When we look back in time that how we first started understanding
our universe, when we first started looking up and recording its data through
cave paintings and then we moved on and we developed early telescopes. For
thousands of years, human civilizations have looked up to the sky pondering the
origin and mysteries of the Moon – our only natural satellite. Ground-based
observations enabled by the invention of the first telescopes opened a new
chapter in our understanding of our celestial companion. For example, like when
Galileo looked up instead of seeing a cloud, he saw countless stars through his
simple telescope. In the fall of 1609 Galileo began observing the heavens with
instruments that magnified up to 20 times. On November 30, 1609 Galileo looked
at the Moon through his telescope and started observing as well as sketching
the Moon. He was probably not the first person to look at the Moon
through a telescope, but Galileo had made himself a telescope that was much
better than the others, and he could see the Moon’s surface in much more
detail. In December he drew the Moon’s phases as seen through the telescope,
showing that the Moon’s surface is not smooth, as had been thought, but is
rough and uneven.
Sketches of the moon from Galileo’s “Sidereus Nuncius,” a short
treatise on Galileo’s early observations of the Moon, the stars, and the moons
of Jupiter; it was the first scientific treatise based on observations made
through a telescope. Look at his sketches created over years ago! These
observations proved that the surface of the Moon is not smooth as previously
thought but rather uneven and full of cavities. The conclusion he drew was that
the changing dark lines were shadows and that the lunar surface has mountains
and valleys. The Moon was thus not spherical and hardly perfect. His first
thought was how Earth-like the features appeared. Before Galileo’s observations
the Moon was thought to be a perfect, smooth sphere (the light and dark regions
that can easily been seen by eye were unexplained blemishes on a smooth
surface). The perfection of the heavens set the planets apart from the
imperfect Earth. The similarity goes beyond anything that Galileo could
have conceived. But now the Moon was revealed to have very Earth-like mountains
and valleys. Galileo described the surface of the moon as being uneven and
rough and crowded with depressions and bulges. In his sketches, we can see clearly
that the line between the light and dark sides of the Moon that looks so
straight with the unaided eye, is in fact ragged from the long shadows cast by
mountain ranges and (as we know now) craters. In fact, the surface of the Moon
was pretty much like the surface of the Earth!
Centuries later we not only developed the high-powered
telescopes in order to look out at the universe but also developed a space program
that got us to the moon, one of the most fascinating things about it was great
to land on the moon, but also really it was about looking back at Earth. In
December 1968, one of the most famous images of moon exploration was captured
by Apollo 8, the 1st crewed mission to the moon. We discovered earth for the first time as no one
had seen this spaceship earth before as nature intends you to view it, not with
color-coded countries as in your school room but with just oceans and land and
clouds. It was the first time people on Earth had ever seen the planet hanging
in space like that and it was profound. Quite unexpected but that gave us such
a different perspective, ‘Earthrise’ was once
described as “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken”. Radical shift in our perspective after Apollo 8 made us to
think about our fragile planet and need to adopt sustainable practices to
protect the same. The ‘Earthrise’ picture
was incredibly powerful; it quite literally launched an environmentalism act.
50 years ago we pioneered a path to the moon. The trail we
blazed cut through the fictions of science, and showed us all what was
possible. Apollo
11, U.S. spaceflight during which commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module
pilot Buzz Aldrin, Jr., on July 20, 1969, became the first people to land on
the Moon and walk the lunar surface. As Neil Armstrong takes that unforgettable
giant leap for mankind, from the time of its launch on July 16, 1969, until the
return splashdown on July 24 (which is my birthday date as well 24 July 1988),
the spectacular feat was watched by more than 500 million people, one-fifth of
the global population. And it inspired generations of astronauts and engineers.
In the 1980s, humanity took a break in crewed and robotic
exploration of the moon with no missions reaching our cosmic partner.
Galileo's telescope got
us about almost a factor of 100 improvements in sensitivity over our eye and
then telescopes got bigger. We moved them to better sites, we changed the
detectors from our eyes to photographic plates as our eyes are not very
efficient detectors and can't integrate light for very long. And then we
invented electronic detectors and eventually the space telescope that sits
above the blurring effects of the atmosphere; as Earthbound
telescopes, from Galileo's simple instrument to all modern mountain-top
observatories are hampered by the Earth's turbulent atmosphere. Fast forward to
the 2020s, James Webb space telescope is discovering more about the universe
that never known before; we use that knowledge to enlightenment of all people.
And as the space agency continues to send telescopes, equipment and even
astronauts farther into the solar system; it need to use the best ways possible
to reach its goals. SLS is designed for human missions and will allow NASA to
send more equipment into space because it is a powerful rocket with more energy
than any rocket in the world and made in a such way that it can be converted
for different missions, it will have the power that can carry more cargo like
the crew and their supplies, or the large and heavy equipment needed to explore
the Moon and Mars. So not only will the rocket be able to send Orion with a
crew of astronauts to the Moon, but a different version of the rocket can send
large and heavy equipment to the Moon or even farther to planets like Mars.
