Ukraine to track Russian movements. To penetrate the clouds, some of these satellites use synthetic aperture an imaging technique that uses microwaves instead of visible light. Unlike normal photographs, it works at night and in overcast skies. 12 “Spies’ Night Eyes: Once-Restricted Tech Is Helping Spot Russian Troops, Chinese Missile Sites and Raging Wildfires,” Grid News, https://www.grid.news/story/science/2022/05/23/spies-night-eyes-once-secret-tech-is-helping-spot-russian-troops-chinese-missiles-and-raging-wildfires/ .

Surveillance satellites are far from a static endeavor. Recent spy satellites operated by the US National Reconnaissance Office operate in eccentric orbits that enable them to briefly get close to their targets—for example, the satellite known as USA-245 orbits with an apogee of 1,010 km and a perigee of 276 km. 13 “USA-245,” in Wikipedia , October 7, 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=USA-245&oldid=1048722641 .

In other words, it swoops in close to the Earth to get a high-resolution photo. Meanwhile, MIT Technology Review reported in 2020 that this satellite is being stalked by a Russian satellite. 14 Neel V. Patel, “A Russian Satellite Is Probably Stalking a US Spy Satellite in Orbit,” MIT Technology Review , February 12, 2020, https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/03/349146/a-russian-satellite-is-probably-stalking-a-us-spy-satellite-in-orbit/ . By spying on our satellites, the Russians can get a good sense of what we are looking at.

America’s ballistic missile early warning system is also largely based in space. The main layer of satellites that performs this function is called the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS). 15 Space-Based Infrared System,” in Wikipedia , March 5, 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Space-Based_Infrared_System&oldid=1075364386 .

Satellites that are part of SBIRS operate in both geosynchronous and highly-elliptical orbits, while other satellites in complementary systems operate in low-Earth orbit. These latter satellites are important for tracking the flight of any launched missiles, including the decoys released by modern Chinese and Russian missiles that make shooting them down harder.

SBIRS is getting close to the end of its intended service period, and may soon be replaced by what’s known as the Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared System.

America’s missile defense capabilities are for now focused on short- and intermediate-range missiles. We are still far from being able to protect the country from advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles, and maneuverable hypersonic weapons could make this challenge even more severe. Yet any level of missile defense is predicated on space-based missile tracking, so if we want to increase our capabilities, we need to continue to invest in space technology.

So far, no country has declared any space-based weapons, but they may yet be coming. One concept studied by the US Air Force is “rods from God.” 16 “Rods from God,” Popular Science (blog), June 2, 2004, https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-06/rods-god/ . The idea is to deorbit a large tungsten rod from space and steer it into a target, which it would strike with a speed of Mach 8–10. Since kinetic energy is a function of mass and velocity squared, these heavy and fast rods would pack quite a punch for a purely kinetic weapon, being able to penetrate today’s nuclear bunkers.

Unlike conventional weapons, these hypervelocity rods would be almost impossible to intercept, could be launched with minimal risk of detection, and would take only a few minutes to hit their target, assuming a sufficient number of rod-launching satellites in orbit.

Since it is clear that warfare of the future will be ever more reliant on space, the major powers have all invested in anti-satellite weapons. The US, China, Russia, and India have all demonstrated the ability to shoot down their own satellites.

If a serious war broke out between space-faring nations, a lot of satellites would quickly get disabled. This could lead to reduced reconnaissance capabilities, loss of positioning services, and shorter missile warning times. Because attacks on satellites generate debris, there could be a chain reaction where one satellite’s debris takes out other satellites. Access to low Earth orbit could be temporarily disabled.

To protect against anti-satellite weapons, we must invest in new, “proliferated” architectures. Today’s satellites are juicy military targets. But if we used large constellations instead of single spacecraft to provide critical services, our capabilities would be more likely to survive first contact with the enemy.

In addition, we must invest in more maneuverable, evasive satellites as well as satellites that are capable of operating in ultra-low Earth orbit (between 200 to 300 km of altitude), where debris is swept away by drag in a matter of days and images have the sharpest resolution.

Enriching science

Space investment is worthwhile for pure scientific knowledge, even in the absence of any immediate practical benefit. If you love science, if you believe in science, if you think science is in any way beneficial, you should embrace space investments. We would not be as scientifically advanced as we are today if not for space.

If you care about Earth’s climate, I have news for you: Our best data on how the climate is changing comes from space

“We have this GOES [Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite] series of satellites [that] dates back to the 1970s,” says NOAA scientist Jordan Gerth. “And so, by continuing to watch geostationary satellites, we’re now getting to the point where we can have a very robust, nearly 50-year look at how the atmosphere is changing.” 17 Chelsea Gohd, “Satellites Are Critical to Fighting the Climate Crisis, Scientists Say,” Space.com, March 4, 2022, https://www.space.com/ipcc-report-climate-change-space-satellites-goest .

Newer, high-resolution imaging and Earth sensing satellites help us understand and control for effects like urban heat islands and land-use changes.

It’s not just today’s Earth that space can help us to understand. By modeling the Solar System with empirical data collected from both astronomical observatories and space probes, we can help understand Earth’s deep past. For example, we know that when Earth first formed, it was too hot to sustain oceans. Scientists don’t know for certain where the oceans came from.

Isaac Newton speculated that they were made from the tails of comets. For a while, the leading theory has been that the oceans formed from hydrated minerals deep in the Earth’s mantle. But recent evidence suggests that some or all of the water that forms the ocean was brought via collisions with asteroids or planetesimals, perhaps even in the collision that may have resulted in the ejection of the moon from Earth’s mass. 18 Gerrit Budde, Christoph Burkhardt, and Thorsten Kleine, “Molybdenum Isotopic Evidence for the Late Accretion of Outer Solar System Material to Earth,” Nature Astronomy 3, no. 8 (August 2019): 736–41, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-019-0779-y .

Measurements from the NASA Dawn spacecraft tell us that as much as 30 percent of the mass of Ceres, the largest known asteroid, is water. As astrophysicist Martin Elvis notes in his book Asteroids , it would take only five Ceres-like asteroids to bring all of the ocean’s water to Earth. 19 Martin Elvis, Asteroids: How Love, Fear, and Greed Will Determine Our Future in Space,  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press (2021). The next time you are standing on a seashore gazing out over the water, consider that all you see may have originated in space.

While astronomy can be carried out on Earth, we can get a better picture of the universe using space telescopes. The Hubble Space Telescope, for example, has not only captured stunning images of other galaxies, it has provided our most accurate estimate of the age of the universe so far. 20 Karl Hille, ed., “Hubble Space Telescope Images,”NASA.gov, August 5, 2020, http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/multimedia/index.html .

The James Webb Space Telescope, which is on the cusp of beginning operations, will capture photons traveling from the first stars and undoubtedly make many new discoveries. As I argued in Works in Progress , the holy grail of astronomy is a lunar telescope array, one that benefits from being located outside of our atmosphere while also being able to combine signals from multiple instruments like the arrays on Earth do. 21 Eli Dourado, “Seeing on the Far Side of the Moon,” Works in Progress (blog), October 19, 2020, https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/seeing-on-the-far-side-of-the-moon/ .

Such an array could prove or disprove theories of dark matter while also searching exoplanets for signs of life.

Speaking of life, it is possible that life on Earth originated out there. We know that microbial life appeared on Earth almost immediately after the end of what’s known as the Late Heavy Bombardment, a period when a disproportionally large number of asteroids collided with the Solar System’s inner planets. One of these asteroids may have brought with it the ingredients for life or even live single-celled organisms.

