Tag: space

Paul Sutter is a research fellow at the Astronomical Observatory of Trieste and visiting scholar at the Ohio State University’s Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics (CCAPP). Sutter is also host of the podcasts Ask a Spaceman and RealSpace, and the YouTube series Space In Your Face. He contributed this article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

James Clerk Maxwell had no idea what he was doing. To be fair, he knew what he was doing when it came to making perhaps one of the greatest scientific achievements of the 19th century: showing that electricity and magnetism were really just two sides of the same electromagnetic coin. Oh yeah, and he discovered what light is. Yeah, light. You may have heard of it. His insights allowed him to realize that it’s all unified under a single force: the light from the sun, the magnet stuck to your fridge, and the electricity in your smartphone. 

What he may not have realized was that the theory he developed sowed the seeds of a revolution that would sweep away the old Newtonian Order and usher in a new Age of Relativity. His results would usher in an entirely new worldview: a paradigm where space and time are not separate entities, but unified as a single space-time. Whoa.

Maxwell also had a beard that would make the bartender at your local gastropub jealous. But it was the explaining-light-bit that stuck in everybody’s collective craw. Maxwell identified light as a self-sustaining wave of electricity and magnetism (an “electromagnetic wave,” if you will), but if it’s a wave, what is it waving? Sound waves need air to wave around, and ocean waves need water to wave around, so what do electromagnetic waves … wave around?

The stuff of light

“Ah-ha,” says Maxwell in my fictional argument, “The new theory itself gives a clue.” The speed of this newfangled electromagnetic wave is a constant, with the exact number depending on the properties of magnetic and electric fields in a vacuum.

A vacuum? Where there’s absolutely nothing else? Why, that’s the domain of the aether. I get it now: Light is a wave of aether! Ta-da! Right. The aether. The stuff, the goop, the nougaty goodness that permeates the entire universe. If there’s nothing somewhere, then that somewhere is full of aether. There’s a reason that the word aether is unfamiliar to you post-19th century readers: Without knowing it, Maxwell’s insight into the nature of light would end up destroying the entire concept. 

But why did people think we needed some aether-stuff for light to wave around in the first place?

Galileo was the first to point out the obvious: all motion is relative. When I say something like “the ball is traveling at 50 mph towards me,” I implicitly add “relative to my head.” If I’m on a train, someone standing on the platform would add the speed of the train to the speed of the ball to get the “total” speed. Another interested observer, way out in space, would also add in the rotation and orbit of the earth. So what’s the real speed? The absolute, final speed? 

This idea of relative motion means that you can’t easily figure out that final speed. For example, a physics experiment performed on the train (say, testing how much my head would hurt after being hit with a ball) would not tell me if I was on a train or not. (Assuming it’s not accelerating. And the windows are shut. And so on. This is a thought experiment, alright?) 

You’ve seen this yourself. Throw a ball around on an airplane. After being restrained by the flight attendants, reflect on the fact that the ball behaved perfectly normally, despite the fact that you’re hurtling through the air at several hundred miles per hour.

How can we tell if we’re moving if … we can’t tell that we’re moving?

A universal reference

Enter the universal reference frame. A “background” to the universe that stays fixed and unmoving for eternity, giving us all a stage to play around on. That’s the place where we can measure the “total, real, final, I’m serious, guys” speed. Oh, and a master clock, too, to keep perfect time. That’d be useful.

This assumption of a fixed background formed one of the bases of Newton’s laws of motion. It was in this universal frame that he could write down the mathematics that he needed to get the job done. All motion in the universe is relative to that background.

Back to Maxwell. Since the speed of light was a constant in the vacuum, and the vacuum was filled with aether (as the thinking went back then), then the aether must be in the universal reference frame. In other words, the aether itself was the universal Newtonian background. If we’re moving around relative to that fixed background, we can detect our motion relative to it — and hence deduce the properties of the aether — by measuring changes to the speed of light. Another ta-da, and a huzzah to boot! 

