Humankind In The Cosmos: Achievements In Space

Here’s your sign to celebrate our inconceivable triumphs out in space! I’ve compiled a small list of the biggest space-related missions/accomplishments from this year. Take a galactic tour of 2022!

Also below are thoughts from Zoology, Microbiology, and Space Science teacher Ms. Wachtel, Physics teacher Mr. Gordon, and my brother, a senior in Aerospace Engineering at the U of I.

SpaceX’s Starlink Launch (Jan. 6-rest of the year)

SpaceX Launches 52 satellites in their 45th launch of the year (Oct. 5)

Mr. Gordon

“I’m on the record as against it. My understanding- There’s this influx of so many satellites into low-earth orbit, and they create these constellations that really affect ground-based observing. To me, it’s a little bit of a vanity project, I think, for Elon Musk. I think he wants to solve these world issues and I’m not sure he always knows what he’s talking about and he has a lot of money to burn so he’s doing these projects.” 

“In space, we don’t have protocols for cleaning up satellites. As we add more hundreds of satellites, the risk of things crashing into each other increases, which is an expensive, dangerous thing. So I just think we’ve got to be careful with that.”

Ms. Wachtel

 “I have mixed emotions on Starlink… I haven’t investigated, but it feels like it wasn’t thought through before they started. I mean, I 100% can get behind everybody on the planet having Internet access. What that could change for developing countries in healthcare and medicine and that sort of stuff is huge. However, I’m not sure that this is- I’m sure it’s not the only way to solve the problem. And it doesn’t feel like the best way, and it feels like somebody thought this vague storyline from a Star Trek episode should be manifested. So, that’s a bit of a bummer.”

Sandil

“I believe that SpaceX’s launch of 52 Starlink satellites on their 45th anniversary was an impressive event and a success for the commercial space industry. The Starlink satellite constellation is the future of communication for both civilians and the US military, making frequent launches critical in order to complete the full constellation. It was also impressive to watch the Falcon 9 boosters land after placing the satellites in orbit, as reusability is the most pressing issue in space exploration.”

James Webb Space Telescope Locks into Place (Jan. 24)

Webb’s NIRSpec detects CO2 outside of the solar system

Webb identifies the oldest and most distant globular clusters (Jun. 10)

Webb captures the most clear picture of Neptune’s rings (Jul. 12)

Webb takes its first image of a distant planet (Sept. 1)

Mr. Gordon

“I’m really interested in life- search for life, and astrobiology. I think James Webb will be huge for that; in searching for exoplanets and being able to look at the composition of their atmospheres. That’s going to be something we’re going to be able to do in way more detail than ever before. In the next year we’re going to be seeing some amazing results… It almost didn’t happen.”

“With how it was delayed, and with what happened with the Hubble telescope when it was first launched, they made a critical mistake and they had to send astronauts up to fix it. It was a terrible, expensive mistake that thankfully worked out. With Webb, they were sending it to the L2 point, the Lagrange point, so it’s far away from Earth to an extent where astronauts can never visit it probably… They started working on it way before the engineering was even possible. They were pioneering all these things… There were so many people that were able to sigh… It’s just such an impressive engineering marvel.”

“That’s the amazing thing about science: you’re never done. We’re never done exploring space. Everytime you vaguely answer questions you get 60 other questions that pop up. For every project, for any new telescope project, there’s like 100 projects that didn’t make it… It’s so many people from so many countries that have to come together to work on it.” 

“I forget the exact number but it was something like some number of hundreds of single-point failures… They were all these maneuvers that it had to do on its own via robotics. They were like multiples of hundreds of individual things that had to happen or the entire thing failed. And every single one of them worked… Think of how many mistakes a day you make.”

“I think it’ll be really cool as Webb and Hubble- they have different wavelengths that they’re able to observe, and as they’re able to look at the same objects with two different views, I think we’re going to get really cool data.”

Ms. Wachtel

“I agree with Mr. Gordon; the feat of doing the Webb Telescope and it working is just so amazing. I definitely was hanging on bated breath as they got it out there and I have these amazing memories of Christmas morning, going, ‘Okay, it’s happening.’ I’m watching that and then going, ‘Okay, I’m just going to check in because I can’t sit here and watch all of this for the next six months while we wait for it to get there and open up.’”

 “When we look at the stuff that’s coming back from the Webb telescope, people are very excited about the images that we’re getting, which is very cool. I do think that spectral analysis that’s going to make it possible for us to say, ‘There’s probably life on this planet.’ We’re looking for something that matches what we have… We’ll find it, we’ll have a lot of good evidence. I think the understanding of what that takes and the spectroscopy of it all and that analysis is something that doesn’t hit home with a lot of regular folks in a day. And so the pictures are what are being promoted…” 

“Some of the people that started imagining and designing this may not be living today. It took long enough that there were people that put their everything into something like that and didn’t get to see the outcome, but other people picked up the ball and continued. There’s no one person that gets the credit.”

“I- as a teacher- I’m very excited about the fact that I have- Space Science on the schedule next semester- so that’s giving NASA and their outreach time to put together good stuff for educators about James Webb. I guess that’s the thing I’m looking forward to; it’s what they’re coming up with that we can bring into the classroom.”