Additional evidence for this, aside from the suspicious timing, comes from the fact that interstellar space is littered with a wide variety of organic molecules. 22 “List of Interstellar and Circumstellar Molecules,” in Wikipedia , June 6, 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_interstellar_and_circumstellar_molecules&oldid=1091796864 . In 2003, glycine, an amino acid , was found in interstellar space. 23 Yi-Jehng Kuan, Steven B. Charnley, Hui-Chun Huang, Wei-LingTseng, and Zbigniew Kisiel, “Interstellar Glycine,” The Astrophysical Journal 593, no. 2 (August 20, 2003): 848, https://doi.org/10.1086/375637 . On June 6, 2022, Japan announced that it had detected more than 20 amino acids in an asteroid sample. 24 “Amino Acids Found in Asteroid Samples Collected by Japan’s Hayabusa2 Probe,” Kyodo News , June 6, 2022, https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2022/06/9a7dbced6c3a-amino-acids-found-in-asteroid-samples-collected-by-hayabusa2-probe.html . This was the first asteroid sample larger than a few micrograms of dust, so it means the first time we really looked, amino acids were there.

The biggest molecules we have found in the interstellar medium are buckminsterfullerene, C 60 and its relative C 70 fullerene. These soccer and rugby ball-shaped molecules are rare on Earth.

Buckminsterfullerene was first theorized in the late 1960s and first generated in 1984. They have been detected in both neutral and ionized forms by the Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes, respectively. Their signatures are not detectable from Earth-bound observatories because they are blocked by moisture in the atmosphere.

“Our confirmation of C 60 + shows just how complex astrochemistry can get, even in the lowest density, most strongly ultraviolet-irradiated environments in the Galaxy,” said astrochemist Martin Cordiner, part of the team that used Hubble to detect ionized buckminsterfullerene. 25 Bill Steigerwald, “Hubble Finds Tiny ‘Electric Soccer Balls’ in Space,” NASA.gov, June 18, 2019, http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/soccer-balls-in-space .

And finally, space is the only place you can do physics with really high energies. The universe is home to unbelievably extreme conditions—in black holes, neutron stars, exploding supernovae, and the relativistically moving jets that occur when matter near the edge of a supermassive black hole is flung out into the cosmos at high fractions of the speed of light. 26 “Astrophysical Jet,” in Wikipedia , June 10, 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Astrophysical_jet&oldid=1092482062 . High-energy astrophysics is thriving due to improvements in ground- and space-based instruments that let us observe matter at the extreme densities and other conditions that only occur in space. If we ever “solve” physics, it will be in large part because of continued investment in advanced space observatories.

From fundamental laws of physics to the origin of the universe to the origin of life to the near-inevitability of non-terrestrial life—there is plenty of science left to be done in space.

The final reason for continued investment in space—and for me, the clincher—is the need for a frontier. Human institutions develop rigidity and rot over time, and they must be renewed by striking out into new terrain and rebuilding. It’s even better if the new outpost of civilization is fraught with peril.

Our greatest advancements have come when the stakes are high and lives are on the line. There is a clarity of purpose when settlers face a life-or-death struggle. While I am grateful that modern life is safe and cushy, our society has lost the urgency that comes from a challenge to survive.

Some have suggested that there is no need to colonize Mars when Earth’s oceans, Antarctica, or even the Utah desert are unexplored and desolate. They are much closer. Yet even if these underexploited terrestrial resources are far cheaper to get to, that is part of the problem. We are not going to send scientists to Antarctica and withhold life-saving interventions from them if they become necessary, and consequently such a mission would not really embody any hope of providing institutional renewal.

On Mars, help might be two years away. The first Martian settlers will likely rely on resupply missions from Earth every two years, but if something goes wrong in between shipments, there’s no way to get emergency parts or medical supplies. The Martians will have email contact with Earth, but for the most part, they will be on their own. They will need a survival paranoia—an overriding attention to the problems that could snuff out the life of their fragile colony. In many cases, it will be innovate or die.

The ability to commit at will to an innovate-or-die outcome is something we have lost in Earthly life. We still face crises that test our mettle from time to time. We innovated our way through World War II and, to a lesser degree, the COVID crisis forced the commercialization of mRNA technology. 27 Eli Dourado, “Crises are Times of Non-Complacency,” The Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University, May 11, 2021, https://www.thecgo.org/benchmark/crises-are-times-of-non-complacency/ . But these crises come stochastically, and not because we choose them—nor would we ever choose them. Only in human space exploration can we credibly (given the high value we place on human life) put people in such precarious vulnerability for years on end.

The frontier of space is different from any Earthly endeavor also in its physical extent. Once we conquer Mars, there is the asteroid belt. The moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Maybe we can terraform Venus. If someday we have mastered the resources of the Solar System, we may have the technology to go beyond it.

In contrast, the pseudo-frontiers of Earth, such as the ocean, are one-and-done. Once we master the ocean (which we should do in any case), there’s no obvious next step.

If a genuine frontier is indispensable for the health of human institutions, then there is no choice but to expand outwards. Perhaps we could delay our expansion into space for a short time while we build new cities in the Utah desert, but at some point, very soon, we would run out of expansionary challenges on Earth. Then our only option would be to take a leap into space.

It’s very unlikely that our species, on a civilizational timescale, will regret going into space. The resources of the Milky Way are unbelievably vast. It’s extreme parochialism to think Earth is all that matters. But even in the shorter run, the frontier of space will have salutary effects on our culture and rate of innovation.

It’s time to take our place in the cosmos.

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11 Pros and Cons of Space Exploration

We’ve put boots on the moon. There are plans in the works to put boots on Mars in this generation. Small spacecraft, such as Voyager 1, have traveled more than 138 AU from our planet since launching, with the goal of discovering what interstellar space may have in store. The pros and cons of space exploration let us explore the final frontier that we currently know. It allows us to see what the universe offers beyond on our planet.

Exploring space is also inherently dangerous. Not only is space a vacuum environment that does not support human life without protection, but we do not know what may be lying in wait for us out there. The conflicts we have here at home could be minuscule compared to the conflicts that may be waiting for us in the stars.

Here are some of the key points to think about when looking at this debate.

What Are the Pros of Space Exploration?

1. It provides humanity with hope for the future. Humans are currently confined to a single planet and facilities that orbit it. Should something happen that changes the environment of the planet, it would have the potential of wiping out the entire human species. A large asteroid, the star going nova, or even a shift in the planetary climate could devastate humanity. Space exploration gives us the chance to begin colonizing other locations, giving us hope that our species can survive.

2. It increases our knowledge. There are many secrets lying in wait to be discovered in space. Asteroids or planets may have new materials that we don’t have on Earth. We can discover more about how the universe was created and why it exists in its current state. These discoveries could then help to improve life on our own planet as we seek out others to explore.

3. It drives innovations in numerous fields. According to the 100-Year Starship Program, the technologies that were created for and made possible because of space exploration have helped to shape, permeate, and are an integral part of who we are today. To travel the stars, we must be able to store large quantities of energy. We must develop closed-loop support systems. Advances in agriculture, computing, artificial intelligence, and manufacturing must happen as well. The framework needed to explore space improves the socioeconomic frameworks we have at home.

4. It can be something that we do at home. According to information provided by the Goddard Space Flight Center, there are over 2,200 active satellites in orbit around Earth right now. One of those satellites is the Hubble Space Telescope. This technology has allowed us to explore our solar system from right here at home. In 2017, this telescope discovered that a dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt, name 2007 OR10, has a moon that was previously unknown.

