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EPIC MISSIONS + SOLAR SYSTEM + ASTEROIDS + MAE JEMISON + PLANET X & MORE
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Welcome
F
or as long as we can remember, humans
have looked up into the night sky
and wondered what is out there. For
thousands of years, pioneers plotted the stars,
discovered planets and marvelled as meteorites
illuminated the sky. Then, within the last 70 years,
we reached out from our home planet and into
the cosmos. Starting with exciting missions into
Earth orbit and then to the Moon and beyond,
space exploration captivated the entire world and
inspired countless astronomers and astronauts to
explore our planet’s neighbourhood and beyond.
In this special edition from The Week Junior
Science+Nature, we are going to take you on
a tour into the stars! Starting with our nearest
neighbourhood, we’ll examine the Sun, marvel
at Mars and more. Then, we’ll explore exciting
worlds beyond the solar system, scan for alien life
and figure our how many galaxies are out there.
So, grab your spacesuit and get ready to blast
off on a fascinating journey into the cosmos!
 24

Home
System 8
8 Welcome to the
solar system
14 Close encounters
20 Earth’s evil twin
24 Say hello to Planet Earth
30 Inside the DART mission
32 Shadow play
34 What are meteorites and
where do they come from?
36 The hunt for Planet X
38 What would aliens be like?

Epic
Missions
42 Moon rocket
44 Tiera Fletcher
46 Could YOU be an astronaut?
50
52
Mae Jemison
Space station
46
54 Tim Peake
56 The overview effect
58 Mission to the Moon
64 Margaret Hamilton
66 Earthrise
68 Return to the Moon

68
 Exploring
Space
102 74 Maggie Aderin Pocock
76 Robot rovers
82 Should space exploration be
done by people?
84 The Voyager probes
86 Strange new worlds
92 How many galaxies are there
beyond the Milky Way?

Into
the Universe
96 Hubble’s greatest hits
100 Wanda Díaz-Merced
102 Space telescope
104 Unlocking the universe
108 Stephen Hawking
104 110 The Wow! signal
112 What comes after space?

76

82
8 Welcome to the
solar system
14 Close encounters
20 Earth’s evil twin
24 Say hello to Planet Earth
30 Inside the DART mission
32 Shadow play
34 What are meteorites and
where do they come from?
36 The hunt for Planet X
38 What would aliens be like?
Getty, Shutterstock, Alamy
 HOME SYSTEM

WELCOME TO THE

The Sun, eight planets, five dwarf planets, hundreds of moons,

thousands of comets, over a million asteroids and a whole lot of
empty space… The solar system is vast. Let’s get our telescope
out and take a look!

CENTRE
STAGE
People thought the Sun and
planets revolved around Earth,
but after a long debate involving
many scientists, we found
the Sun is the centre of
the solar system.

8 Science Nature

he universe is so incredibly vast and
T seemingly unknowable that it’s utterly
impossible to picture it in your mind’s
eye. In fact, it’s so infinite that to think about
the insane scale of the universe for too long will
probably make your brain hurt. The solar system,
on the other hand, now that’s something that
we can make sense of. We can even imagine a
scaled-down version of it.
The solar system is our little part of the
universe. One way of thinking about it is that it’s
like our street in the limitless reaches of space.
Earth is our house, and Mars, Jupiter and the other
planets are our neighbours. And the Sun is the
nearby shop (well, sort of).
Our solar system consists of one star, eight
planets, at least 290 moons, five dwarf planets,
millions of asteroids and nearly 4,000 comets.
THE SOLAR SYSTEM
Essentially, if it’s drawn in by the gravitational
pull of the Sun, it’s part of the “Solar” (meaning
“related to the Sun”) System.
Astronomers and experts estimate that the
solar system is over 4.6 billion years old. It’s part of
the Milky Way galaxy and orbits around the centre
Illustration: Nicholas Forder
of that galaxy once every 230 million years. We’re
all living inside it right now, so let’s get to know it
just that little bit better.
Science Nature 9
 HOME SYSTEM
gravitational pull that keeps all the planets that are in gases. It’s the changing of hydrogen into helium

THE SUN
We’ll start with the biggest thing in the solar system,
that enormous ball of fiery gas that’s the main
attraction. It’s The Big Kahuna: it’s the Sun.
The Sun is a star. One that provides constant
heat and light to the solar system. Without this, no
life on Earth could be sustained. It also provides the
orbit inside our neighbourhood.
It’s, by far, the single largest object in the solar
system. In fact, to call it ‘large’ is to do the Sun
something of a disservice. Its massive diameter is
1,392,000 kilometres (that’s 865,000 miles). It’s
so huge that the Sun contains over 99% of all of
the material in the entire system! But what is it,
exactly? Well, it’s made up of hydrogen and helium
that creates the radiation that we all use as an
energy source.
As for how hot it gets, exactly - the answer is
‘very’. If you like big numbers, you’ll enjoy this: at
its core, the Sun is 15 million Celsius (or 28 million
Fahrenheit). Which (we are sure you’ll agree) is
fairly warm. On its surface, however, the sun is ‘only’
around 5,500 Celsius (10,000 Fahrenheit).

Our Sun is 4.5 billion years

old, which is actually fairly
young for a star!

The asteroid belt

The asteroid belt is a wide, doughnut-shaped
grouping of lots of asteroids (basically massive
rocks), which are shooting around the Sun located
in the area of space between Mars and Jupiter. All
moving at different speeds. And when we say ‘lots’,
we mean LOTS. It’s a number in the millions.
The asteroids found there come in all sorts
of different shapes and sizes: some are almost
planet-sized, while others are tiny in comparison. There is a second asteroid
belt, called the Kuiper belt,
One asteroid, known as ‘243 Ida’ is so big, it even
in the outer Solar System.
has its own little moon named Dactyl.

10 Science Nature
 THE SOLAR SYSTEM
Astronomers think
Mercury is shrinking due
to it getting cooler.
MERCURY
The closest planet to the Sun, Mercury can boast that it is the densest planet
around (although that’s a strange thing to brag about). Just don’t mention its
size. Mercury is easily the smallest planet in the solar system. In fact, it’s 18
times smaller than Earth. In fact, it’s only a little bit bigger than our Moon.
Speaking of moons, Mercury has none of its own. In fact, it doesn’t have
much of anything. It has no real atmosphere, either. What it does have, though,
is craters. The surface of the planet is pockmarked with loads of impact holes
from all the comets, meteorites and asteroids that have pelted it over time.
It rotates pretty slowly (at least, compared to Earth). So its days are long (the
equivalent of 59 Earth days). Yet a year on Mercury goes by super-fast because
it’s so close to the Sun. It revolves fully around our star in just 88 (Earth) days.
Of course, no one lives on Mercury, but if they did… they’d have four
birthdays to every one we have here on Earth.
REVERSE IT
On Venus, the
Sun rises in the west
VENUS
Another rocky moonless planet, Venus is Earth’s closest neighbour.
because it rotates in the
opposite direction
compared to most
While its surface is a
harsh environment, life
might exist in Venus’
much-cooler clouds.
It’s the brightest planet that’s sometimes visible in the night sky and other planets.
almost the same size as humanity’s home planet (it’s 82% of the size of
Earth). In fact, it’s sometimes called Earth’s “sister planet” because of the
amount of similarities. Venus’ mass is almost the same, and so, too, is its gravity.
Plus, it also has volcanoes, valleys and mountains.
The heat isn’t like Earth’s, though. Venus is hot. Very hot. In fact, it’s the
hottest planet in the solar system. The surface averages a temperature of around
480 Celsius (896 Fahrenheit). That’s hot enough to melt lead. Part of the reason
it’s so scorching is because it has an atmosphere of incredibly thick yellow carbon
dioxide clouds, which keeps all the heat in like an enormous coat.
The pressure is unlike Earth, too. It’s almost 100 times more pressurised
there. If, somehow, you managed to stand on the surface of Venus, you would
instantaneously be crushed into dust… which is a fun fact, isn’t it?

EARTH
Now here’s a planet you should all be pretty familiar with… Earth. The planet
you’re on right this second. It’s the only one with (confirmed) life on it, too.
Thanks to all the water on its surface and oxygen in its air. In fact, water
accounts for 70% of the globe’s surface. Also adding to the hospitality factor is
that our world isn’t insanely hot like Venus or cold like Neptune. It’s the ideal
temperature to sustain and encourage animal and plant life.
It might not feel like it, but – amazingly – the Earth spins at around
1,670 km/h. That’s 1,000 miles per hour! Earth’s rotational speed is actually
slowing down, but the process is moving so slowly that it may take as long as
Our Moon might have come 140 million years for a day to become just an hour longer. So don’t worry about
from another small planet having to buy a new watch just yet.
impacting Earth while it
Getty

was still forming.

Science Nature 11
 HOME SYSTEM
Mars’ moons, Phobos and
Deimos, are potato-shaped, and
they might be asteroids caught
by the Martian gravity.
MARS
The fourth planet from the Sun, Mars, is distinctive in colour. Its nickname is “The Red Planet”, so
you can probably guess what colour it is. The second smallest of all our solar system’s planets,
Mars is the world we humans have thought and wrote about and explored the most. Although,
of course, only unmanned spacecraft have landed on Mars’ surface (so far).
While we are all but certain that no significant or intelligent life lives on The Red Planet,
there’s no saying that this has always been the case. Some scientists think that Mars could have
hosted life, as there’s evidence that there used to be water there.
Just how far away is Mars from Earth? Well, the answer varies depending on when you ask.
This is because the two planets’ distances vary based on each planet’s position in its orbit around
the Sun. It could be as ‘close’ as 34 million miles… or as far away as 250 million miles!

JUPITER
If our solar system were to nominate a “King of Planets”, Jupiter would
wear the crown. The mass of Jupiter is nearly double of all the planets
combined in the solar system. Its volume surpasses that of Earth by
nearly 1,300 times – meaning more than 1,300 Earths could fit inside.
Jupiter has a few things in common with the Sun. And not just that
it’s big. It’s a ‘gas giant’, mostly made up of hydrogen and helium – like
the Sun. Unlike our favourite star, the hydrogen gas turns into a liquid
the deeper into its atmosphere you go. It’s not water as we know it, but
Jupiter has the biggest ocean in the solar system… a gigantic ocean
made up of liquid hydrogen. You wouldn’t want to go swimming in it.
How about moons? Well, Jupiter has plenty. In fact, it has more than
The Great Red Spot in
90 of them. Most are small, but it does have four larger ones. They are: Jupiter’s atmosphere is
Io, Europa, Callisto and Ganymede. Experts think Ganymede – as well a raging storm that’s the
as Europa and Callisto – might have water and ice under their surfaces. largest in the solar system.

SATURN
Much like its neighbour, Jupiter, Saturn is also a
hefty gas giant. The second biggest in the solar
system and sixth from the Sun, Saturn is also mostly
composed of helium and hydrogen. It has even
more moons than Jupiter, though, with 146 natural
satellites orbiting it.
The most distinctive thing about Saturn, what it’s
really famous for, is its impressive rings. Most planets
kind of look the same. Not Saturn! It has seven
different rings around it, all made up of ice, rocks
and bits of shattered asteroids and moons – possibly
smashed up by the planet’s impressively strong
Jupiter, Uranus and
Neptune also have rings,
gravity. The ‘bits’ range from dust-particle-sized to
but they are not as as big as mountains. The rings are grey and white in
impressive as Saturn’s! colour, and they orbit Saturn at different speeds.

12 Science Nature
 THE SOLAR SYSTEM

URANUS
Right. No laughing at this one! This planet gets its amusing name from the Greek
god of the sky. You really wouldn’t want to live on Uranus. No matter how much you
don’t mind the cold. It’s a noticeably chilly -224 Celsius (-371 Fahrenheit). Not only
that, but it’s also terrifyingly windy, with wind speeds reaching up to 900 kilometres
per hour (560 miles per hour) there. Oh, and there’s no oxygen to breathe.
Because of its very high methane content (which can also be found in farts),
Uranus has a bluish-green tinge to it. Along with significant concentrations of water,
ammonia and methane, the atmosphere is primarily composed of hydrogen and
helium, like a few other planets in the system.
The third-biggest planet in our neighbourhood, it’s a slightly odd-looking Thanks to its freezing
temperature due to being so
thing, with a unique axis that makes it look as though it’s spinning sideways. far from the Sun, Uranus is
Astronomers think it was part of a massive collision which knocked it over. called an “ice giant”.

NEPTUNE
The eighth planet in the solar system, Neptune is – of course – the furthest of all
the planets from the Sun. So you won’t be too shocked to discover that it’s pretty
nippy there. Along with Uranus, Neptune is known as an ‘ice giant’ for a reason.
Its natural gas atmosphere has an average temperature of a chilly -214 Celsius
(-353 Fahrenheit). Like Uranus and Saturn, the atmosphere is mostly helium and
hydrogen, though it’s the third element – methane - that gives it its colour.
Neptune may look small from Earth, but it’s actually pretty vast. You could fit the
Scientists think there might mass of Earth inside the planet a full 57 times. In terms of moons, Neptune has at
be an ocean of hot water least 14. Its largest, Triton, is thought to have been its own little ‘dwarf planet’ before
on Neptune that is trapped by
Neptune’s gravity pulled it in and forced it to start orbiting.
the planet’s high pressure.

The dwarf planets

Forget Grumpy, Sneezy, Sleepy and Doc from Snow
White, or Gimli from The Lord of the Rings – these
are the only dwarves that astronomy fans need to
know about. In addition to the main planets we’ve
all heard of, there are another five smaller ones, too.
These are known as the ‘dwarf planets’.
Planets must do three things to qualify as ‘proper
planets’. They must orbit their host star, be (pretty
much) a sphere and also be large enough that their
gravity can move away any other similarly-sized
objects. If a planet can’t tick off those three things, it
gets classified as a ‘dwarf planet’.
They are - in order of how far away they are
from the Sun: Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake
and Eris. However, there could be anywhere up to a
hundred dwarf planets still to be discovered. So get
your hands on a telescope, discover one and get it
named after you!

Pluto Eris Haumea Makemake Ceres

Getty, NASA

Science Nature 13
 HOME SYSTEM

GIANT
REACTOR
Each second, the Sun
converts four million
tonnes of matter into
pure energy.

Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe are the spacecraft

tasked with plunging into the Sun’s scorching atmosphere
to discover its secrets.

nless you’re slapping on sunscreen or snapping a selfie at sunset, you

U probably don’t spend too much time thinking about the Sun. Stop for a
second and think about it now. Even on the gloomiest, most overcast
day in winter, you rely on this glowing sphere in the sky for light, warmth and
food. The Sun provides the energy that sustains life on this planet. Most ancient
civilisations understood this and told fantastic stories about our nearest star.

Mission to touch the Sun

Thankfully, today we know there is no danger of the Sun being eaten by a hungry
wolf, dragon or squirrel, as some old myths warned. Astronomers and solar
scientists have discovered what it is made of and the source of its fierce glow, but
you may be surprised to learn how much there is still to explain about this star.
Enter NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and ESA’s Solar Orbiter, the robotic space
probes currently on a mission to unravel the Sun’s riddles. Packed with $3 billion

14 Science Nature
 THE SUN
The ESA’s Solar Orbiter
is helping astronomers
investigate how the Sun
controls its heliosphere.

Science Nature 15
 HOME SYSTEM
of cutting-edge technology, they promise to let us
“touch the Sun”, meaning they will examine our home
star closer than ever before, sniffing the corona and
listening in to the solar wind.
Sizzling science
It’s tricky to study an object that is dangerous to
look at. The Sun is so bright you should never look at
it directly. In the 17th century, the famous scientist
Isaac Newton joined the long list of curious
sunchasers who (temporarily) damaged their sight
trying to study the Sun. Modern instruments help
people to look at our star safely, but even the world’s
most powerful solar telescope – the Daniel K. Inouye
Solar Telescope in Hawaii, constructed in 2019 – only
squints at the Sun from 93 million miles away. Space
scientists say this is like trying to examine a waterfall
by standing at the bottom drenched in spray. To get a
better view, there’s no option but to get closer.
What is the Sun?
The Sun is a medium-sized star called a yellow
dwarf star. It is actually pretty ordinary – just one of
billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The star
fired up about five billion years ago, and today lies
at the centre of a solar system of trillions of orbiting
space rocks, including Earth. Even the biggest
planets are minuscule compared with the Sun,
which contains 99.8% of the mass of the solar
system. All the planets, dwarf planets, moons,
asteroids, comets and living things together make
up just 0.2% of the total mass.
A giant nuclear reactor
People often describe the Sun as a giant fireball,
but it’s not the sort of fire you sit round to toast
marshmallows. Campfires are an example of
combustion, a chemical reaction in which atoms
(the basic building blocks of a substance) in matter
shuffle themselves about and make different
substances such as ash and smoke, giving off a little
energy in the process. At the centre of the Sun,
however, atoms aren’t simply recombining, they are
being crushed together so violently that they
change into completely different types of atoms.
This is a powerful nuclear reaction, called nuclear
fusion. It releases vast amounts of energy – enough
to burn our skin and melt ice creams hundreds of
millions of miles away.

A trip to the heart of the Sun

The Sun is a ball of superheated material. Core Radiation zone

Most substances on Earth exist in three The core is a high-pressure nuclear Light escaping the core
states – solid, liquid and gas – but the energy reactor, which reaches 15 million
degrees Celsius, and in which
gets trapped in the
radiative zone. It can
GAS POWER
on the Sun is so great, it rips atoms apart, hydrogen atoms are smashed take more than 100,000 Hydrogen is the
separating negatively charged electrons from together, creating helium atoms years to find its way out.
fuel for nuclear fusion.
an atom’s central nucleus. This electrically and releasing energy as radiation.
The Sun has enough fuel
charged gas is called plasma.
left to burn for at
least another five
billion years.
Magnetic field
The Sun’s magnetic
field constantly moves
and twists, shooting
loops of material out
from the surface.
Convective
zone
Large bubbles
of hot material
well upwards,
like gloopy blobs
in a lava lamp.