So, by golly, let’s go out and do it. And that’s what a bunch of people, including Albert Michelson and Edward Morley did. Or more correctly, attempted to do. By building a sensitive apparatus and comparing the speed of light moving in different directions at different times of day, they thought they could measure the motion of the Earth relative to the background aether. Key word: thought.

That’s the problem: try as they might, the Michelson-Morley experiments failed to detect any changes to the speed of light . At all. Ever. Even when they asked nicely. No matter what, no matter how fast or in what direction the Earth was moving, their measured speed of light remained stubbornly fixed. 

This is what’s called a “problem.” On one side you have the Newton worldview, saying there must be an absolute reference frame, and on the other you have Maxwell plus the M&M (wait, that may be copyrighted, let’s go with M-M) worldview, saying there is no evidence of the aether, and hence no absolute reference frame. Who wins? I mean, they’re all pretty smart, so it’s tough.

So that’s what they mean by ‘relativity’

Along came Einstein to settle the dispute. And by “settle” I mean “pick Maxwell.” Einstein took the old notions of Galileo’s relative motion and took them to the extreme. Yes, everything is relative. And that’s it. No absolute reference frames. No aether. No master clocks. Just relative motion. Things can only be said to be “moving” relative to another observer.

What’s the big deal? Special Relativity is the big deal. By disregarding the absolute reference frame (and the aether along with it) the world has some weird properties. For example, there is now a universal speed limit. That’s right: we’ve traded a universe with no speed limits but a fixed background to one with a speed limit but free of any aether. 

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Credit: SPACE.com

And then Einstein took it to the next level as only Einstein could: not only are the laws of motion the same in every inertial (jargon alert: “non-accelerating”) reference frame, but all physics are the same. Including Maxwell’s equations. Including Maxwell’s speed of light. Which is a constant in one frame. And is thus constant in all frames. 

And there’s our universal speed limit: the speed of light in a vacuum. Constant for one, and thus constant for all, no matter how fast you’re moving.

Switching to a universe with Special Relativity comes at a price. After all, with great power comes great relativity. Ha-ha, sorry, couldn’t resist. But, really, there is a price. No longer can space and time be thought of as separate things. There is only space-time. That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but now the universe is a lot stranger: without an absolute reference frame, different observers can disagree about lengths, or the duration of time, or even the ordering of events. Sounds spooky.

It is all now, as they say, relative. What does this mean for you and me? To be continued in my next essay…

Learn more by listening to the episode “What is spacetime? (Part 1)” on the Ask A Spaceman podcast, available on iTunes and on the Web at http://www.askaspaceman.com.

Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Space.com.

On Thursday, Sept. 10 the waning crescent moon, Venus and Mars will appear in an eye-catching arrangement in the early-morning sky. Credit: European Southern Observatory

If you want to see an eye-catching celestial display involving a slender crescent moon and two bright planets, be sure to wake up an hour before sunrise on Thursday morning (Sept. 10).

You might also want to make sure that you have a clear and unobstructed view toward the east, as this nice array of the moon and planets will be relatively low — only about 15 degrees above the horizon. (Your clenched fist held out at arm’s length measures about 10 degrees.) So you’ll need to make sure that there are no trees or buildings any higher than a fist and a half; otherwise your view may be partially or completely blocked.

The most obvious celestial object will be the crescent moon, a sliver of yellow-white light only 7 percent illuminated by the sun. To the right of the moon will be the second-brightest object of the night sky: the planet Venus. Venus, which had been a prominent evening object since the start of this year, finally relinquished the title of “Evening Star” less than a month ago and disappeared from view before beginning to appear in the morning instead. [Best Night Sky Events of September 2015 (Stargazing Maps)]

In the hour before sunrise Thursday morning, Venus and the crescent moon will provide a pleasing celestial tableau as they ascend the eastern sky side by side, just 2.5 degrees apart. Use binoculars to better appreciate the appearance of the full globe of the moon, its grayish-blue tone delicately interposed between the brighter sunlit crescent and dark background sky. Leonardo da Vinci was the first to recognize the faint glow of the moon’s globe  as Earthshine — light from the sun, reflected off Earth to the moon and then back to Earth.