The Artemis Program is a spiritual sibling of the Apollo
Program, which landed the first astronauts on the Moon. That program was named
after a god of Greek mythology, Apollo. Artemis is the mythological Greek
goddess of the Moon and twin sister of Apollo. With Artemis missions, NASA will
land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon. The Moon is the
only place in the Universe, beyond Earth where human beings have set
foot. This year marks half a century since Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene
Cernan left the last footprints on the moon in 1972, and a lot has changed
since then. That year, the first scientific hand-held calculator was released;
today we carry more computing power in our pocket than that which safely guided
the Apollo astronauts to the moon and back. Artemis is a human and robotic
Moon exploration program. If successful, the Artemis program will re-establish
human presence on the Moon for the first time since the Apollo 17 mission in
1972. Artemis I planned to launch from Complex 39B at the Kennedy
Space Center, from which Apollo 10 was launched 53 years before. The amount of memory used
in a Saturn rocket or in Apollo capsule is less than what we got in our cell
phone. Back then, computers were programmed using punch cards. They ran one
program at a time. We take for granted how our computers today can easily
switch from one program to another. Multitasking had to be invented for Apollo.
This level of computer programming was the beginning of an industry. There was
no field in what we did in software engineering, but that's what we were doing without
realizing that it was a field. Before the Apollo Program, vehicles were not
regularly controlled by computers. Airplanes at the time were pulleys and
hydraulics, you had a pilot that actually pulled on a lever and it pulled on a
lever and those actually actuated things. And so it's the first time that you
have a digital flight control system that a human life depended on and that
could successfully control a platform as complex as the Apollo spacecraft were.
And there was little margin for error. It had to be reliable, it had to not
only work, but it had to work the first time. And in the end, through the people and the technology,
it all worked. How they were able to do that with such little computing capability
is amazing. On the launchpad, both Saturn V and
SLS stand taller than the Statue of Liberty – a towering rocket standing 110 meters
tall.
The Saturn V was muscle behind the NASA Apollo moon mission. It
towers over 350 feet and weighs 6.2 million pounds, that’s 1240 pickup trucks
weight. It generates 34 million newton of thrust, the equivalent of 43 jumbo
jets which is enough power to carry over 95,000 pounds or four school buses to
the moon. NASA reported the first step of mankind on the moon to be the single
greatest technological achievement of all time. It's great to look back on, perhaps, what is
one of the greatest human achievements in engineering ever done. Artemis I mission is a test flight for the first time SLS
launches along with the Orion spacecraft, the only spacecraft currently capable
of human deep space flight. At blastoff, it will produce 8.8 million pounds of
thrust, making it the most powerful rocket that NASA has ever built. The SLS
rocket will travel at a top speed of over 6 miles per second/9.7 km per second.
This is so fast that SLS could circle the world in 66 minutes. It weighs almost
6 million pounds. That's the weight of eight fully loaded 747 jumbo jets. The
SLS crew rocket is powerful enough to carry the weight of 12 NFL football teams
of 53 players each. With Artemis missions, NASA in collaboration with
commercial and international partners will establish the first long-term
presence on the Moon. Also such collaboration is much needed for paving the way
for human mission in 2024 by helping to deliver robotics, science instruments
to the moon surface. The objective is to utilize innovative technologies so
that Artemis moonwalkers can explore more of the lunar surface than ever
before. Even without a crew, Artemis 1 will be a record-breaker. According to
NASA, Orion will stay in space longer than any ship for astronauts has done
without docking to a space station and return home faster and hotter than ever
before. The mission's primary objective is to test the capsule's heat
shield, the largest ever built, 16 feet (five meters) in diameter. On its
return to the Earth's atmosphere, the Orion module will reach temperatures of
5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius) during reentry with a speed of
25,000 miles per hour. In addition to testing NASA’s latest equipment, Artemis
I will have a secondary payload of 10 CubeSats, which contain small satellites
that will conduct some nifty independent testing. These include an orbiter
designed to search for lunar ice and a solar sail-powered spacecraft capable of
encountering near-Earth Asteroids.
This year we celebrated the first international moon day 20 July
2022, chosen to honor the first ever human landing on the surface of the moon
by the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. International moon day was not only to
commemorate this outstanding achievement but also to celebrate and reinforce
achievements of humanity; efforts of all states in the exploration of our
cosmic companion with their first spacecraft to reach the moon, new images of
its surface and rover landings. Because every successful lunar missions come in
handy as data from lunar orbiters is useful not only to reveal the moon's
hazards and resources but also in developing an entirely new approach for
landing and operating on the moon. Some of the most common image people
requests are not just distant galaxies from the far reaches of our universe but
also the footsteps of 12 people who walked on our closest cosmic neighbor; the
Moon. Since there is no wind or rain on the Moon, the astronauts'
footsteps remain on the surface which can be seen with the Lunar Reconnaissance
Orbiter.
The Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s gave us tremendous
insight into the history and structure of the moon, missions brought a total of
12 astronauts to the moon. They also collected over 380kg of samples to
bring back to Earth that helped scientists to decide the age of the moon that the
lighter regions of its surface are over 4 billion years old. Evidence now shows
that the Moon was once part of the Earth, and that an impact between the young
Earth and another planet in the early Solar System ripped away a huge amount of
the Earth’s outer layers which would later cool and re-solidify as the Moon. The
landscape is covered in craters that have been preserved because there is no
atmosphere, and therefore no weathering, of the surface. The darker
regions, called Maria (Latin for Sea) because they look like oceans, are
actually vast plains of volcanic lava, although the last volcanic eruptions on
the Moon ended over three billion years ago. In the past when people looked up
at the moon and they saw these darker regions and they thought these are seas
on the moon which is why we call these regions as Mare or Maria while the original
crust being higher in elevation are called terra or highland of the moon. These
theories about the moon's formation and evolution are not perfect yet. It's
difficult to answer how exactly the moon formed but thanks to lunar meteorites
and returned samples scientists have gathered these hints. NASA reported the
first step of mankind on the moon to be the single greatest technological
achievement of all time. There are still so many things we don't know about the
moon but with future Artemis missions, we will send astronauts back to the moon
with advanced equipment and technology to look for more answers.
There are some theories to explain the formation of the moon and
currently the most popular explanation is the giant impact theory. It says that
in the early age of our solar system there were lots of clueless planetary bodies
traveling around and on one fateful day around 4.5 billion years ago something
as big as mars crashed into earth who was still a baby at the time. This
collision created a lot of molten planetary debris but because of earth gravity
it didn't all drift away into space instead it started orbiting around earth
and eventually came together forming our moon and this process is called accretion.
But at that stage the moon was still a huge ball of molten rock which geologists
refer to as magma and over time things started to cool down and a solid core
mostly made of iron alloy was formed and after that more minerals started to crystallize
and sink to the bottom forming a layer which we call the mantle. Because of the
high temperature and pressure the materials at this layer are actually not in
the solid state still molten, these minerals mostly olivine and peroxine are
heavier and darker in color. The remaining materials mostly made of plagioclase
feldspar floated to the surface cooled down last and solidified over time
forming the crust of the moon. This layer
is the light colored part of the main surface that we see today. This is called
the lunar magma ocean theory and it is the leading explanation of the moon's
early evolution.
The dark spots come from giant impact happened and still many
collisions happening every single day. On earth we have an atmosphere that
slows down space intruders and turns them into shooting stars or meteors; most
of them if small enough will be completely burned during this process. Although
a small number of them will survive and make a hard landing and become
meteorites. The moon on the other hand has no atmosphere and therefore nothing
to slow down. These impacting objects especially in the early time of our solar
system there were lots of violent collisions. So these large objects went
straight towards the moon's surface without slowing down and the collision fractured
the crust and the mantle materials underneath found its way to the surface
filling the basins at these crashing sites. Other than these larger impact
events there are countless smaller objects gliding onto the lunar surface as
well even to this day and this process repeatedly broke down the very top layer
of the crust forming a dusty world that we see today. We call this loose
granular material as regolith.
Artemis I mission is the first flight test of the Space Launch
System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft together that designed to take
astronauts to the Moon. The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is an incredible
piece of space technology that is crucial to the Artemis missions. Unlike future
Artemis missions, Artemis I is un-crewed mission. Orion capsule will not have
astronauts aboard but will fly around the Moon and back. So Artemis I mission
will not carry crew; although uncrewed by humans, the capsule has several
“passengers” on-board. Captain Moonikin Campos (named after Arturo Campos, an
engineer who played a major role in resolving the emergency that occurred
during the Apollo13 mission), a mannequin equipped with radiation sensors and
acceleration measurement instruments, as well as two identical phantoms shaped
like female torsos. Also a plush, NASA’s Snoopy and ESA’s Shaun the Sheep are
accompanying them. So for now NASA is flying the names of people around the
moon during Artemis 1 mission and these “passengers” before its main goal of
landing “the first woman and the next man” on the surface of the moon in the
future. Unlike Apollo missions, which kept to a tight, near-circular orbit
around the Moon, Artemis 1 will use a much wider orbit called a distant
retrograde orbit (DRO). NASA is stressing the
craft beyond normal parameters on this test flight as no one is aboard except a
set of full and partial mannequins; Commander Moonikin Campos, Helga, and Zohar
equipped with sensors to monitor the impact of radiation on future human
astronauts. These experiments will study the effects of space radiation before
humans land on Moon and, then further on to Mars.
NASA has partnered with the Israel Space Agency (ISA) and the
German Aerospace Center (DLR) to perform the investigation, called the
Matroshka AstroRad Radiation Experiment (MARE) to test the AstroRad radiation
protection vest; two measuring dummies named Helga & Zohar record the
radiation exposure on the bodies of future female astronauts. To get
comparative values, only Zohar wears a radiation protection vest, Helga travels
unprotected. The MARE experiment is truly pioneering and forms the primary
science payload of the Orion capsule and will provide valuable data on
radiation levels during missions to the Moon while testing the effectiveness of
the new vest. The manikins, called phantoms, are manufactured from materials
that mimic human bones, soft tissues, and organs of an adult female. Since the
female body is more sensitive to radiation than the male in some places, the
two phantoms were modeled on women, but the AstroRad vest is designed to
protect both men and women. The phantoms have a three-centimeter grid embedded
throughout the torsos that will enable scientists to map internal radiation
doses to areas of the body that contain critical organs. With two identical
torsos, scientists will be able to determine how well the new vest might
protect crew from solar radiation, while also collecting data on how much
radiation astronauts might experience inside Orion on a lunar mission –
conditions that cannot be recreated on Earth.