Photosphere
This is the visible
surface of the
Sun. The top of
the photosphere
is around 5,500
degrees Celsius –
hot enough to boil
titanium, but quite
cool compared with
the rest of the Sun.

Chromosphere
The second of the
three layers of the
Corona Sun’s atmosphere.
The Sun’s outer layer
Strangely, the rosy-
is its hottest. Plasma
red chromosphere
temperatures can soar to
is hotter than
17 million degrees Celsius.
the surface.

16 Science Nature
 GOLDEN
BALL
If the Sun were the size of a
basketball, the Earth would be
just over two millimetres
across – the size of a
mustard seed.
A giant solar flare
captured in 2012.
Space weather
As well as heat and light, the Sun gives off a constant
stream of material. Called the solar wind, the stream
is made of high-energy, electrically charged particles
driven out from the corona (the Sun’s outer layer).
This wind streaks across the solar system at almost
500 miles per second. Even though they are smaller
than atoms, at this speed the particles slam hard into
every object in their path. Earth lies deep inside the
danger zone, so we take the full force of the solar
wind. Luckily, our planet is protected by its magnetic
field, which deflects most of the wind. Even
so, some of these charged particles
make it into our atmosphere. As
they interact with the gas high
up in the atmosphere, they
cause the colourful northern
and southern lights (aurorae)
that dance across polar skies.
Earth’s atmosphere is thin
and cold, and doesn’t blow off
into space because our planet’s
gravity keeps the gases clustered
around it. However, the Sun’s
atmosphere is incredibly hot and its Northern lights
over Canada.
plasma gases (as shown in the box, left)
THE SUN
SCIENCE FACT OR
have much more energy. Because of this, they push
out much further from the Sun, and have enough
energy to escape its (much greater) gravity and shoot
off into space. The Sun loses about a million tons of SCIENCE FICTION?
plasma every second. Although this sounds like a The Sun is yellow
very large number, the Sun is so massive that in
Sadly, for everyone who draws a yellow circle
five billion years it has only shrunk by a mere
for the Sun, this is pure science fiction. Sunlight
1/20,000 of its total mass.
is white – a mixture of every colour in a rainbow.
This is how astronauts in space see it. On Earth,
Solar flares we see sunlight after it has passed through the
Gigantic explosions on the Sun’s surface, called solar
atmosphere. This big blanket of air scatters
flares, also blast vast quantities of material
blue, violet and indigo light more than other
into space. If one of these tidal waves
colours. This makes the sky look blue, and means
heads towards Earth, it spells
slightly more red, orange and yellow light reaches
trouble. The solar storm that
our eyes, giving the Sun its yellow glow.
hits our planet brings brighter,
more colourful aurorae, but An astronaut in
can also disrupt radio space pretends
signals, fry electricity grids to hold the Sun.
and even trigger bombs to
explode. The electrical surges
they generate could short-
circuit GPS and communication
satellites, and may even mess with
the navigation systems of migrating
animals, such as pods of whales. Scientists
Science Nature 17
 HOME SYSTEM
Meet a scientist

MIHO JANVIER
SPACE SCIENTIST AND SOLAR STORM CHASER,
INSTITUT D’ASTROPHYSIQUE SPATIALE, FRANCE.
Dr Janvier helps develop operations for the
scientific equipment on board Solar Orbiter. She
will be analysing the data collected by different
instruments on the mission.
How do you chase solar storms?
I study how solar storms are born at the Sun, and
how they propagate (spread around) in space.
I use different types of observations: telescopes,
to see our star from afar and instruments that

measure what happens around the probe – what
we call “in situ” instruments.
How will Solar Orbiter help you understand
solar weather better?
Solar Orbiter carries both types of instruments,
gets close to the Sun, and will also take the first
images of the Sun’s poles. All these observations
are incredibly important for my research, because
they are missing pieces of the puzzle of how solar
storms start moving away from the Sun.
What does it feel like to watch Solar Orbiter
being launched?
It is an exciting time! I never imagined that I
would work on a space mission, although space
science was always a dream for me. So for this
to be happening, and to actually see the launch
where so many historical missions – including
the space shuttles and the Apollo missions were
launched – is magical.
Then there is of course the excitement of the
first data, the new science we will get to do, and
the first images of the poles. The mission has many
milestones to look forward to in the coming years,
and I feel extremely lucky to be part of this. It’s
a great reward for the many years put working
towards this outcome.
SUN-GRAZER
Parker Solar Probe is
Parker Solar
already the fastest human- Probe.
made object. By the end of its
mission, it will be travelling at
monitor solar activity closely, 430,000mph – fast enough to Parker
keeping an eye out for flares, so
get from London to Cardiff Solar Probe
that people get advance warning Parker’s seven-year voyage will
of incoming bad space weather. The
in one second! take it just four million miles from the
solar wind typically takes two to four Sun’s surface. This sounds like a safe
days to reach Earth. distance, but imagine cool Earth and the
scorching Sun at opposite ends of a metre stick. The
Burning questions probe will end up just 10 centimetres from the hot
Our closest star still holds many secrets. Among many end. To get this close, it has a special carbon heat
unanswered mysteries is why the Sun’s atmosphere shield, which ensures that the instruments behind
is 300 times hotter than its surface, how the solar the shield don’t get any warmer than 30°C.
wind speeds up after leaving the Sun, and whether it However, heat isn’t the only challenge. Parker
will ever be possible to predict solar flares. is constantly being sandpapered by dust from
Ferrying a whole laboratory of high-tech gadgets pulverised asteroids. Each speck of cosmic dust is
and gizmos deep into the Sun’s scorching atmosphere, tiny, but smashes into the spacecraft at about
Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter promise to shed 250,000mph. Parker’s instruments pick up the sound
new light on the most puzzling questions about this of these microscopic impacts as a constant hiss.
fiery ball. Parker was launched in August 2018, and it
has gathered lots of important data that scientists are Why is it hard to get
poring over. In February 2020, Parker was joined by to the Sun?
the ESA’s Solar Orbiter (nicknamed ‘SolO’), which is Despite the Sun’s enormous gravity, it’s surprisingly
planned to hang around the Sun until at least 2026. difficult for a spacecraft to move towards it. Parker

18 Science Nature

Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter began their missions on
Earth, which is travelling sideways to the Sun at
about 67,000mph. Changing direction is like
trying to edge towards the centre of a spinning
roundabout – if that roundabout were moving
more than 100 times the cruising speed of a
passenger jet. To fall towards the Sun, a
spacecraft must gradually reduce its speed. No
probe could carry enough rocket fuel to do this, so
Parker is using Venus’s gravity to help it put the
brakes on. Every time the probe goes round the Sun
and passes Venus its motion slows and it gets pulled a
little closer to the Sun.
First discoveries
The Parker Solar Probe has already beamed back
twice as much data as expected. In December 2019,
space scientists revealed that they had been able to
listen in to the solar wind itself – Parker detects
disturbances in the wind, which move through the
Sun’s corona like ripples in a pond. Back on Earth,
these are converted to sound waves, which solar
scientists have described as “a scene from Star Wars”.
Listen for yourself here, at tinyurl.com/SN-SunSound
Later, in April 2021, during its eighth flyby of the
star, Parker measured the solar wind plasma
environment with its sensors; NASA described this
THE SUN
LIGHT pictures from a distance,
SPEED including the first ever
Light takes eight minutes to images of the Sun’s poles.
cross the 93 million miles When Parker measures
something unusual in the
of space from the Sun
corona, Solar Orbiter’s photos
to Earth. of the solar surface will help
scientists work out the cause.
Although Solar Orbiter won’t fly into
the corona itself, it will get as close as 26 million
miles from the surface – closer than the Sun’s
nearest planetary neighbour, Mercury.
Into the light
Solar Orbiter’s The probes will help us become better at forecasting
mission patch.
space weather. Advance warning of solar storms could
protect technology and astronauts on future missions
confusing-sounding-feat as “touching the Sun”. More to the Moon and Mars. Once astronauts venture
recently, in September 2022, NASA worker Peter beyond the shield of Earth’s magnetic field, they are
Berrett discovered a new comet using images from exposed to deadly radiation from the Sun. Having
Parker – it’s named PSP-001, after the probe itself. plenty of warning of solar flares will allow mission
planners to schedule safer flights. Better predictions
So long, Solar Orbiter will also help defend the satellites orbiting Earth so
Like Parker, the Solar Orbiter is a supersonic lab, that we can navigate, watch TV and play on our
packed with high-tech instruments to measure smartphones. Perhaps most importantly, however, the
conditions in the heliosphere. Solar Orbiter is the Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter will give us a
photographer to Parker’s roving reporter, snapping better understanding of the inner workings of our star.

Young people observe a

2019 solar eclipse using
special eclipse glasses.

WARNING
Never, ever
lo
!
the Sun dir ok at
e
mirror or th ctly, in a
rough any
kind of lens
–
through su not even
nglasses.

Science Nature 19
 HOME SYSTEM
Venus may be bright and beautiful but it hides a deadly secret.
n 13 June 1985, a 2.4-metre metal
O sphere silently detached from the
Vega 2 spacecraft as it hurtled past the
planet Venus. Two days later, this probe – the Vega
Descent Craft – plunged into the thick clouds that
surround the planet, sending back data about this
strange and hostile place.
During the probe’s hour-long fall towards the
surface, sulfuric acid in the yellowish clouds burned
into the lander’s shielding and 220mph winds
almost ripped its parachute to shreds. Conditions
on the planet’s surface were even worse, with
temperatures of 480°C and crushing air pressure 90
times greater than Earth’s – enough to crunch
a car. In this hellish
place, burned by
acid, bashed and
beaten, fried
and crushed,
the lander survived
a mere 57 minutes before
it malfunctioned. Vega 2’s Vega 2.
20 Science Nature
descent craft was the last space probe to attempt a
landing on Earth’s “evil twin”.
A deadly world
When the Sun goes down, the first bright point
you will see in the night sky will almost always be
Venus. Sunlight reflected from its clouds makes it
shine brilliantly. Venus is the second planet to the
Sun (Earth is third) and the two worlds are very
similar in size, yet they couldn’t be more different.
For many years it was thought that Venus was
the most likely place for life to exist in our solar EARTH
Average
system. Astronomers couldn’t peer beneath the
temperature
16°C
thick clouds and so imagined that there were
lush green jungles full of alien life. That
idea was proved wrong in 1962, when
Atmosphere
the Mariner 2 spacecraft flew past the
planet and took the first accurate NITROGEN,
OXYGEN
temperature of its scorching
surface. Venus is the Oceans
hottest
planet in
70%
of surface
 VENUS

VENUS
Average
temperature

480°C
Atmosphere

MOSTLY
CARBON
DIOXIDE
Oceans

0%
of surface

SLOW TURN
Venus takes 243 Earth
days to spin once on its
axis – longer than the 225 days
it takes to orbit the Sun. This
means that one day on
Venus is longer than
one year on Earth.
Shutterstock, Getty

Science Nature 21
 HOME SYSTEM
A 1962 diagram
of the Venera
spacecraft.

TOUGH
MACHINE
An artist’s
imagining of
Venera 9 on Venus.
The Venera 13 spacecraft
touched down on Venus on
1 March 1982. It worked for 127
minutes on the surface
– the longest ever
recorded.

A Soviet stamp
celebrating
Venera 9. The surface of Venus is
hostile and difficult for
probes to survive.

our solar system. It is even hotter than Mercury, which A rocky planet
is closer to the Sun but has no atmosphere.
Venus’s hostility means that it is relatively
unexplored. A few heavily armoured landers have
briefly made it to the surface. The Venera space
probes, which visited Venus between 1961 and
1984, are some of the most ambitious
missions to Earth’s neighbouring
planet to date. Launched by
the Soviet Union (a country
composed of modern-day
Russia and its nearby
neighbours), these
missions changed the
way people viewed
Venus. Venera 3 was
the first spacecraft
to crash into another
planet in 1966, and
Venera 9 and 12 captured
Earth’s crust lock up
some of the first images
of Venus’s surface.
In June 2021, the US space
agency NASA announced plans for two new
Venus missions. Will they finally uncover the
secrets of this mysterious world?
Venus is made of similar materials to Earth. It has a
hard outer crust; a middle-layer “mantle” made of
hot, slowly moving rocks; and an iron core. Radar
mapping from satellites in orbit – which beam radio
signals through the clouds and record the reflections
that bounce back – shows that the surface is
covered in valleys and high volcanoes.
Like Earth – and unlike Mercury
and Mars – Venus does not have
many craters. On Earth, lava
flowing across the surface
over long periods of time
“wipes away” the damage
caused by space rocks
smashing into its surface.
So, could Venus’s volcanoes
still be active today?
Unlike Earth’s atmosphere,
Shifting slabs of which is made up of mostly
carbon dioxide. nitrogen and oxygen, the thick
atmosphere of Venus is dominated by
carbon dioxide (CO2), a gas that only forms
a small part of Earth’s air. CO2 acts like a blanket
around the planet, trapping heat from the Sun and
making it hotter than an oven.
Two planets, two stories
Scientists think that Earth and Venus were pretty
much identical shortly after they formed 4.5 billion
years ago. Venus’s early atmosphere was fairly thin
and the Sun did not shine as fiercely as it does now.
A 2016 study showed that without its blanket of CO2,
Venus probably had surface temperatures like those
of Earth today. It might also have had oceans of liquid
water, providing a possible place for life to evolve.
One theory suggests that as the brightness of
the early Sun increased, less than a billion years
ago, water on the surface of Venus evaporated
and entered the atmosphere. Water vapour is very
effective at trapping the Sun’s heat. This increased the
planet’s temperature, eventually boiling its oceans
away. The planet’s water vapour was lost to space but
that’s not the end of the story.
Earth’s rocky surface is broken into vast slabs
called plates. These fit together like jigsaw pieces but
jostle against each other slowly – separating in some
places and colliding in others. This process, called plate
tectonics, not only triggers eruptions from volcanoes
but also locks away CO2 inside Earth’s rocks. CO2 is a
powerful greenhouse gas that can cause the Earth
to heat up if too much enters the atmosphere. Plate
tectonics helps Earth maintain a moderate temperature

22 Science Nature
 VENUS
VOLCANOES
There are more volcanoes on
Venus than on any other planet in
the solar system. Scientists think
most of these are dormant
but a handful may still
be active.
The VERITAS orbiter.
but this process doesn’t seem to have happened
on Venus. One theory is that Venus’s crust locked
together. With the rocks no longer able to recycle CO2,
it built up in the atmosphere, causing the planet to
heat up quickly.
Life on Venus?
Boiling oceans might have spelled the end for any
life on Venus but in 2020 astronomers from Cardiff
University in Wales reported streaks of a chemical
called phosphine in its upper atmosphere. On Earth,
phosphine is usually a sign of life, created only by
a few microscopic life forms. Could this be a sign of
living things in the clouds rather than on the surface?
Scientists are still arguing about whether the
phosphine was real and what might have caused
VENUS
A radar image of
volcanoes on Venus.
it. Conditions in Venus’s clouds are less brutal than
on the surface but living things would still face huge Surviving a Venus landing
challenges. As well as high winds and acid, the air is
How will NASA avoid acid eating into DAVINCI?
100 times drier than the driest place on Earth. If life
The probe’s outer shell will be made of a strong
exists, it’ll be like nothing we have seen before.
but light metal, such as titanium, which can resist
Venus’s corrosive environment.
Return to Venus
NASA’s new missions might finally answer How can NASA protect against the pressures?
some of the biggest questions about Venus. The probe will be spherical – just like a football –
Planned for launch in 2029, VERITAS will orbit as this is the best shape to resist crushing.
Venus and map the entire surface in 3D, using radar
What about the extreme temperatures?
and special cameras to peer through the clouds. This
A titanium shell has a very high melting point
will show whether processes such as plate tectonics
and insulation will stop heat from reaching the
and volcanism are still active on Venus.
science equipment inside for as long as possible.
The second mission, DAVINCI (also aiming for
Despite this, soon after landing the probe will
2029), will make the first landing attempt since
get too hot to function.
1985’s Vega missions. During a 63-minute drop
through the atmosphere it will send back a stream
of data before hitting the surface. As it explores the
atmosphere, scientists hope that it will reveal why
Venus is so different from Earth. It might confirm
whether there really is phosphine in the upper
atmosphere. DAVINCI will also try to answer the
question of whether Venus ever had a surface ocean
and, if so, why it disappeared.
Shutterstock, Getty, Alamy, NASA
The most significant lesson that these missions
could teach, however, is what caused Venus to
become so hot. The secrets that Venus holds could The DAVINCI
descent probe.
teach us about our own world and perhaps show us
ways to tackle climate change, protecting our home.
Science Nature 23
 HOME SYSTEM

SAY HELLO TO

24 Science Nature
 EARTH

Get to know your

home planet and
discover what
YOU can do to
protect it.

Science Nature 25
 HOME SYSTEM
eeling brave? Would you dare to stand on
F a rock that’s spinning at 1,000mph and
speeding through space at 67,000mph?
planet may also have been in total deep freeze at
least once, like a giant space snowball. Five mass
extinctions have hit our world, when more than 75%
Earth once
looked like this.