Skywatching Triple Treat: Mars and brilliant Venus will shine near the crescent moon before sunrise on Thursday, Sept. 10. This Starry Night sky map shows how the trio will look risking in the eastern pre-dawn sky at 6 a.m. local time as viewed from mid-northern latitudes.
Credit: Starry Night Software

Finally, there is much fainter Mars. If you extend an imaginary line from Venus through the moon and continue that line for a bit more than twice the distance between the two, you will come to the Red Planet. Don’t look for red, though; in actuality, Mars appears to glow with a yellowish-orange color.

Mars shines at a magnitude of +1.8. For comparison, Venus dazzles at magnitude -4.5, or 316 times brighter than Mars!

One of the reasons that Venus is so bright in the sky is because of its high albedo, or the amount of light it reflects back into space. This albedo comes from the permanent cloud layer that surrounds the planet; the clouds reflect about 75 percent of the sunlight they receive back toward Earth. Another reason has to do with distance. Currently, Venus is 34.4 million miles (55.3 million km) from Earth. In contrast, Mars is 230.3 million miles (370.6 million km) away — more than 6.5 times farther compared with Venus. Mars is also considerably smaller than Venus.

But don’t feel too sorry for poor dim Mars, for things will change in the coming months. Right now, Venus is slowly pulling away from the Earth, while Mars is slowly approaching.

Fast forward to next spring: Mars will approach to within 46.8 million miles (75.3 million km) of Earth on May 30 and will glow at a brilliant magnitude of -2 — its best apparition in over a decade. Venus, meanwhile, will be completely lost from view, deeply imbedded in the glow of the sun.

Editor’s note: If you capture an amazing view of Mars, the moon and Venus — or any other night sky view — and want to share it with Space.com, send images and comments in to managing editor Tariq Malik at: spacephotos@space.com. 

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York’s Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmer’s Almanac and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, N.Y.  Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Credit: NASA/SDO/mash mix: Space.com

On Sunday morning, Sept. 13, there will be a partial eclipse of the sun visible in southern Africa, the Indian Ocean and parts of Antarctica. Here it is seen from Cape Town, South Africa, where it will be at its maximum. Credit: Starry Night Software

The penguins are in luck, as are some skywatchers in the Southern Hemisphere: A solar eclipse will be visible from Antarctica, southern Africa and the Indian Ocean on Sunday (Sept. 13).

The best view of this partial solar eclipse — the third of four solar or lunar eclipses this year — from an urban area will be from Cape Town, South Africa, where the moon will cover a maximum of 30 percent of the sun. The eclipse will begin in Cape Town just as the sun and moon are rising at 6:49 a.m. local time. Early risers will see a tiny bite out of the sun. At 7:43 a.m., the eclipse will reach its maximum, and by 8:50 a.m., it will be over.

This eclipse will be visible throughout South Africa, and also in southern parts of Madagascar, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. It will also be visible over a wide area of the Indian Ocean and Antarctica (which is good news if you happen to be a penguin). [Solar Eclipses: An Observer’s Guide (Infographic)]

The best way to observe a partial solar eclipse is with a filter specifically designed for viewing the sun. Stores specializing in telescopes sell these filters. Safe “eclipse shades” are often widely available prior to an eclipse. A No. 14 welder’s glass also works well, and is available from specialized welding shops. The ordinary, No. 12 welder’s glass sold in hardware stores to protect welders’ eyes from extremely bright light does not provide adequate protection from the sun.

If you don’t have a proper solar filter, you can view the partially eclipsed sun with a pinhole camera by punching a hole about a millimeter in diameter in a piece of cardboard. Natural “pinholes” created by leaves on trees or reflections from a building’s windows will also work.