5. True space exploration requires international cooperation. The foundation of how we explore space was created in 1966 with the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies. It’s easier to call it the “Outer Space Treaty.” By 2017, there were 105 countries who had signed onto the treaty and another 24 who have signed, but not yet ratified it. This treaty forbids placing weapons of mass destruction into orbit, installing them on the moon, or any other location in space. The treaty also disallows any nation from claiming a celestial resource as a national appropriation.

6. The political structures of managing space exploration are already in place. According to Wired, a multistate body that is supported by 193 nations approves the orbits of items that are currently in space. It is called the International Telecommunication Union and it has been in place since the 1960s. With their protocols helping to create a push deeper into space, exploration could become a future way of life.

What Are the Cons of Space Exploration?

1. It could allow other civilizations to know about our own. The idea of finding alien life has been a concept explored in the medium of fiction for more than a century. There is something comforting about the idea that humans are not alone in the universe as a species. That knowledge could come with a price. If an advanced civilization encountered one of the gold-plated records on the Voyager crafts and decided they wanted our planetary resources, we might be unable to stop them. There is sometimes more danger in being part of a community than living by yourself without any neighbors.

2. Exploring space is a costly venture. In 1973, the total cost of the Apollo program was reported to the US Congress as being $25.4 billion. The total cost of the space shuttle program, when adjusted for inflation, was $196 billion. Each mission that was flown came at a cost of $450 million. The Mars One mission budget to bring just 4 people to Mars is over $6 billion. Even as technologies advance, the costs of exploring space are far from cheap.

3. We must consume resources to get people or equipment into space. There are high fuel costs required to launch anything into orbit. Using the US Space Shuttle program as an example, the total mass of all propellants was over 3.8 million pounds. Fossil fuels are refined to create these fuels, used in the manufacturing processes to create the equipment or vehicles, and this creates an environmental cost which must be paid at some point.

4. Exploring space means we’re leaving a lot of litter behind. According to information provided by NASA, there are more than 500,000 items of debris that are currently being tracked as they orbit our planet. This space junk is litter that is flying at a speed of over 17,500 miles per hour, which means an impact could do great damage. Now expand the amount of space junk that exists to other planets or solar systems and the amount of litter we would leave behind is quite enormous.

5. No agreements are in place for rich resources that may exist in space. The current treaties which govern space exploration forbid governments from appropriating territories in space. The amount of materials in a single asteroid could be more than $100 billion. Planetary Resources has evaluated an asteroid called “Davida” to be worth $100 trillion or more. Although the US has brought back hundreds of pounds of rocks from the moon without litigation, there would be a greater fight in grabbing resources that are in the hundreds of trillions of dollars.

The pros and cons of space exploration highlight the current rifts we have in society. Governments are restricted and private organizations with the most resources have the chance to make huge profits. If those profits can be funneled toward a mutual good, then humanity can do more than just survive. It could thrive.

Life on Other Planets: What is Life and What Does It Need?

One day, perhaps in the not-too-distant future, a faraway planet could yield hints that it might host some form of life – but surrender its secrets reluctantly.

Our space telescopes might detect a mixture of gases in its atmosphere that resembles our own. Computer models would offer predictions about the planet’s life-bearing potential. Experts would debate whether the evidence made a strong case for the presence of life, or try to find still more evidence to support such a groundbreaking interpretation.

“We are in the beginning of a golden era right now,” said Ravi Kopparapu, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who studies habitable planets. “For the first time in the history of civilization we might be able to answer the question: Is there life beyond Earth?”

For exoplanets – planets around other stars – that era opens with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Instruments aboard the spacecraft are detecting the composition of atmospheres on exoplanets. As the power of telescopes increases in the years ahead, future advanced instruments could capture possible signs of life – “biosignatures” – from a planet light-years away.

Within our solar system, the Perseverance rover on Mars is gathering rock samples for eventual return to Earth, so scientists can probe them for signs of life. And the coming Europa Clipper mission will visit an icy moon of Jupiter. Its goal: to determine whether conditions on that moon would allow life to thrive in its global ocean, buried beneath a global ice shell.

But any hints of life beyond Earth would come with another big question: How certain could any scientific conclusions really be?

“The challenge is deciding what is life – when to say, ‘I found it,’” said Laurie Barge of the Origins and Habitability Lab at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

With so much unknown about what even constitutes a “sign of life,” astrobiologists are working on a new framework to understand the strength of the evidence. A sample framework, proposed in 2021, includes a scale ranging from 1 to 7, with hints of other life at level 1, to increasingly substantial evidence, all the way to certainty of life elsewhere at level 7. This framework, which is being discussed and revised, acknowledges that scientific exploration in the search for life is a twisted, winding road, rather than a straightforward path.

And identifying definitive signs remains difficult enough for “life as we know it.” Even more uncertain would be finding evidence of life as we don’t know it, made of unfamiliar molecular combinations or based on a solvent other than water.

Still, as the search for life begins in earnest, among the planets in our own solar system as well as far distant systems known only by their light, NASA scientists and their partners around the world have some ideas that serve as starting points.

Life That Evolves

First, there’s NASA’s less-than-formal, non-binding but still helpful working definition of life: “A self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution.” Charles Darwin famously described evolution by natural selection, with characteristics preserved across generations leading to changes in organisms over time.

Derived in the 1990s by a NASA exobiology working group, the definition is not used to design missions or research projects. It does help to set expectations, and to focus debate on the critical issues around another thorny question: When does non-life become life?

“Biology is chemistry with history,” says Gerald Joyce, one of the members of the working group that helped create the NASA definition and now a research professor at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California.

That means history recorded by the chemistry itself – in our case, inscribed in our DNA, which encodes genetic data that can be translated into the structures and physical processes that make up our bodies.

The DNA record must be robust, complex, self-replicating and open-ended, Joyce suggests, to endure and adapt over billions of years.

“That would be a smoking gun: evidence for information having been recorded in molecules,” Joyce said.

Such a molecule from another world in our solar system, whether DNA, RNA or something else, might turn up in a sample from Mars, say from the Mars sample-return mission now being planned by NASA.

Or it might be found among the “ocean worlds” in the outer solar system – Jupiter’s moon, Europa, Saturn’s Enceladus or one of the other moons of gas giants that hide vast oceans beneath shells of ice.

We can’t obtain samples of such information-bearing molecules from planets beyond our solar system, since they are so far away that it would take tens of thousands of years to travel there even in the fastest spaceships ever built. Instead, we’ll have to rely on remote detection of potential biosignatures, measuring the types and quantities of gases in exoplanet atmospheres to try to determine whether they were generated by life-forms. That likely will require deeper knowledge of what life needs to get its start – and to persist long enough to be detected.

A Place Where Life Emerges

There is no true consensus on a list of requirements for life, whether in our solar system or the stars beyond. But Joyce, who researches life’s origin and development, suggests a few likely “must-haves.”

Topping the list is liquid water. Despite a broad spectrum of environmental conditions inhabited by living things on Earth, all life on the planet seems to require it. Liquid water provides a medium for the chemical components of life to persist over time and come together for reactions, in a way that air or the surface of a rock don’t do as well.

Also essential: an energy source, both for chemical reactions that produce structures and to create “order” against the universal tendency toward “disorder” – also known as entropy.

An imbalance in atmospheric gases also might offer a tell-tale sign of the presence of life.

“In Earth’s atmosphere, oxygen and methane are highly reactive with each other,” Kopparapu said. Left to themselves, they would quickly cancel each other out.