Yes, you guessed it – you are already doing just of living species disappeared. The last one ended the
that! Earth may be just a tiny speck in the vastness dinosaurs’ 160-million-year rule, after a huge space
of space, but it is the only planet in our solar system rock smashed into the planet. Looking back, our
you’d want to live on. Mars is a cold, dry desert; history seems to be a series of truly epic catastrophes,
Mercury is scorching hot by day, freezing cold at but constant change has kept renewing the planet
night and utterly airless; on Venus it rains and provided fresh environments
deadly sulphuric acid. You can forget about for living things.
the gas giant planets Jupiter, Saturn,
CYCLE, The perfect
RECYCLE
Uranus and Neptune – they don’t even
have a solid surface. Only Earth is position a “Goldilocks planet” because it is neither too hot nor
hospitable to humans, and it is the Earth’s water is always on So what is it that makes too cold – just like the perfect porridge that the little
only planet that we know for sure the move, from the sea to our planet so perfect? girl finds in the fairytale.
can support life. the sky, then falling as rain Firstly, Earth is located in
and snow to feed rivers exactly the right place in the Our watery world
A hazardous history and glaciers. solar system for life to thrive. Water covers almost three-quarters of the planet – it’s
Our planet formed about 4.5 billion Our Sun provides us with energy, the reason Earth is often called “the blue planet”.
years ago from the same cloud of cosmic and it’s an ideal distance away: There’s really only one global ocean, the vast body
dust and gas that made the Sun and the Earth’s water would evaporate if we of salty water that covers most of our world. However,
entire solar system. At first, Earth would have been were closer to the Sun, or be turned into ice if we we’ve divided it into several named zones, including
molten (a hot liquid), and then battered by meteors were further away. Our planet’s position means that the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic and Southern (or
from outer space. Volcanoes spewed out lava and water exists in liquid form on its surface, and every Antarctic) Oceans. The Pacific is the largest ocean,
poisonous gases for nearly 600 million years. The living thing depends on it. Scientists refer to Earth as covering about one-third of the globe.

Liquid water sloshes

about on Earth’s surface.

26 Science Nature
 EARTH
Mount Everest – the
world’s tallest mountain.

Our planet’s water is incredibly important. Ocean at the bottom of the Pacific’s Mariana Trench. If you
currents move heat around the planet, controlling dropped Mount Everest into it, there would still be
the world’s weather patterns and temperatures. By more than 2,000 metres of sea water above its peak.
dissolving gases from the atmosphere (the layer of
gases that envelop our planet), the oceans maintain Earth’s amazing atmosphere
the balance of chemicals in the atmosphere and Earth is surrounded by a thin layer of gases called the “How inappropriate
slow down the pace of environmental changes on
the planet. Life on Earth began in the ocean depths.
atmosphere. Humans depend on the atmosphere’s
supply of oxygen. We can thank the vast amounts to call this
Water is an ideal medium for chemicals to slosh
around in, and when the ingredients are right, the
of algae, microscopic bacteria and plants (mostly
in the sea) for that. They take in energy from the
planet Earth
reactions can create life. Sun and carbon dioxide from the air and when it is quite
“breathe out” oxygen.
clearly Ocean.”
Land ahoy!
Earth’s land is made up of several A BREATH Another major plus point for life on
this planet is the atmosphere’s ozone Arthur C. Clarke, sci-fi author
great masses that we call OF FRESH AIR layer. Ozone is a form of oxygen and science writer
continents. From biggest to Microscopic plankton in gas made with three atoms
smallest they are: Asia, Africa, the oceans provide most of oxygen (the oxygen gas we
North America, South America, of the oxygen for our breathe is made with two atoms of
Antarctica, Europe and Oceania (the atmosphere. oxygen). High up in the atmosphere,
region around Australia). Although the ozone also forms, creating an invisible
land beneath us seems pretty firm and protective layer about nine to 18 miles
stable, it’s actually moving. Our planet is a above the surface. It shields us from almost
dynamic, shifting and changing world. Earth’s surface all the Sun’s most harmful ultraviolet rays (a type
is broken into big solid slabs called tectonic plates. of light that causes sunburn). Think of it as nature’s
These plates float on a much thicker layer of hotter sunscreen. Without it, those rays would fry most living
rocks that – over long periods of time – can flow like things. You can smell ozone when a storm is coming,
a liquid. This happens painfully slowly, at about the because the electrical charge in the thunderclouds
same speed as your nails grow. How these plates splits oxygen gas in the air, making ozone form.
shift and interact constantly reshapes Earth’s outer
layer, and when plates bump and barge into one Magnetic superpowers
another, they can cause earthquakes and volcanoes. Equally important for life is Earth’s magnetic field.
Earth’s highest point is the peak of Mount Everest, If our planet were a superhero, this would be its
which is 8,850 metres above sea level. The deepest superpower. It is generated by currents in our
part of the ocean is Challenger Deep, a dark valley planet’s hot metallic core. This magnetic field – or

Science Nature 27
 HOME SYSTEM
magnetosphere – is like an invisible force field
wrapping around the planet. It’s like having a giant
magnet at the centre of the Earth, with powers that
extend 40,000 miles into space. It shields us from the
solar wind – a vicious stream of particles from the
Sun – that would strip away our atmosphere. If
you want to know what would happen
without it, look at Mars. The Red
Planet lost its magnetic field
about four billion years ago,
and most of its air and
water are long gone.
Although you can’t
see it, our magnetic
field has some strange
effects. One of the most
striking is the shifting
coloured lights that appear
in the skies close to the north
and south poles. The magnetic Northern lights
field channels the electrically over Iceland.
charged particles of the solar wind
towards both poles. The glow is created as these
particles slam into gases in the upper atmosphere.
Life everywhere
Earth creeps, crawls, swims and soars with life. You
can find living things high in Earth’s atmosphere
and buried in the rocks of its crust. Even the deepest
parts of the ocean are teeming with life. You might
expect the ocean floor to be too harsh to support any
life at all. There’s no light, hardly any oxygen and
the pressure could crush metal. However, lifeforms
living there have found an alternative energy
source. Hydrothermal vents are cracks in the ocean
bed. Superheated water that has filtered through
the rocks beneath, belches out like a hot soup of
There are 400 billion trees
in the Amazon rainforest.
28 Science Nature
chemicals. Giant red tube worms, which can grow
Most of the living
up to two metres long and live for 250 years, thrive
things on Earth
around some vents. There are also crabs, mussels are in the oceans.
and shrimps living down there. Scientists estimate
that the natural world contains about 8.7 million
species, and thousands of new species are discovered
every year. Most of these living things
are too small to be seen without a
microscope. Bacteria outnumber
every other organism on
the planet – there are 100
million times more bacteria
on the planet than there
are stars in the universe,
yet we know very little
about most of them.
Biodiversity
From bacteria to blue whales,
the sheer variety of life on Earth
is amazing. Earth’s most important
feature may not be its ocean after all,
but its biodiversity. The term is short for biological
diversity. We use it to describe the wide variety of
living things in the world. The only thing more amazing
than the sheer variety of life on Earth is how these
species interact to keep the world’s many ecosystems
healthy and balanced. Every species, however small,
has its part to play. What’s more, without biodiversity,
we humans wouldn’t last long. Without plants and
trees there would be no oxygen for us to breathe. Trees
absorb pollution, and help to prevent flooding. Forests
give animals places to live, too. Flowering plants, on
which we rely for much of our food, depend on insects.
Insects also eat pests, help to decompose waste and
are the basis of many food chains. We even harvest
many of our medicines from nature.
 MYSTERIOUS EARTH
DEPTHS
Over 80% of the Earth’s ocean
remains unexplored. We know Climate-change
protesters.
more about the far side of the
Moon than we do about
the ocean’s depths.

Take care of your planet

Humans are destroying the planet’s natural
biodiversity – and fast. According to the World
Wildlife Fund, we’ve lost half of Earth’s wildlife in
less than 50 years. Species are dying out 1,000 times
faster than the natural rate of extinction. An area
of tropical rainforest the size of 27 football fields is
destroyed every minute. This is insane, since our
own survival relies on a healthy biodiversity. There
are plenty of things that we can do to help. Try to
reduce, recycle and reuse products whenever we can.
We can cut down on the electricity we use and avoid
single-use plastics, like water bottles. Support local
parks and nature reserves – making a change in your
local area is a great way to start bigger changes. Who
knows, you may even be able to persuade leaders
and companies of the importance of biodiversity.
Hopefully, they might change their behaviour. After
all, the most special thing about Earth might be you.
You can help to protect this special planet of ours.
Earth is an extraordinary island in the vast sea of
space. We should all be glad to call it home, and do
our best to keep it healthy.

Earth Day
Earth Day is celebrated around the
world on 22 April. Every year, an

EART
estimated billion people join in
with activities to raise awareness
of the challenges facing our
planet. Each Earth Day has a DAY H
unique theme, too, from ‘Protect
Our Species’ to ‘Restore Our
Earth’ and ‘Invest In Our Planet’. It’s not all
about a single day – the Earth Day Network works
round the year to find solutions to climate change
(long-term changes in weather patterns, caused
by harmful gases released by burning fossil fuels),
to end plastic pollution and protect endangered
species. Find out more at earthday.org

Science Nature 29
 HOME SYSTEM
INSIDE THE
Antenna
A compact dish-shaped
antenna kept DART in
touch with Earth and
sends back data until
the moment of impact.

Lessons from a impactful spacecraft might one day save the world.
atch out, there are asteroids about. There are thousands
W of space rocks whizzing around the Sun – and occasionally
they get too close to Earth for comfort. Scientists
predict that one day an asteroid will line up on a collision course,
threatening the planet’s population with an impact like the one that
wiped out the dinosaurs. The US space agency NASA keeps a close
eye on these threats. Although it is sure that nothing major
will hit for at least the next 100 years, NASA prepared by
testing Earth’s asteroid defences with a new spacecraft
called DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test).
TINY BUMP
The fridge-sized DART launched in November
DART struck
2021 and was pointed towards a “double
Dimorphos 10 times faster
asteroid” that was passing about seven million than a fighter jet but this only
miles from Earth. This pair of space rocks consists altered the asteroid’s speed
of an 800-metre asteroid called Didymos, which is by 0.4 millimetres
orbited by 160-metre Dimorphos. As it approached per second.
the asteroids in September 2022, DART released a small
observer satellite called LICIACube, which watched from a
distance as the main spacecraft smashed straight into Dimorphos.
The idea was to give the asteroid a nudge that would alter its path
slightly and slowly move both asteroids onto a slightly different
orbit around the Sun. Lessons learned from DART, and a planned
European follow-up mission called Hera, will be launched to
evaluate DART’s impact on Dimorphos.

Near Earth Objects

Asteroids are lumps of rock and metal left over from the time
Solar array
when the planets formed – about 4.6 billion years ago. There DART’s engine thruster and
are millions of them out there, ranging from a few metres to instruments were powered
tens of miles wide. Most asteroids orbit in a belt between Mars by flexible solar panels, which
harness energy from the Sun. The
and Jupiter, but collisions and close encounters between them panels rolled out after launch.
sometimes push them into new orbits that come close to Earth
and the solar system’s other inner planets. These asteroids are
known as Near Earth Objects (NEOs). About 5,000 NEOs have
been discovered and astronomers keep a constant eye on them,
partly because their nearness to Earth makes them the easiest
ones to study. The DART system will help space scientists get
ready if any NEO is on a collision course.
NASA/JOHNS HOPKINS APL

A diagram showing
DART’s final approach.

30 Science Nature

Thrusters
The cube-shaped DART had
eight thrusters – one on each
corner – which were used to
steer the craft.
Camera
A camera called DRACO,
mounted on DART’s front
face, tracked Dimorphos and
guided the spacecraft to its
head-on smash.
Star finder
This camera looked for certain
patterns of bright stars to help
DART navigate through space.
DART: DOUBLE ASTEROID REDIRECTION TEST
Twin asteroids
Didymos and Dimorphos were
MAJOR
separated by about 1,000 metres.
METEORITE
The asteroid that wiped out
the dinosaurs was six miles
wide – the same as 100
football pitches laid
end to end.
Sun sensor
To help figure out where it was,
DART used a light sensor that
detected the position of the Sun,
the brightest object in the sky.
NEXT Thruster
DART was powered by an
electric engine. Instead of
burning rocket fuel, the
engine propelled itself by
blasting out a stream of
plasma, or electrified gas.
Science Nature 31
 HOME SYSTEM

SHADOW PLAY
In June 2021, the spacecraft Juno was
making its 40th flyby of Jupiter when it
took this breathtaking picture. At the
top-left you can see a dark shadow cast by
the planet’s largest moon, Ganymede.
Taken from 44,000 miles above Jupiter, the
image makes Ganymede’s shadow appear
unusually large. Ganymede is not just the
biggest moon orbiting Jupiter, it is also the
biggest in the solar system (even bigger
NASA/JPL CALTECH/SWRI/MSSS/THOMAS THOMOPOULOS

than the planet Mercury). It is home to a

giant saltwater ocean that is thought to
contain more water than all of the water
on Earth. Juno was launched in 2011 and
arrived in Jupiter’s orbit in 2016. It has been
snapping images and beaming back data
about the solar system’s largest planet
for the last seven years.

32 Science Nature
JUPITER AND GANYMEDE

MANY
MOONS
Jupiter has 95 moons,
with Ganymede, Callisto,
Io and Europa being
the largest.

Science Nature 33
 HOME SYSTEM
What are meteorites and
where do they come from?
These space rocks can tell us a lot about our solar system and how it was made.
eteorites are space rocks that are found on Earth’s
M surface after they fall from the sky. Before they hit
the ground, they are called meteoroids. While falling,
meteoroids race through the air 100 times faster than an aeroplane.
Travelling this fast makes them very hot – more than 1,000°C –
which causes them to shine brightly and look just like a star falling
out of the sky. Most meteoroids are tiny and burn up completely
as they fall towards Earth. People often call these streaks of
light meteors or shooting stars. Some bigger ones explode. This
happened in Russia in 2013: a meteorite as large as a house
exploded above a city of more than a million people.
Where do meteorites come from?
We know that there are many rocks travelling through space in our
solar system, orbiting (circling) around the Sun just like the Earth
does over the course of one year. The largest known one, called
Ceres, is almost 600 miles wide and is also considered a dwarf
planet. However, many of the smaller ones humans can’t see...
until they hit Earth.
Some meteorites come from the Moon and some are from Mars.
We know this because inside the meteorites are tiny bubbles of
air. The air on other planets and moons is very different from the
air on Earth, so by examining the air bubbles inside a meteorite,
we can tell where it came from. Some meteorites even come from
outside our solar system. Scientists spotted the first one of these in
2017 – it’s called ‘Oumuamua, and it is 100 metres wide. Luckily,
this massive meteoroid didn’t hit Earth.
What are meteorites made of?
Meteorites come in two main types. One kind is a bit like any old
stone on Earth – it can be difficult to tell if it’s actually a meteorite.
The other sort is like a lump of metal, and is much heavier than
normal stone. These are much easier to recognise. Both types have
an outer “skin” that is scorched, as if it had been in a very hot oven.
The polished insides
of an iron meteorite.
34 Science Nature
Barringer Crater
in Arizona, US.
Where can I see meteorite craters?
When a meteoroid hits Earth’s surface as a meteorite, it often
creates a hole in the ground called a crater. Our Moon is covered
with craters (showing us just how many space rocks actually collide
with a large object such as a moon or a planet), but they are harder
to see on Earth. This is because craters can get worn away by the
weather, and Earth’s shifting rocks and moving landmasses, and
they may be covered by newer layers of rock, or perhaps plants
have grown over them. The gigantic Chicxulub crater in Mexico was
formed around 65 million years ago, when a rock the size of London
struck the planet. At the time, this colossal impact would have
caused a tsunami (a long, high sea wave caused by an earthquake
or other large disturbance) and sent millions of particles of dust
into the air. The dust blocked sunlight for more than a year and
that’s thought to be the main reason why dinosaurs, along with an
estimated 75% of all other known species on Earth at that time,
became extinct. Now, the 93-mile-wide hole in the ground is buried
under about 600 metres of newer rocks. You can still find some big
craters though, such as the Barringer Crater in Arizona, US.
Did a meteorite bring life to Earth?
All life on Earth shares something special: amino acids. These
chemicals are the building blocks of proteins – substances that are
essential for the functioning of your body. Amino acids have been
found inside meteorites. Some scientists think this means that life
might have arrived on Earth from space; if that’s true, perhaps
we’re aliens after all. Either way, there’s no doubt that meteors
have played a significant part in the life of our planet.
Created by Jacco van Loon, an astrophysicist and
director of Keele Observatory, Keele University.
Published in association with theconversation.com An artist’s impression of a
massive space rock entering
Earth’s atmosphere.
 METEORITES

CATCH A
FALLING STAR
Meteor showers occur when
lots of shooting stars fall from the
same part of the sky over the
course of a few nights. You can
see these amazing events
several times a year.
Getty, Shutterstock

