To the Moon and Beyond: 50th Anniversary of Humankind on the Moon
The 50th anniversary of humankind on the moon was celebrated all over the world in 2019. It seems humankind’s intentions for space bring together different cultures, make exchange of thoughts possible, and allows us to open up and bond with each other. Regardless of national identity.
Indeed, as Neil Armstrong said, the moon landing of 1969 was “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”. It opened the door for future space explorations. The Consulate General of Switzerland in San Francisco celebrated Apollo 11 with two panel discussions on Future Space Research and Art & Space.
Below is an interview with three of the guests. Switzerland’s first astronaut, Claude Nicollier; Project Manager of CleanSpace One, Muriel Richard-Noca; and Emeritus Chair for SETI Research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Jill Tarter, who was named one of Time Magazine’s 25 most influential people in Space in 2012 worldwide.
We talked to all three about their current projects, as well as their dreams, and expectations for the future.
“I was an astronomer and a fighter pilot, I dreamed to be an astronaut”
Claude Nicollier, Switzerland’s first astronaut, dreamt about being a pilot as a child. He calls it fortunate that in Switzerland it was possible to become a scientist and at the same time a pilot in air force, a path he has followed.
I could satisfy my dream of becoming a scientist, astronomer, as well as an air force pilot. So these two interests have stayed with me my whole life.
I was 25 years of age when the Apollo program took place. I was an astronomer and a fighter pilot, I dreamed of being an astronaut. There was a huge motivation for me, but you know, there was no room for Europeans, for Swiss, for something between the Soviet Union and the United States. It’s only a few years later, in the mid-seventies that ESA, the European Space Agency, was invited to participate in the Shuttle program. And immediately I thought, “Wow, this is something that I could do”, and I followed that track, and it worked.
What is Switzerland’s place in future space research? Would you call Switzerland a space nation?
Switzerland is definitely a space nation. It’s a small nation, but it’s a space nation. It is one of the 22 member states of the European Space Agency. A small country compared to the large countries like France, Italy, Germany, or the UK. It’s about 3.5% of the European Space Agency’s budget and it gets the same percentage of the industrial contracts. Because of Switzerland’s legacy in watchmaking and precision instrument making, and it’s good reputation within ESA, we get a lot of interesting contracts. For instance, the atomic clock of the European GPS, which is called the Galileo, was made in Neuchâtel, and there are numerous other contributions to the space program. So Switzerland is a small nation, but it’s definitely a space nation.
How would you describe the last 50 years in space research? What did we achieve?
Well, of course, I would say that the Apollo program was a huge springboard for the space program in general, especially for the human space program. As you know, the Shuttle program followed the Apollo program with the first flight in 1981. So, in a way, the space program, especially the human space program, happened in waves. So, we had the Apollo wave, which is (an) absolutely superb wave, we had the Shuttle wave, and we had the international space station, which is, of course, related to the Shuttle, because Shuttle was instrumental in the assembly of ISS from 1998 until its retirement in 2011. We have done a lot to use the capabilities and resources of the lower orbit. It is time to go away now and move again to far away destinations: Moon, Mars, and other places. But in a way, there have been many preparatory steps in order to accomplish these next steps of exploration.
Also, I think, one important element is the rise of the private companies, whether it’s SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, they are rising and I wouldn’t say that it’s a competition to the institutional agencies like NASA and other space agencies, but there will be a cooperation between the two for a better space program in the future. There are new ideas coming from these private companies, and I think it’s a very healthy process.
Now that you are talking about the future, what do you expect from the next 50 years? More Moon, more Mars, where do you think we’re headed?
Well, again, it will be going away from the lower orbit. We will continue using the resources of the lower orbit, especially for earth observations. Much development is needed before we take spaceships to faraway destinations. The Moon is really the neighborhood of the planet Earth. But whenever we go to Mars and other places, we’ll need to be ready and we do a lot of preparatory steps using the lower orbit capabilities like the International Space Station. We know that the plan is to return to the Moon before 2024, so this is pretty close. Then, a permanent outpost on the Moon, and then Mars, which is the most likely destination beyond the Moon. And I think there will be a lot of other developments that will be really useful and necessary, like taking care of the space debris. We need to do something about it, it’s not easy. It’s much easier to put something up to orbit than to take something from orbit and bring it back down to Earth, but we need to do that.
Yes, Muriel Richard, Project Manager of CleanSpace One will talk about the debris and what to do about it in detail. What else might be important for the future?
