So far away but still so close to home

It has been a week of opposite yet simultaneous perspectives, I travelled far away but stayed close to home, examined both distant futures and immediate issues and felt somewhat of a stranger in my new home.

Before all of that, I need to mention a note that has been waiting in my blog line for three blogs, the relation between the future of the international space station (ISS) and the future of space exploration. We have discussed this issue several times during the program and I'm not very happy with the bottom line.
There is no doubt that the ISS is the single most complex piece of engineering of human history, it has a price tag of over 100 Billion US$ and is a true testament of international collaboration, some might say it even has a role in the diplomatic approach of current conflict resolving. However, the conclusion regarding the ISS that I'm not to happy about is that in order for new space exploration to progress the ISS has to end its mission. This is due to the fact that funding the ISS operations takes a big part of the member nations' space budget, and this budget portion together with the "illusion" of space exploration that the ISS provides serves as a new exploration inhibitor. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a big ISS fan and think that the concept of a "constant human presence in space" is really important. The ISS also provides a great platform for space experiments and measurements (in physics, chemistry, biology, medicine) and experiments done on the ISS do provide new data about all fields of research. Yet, think what motivation would policy makes have for new human space explorations if there was no anchor for human space flight, we might have been on Mars by now. The sad part for me is that in the current financial geopolitical world state it is an either or question, and I have already discussed the difference in resources given to terrestrial man made problems over celestial curiosity. At the moment the accepted mission end for the ISS is around 2020, the american political world would like to use this already (mostly) paid for asset and extend its mission to 2024 (and some NASA charts even mention 2028), this desire has yet to have been seriously answered by the other member states. But one thing is clear, the ISS will end its life in the future and there is now serious discussion regarding ISS2 or an International Lunar\Martian Base. It is important to mention (as I already have in the past) that space exploration pathways have been thought of and that work is being done for future space exploration.

A great map of the our solar system manned, robotic and orbital space exploration missions (url) 

On another note, I left Earth for 3.5 hours this week! In our Space Sciences Department we preformed a short Mars analogue mission, my 6 member (3I) crew was simulating a manned mission on its way to Mars operating a rover on the red planet's surface. We first had to plan our mission - we picked areas of interest near the rover's landing site, we then configured the rover and its instruments to the assigned tasks and lastly allocated a mission for every crew member, I got to drive the rover! After the planning, the briefing and the training we set out to perform our mission. The mission went quiet smoothly, we visited our first site and took some measurements, we then continued to the adjacent main sites that were pointed out as possible habitats for the crew. In order of doing the tests we had to wiggle this 200kg rover into a small canyon and then point the instruments to get the data we wanted. As we were leaving towards the first site for more tests our rover met a simulated sandstorm that jammed some of its instruments, but nonetheless we managed to make our way back to the first site and find out some more interesting things about it. We then continued to a hill nearby for a panoramic view of the area and made it just in time before mission end. The analogue mission performed at the Canadian Space Agency Mars terrain yard. It was planned by the department chair Dr. Geoffrey Steeves together with a team of engineers from company named Neptec that does space grade robotics and cameras and a team of geologists from the Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration at the University of Western Ontario. From I've been told the mission took a long time to plan but the its visionaries are very happy with its results.

Mars rover mission teams with the supporting crew, mission planners, and of course the rover (photo by Shripathi Hadigal) 

Other departmental activities done this week included an astrophotography workshop (which will be followed by an astro-photo processing workshop) and a Sun gazing event. Both were led by retired physics professor and amateur astrophotographer John McDonald.

Sun gazing at the Canadian Space Agency

Image of the Sun with sun-spots and solar flares take with my cellphone and a filtered telescope