“They should not be seen together,” he said. “So why are we seeing methane, why are we seeing oxygen? Something must be constantly replenishing these compounds.”

On Earth, that “something” is life, pumping more of each into the atmosphere and keeping it out of balance. Such an imbalance, in these compounds or others, could be detected on a distant exoplanet, suggesting the presence of a living biosphere. But scientists also will have to rule out geological processes like volcanic or hydrothermal activity that could generate molecules that we might otherwise associate with life.

Careful laboratory work and precision modeling of possible exoplanet atmospheres will be needed to tell the difference.

Going Through Changes

Barge also places high on the list the idea of “gradients,” or changes that occur over time and distance, like wet to dry, hot to cold, and many other possible environments. Gradients create places for energy to go, changing along the way and generating molecules or chemical systems that later might be incorporated into life-forms.

Plate tectonics on Earth, and the cycling of gases like carbon dioxide – buried beneath Earth’s crust by subduction, perhaps, or released back into the atmosphere by volcanoes – represent one kind of gradient.

Barge’s specialty, the chemistry of hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor billions of years ago, is another. It’s one possible pathway to have created a kind of primitive metabolism – the translation of organic compounds into energy – as a potential precursor to true life-forms.

“What gradients existed before life?” she asks. “If life depends so much on gradients, could the origin of life also have benefited from these gradients?”

Clearer mapping of possible pathways to life ultimately could inform the design of future space telescopes, tasked with parsing the gases in the atmospheres of potentially habitable exoplanets.

“If we want to be sure it’s coming from biology, we have to not only look for gases; we have to look at how it’s being emitted from the planet, if it’s emitted in the right quantities, in the right way,” Kopparapu said. “With future telescopes, we’ll be more confident because they’ll be designed to look for life on other planets.”

Search for Life

This article is one in a series about how NASA is searching for life in the cosmos.

Beginnings: Life on Our World and Others

The Hunt for Life on Mars – and Elsewhere in the Solar System

'Life' in the Lab

Searching for Signs of Intelligent Life: Technosignatures

Finding Life Beyond Earth: What Comes Next?

Related Terms

• Terrestrial Exoplanets
• The Search for Life

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Black Holes

History of Space Travel

Learn about the history of humans traveling into space.

The first earthling to orbit our planet was just two years old, plucked from the streets of Moscow barely more than a week before her historic launch. Her name was Laika. She was a terrier mutt and by all accounts a good dog. Her 1957 flight paved the way for space exploration back when scientists didn’t know if spaceflight was lethal for living things.

Humans are explorers. Since before the dawn of civilization, we’ve been lured over the horizon to find food or more space, to make a profit, or just to see what’s beyond those trees or mountains or oceans. Our ability to explore reached new heights—literally—in the last hundred years. Airplanes shortened distances, simplified travel, and showed us Earth from a new perspective. By the middle of the last century, we aimed even higher.

Our first steps into space began as a race between the United States and the former Soviet Union, rivals in a global struggle for power. Laika was followed into orbit four years later by the first human, Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin. With Earth orbit achieved, we turned our sights on the moon. The United States landed two astronauts on its stark surface in 1969, and five more manned missions followed. The U.S.’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched probes to study the solar system. Manned space stations began glittering in the sky. NASA developed reusable spacecraft—space shuttle orbiters—to ferry astronauts and satellites to orbit. Space-travel technology had advanced light-years in just three decades. Gagarin had to parachute from his spaceship after reentry from orbit. The space shuttle leaves orbit at 16,465 miles an hour (26,498 kilometers an hour) and glides to a stop on a runway without using an engine.

Space travel is nothing like in the movies. Getting from A to B requires complex calculations involving inertia and gravity—literally, rocket science—to "slingshot" from planet to planet (or moon) across the solar system. The Voyager mission of the 1970s took advantage of a rare alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune to shave off nearly 20 years of travel time. Space is also dangerous. More than 20 astronauts have died doing their job.

That hasn’t stopped people from signing up and blasting off. NASA’s shuttle program has ended, but private companies are readying their own space programs. A company called Planetary Resources plans to send robot astronauts to the Asteroid Belt to mine for precious metals. Another company named SpaceX is hoping to land civilian astronauts on Mars—the next human step into the solar system—in 20 years. NASA and other civilian companies are planning their own Mars missions. Maybe you’ll be a member of one? Don’t forget to bring your dog.

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How to travel to space, Earth’s hottest new destination

Go boldly, but pack lightly.

The space just above our planet is booming . Off-world trips are rapidly increasing: 42 of the 51 commercial astronauts recognized by the Federal Aviation Administration left Earth within the past two years.

The FAA predicts their ranks will balloon in the next decade — which may also bring new destinations, such as a rotating space hotel whose construction, planners claim, will begin in 2026 — and some experts have expressed optimism that relatively affordable space travel could be possible by the middle of this century.

For now, though, costs remain enormous. A $450,000 ticket reserves a spot on Virgin Galactic’s space plane, which flies 50 miles above Earth — six times a passenger plane’s cruising altitude. Expect to pay even more to go higher. Blue Origin’s 11-minute journey by rocket, which reportedly cost more than $1 million, shoots above the 62-miles-high Kármán line, the generally agreed-upon boundary between Earth and space. Others spend days in space. In September 2021, four civilian Americans orbited for three days aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule. No word on how much it cost them.

For $55 million , Axiom Space will send astronauts via a SpaceX rocket to the International Space Station, a laboratory that circles Earth once every 90 minutes. For two weeks last April, the ISS’s first Axiom crew members worked in the lab while forgoing proper showers.

The New Space Age

Space “ought to be on everybody’s bucket list,” said former NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría , the Axiom Space vice president who commanded the April mission. “We’d be the first to admit that it’s not quite democratic yet, because it’s still pretty expensive, but we’ll get there.” The Houston-based company has already begun to build a segment of what will be a private space station.

Here’s how to pack and prep for Earth’s hottest new destination.

Getting ready

Training takes days to months. Axiom Space crew members spent at least 700 hours learning new tasks: how to run experiments, dock a transport vehicle to the ISS and respond to fires.

They also practiced on a centrifuge, the rapidly spinning machine that simulates the extreme acceleration of space travel. You don’t need to be in tiptop shape — floating in microgravity is effortless, López-Alegría said — but you will have to endure intense G-force as you exit and reenter the atmosphere.

You should be mentally prepared for a unique psychological experience called the overview effect , which occurs when people witness their home planet from above. “When we came back to Earth, I could not stop crying,” said aerospace PhD student Sara Sabry, founder of the Deep Space Initiative , who traveled to space last August via Blue Origin (whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post).

Aboard SpaceX, you’ll wear spacesuits: sleek, pressurized white outfits with black-visored helmets. On Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin flights, the fit is closer to a jet pilot’s, with gear that’s not designed for loss of pressure. Sabry said her suit was comfy and custom-tailored. Under Armour makes the clothes — underwear, jumpsuit and zip-up boots — for Virgin Galactic, which founder Richard Branson wore in his July 2021 journey to space’s edge.

Going boldly, packing lightly

Space may be the one place you can fly without packing an ID or passport . “When we walk onto the vehicle, we’re wearing our spacesuits and pretty much nothing else,” López-Alegría said.

Expect to leave the rest of your worldly possessions on Earth, with a few exceptions. Sabry packed three pounds of mementos in a bag, including photographs and a single dirty sock belonging to her niece. On Inspiration4, the Earth-orbiting SpaceX mission, one astronaut brought his ukulele to serenade his teammates in the capsule.