Science Nature 35
 HOME SYSTEM
Could an undiscovered giant planet lurk in the darkness at the edge of our solar system?
ou might think that the idea of unknown
Y planets looping around our Sun sounds
unlikely. However, did you know that for
most of history, people thought that there were only
six planets in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth,
Mars, Jupiter and Saturn? Then, in 1781, amateur
astronomer William Herschel discovered an entirely
new world, which we now call Uranus. More than 50
years later, in 1846, a French mathematician called
Urbain Le Verrier found another one – Neptune.
For nearly a century after Neptune was discovered,
astronomers chased after a mysterious ninth planet
they called Planet X. Over the years, new discoveries
have revived interest in the idea of this new world.
Distant worlds
Objects that are very far from the Sun are detected
by their influence on other planets. Gravity is the
force of attraction (a “pulling” force) felt by all
objects with mass (material). As 98.86% of the solar
system’s mass is contained in the Sun, the fiery star
is the main influence in the solar system. Every major
body over billions of kilometres of space orbits the
Sun. However, the planets also tug a little on each
other, causing them to wobble or change their speed
very slightly as they zoom around the Sun.
If wobbles in a planet’s orbit can’t be explained by
the effects of any of the known planets, astronomers
try to calculate the size and path of the unknown
object causing it. They try to predict where this mystery
body will be on a particular night. They can then train
their telescopes on that point in the sky in the hope
of observing the object directly and confirming a
discovery. This is how Le Verrier found Neptune.
Lost worlds Three planets that never were
SHUTTERSTOCK · GETTY IMAGES · LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Vulcan
Urbain Le Verrier came unstuck when he claimed
that wobbles in Mercury’s orbit were caused by
a planet even closer to the Sun. Funnily, some
experienced astronomers reported seeing Vulcan
before Le Verrier’s maths was shown to be wrong.
36 Science Nature
At the time, astronomers thought that both
Uranus and Neptune showed unexplained wobbles
in their orbits and began searching for the so-called
Planet X. In the late 1800s, Percival Lowell, a rich
amateur astronomer, built his own state-of-the-art
observatory to find it. However, it wasn’t until 1930
that Clyde Tombaugh, a young astronomer working
at the Lowell Observatory, spotted a faint dot that
shifted position against the background of stars on
photos taken several nights apart.
The new discovery – named Pluto after the Greek
god of the underworld – was hailed as the solar
system’s long-lost ninth planet, but astronomers
doubted that it was the real Planet X. Smaller than
Earth’s Moon, Pluto wasn’t anywhere near big
enough. There was no way, they argued, that Pluto’s
gravity could affect its inner neighbours.
Percival Lowell
scans the skies.
Planet Five
In the late 1700s, astronomers wondered if another
planet was hiding in the wide gap between the
orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Large numbers of rocky
asteroids were later discovered in this region – if all
the millions of these asteroids were lumped together,
they would still not amount to a small planet.
When the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew past Uranus
and Neptune in the late 1980s, it supplied much
more accurate measurements of Uranus’s and
Neptune’s mass and gravity. These seemed to offer
an explanation for the mysterious wobbles after
all – there was simply no need for Planet X.
Theory revived
The idea of a distant planet beyond Neptune refuses
to die, though. New computer models suggest that
Uranus and Neptune formed closer to the Sun, and
were only later dragged outward to their current
orbits. One theory tells of a rogue planet – similar in
size to the outer planets – that pulled its neighbours
away from the Sun. A close encounter could also have
knocked Uranus over, explaining why it now “rolls”
around the Sun like a ball, compared to all the other
“spinning top” planets. Perhaps these encounters
hurled the theoretical planet out of the solar system,
or into a far-flung orbit far beyond Neptune.
That might sound fanciful, but Konstantin Batygin
and Michael E. Brown of the California Institute of
Technology, in the US, say the theory is supported by
patterns in the solar system’s most distant objects.
They claim that the paths of far-out, tiny, icy worlds
leave some regions of space totally empty. They
say that this sort of pattern happens when a large
object with powerful gravity (such as a planet) barrels
through space, knocking smaller objects out of their
paths around the Sun and scattering them into
new orbits. Based on the clustering of these distant
ice-world orbits, Brown and Batygin reckon they can
predict the object’s size, distance and even its rough
direction in the sky. The hunt for Planet X is back on.
Nemesis
In the 1980s, some scientists claimed to have
identified impacts from space happening on a
26-million-year cycle. Perhaps the Sun was orbited
by a dark dwarf companion star that sent comets
hurtling towards Earth? Probably not.
 PLANET X

NAME GAME
Pluto was named by an
11-year-old girl called Venetia
Burney. Pluto was the Greek god of the
underworld, who lived in a place without
sunlight and could make himself
invisible. Its first two letters paid
tribute to US astronomer,
Percival Lowell.
An artist’s
impression of
Planet X.

Science Nature 37
 HOME SYSTEM

What would aliens be like?

Scientists can only guess what life on other planets would look like.
e don’t know whether there are any aliens living
W somewhere in space. There are so many planets in the
universe – some say more than all the grains of sand on
Not all
butterflies are
orange and black.
Earth – that many scientists think it’s worth looking.
To help narrow our search, we often try to work out what aliens
might be like and what conditions they might require. For example,
if we think that aliens (like us) will be made mostly of the chemical
element carbon, then we should look for planets that have lots of
carbon. If we think they will depend on liquid water (also like us),
we should look for planets with liquid water.

The chemistry of life

All living things require energy to power their body’s chemical
reactions. Liquid water is a particularly good environment for these
reactions to occur because it allows chemicals to break apart and
move around easily. Carbon is widespread in the universe and is
good at making the kind of big, complex molecules that form the
building blocks of advanced life. These seem like arguments in
favour of looking for carbon-based life on planets with liquid water.
were orange and black. Similarly, since we have only life on our own
planet to work from, it’s hard to know which features of life are
universal and which are special to Earth.
Sometimes scientists can make guesses based on a process
called convergent evolution. This is when the same feature, such as
eyes or limbs, appears in many separate groups of living things. For
example, eyes have evolved several times in different animals, so
you might think it likely that aliens would have eyes as well. The
problem with this approach is that species on our planet are not
really all that separate. All life on Earth is related, and shares the
same basic DNA-based chemistry. Even if Earth’s living things
weren’t related, they have all evolved in the same environment.
Eyes might be common on planets where there’s a lot of sunlight,
but not on darker ones where they would be less useful.

Laws of nature
One thing most scientists would agree on is that aliens, like us, will
be the products of evolution by natural selection. This is the process
by which living things develop from earlier forms. Individuals that
have traits that give them an advantage in their environment tend
However, there are other liquids that are good alternatives to
to have more offspring, and so those same traits become more
water. Liquid methane, for example, forms at much lower
common over time. Natural selection is the reason why organisms
temperatures. Elements such as silicon, found in sand and rock, can
on Earth are so well adapted to their environments.
also form complicated bonds like carbon. Perhaps we should also be
Any alien living thing, however different its chemistry or planet,
looking for silicon life on liquid methane planets? This is one reason
will be made for a common purpose of staying alive, eating and
that there are plans to send robots to explore Titan, the largest
reproducing. Does the fact that they evolve through natural
moon of Saturn – its surface has large lakes of liquid methane.
selection, just like us, tell us anything about what aliens will be like?
Does it tell us anything about what kinds of conditions they need?
What things do all living things have? Like all good questions, wondering what aliens would be like
The problem is that working out what aliens will be like isn’t so
has opened up even more questions, but while you ponder, think
easy. We have only one example of life – from Earth – to learn from.
about this: somewhere out in space, an alien, stranger-looking than
To see why this can be a problem, imagine if we wanted to learn all
in our wildest dreams, might be thinking about the same thing.
about the features of butterflies.
Normally, we would look at as many different butterflies as
possible, and note down the things that are true of all butterflies. Created by Samuel Levin, PhD in Evolutionary Biology,
University of Oxford
We might learn that they come in a range of different colours and Published in association with theconversation.com
sizes, but that all of them have two antennae and six legs. What if
Getty, Alamy

we’d never seen a butterfly before and were given just one – say a
monarch – to look at? We might wrongly imagine that all butterflies

38 Science Nature
 ALIENS
WOW!
Scientists believe that
life could be hiding on
Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The
moon harbours a liquid
water ocean beneath
an icy crust.

Aliens probably look

weirder than we imagine.

Science Nature 39
42 Moon rocket
44 Tiera Fletcher
46 Could YOU be an Astronaut?
50 Mae Jemison
52 Space station
54 Tim Peake
56 The overview effect
58 Mission to the Moon
64 Margaret Hamilton
66 Earthrise
68 Return to the Moon
Getty
42 Science Nature
Safety system
At the very top of the SLS is a small,
spike-like rocket. If something goes
wrong during launch, this rocket
EPIC MISSIONS

blasts clears of the main spacecraft,

pulling the crew inside Orion to safety.

Prepare for lift-off as NASA aims to send

a rocket back to the Moon.
t’s been nearly 50 years since humans last
landed on the Moon, and NASA is getting
ready to send its next crew. The new Orion
I
This spacecraft is designed to
mission is called the Artemis programme. To reach
carry a crew of four to the Moon
the Moon, NASA will use the immense SLS (Space and back on a three-week trip.
Mobile
Launch System) – the most powerful rocket it has There were no humans travelling
launcher
on the Artemis I mission but a little
ever created. Its six engines firing together make The 115-metre
Snoopy toy was on board. Snoopy
it more powerful than Saturn V (the original Moon launch tower
had a gravity sensor and floated
is driven to the
rocket) and, although it is slightly shorter, the SLS around the module, sending back
launchpad before
information throughout the flight.
still stands two metres taller than Big Ben’s tower. the rocket arrives.
The SLS could launch eight killer whales (that’s It has 662 steps
but the astronauts
around 27 tonnes) into space, but the real plan is will travel up in
to send a crew of four humans to the Moon on a a lift.
spacecraft called Orion.
The first Artemis mission blasted off from the
Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, US, in February
Core section
2022. It carried an uncrewed Orion module as a test. The central section
Then, on the way to the Moon, it launched the Orion of the SLS is made
module, which orbited our lunar satellite for six days up of two vast
tanks. The lower
before boosting its way back to Earth. one holds cold
For the second Artemis mission, due for launch in liquid hydrogen,
September 2025, four humans will board the Orion and the upper one
has cold liquid
spacecraft and perform many tests while in Earth’s Small rocket engine oxygen. In total,
orbit before circling the Moon and heading home. Only the white part at the top of the tanks hold
the SLS reaches space. A smaller 2.7 million litres
This is all in preparation for the most ambitious
rocket engine underneath Orion is of fuel, which
mission: Artemis 3, which will carry a crew to the used to blast out of Earth’s orbit is enough to
lunar surface itself: the first time humans will have and heads to the Moon. power the rocket
stepped on the moon since 1972! for about eight
minutes.
 Gateway to Mars
As well as putting explorers back on the Moon, the
Artemis programme will build Gateway, a space
station orbiting the Moon. Gateway will be a science
hub, helping scientists learn more about space travel.
It will also be a stopping-off point for people travelling
to or from the lunar surface. In future, the first human
flight to Mars may be setting off from Gateway.
Gateway will copy many technologies used on the
International Space Station (ISS) but it will also use
new ones, such as an electric engine that will control
the station’s speed and position using solar power,
rather than rocket fuel.
Solid rocket boosters
During the first two minutes of the
launch, three-quarters of the thrust
is provided by boosters on either
side of the rocket. These are filled
with solid fuel and when spent, the
empty shells fall back to Earth.
Orange foam
The core section is insulated in
brightly coloured foam that keeps
the -253°C liquid hydrogen cold.

Rocket engines
The SLS’s core section boasts four R-25 rocket engines.
These are the same type of engines that were used on
the space shuttle, which had just three. The engines mix
hydrogen and oxygen to make an explosive mixture
that blasts out as a jet of white-hot gas and flame,
launching the rocket into space.

TWIN NAME
Artemis is named after
an ancient Greek goddess.
She was the twin sister of
Apollo, who gave his name
to the original NASA
Moon missions.

Science Nature 43
SPACE LAUNCH SYSTEM

NASA · ALBERTO BERTOLIN · MARVIN SMITH

 EPIC MISSIONS
Meet the wonder woman of rocket science.
“ f I could tell my 11-year-old self something,” says Tiera
I Fletcher to The Week Junior Science+Nature, “I would say
to not give up and to focus on the dream at hand.” When
she was 11 years old, Fletcher decided that she wanted to become a
rocket scientist. Now, years later, she is part of the team that helped
to build NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), which was used to
launch the recent Artemis I mission around the Moon.
A problem-solver BIG
BOOSTER
Fletcher was only six years old when her love of
maths first blossomed. “I always loved to solve
problems and find an answer,” she says. Her mum The SLS rocket holds
also enjoyed maths, and she would encourage the record for the most
Tiera by giving her activities to do, like adding up powerful rocket
the costs of their food shopping. ever launched.
Fletcher also learnt how to build things and about
the importance of problem-solving from her dad, who
was a construction worker. She soon became interested in science
and design as well, but didn’t know how to put all of her passions
together. She says, “I wanted to be a mathematician, a scientist, an
inventor, a designer. I wanted to be all of those things at once.”
Rocket with the Fletchers
Tiera Fletcher’s husband, Myron, is also an aerospace engineer
working on a different part of NASA’s Space Launch System.
Together, they started a group called Rocket with the Fletchers,
where they share their stories to inspire young people from all
backgrounds to follow their dreams, and to also highlight that
science is open to everybody. Their online and in-person events
take them all over the world. “We each have our individual
pathways and stories of how we became aerospace engineers of
today,” Tiera says. “We find that by sharing our stories, we’re just
able to motivate and inspire.”
COURTESY BOEING · NASA/JOEL KOWSKY · REX SHUTTERSTOCK
The Fletchers both
helped to build the SLS.
44 Science Nature
Chasing a dream
A turning point for Fletcher was when she took part in an
aerospace engineering programme at the age of 11. She
realised that here was a job where people could use maths and
science to design and build important machines, like aeroplanes
and space rockets. She no longer felt that she wanted to do four
different jobs, because she’d found one that pulled
together all of her passions.
It wasn’t always easy for Fletcher to pursue this
dream, but she had her parents and teachers to keep
motivating her. “There’s always been a mentor
that has served as a cheerleader and a champion
in my life to push me to keep going when I did
want to give up,” she says. She also looked up to
role models such as Mae Jemison, the first African
American woman to become an astronaut in 1992.
Jemison’s success helped Fletcher to picture what she
could look like as an aerospace engineer. She says, “It gave me a
visual to fight towards.”
A rock-star engineer
Fletcher went on to study aerospace engineering in college at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). During her studies, she
started to work as an engineer at Boeing, an aerospace company.
This was when she first heard about NASA’s Space Launch System,
a rocket that would be used to send humans to both the Moon and
Mars. Boeing was helping to build the SLS, and Fletcher instantly
knew that she wanted to be a part of the project. “Having a role
in bringing the rocket to this point – I felt like a rock star,” she told
MIT Technology Review.
How to build a rocket
Tiera Fletcher’s involvement with the SLS began with analysing and
designing the Exploration Upper Stage of the rocket. This is the part
of the rocket that propels the craft when it gets into space. It will
allow NASA to send astronauts, and large amounts of supplies and
equipment, to the Moon and beyond.
After that, Fletcher started working on the core stage of the
rocket, which lifts the rocket off the launchpad. Working on this
involved crawling into the rocket’s engine section to assemble
and install certain parts, which she says was “truly a once-in-a-
lifetime opportunity”. When Fletcher watched the Artemis I launch
on 16 November 2022, she felt that it wasn’t just a monumental
achievement for history, but for her on a personal level as well. She
says, “I was a part of lifting us off the ground. I can’t really think of
many other things cooler than that.”
Among Fletcher’s favourite things, she loves to inspire young
people to learn about space, and she enjoys seeing the growing
amount of diversity among the people who now work in the
industry. “People in the STEM field – we can’t underestimate the
impact that we can have on a student,” she says.
TIERA FLETCHER
Inspiring the next
generation of
engineers.

MISSION
TO MARS
NASA aims to send
humans to Mars by
the late 2030s or
early 2040s.

Science Nature 45
 EPIC MISSIONS

46 Science Nature
 ASTRONAUT TRAINING

Do you dream of travelling into space, perhaps going boldly where no one has gone before?
Find out if you have what it takes to do the toughest job in the universe.

magine living in the International Space The tests ahead

I Station (ISS), looking down on your home
planet as you whizz around it every 90
Congratulations! You’ve made it past thousands of
other candidates to the first stage of selection. Get
minutes. Sounds great, doesn’t it? However, only the ready, because the training from here on is intense
very best candidates ever make it into space. If you – there are hundreds of other brilliant candidates, all
want to travel up to the ISS, you have to be brave, fit, determined to earn one of only six places in the
quick thinking, clever and able to get along with lots astronaut corps. ESA will put you through your
of other people (even when you disagree with them). paces, challenging you to a year’s worth of tests
Do you think you’ve got what it takes to be selected devised by the brightest brains on the planet.
as an astronaut? Put yourself to the test.
Unfazed by danger?
Your mission begins...
DID
Astronauts face many risks during a
If you live in the UK, you will need to mission, but one of the most
apply to be an astronaut through YOU KNOW? dangerous parts of a space flight
the European Space Agency NASA astronaut Peggy is the return journey.
(ESA). The ESA selects candidates Whitson has spent 675 Re-entering Earth’s
every 10 to 15 years and will only atmosphere from space and
days aboard the ISS
consider applicants between the touching down safely is the part
ages of 27 and 37, meaning you will
– the most of any of the space flight that could most
probably get just one shot at success.
astronaut! easily go wrong. Even if you make
Unlike in the early days of astronaut it through the atmosphere, your
training, when candidates were mostly ace spacecraft might not land where
fighter pilots, today’s selectors are looking for planned, potentially leaving you stranded in the
healthy and clever doctors, engineers, pilots and middle of an ocean at night. Were that to happen,
scientists, all with a keen passion for space. To get you’d have to keep a cool head as your spacecraft
started, all aspiring astronauts need to fill in an filled up with water.
online form – but don’t rush your answers because To test whether you are up to this, you will be
Getty Images

they will be scrutinised in immense detail. placed in a simulator that sinks into a giant