Under NO circumstances look directly at the sun, even with sunglasses, as you can quickly cause permanent damage to your eyes. If a small magnifying glass can light a fire in seconds, think what will happen to the retina of your eye by staring at the sun.

Editor’s note: As always, we welcome your pictures of the partially eclipsed sun; a solar filter on your camera will be essential. (The sensor in your camera is just as easily damaged by the direct sun as are your eyes.) Try to get a landmark or tree in the foreground to give a sense of scale. You can send images and comments for possible use in a future story or gallery to managing editor Tariq Malik at: spacephotos@space.com.

This article was provided to Space.com by Simulation Curriculum, the leader in space science curriculum solutions and the makers of Starry Night and SkySafari. Follow Starry Night on Twitter @StarryNightEdu. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

The U.S. Air Force intends to use an Orbital ATK satellite platform for the STPSat-6 mission. Shown above is an artist’s concept of the GEOStar-1 platform Orbital ATK offers for national security missions in geostationary orbit. Credit: Orbital ATK

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Air Force hopes to build an experimental satellite that would detect nuclear explosions and monitor the space environment from geosynchronous orbit, the service said in an Aug. 24 announcement.

The Space Test Program Satellite (STPSat) -6 would be the latest in a series of spacecraft developed under a Defense Department program to field space capabilities quickly in response to emerging military needs.

STPSat-6 is notionally scheduled to launch in late 2018 as the primary payload on a rocket to be selected via competition, presumably between SpaceX and United Launch Alliance, the Air Force said. That mission, called STP-3, will place multiple satellites into geosynchronous orbit, the statement said. [The Most Dangerous Space Weapons Ideas Ever]

In a request for information posted to the Federal Business Opportunities website, the Air Force’s Space Test Program at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico said it was looking for input from industry on how to build and fly the satellite. The service plans to use the resulting input to develop its acquisition strategy.

The primary payload aboard STPSat-6 is the Space and Atmospheric Burst Reporting System, or SABRS, which provides nuclear detonation detection and space environment data. The payload would complement nuclear detection sensors currently aboard GPS satellites.

STPSat-6 also could include as many as eight secondary payloads from the Space Test Program office, the Air Force said.

Project officials envision providing a partially assembled satellite bus from Orbital ATK of Dulles, Virginia, as government furnished equipment. Orbital ATK currently has the hardware at its Beltsville, Maryland facility, the notice said.

The Air Force expects to spend $65 million on the program from 2016 to 2026 and hopes the satellite would operate for at least eight years, the posting said. The satellite would be placed into geostationary orbit between 80 and 120 degrees west longitude, the notice said.

STPSat-6 could be compatible with the Multi-Mission Satellite Operations Center (MMSOC), a satellite control architecture designed primarily for experimental and Operationally Responsive Space missions. The MMSOC was developed by Lockheed Martin along with the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center’s Space Development and Test Directorate and is viewed by some as the ground system of the future.

Responses from industry are due Sept. 24.

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said that the agency is carrying out an independent review of the June 28 Falcon 9 launch failure, but using existing mechanisms rather than a separate panel. Credit: NASA TV

WASHINGTON — Responding to congressional criticism that suggested NASA was giving SpaceX special treatment, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said the agency is conducting an independent review of the company’s June launch failure.

In an Aug. 24 letter to House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), Bolden said the appearance of special treatment accorded to SpaceX over Orbital ATK was a “misunderstanding” because NASA is taking a different approach to reviews of the two companies’ launch failures.

“First and foremost, I want to assure you that NASA is performing an independent analysis” of the June 28 Falcon 9 launch failure on SpaceX’s seventh cargo mission to the International Space Station under its Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA, Bolden wrote in the letter, released by the agency Aug. 25. [See photos of the failed SpaceX rocket launch]

Orbital’s Antares rocket failed in October, also on a CRS mission to the space station.

