TheSpacewriter's Ramblings

In my last entry, I talked about how NASA was floating a weird proposal. In essence, the agency wanted to change the New Horizons mission from a Kuiper Belt explorer to doing solely heliophysics.

This, while the spacecraft is still in the Kuiper Belt, exploring this largely unexplored part of the Solar System. Oh, and the proposal also suggested replacing the entire science team (that built and knows the spacecraft). Or, at least forcing them to recompete for their jobs.

The original proposal had all this happening in late 2024, leaving the team little time to respond to the suggested changes.

After several months of speculation, a letter-writing campaign, and a Change.org petition, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate last week announced that the mission would continue largely as is. It would keep exploring the Kuiper Belt with funding guaranteed until the spacecraft leaves that region sometime around 2029. No word on whether the team would be replaced, but since the announcement suggested that mission operations would remain as they are, the team may be safe. The announcement was interesting for what it didn’t mention.

I guess this is good news, but I remain skeptical until I hear from the team that they’re still employed doing the science they planned more than two decades ago. There’s still time for them to do planetary science, as well as heliophysics (which it’s been doing all along). And, when the spacecraft leaves the Kuiper Belt, it’ll still have enough fuel and power to measure what lies beyond.

I still wonder why NASA went through this whole exercise of threatening a working mission like it did. It’s a mystery, for now. But, we can at least hope that maybe the spacecraft will deliver us more looks at Kuiper Belt objects. The team is still looking for a flyby target, so let’s hope for the best.

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Over on Universe Today, I wrote in April about how NASA’s proposed plans for New Horizons seem just a little bit inexplicable. I wanted to share my opinion here about the whole thing.

Basically, the Science Mission Directorate is thinking about stopping planetary science using this spacecraft and turning it into a heliophysics mission. Not at some point a few years from now, but essentially in about a year. To be clear, that’s WHILE the spacecraft is still exploring the Kuiper Belt. It’s not going to be leaving that region of the solar system for at least five years, maybe longer.

Not only does this misguided plan cut off planetary science, but NASA floated the idea of replacing the entire science team currently running the mission with … well, some other team yet to be defined, and honestly, it’s not very clear who would take over.

As New Horizons passes through the Kuiper Belt, it’s studying objects near and far. It’s helped the current teams discover at least another few dozen Kuiper Belt worlds. As the spacecraft speeds along, the team is looking for another flyby target, which is a lengthy and painstaking process. Maybe there’s an object on the path New Horizons is taking, maybe there isn’t. If there is, it’s another chance to get up close and personal with a never-before-explored world in the solar system.

So, having a spacecraft passing through this region is going to help planetary scientists in a big way. It’s giving them some insights into the formation of Kuiper Belt objects, and the differences between the bodies that populate this region. Of course, the spacecraft is also—and HAS BEEN —doing heliophysics all along. That’s been an integral part of the mission, along with look-back observations of Uranus and Neptune, plus some astrophysical work.

So, I have to wonder why NASA is suggesting taking the spacecraft away from the team that’s running it, truncating planetary science, and giving the whole mission to people who didn’t help run it or build it in the first place. NASA solicited input for this proposal back in April, asking scientists to give their opinions on this idea.

A couple of weeks ago, a group of prominent scientists did just that in a letter to NASA. They said the following:

“The New Horizons team, particularly its science team, and science leadership team has done a magnificent job at every stage of this important and impressive project, and they continue to do so. Recent discussions at NASA surrounding replacing this team, in part or in whole, are both misguided and unfair, and would set a bad precedent for NASA.

As the first and only planned spacecraft exploration of the Kuiper Belt, New Horizons is a jewel in the Nation’s and NASA’s portfolio of space leadership. We the undersigned ask NASA, the Administration, and Congress to reverse course on both of these important matters.”

Courtesy: Planetary Exploration Newsletter.

Signers include an impressive array of people: past NASA officials, folks from the Planetary Society, authors such as Ann Druyan and Homer Hickam, planetary scientists, a Nobel laureate, astrophysicist (and rock musician) Brian May, and many others. They all immediately saw, as I did, the strangeness of this proposal. They wonder why NASA proposes to make such a drastic change to this well-regarded and productive spacecraft and its team.

The whole idea sets a pretty poor precedent for NASA. It tells scientists, in essence, “We can take your spacecraft away from you after all the career work you’ve done, and give it to somebody else, no matter how much great science you’re doing.”

That’s hardly encouraging to people who are expected to spend great chunks of their careers planning, proposing, building, and sending spacecraft “out there” and then doing the heavy lifting of science gathering and analysis.

I wish I knew what was going to happen with this idea. So far, there’s been no word from NASA about the “feedback” they got. I can only hope that enough people told them exactly what they thought of this proposal.