In free space, radiation exposure is around 700 times greater
than on the surface of the earth. The further you fly into space, the weaker
the protective effect of the earth's atmosphere and earth's magnetic field
becomes. As NASA leads the way for human exploration at the Moon and beyond,
space radiation is one of the biggest hazards crews face. Two identical manikin
torsos equipped with radiation detectors flying aboard Orion during the
three-week mission and travel about 280,000 miles from Earth and thousands of
miles beyond the Moon. The cosmic ray field is so complex that it cannot be
simulated. Hence the measurements taken during Artemis I will provide valuable
risk assessment and mitigation data for future exploration missions and enable
safe human exploration of space. The follow-up missions Artemis II and III are
intended to transport the next humans to the moon. Artemis II is now being
conceived and hopefully we can land crew by Artemis III. If all goes according
to plan, the Artemis II mission will follow in 2024, sending astronauts around
the moon and back. Artemis III will put astronauts down on the moon, near
the lunar South Pole, with the aid of SpaceX's Starship vehicle. This landmark
mission is targeted for 2025 or 2026. Artemis missions at the Moon will pave
the way for human exploration of Mars.
Orion spacecraft will go the distance in retrograde orbit during
Artemis I. Artemis I mission is the first flight test of the Space Launch
System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft together that designed to take
astronauts to the Moon. For Artemis I mission, we are going into a “distant
retrograde orbit” (DRO), a very big orbit around the moon. "Distant"
relates to high altitude, while "retrograde" means that it will orbit
the moon in the opposite direction to the one in which the moon spins or in
other words Orion will go around the Moon the opposite direction to the Moon's
orbit around the Earth, that's the orbit Artemis I using as the test flight. Distant
retrograde orbit is just the easiest and very stable orbit because of its
interactions with two points of the planet-moon system as objects are balanced
between the gravitational pulls of two large masses where objects tend to stay
put which means that the perfect use of the Earth and the Moon gravity to maintain
that orbit; kind of like a Lagrange point, so if Orion space module did nothing
it would never leave that orbit which makes it a perfect test orbit. NASA
originally studied DRO for the Asteroid Redirect Mission, a proposed mission
that would capture an asteroid and place it into DRO for easy access to study.
As DRO provides a highly stable orbit that allows a spacecraft to reduce fuel
consumption where little fuel is required to stay for an extended trip in deep
space to put Orion’s systems to the test in an environment far from Earth. NASA's
Orion spacecraft will launch from Kennedy Space Center on the Space Launch
System (SLS) rocket. After the SLS rocket upper stage engine fires to put Orion
on course for the Moon, Orion will use a combination of propulsion from the
service module and a flyby around 100 kilometers (about 60 miles) over the
surface of the Moon on its closest approach for a gravity assist to slingshot
it into a distant retrograde orbit (DRO) around 40,000 miles beyond the Moon, a
distance record for a spacecraft rated to carry humans. The spacecraft will
remain in that orbit for more than six days to acquire the necessary data
providing the mission controllers at NASA the chance to understand its
performance. Orion will travel about 240,000 miles from Earth to the Moon, then
about 40,000 miles beyond the Moon at its farthest point while flying in DRO. To
exit DRO, the Orion spacecraft will again rely on a combination of propulsive departure
burns and a return flyby to utilize again the Moon's gravity to speed up its
journey to bring Orion back to Earth. The total duration of Artemis I mission to
the moon and back is estimated to be between 26 and 42 days.
60 years ago, President John F. Kennedy on September 12,
1962 at Rice University in Houston Kennedy delivered a landmark speech, one
that galvanized entire generation and inspired the nation to take up an
audacious goal. Shortly after making his challenge, the Apollo program was
born; with the speech at Rice, it led to the six Apollo lunar landing missions
between 1969 and 1972. He said during this historic speech, "Its conquest
deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation
many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our
goal? And they may well ask, Why climb the highest mountain?", "We choose to go to the Moon in this
decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are
hard."