Bolden’s letter is in response to one by Smith Aug. 4, where he questioned NASA’s decision to establish a formal independent review panel for the Antares failure but not for the Falcon 9 accident. Smith indicated that choice appeared to reflect favoritism towards SpaceX.

“The discrepancy between the approaches taken by NASA in response to these two similar events raises questions about not only the equity and fairness of NASA’s process for initiating independent accident investigations, but also the fidelity of the investigations themselves,”Smith wrote.

In his response, Bolden noted that immediately after the Antares failure, NASA decided to establish a formal independent review team.

While NASA was formally part of Orbital’s own accident investigation board, Bolden said the independent review was intended to “inform and amplify the learning for the NASA team.”

For the Falcon 9 failure, however, NASA instead elected to have the agency’s Launch Services Program (LSP) lead the review into the accident. Unlike Antares, which has no other NASA contracts beyond its CRS flights, NASA has contracts for Falcon 9 missions beyond ISS cargo missions. That includes the launch of the Jason-3 satellite, which prior to the June failure was scheduled for launch in August.

Bolden wrote that William Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, concluded LSP’s review of the failure “would lead to an in-depth understanding of the events.” It would also, he said, be an efficient use of resources, since NASA’s commercial crew program is also interested in the investigation.

Bolden’s response to Smith included an Aug. 3 “memorandum for the record” from Gerstenmaier discussing his decision to let LSP lead NASA’s investigation into the Falcon 9 failure. “Their experience and understanding of the Falcon 9 system for NASA robotic missions places LSP in a unique position to most efficiently and independently evaluate the events that occurred on CRS-7 that led to its failure and to ensure that the resulting corrective actions are implemented appropriately,” he wrote in the memo.

Unlike the Antares investigation, NASA does not have a full voting representative on SpaceX’s accident investigation board. However, Bolden said that NASA still has “leverage” over the report’s findings because of its other launch contracts, which give the agency the right to accept or reject the findings of that investigation and any corrective actions before allowing those launches to take place.

That difference in approaches in NASA’s independent reviews of the failures, Bolden acknowledged, may not have been clear to Smith and others. “Note that due to this misunderstanding, many of the questions posed were written under an incorrect premise that NASA is not conducting an independent review” of the Falcon 9 launch failure, he wrote, referring to a set of questions in Smith’s letter.

Neither company has formally completed their investigations into their respective launch failures, but both have identified their likely causes. Orbital ATK executives said earlier this year they traced the cause of the Antares failure to excessive bearing wear in the turbopump of an AJ-26 first-stage engine, but have not disclosed what caused that wear. Orbital is replacing the AJ-26 with the RD-181 engine, and expects the Antares to return to flight in early 2016.

SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said in a July 20 briefing that the company believes a strut holding down a helium bottle with an upper stage propellant tank failed, causing the tank to overpressurize and burst. Musk said at the time that the Falcon 9 could return to flight as soon as September, but the company has not yet announced a launch date.

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft spotted ice mountains 2 miles (3 kilometers) high on Pluto during its July 2015 flyby of the dwarf planet. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has begun beaming home the best data from its epic July Pluto flyby.

On July 14, New Horizons became the first probe ever to fly by Pluto, zooming within 7,800 miles (12,550 kilometers) of the dwarf planet’s enigmatic surface. New Horizons sent some images and measurements back to its handlers immediately after the encounter, but stored the vast majority onboard for later transmission.

That transmission — which involves tens of gigabits of information — began in earnest on Saturday (Sept. 5) and should take about a year to complete, mission team members said. [Destination Pluto: NASA’s New Horizons Mission in Pictures]

“This is what we came for — these images, spectra and other data types that are going to help us understand the origin and the evolution of the Pluto system for the first time,” New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said in a statement.

“And what’s coming is not just the remaining 95 percent of the data that’s still aboard the spacecraft — it’s the best data sets, the highest-resolution images and spectra, the most important atmospheric data sets and more,” Stern added. “It’s a treasure trove.”