Snapping selfies

Don’t plan on filling your Instagram feed with your space travels to make your friends jealous. You won’t have your phone.

On Sabry’s Blue Origin flight, a few people had a GoPro strapped to their wrists to capture video — especially of the three minutes of weightlessness.

The ISS provides cameras to use. Astronauts can browse the internet on the space station, but posting requires help. Pictures snapped in space are beamed to Earth, López-Alegría said, where someone on the ground uploads them to social media.

Eating and drinking

There wasn’t any snacking on the Blue Origin craft, Sabry said, and the up-and-down trips don’t leave time for in-flight meals. Hot food isn’t always an option with other carriers, either. The first course served on the orbiting Dragon capsule was cold pizza, though SpaceX founder Elon Musk apologized for the unheated pie and promised future astronauts would have a food warmer.

Why NASA and other space agencies want to return to the moon

That’s how the crew heats dinner on the ISS, which boasts a varied menu: about 200 options , mostly freeze-dried or thermostabilized. Tortillas replace bread to avoid crumbs; what’s just a tabletop mess on Earth becomes a hazard when bits can float into electronics or eyeballs. There’s no soda or beer because, according to NASA, carbonation bubbles would be unpleasantly routed through the digestive system without gravity to help an astronaut burp.

Staying clean-ish

Space is like backcountry camping. Both lack laundry machines and require some hygienic compromises. When astronauts must bathe, they squeeze packets of soap and water on their skin and apply rinseless shampoo to their hair. Toilets on the ISS and Dragon Capsule collect waste via suction hoses and fans. On the space station, urine is recycled into drinkable water . Toothbrushes and paste are the same, but without sinks, there’s no spitting.

Falling asleep

You’ll roll out sleeping bags in the SpaceX spacecraft or as an Axiom crew member on the ISS. Vehicles are temperature-regulated because the outside of the ISS can swing from minus-250 in the shadows to 250 degrees in the sun. Still, some modules, or sections, of the ISS can be chillier than others: López-Alegría said he donned long underwear to be cozier when drifting off in space.

Illustrations by Elizabeth von Oehsen. Editing by Amanda Finnegan.

There’s No Way to Make Space Travel Good for Planet Earth Right Now

S paceX has never been reluctant to brag, especially when it comes to its celebrated Falcon 9 rocket. Since 2010, as a company toteboard shows, 217 Falcon 9s have flown, with 61 launches in 2022 alone, making it the workhorse of the current global space fleet. So what’s not to like? Plenty, actually—at least if you care about the environment.

The Falcon 9 uses a fuel mixture of liquid oxygen and simple kerosene, and while the oxygen does not do any harm to the skies, the black soot created by the burning kerosene is injected directly into the stratosphere—the layer of air ranging from 12 km (7.5 mi.) to 50 km (31 mi.) above the Earth. There the soot lingers for up to five years , absorbing heat, contributing to climate change, and damaging the ozone layer, which exposes the planet to dangerous ultraviolet (UV) radiation. And SpaceX is not remotely alone.

According to a study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), global rocket launches (of which there were 180 last year, the study notes) inject about 1,000 tons of soot into the upper atmosphere per year. That will only get worse, NOAA warns, as the industry continues to expand. “The bottom line is projected increases in rocket launches could expose people in the Northern Hemisphere [where most rocket launches take place] to increased harmful UV radiation,” environmental scientist Christopher Maloney, the study’s lead author, said in a statement .

By themselves, rocket launches are small contributors to overall atmospheric pollutants. The aviation industry burns 100 times more fuel each year than all of the rockets launched globally combined. But there is a key atmospheric difference: airplanes fly in the troposphere about 11 km (6.6 mi.) above the ground. Soot precipitates quickly from this range compared to stratospheric soot which sticks around much longer. Indeed, according to the NOAA report, a single passenger aboard a rocket is responsible for 100 times more climate-changing pollution than a passenger aboard an airplane.

Not only does all of this warm the planet and damage the ozone, the NOAA scientists warn, but the change in temperatures can also slow subtropical jet streams , worsening summer monsoons in Africa and India. “We need to learn more about the potential impact of hydrocarbon-burning engines on the stratosphere and on the climate at the surface of the Earth,” said Maloney.

A version of this story also appears in the Climate is Everything newsletter. To sign up, click here .

The type of fuel used in the rockets can make a difference. SpaceX’s massive, 33-engine Starship spacecraft , for example, uses methane in place of kerosene. While methane is a powerful greenhouse gas by itself, it does burn cleaner than kerosene, putting out less black soot. Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket is cleaner still, burning liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, and producing only water vapor as an exhaust—water vapor in the upper atmosphere still traps and retains heat, but not nearly as much as black soot, methane, or carbon dioxide do.

None of this means that the private rocket industry or growing space powers like China, India, and the United Arab Emirates—to say nothing of the U.S.—will be slowing down their launch schedules or becoming less pollution-intensive any time soon. Indeed, NASA’s new Space Launch System moon rocket, which first launched in November 2022, is an especially dirty machine. While it uses a liquid oxygen-hydrogen mix in its four main engines, its two attached solid fuel engines, which account for most of the vehicle’s thrust, produce the ozone-damaging pollutant chlorine.

The thriving space industry is typically seen as a boon for both the economy and for human exploration—and it is. But the launching of a monster rocket—with monster exhaust—like SpaceX’s anticipated Starship is a reminder that there can be too much of a good thing. If we keep increasing not just the size of rockets but the number of launches, we do so at a price; and as with so many other things, it is the climate that pays.

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Meet the NASA astronauts who will be first to fly on Boeing's Starliner spaceship

Two NASA astronauts are set to become the first in history to launch into space aboard a Boeing spaceship.

Astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams are slated to pilot the company’s Starliner capsule on its first crewed test flight to the International Space Station on May 6.

They arrived Thursday at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where both will remain until the launch.

“This is where the rubber meets the road, where we are going to leave this planet, and that is pretty darn cool,” Williams said in a post-arrival news briefing.

The long-delayed mission will be crucial in demonstrating that Boeing’s spacecraft can safely ferry a crew to and from low-Earth orbit. If successful, it will be a key step forward for the company, which eventually plans to join the ranks of SpaceX in conducting routine flights to and from the space station for NASA.

The test flight will be closely watched, because software glitches  and issues with the Starliner’s fuel valves have already pushed the mission years behind schedule. Boeing’s separate aviation arm has also been under intense scrutiny after a panel ble w out on one of its 737 Max 9 planes midflight earlier this year, raising questions about quality-control practices at the company.

Wilmore said the delays leading up to this launch were necessary to ensure that the Starliner capsule was prepared to carry people into space.

“We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t ready,” he said. “We are ready. The spacecraft’s ready, and the teams are ready.”

Officials from NASA, Boeing and United Launch Alliance, which manufactures the Atlas V rocket on which the Starliner capsule will launch, met Thursday and signed off on the May 6 liftoff attempt.

Then on Friday, the astronauts completed a full launch-day dress rehearsal. They will now spend the next week working on last-minute preparations and training exercises, according to NASA .

If the crew successfully reaches the International Space Station, the astronauts will spend about a week there before returning to Earth.

Wilmore and Williams are both veteran astronauts and former test pilots in the U.S. Navy. NASA selected the pair in 2022 for Boeing’s first crewed test flight.

Wilmore, the mission’s commander, has completed two previous spaceflights, logging 178 days in space. A Tennessee native, he piloted the space shuttle Atlantis to the space station in 2009, and also launched to the orbiting outpost aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2014 as a member of the space station’s Expedition 41 crew.