Another important thing is really the planetary defense. Be ready for a big asteroid going toward the Earth, possibly hitting it. If we don’t do something about it, that is really potentially dangerous for the planet Earth. We need to develop the means to redirect it. Planetary science will continue in the spirit of Cassini and Rosetta, which are superb programs within the European Space Agency.
We have matured a lot since Apollo. Apollo was an enormous springboard in terms of motivation and development of technologies. The spirit of Apollo was “if you really want it, you can do it”. It seemed impossible to accomplish this goal of putting a man on the moon in the 60s, which was decided in the early 60s, and this was possible because there was so much will for it. There was money too, but money is never enough. There was a lot of will and a lot of talent, and this has been a huge springboard for the current space program and for the future.
Our second interview partner is Muriel Richard, Project Manager of the CleanSpace One mission at EPFL. She worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for 12 years, within the Mars Program, the Advanced Propulsion Technology Group, and the Mission Architecture Group. In 2005, she was employed by the Space Center EPFL in Switzerland to manage the SwissCube satellite project, and later on to manage the “Clean-mE” research and technology development program on Active Debris Removal.
“A collision between a one-centimeter debris and a satellite, kills the satellite.”
Dear Ms. Richard-Noca, what are we talking about when we talk about space debris?
Space debris are made of three types of materials, very old rocket stages; so elements of rockets that stay in space. The second thing is typically failed satellites; satellites that worked, did their mission or during the mission they failed, and they stayed up there. And then the third thing is the product of satellite explosions or the products of collisions between debris. Satellite explosions can happen when sometimes there is still propellant in the failed satellites, and then you get to some configuration for instance they get heated by the sun, or there is a debris that goes through the tank, and that creates an explosion. And there are different sizes of these elements. The ones that we can track from the ground up are typically bigger than 10 centimeter in size. Now, there are about 23,500 of them.
And if you go down smaller in sizes, it’s really hard to know where they are. We cannot easily track them from the ground. And these are centimeters in size. There are probably estimated 700,000 of them. And if you go to smaller sizes than one centimeter, there are millions of them.
A collision between a one-centimeter debris and a satellite, kills the satellite. A collision between a millimeter size will create a hole in a window of the space shuttle, for instance.
Why is that, because of the speed?
Because the speed in space, in Earth’s orbit is about 28,000 kilometers per hour. So basically a satellite that goes around the Earth, goes at the velocity of 28,000 kilometers per hour. It’s really big. And so this is why such a small element when it collides with something, it will have a very great impact.
Did this ever happen? And since when are we dealing with the space debris problem?
Yes, collisions have happened before. If you were to take the Mediterranean Sea for instance. Let’s say you would put bottles into the Mediterranean Sea and these bottles would travel with respect to the sea at some velocity. When you put more and more at some point there will be a collision between two of these bottles.
The debris problem started when we started launching stuff out there. From the 60s on it started going up slowly all the way up to 2005 or so. In 2007 we actually reached the point where collisions between the debris started. And so that, in fact, accelerates the growth of this debris density. Because when you have a collision between two objects, two debris, they create hundreds or thousands of more debris. So they suddenly increase rapidly.
This is what we have been going through in the late 2000s. And in the 70’s this is something that had been predicted by Don Kessler, engineer at NASA. He had predicted that at some point this linear growth would go exponential. And so it’s still not clear if we are in the exponential. I mean it really looks like we’re going exponential. And the problem with this exponential is that if we let it go it will avalanche. Two debris colliding creates a thousand, and that increases the probability of more collisions. If this avalanche effect -if we’re already in, we don’t know it-, but if that avalanche effect occurs it becomes non-controllable anymore. And so the whole path of space that we have been using for weather satellites, telecommunication, eventually GPS, internet, all of these things will be unusable. It will destroy all the assets that we have in space.
Did you see the movie Gravity?
I did, a science fiction with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney (from 2013)
So they took this movie in a case where there was a collision. That collision created debris, and those debris collided with another object. And the way they have represented it in the film was really well done. It would look just like that. That was very authentic. We’re not there yet. And this is what we’re trying to avoid to have a continuation of that exponential.
Is CleanSpace One the only project working on this issue?
No. We’ve been pioneers, the two first projects that worked on this issue were European projects. And so I ended up being part of that, part of this change in the way we’re thinking about space. One of the two projects were from the European Space Agency, which they called the CleanSpace. Their aim was to go and remove the biggest object, which is a failed satellite as big as a school bus, which weighs eight tons. So imagine now that object colliding with any other debris or small satellite, it would create thousands and thousands of debris. And it still has proportion on board, and so it would be a disaster. So, the European Space Agency created that mission in order to remove that very big object. At the same time, we at EPFL created the CleanSpace One project, which purpose was to remove SwissCube from orbit.