Sandil

“I think the James Webb telescope’s image of HIP 65426 b (exoplanet) is an especially significant achievement as it begins a new chapter in finding Earth-like and habitable planets. The data from this image which was obtained with Webb’s infrared cameras can better help researchers understand what makes Earth unique by studying the chemistry of distant planets, which are often invisible to modern telescopes but visible to Webb.”

“I was definitely anticipating Webb reaching L2 on January 24th the most. This achievement was the culmination of more than 30 years of research and advancements in engineering and science. There were also a great number of possible points of failure for the mission, so for Webb to finally reach L2 was a major relief to the scientific community.”

Perseverance Rover’s 1st Mars Landing Anniversary (Feb. 18)

Ms. Wachtel

“That drone that Perseverance had and that working has been really cool. It’s made it possible for Perseverance to go into places that they wouldn’t have been comfortable sending it to before because it’s doing reconnaissance basically on areas… It’s also gotten some imagery from up higher that we wouldn’t have been able to do. I think that it’s really cool to see that that also worked successfully when that drone needs to be able to fly in conditions that are different from what we have here. Managing all of that and continuing to get good information back from that has been really cool to see…”

Axiom-1 All-Private ISS Crew Launch (Apr. 8)

SpaceX All-Private Crew-4 Launch (Apr. 27)

Tiangong Assembly Mission Progress (May-rest of the year)

Boeing Starliner Docks on ISS on 2nd attempt (May 19)

NASA Capstone Mission Launch (Jun. 28)

South Korea Danuri Moon Mission (KPLO) Launch (Aug. 5)

NASA’s DART Crash Success (Sept. 26)

Ms. Wachtel

“I’m surprised that that movie Armageddon hasn’t shown back up in my Netflix suggested just because of people’s awareness that, ‘Oh, we are treating the threat of impact as a serious thing.’ It’s gonna be our space programs that save us if something like that comes along. I think it’s a nice reminder that these programs are important. It can be hard to say… when we look at how the government spends its money, when the money is being spent on exploration that seems like it doesn’t serve anybody. ‘Why do we need to send another rover to Mars when there are people that don’t have healthcare?’ To have this as a nice reminder that there is value to it for everybody, not just the people that are interested… to save the planet is a nice one too.”

Sandil

“I would like to highlight the NASA DART mission which ended successfully on the 26th of September this year. The DART spacecraft was tasked with crashing into an asteroid in order to test our planetary defense capabilities, making it the first successful test of its kind. As a student currently studying orbital mechanics, it is absolutely amazing to see the results of years of meticulous modeling and the implication of this test in protecting Earth from future asteroid collisions.”

NASA’s Juno Makes Closest Flyby of Europa (Sept. 29)

NASA Artemis I Launch (Nov. 15)

Ms. Wachtel

“The thing that stood out to me first was the Artemis Launch, because that was so fraught with struggles at first. To see them keep going back to it and keep going back to it, I think, was just a really nice reminder of what science is about. Troubleshooting these problems. And what space exploration has been about. Everything that was successful came with so many failed attempts first. And that’s true for all science… That’s probably true for all of these things, but the Artemis launch was very public. I think more people got to see people sticking with it and not giving up.”

Sandil

“I highly look forward to the launch of NASA’s Artemis I rocket later this year which will eventually land the first woman and person of color on the moon. I’m especially excited for when the first permanent human colony is established on another world with the construction of a moonbase, and a Mars colony in the future.”

SpaceX Orbital Test Flight Launch (late 2022)

Blue Origin’s New Glenn Rocket Launch (no earlier than Jan. 2023)

The teachers also had other thoughts to share about our current day in space. Mr. Gordon said, “One other thing I wanted to mention is that some things that I’m really excited about are some of the things that just a few years ago were a huge deal and now it’s just a regular, it’s just another day in astronomy. With exoplanets, it wasn’t long ago that we just knew of a handful. And now there’s thousands of exoplanets that we know of. It’s not a big deal, we just find them. The other thing is that gravitational waves just 7 years ago, 2015, we observed the first one- incredible engineering feat. Really cool collaboration, it was a huge press release. Shook the whole world of astronomy. And then a year later they had another one, another press release and now there’s been a bunch of them, we’ve seen oodles of these neutron stars of black holes colliding and it’s not news anymore, it’s just science now. And I think that’s so cool being a press release and then just turning into a field that people go into and people study.”

Additionally, Ms. Wachtel said, “I am excited to see the number of private things that are going on. Privately funded is really cool to see. I look at this overall and see this really nice collaboration between government funded stuff and privately funded stuff which I think is almost utopian… Both the ones that are we-wanna-make-money-off-of-it and the ones that are we’re-spending-taxpayer-dollars-on-it… I don’t think my parents in the early 80s with the space shuttle program could have imagined that it would get to this place. During the space race, the whole goal was to get there before Russia. And then to look at it today and go- Well, now, the Space Station is truly international.”

In a conversation about general interest in space, Mr. Gordon suggested watching the movie Contact: “I love that movie. If you’re a student out there looking for a good space movie that’s a little bit older, it’s really good.”

To finish off, Ms. Wachtel said, “For students that are interested in flight and in getting stuff off of the planet, they should check out our Model Rocketry Club.”