NASA's real-life "Don't Look Up"

ENTERTAINING and a bit worrying at the same time, the movie Don’t Look Up defied critics and broke Netflix’s record for the most hours viewed in a single week on the global TV platform at the start of the year.

It tells the story of astronomy graduate Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and her PhD adviser, Dr Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), who discover a “planet killer” comet that will impact Earth in just over six months.

The movie’s rogue comet could be anything – climate change, new viruses, global war, attempts to overthrow a legitimate democracy – and the scientists are essentially alone
with their knowledge, ignored and gas-lighted by society, and ridiculed by the media.

The film is both amusing and terrifying in equal measure, conveying uncomfortable cold truths and demonstrating how hard it is to break through prevailing norms.

Above all, it perfectly captures humanity’s apparent capacity for denying the blindingly obvious, the absurdity of an economic system which puts profit above survival of life on earth, a crass political class, and a superficial mainstream media more concerned with show biz stars and ratings.

Don’t Look Up is most definitely a movie for our time. And do hang around to watch all the credits as there are some interesting bits right at the very end! 

In real life, the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) - a state-of-the-art asteroid detection system operated by the University of Hawaiʻi (UH) Institute for Astronomy (IfA) for the agency’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) - reached a new milestone in February by becoming the first survey capable of searching the entire dark sky every 24 hours for near-Earth objects (NEOs) that could pose a future impact hazard to Earth.

Now involving four telescopes, ATLAS has expanded its reach to the southern hemisphere from the two existing northern-hemisphere telescopes on Haleakalā and Maunaloa in Hawai’i to include two additional observatories in South Africa and Chile.

“An important part of planetary defence is finding asteroids before they find us, so if necessary, we can get them before they get us” said Kelly Fast, NEO Observations Program Manager for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

“With the addition of these two telescopes, ATLAS is now capable of searching the entire dark sky every 24 hours, making it an important asset for NASA’s continuous effort to find, track, and monitor NEOs.”

Each of the four ATLAS telescopes can image a swath of sky 100 times larger than the full Moon in a single exposure. The completion of the two final telescopes, which are located at Sutherland Observing Station in South Africa and El Sauce Observatory in Chile, enable ATLAS to observe the night sky when it is daytime in Hawai‘i.

To date, the ATLAS system has discovered more than 700 near-Earth asteroids and 66 comets, along with detection of 2019 MO and 2018 LA, two very small asteroids that actually impacted Earth.

The system is specially designed to detect objects that approach very close to Earth - closer than the distance to the Moon, about 240,000 miles away. On 22 January, ATLAS-Sutherland in South Africa discovered its first NEO, 2022 BK, a 100 m asteroid that poses no threat to Earth.

The addition of the new observatories to the ATLAS system comes at a time when the agency’s Planetary Defense efforts are on the rise. 

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) - the world’s first full-scale mission to test a technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid impacts - launched last November will deflect a known asteroid, which is not a threat to Earth, to slightly change the asteroid’s motion in a way that can be accurately measured using ground-based telescopes.

Additionally, work on the agency’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor space telescope (NEO Surveyor) is underway after receiving authorisation to move forward into Preliminary Design. 

Once complete, the infrared space telescope will expedite the agency’s ability to discover and characterise most of the potentially hazardous NEOs, including those that may approach Earth from the daytime sky.

Rocketing climate change

 

THE prospect of large-scale space tourism has mostly been the stuff of science fiction until this summer when, after years of effort and millions of dollars in investment, the exploits of businessmen Sir Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos bore fruit.

The billionaire blast-offs in July delivered a high-octane start to 21st century tourism and Virgin Galactic, founded in 2004, is reporting a waiting list of 8,000 for its space jaunts.

While the carefully choreographed and publicity-rich suborbital hops of Branson and Bezos caught the public imagination, the flights also drew attention to a potential downside of space tourism.

Taking place shortly before publication of the Sixth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the flights were a perfect juxtaposition for social media commentators - a couple of billionaires joy-riding in space on the back of climate change delivering unprecedented levels of extreme weather.

The IPCC report summarises a worrying scientific consensus: climate change is happening, humans are causing it, even our best efforts cannot prevent negative effects, and reducing emissions now is essential to preventing catastrophic consequences.

And so the environmental impact of space tourism flights, whether in the fuels themselves or the carbon footprint of support services and travel to launch sites, rightly came under the spotlight.

Space technologies and activities are foundational to climate science. Satellite-based data monitoring plays a significant part in tracking and building up the big picture around anthropogenic climate change. In addition, technology transfer from space-led developments can support a faster transition to cleaner energy, as was the case for photovoltaic panels which laid foundations for the solar industry.

The challenge facing space entrepreneurs, scientists and engineers is to continue to provide answers while not contributing to the problem. Though carbon emissions from rockets are relatively small compared with the aircraft industry they are increasing at nearly six percent a year.

Emissions from rockets affect the upper atmosphere most, which means they can remain in situ for two to three years. And even water injected into the upper atmosphere - where it can form clouds - has the potential to add to global warming.

Bezos boasts his Blue Origin rockets are greener than Branson’s VSS Unity. The Blue Engine 3 (BE-3) uses liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants. VSS Unity uses a hybrid propellant comprised of a solid carbon-based fuel, hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene (HTPB), and a liquid oxidiser, nitrous oxide (laughing gas). In contrast, Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon F9 rockets use the more traditional liquid kerosene and liquid oxygen.

Large quantities of water vapour are produced by burning the BE-3 propellant, while combustion of both the VSS Unity and Falcon fuels produces carbon dioxide, soot and some water vapour. The nitrogen-based oxidiser used by VSS Unity also generates nitrogen oxides, compounds that contribute to air pollution.

Virgin Galactic anticipates it will offer 400 spaceflights each year. Blue Origin has yet to confirm numbers and SpaceX, though mainly flying commercial customers, has announced plans to send Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa on a private trip around the Moon and back.

Globally, rocket launches wouldn’t need to increase by much from the 100 or so performed each year at present to induce harmful effects that are ‘competitive’ with other sources.

There are currently no regulations around rocket emissions and, given the challenges facing every other human activity, this must change. While millionaires are queuing to buy their tickets to ride, the time for the space industry and regulatory bodies to act is now.

This Editorial was first published in ROOM Space Journal (#29), Autumn 2021.