SwissCube is the first Swiss-owned and student-designed satellite. It was launched on September 23, 2009, and has been operational since.
And why do we do this? Because we needed to have a demonstrator that it can be done. Because removing objects in space has never been done before, and it is something, which is really hard to do.
So how does CleanSpace One intends to remove the SwissCube?
SwissCube is like a brick of milk. It’s 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm. So it’s very small, and our challenge is to find it, because it is so small. So we have a bit of a challenge with the rendezvous phase. But then the capture will be done with a system that is like a flower with several petals that open up. It’s a mechanism that opens up with something like a net. And then we go around SwissCube, we close our capture system, and then SwissCube is in the volume of capture.
I see. It’s like a bug-eating flower.
Exactly. And for that we already have a very good prototype. Imagine now that you had to capture a school bus. This system is not very appropriate. It would be too big. So what industrials in Europe do is that they rely on robotic arms. But robotic arms are little bit more tricky, because now the chaser has to match the motion of the debris for the robotic arm to pick it up. Debris in space are not still standing. When for example a cargo mission goes to refuel or bring water/food to the International Space Station, they do adopting. So basically, the International Space Station is standing still and then you have your cargo vehicle. It’s also coming very slowly to contact with the International Space Station, both of these elements are completely stable. Do you see what I mean? Both of these elements have been designed for this mating.
In the case of a satellite, it’s not been designed for any mating. And the very big school bus tumbles. It’s not stable in space, it just tumbles. So imagine that you have a large bus on the freeway going fast and suddenly it hits some part of the road and it starts tumbling, and imagine that you would have a drone that would have a robotic arm. You would have to go pick up the bus while it’s tumbling. I mean when you get that picture in your head you’re thinking, “How the hell do you do this?”
Right, exactly “How the hell do you do this?”
(The school bus is tumbling and now you have to capture it with the robotic arm.) So what you try to do is with your propulsion, you try to match the rotation of the tumbling bus and that’s tricky, very tricky. These are the technologies that have never been done before and this is why you need a demonstrator. We started doing Space One in 2012. In the meantime, there are other companies, private companies that started working on this problem, too.
Private companies in Europe or other places?
I know of companies in Singapore, in Japan, and in Israel and some other studies done for smaller debris by Airbus here in Europe. So mostly Europe has been actually investing money into it. In the early days when this was discussed in the United Nations meetings of 2010/11/12 and so on it was really the US saying, “There is a problem. We have a problem.” Europe was backing this up. But for some reason it was mostly Europe that was investing funding into the technologies that you need for it. And then it took some time but at some point Russia started saying, “Yes. We need to do something about it.” And for only a couple of years China has realized there needs to be something done. So finally on the international level, something is really happening. So I don’t know, probably there are projects in Russia and China, but they don’t publish very much.
The impact of more collisions would change our lives completely.
Absolutely. And a lot of transportation logistics depends on GPS data. The GPS satellites are a little bit higher up so they’re not as threatened as other types of satellites like weather and internet and so on. They’re not as threatened by that yet. But if there are massive cascading effects of all these collisions, the debris will go up higher. They’re not going to be staying only in the very narrow region. And so eventually it will affect those satellites, too. It can impact also the GPS constellations. All the boats that are guided via GPS or the huge petroleum boats and goods boats and so on…
So in the scale of importance within future space research, where is this problem placed internationally?
I have to say that this problem was really flagged in 2009/2010, and now 10 years after the US has started investing and taking action. And when the US says so, usually the rest of the world follows. So from my perspective we can see a much higher reaction rate from several countries to the debris issue than for instance to the plastic issue in the ocean. The plastics in the ocean, the only real endeavor I know of is a startup in the Netherlands. And these guys have produced a solution, and it’s taking them time to implement that solution. But it’s a private investment. It’s not government’s investment, and there are not that many projects on it. In the case of space, interestingly enough, because I think that there is enough business behind it, that probably industry started making it the main point.
Thank you, Muriel for this very interesting and informative conversation.
Our next interview partner is Jill Tarter. She has spent the majority of her professional career attempting to answer the old human question “Are we alone?” by searching for evidence of technological civilizations beyond Earth. She served as Project Scientist for NASA’s SETI program, the High Resolution Microwave Survey, and has conducted numerous observational programs at radio observatories worldwide.
“And I think that our other purpose is to be good stewards
for the planet and for all life on it.”
Could you start by explaining what SETI is currently working on?