Pete Worden came to speak to us this week. I had the pleasure of speaking with him on three different occasions, and got new inputs and ideas with each event. Pete is a retired US Air Force general, a professor of astronomy and now the head of NASA Ames in Silicon Valley. During the lecture he gave the whole program he discussed future space exploration, the challenges is holds and the current programs being developed. Pete is actually (unlike other spacies) in favour of the asteroid redirect mission because of its feasibility with current (and near future) technologies and the added value of learning how to change an asteroid's trajectory in case of future threats. When discussing Mars exploration Pete mentioned a material called Perchlorate which is toxic and abundant on the Martian terrain. In a Mars mission this material would cover the astronauts' suits and require a very a comprehensive decontamination process. Because of the Martian perchlorate Pete believes that resuming manned surface missions should be done elsewhere. At the Q&A section of the lecture I asked him how he as a NASA administrator gets more funding for all these great plans, his answer gave me a new perspective. He said he does want more government money for space exploration, he (and many others) said that at the moment private companies manage to spend a substantial amount of money less then NASA does reaching the same results, and he believes that the space exploration community should be lead by private initiatives. While saying that he also point out that his Silicon Valley neighbours might be a good place to start.
When Pete came to speak with my team project (TP) group he discussed the search for extraterrestrial life. He believes that some type of extraterrestrial life form will be found within the next 20 to 30 years. This will obviously change our civilization forever.
When I met up with him for the third time he was just finishing a conversation with another SSP14 participant, Thomas Folliard, regarding synthetic biology. They both believe that the future of engineering in general and specifically space exploration is going to include biological machines (small and big) that are programmed by synthesizing DNA sequences. Just think about it, instead of building a satellite on Earth you could grow it in a lab in orbit. After all the bio excitement I had a chance to speak with Pete about some opportunities at Ames. But more importantly, I thanked him for having the center participate in the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade this year. His reply was great and he was happy to hear it had an impact, he also said that a lot of his workers are gay and it was important to make sure they get their NASA family support.

Pete and Dan Cohen, notice that Pete is a SpaceIL fan

Not much exoplanet work has been done this week (don't worry, we have three full weeks after the end of the department activities) but I have stated to think about exoplanet databases and data analysing and have listed some questions in the subject of the exo-database. Hopefully by next week I'll be able to discuss it in more detail.

We also had an international, all woman, astronaut panel this week. The panel included Julie Payette (Canada), Wang Yaping (China), Soyeon Yi (South Korea) and Shannon Walker (USA) and was moderated by Janet Petro from NASA. It was an interesting event, each astronaut spoke a bit about her life experiences that got her to space and then the Q&A portion was held. I don't mean to sound like a grumpy cat, but some of the personal presentations and the first questions asked were a bit childish in my opinion, they dealt with women in mostly male environments, but did it from a "cute" point of view rather than an equality one. As I was expressing my grumpy-catness my friend Dan asked how I would act if it was a first gay astronaut on stage, I have admit, it got me thinking and I do not know my answer.

Ask an astronaut via social media at the astronaut panel

I left to Mars this week, but also went back home every few minutes. While I am busy with the insane things happening  here at the program Israel is busy with it own craziness. While I was leaning how to drive the rover, Yotam was running with Laika to the stairwell to make sure that a rogue rocket does not meet them. He would then text that everything is all right and I would then spend the next three hours checking my phone every five minutes to any reports on other attacks. For some reason it is very easy to be brave when you're close to the line of fire, but much more likely to worry over everything when you're really far away.

This last weekend was also the traditional ISU alumni weekend, it means that alums (mostly locals) arrive for the weekend, attend some joint lectures and events and basically try to relive their SSP experience. It felt to me a bit like a bunch of strangers came to my new home, were somewhat rude and indifferent to me, made a mess, wasted some important weekend time and then left. But that's just grumpy old me. One of the events of the traditional alumni weekend is the traditional space masquerade. Me and a Polish physicist friend named Michal decided to continue the line of thought we started with Scott Madry and go as GPS, Gay Positioning System. It was a nice play on words, and the reaction from the other folks was great, usually a confused face that was changed to a laughing one after explaining the acronym. Sadly we didn't even make it to the costume contest finals, but it's better not to discuss the politics of it.

GPS - Gay Positioning System

In our new discoveries section I would like to discuss the major change that our Milkyway galaxy went trough in the past twenty years. In the past the galaxy was thought to be a spiral galaxy, but due to the amount of dust that lays between our solar system and the center of our galaxy it has been very difficult to look at the center and examine its exact shape. New space exploration missions have been able to look inwards into the Milkyway and astronomers have now concluded that we actually live in a barred spiral galaxy with two main spiral arms.

Our place in the Milkyway (from url)