The Devotion of Resources Towards Space Exploration

Introduction

We humans have been infatuated by the sky and stars since time immemorial. Being it, seeing images in the stars or observing their movement through the night sky, we humans have always looked up into the night sky. We can see evidence of this in ancient structures like Stonehenge, where the sun lines up perfectly with the structure during the winter solstice, and in texts from ancient China and Mesopotamia describing the movement of certain stars across the night sky. The peculiarity of Polaris’ stationary position has also been known to use for centuries. Using the position of this star to navigate the seven seas at night by using the fact that it is always in the north of the sky. This fascination has also led a numerous amount of people to believe that the images they see in the stars predict their future. Many more examples of this curious fascination can be found throughout human history, but this fascination is ever more prevalent in our modern society. It all started right after World War II. With the cold war also came the notorious space race and its even more famous milestones in human space exploration. Starting with humanities first satellite in space, Sputnik launched by the USSR. This sparked a huge chain of milestones. Starting with the first dog in space, Laika, in 1954 (Dohrer, 2017); the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin, in 1961 (Redd, 2018b); the first spacewalk in 1965 by Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov (Leonov, 2005); and the first circling of the Moon in 1968 by the crew of Apollo 8 - Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders (NASA, 2009). All culminating in probably the most famous mission into space, Apollo 11 and its world-famous Moon landing on the 21st of July 1969 (NASA, 2019). This is the mission where Even though the race was extremely simple in concept (i.e. who could get to the Moon first), its consequences have been enormous. Because it was a race between the two major superpowers at the time, a gigantic amount of time and effort were expended in trying to outdo the other nation, thus allocated a massive amount of resources to institutions like NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). With this attention and these amounts of resources, giant leaps were constantly being made in the field of rocket science and astronomy. Institutions like NASA became able to not just look at the stars and other celestial objects through a telescope, but now they were able to send robots and other equipment, maybe even humans to a couple of these celestial objects. However, what have these efforts and these expenses contributed to our modern-day society and should we continue to provide our recourses and our time on space exploration. In other words, to what extent should we as the human race devote our recourses towards space exploration and research?

NASA’s Numerous Missions

NASA has sent a multitude of missions into space, being it a satellite just outside our atmosphere like SMAP (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, n.d.-b) or an important probe sent into deep space like the well-known Voyager missions (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, n.d.-e). Each of these missions has had a specific purpose that has been either been focused on our own blue marble or a something more adventurous like observing the Sun from up close like the Parker Solar Probe (NASA, n.d.) or even for the most adventurous of machinery, fly to away, away from the solar system into deep space (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, n.d.-e). Let us focus on a couple of these numerous missions and see what kind of impact these have had and what they will do for humanity in the future.

Let us start with one of the more obvious missions, SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive). The SMAP satellite orbits the earth and monitors the top 5 cm of soil for their moisture content (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, n.d.-b). This satellite does this to accomplish a couple of scientific objectives and I quote:

1. “ Understand processes that link the terrestrial water, energy, and carbon cycles,
2. Estimate global water and energy fluxes at the land surface,
3. Quantify net carbon flux in boreal landscapes,
4. Enhance weather and climate forecast skill, and
5. Develop improved flood prediction and droughtmonitoring [sic] capability” (Entekhabi et al., n.d.).

By looking at the top 5 cm of soil and its moisture content, a lot of information can be gained. With a giant rotating arm, it looks at the top layer of soil in order to create a data map of the soil moisture level of the Earth (Entekhabi et al., n.d.; Jet Propulsion Laboratory, n.d.-b). This data map can be used to observe the circulation of water and carbon throughout the soil (Entekhabi et al., n.d.; Jet Propulsion Laboratory, n.d.-b). All in order to accomplish the aforementioned goals.

While the sheer understanding of the mechanics behind the circulation of water and carbon in the top layer of soil, can be advantageous; with SMAP, the fact that all the data is free to access for everyone, like with any NASA mission, is well and truly the real kicker. Underdeveloped countries, like those in Africa, can use this data to see where the soil is fit for growing crops on, as well as try to predict droughts and prepare accordingly (Rober, 2018). Missions like this one directly affect us humans on Earth with the insight the equipment gives us and allows us to better they way we use our planets recourses.

