#01 ALVIN

+ The deep-sea submersible Alvin is one of the most storied manned submarines on the planet. Largely known for its part in the discovery of the Titanic, Alvin has been exploring the deep since the 1960's, has logged over 5,000 dives, and is credited in over 2,000 academic publications. Much like the mythic Ship of Theseus, you'd have a hard time finding even a single bolt on Alvin that is original due to both regular maintenance and various overhauls throughout its lifetime. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, which operates Alvin, just finished another major rebuild of the craft. The upgrade increased Alvin's max depth from 4,500 to 6,500 meters, putting 99% of the ocean within range, and included additional technology like a 3rd sampling arm, a new imaging system, improved thrusters, and an acoustic transmission system that will allow occupants to wirelessly communicate with a surface vessel. In case you don't have the chance to dive deep yourself, Woods Hole also published a video of what it's like to dive in a research submarine.

+ And because you should never waste a good headline, researchers at Monterey Bay discovered carnivorous sponges that make their own light.

#02 STUFF FROM SPACE

+ The end of 2020 saw a number of successes in efforts to collect samples from various bodies in the solar system. China has reported that their Chang'e 5 mission returned nearly 4 lbs of material from the moon, Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft brought back a few precious grams of asteroid, and NASA's OSIRIS-REx netted enough material on the asteroid Bennu that operators had to scramble and save the mission from a leaky disaster. 

+ With all this stuff coming back from space and Earth in the middle of a global pandemic it's not unreasonable to ask, how do scientists protect Earth from possible space bourne germs anyway?

#03 ROVERS

+ One of the blockbuster space missions of  2021 will certainly be NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars. With the landing only a little over a month away, it's never too early to brush up on how to drive a Mars rover.

+ Venus is not a very pleasant place to be, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to learn more about the surface. Wired.com published an excellent write up on why we should be exploring Venus, and the steampunk-inspired rover concept that a couple of colleagues and I have been working on over the last few years.

#04 COOL MAPS

+ National Geographic is known for excellent maps and illustrations and, you can now browse the maps and graphics of 2020's events and discoveries yourself!

+ I had a lot of fun using this website to generate vector style road maps for any city in the world. It uses OpenStreetMap data and you can export the result as an image or vector graphic.

#05 NEW TELESCOPES

+ "NASA's upcoming space telescope, the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, or SPHEREx, is one step closer to launch. The mission has officially entered Phase C, in NASA lingo. That means the agency has approved preliminary design plans for the observatory, and work can begin on creating a final, detailed design, as well as on building the hardware and software." I'm a bit biased since I recently joined the engineering team for this project, but SPHEREx is a really cool telescope. It'll be able to make a full sky 3-dimensional map of the universe which will help astronomers learn more about the origins of the universe. What I find even more remarkable is that the telescope doesn't need a single moving part to do it.

+ The James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the Hubble, recently passed its final sun shield deployment test keeping the spacecraft on track for a launch this fall.

#06 POLITICS

+ Tired of American politics yet? For a bit of a change, why not learn more about ancient Egyptian politics? "The Amarna Letters preserve an inside look at Egyptian diplomacy, revealing how power brokers maneuvered, alliances were forged, and pharaohs were flattered." All from over 3,000 years ago.

#07 ON NATURE

+ "This sense of nature as an unstoppable force has been strongly impressed on me (and doubtless on many others) by the great world-historical event of the coronavirus, tragic paradox though that may be; nature, which has been lost to sight so widely, has suddenly been made visible once again by the pandemic, by the extraordinary circumstance of the anthropause, and most of all, by people’s own need to seek out nature as a relief from unprecedented stress." The Coronavirus Pandemic and the Invisibility of Nature, a wonderful essay on the value of nature to humanity particularly during this time of lockdown and isolation. (Editor's note to the squirrel that has taken a liking to our patio: we love being close to nature but you can stop knocking over all the potted plants.)

#08 A GOOD BOOK

+ Maybe it's because I grew up in Nebraska, but to me, the buffalo has always been associated with mystique and a sense of a lost past. The feeling is clearly shared by Stephen Rinella in his book American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon. Rinella, who is now a well-known advocate for hunting and nature conservation, drew a lottery permit in 2005 to hunt a wild buffalo in the Alaskan wilderness. The hunt itself is a compelling narrative and riveting adventure story. What this book is really about, though, is how the buffalo shaped the Americal identity. Rinella’s gift for storytelling combined with a healthy respect for history make this book a great read if you're looking for both an outdoor adventure and introspection on our place in nature.

"I sometimes imagine that we saved the buffalo from extinction for the simple reason that the animal provided a handy mirror in which we could see our innermost desires and failures, and our most confounding contradictions. Our efforts to use the buffalo as a looking glass has rendered the animal almost inscrutable. At once it is a symbol of the tenacity of wilderness and the destruction of wilderness,... it stands for freedom and captivity, extinction and salvation."

That's all for this week! You can respond to this email to tell me about anything you liked or didn't like, tell me about a project you're working on, or suggest a story. You might also forward this email to a friend so they can subscribe too!

- Evan Hilgemann

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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