#01 UNDERGROUND

+ "To get to Cueva de los Tayos—Cave of the Oilbirds—drive east out of Ecuador’s capital city of Quito for eight hours along narrow, potholed roads that twist through cloudforest above the Amazon Basin. Pull over outside the small town of Mendez, and walk a path to the bank of the muddy Santiago River, where you’ll see locals hauling 150-pound bushels of bananas on their shoulders. Lower yourself into a long wooden canoe and glide past cascading waterfalls to the start of a dirt trail. Hike five hours in the humidity, over Puntilla de Coangos mountain, then up to the summit of Bocana de Coangos. The trail ends at a clearing with three thatch huts, home to a dozen Shuar, the ancient tribe that guards the cave." Take a deep dive into one of the most mysterious cave systems on the planet and what it means to the people who have explored it.

#02 THREE... TWO... ONE.

+ It was another busy couple of weeks for launch vehicles of all shapes and sizes. Blue Origins completed a 14th test flight of the company's New Shepard booster and capsule and hopes to start offering sub-orbital rides to passengers in April. In a bid to make an entry into the competitive small-satellite launch industry, Virgin Orbit reached orbit on their second try with a rocket that is airdropped from a 747. Lastly, the elephant in the room, NASA's ginormous Space Launch System, now faces questions after an engine test was terminated a minute into the eight minute planned duration. "Intentionally conservative" test limits have been blamed and it is unclear if NASA will re-do the test. The mega-rocket is meant to take humans back to the moon this decade.

#03 SOLAR SYSTEM

+ Even spacecraft that are already in space need to sometimes argue for more money. Fortunately, NASA's Insight lander on Mars and Juno orbiter at Jupiter both received mission extensions. Juno is probably best known for the amazing images it has sent back of Jupiter's cloud tops while probing the giant planet's interior. And Insight is responsible for detecting Marsquakes on the red planet, although the project recently called off efforts to bury a probe up to 10ft underground after years of troubleshooting, which included hitting it with a shovel, yielded only an inch or two of progress.

#04 DRONES

+ In a year where the coronavirus pandemic has limited the ability of researchers to actually go into the field, the use of distributed robots to autonomously explore and maintain a persistent presence is becoming ever more critical. In this light, researchers from multiple institutions recently deployed a coordinated fleet of robots to track and monitor microbes in the deep ocean. The project involved multiple robots operating at different depths to detect and hone in on microbial communities that are tens of miles across, too deep to detect by satellite, and can shift hundreds of feet in depth in just a couple of hours.

+ A very different type of drone was deployed in Iceland to experiment with how flying vehicles might enable exploration on Mars. The volcanic terrain in Iceland is not unlike some places on Mars that scientists would like to see but are too rough for a rover. "The lava fields are far too rough and uneven a surface for a wheeled rover to traverse. Not only at Iceland but on Mars, too. So developing a drone is the logical solution to the problem of exploring the fields. In fact, drones may become desirable additions to rovers on all other worlds, simply because flying is better than driving in many cases."

#05 ENVIRONMENTAL ESPIANOGE

+ "Linda Zall played a starring role in American science that led to decades of major advances. But she never described her breakthroughs on television, or had books written about her, or received high scientific honors... The reason is that Dr. Zall’s decades of service to science were done in the secretive warrens of the Central Intelligence Agency." Meet the woman who was the driving force behind getting decades of classified satellite imagery released to scientists, and in doing so, "provided a new baseline for assessing the pace and scope of planetary change" as far back as 1960. "It was fun,” she said of her C.I.A. career. “It was really a lot of fun.” Interesting words from a woman who named her government program Medea, after the headstrong character in Greek mythology who let nothing stand in her way.

Thanks to Steve for sharing this story! A reminder that if you see something that would make a good fit for the newsletter, feel free to let me know by responding to any one of these emails or pinging me on twitter.

#06 CONSERVATION

+ More than 50 countries commit to protecting 30% of Earth's land and oceans, and donors pledge $14 billion to build a 'Green Wall' to hold back the Sahara.

+ A through hiking trail in the Pacific Northwest forces the question: should a haven for grizzly bears be off-limits to hikers? As an avid hiker who enjoys time in the woods, I struggle with defining where human presence should end and wilderness begin. 

#07 MOUNTAIN MEN

+ Have you ever wondered what a bunch of Nepalese sherpas might achieve if they weren't busy hauling other peoples' stuff up and down the biggest mountains in the world? Nepali mountaineers become the first to climb K2 in winter.

#08 A GOOD BOOK

+ Although we're nowhere near interstellar travel with current technology, Becky Chambers offers one plausible scenario in To Be Taught, If Fortunate. Engineers have developed a form of torpor that allows astronauts to sleep through the extended decades of spaceflight while only aging a few years themselves, and humanity is taking its first tepid steps to nearby solar systems. Follow along as the small crew makes an ecological survey of four new distinct worlds teeming with their own disparate forms of life. I quite enjoyed Chambers's imaginative take on what life in the universe could look like combined with a clear-eyed vision of technology and the effect of all that on the human interlopers. In the end, though, this book really seeks out to respond to a nearly unanswerable question: what if the world that sent you might not remember when you come back?

"If you read nothing else we've sent home, please at least read this. I ask knowing full well that this request is antithetical to what I believe in my heart of hearts. Our mission reports contain our science, and the science is by far the most important thing here. My crew and I are a secondary concern. Tertiary, even.

But all the same, we do have a lot riding on someone picking this up."

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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