Williams, the mission’s pilot, previously completed two stints aboard the International Space Station, totaling 322 days in space.

She grew up in Needham, Massachusetts, and first flew to the ISS on the space shuttle Discovery and remained there for about six months. In 2012, Williams returned to space, this time in a Russian-built Soyuz spacecraft. Her second stay on the space station lasted roughly four months.

Denise Chow is a reporter for NBC News Science focused on general science and climate change.

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China launches a new crew to its space station, advancing toward lunar mission

John Ruwitch

A Long March rocket carrying a crew of Chinese astronauts in a Shenzhou-18 spaceship lifts off at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China on Thursday. Andy Wong/AP hide caption

A Long March rocket carrying a crew of Chinese astronauts in a Shenzhou-18 spaceship lifts off at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China on Thursday.

JIUQUAN SATELLITE LAUNCH CENTER, China – China launched three astronauts into space on Thursday night, bound for the country's homemade space station where they will live and work for half a year.

The Shenzhou-18 launch is the latest in a series rotating taikonauts, as China calls its space explorers (the Chinese word for "space" is taikong ), through multi-month missions in orbit to conduct experiments and amass experience for eventual trips to the Moon and beyond.

The crewed missions are just one facet of an ambitious and fast-moving space program that international experts and officials worry could pose a threat to U.S. space superiority and military effectiveness on Earth.

NASA astronaut Tom Stafford, famed for U.S.-Soviet orbital handshake, has died at 93

Thursday's launch coincides with a visit to China by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who made stops in Shanghai and Beijing to advocate for a level playing field for U.S. businesses and press Beijing to stop supporting Russia's war effort against Ukraine.

From left, astronauts for China's Shenzhou-18 space mission Li Guangsu, Ye Guangfu and Li Cong wave during a departure ceremony before boarding a bus to take them to the Shenzhou-18 spacecraft at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi desert in northwest China on Thursday. Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

From left, astronauts for China's Shenzhou-18 space mission Li Guangsu, Ye Guangfu and Li Cong wave during a departure ceremony before boarding a bus to take them to the Shenzhou-18 spacecraft at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi desert in northwest China on Thursday.

At one minute before 9 p.m., Shenzhou-18's Long March 2F rocket lit up the night and tore skyward to cheers from onlookers at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in remote western China.

A day earlier, China unveiled the crew — commander Ye Guangfu, Li Cong and Li Guangsu. All are former fighter pilots, all born in the 1980s.

Third time's the charm: SpaceX's massive Starship reaches space

"I am thoroughly looking forward to the coming half-year of life in space. Embarking on this space expedition for the motherland is my greatest happiness," Li Guangsu told reporters the day before the flight.

The three taikonauts were not the only ones headed to the space station on Thursday. Several zebrafish were also slated to be part of the mission, according to the China Manned Space Agency. The crew will conduct more than 90 scientific experiments in orbit, including one that will try to establish a closed aquatic ecosystem with the minnows and a type of algae.

Well, hello, Voyager 1! The venerable spacecraft is once again making sense

"We hope that through this research we can understand the interaction between these plants and animals in space, so that in the future when we understand it we can establish a large-scale ecosystem with animals, plants and microorganisms ... and create a systematic loop and possibly a closed system so that people can live in space for long periods," said Zhang Wei, a professor of technology and engineering at the Center for Space Utilization at the Chinese Academy of Science.

The Shenzhou-18 crew will also add protective shielding to exposed pipes, wires and other systems on the outside of the space station, officials said. The previous crew discovered damage from space debris to a solar panel wire that CMSA says affected the power supply. They conducted space walks to fix it, but future damage from space debris is possible.

China's space program has come a long way in a relatively short period time, according to international experts. That has raised persistent concerns in the U.S., most recently from the commander of the U.S. Space Command, Gen. Stephen Whiting.

On Wednesday, Whiting told reporters that China had tripled its number of intelligence gathering satellites over the past six years, and he called the country's space advances "cause for concern."

Whiting said China's strides in space were helping it improve the effectiveness of its military on Earth. He also noted that China is developing a range of counter-space weapons — devices that can disable or disrupt other countries' space assets.

Indeed, China's space program is an outgrowth of the People's Liberation Army, with the crewed portion still directly under the military. Even many of the firms that comprise a growing commercial space sector have links to state-owned enterprises in the military industrial complex.

Still, some experts say calling competition between China and the United States a new space race is of debatable value.

"To me, it looks more like a very long endurance, no-end-in-sight, marathon. And the marathon we are running here in space is really against ourselves," says Svetla Ben-Itzhak, a space security expert at Johns Hopkins University.

She notes that while China has been making fast strides, the U.S. retains clear advantages in space — including operating close to 70% of all space assets, including satellites.

That leadership position, coupled with a growing dependence on space and a lack of transparency on the part of China, has fueled a security dilemma, she says.

U.S. law bans NASA from using government money to cooperate with China, and Beijing has been excluded from the International Space Station — part of the reason it developed its own space station.

China's endemic secrecy was apparent during a government-organized visit to the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center for a small group of journalists.

Foreign reporters were housed in a town three hours by bus from the space center, while Chinese journalists stayed onsite. Trip details and schedules were withheld until the last minute. And plainclothes guards at the launch center kept a close eye on reporters to prevent them from wandering more than a few yards away from approved stops — or, at one location, aiming cameras at a camouflaged truck.

Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut, who went into space in 2003 aboard Shenzhou-5, says China would welcome more cooperation with the United States.

"China has always wanted to cooperate with the United States," he says. "In space exploration, and especially crewed space exploration, international cooperation is a major trend...[and] it's a common need of humanity."

Zhang Wei, the scientist, says China will keep plowing ahead regardless of worries about its program from abroad.

"That's not important. We just need to do our best. We don't really need to worry about whatever others think of us," he says.

• space exploration

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft finally phones home after 5 months of no contact

On Saturday, April 5, Voyager 1 finally "phoned home" and updated its NASA operating team about its health.

NASA's interstellar explorer Voyager 1 is finally communicating with ground control in an understandable way again. On Saturday (April 20), Voyager 1 updated ground control about its health status for the first time in 5 months. While the Voyager 1 spacecraft still isn't sending valid science data back to Earth, it is now returning usable information about the health and operating status of its onboard engineering systems. 

Thirty-five years after its launch in 1977, Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to leave the solar system and enter interstellar space . It was followed out of our cosmic quarters by its space-faring sibling, Voyager 2 , six years later in 2018. Voyager 2, thankfully, is still operational and communicating well with Earth. 

The two spacecraft remain the only human-made objects exploring space beyond the influence of the sun. However, on Nov. 14, 2023, after 11 years of exploring interstellar space and while sitting a staggering 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, Voyager 1's binary code — computer language composed of 0s and 1s that it uses to communicate with its flight team at NASA — stopped making sense.

Related: We finally know why NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft stopped communicating — scientists are working on a fix

In March, NASA's Voyager 1 operating team sent a digital "poke" to the spacecraft, prompting its flight data subsystem (FDS) to send a full memory readout back home.

This memory dump revealed to scientists and engineers that the "glitch" is the result of a corrupted code contained on a single chip representing around 3% of the FDS memory. The loss of this code rendered Voyager 1's science and engineering data unusable.

