#01

"In 2015, I was separated from the U.S. Army with a General Discharge, Under Honorable Conditions. I returned to California with no idea what I was going to do ... Over the next year, I would end up dropping out of community college and getting fired from my gas station job. My life was way off track, I lacked any purpose or vision, and I was headed nowhere fast. But this rock-bottom moment led me to a job posting for the California Conservation Corps (CCC), and my life was radically transformed in the best possible way." A feel good story about the power of being in the field from Ryan Shorrow, a military veteran who found solace in the fisheries of Northern California.

#02

In good news for NASA's Commercial Crew program, SpaceX successfully completed their launch abort test of the Dragon crew capsule. In this unmanned test, the capsule was intentionally jettisoned from its rocket about one and a half minutes after launch and returned safely to earth. SpaceX posted a neat video of the seperation, and shortly thereafter the rocket exploded in a massive conflagration (which was planned). Regardless, the test showed that any unlucky astronauts who need to abort a launch will be able to do so safely, and sets a stage for the first manned flight from US soil in nearly a decade.

#03

Its been a busy couple of weeks on the space station. On January 20th Astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch completed a six hour and fifty eight minute spacewalk to replace nickel-hydrogen batteries with lithium ion replacements. Only five days later, Andrew Morgan and Luca Parmitano ventured beyond the hatch for another six hour mission to increase the lifespan of the aging Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer dark matter and antimatter detector. I imagine this type of maintenance will become more common as our only outpost in space nears its 20th year.

Humans aren't the only animals in space right now. A handful of intrepid mice made the trip in an effort to improve treatments for muscle and bone loss back here on earth.

#04

"It's easy to say that the Moon should serve as a stepping stone to Mars. But how foundational should that be? Are you merely using the Moon to test hardware designed for Mars? Or is it required to support future exploration? Is the Moon a stepping stone or cornerstone?" Casey Dryer of the Planetary Society with some more on-point analysis of the the recently passed House NASA authorization act. 

And while we're on the Planetary Society, you can read about the performance of LightSail 2, a small spacecraft funded by Planetary to demonstrate solar sailing techniques. It works! The whole paper is available here. (On a side note I once had dinner with Louis Friedman, a founder of the Planetary Society, and learned about his conviction that solar sailing will be the future of space travel. Pay attention to this technology, with the dedication of folks like Louis this may become the next big thing in space.)

#05

Have you ever wondered hat happen when alligators die in coastal areas and then get swept out to sea? These guys did. See what happens when researchers from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium intentionally sank alligator carcasses over a mile deep in the Pacific Ocean. According to the group, dead alligators could be an important but previously unstudied method for carbon transportation to the deep ocean.

#06

"Our best model of particle physics is bursting at the seams as it struggles to contain all the weirdness in the universe. Now, it seems more likely than ever that it might pop, thanks to a series of strange events in Antarctica." In addition to being the plot line for my first novel, that line depicts the currently unexplainable results from the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiment, a machine designed to dangle from a balloon far above the frozen continent.

#07

After a couple of parachute test failures last year, the European Space agency appears to be back on track to launch the Rosalind Franklin rover to Mars this year. "Real-time observations of these initial tests showed a clean and correct release of the parachutes from their bags, with no damages seen in either the parachute system or the bag."

And before you go, make sure to vote to name NASA's next Mars rover which currently carries the uninspiring moniker of Mars 2020. I personally voted for Perseverance, because if we're ever going to get those samples back from Mars that's what it will take!

The Bookshelf

Science fiction is what led me to start reading regularly in my early 20's and I still enjoy returning to the genre, particularly in the short story format. So I was excited when I received Machine Learning by Hugh Howey for Christmas. I found his short stories on such topics as artificial intelligence, aliens, and virtual worlds to be thought provoking and on point in the tradition of the X-Files. One of my particular favorites asks a question, in the authors own words, "The men and women who built the railroads, started our agricultural revolution, our industrial revolution, had to go through a period of abuse, ownership, and neglect. Will our machines suffer the same? ... My sailboat is a robot ... My boat never gets a moment of rest. I sit back, sun on my skin, a book i my hand, an iced tea sweating in a tall glass beside me. Yet somehow I'm the one sailing around the world." Hugh is also the author of the popular post apocalyptic novel Wool, which will likely be one of my next reads.

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This newsletter was produced as a private venture and not in the author's capacity as an employee of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology or of Griffith Observatory. Any views and opinions expressed herein or on exploreandobserve.com are his own and not those of his employers.

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