So, SETI is an acronym. It stands for Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, but actually that’s a misnomer because we don’t know how to find intelligence directly, right, at a distance, so what we do is we look for techno-signatures, we look for evidence of someone else’s technology that is modifying the environment in ways that we could sense over the vast distances in the stars. And if we find the technology, we are going to infer that at least at some time there were intelligent technologists who created it.
Is there still hope for the assumption that extraterrestrial intelligence exists?
I think today there is even more reason than ever before to be asking about this question about the extraterrestrial intelligence because in the past few decades we’ve discovered extremophiles, types of life that we never knew about that existed in conditions that were totally inhospitable to humans, but for which they are very well suited. And we have also discovered the exoplanets, planets orbiting other stars, thousands of them. So, it looks like there is potentially a lot of habitable real estate out there. And so now, we need to find out if any of it is inhabited.
How do you see humankind on this earth? What in your opinion is our space and purpose on Earth?
I think that our purpose is to be curious. I think our purpose is to try and learn about the universe and everything that we can. And I think that our other purpose is to be good stewards for the planet and for all life on it. We are not doing a real good job on that ladder right now, but I think that we do need to get better at it so we can have a long future. And when compared to another race of intelligent beings on another world, we humans are all the same. I hope that thinking about SETI will trivialize the differences among us that we are willing to shed blood over. We are all Earthlings and should act accordingly.
Can you tell us where you think the next 50 years of space exploration or space research will go?
Yeah. Back in 2004, Craig Ventor and Daniel Cohen published a paper. They said the 20th century had been the century of physics, with things like quantum mechanics and relativity and cold dark matter universe and they predicted that the 21st century would be the century of biology. And of course they were talking about genomics, and proteomics all of that and they were certainly being proved right. But I don’t think they were bold enough. I think the 21st century is the century of biology on Earth and beyond. I think this is the century that we are going to know whether there is any other life in the solar system or around nearby stars.
At one of the talks you have attended you mentioned that Margaret Burbidge and Grace Hopper were your heroes. Would you mind telling us little bit about these women?
Admiral Grace Hopper was a very early programmer. She coined the term ‘bug’ for a computer or programming glitch. She apparently pasted a large insect that has shorted a computer breadboard into her notebook. She also was famous for saying that it is better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission — I find that a really useful motto.
Margaret Burbidge is a brilliant British-American astronomer who came to the States and opened up the mountain top observatories to women in the 1950's.
When you were a child and growing up, did you dream that you would be in this position today?
No, I have my job purely by accident because I knew how to program an ancient computer that was given to a scientist who wanted to do a SETI search and was given a surplus equipment and he found out that I knew how to program the thing and so he recruited me and I thought, “wow, after millennia of asking the priests and philosophers what we should believe about life beyond Earth?” I was suddenly at the right place, at the right time, we had the right tools, we had telescopes, we had computers, and I couldn’t imagine anything more fascinating than trying to answer this old human question.
There is a lot of conversation around Mars. Mars would be the next planet that we would inhabit if we left the Earth. Do you have any comment about that?
Mars? I think that we will have humans on Mars, but I think that they are going to be scientists who are studying the planet. I think it’s overwhelmingly going to prove easier to fix this planet rather than abandon it for another. So I think that we will definitely have humans on Mars but they would be there to learn about Mars as opposed to a second outpost for humanity. I think we can do that with colonies and orbit around the planet Earth.
Is there anything else that you would like to add that you think our readers might be interested in hearing?
I think that we are always eager to have young people come into this general field of astrobiology, so looking for bio-signatures, evidence of life of any kind, and then looking for techno-signatures, so looking for mathematicians, rather than the microbes. It’s an expansive field, and I think that it is just going to have huge payoffs in this century. So, any young people out there thinking about what they want to spend their life doing, I would suggest that astrobiology might be a very enjoyable way to have a career in this century.
You had a great interesting career and I’m sure that this will be an inspiration for younger people going into the field. Is there anything else you can advise young people?
When young people ask me what they should do, my only advice is to find something that you are passionate about, that you really like doing. And then, get better at that than anyone else and then get creative about how you could use those skills to solve problems that you might have never thought of. If you’ve got a good toolbox of skills, you’ll find lots of problems out there of all kinds of different types that maybe can benefit from your toolbox. So just get good at something you love and find someone to pay you to do it.
The interviews and this article were a collaborative work between Jale Yoldas (Consulate General of Switzerland in SF), Perrine Huber (swissnex SF), and Carmen Archouniani (Consulate General of Switzerland in SF)