President John F. Kennedy
wasn’t kidding when he said going to the Moon was hard. Much of the technology
needed to get to the lunar surface and return didn’t exist at the time of
Kennedy’s famous 1962 speech. There so much was unknown and when NASA’s Apollo
missions were being planned, there was concern that the lunar module might sink
right into the surface or become stuck in it. When Kennedy announced to go to the moon, NASA
didn't have a clue how the hell they were going to do it but they just said we
got to get to the moon before the Russians. Similarly back in 15th
century Florence, Italy Brunelleschi too wasn’t sure about his solution of
flying buttress imbedded in the dome itself by building two domes, the inner
dome to serve as support for the outer dome because no one had ever attempted
to build a structure of that scale before him neither he was having any
simulation tools to test his proposed solutions. So if Medici funds him that
would be an act of faith and he did fund him as he made commitment to complete
the dome for cathedral. For over a hundred years a
great unfinished Cathedral had loomed on the Florence. The original planners
had been overly ambitious they had meant to build the largest dome in the world
and they had failed. The cathedral more than any other building of any nature
in a medieval and renaissance city represents the symbol of the identity of the
community and having the project not completed was a sort of mutilation. All contemporary building knowledge had been exhausted now the
city looked for fresh ideas from a new generation. Cosimo de Medici had grown up in the shadow of the Cathedral,
now he and his father stood on the threshold of city power perhaps they could
apply the enterprising spirit to the greatest problem of the age and in the
process win glory and power for the Medici family. Brunelleschi's intricate
design would stand up, the city of Florence was nervous and no one more anxious
than Cosimo himself. Cosimo de’ Medici gives a
space to artists and writers to develop new ideas that are outside the
orthodoxy of the Catholic Church, art is really where it's happening. Art, sculpture
and architecture are pushing forward the boundaries of what it's possible to
actually do; No one in Florence was taking more risks than Brunelleschi. With
the backing of the Medici Brunelleschi now set his eye on the problem of the
dome the greatest challenge in Florence. In the
Medici, Brunelleschi had found patrons willing to gamble on his judgment. His
magnificent dome was rising even higher but with each new brick the angle of
the dome increased, this was the critical phase of Brunelleschi's design. One
of the major problems for Brunelleschi faced when he was building the dome and
particularly when he got to the upper reaches of it and so was how he could
prevent the bricks from falling inward. So resolve this Brunelleschi did was to
insert bands of vertical brickwork to tie the horizontal courses to these vertical
ones which were keyed to courses five six rows beneath that where the mortar. Brunelleschi's
herringbone design was untried and untested; the slightest miscalculation could
result in catastrophic failure. It would have been a disaster but
contemporaries might say not as much a disaster in terms of not completing an
architectural project, but a disaster in failing in producing the most
grandiose symbol of Florentine pride ever.
JFK's address changed the course of human history. It captured
the determination and drive for discovery that has been at the heart of NASA's
mission from its inception to today. The Apollo Program with the Saturn rocket
hired and inspired so many young people creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Two years after NASA began operations, the U.S. government allocated 500
million dollars of the federal budget to the agency. In just five years, the
budget grew to 5.2 billion dollars which represented 5.3 percent of all federal
government spending. NASA expanded facilities across the country: the Manned
Spacecraft Center in Houston, the Launch Operations Center at Cape Canaveral in
Florida and the Mississippi Test Facility. With the massive expansion came
hundreds of thousands of jobs. NASA’s labor force peaked in the mid 1960’s with
a reported 400,000 staffers and contractors. The majority of NASA’s resources
went to the Apollo Program. Between 1959 and 1973, the agency spent just over
23 billion dollars on human spaceflight of which nearly 20 billion dollars was
for Apollo. That amount of money today would equate to over 130 billion dollars
spent on one program alone. Apollo Program encountered a major setback in 1967
when an Apollo 1 cabin fire killed the entire crew during the prelaunch test.
But America has invested too much to quit now. With 400,000 people on the
payroll, NASA was more determined than ever to leave their footprints on the
moon. The 1960s every next
mission from Mercury to Gemini to Apollo went from one astronaut to two to
three. Every next mission was more ambitious than the previous one. It went a
little farther, it stayed a little longer, they brought more cargo, they did
more things this kept an interest level of the press and of the public, they
could talk about new things each time. It was a daring challenge that would
ignite American momentum. With new urgency, NASA's fledgling Mercury and Gemini
projects scored quick success. John Glenn's solo orbit and for the first time,
space walks. NASA astronauts, engineers, and American industries spent the
decade working round the clock. And by 1967, it was time for Apollo's first
manned flight.
Cosimo developed a strategy in spending money in such a way that
wealth would be transformed into prestige and power. Cosimo de Medici became
the most sought-after patron in Florence. Cosimo spent six hundred thousand
golden floorings in patronage which is six times the total state entry for one
year. Patronage is great for the production of art but totally rational from an
economic point of view patronage is a political strategy this in my opinion is one
of the keys to understand the Renaissance this high political competition
expressed through patronage in a city with those art potentialities gave birth
to an art market that has no equivalent elsewhere in Italy at the time. why the
artist needs the patron is very simple there are no public art markets in the
Renaissance as we have today you didn't make art and then put it in the shop
window and wait for someone to buy it you only made art what somebody commissioned
it from you and paid you for it, more or less in advance. The man working on
the best project in Florence was Filippo Brunelleschi and he continued to break
boundaries of conventional understanding. He simply saw the world as no other
man ever had; in 1434 Brunelleschi unveiled a new technique that radically
changed Western art. Brunelleschi developed linear perspective which allowed
pictures to create the convincing illusion of a three-dimensional space where
gothic art is primarily flat to represent objects as three-dimensional rounded
solid forms imitating the appearance of the natural world. Perspective revolutionizes
everything. It revolutionizes art but then of course it revolutionizes how we
see completely. Something small may seem enormous, depending from where you
view it and vice versa. Something Cosimo might have learned from Brunelleschi’s
Perspective theory which might have helped him to recognize a true artists even
among maverick person such as Filippo Lippi. That perspective created a modern
way of looking. It began in the 15th century and it very much begins under
Cosimo with Brunelleschi.