The Parker Solar Probe flies around the sun in a elliptical orbit, moving extremely close by the Sun with its closest perihelion (point in orbit closest to the sun), which will happen in 2025, being only 3.83 million kilometres away (NASA, n.d.). while this still sounds like a lot, it is already well inside the orbit of Mercury and closer than any other man-made object ever. Named after Eugene Parker, a professor at the department of astronomy and astrophysics at the university of Chicago, who theorized the existence of solar wind, a ‘wind’ of charged particles like protons and electrons coming from the sun (NASA, n.d.; Redd, 2018a). This solar wind will also be the main thing the Parker Solar Probe will be observing in its close flybys, together with certain other solar phenomena like solar flares, which are large eruptions of electromagnetic radiation (NOAA, n.d.-b), and coronal mass ejections, which are like the name suggests ejections of mass from the outer layer of the sun (the corona) (NOAA, n.d.-a) (NASA, n.d.). These solar flares are caused by the magnetic fields inside of the Sun, which are constantly moving around. When these magnetic fields are moving it is possible that they hit touch themselves, essentially short circuiting themselves (Northwestern University, n.d.). These short circuits cause a massive amount of radioactive particles and electromagnetic radiation to eject itself from the Sun and are often accompanied by mass from the corona in the form of a coronal mass ejection (NOAA, n.d.-a; Northwestern University, n.d.).

Our understanding of this solar wind and these other solar phenomena is instrumental understanding of the sun itself and probably more importantly to get a greater understanding of the so called ‘space weather’. Understanding ‘space weather’ is extremely important due to one simple fact: most of our modern day society is dependent on satellites orbiting our planet and these satellites are affected by this ‘space weather’ (NASA, n.d.). If the high energy particles coming of the Sun during a coronal mass ejection of solar flare hit one of these precious satellites, it can cause this satellite to get damaged or break entirely (Nicholson, 2017). Not only will the satellites be affected by the solar flares, but when the solar flare has enough energy it can penetrate our magnetosphere (area affected by the Earth’s magnetic field) further and disrupt the electrical grid, causing a blackout (Nicholson, 2017).

Observing the Sun from up close and observing its solar wind and its corona will give us a better understanding of the Sun, its solar wind and its solar flares. This in turn can allow us to protect ourselves and our infrastructure (e.g. satellites and the power grid). With our better understanding of the corona and solar wind we can construct our infrastructure to be able to withstand these conditions.

Voyager 2 was launched on August 20th, 1977 at the Kennedy Space Center, strangely being launched first (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, n.d.-e). Voyager 1 launched on September 7th, 1977 at the Kennedy Space Center, being launched second (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, n.d.-e). This oddity can be explained by the fact that they were named according to the order that they reached Jupiter and Saturn (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, n.d.-e). This curious fact aside, the Voyager missions had an extremely vague goal to achieve. The initial objective of Voyager 1 and 2 was to collect data from the planets Jupiter and Saturn (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, n.d.-c). While its objective being terribly vague, we have still gained a ton of information about these planets and their moons during its flyby. For instance, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2’s most notable discovery when doing its flyby of Jupiter and its moons was that Jovian moon Io is volcanic (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, n.d.-a). Io’s volcanic activity is also the origin of matter the permeates through magnetosphere of Jupiter (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, n.d.-a). This matter consisted of mainly sulphur, oxygen and sodium was spewing forth out of Io’s volcanoes (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, n.d.-a). As for the Saturn flyby, both voyagers learned a lot about the planet consists of, learning that it is mostly made out of helium and hydrogen (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, n.d.-d). Also, a lot of information was gained on the temperature and pressure of the upper atmosphere of this gas giant. With the minimum temperature of the upper atmosphere being a mere 82 kelvin (-192.15 ℃) (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, n.d.-d). At this point in time the trajectory of Voyager 1 was such that it would miss both Uranus and Neptune and from this point forwards would fly towards interstellar space. Voyager 2’s trajectory, however, would lead probe past both Uranus and Neptune (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, n.d.-e).