Science Nature 47
 EPIC MISSIONS
swimming pool like a crashed spacecraft. This
capsule shakes and rolls over in complete darkness,
making it hard to know which way is up. When you
do this test, you will have to wait until you’re
completely underwater before you can undo your
harness, find the emergency exits and get out safely.
Even once you’re out of the craft, the task isn’t over.
You need to radio for help, remembering exactly
where in the ocean you have landed, and provide
updates on how the rest of the crew are holding up.
Calm under pressure?
Getting into space in the first place is dangerous.
Rockets shoot into the sky so fast that astronauts feel
the powerful force of gravity pushing down on
them during take-off. This makes your arms feel
like lead weights, yet at the same time
you will have to communicate with
mission control, fly the rocket – and
possibly make some life-saving
decisions too.
To check that your body can
survive under these sort of
pressures, you will be put into
a centrifuge launch simulator. A
centrifuge is essentially a seat
at the end of a long pole that is
spun around at enormous speeds,
will head to space
48 Science Nature
A spacecraft
simulator.
SPEEDY
STATION
Astronauts living on the
generating the kind of International Space Station machines suddenly fails while
acceleration you might are the fastest people in the you’re in space. Not getting
experience during a rocket enough oxygen makes you
universe. They are hurtling
launch. It might also feature an confused very quickly and it can
artificial cockpit that mimics that of
along at more than have fatal consequences.
the rocket ship. As you zip around in
15,500mph. There’s a very simple test for this on
the centrifuge, mission control can Earth. While wearing a special mask, you
request that you perform some tasks – are set a number of tasks. These keep you
some of which might even be in a foreign language, busy but at some point the oxygen supply is switched
to ensure that you’re up to the job. off. You need to respond to this failure before you
become too confused from the lack of oxygen to do
Remember to breathe… anything about it.
You’re doing well. You’ve passed the first two tests,
and the ESA is impressed with your progress. Still, All aboard the vomit comet
there’s a long way to go before you’ll become an Every astronaut loves the feeling of being weightless,
official astronaut. The next test will but the strange, floating sensation can make you
see whether you can detect spacesick. You must have a strong stomach to be able
when oxygen supplies fail to carry out your duties. The best way to test your
before it’s too late. ability to cope with this is to put you inside something
Spacecraft produce air called the “vomit comet”. This is a jet plane that does
using special steep climbs and loops, like a rollercoaster in the sky.
machines that could As the plane reaches the top of a loop and starts to
break during a fall, you experience a few seconds of weightlessness.
mission. It is vital Most people lose their lunch during this test. Gross.
that you can
recognise the signs of It’s time to make new friends
a lack of oxygen in So, you’ve proved that you can cope with take-off,
Jeanette Epps case one of the landing, losing oxygen supplies and being weightless.
in 2024.
 ASTRONAUT TRAINING
WOW!
However, some of the biggest challenges for Fewer than 800
astronauts are much more human. On the ISS, you people have been
will spend at least six months with just five other to space.
people for company. Can you imagine being stuck for
that long with people you might not like?
A bunch of bickering astronauts is not just
pointless, it is potentially dangerous, so it’s important
that candidates can get along with others in stressful
conditions. NASA, the US space agency, uses an
underwater base off the coast of the US state of
Florida to observe teamwork skills. You have to scuba
dive to the sea floor in order to enter the facility, and
then you will spend several weeks in a small group
carrying out tasks. You may go on “space walks” in the
underwater environments, where you will float
around as though you are in space, relying on your
new crewmates for assistance.

The final verdict

If you’ve made it this far without being dismissed, you
will have an agonising wait to hear if you are one of
the six lucky candidates to have made it into the ESA
as an astronaut. If you make the cut, your training is
only beginning. You now have at least two years
before you will be selected for a space mission and
further preparations to get ready for launch day.
With all that work behind you, imagine the feeling
of finally blasting off on an exciting new mission to
the ISS, the Moon, or beyond. Astronauts are at the
cutting edge of scientific discovery, and your efforts Training for a space walk.
have just earned you a place in the history books.

Do you have what it takes?

Try this test at home

This is a real test used by space agencies to
check your memory skills. Find a crewmate
who will read out a string of numbers to you.
During the test, you have to repeat them back
in reverse order.
Now for the tricky part – you must do this
while performing step-ups on a box or stair. Your
crewmate should start with just three digits and
keep adding an extra digit once you’ve repeated
it successfully. Keep going until you’ve messed
up twice. How many numbers can you do?
Everyone will eventually fail this test. Adults
typically manage five numbers. Can you beat
that? Why not give it a try?
Getty Images, Alamy, NASA, Shutterstock
GETTY IMAGES · NASA · SHUTTERSTOCK

American
astronaut trainees
during their zero
A crewmate
gravity training on
can help you.
a “vomit comet”.

Science Nature 49
 EPIC MISSIONS

The woman who broke

down boundaries and made
it to the stars.

ost people in life are happy if they can excel in one field. Tough times
M Mae Jemison, however, has managed to master several
over the course of her career. She is the first African-
At the age of 16, Jemison went to Stanford University to study
chemical engineering (designing industrial processes to make
American woman to become an astronaut, and she is an author, products and materials). She also attended classes in African-
doctor and engineer. Her journey to becoming a hero of science was American studies. She was one of the only black people in her class,
not straightforward, and she had to overcome several challenges to and one of very few women. Jemison experienced racism at the
get to the top. Let’s find out how this remarkable scientist achieved university, including from her teachers. Racism is when people are
her dreams and continues to inspire others today. treated badly or unfairly because of their skin colour, culture or
nationality. Jemison remembers one professor who made her feel
Dreaming of space stupid when she asked questions, but praised white students for
Jemison was born in Decatur, a city in the US state of the same thing. Jemison overcame these challenges, and
Alabama, on 17 October 1956, but grew up in the
bigger city of Chicago. From an early age, she loved WOW! in 1977 she left university with degrees in chemical
engineering and African-American studies.
art, fashion and all types of science – especially Jemison can
anything to do with space. When asked on her speak four different From doctor to astronaut
first day of kindergarten (the American name for languages – English, After graduating, space seemed to Jemison to be
nursery school) what she wanted to become, Japanese, Russian out of reach. She went to medical school at Cornell
Jemison replied, “A scientist.” and Swahili. University, New York, to become a doctor. She
Her interest in space continued to grow as she volunteered in Cambodia in Asia, and Kenya in Africa,
got older. She loved Star Trek, a TV show set on board a and worked as a doctor in the US.
spaceship, and was particularly inspired by Nichelle Nichols, an Then, in 1983, Sally Ride blasted off on the space shuttle
African-American actor. She was also fascinated by the Apollo space Challenger, becoming the first American woman to fly to space. It
programme, which the US government launched in 1961 to try inspired Jemison to follow her dream, and in 1985, she applied to
and get humans to the Moon. Jemison loved watching the Apollo NASA, the US space agency, to become an astronaut.
missions on TV but was disappointed that there were no female She had to wait, because the following year the Challenger
astronauts. She read a lot about science and science-fiction, and spacecraft blew up after take-off. It was one of the worst accidents
won a scholarship to one of the top US universities. of the US space programme and the tragedy led to a pause in
recruitment. However, in 1987, Jemison was one of just 15 people
out of 2,000 applicants accepted onto the astronaut programme. “I
From Apollo to Artemis didn’t care if there had been 1,000 people in space before me or
whether there had been none. I wanted to go,” she says.
The US space agency NASA has launched a new programme to
land the first woman on the Moon by 2026. The Artemis
programme has been described as “humanity’s return to the
Reaching the stars
After years of training, Jemison finally left Earth on board the space
Moon”. It aims to use resources on the Moon to allow
shuttle Endeavor, on 12 September 1992, with six other astronauts.
astronauts to travel further, carry out more experiments, and
Her mission was to see how the human body and other materials
build a base on the Moon that could be used as a launch pad
react to the conditions in space. Jemison took along a few special
for the first human voyages to Mars. To achieve this, the most
items. She chose things that represented people who are
powerful rocket of all time has been created, called the Space
sometimes not included: a poster of a black dancer called Judith
Launch System. A new capsule called Orion has also been
Jamison; a small statue from a West Africa women’s society; and
built, to try and enable astronauts to travel into deep space.
the flag of the oldest African-American female student group.
Jemison and her team spent 190 hours, 30 minutes and 23
NASA’s Space Launch seconds in space, and orbited the Earth 127 times. She says the
System rocket.
experience made her feel very connected to the universe.

Down to Earth
After six years as an astronaut, Jemison retired from NASA,
and has now set up a company that uses science and technology to
solve everyday problems, such as a lack of power supplies in
developing countries. She also began to teach and write, and is
currently leading the 100 Year Starship project, which aims to make
travel outside our solar system possible within the next 100 years.
With so many inspirational achievements already behind her, it
seems inevitable that Jemison will make it happen.

50 Science Nature
 MAE JEMISON
LIVE LONG Mae Jemison

AND PROSPER made history.

In 1993, Jemison became the

first real astronaut to appear on
the TV show, Star Trek, after
the producers heard
she was a fan.

ALAMY · SHUTTERSTOCK

Science Nature 51
 EPIC MISSIONS
Truss
This 108-metre frame
holds power supplies,
computing units and

BRIGHT
spare parts.
Canadarm 2

SPOT
This strong robot
arm was used while
the ISS was being
The ISS is the third built. It is now there
brightest object in the to grab hold of
night sky after the supply ships.

Moon and Venus.

Quest airlock
Astronauts must spend
several hours inside
this airlock before a
spacewalk so they can
get used to the lower
pressure air that fills
Laboratories
Nodes their spacesuits.
There are three laboratory
The smaller modules – nodes modules on the ISS: Destiny
– connect several sections. (US), Kibo (Japan) and
This Harmony node is the main Columbus (Europe). There is
living quarters for the US and room for 29 experiments to be
European crew members. carried out on the ISS at once.

Take a closer look at humanity’s home in space.

ver 25 years ago, on 20 November 1998,
O humankind took a giant leap off the
home planet when the first part of the
International Space Station (ISS) was launched into
orbit. The ISS is the first permanent human base
in space. It’s the crew’s job to maintain the space
station, run experiments and find out more about
what it’s like to live in space – information that will
come in useful on long missions to Mars and beyond.
Around 230 people from 18 countries have
made the journey to the ISS so far. They blast off
aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur
Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It takes about three
days of precise manoeuvring to meet up safely
with the ISS, which is orbiting 250 miles above the
Earth’s surface (or about 40 times higher than Mount
Everest) and whizzing along at 17,225mph. It passes
right across the sky in about five minutes.
The ISS was assembled in space piece by piece,
a process that took 13 years and 201 spacewalks. It
is now the size of a football pitch and has the living
space of a six-bedroom house. However, there is no
up or down in the weightlessness of space, so the
equipment is positioned all over the floor, walls and
ceiling. The astronauts don’t use chairs, but just float
at workstations, and they sleep inside bags that
are tethered to the wall so they don’t float off. The
station orbits Earth every 93 minutes, giving them 32
sunrises and sunsets every day. Therefore, the crew
set bedtimes according to Greenwich Mean Time,
which is halfway between the two control rooms in
Houston, Texas, and Moscow, Russia. Both control
rooms oversee the station 24 hours a day.
The astronauts on board the ISS must exercise
for two hours a day. They lift weights and run on a
treadmill to stop their muscles and bones weakening
in the weightless environment. After returning to
Earth, it can take between six weeks and three years
for an astronaut to regain their previous strength.

52 Science Nature
 THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
Permanent home
Return vehicle Since 2000, there have Supply ship
The Russian Soyuz always been three Each year, the crew
spacecraft carries three
crew members at a time. At
astronauts on board. eats nearly eight
WATER
SUPPLY
A new team arrives every tonnes of food. This
least one Soyuz spacecraft six months – although some arrives mostly aboard
stays at the station at all astronauts stay for longer. Progress cargo ships,
times to be used in the case which dock on the The ISS recycles all its water
of emergency. Zvezda module – even from the toilet. As well as
– also the main
living quarters drinking and washing, the clean
for the Russian water is also used to make
crew members.
fresh oxygen for the
crew to breathe.

Radiators
The zig-zagged panels
are used to get rid
of heat from inside
the ISS. They are
positioned to avoid
being in direct sunlight
as much as possible.

Solar arrays
The panels swivel
so they are tilted
towards the Sun
as the ISS moves.
They provide enough
electricity to power
40 houses on Earth.

Cupola
The viewing pod is
positioned for looking
at Earth. It has the
largest windows of any
spacecraft in history.
POWER UP
As the ISS orbits at
the very edge of Earth’s
atmosphere, slight wisps of air
drag on the space station, making
Exposed section it sink 100 metres towards Earth
This platform on the
Kibo laboratory module
every day. The ISS crew use the
(built in Japan) is used to Soyuz thrusters to push
SHUTTERSTOCK

expose materials to the themselves back up.

vacuum of space to see
what happens to them.

Science Nature 53
 EPIC MISSIONS

The British astronaut talks

about on life aboard the
International Space Station.
im Peake is the first British astronaut to carry out a space time,” Peake remembers. He had to study biology, chemistry,
T walk from the International Space Station (ISS), and
one of very few Britons ever to make it beyond Earth’s
maths and physics, as well as practical skills like medicine,
plumbing and speaking Russian.
atmosphere. On Earth, he spends his time writing books, including
the Swarm books, which you can read about in the box below. Blasting off
On 15 December 2015, Peake was launched into space on a
Finding a passion six-month mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
Peake was born in Chichester, England, on 7 April 1972. As a child, Describing how it felt to sit in the Soyuz rocket before blast-off,
it took him a while to find something that he really enjoyed. He Peake says, “That’s the moment you think, ‘Now focus, and get on
tried all sorts of activities, including athletics, gymnastics and horse with what we’ve been trained to do.’”
riding, but it was only when he got involved with the army cadets It takes a while to settle in, though. “Imagine doing a handstand
at school that he found his true passion. “I was a teenager and the for 24 hours – you get an idea of how much pressure your head is
cadets just gave me everything that I realised I wanted,” Peake tells feeling,” Peake says, describing that first day. Despite throwing up,
Science+Nature. “It was outdoor activities, night hikes, Peake quickly got used to the conditions.
camping and flying.” It was here Peake discovered his
interest in flying. “From about 14 years onwards, I
IN A SPIN Life in space
knew I wanted to be an army helicopter pilot, so I While Peake was “No one goes to space for the cuisine.” That’s the first
worked really hard towards that goal.” on board, the ISS thing Peake says about everyday life during the
travelled around 78 million mission. Meals are cooked by heating up them up
Astronaut classes miles and orbited Earth from a hot-water dispenser and crisps and peanuts
Peake spent 18 years as a test pilot in the army roughly 3,000 are banned because they are too messy.
and flying helicopters. He had a successful career times. As for going to the loo, Peake says it is pretty much
but never imagined going to space. “It just didn’t seem the same as on Earth but before you do anything, you
accessible if you were a Brit,” he says. have to switch on a fan. He says because there is no gravity,
Then, in 2008, the European Space Agency (ESA) opened the astronauts wee into a tube that has an airflow like a vacuum
the selection process to allow people from Britain and other cleaner to help everything go in the right direction. “It’s the same
European countries to apply to be astronauts. Peake was one of for number two,” he says. The astronauts have a busy schedule on
six lucky applicants to be selected. “Training takes an awful long board. They have to do experiments, carry out maintenance and
perform space walks.

Talking aliens A hostile environment

On 15 January 2016, Peake became the first British person to
“I genuinely do think there is intelligent life in the universe,”
complete a space walk from the ISS. Peake and his fellow astronaut
says Tim Peake. He says there are so many galaxies, stars and
Tim Kopra spent six hours in spacesuits outside the station carrying
habitable planets in the universe that there must be life out
out maintenance. Peake described the experience as “remarkable”.
there, but contacting them will be very difficult.
“On the one hand, you’re very aware that you’re in a very hostile
Peake began to think about how this might work and came
environment,” Peake says, “But then you turn and you see Earth and
up with an idea is that an intelligent life form could transform
it’s just absolutely beautiful.”
its brain, using advanced computers, into a form of digital
intelligence. This concept has formed the plot of Peake’s book
Swarm Rising, which is co-written
To Mars and beyond
Peake says the next step in space travel will be going back to the
with Steve Cole. The book tells the
Moon and then heading to Mars. “The great thing is that children
story of a boy who is kidnapped
today will potentially not just be watching other humans land on
by a digital being in the form of
Mars, they could be the next humans to go to Mars.” Although
a girl called Adi (or alien digital
only relatively few people get to go to space, each mission
intelligence).
requires thousands of people to work behind the scenes. “It’s all
He explains, “Swarm Rising is
about teamwork and cooperation.” Peake says careers in science,
very much my genuine thought
technology, engineering and maths (STEM) can play a vital role in
about how intelligent life could
this – as well helping improve quality of life on Earth.
evolve and make contact with
“When we work together, we can put our minds to it, we’re
other species.” The book is
going to achieve incredible things.” Peake says. “That’s why I’m
published by Hodder Children’s
passionate about STEM. I think it maximises your opportunities and Tim Peake.
Books and is available now.
helps young people to be the best that they can be.”

54 Science Nature
 TIM PEAKE

DID YOU
KNOW?
In 2016, Peake made history
as the first person to run the
London Marathon while
on board the ISS.

GETTY IMAGES

Science Nature 55
 EPIC MISSIONS

Why does a trip into space leave many people changed forever?
n 7 December 1972, astronaut Harrison
O Schmitt looked out of the window of the
Apollo 17 spacecraft as it sped away from
Luke Jerram’s
Gaia artwork.

Earth towards the Moon, and took a photo of our

planet’s entire sunlit side, surrounded by inhospitable
darkness. The photograph, known as the “Blue
Marble”, became one of the most shared images ever.
It perfectly captures just how remote and isolated our
world is in space – something that’s often hard to
communicate in words. Astronauts who have seen
Earth from outside often come back expressing a
peculiar feeling that has been given its own name –
the “overview effect”.