Fast forward to Apollo era, Apollo 8 went to the moon they didn’t land but
that they did circle the moon. Many watching on television and at a certain
point one of the astronauts casually said we’re going to turn the camera around
and show you the earth and when he did, that was the first time people on Earth
had ever seen the planet hanging in space like that and it was profound. Quite
unexpected but that gave us such a different perspective. Firstly focus had
been we’re going to the stars and suddenly we look back in ourselves and it
seems to imply a new kind of self-awareness. In fact, one of the astronauts
said when we originally went to the moon our total focus was on the moon, we
weren’t thinking about looking back at the earth but now that we’ve done it
that may well have been the most important reason we win. The engineers in
mission control admitted that though they are not poets and certainly not good
at that, but it was profound effect on everybody that was in the Control
Center. Jim Lovell one of real heroes on Apollo 8 while he was circling
around the moon, he did something amazing that he put his thumb out and he
realized with his thumb at arm's length. He could cover the whole earth everything
he'd ever known and he said something amazing that “there is old saying that I
hope I go to heaven when I die, but during Apollo 8, I realized at that moment
you go to heaven when you're born”. For a brief moment, a fractured world was
brought together in awe.
Not all astronaut were thinkers or philosophers but once
got the experience of overall effect they felt enlightened and many them
expressed theirs same feeling with world, in fact some with tears in their eyes
as words were not enough to expressed the beauty and fragility they experienced
in the space when they saw the earth from space. Thinkers of the renaissance era who changed the world were
actually consciously or subconsciously aware of this overview effect as they
didn’t bound themselves with their contemporary local saturated believes or mindset
imbued with traditional rigid thinking instead looked to the ancients for
guidance as their writings provided an overview of all of Greek and Roman
learning which offered them fresh new ideas and perspectives when they combined
those ancient thoughts with their own interpretations of those ancient thoughts
which helped them in ending the dark ages and beginning of Renaissance era. So
these philosophers/poets/thinkers/historians as if bending space-time with
their hypothetical warping device as not limited by contemporary time and local
space achieved overview effect and the enlightened generations.
In the year 2020, world went into a global lockdown due to
the global pandemic as if universe really conspired to pause Earthlings to
think and communicate about doing things with sustainability. The first time
that the human race has had this single focused attention on one thing, just
like during the Apollo program there's being a single focus on what global
events but this is also interestingly the first time we've ever had a singular
enemy on the planet and that's a big deal. So there was also a countervailing
trend of re-globalization; since world faced global lockdown which boosted a
digital world bringing them closure as best example is that people from various
part of the world were meeting and coming together on online platforms like
zoom having discussions. If we consider history in the past with world
problems, our ability to actually address those problems was so weak and we now
have the ability to actually use a global response to catalyze the world's
knowledge, information and focus on our sustainable future together with new
perspective. Also as we are looking at missions to Mars to bring back samples
why there is a massive safety protocol around that before it's ever touched by
human hands. So practices we following during global pandemic are quite a
common things in such missions. So if we get to our Star Trek world where we
will be able to scan and test for all these things very easily at the point of
contact at the point of you know sort of when you encounter something would be
really helpful. Like Star Trek world, you are seeing that the heroes today in the actual
world are the scientists, engineers, mathematicians and the frontline workers.
So perhaps if have some talents in math or science, now is a good time to
realize how valuable they are in today’s world. I think the people who are going
to be making the world safer, better and more vibrant are our technologists,
scientists or mathematicians. So being good at math, being good at science became
a lot cooler, it's good to be great in football and soccer, but yes being good
in math and science at this time is definitely an important too. And who knows this better than our astronauts who are not
only experts in their respective field but also have ‘Overview Effect’
perspective.
During Apollo era, it was not a miracle they just decided to go;
dared to take the moonshot. And look what happened, they landed people on the moon and get
them back and they did it in less than a decade; with
seven words we choose to go to the Moon
President Kennedy changed the course of human history. With Apollo mission
journey of 240,000 miles was not to just discover magnificent desolation on the
moon, but to get a whole bunch of new questions to ask that we could ask
ourselves. This enormous event regardless of race, sex, or religious belief
uniquely united the entire world in this singular human achievement. After this
journey we on the Earth is never the same as this new perspective seeing the
Earth from space, in all our unity and cohesion brought us an unprecedented
shift in our thinking. That was a powerful reminder of our capacity for
greatness as a species. Not simply represented the engineering triumph, but the
triumph of human ambition, the desire to reach quite literally for the stars.
Again back in 15th century as Brunelleschi’s
magnificent dome was rising, from his patrons to his workers all looked upon
him with disbelief. Brunelleschi had to prove that he was right. Brunelleschi
was a very hands-on person not only did he inspect many of the bricks that were
used and sent consignments back if they weren't quite up to snuff. He also
actually laid some of the bricks himself. The workers weren't certain at all
that this was a viable proposition to lay these on an inward curving vault and
so he himself went up and practiced what he preached. The genius of
Brunelleschi had defied all doubt and danger. In 1436 Brunelleschi who has been
keeping the faith all this time that he could build that dome without aid of
scaffolding or any other visible support has brought in reality. This great
achievement had mirrored the rise of the city's most powerful family and it
hovered majestically over the city of Florence.