New Horizons is beaming its data back with the help of NASA’s Deep Space Network, a system of big radio dishes in California, Spain and Australia that serves a variety of agency spacecraft.

The typical downlink rate is between 1 and 4 kilobits per second, NASA officials said. And communication is far from instantaneous; New Horizons is about 3 billion miles (4.8 billion kilometers) from Earth, so it takes signals from the craft, which are traveling at the speed of light, about 4.5 hours to get here.

The images that New Horizons has already beamed home revealed towering ice mountains and vast, geologically young plains on Pluto, as well as giant canyons on the dwarf planet’s largest moon, Charon. Mission team members therefore have high hopes about the probe’s complete flyby data set.

“The New Horizons mission has required patience for many years, but from the small amount of data we saw around the Pluto flyby, we know the results to come will be well worth the wait,” said New Horizons project scientist Hal Weaver, of the the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

New Horizons is probably not done gathering data. The probe’s handlers will soon begin steering it toward a small object called 2014 MU69, which lies about 1 billion miles (1.6 billion km) beyond Pluto. If NASA approves a proposed extended mission for New Horizons, the spacecraft will fly by 2014 MU69 in early 2019.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Hannah Rae Kerner is chair of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS), executive director of the Space Frontier Foundation, and a Ph.D. student at Arizona State University studying machine learning applications for astrophysics and robotic control. She contributed this article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Recently, my dad and I were in a Bojangles’ restaurant in Charlotte, North Carolina. I grew up in that city, and I was visiting my family before starting graduate school in Tempe, Arizona. I was struggling to keep my egg and cheese biscuit together almost as much as I was struggling to answer my dad’s question about what exactly I’d be doing in grad school. I explained for a while, my sentences peppered with words like “autonomous,” “neural networks,” “spectrometry” and “swarming.” He listened and made a good attempt to understand, at least enough to relay the answer to others, and at the end delivered the inevitable, “Wow. That’s really cool stuff.” And then, “You know, all of that stuff is really cool and everyone working on it is supersmart, but I always kind of wonder what the point of it all is.” 

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If you’re a topical expert — researcher, business leader, author or innovator — and would like to contribute an op-ed piece, email us here.
Credit: SPACE.com

As the leader of two national space advocacy organizations, I should have been able to deliver a clear and confident answer. My dad’s question was of the sort people in my field are asked all the time by the public and the media. But I stumbled. I rambled off some nonsense about how space research and technologies often result in useful medical and household technologies  like MRIs, baby food and sneakers. To be honest, I always stumble on this question, probably because I’m never quite convinced by my own answer. Now I’ve realized why: It’s not the right answer. 

What’s the point?

As space scientists, we’re forced to explain how our work translates to people’s daily lives, how we’re helping them directly. In answering the question, “What’s the point?”, in converting the meaning of our work to units of impact on the average citizen, we are forced to dilute that meaning. In answering this question, we claim to be trying to put it “in layman’s terms,” but rather than teaching and fostering understanding, we are mutilating our work into some sort of “spin-off” explanation that feels like a lie. 

The right answer is that thinking about problems on scales like the astronomical is good. It is fundamentally worthwhile for humans to push the boundaries of their understanding, to convert the unknown into the known through the power of scientific inquiry. 

Rather than “What’s the point?” the question should be, “What does thinking about and understanding these problems mean for humans and for the evolution of humanity as a part of the universe?”

Opening eyes

Scientific inquiry has led humans to discover that not just this planet but eight other planets (fine, seven other planets) orbit a star that is halfway through its lifetime. Humans discovered that at least one of those planets contains water and methane, because scientists built a robot, slingshot it across orbits that humans had discovered, and made it land itself on a planet 140 million miles 225 million kilometers) away and drill a hole, all by itself.