A shift in perspective
The overview effect describes the changes in the way
you understand Earth and humankind’s place on it
after seeing it from afar. Some people experience a
sense of interconnectedness, a realisation that we’re
all made from the same space dust; others get a
feeling of awe. Michael Collins, who flew aboard the
first crewed mission to land on the Moon, said Earth
Worlds on film
Harrison Schmitt’s 1972 photograph of Earth drew
worldwide attention, but the first full-colour photo
of Earth’s sunlit side was actually taken by a
satellite five years earlier, in 1967. The first
photograph of an entire world in space was taken
some 127 years earlier than that, by astronomer
John William Draper.
Using an early form of photography known
as a daguerreotype (say “dag-air-oh-tipe”), Draper
captured an image of the full Moon on 23 March
1840. It was the first to show our satellite’s craters,
mountains and valleys. A daguerreotype is printed
on a sheet of silver-plated copper covered with
chemicals that are sensitive to light. Draper’s image
survives and a lunar crater was named after him.
GETTY IMAGES
“projected an air of fragility” when he saw it from change? Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who rocketed to
lunar orbit. International Space Station (ISS) space in July 2021, has committed around £2 billion
astronaut Nicole Stott described an overwhelming to environmental causes after experiencing the
feeling of beauty. Almost every person who’s had the overview effect himself.
chance to look down on the planet has experienced
their own version of the effect – but why? Overview for everyone
For the moment, though, some people are working
Tiny planet on bringing the overview effect down to Earth.
Seeing our home in the emptiness of space could be Bristol-based artist Luke Jerram, for instance, has
one of the most important lessons of any space trip. created a piece called Gaia, named after the mythical
For one thing, it reveals how small Earth is – Greek goddess of the Earth. Consisting of a balloon
astronauts travelling to the Moon were seven metres wide with images of the surface
able to block it out completely behind a projected onto it, it gives the viewer a chance
raised thumb, and for any future
travellers venturing deeper into the WHAT’S IN to see Earth in 3D on a scale not usually
seen by humans.
solar system, it would rapidly A NAME? For those who are more into tech
shrink to a pale blue dot. Yet The term “overview than art, an award-winning project
this tiny ball of light effect” was first used by called Spacebuzz shares the wonders
encompasses everything we author Frank White of the overview effect with young people
know from everyday experience – in a 1987 book. around the world using virtual reality. And
all of humanity with its triumphs and NASA’s DSCOVR satellite (Deep Space
troubles, and everything else, from Climate Observatory) delivers new Blue
microbes to animals to mountain ranges. Marble images of Earth from a distance of almost a
Since 1972, nobody has been far enough from million miles away – you can see them for yourself
Earth to take a photograph like the Blue Marble. over at epic.gsfc.nasa.gov
However, even a trip to low Earth orbit, where Spreading and sharing the overview effect can
astronauts aboard the ISS constantly see Earth as a lead us to a greater understanding that Earth is one
vast sphere below them, can be enough to trigger the system. Despite the conflicts that divide people,
overview effect. What’s more, new advances in space humankind is part of a complex and interconnected
travel, such as the short trips to the edge of space web of life that spans the whole world. People should
offered by companies such as Virgin Galactic and try to see the big picture. So next time you gaze up at
Blue Origin, are likely to make the experience far the stars, take a second to pause and think about

Draper’s Moon. more common – you might even get to experience it how our own small, precious fragile world must look
for yourself. What would it inspire you to do, try or from out there in the dark.

56 Science Nature
 COSMIC THE OVERVIEW EFFECT
INFINITY
Researcher Deana Weibel
claims that some astronauts
also experience an “ultraview
effect” when looking
out on the vastness
of space.

Science Nature 57
 EPIC MISSIONS
Remembering the historic Apollo 11 voyage that put the first people on the Moon.
t 8.32 am on the morning of 16 July 1969, an ear-splitting blast ripped
A out from the launchpad of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, US as
the most powerful rocket ever built began to climb into the sky.
Around a million people had jammed the roads and beaches for miles
around to see the blast-off of the mighty Saturn V, a 111-metre-tall rocket made
up of three separate stages stacked on top of each other. It was the start of the
most ambitious journey in human history – the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon.
The five engines of the first stage burned 13 tonnes of rocket fuel every
second. They thrust the rocket upwards so fast that the three astronauts
Saturn V Buzz Aldrin
58 Science Nature
who lay on padded seats in the small conical spacecraft at the very top felt as if
they weighed up to four times more than normal.
It took nine minutes for the two huge lower rocket stages to use up their
fuel and drop away, leaving only the third stage (the top) to push the Apollo
spacecraft into orbit around Earth two minutes later. Suddenly weightless,
Michael Collins, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and mission commander Neil Armstrong
could finally take a breather – this was just the start of an eight-day voyage that
would take them across a quarter of a million miles of space, put two of them on
the surface of the Moon, and eventually bring them all back safely to Earth.
Lunar module
APOLLO 11 MOON LANDING

DID YOU
KNOW?
Almost all the photographs
of the moonwalks are of
Buzz Aldrin, because
Neil Armstrong had
the camera.

ALAMY

Buzz Aldrin on
the Moon.

Science Nature 59
 EPIC MISSIONS
The race into space Setting a course
WHAT’S IN
Mission control.
At NASA mission control in Once in orbit above Earth, the Xxxx

A NAME?
Houston, Texas, things were astronauts had a couple of hours to
tense. The launch marked the check that everything was in order
final drama in America’s long The name Columbia referred before the next phase of their
space race with the Soviet to Christopher Columbus, journey. This involved restarting
Union (a group of countries that who discovered North the engines of the rocket’s upper
were once ruled from Moscow, the America in 1492. stage at precisely the right moment to
capital of Russia). The US saw itself push their spacecraft into a “translunar”
as technologically superior to its rival, orbit – a figure-of-eight route through
but the Soviets had surprised the world space that would send them around the far
by putting the first satellite in space in 1957, and then side of the Moon. This first burn took just six minutes
the first person in space in 1961. and boosted Apollo 11’s speed from 4.5 miles per
This had prompted US president John F Kennedy second to seven miles per second – fast enough to
to set the goal of landing on the Moon before the end reach the Moon in just three days. and air for the journey, as well as a small rocket
of the decade. The challenge was far beyond either engine of its own. The third stage also contained
side’s capabilities at the time of the announcement, Columbia and Eagle a spidery-looking spacecraft called Eagle. This
but that was the whole point. The huge amount of The astronauts were confined to the cone-shaped all-important lunar module, stowed in a protective
work and money needed to achieve this aim would command module, known as Columbia, at the very casing under the service module, would get the
give NASA a chance to overtake the Soviets. Apollo 11 top of Saturn V’s third stage. Beneath Columbia was astronauts from orbit around the Moon to its cratered
was the Americans’ chance to prove themselves. the service module, which held supplies of fuel, water surface and back again.

From lift-off to splashdown

Apollo’s flight followed a figure-of-eight path that swung a successful landing, the lunar module was abandoned and
it around the Moon. Firing the third-stage engines of the the remaining modules fired a third burn to get out of the SAILING BY
Saturn V rocket was the first burn that put Apollo on a course
to loop behind the Moon. As it flew over the lunar far side, a
Moon’s orbit and head back to Earth. If any of these stages
went wrong, the mission would fail, and the astronauts could
THE STARS
second burn pushed Apollo into orbit around the Moon. After have been left stranded in space forever.
On the way to the Moon,
the Apollo 11 astronauts
used the stars to check
that they were
on course.

ADRIAN MANN

60 Science Nature
 APOLLO 11 MOON LANDING
The Saturn V rocket Lunar module
(Eagle)

First stage Ring between stages Third stage Service module Launch escape
rocket

Second Protective
stage casing Command module
(Columbia)

A delicate manoeuvre for the first time and radio contact with Earth was
The next challenge was to link the Eagle nose-to-nose lost. A six-minute burn from the service module’s Meet a scientist
with Columbia. The hatch where the lunar module backward-facing engines slowed the spacecraft down
and command module connected was located on top so that instead of catapulting back towards Earth, it
Katherine
of Columbia’s cone-shaped nose. Michael Collins had entered a new orbit around the Moon. Johnson.
to ease Columbia and the service module forward, in For the next 24 hours, the crew worked swiftly
front of the rest of the third stage and turn it around to check Eagle’s systems and to prepare it for a
to face the lunar module – using small built-in landing attempt. If anything went wrong now they
thruster rockets – before gently docking with the would have to return home with the mission
lunar module and pulling it free of the incomplete. Finally, Buzz Aldrin and Neil
upper stage. With this delicate Armstrong were ready to board the
manoeuvre completed, just spider-legged lunar module for
four and a half hours after the descent to the surface
launch, the crew of Apollo of the Moon. Collins was
11 had left the rocket the command module
that had launched pilot, so he remained in
them and were on orbit while his fellow
their own, hurtling astronauts made
across space towards a their descent.
date with history.
The landing
Arriving at In the years before
the Moon the mission, NASA had
Over the next three days, mapped the Moon using
Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins Footprints on the
orbiting satellites and sent
kept in constant touch with mission Moon are still there. robot landers to test its surface. The
control by radio, and even sent TV pictures chosen landing site was on the edge of a
back to the millions of people following the mission vast plain called the Sea of Tranquillity. This area was
at home. Slowly, Earth dwindled in size and the Moon supposed to be smooth, but as Eagle came hurtling
grew larger, until it dominated the view through in towards the surface, it turned out to be covered KATHERINE JOHNSON
Columbia’s tiny windows. Seventy-five hours into with dangerous rocks and small craters. Making RESEARCH MATHEMATICIAN, NASA
the mission, Apollo 11 swung behind the Moon matters worse, the small lander carried only a limited
Pioneering mathematician Katherine Johnson
made waves as both a woman and an African-
American at NASA in the 1960s. When staff
A DEBT PAID were still separated by race, Johnson fought for
The Apollo 11 crew promotion to the male-dominated Flight Research
carried with them a piece Team in the newly formed NASA, where she
of fabric and wood from calculated by hand the flight paths for the Mercury
the Wright Flyer – the missions of Alan Shepard (the first US man in
world’s first powered space), and John Glenn (the first US man to orbit
the Earth). After helping to calculate the flight
controlled aircraft.
trajectory for the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, she
continued at NASA until 1988. In 2015 she was
given the National Medal of Freedom, the highest
ALAMY · GETTY

Aldrin steps on to civilian honour in the US. Her amazing story was
the lunar surface. told in the 2016 film Hidden Figures.

Science Nature 61
 EPIC MISSIONS
amount of fuel (any more would have made it too
heavy to launch from Earth), and tensions in mission
control rose as the fuel gauge steadily ticked down.
However, Neil Armstrong was ice cool at the controls
as he searched for a place to touch down, computer
system alarms blaring in the cramped cabin. Finally,
the commander spotted a smooth area and
steered towards it. When the lunar
module settled in a puff
of grey moondust, it had
just 90 seconds of
fuel remaining.
Armstrong sent
back a message:
“Houston, Tranquillity
Base here. The Eagle
has landed.”
Moonwalk
No one had ever set
foot on another world,
so safety had to come first.
The space suits designed for
walking on the lunar surface were
quite different from those used on previous
spacewalks, so it took the team some time to make
sure everything was fitted correctly.
According to their original mission schedule,
Armstrong and Aldrin were supposed to rest, but
perhaps unsurprisingly, they were too excited to
sleep. Instead, they tucked into the first meal eaten
on the Moon – bacon squares, peaches, sugar cookie
cubes, pineapple-grapefruit drink and coffee. More
than six hours after landing, Armstrong emerged
from Eagle and made his way down a short ladder, in
gravity just one sixth of that on Earth.
At 2.56 am on 21 July 1969, he dropped the last
few centimetres onto the Moon’s surface with the
famous words, “That’s one small step for man, one
Armstrong, Collins and
Aldrin on USS Hornet.
62 Science Nature
giant leap for mankind.” For the very first time in
One of the few snaps
history, humans had stepped onto another world. of Neil Armstrong on
As well as the brave astronauts, it had taken the the Moon.
work of around 400,000 engineers, technicians and
scientists to make this awesome achievement a
reality. More than 600 million people all around the
globe watched the action unfold on
live television.
Down to
business
Armstrong’s first
job was to set up
a camera. Aldrin
soon joined him
on the surface,
and the two then
spent two
hours setting
up a number
of experiments,
including a moonquake
detector, a lunar weather
Command station and a set of mirrors that
module
could be used to reflect lasers beamed
from Earth (to provide super-accurate measurements
of the Moon’s distance). They collected rock
samples to take home – geologists would use
them to understand the age, history and structure
of the lunar surface. The crew also took more
than 100 photographs on their specially designed
cameras, unfurled a US flag, took a radio call from
the US president, Richard Nixon, and unveiled a
commemorative plaque.
Back to space
Later Apollo missions would spend longer exploring
the Moon’s surface, but Apollo 11 was kept as simple
as possible. After a short rest, the crew got set to
THAT’S
DISGUSTING
Toilet arrangements on the Apollo
missions were basic, to say the least.
The so-called urine-collection system
was a small bag with a tube that
sucked the astronauts’ pee out into the
vacuum of space, where it froze into
crystals. Going for a number two was
even worse! Astronauts had to go in
a self-adhesive bag attached to their
bottoms. Once they had finished, they
had to add a special germicide liquid
before sealing up the bag and mashing
it all together. Imagine having to do
that while being stuck in a tiny cabin
with your crewmates!
 APOLLO 11 MOON LANDING
A tickertape
parade for the
astronauts.

return to space. The cabin of the lunar module carried

a separate rocket engine beneath it to lift off from the
Moon’s surface and, less than 22 hours after landing,
Armstrong and Aldrin triggered this ascent stage. The
engine blasted them free of the Eagle’s lower section
(which is still on the Moon) and sent them up from
the Sea of Tranquillity into orbit. They slowly spiralled
out to meet Columbia and the service module, where
Collins was waiting for them.

Return trip
Reunited in lunar orbit, the astronauts had no time
for celebration – they quickly transferred rock samples
and other equipment from Eagle to Columbia. Then,
the Eagle was cast adrift – its job was done so it
was now nothing more than excess weight for the
return journey. The engines fired, and the service
module and Columbia exited lunar orbit. The three
heroic astronauts were on their return course to
Earth. Eventually, it was the service module’s turn to
be discarded, separated from Columbia with small
explosive charges. Apollo 11’s last stages would be
dangerous and spectacular.

The final burn

To re-enter Earth’s upper atmosphere, the command
module had to hit it at a shallow and very specific
angle, all while travelling at a speed of almost
seven miles per second – a blistering 25,200mph.
Now travelling with the wider end of the cone
facing forward, Columbia blazed through Earth’s
thin upper atmosphere like a fiery shooting star.
Friction (resistance) with the thin gases heated the
shield to more than 2,700°C, but also slowed the
capsule down. The round base was an insulated
heatshield that protected its passengers through their
bone-shaking descent. As Columbia’s speed dropped
below 500mph, two small parachutes deployed. Then
three larger ones unfolded about 3,000 metres above

DID YOU
the Pacific Ocean. Apollo 11 finally splashed down
ALAMY · GETTY · SHUTTERSTOCK

within just 12 miles of the recovery ship USS Hornet

KNOW? on 24 July 1969.
Neil Armstrong described John F Kennedy’s promise had been fulfilled; a
the strange smell of historic journey and a bold leap into the unknown
was complete. In the words of the plaque left behind
moondust as “like
on our Moon, “We came in peace for all mankind”.
wet ashes”.
Science Nature 63
 EPIC MISSIONS
Meet the coder whose computer skills helped send people to the Moon.
n 20 July 1969, NASA’s Apollo 11 mission made history
O when the astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin
landed on the Moon – becoming the first humans ever to
walk on the lunar surface. This incredible achievement
would never have happened, however, without the help
of men and women working tirelessly behind the
SHORT ON
MEMORY
scenes. One of these people was Margaret Hamilton,
a trailblazing computer coder who actually
invented the term “software engineer”. The computer
lunar lander had just 72KB
A smart cookie of memory – a modern
Margaret Hamilton was born Margaret Heafield on mobile phone has a
17 August 1936, in Indiana in the US. As a young girl, million times more.
she loved maths. “When I attended high school and
college, software engineering was not yet a field [an area
of study],” she told Futurism magazine. When she went to
university at Earlham College in Indiana, Florence Long – the head
of the college’s science department – inspired her. “She was a great
human being,” said Hamilton. After graduating, Hamilton took a job The Lauren bug
as a programmer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Learning on the job
Her new job placed her in the laboratory of a famous meteorologist
and mathematician called Edward Lorenz. Hamilton helped him
create a computer program to predict the weather. “Here I learned
what a computer was and how to write software,” she told
The Guardian newspaper in 2019. It was Lorenz’s love for
Creative coding
The first-ever image of a black hole was captured by eight
telescopes dotted around the planet, in 2019. Stitching the
images together and getting them to line up took some seriously
tricky computer coding. Dr Katie Bouman led the development of
the program that made capturing this groundbreaking image
possible. She began to write the code when she was a graduate
student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr Bouman
said that it took teamwork, “We’re a melting pot of astronomers,
physicists, mathematicians and engineers, and that’s what it
took to achieve something once thought impossible.”
ALAMY · REX SHUTTERSTOCK · EHT COLLABORATION
The supermassive
black hole at the centre
of a distant galaxy.
64 Science Nature
experimenting with programming that started Hamilton down the
path of software engineering.
At the time, computers were enormous, and didn’t have screens
for operators to monitor their activity. Programmers had to
feed information into the machines on cards punched
with holes. “The size of the computers I and others
worked on… varied from being huge, taking up
rooms of warehouse-like space, to being
on the quite large,” she said.
Before long, her work got her noticed, and
she was accepted for a position as a lead
software developer for NASA’s upcoming Moon
missions. Hamilton was not only the first
programmer to join the team, but also the first
woman. She got to work on Apollo’s guidance computer
in the command module and lunar lander – the most
sophisticated system of its day.
As a mother, Hamilton remembered that, “Often, in the evenings or
at weekends, I would bring my young daughter, Lauren, into work
with me.” One day, while Hamilton was running a test of the Moon
mission software, Lauren started pressing all the keys and managed
to crash the simulation.
Hamilton realised that if an operator pressed a key by mistake in
the middle of a real mission, it could make the computer system
crash. She suggested a modification to prevent this from
happening, but NASA and MIT staff said no. “Midcourse on the very
next mission – Apollo 8 – one of the astronauts on board
accidentally did exactly what Lauren had done. The Lauren bug!”
remembers Hamilton. It created so much chaos that Hamilton was
allowed to code her changes.
For the Apollo 11 mission, Hamilton was hooked up to
Mission Control from MIT. “I was concentrating on the
software,” she said. However, when the lunar module
had safely landed on the Moon, she allowed herself
a moment of excitement – and relief. “My God.
Look what happened. We did it. It worked.”
A true pioneer
In 2003 Hamilton was awarded the NASA
Exceptional Space Act for her contribution to the
missions. The former NASA Administrator, Sean
O’Keefe, said that her work “became the building blocks
for modern software engineering”.
In 2016, President Barack Obama presented Hamilton
with a Presidential Medal of Freedom. He said she
symbolised “that generation of unsung women who
helped send humankind into space… Our astronauts
didn’t have much time, but thankfully they had Margaret
Hamilton.” Today, Hamilton continues to be an inspiration
to young women coders across the world.
MARGARET HAMILTON

WOMEN OF
NASA
In 2017, Lego created a
limited-edition minifigure
of Hamilton as part of a
set called Women
of NASA.