The NASA team can't physically repair or replace this chip, of course, but what they can do is remotely place the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory. Though no single section of the memory is large enough to hold this code entirely, the team can slice it into sections and store these chunks separately. To do this, they will also have to adjust the relevant storage sections to ensure the addition of this corrupted code won't cause those areas to stop operating individually, or working together as a whole. In addition to this, NASA staff will also have to ensure any references to the corrupted code's location are updated.

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On April 18, 2024, the team began sending the code to its new location in the FDS memory. This was a painstaking process, as a radio signal takes 22.5 hours to traverse the distance between Earth and Voyager 1, and it then takes another 22.5 hours to get a signal back from the craft. 

By Saturday (April 20), however, the team confirmed their modification had worked. For the first time in five months, the scientists were able to communicate with Voyager 1 and check its health. Over the next few weeks, the team will work on adjusting the rest of the FDS software and aim to recover the regions of the system that are responsible for packaging and returning vital science data from beyond the limits of the solar system.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.’s Open University. Follow him on Twitter @sciencef1rst.

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• Robb62 'V'ger must contact the creator. Reply
• Holy HannaH! Couldn't help but think that "repair" sounded extremely similar to the mechanics of DNA and the evolution of life. Reply
• Torbjorn Larsson *Applause* indeed, thanks to the Voyager teams for the hard work! Reply
• SpaceSpinner I notice that the article says that it has been in space for 35 years. Either I have gone back in time 10 years, or their AI is off by 10 years. V-*ger has been captured! Reply

Admin said: On Saturday, April 5, Voyager 1 finally "phoned home" and updated its NASA operating team about its health. The interstellar explorer is back in touch after five months of sending back nonsense data. NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft finally phones home after 5 months of no contact : Read more

evw said: I'm incredibly grateful for the persistence and dedication of the Voyagers' teams and for the amazing accomplishments that have kept these two spacecrafts operational so many years beyond their expected lifetimes. V-1 was launched when I was 25 years young; I was nearly delirious with joy. Exploring the physical universe captivated my attention while I was in elementary school and has kept me mesmerized since. I'm very emotional writing this note, thinking about what amounts to a miracle of technology and longevity in my eyes. BRAVO!!! THANK YOU EVERYONE PAST & PRESENT!!!

• EBairead I presume it's Fortran. Well done all. Reply

SpaceSpinner said: I notice that the article says that it has been in space for 35 years. Either I have gone back in time 10 years, or their AI is off by 10 years. V-*ger has been captured!

EBairead said: I presume it's Fortran. Well done all.

• View All 13 Comments

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Why the ‘three-shoe’ rule will save you space in your suitcase when travelling with hand luggage

• Karim Camara
• Published : 17:11, 28 Apr 2024
• Updated : 15:03, 29 Apr 2024
• Published : Invalid Date,

A TRAVEL expert has revealed a simple rule that can save you space when travelling.

Flying with a budget airline can be tricky when it comes to hand luggage rules.

Passengers flying with Ryanair or EasyJet must follow strict hand luggage rules or risk getting caught out with a hefty sum if not packed correctly.

Gabriel Miller, a travel expert , has come up with an effective rule that could help you stay within the limit of what you are allowed to take.

Travellers need to focus on their trip itinerary and plan while packing.

Focusing on what can stay at home and what goes in your suitcase is challenging even for experienced packers.

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However, shoes are always the largest and sometimes heaviest item in the suitcase, according to Gabriel.

Therefore, he recommends following the "three-shoe rule" which limits how much you take.

He said: "The concept is simple yet effective: limit yourself to packing no more than three types of shoes for any trip."

This will save holidaygoers plenty of space and also encourage thoughtful packing.

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It’s about bringing what you need, not what you might use Gabriel Miller

Three sets of shoes will cover all your travel activities from days spent hiking or exploring a new city to a dinner party at night.

The travel expert recommends breaking down what shoes you'll need to take into three categories.

For example, travellers might want to take a pair of shoes comfortable for walking but also stylish so they can used for multiple activities.

Whereas, the second pair needs to be more luxurious for any formal events or fancy dinners.

He told the Express : "It’s about bringing what you need, not what you might use."

Gabriel suggests taking a pair of leaders for men or a sleek pair of heeled sandals for women.

Packing a pair of sandals will take up the least space in your suitcase but is necessary if you're visiting a hot country.

The travel expert added: "Choose options that are easy to clean, quick to dry, and comfortable enough for prolonged wear."

It comes after an organising pro revealed the five packing hacks you wouldn't have heard of when going on holiday.

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Why the ‘three-shoe’ rule will save you space in your suitcase when travelling with hand luggage

• Karim Camara
• Published : 12:11 ET, Apr 28 2024
• Updated : 10:05 ET, Apr 29 2024
• Published : Invalid Date,

A TRAVEL expert has revealed a simple rule that can save you space when travelling.

Flying with a budget airline can be tricky when it comes to hand luggage rules.

Passengers flying with Ryanair or EasyJet must follow strict hand luggage rules or risk getting caught out with a hefty sum if not packed correctly.

Gabriel Miller, a travel expert , has come up with an effective rule that could help you stay within the limit of what you are allowed to take.

Travellers need to focus on their trip itinerary and plan while packing.

Focusing on what can stay at home and what goes in your suitcase is challenging even for experienced packers.

However, shoes are always the largest and sometimes heaviest item in the suitcase, according to Gabriel.

Therefore, he recommends following the "three-shoe rule" which limits how much you take.

He said: "The concept is simple yet effective: limit yourself to packing no more than three types of shoes for any trip."

This will save holidaygoers plenty of space and also encourage thoughtful packing.

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It’s about bringing what you need, not what you might use Gabriel Miller

Three sets of shoes will cover all your travel activities from days spent hiking or exploring a new city to a dinner party at night.

The travel expert recommends breaking down what shoes you'll need to take into three categories.

For example, travellers might want to take a pair of shoes comfortable for walking but also stylish so they can used for multiple activities.

Whereas, the second pair needs to be more luxurious for any formal events or fancy dinners.

He told the Express : "It’s about bringing what you need, not what you might use."

Gabriel suggests taking a pair of leaders for men or a sleek pair of heeled sandals for women.

Packing a pair of sandals will take up the least space in your suitcase but is necessary if you're visiting a hot country.

The travel expert added: "Choose options that are easy to clean, quick to dry, and comfortable enough for prolonged wear."

It comes after an organising pro revealed the five packing hacks you wouldn't have heard of when going on holiday.

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10 Best Vacuum Storage Bags of 2024

Our top picks will increase your closet and suitcase space in minutes.

We've been independently researching and testing products for over 120 years. If you buy through our links, we may earn a commission. Learn more about our review process.

Our top picks:

Best Overall

Spacesaver vacuum storage bags.

GONGSHI Vacuum Storage Bags

Best for Travel

Ziploc space bag.

Top-Seller on Amazon

Cozy essential vacuum storage bags.

Best Variety Pack

Hibag vacuum storage bags.

Best for Bedding

Hefty shrink-pak vacuum storage bags.

Best for Stacking

Storage master jumbo vacuum storage bags.

Best Extra-Large

Vacwel vacuum storage bags.

Best Hanging

Taili hanging vacuum storage bags.

The best vacuum storage bags make the most of your space by removing the air inside and sealing it tight. Many use a vacuum or hand pump to suck out all the air, while some travel-friendly space bags can actually be hand-pressed shut. Because of this, they're great for packing out-of-season clothes, bedding and more into small spaces like under your bed or inside your suitcase .

After consulting our in-house experts and scouring online reviews, we've rounded up the best vacuum storage bags to shop on Amazon, starting at just $8 (with fast, free shipping to boot!).