We are in the second renaissance phase as in less than a single
lifespan; we went from first manned flight to first man on the moon. Just like
Brunelleschi, Wright brothers too defied all doubts
and danger with their successful first flight in 1903. And now last year in the
‘month of ingenuity’, April 2021 NASA Mars Helicopter Ingenuity hovered
majestically over the Martian surface successfully. With NASA’s Ingenuity,
Wright Brothers dreams of flying got accomplished again but this time on Mars
as Ingenuity helicopter did carried a small swatch of muslin material from the
lower-left wing of the Wright Brothers Flyer 1. It is located on the underside
of the helicopter’s solar panel. The Mars helicopter was initially designed as
a technology demonstration – up to five flights that would prove the
possibility of powered flight on another world. But in one year, Ingenuity has
exceeded its all expectations – completing 25 flights, flying for a total of
46.5 minutes, and travelling 5,824 meter. This year when Ingenuity completed
its most ambitious 25th flight travelling 704 meter at 5.5 meters
per seconds while flying for 161.3 seconds, it broke its own distance and ground
speed records on Mars.
If Cosimo could have looked into the future, he would have seen
the story of the Renaissance unfold on the ceiling of the dome itself, weighing
37,000 tons and using more than four million bricks. Brunelleschi's dome was
proof that man could conquer the seemingly impossible. A friend of Cosimo's
wrote of its impact, it touches the skies and casts its shadow on the whole of
Tuscany. When we saw the first image from Ingenuity helicopter which showed its
shadow on the surface of Mars during its flight, that moment was so profound
for all of us. And Ingenuity weighing just four pounds not just touched the
skies, in fact it went beyond limits of sky and now casts its shadow on entire
planet Earth from planet Mars.
NASA and Rice University in Houston hosted an event on 12th
September 2022 to mark the 60th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s historic
speech at Rice Stadium, which rallied the nation to land astronauts on the
moon. The agency provided live coverage of this event commemorating the speech
on NASA Television, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson was the keynote speaker. “In
1962, President Kennedy delivered a historic speech at Rice University on his
groundbreaking plans for the new frontier and sending the first humans to the
Moon. Sixty years later, we choose to go to the Moon – and on to Mars,” said
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. "Now the Artemis generation is about to
leave quite a mark," said Nelson. "This generation — all of you,
students from all over America, students throughout the world — this generation
will choose to go to Mars, and that journey begins right now with humanity's
return to the moon." The event also featured exhibits showcasing the state
of space exploration six decades after JFK's speech. These exhibits were set up
by NASA, Space Center Houston, Rice University, and space industry partners,
who commemorated Kennedy’s historic challenge and unprecedented commitment of
resources that set a young space agency on the path to achieve the goal with
the successful landing of Apollo 11 astronauts on the Moon on July 20, 1969. Apollo 11 was the
culmination of the Apollo program and a massive national commitment by the
United States to beat the Soviet Union in putting people on the Moon. It was
only the first stage of NASA’s moon domination. In the three year that
followed, ten more Americans land on the moon. As for the Soviets, they abandon
any ambitions of getting there, instead started focusing a different space
dream, launching an orbital space station called Mir meaning “Peace”. Wherever
mankind continues to explore throughout the great unknown of outer space, it
will all be made possible by the work of hundreds of thousands who collectively
made one giant leap a half century ago.
Thanks in part to the massive,
400,000-person effort that put astronauts on the Moon; our knowledge of the
solar system has increased dramatically in the decades since. Many immigrants on
green card contributed too, many with work Visa got sponsored for their talent.
By the time Apollo 11 landed, several dozen graduate students
and countless undergraduates had helped to build instruments that made historic
breakthroughs and remain on the surface of the moon today. But all of the
unexpected results from that every year NASA publishes a magazine called
spin-off and it's loaded with dozens of innovations that have resulted just
from the commitment to get to the moon. Dozens of products that have come out
of it just because NASA said we're going to get to the moon first and even now
50 years later when Nobel prizes in science are announced, more than half of
them are scientists working in America. So this is what a very profound lesson
that the important thing to try to achieve anything is to make the commitment
that this is what we've got to do. The many
challenges NASA overcame forced the agency and its partners to devise new
inventions and techniques that spread into public life, many of which are taken
for granted today. NASA’s Spinoff highlights NASA technologies that benefit
life on Earth in the form of commercial products. We’ve profiled more than
2,000 spinoffs since 1976 — As Apollo technologies have made their way into
everyday life, there’s more space in your life than you think!
SMART’s METL tire is based on NASA rover tech, startup working
with NASA’s Glenn Research Center, revealed its first product: An airless
bicycle tire based on technology so called “shape memory alloy” (SMA), NASA
engineers created to make future lunar and Martian rovers even more resilient. SMA
allows for a tire constructed entirely of interconnected springs, which
requires no inflation and is therefore immune to punctures, but which can still
provide equivalent or better traction compared to inflatable rubber tires, and
even some built-in shock absorbing capabilities. A rover on the Moon has metal
wheels that can flex around rocky obstacles and then reshape back to their
original form. On Earth, surgeons install tiny mesh tubes that can dilate a
heart patient’s blood vessels all in their own, without mechanical inputs or
any wires to help. These shape-shifting capabilities are all thanks to a
bizarre kind of metal called ‘nitinol’, a so-called shape-memory alloy that can
be trained to remember its own shape. The decades-old material has become increasingly
common in a wide range of everyday applications. The metal will face its most
challenging application yet: a sample return mission on Mars.