Margaret Hamilton
inside one of the Apollo
command modules.

Science Nature 65
 EPIC MISSIONS

EARTHRISE
On Christmas Eve, 1968, the crew of Apollo 8
became the first humans to orbit the Moon.
Astronaut Bill Anders snapped this famous
image of Earth rising over the Moon’s
surface. This breathtakingly beautiful view
of our home planet in the blackness of space
showed people just how unique and fragile
our world is. It kicked off the environmental
movement to help protect and conserve our
planet. Anders said, “We came all this way to
explore the Moon, and the most important
thing is that we discovered the Earth.”

66 Science Nature
 EARTHRISE

MOON-ATICS
Apollo 8’s crew broke
loads of records. They were
the first to ride a Saturn V rocket
into space, the first to leave Earth’s
gravity, the first to see the far
side of the Moon, and they
also set a speed record
of 24,200mph.

ALAMY

Science Nature 67
 EPIC MISSIONS

Get ready to join the crew Victor

Glover
Jeremy
Hansen
of Artemis II as they blast
off on a daring mission
into outer space. Christina
Hammock Koch
n 3 April 2023, the US and Canadian Reid

O space agencies announced the crew

of astronauts who, in late 2025, will
Wiseman

boldly go where no one has gone before. The four

astronauts of the Artemis II mission will travel further
from Earth than any humans before, in an important
test flight for the new Orion spacecraft. On board will
be NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman (mission
commander), Victor J. Glover (pilot) and Christina
Hammock Koch (mission specialist), along with
Canadian Space Agency crew member Jeremy
Hansen (mission specialist). So, join us on an
adventure to the Moon – and beyond.

Destination outer space

Artemis II is now possible thanks to Orion’s successful
first flight during the Artemis I mission in November
and December 2022. For that flight, the spacecraft
flew in automatic mode with no astronauts aboard.
Engineers and scientists controlled the capsule from
NASA’s mission control in Houston, Texas, putting

68 Science Nature
 THE ARTEMIS PROGRAMME
WHAT’S IN
A NAME?
The Artemis programme
is named after the Greek
goddess of the Moon –
the twin sister
of Apollo.

MOON
WALKERS
During six Apollo missions
from 1969–72, 12 US astronauts
spent a total of 3 days,
8 hours and 22 minutes
exploring the Moon’s
surface.

The Artemis
crew is heading
to the Moon.

Science Nature 69
 EPIC MISSIONS

SET YOUR SIGHTS FOR THE MOON

As Artemis II’s newest member, you’ll kick off a whole new era of Moon landings, help set up a base
in lunar orbit and maybe become the first human to visit Mars. Here’s your mission briefing.

1 Preparation is key
Before your space adventure begins, you’ll need
to do lots of training. NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy
Laboratory is a massive swimming pool that
mimics conditions on the lunar surface. 3 Into orbit
The rocket will launch Orion into a high Earth
orbit. From there, your spaceship’s will propel you
around the Moon in a giant figure-of-eight loop.

2 Blast off!
You and your crewmates will launch from Cape
Canaveral in the US state of Florida, on top of
NASA’s giant Space Launch System rocket – the
most powerful rocket ever to have reached space.

5
2
1

6 Splashdown
Fortunately, your spaceship’s heat shield will
protect you. After a few minutes, air resistance
4 To the Moon
slows down the capsule until it’s safe to fire the
The journey to the Moon takes about four days.
parachutes. You’ll land with a splash in the ocean.
You will whizz around the far side (the side that
faces away from Earth), almost 10,500 miles
above the surface. Then it’s a long trip home.

5 Coming home
As you approach Earth, the cone-shaped crew
module separates from the service module. Air
resistance as you re-enter Earth’s atmosphere raises
the temperatures outside the module to 2,800°C.

70 Science Nature
 SPACE
ENGINEERING
NASA doesn’t have rockets
An illustration of the
powerful enough to launch a fully
Gateway in lunar orbit. (or even partially) constructed
space station. This means
Gateway will need to be
built in space.
Orion through its paces over a 25-day, 1.4 million- Artemis III should see the first woman,
mile journey. The capsule travelled to the Moon and as well as the first person of Plans for a future
Moon base.
back, spending six days orbiting Earth’s distant colour, walk on the Moon.
satellite. Building on the lessons learned from Artemis III will test the
Artemis I, Artemis II will mark the long-awaited return technology for longer
of humans to space exploration. Between 1969 and missions in the next
1972, NASA’s Apollo missions to the Moon put 12 decade. By 2025, NASA
astronauts on the lunar surface. Since then, however, aims to start building a
human spaceflight has been limited to a narrow zone permanent space
called “low Earth orbit”, in which rockets and space station, called the
stations zip around, just a few hundred miles above Gateway, in the orbit
our home planet’s surface. around the Moon. This
will provide a jumping-off
ROBERT MARKOWITZ/NASA/JOHNSON SPACE CENTER · THALES ALENIA SPACE/BRIOT
Gateway to adventure point for future astronauts
COURTESY NASA ESA/D. DUCROS · ESA/P. CARRIL · NASA/BILL BRASSARD ·
If all goes well, NASA plans to follow Artemis II by to go to, and from, the surface,
landing a crew on the surface of the Moon once using lunar landers.
again. Artemis III – which could happen as soon as
2026 – will be a two-part mission. Lunar living
The first step will be an automated (uncrewed) There are also plans to build a base camp on the
launch to put an empty lunar lander vehicle into orbit lunar surface, made up of a cabin, a rover and a
around the Moon. Once this vehicle is safely in place, mobile home where astronauts will live and work. In
a crewed Orion vehicle will blast off to meet it. Two future, this base may allow them to stay on the
astronauts will transfer to the lander and descend to Moon’s surface for up to two months at a time.
the surface near the Moon’s South Pole. Later, they The base could act as a science lab for studying
will use the spacecraft to return to orbit. The Apollo both outer space and Earth itself. Staying for a long
missions have so far all been crewed by men, but time in space would advance scientific research into
THE ARTEMIS PROGRAMME
the long-term effects of living in a
low-gravity environment – on the
Moon your weight is about a
sixth of what it is on Earth.
Learning to survive on the
Moon would also
provide valuable lessons
for exploring worlds
further out in the solar
system, while being
close enough to Earth to
escape in an emergency.
The next frontier
In the future, it might make
sense to build rockets from lunar
materials. The low gravity means it
would take much less fuel to launch rockets from the
Moon than from Earth. This makes the Moon
attractive as a starting point for a voyage to Mars.
As we gain more experience, the Gateway and
the lunar base will act as assembly points for putting
together bigger, more powerful, multi-part
spacecraft. This will help humans take the next giant
leap of journeying to Mars, exploring the asteroids
and venturing further into the depths of space.
Science Nature 71
74 Maggie Aderin Pocock
76 Robot rollers
82 Should space exploration
be done by people?
84 The Voyager probes
86 Strange new worlds
92 How many galaxies are
there beyond the
Milky Way?
Tobias Roetsch
 EXPLORING SPACE

This space scientist and TV presenter has never stopped reaching for the stars.
r Maggie Aderin-Pocock has spent her life dreaming of female, but she says things are now changing and more women
D going into space. She tells Science+Nature that it’s “this
crazy dream” that led to her becoming one of the UK’s
are joining the science world. Anyone who wants to study sciences
should follow their dream and do it.
leading space scientists and a TV presenter on BBC Four’s The Sky at
Night and CBeebies’ Stargazing programmes. Although her success Wonders of space
is stellar, the journey has not been without its challenges. Even after many years, Aderin-Pocock is still an enthusiastic
about space. “I love the Moon,” she says. “My daughter and I
Early life sometimes howl at it.” She is fascinated by Mars too, and says it is
Aderin-Pocock was born in 1968, a year before Neil Armstrong her favourite planet because it has so many mysteries. “It used to
became the first man to walk on the Moon. Although she doesn’t
remember that happening, she says she grew up in a bubble
of excitement about space and the Moon. As a child, she fell in
love with the children’s TV series The Clangers, which featured a
family of pink alien puppets living on a small blue planet. “From
the age of three, my dream was to travel from the Earth and then
visit the Moon and then go out into the beyond and visit the
Clangers.” Her love of science started when she realised that
it was science that sent people into space.

A life-changing moment
Despite her ambition, studying was not easy for
Aderin-Pocock. She says she has dyslexia, which can
make reading and writing difficult, although it doesn’t
affect a person’s ability to process ideas. It wasn’t
diagnosed until much later in her life. “It was quite
challenging,” she says. “I was told that space science and
astronomy (the study of stars and space) would be too
difficult for me, and perhaps I should find something else,
but space has always been my goal.”
Then, in science class, there was a moment that changed
everything. Her teacher asked a question and Aderin-Pocock
Y
worked out the solution. When she put her hand up but no one else AL
AM

did, she thought she must be wrong – but the teacher encouraged
her and she gave the correct answer. “I thought, ‘My goodness, I
can work things out,’” she says. From then on she threw herself into
her studies and worked hard. She spent a lot of time studying in
the library and with her father, who was also interested in science.
She even went to classes at night school where she learned how to
make her own telescope mirrors.
Hard work pays off
Aderin-Pocock did well in her GCSEs and A levels, then studied
physics and mechanical engineering at university. Today, she works
on some of the world’s most important space projects, including
the James Webb Space Telescope, a huge satellite observatory.
Launched in 2021, it is powerful enough to probe the furthest
reaches of the visible universe.
In 2009, Aderin-Pocock was awarded an MBE for services to
science and education – she says she wants more women to follow
her path and study STEM subjects, particularly physics, chemistry,
engineering and computer programming. When she started at
university, only around 10 of the 200 first-year students were
The Clangers.
have water running over the surface and might have had life in the
past, but something changed,” she says. “I’d love a trip to Mars to
investigate.” She also says she thinks aliens probably exist, “There is
so much we don’t know and we are discovering things all the time.
Each new discovery is a delight and a wonder.”
Dreams can come true
Aderin-Pocock hasn’t been to space yet, but she has met the
Clangers, in an episode where a “little Maggie puppet” went to space
and landed on their planet. She hasn’t given up hope of reaching
space herself. She says that the dream she had as a child has taken
her to heights she never thought she would reach, and driven her
to overcome obstacles and hurdles she never thought she would
conquer. “Believe in yourself and have a crazy dream,” she says. “I
may never get out into space, but by having a crazy dream you can
achieve far more than you ever thought possible.”

74 Science Nature
MAGGIE ADERIN-POCOCK

LONG TRIP
Flying from the
Moon to the Sun at
the speed of an aeroplane
would take around 20
years. Reaching
Saturn would take
about 170!

Science Nature 75
 EXPLORING SPACE

DID YOU
KNOW?
The Perseverance rover was
named by a 13-year-old boy called
Alexander Mather, and Ingenuity
got its name thanks to a
17-year-old girl called
Vaneeza Rupani.

An artist’s impression of the

Perseverance rover on Mars.

76 Science Nature

n July 2020, a rocket blasted off from Cape
I Canaveral, Florida, US, on an incredibly
remarkable mission. On board was the US
space agency NASA’s latest Mars rover: Perseverance,
an advanced robotic explorer that was set to travel
millions of miles across the solar system to the planet
Mars, touching down on 18 February 2021
Packed with high-tech gadgets and gizmos –
including a start-of-the-art drill that can collect
rock and soil samples – Perseverance is the most
sophisticated scientific instrument ever to be sent to
another planet. Slung underneath the robot roller was
a mini helicopter called Ingenuity. This dinky drone
performed the first powered flight on an alien world
on 19 April 2021.
Engineers and scientists started working on this
ambitious project since 2014. Its goals are simple:
to help scientists understand whether life once
MARS ROVERS
NASA
existed on the Red Planet; collect samples from the
surface; and find out whether people could visit Mars
in the future. Hop on board with us to experience
Perseverance’s mission so far, and what makes it such
an awesome Martian explorer.
Meet Perseverance
Weighing in at one tonne, Perseverance is about the
size of a small car. It has six wheels, two microphones,
Science Nature 77
 EXPLORING SPACE

WOW!
Perseverance
has a top speed of 152
metres per hour, which
is slower than
walking speed.

The rover’s manoeuvres are

meticulously planned out in
NASA’s Mars Yard.

23 cameras and one giant 2.1-metre-long robotic peer beneath the developing Curiosity’s
arm. In many ways, this robot explorer works like a surface, and a nifty technology and since
human or a fictional droid, such as R2-D2 or WALL-E. laser to blast dust it works so well, they
With its microphones and camera, it can hear from rocks and chose to reduce the risk
the sounds of Mars and scan its surroundings. Its examine them from of things going wrong
extendable arm can reach out and touch (and sniff) seven metres away. by keeping many of the
the world around it. The rover’s three antennas act same systems.
as its “voice”, allowing it to send information to and If it ain’t The newer rover does
receive data from Earth. The messages it sends are broke… Mars is known as have a few tricks up its robotic
relayed to and from the Martian surface via a network Despite all of its shiny new the Red Planet. sleeves, however. Perseverance
of orbiting satellites. kit, Perseverance doesn’t actually has bigger, beefed-up wheels,
Perseverance also carries an entire laboratory look all that fresh. It shares its basic design designed to grind over terrain as varied as
on board to enable it to study the planet’s geology with Mars’s most famous robotic resident – NASA’s loose sand and sharp rocks, without getting stuck
(the materials that make it up), atmosphere and Curiosity rover, which has been on the planet since or damaged. It can also do a bit of self-driving and
environment, and look for chemical clues of past life. 2012. Perseverance was built using some of the steer away from possible dangers. This enables
Its gadgets include a ground-penetrating radar to older rover’s spare parts. Engineers spent a long time Perseverance to calculate a path five times faster than

Hits and misses

Space agencies have been launching
spacecraft to the Red Planet since the
1960s, but so far only NASA and the
China National Space Administration
have been successful in getting
its hardware safely to the surface. 1965 NASA’s Mariner 4 takes the 1976 Viking 1 and 2 become the first 1993 NASA’s Mars Observer
Around half of the spacecraft sent to first close-up photo of the planet from landers to survive on the surface and mysteriously disappears before
Mars have crash-landed. a distance of around 200 miles away. send back images from the Red Planet. reaching orbit around Mars.