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On the heels of that amazingly successful Artemis-1 launch to the Moon, the JWST teams have just dropped an amazing image of a protostar. It’s an infrared view of the object L1527, which is a dark cloud of gas and dust with a future star just starting to form inside.

As you look at the image, you can see some pretty interesting features. The protostar is hidden at the center and the cloud of gas and dust it’s buried in is about the size of our solar system. The object is lighting up the clouds of gas and dust stretching away from it. Amazingly, you can also see caverns and filaments inside the cloud. Those are all regions where the material being ejected from the newborn star is sculpting the cloud.

Now, this protostar is pretty young—maybe only about 100,000 years old. It’s not actually a fully-fledged star yet. That’s going to take some time before nuclear fusion ignites at its core. Before that happens, materials in the thick birth cloud will continue to coalesce toward the center. They’re drawn by the gravity of the forming star.

As the material falls in, it creates a dense accretion disk that will keep feeding the infant star. As it gains more mass and compresses further, the temperature at the protostar’s core will rise. Eventually, things will get hot enough and the pressure high enough that nuclear fusion will ignite.

So, in a few tens of thousands or a million years, this area of the sky will welcome a new star. The cool thing is that there are a lot more places like this in the galaxy for JWST to study. That means a lot more data for astronomers to study as they seek to understand the process of star birth.

JWST is the latest of the world’s space telescopes to take its turn showing us the universe, particularly in infrared wavelengths. Its first images of the distant universe began flowing back to Earth for analysis earlier this year.

Read more about this image and its details here.

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Last week, Nichelle Nichols died. Her son announced her passing in a lovely tribute to both her career and the recent discoveries made by the JWST.

Nichelle was an inspiration to so many people through the years. I remember the first time I saw Star Trek and saw her as an officer of a starship, I was amazed. Here was a woman onboard a ship in a position of importance. The fact that she was black was wonderful, but she was a woman, in a position of power. THAT was amazing to pre-teen me.

I can honestly say that Star Trek put me where I am today as a science writer, as a scientist in my past career, and as a skywatcher. Nichelle Nichols was part of that. The first time I ever met her (at a Con), I thanked her profusely for her work. It was like meeting a queen. She was gracious and funny and insightful. Over the years, I met her a few more times and remained in awe of her. I’ll miss her smiling face and gracious attitude toward all of us.

So, her passing marks the end of an era, but not the end of her lasting influence on people. I can only say, as so many others have done in the past week, “Thank you, Ms. Nichols. And, hailing frequencies closed.”

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Back in the “before times” (i.e. before the pandemic and all the shutdowns), I offered stargazing and astronomy lectures onboard cruise ships. I had a lot of fun doing talks and showing people from all over the world how to look at the stars. As with other groups of people, the folks I sailed with always had interesting questions about astronomy and space travel.

On one of my first trips, for example, I got into a discussion with a rabbi about black holes. On another adventure, I enjoyed lunch with a pair of ex-Navy officers who were on a “retirement” adventure. They actually taught ME about navigation and the stars. Later that cruise, we got to know the ship’s actual navigator, who gave a star-sighting demonstration.

We all had a chance to visit with the young man (who was from Russia) and “talk shop”. Turned out he’d been watching all my lectures via the onboard TV channel. He knew how to do the navigation sightings, but didn’t know much more about the stars and planets.

Of course, cruises weren’t the only places where I got to teach about the stars. Pre-pandemic, I attended conferences both at home and abroad, particularly meetups where we would gather astronomers and educators to talk about the best ways to bring astronomy to the public. I was a guest speaker at a number of star parties in the U.S. and Canada when I was working at Sky & Telescope, and before that as a graduate student.

One quite memorable trip occurred when I went to Warsaw and then traveled to Torun. Along the way, we visited a series of small observatories that were built by students and their families. I was quite heartened to see the huge interest these folks had in astronomy.

Alas, those days and nights are gone. Well, at least for a while, until the cruise lines welcome me back as a regular lecturer. And actually, it’s only been a recent development that I’ve felt comfortable even traveling to meetings. And, in fact, I did go to a meeting a few weeks ago—the American Astronomical Society (of which I’ve been a member for decades), met in Pasadena, California. It was an amazing experience to get back together with folks I haven’t seen for years.

I still do hear from of my some of my former shipmates from the pre-pandemic cruise days. And, I keep in touch with my fellow astronomy communicators in planetarium facilities, media outlets, and other places. One thing that I notice didn’t stop for the pandemic was our love of communicating our favorite science. I joined the writing staff of Universe Today, and am honored to be among some excellent communicators. I’ve also been a regular on the Weekly Space Hangout. And, in a few weeks, I’ll be leading a star party in our neighborhood (safely masked, of course), to keep the tradition of astronomy communication alive.

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