Today our calling to explore is even greater. This time, we’re
going to the Moon with the goal of establishing a human presence to learn how
to live and work in deep space to prepare for the first human missions to Mars.
We continue to build on the legacy of the Apollo program as the Artemis
Generation prepares to go farther into the cosmos than ever before. To go
farther, we must be able to sustain missions of greater distance and duration
by using the resources we find at our destinations. Scientists, engineers and
technocratic community are busy developing technologies that can overcome
radiation, isolation, gravity, and extreme environments like never before.
These are the challenges we face to push the bounds of humanity. Today we are
starting with the Space Launch System (SLS), the most powerful rocket ever
developed with the ability to get larger, heavier payloads off planet, and
beyond Earth's gravity. We have Orion capsule, NASA's next generation human
space capsule that can support humans from launch, through deep space, and
return safely back to earth. This system is capable of being the catalyst for
deep space missions; for next giant leap.
Artemis Program with goal
of landing “the first woman and the next man” on the moon, NASA has led a group
of nations expecting international partnerships to play a key role in advancing
Artemis as the next step towards the long-term goal of establishing expedition
team and a sustainable presence on the moon, laying the foundation for private
companies to build a lunar economy, and eventually sending humans to Mars. The
Artemis Accords are an international agreement between governments of
participating nations in the Artemis Program on the principles for cooperation
in the civil exploration and use of the Moon, Mars, comets and asteroids for
peaceful purposes, and is grounded in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. Artemis Accords which is a set of agreements
of nations and how they're going to work together, so we're inevitably going to
be seeing this not just with the moon but with mars and other planets because no
one country can do the best job by themselves and there's a strength in
collaboration which is exactly what is going on at Mars. Through Artemis
missions, NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the
Moon, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than
ever before for the benefit of all. In collaboration with commercial and
international partners, NASA will not only establish the first long-term
presence on the moon but then with this effort humanity will use what it learns
on and around the Moon to begin the next giant leap: sending the first
astronauts to Mars.
Martian waves are all over the planet Earth.
But Mars is 160 times
further away than the moon. It will take eight months to get there. Why go to
the expense and risk of going all that way? Well, the race to space began
through fear, as a reaction to the threat of an enemy. But while reaching to
the moon, we gained new perspective on our home planet. Today, new threats are
re-focusing our gaze back on our little blue marble. In order preserve it, the
nations of the world will need to work together. The next space race may not be
nation against nation, but humanity against the clock. So if climate change is
real that means terraforming is possible too, we are changing the planet's climate
here meaning that we are terraforming the earth right now. You can read one of
my previous blog for “Martian
Perspective” on Environment day. If
there's life form exists on planet, they alter their environment and by
observing such global effects is one of the strategy in astrobiology to detect
presence of life. Life does affect the planet and its atmosphere. During early
stage of solar system formation lots of the light elements like methane,
ammonia and Carbon dioxide condensed out on Earth, then these humble
cyanobacteria were among the earliest organisms on Earth who figured out an
incredible invention discovering photosynthesis with which they were able to harness
sunlight to extract energy and in the process create oxygen. These primitive
bacteria fixed carbon dioxide dissolved in the water contributing to global
oxygen formation on Earth. Today human activities are changing the weather of our
entire planet. Some people say why not to do the same on mars, the dinosaurs did
not have a space program and that's why they're not here today. There are no
dinosaurs running around today because they didn't have a space program and
they were helpless when an asteroid or meteor hit Mexico 66 million years ago.
But we do have a space program and perhaps one day we will be able to do
terraforming of Mars.
NASA along with commercial partners and international Partners
is working not only to land the first woman and first person of color on Moon
but to establish the first long-term presence at the Moon as part of Artemis, also
jointly to venture out into our solar system to explore, see and understand. We
will do it together for the benefit of all humankind. Humans are the most
fragile element of this entire endeavor, and yet we go for humanity. We go to
the moon and on to Mars to seek knowledge and understanding, as I quote in my Mars Rover Quote blog that “CURIOSITY with PERSEVERANCE should be in our SPIRIT to
find new OPPORTUNITY for a hopeful future of mankind.” We know that our efforts
will create opportunities that cannot be foreseen. This is the next chapter of
human space exploration. On the next mission, Artemis II, SLS will launch Orion
carrying a crew of four astronauts during which Orion will fly past the Moon
and back, so Artemis II will be the farthest humans have ever traveled into
space. On the Artemis III mission, SLS will launch with Orion taking four
astronauts and cargo to study the Moon’s South Pole. The moon is quite uniquely
suited to prepare us and propel us to Mars and beyond. Orion, the Space Launch
System rocket and the Gateway are part of NASA’s backbone for deep space
exploration. Through the agency’s broader Moon to Mars exploration approach,
NASA will establish a long-term presence at the Moon. We turn towards the moon
now, not as a destination, but as a stepping stone, as a checkpoint toward all
that lies beyond. Our greatest adventures remain ahead of us that to prepare
for humanity’s next giant leap, sending astronauts to Mars.
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History repeats itself as a October Sky.
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