The original Spacesaver vacuum storage bags are our top pick for heavy-duty storage needs where damage protection is imperative, like cross-country moves and travel. You can use either the included hand pump or your vacuum to reduce volume by up to 80%, according to the brand. Choose from small to jumbo sizes and variety packs for all your storage needs.

Reviewers appreciate its ease of use and sturdy plastic . "I'm moving all the way across the country and was stressed out wondering how much of my clothing I could actually take with me. These Space Saver bags are a life saver!" wrote one five-star reviewer . "They are so easy to pack, zip and vacuum out the air. One of my best purchases ever here on Amazon (and I've made thousands)."

Stow bulky bedding, sweaters, pillows and more with these space-saving storage bags. You can either use the included hand pump or a standard vacuum cleaner to compress each bag and reduce volume by up to 80%, according to the brand. For under $20, this pack comes with four bag sizes to store different items: the smallest size fits six to eight sweaters while the largest fits a queen-sized bedding set.

The triple-sealed valve is designed to keep bags airtight so your items stay condensed, and the double-layered material is designed to be puncture- and scratch-resistant, making it more durable against damage. "They're strong and sturdy," one Amazon reviewer said . "They have great sizes and storage space, and they hold the seal (some for a year now)."

Skip the checked luggage line at the airport with these travel-friendly storage bags. Forté named the Ziploc Space Bag a long-standing Lab favorite. There's no need for a pump or a vacuum to take the air out — simply fill each with up to five pounds of clothing or bedding, seal it with the Ziploc slider and fold to press out the air. It also costs under $10 for a pack of two.

Since they don't require any bulky equipment, these bags are a great option for users on the go. The brand claims the bags reduce the volume of clothing and bedding by up to 75%. They're also waterproof and airtight per the brand, meaning they should help protect your items from damage caused by travel and storage.

Boasting more than 38,000 five-star reviews and counting, Amazon's #1 best-selling space saver bags claim to shrink the size of your items by up to 80%. This variety pack includes 20 bags, making them great for anyone moving houses or with lots of vacuum storage needs. The pack includes standard vacuum-sealable bags as well as travel bags that can be rolled to press out air — no pump required.

Waterproof and reusable (purported by the brand), the bags' valves and seals are designed to prevent expansion and keep moisture and debris out. "The quality of these bags is outstanding," one online shopper wrote . "I feel confident storing my clothing, bedding and other textiles knowing they are safe and well-preserved."

Whether you need to increase your under-bed storage space or condense your clothes on the go, this pack offers the most variety with six different-sized bags for all your needs . The standard bags range from pouch-sized bags for lingerie and T-shirts to extra-large bags for bedding sets and pillows . Each waterproof bag has a handy line to show you where to stop filling them, making it more intuitive to pack than other options on our list.

While it can be sealed with the included hand pump or a vacuum, we love that the travel bags can be rolled to seal out excess air sans tool if needed. "These were a game changer during our move," an Amazon reviewer wrote . "The sizes vary drastically, accommodating many different types of items from quilts to pillows as well as clothes."

Hefty is known for its durable garbage bags and freezer bags, but the brand also has a line of high-rated vacuum storage bags. Including three large and three extra-large sizes, Hefty's Shrink-Pak bags claim to be waterproof and reusable season after season, so you don't have to worry about moisture, dust or bugs ruining your items. Plus, you can simply press the air out with your hands and seal.

We love how the extra large bags have a zipper on the long side rather than the shorter top, making it easier to pack bedding supplies like pillows and comforters. Shoppers agreed, with one writing : "We just went through a very long, drawn-out move and the shrink bags have been a true lifesaver! We were able to put lots of our clothes, towels and blankets in storage while we shopped for a new house. When we finally started unpacking, everything looked exactly the way it did when it was packed!"

Outfitted with a stylish plaid print, we wouldn't mind keeping these space bags out in plain sight. And it's not just for aesthetics. Their unique woven texture provides a bit of grip to their exterior, helping them to stay in place better while stacked. The bags come in four sizes and packs of six to 26, making them great for small organization projects and large undertakings.

Plus, they compress with a vacuum or its included pump. Reviewers appreciate the variety of sizes and ease of use, too. "I love these sealable storage bags!" one shopper wrote . "The quality is fantastic, very well-made and sturdy. I really like the assortment of colors and sizes, too, so much so that I ordered a second box!"

If you need to store cumbersome items like king-sized duvets, foam cushions or dog beds , Vacwel's XXL bags offer an impressive storage capacity of 47 by 35 inches . Featuring a nylon lining for extra durability, the brand claims these bags are waterproof and protect against dirt, bugs and dust. They even come with sticker labels to easily identify stored items.

"These bags are durable and got the job done," an Amazon shopper added . "I was able to vacuum seal large comforters and sheets! Very surprised at how many bedding items that I was able to put in the bags." Note that a pump is not included, so you'll need a vacuum handy to seal these bags.

Protect your out-of-season garments and make room for new pieces with these clever hanging storage bags on Amazon. You can stash up to five pieces of clothing inside each, including coats, jackets and suits . Just place one included hanger on each rotating ring, zip it up and vacuum all the air out. The vertical storage design keeps your clothes clean and organized until you're ready to wear them again.

"I get immense joy out of packing away my winter clothes in the Taili hanging bags," an Amazon reviewer said . "[It] shrink wraps everything into compact boards ... It was very easy and effective to use."

How we chose the best vacuum storage bags

With so many different options on the market, it can be difficult to determine which vacuum storage bags are worth buying. To help you find the right pick for your needs, we consulted our experts in the GH Institute Cleaning Lab and vetted customer reviews to bring you a range of vacuum storage bags that suit a variety of purposes.

How do you choose the best vacuum storage bags?

Choosing the best vacuum storage bags depends on your individual needs — do you just need to store a few seasonal sweaters, or pack up your whole house for a move? According to, the size and dimensions can help you figure out which options are right for you.

" They should be large enough to hold multiple items and be durable enough to use from year to year ," Forté says. For those who don't own a vacuum (or have one readily accessible), opt for a bag that can be rolled to compress or can be hand pumped.

What do you put in a space bag?

While you might want to use your vacuum storage bag to compress bulky items like winter coats and duvets, Forté warns against vacuum-sealing down-filled items . Instead, she recommends only compressing them halfway.

"Otherwise, you risk crushing and breaking the down feathers and they may then not be as lofty or insulate as well," Forté says. Additionally, be sure not to store wet items, or you risk creating mold and causing long-term damage.

How long can you store items in a vacuum storage bag?

Forté recommends using storage bags for short-term and seasonal storage . "Keep items in them too long, and you risk permanently setting creases or crushing and flattening items that are supposed to be lofty and puffy," Forte says. For best results, be sure to check the recommended storage time on your bag's instructions.

Why trust Good Housekeeping?

Associate Commerce Editor Lauren Gruber put together this list of the best vacuum storage bag picks, based on insights and recommendations from Carolyn Forté .

Forté brings more than 40 years of experience as a consumer products expert to her role as executive director of the Good Housekeeping Institute 's Home Care and Cleaning Lab. Using deep analytical testing and writing expertise in appliances, cleaning, textiles and organizational products, she oversees all of GH's cleaning and home care product testing.

Lauren is a Brooklyn-based journalist and Associate Editor at Hearst. You can find her previous work at Entertainment Tonight , Shop TODAY , USA Today , Self Magazine , L’Officiel USA , V Magazine, and Modern Luxury Media . 

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Alien: Romulus

While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe. While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe. While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.

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