Astronomers took this image, a teeny-tiny sliver through the fabric of space-time, looking back more than 13 billion years:

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has made the deepest image of the universe ever taken in near-infrared light. The faintest and reddest objects in the image are galaxies that formed 600 million years after the Big Bang. The image was taken by the new Wide Field Camera 3 in the same region as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), which was taken in 2004 and is the deepest visible-light image of the universe.
Credit: ASA, ESA, G. Illingworth (UCO/Lick Observatory and the Univ. of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens (UCO/Lick Observ. and Leiden Univ.), and the HUDF09 Team

Humans have not only walked on the moon, but also collected geological samples on it, tested theories of gravity on it and hit a golf ball on it. People took this picture of the Earth from the moon , showing humanity just how vulnerable this planet is, and inspiring its inhabitants to protect the only place in the universe known to harbor life:

“Earthrise,” the first picture taken of planet Earth by people orbiting the moon. This shot was captured by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders on December 24, 1968, as his spacecraft became the first to fly around the moon.
Credit: NASA

Every one of those discoveries occurred because people were studying what inspired them, what they felt was worthwhile — what they loved to think about every day. What a backwards and miserable population humans would be if they could not work on the things that they love, that they feel are meaningful, that blow their minds. That people can hold an understanding, however tenuous, of something so large as the universe in something so small as the human brain makes this pursuit worthwhile. 

The point of it all is that humans are seeking the point of it all.

Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Space.com.

Earth’s natural light show — the auroras — flared into high gear Monday (Sep. 7), creating a breathtaking display that astronaut Scott Kelly said was like no other aurora he’d ever seen.

Bright-green rivers of light and a deep-crimson haze decorated Earth’s atmosphere during the Labor Day light show. From his vantage point on the International Space Station, Kelly caught several snapshots of the waving green lights, as well as a vivid time-lapse video.

“I would say yesterday was probably the second-most impressive thing I’ve ever seen,” Kelly said in an interview broadcast today (Sep. 8) on NASA TV. “The first thing was when I saw Earth from space the first time.” [Amazing Auroras: Breathtaking Northern Lights Photos of 2015]

Kelly posted several photos of the waving green lights on Twitter, and included a time-lapse video of the lights’ movement, writing that it was a Labor Day gift to the United States. 

Must be a big #solarstorm because there’s some crazy green stuff going on outside! #Aurora #YearInSpace pic.twitter.com/ukngn5gZ9v

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) September 7, 2015

In the interview, Kelly was joined by the other eight people currently living on the orbiting laboratory as he discussed the unbelievable natural fireworks.

“Yesterday, we had some incredible auroras outside, like none I’ve ever seen before with regards to how vivid it was,” Kelly said during the interview. “We had heard a solar storm was on its way, and usually, we think it takes a couple of days from solar activity to an incredible show outside. But in this case, it was much faster, and the Earth responded much quicker.”

This #aurora is impressive! #YearInSpace. pic.twitter.com/mf3YSmZwtb

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) September 7, 2015

Skywatchers at high northern latitudes of Earth were able to see the auroras as well. Sightings were reported from Alaska, parts of Canada, southern Norway and Sweden, and as far south as Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The Labor Day auroras began when a geomagnetic storm engulfed the Earth, according to Spaceweather.com. Geomagnetic storms are caused by flurries of energetic, charged particles released by the sun. This storm was only of moderate strength — a G2 on a scale that goes up to G5. A G2 storm can cause minor problems for satellites in orbit and power grids on Earth (whereas stronger storms can damage these systems severely). Nonetheless, this “moderate” storm created a spectacular auroral display.

Editor’s note: If you have an amazing photo of Monday’s aurora or any other night-sky view you’d like to share for a possible story or image gallery, please contact managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

International Space Station crew members, including Scott Kelly, Mikhail Kornienko, Gennady Padalka, Oleg Kononenko, Sergei Volkov, Kjell Lindgren, Kimiya Yui, Andreas Mogensen and Aidyn Aimbetov, talk with reporters on Sept. 8, 2015. Credit: NASA TV

HOUSTON — If Scott Kelly were on a spaceship heading out to Mars — rather than on board the International Space Station, where he has been for the last 6 months — he would be arriving at the Red Planet just about now.

Instead, Kelly and his eight crewmates — astronauts and cosmonauts from five different nations — took time out of their day circling the Earth on Tuesday (Sept. 8) to talk to reporters about life on board the outpost and what a trip to Mars might be like for those in the future.

“I think for the folks who go to Mars — especially the first ones — it is going to be such an incredible destination and event that they are going to be really psyched up getting there,” stated Kelly, reflecting on the differences between reaching the midway point of his almost yearlong mission and the 6 months it will take future astronauts to reach the fourth planet from the sun. [5 Manned Mission to Mars Ideas] 

“I am not saying I am not psyched up for the rest of this, [but] in some ways, almost being halfway through, a lot of what we are going to [do for the remainder of the mission] is very similar to what we have already done,” he added.

Kelly, who took over command of the station’s Expedition 45 crew on Saturday (Sept. 5), launched to the outpost in March along with Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Gennady Padalka. Like Kelly, Kornienko is set to stay aboard the orbiting laboratory until March 2016, gathering medical data in support of future crewed missions deeper into the solar system, including to Mars.

Padalka, meanwhile, is set to return to Earth on Friday (Sept. 11), landing together with Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen and Kazakh cosmonaut Aidyn Aimbetov, who arrived on the space station just one week ago. When he lands, Padalka will have logged a record-setting 878 days in space over the course of his five missions — more than enough time to have flown out to Mars, spent a year and a half on its surface, and then returned to Earth.

“We have a person who has been here the whole time that is getting ready to leave — Gennady — and that obviously wouldn’t happen on Mars. So that [too] makes it a little bit different, with people coming and going,” Kelly observed. “So I think it is hard to compare the two experiences.”

“But man, I’m excited for the folks who get to go to Mars,” he added.

For now, Kelly and his space station crewmates, including fellow NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren, may have to make do with fictional voyages to Mars like the one depicted in the upcoming 20th Century Fox film, “The Martian.” Kelly and Lindgren recently called down from space to chat with the movie’s star, Matt Damon, while the actor was touring NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

“It was certainly fun for us, and from a picture of [Damon] at JPL, it looks like he was having fun as well,” Lindgren said. “It is neat to think about the trip we’ll have to Mars.”

Lindgren said that both he and Kelly had read and enjoyed author Andy Weir’s book, on which the Ridley Scott film is based, and they were looking forward to seeing the movie when it opens in theaters on Oct. 2.

“We’re hopeful for a copy up here, either on the day of the release or soon thereafter,” Lindgren said.

Mogensen, who will be on Earth by the time “The Martian” premieres, said that sometimes movies can be so realistic today that they can detract from part of the experience of first flying into space.

Cosmic Quiz: Do You Know the International Space St…

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Cosmic Quiz: Do You Know the International Space St…

The International Space Station is the largest structure in space ever built by humans. Let’s see how much you know about the basics of this science laboratory in the sky.

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“I remember thinking that maybe our movie industry has ruined the moment a little because they are so good now at making high–definition IMAX movies,” Mogensen said. “You can actually go to a good cinema [film] that is very, very close to what we see.”

But on the other hand, the European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut said, life aboard the International Space Station is so unique that it is “almost impossible to imagine what it is going to be like until you get up here.”

“What’s really incredible for me is a sense of being aboard this gigantic spaceship that is slowly circling the Earth,” said Mogensen, recalling the hum of the station’s fans as he gazed down at the world below. “It just reminds you of being aboard the Starship Enterprise and arriving at a new planet and, yeah, about to explore this new planet. So it is [a] really cool feeling.”

Watch astronauts and cosmonauts on the International Space Station reply to reporters on collectSPACE.com.

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