78 Science Nature

Curiosity. Perhaps the biggest difference between the
two rovers is the equipment mounted on the end of
Perseverance’s robotic arm. Rather than crushing
rock samples like Curiosity, the rover carries a
special drill to “core” rocks – just like
removing the middle of an apple.
These Martian rock samples will
be sealed in tubes and left on
the planet’s surface. The hope
is that a future mission could
one day pick them up and
carry them to Earth.
Journeying to Mars
Earth and Mars are planetary
neighbours – the third and fourth
2003 The European Space Agency’s
Beagle 2 makes it to the surface, but
not all of its solar panels deploy.
Perseverance’s “eyes” are
cameras mounted on a
tall mast, plus a laser.
planets from the Sun. However, as they travel
around the Sun, the distance between the two
constantly changes. It can vary enormously –
between 35 million miles and 250 million miles.
As a result, space agencies only launch
their spacecraft every few years, to take
DON’T advantage of the times when the
TOPPLE OVER! distance between the two planets
is at its shortest.
Perseverance is designed to Perseverance’s journey
climb 45-degree slopes without began aboard a powerful
tipping over. To be safe, rover Atlas V rocket. After tearing
drivers avoid ground that through the sky and escaping
tilts more than Earth’s gravity, the rover embarked
30 degrees. on a seven-month journey across the
solar system to reach its new home.
2004 NASA’s twin rovers Spirit and 2012 NASA’s Curiosity Rover was
Opportunity land on Mars. Opportunity the largest and most advanced robot
works on the planet for 15 years. to operate on another world.
MARS ROVERS
Meet a Mars scientist
TANYA HARRISON
PLANETARY SCIENTIST
What is your job?
I am what’s called a
geomorphologist. This
is a really fancy way
of saying I study the
shapes of things on
the surface of Mars,
and how they are related to each other, to try and
understand the history of what happened in a
given place on the planet.
Why is Mars so exciting?
Mars is really cool because it’s so much like Earth,
and yet so different. It used to be much warmer,
with lakes and rivers and a thicker atmosphere
that could maybe have supported life. If it did
have life, what happened? If it didn’t, why didn’t
life form on Mars like it did on Earth?
What is your hope for the future of
Mars exploration?
I really hope to see humans set foot on Mars in
my lifetime. Our rovers are wonderful but they’re
still not a replacement for sending human
scientists. I also can’t wait to see a photo of
humans standing next to one of the rovers we’ve
sent before, showing how far we’ve come.
Enter with style
Landing safely on the surface of Mars is extremely
difficult (see the timeline). This is largely because
Mars’s atmosphere is roughly 100 times thinner
than that of Earth. It is about the same thickness
as the wispy air 22 miles up in Earth’s sky. The
major challenge of such a sparse atmosphere is
that parachutes are of little use for slowing down
a spacecraft as it descends. To complicate things
further, the atmosphere on Mars is thick enough to
cause friction, which means a spacecraft becomes
NASA · SHUTTERSTOCK · ALAMY
incredibly hot as it heads towards the surface.
The team at NASA borrowed a technique that
they used to land Curiosity in 2012. At that time, it
was totally untried, pretty complicated and it seemed
crazy. Scientists and engineers called it the “seven
THE ROBOT
PLANET
Mars is the only planet in the
solar system that is entirely
occupied by robots. There are
currently six robot rovers on
the surface, but only two
are operational.
Science Nature 79

EXPLORING SPACE
minutes of terror”, referring to the time it
took for the rover to drop from the top of
Mars’s sky to the surface.
On the day it landed, Perseverance
slammed into the Martian atmosphere
travelling at 13,000mph. Friction from the
thin air roasted spacecraft’s heat shield,
heating it to 1,600ºC and making it glow
white-hot. Seven miles from the surface, a
giant parachute opened, the heat shield flew
off, and the radar landing system switched
on. Perseverance was still falling too fast to land
safely at this point, so cut its parachute and fired its
reverse rockets. The jets helped to slow the craft until
its fall speed was just 2mph. Then, the heavy rover
was lowered to the bottom of its destination crater
from a hovering “sky crane”. Finally, the tether was
cut and the sky crane flew off so that it didn’t land
and squash the rover.
During this nail-biting period, Perseverance was
out of contact with mission control on Earth, because
it takes 14 minutes for communications to travel
between Mars and Earth. The team at NASA had to
sit and wait for the signal that their beloved machine
touched down safely. Once Perseverance began
80 Science Nature
A sky crane gently lowered the
rover to the Martian surface.
talking to the team from the Martian surface, the
mission control room erupted in the loud cheers of
a job well done.
Why go to Mars?
If you think that this plan sounds packed with
potential problems, you are not wrong. Why would
you risk a multi-billion-dollar space vehicle on such a
complex and unlikely sounding set of manoeuvres?
Well, because it worked once before,
and because the rewards were worth
the risk. Of all the planets in the solar
system, Mars is the one most like Earth.
Both are rocky worlds of the inner solar
system. Both are governed by seasons
and have been shaped by volcanoes and
running water. Also, they are relatively
close together. It is hoped that humans
could adapt to life there one day. However,
the root of the everyone’s fascination with
Mars – and the biggest question of all – is did
life ever exist on the planet?
Life on Mars
Nobody knows if there are things living on Mars.
They may have existed in the past and might even
exist there today. One of the things that makes
Perseverance so exciting is that it is the first rover
designed with the specific purpose of looking
for signs of life. Curiosity focused on whether the
planet had ever had the conditions for life to exist.
Researchers know water is the key to life; their motto
is, “Follow the water,” in their search for signs of
extraterrestrial lifeforms. Perseverance was dropped
IN THIN AIR
Helicopters on Earth
rotate their blades about
500 times per minute. In
Mars’s thin air, Ingenuity
had to whizz its rotors
around 2,500 times
per minute.
The Ingenuity helicopter
deployed on Mars.
 MARS ROVERS

WOW!
To return to Earth,
human explorers on Mars
will need about 30–45 tonnes
of oxygen fuel – about
the weight of a
Space Shuttle.

Will humans ever

walk on Mars?

in an area known as the Jezero Crater. This fascinating – the rover has surpassed that and travelled A second home in space
28-mile-wide crater is believed to have once been the 14.75 miles (23.73 kilometres) to date. It isn’t Although Mars is not the closest planet to us (that
site of a lake that has since disappeared, and the Mars staying put on the ground, either. Hitching a title goes to Venus) it has the friendliest conditions
explorer is scouring the area for chemical evidence left ride beneath Perseverance’s belly was a robotic for humans. In the next few decades, astronauts
by living and long-dead organisms. companion – a helicopter named Ingenuity. This might be able to travel to Mars and become the first
At the moment, the only planet on which life is tiny 50-centimetre-high chopper weighs just 1.8 people to walk on another planet. For this ever to be
known to exist is Earth. However, if Perseverance kilograms and has a very special mission. With more than a dream, however, humans will need to
finds evidence to show that there was life on Mars its dual rotors spinning in opposite directions, make their own oxygen. This gas is essential, both
in the past (or even that there is still life there), that Ingenuity was the first vehicle ever to complete a for humans to breathe and to burn rocket fuel for the
changes everything. Our planet would no longer be powered flight on another world. journey home. Carrying all that weight from Earth is
alone in the universe. If scientists could Each flight was designed last just just not practical.
show that the living things on 90 seconds and travel around Perseverance has one final marvellous piece
Mars are different to life on 300 metres, flying up to five of machinery called Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource
Earth – for instance, not metres off the ground, but Utilisation Experiment – MOXIE, for short. This is
based on DNA (the it frequently broke its a ground-breaking experiment that will test new
complex chemical own records for speed technology that might help future human explorers.
molecule that and distance over MOXIE will produce oxygen from the Martian sky
carries instructions its 72 successful like plants do on Earth.
for making and flights. It had to
maintaining fly on its own Red Planet’s secrets revealed
all organisms because the delay Mars is a place that hides the answers to some of
on Earth) – it in communications the biggest questions in science. Researchers have
would show that between mission lots of questions, but few answers. For example,
life has arisen control and Mars how did life arise on Earth? Could it have been
independently on makes remote brought to our planet on a meteorite from Mars?
two planets within our control impossible. The Perseverance mission is another step to
small solar system. This Ingenuity didn’t perform discovering more about this fascinating planet. Even
would suggest that in the any science; instead, its more importantly, though, it has given people new
wider universe we could well Pupils of Lake Braddock purpose was to show that views of this distant rusty-red world, with its lovely
Secondary School, US, won a
find other extraterrestrial life. powered flight is possible in the pink sky and blue sunsets. It has provided young
contest to name the new mission.
thin Martian atmosphere. For all people something to dream about. The first person
A high flier its success, Ingenuity retired after its rotors were to walk on Mars is probably still at school, not yet
Perseverance’s mission was designed to last damaged while landing in January 2024. Future aware that one day they will join Perseverance on
NASA · ALAMY

one Martian year (about 687 Earth days), missions could include advanced helicopters that a planet that we’re only just beginning to study
although – like Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity travel further and take high-resolution photos. properly. Who knows? It could be you.

Science Nature 81
 EXPLORING SPACE

Are robots or humans better

suited for space travel?

Should space exploration

be done by people?
The real space race isn’t between countries – it’s between humans and machines.
t’s already been a busy time for space for a later robot mission to pick up, and it even daring to blast a new generation of astronauts to
I exploration, especially if you’re a robot.
In February 2021, three
carried a tiny robot helicopter.
It’s now almost 50 years since humans
visit other worlds?
Retired NASA astronaut Tony Antonelli has a firm
spacecraft from different nations arrived explored the Moon. Since 1973, answer, “Robots don’t explore; humans explore.”
at Mars, including the US space astronauts have gone no further than Ingenuity – the ability to think up clever new ways of
agency NASA’s roving robot FOLD HERE low Earth orbit, just a couple of doing things – is a human characteristic, not a robotic
Perseverance. The most NASA is developing a hundred miles up, even as our one. Put a human on Mars, he argues, and they will
sophisticated rover so far, new space robot called machines have been sent to follow their instincts and explore in ways that could
Perseverance will help scientists PUFFER, with a fold-up design planets and moons across the yield exciting discoveries. A robot can only follow
hunt for ancient signs of life on inspired by the Japanese solar system. So should humans instructions. Guided by humans on Earth, it can take
Mars. It has been collecting and paper art of origami. just stay at home and let robots do pictures, make measurements and collect samples
leaving containers of Martian rocks the exploring for us, or should we be but it can’t decide what’s worth investigating.

82 Science Nature

Humans, however, belong on Earth. Unlike
machines, we need air, water and food. Retired
NASA engineer Steve Swanson estimates “with a
large margin of error” that the cost of sending
humans to Mars is 200 times more than
sending robots. Surely it makes sense to send lots
of robots at a fraction of the cost of a single
human expedition?
More important than cost is safety. Space is
dangerous by nature, and to reduce the risks involved,
every item of technology must work perfectly. Elon
Musk, the billionaire behind the SpaceX programme
to send humans to Mars, admits, “It’s gonna be hard,
FOR Humans are versatile, instinctive and inspirational
Humans make better explorers than
robots because of their desire to find out
new things and visit new places. They
can use judgment and make decisions –
robots just follow instructions.
People are much more interested in
seeing humans exploring other worlds
than they are in following robots.
Humans can move better on tricky
terrain than robots and respond better
to unexpected situations.
Sending astronauts to Mars would
inspire the entire world. We should focus
on achieving this goal, even if it means
cutting back on robotic exploration.
AGAINST Robotic exploration is simpler and much less dangerous
NASA’s Perseverance
Mars rover.
SHUTTERSTOCK · NASA · ESA
there’s a good chance of death.” What’s more, robots
can remain where they’re sent – but humans need to
be brought back to Earth.
Some people, however, make an argument for
human exploration that can’t be assessed in terms of
money or engineering challenges – its value as
inspiration. In 1969, more than one-fifth of the
world’s population watched on TV as Neil Armstrong
became the first human to set foot on the Moon.
Would similar numbers want to watch a machine
rolling across another world? Humans can tell us
what it looks like, feels like and smells like to be in
outer space. We are inspired by other people, and if
ROBOTS VS HUMANS
astronauts do set foot on Mars, then all of humankind
will be united in celebrating the achievement.
Swanson says that for the best results, robots and
humans should go to Mars. “Rovers on Mars have
done wonders and helped get people excited about
planetary exploration,” he says, “but a human
perspective is vital for generating enthusiasm.”
Some people, Musk for example, believe that
human space exploration is a mark of “believing in
the future” – a way to reach literally for the stars.
Others say it’s not worth the risk and the huge
expense. So what do you think? Do people make
better space explorers than machines?
Astronaut Thomas
Pesquet in Earth orbit.
Space travel for humans is extremely
dangerous because humans belong on
Earth. It’s better if we just send robots,
which are much better suited to space.
It’s easier to send robots on missions
to distant planets because they won’t
mind if we don’t bring them back again.
Robots can be sent into space more
cheaply than humans. This means we
can launch lots of missions and make
more exciting discoveries.
There have been many accidents
during space travel. It’s safer to use
robots so that people won’t be harmed.
Science Nature 83
 EXPLORING SPACE

Magnetometer
This tool was used to
investigate the magnetic
fields of Jupiter and Saturn,
and it’s still being used to
investigate interstellar space.

Explore the epic voyage of NASA’s

intrepid Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes
uring the last 70 years, humanity has explored an
D impressive chunk of the solar system. We’ve landed
probes on Venus, sent robotic ambassadors to Mars,
and, of course, walked on Earth’s– very own Moon. For all of our
telescopes, rockets and probes that have explored our home system,
only two brave machines have managed to journey beyond it.
Launched in 1977, NASA’s brave explorer spacecraft, Voyager 1
and Voyager 2, took advantage of the gravitational pulls from an
extremely rare planetary alignment that could send them on a
‘grand tour’ of the solar system.
This epic voyage took the Voyager pair past all the outer
planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – Voyager 1’s path
set it on a different course, however, making it skip Uranus and
Neptune. In August 2012, Voyager 1 made history as it crossed the
‘heliopause’, which is the edge of the Sun’s influence on the solar
system and officially placed Voyager 1 in interstellar space – the
first man-made object to do so. Voyager 2 joined its sibling by
achieving the feat in November 2018.

Pale Blue Dot

It’s difficult to visualise how far away the Voyager spacecraft
have travelled, however, Voyager 1 took a photo on 14 February
1990 that puts it into perspective. At the time of taking the
photo, the probe was 6 billion kilometres from its home, and all
that you can see of Earth is a teeny-tiny blue dot, surrounded by
the vast expanse of space. Astronomer Carl Sagan wrote about
the emotional significance of the image in his book Pale Blue
Dot: “It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and
character-building experience. There is perhaps no better
demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant

OUT OF GAS
image of our tiny world.
To me, it underscores
our responsibility to Scientists estimate that
deal more kindly with the Voyager craft will lose
one another, and to power in 2025. From then,
preserve and cherish they will stop talking to
the pale blue dot, the Earth and be adrift.
only home we’ve
NASA/JOHNS HOPKINS APL

ever known.”
This image shows how
vast space is.

84 Science Nature
 THE VOYAGER PROBES
ONCE AGAIN
China is planning it’s
own Voyager-like mission
called Shensuo. Slated to begin Radioactive
power source
later in 2024, multiple Loaded with spheres of
probes will be sent into radioactive plutonium,
this unit will power the
interstellar space. probes until 2025.

Optical
calibration target
A plate which
Voyager’s movable
instruments used as a
reference point.

Communication
antenna
This device is what the
Voyager spacecraft use Infrared
to communicate with spectrometer and
scientists on Earth. radiometer
Now disabled, these
tools were used
to measure planet
temperature.

Science Nature 85
 Let’s journey far beyond our solar system to the weird
and wonderful planets orbiting other stars.
n March 2022, the US space agency NASA
I celebrated the discovery of the 5,000th known
exoplanet – a world orbiting a distant star
beyond our solar system. Just 30 years ago, no exoplanets
were known, and many astronomers thought that our own
solar system was a rare oddity within the Milky Way galaxy.
Now, thanks to clever scientific tricks and new telescopes
on Earth and in space, it’s clear that alien planets are more
common than first thought. What’s more, astronomers are
coming up with ways to discover what these worlds are
actually like, and are making discoveries far stranger than
they could ever have imagined.
86 Science Nature
From planets with pink skies and ones
covered by seas of lava, to worlds with twin
suns and lonely wanderers far from any
star – there’s an amazing variety of
exoplanets beyond our solar system. So
why not hop aboard for a whistle-stop
tour of these strange new worlds?
Outsize oddballs
From the moment the first planet was
discovered around another Sun-like star
in 1995, astronomers realised that
 EXOPLANETS

LONG TRIP
The fastest spacecraft
ever launched would still
take more than 7,700 years to
reach Proxima Centauri b,
the nearest exoplanet
to Earth.

Science Nature 87
 EXPLORING SPACE
The surface of A planet orbiting a
CoRoT-7b is lava. fast-spinning pulsar.

LOOKS
FAMILIAR
The largest known exoplanet
system, Kepler-90, has eight
major planets – the same
number as our own
solar system.

Kepler-62f is a An artist’s impression of

“super-Earth”. Proxima Centauri b’s surface.

exoplanets would rewrite the scientific rule book. Burnt-out worlds original star, but a second generation of worlds
That planet, now known as Dimidium, orbits Another, rarer group of heavyweight bodies orbit just seems to be able to form out of the destructive
51 Pegasi – a star in the constellation Pegasus, about as close to their stars, but the material that they are debris that’s left behind.
50 light years from Earth. A light year is the distance made of is packed into a much smaller space. Take
that light, the fastest thing in the universe, travels in Kepler-57b – it weighs as much as 115 Earths (about Spotting invisible planets
a year – roughly six million million miles. Dimidium is one-third as much as Jupiter) but is just twice the size Detecting exoplanets often involves observing
a gas giant world that weighs at least half as much as across. Astronomers think these super-dense planets objects that astronomers can’t see directly. Planets
Jupiter (the solar system’s biggest planet), and has a are the stripped-down remains of hot Jupiters, whose only shine by reflecting light from their parent stars.
deep atmosphere around a fairly small, dense centre. atmospheres have boiled away almost completely. This means they’re almost always lost in the glare of
In our solar system, gas giants lie far out from the Sun They call them Chthonian (say thoe-nee-uhn) planets, the stars themselves. Only a handful of planets have
and take many years to orbit around it, but after an ancient Greek term for the ever been photographed directly, although more
Dimidium completes its circuit of mythical underworld. advanced telescopes and new satellites are steadily
51 Pegasi in just 100 hours. This Chthonian planets aren’t the increasing that number.
is so close to the star that the only examples of exoplanets Despite this, there are countless other ways to
world is heated to a with a strange afterlife. discover and learn about exoplanets. The vast
scorching 1,000°C. Astronomers have majority are known only through indirect observation
Dimidium was the detected a handful of – the way they affect the light from their stars (see
first example of what planets orbiting around box opposite). Dimidium and other early exoplanets
astronomers now call a pulsars. Pulsars are the were discovered in the 1990s using new technology
“hot Jupiter” – a gas collapsed, fast-spinning that could probe the light from stars and detect tiny
giant exoplanet orbiting cores left behind when changes in their colour.
extremely close to its monster stars end their
star. The heat causes their lives in enormous Too hot, too cold, or just right?
atmospheres to puff up to supernova explosions. The These techniques also give away a few extra bits of
enormous size. In some cases, supernova blast is powerful information about the planets. For example, their size
such as Gliese 436b, the outer An illustration of Dimidium enough to tear apart anything or weight (sometimes both), and the time they take
layers simply boil away into space. orbiting 51 Pegasi. that may have orbited around the to orbit their star (the exoplanet’s length of year).

88 Science Nature
 EXOPLANETS
GOLDEN
GLOW Kepler 186f could be
home to alien life. Spotting alien worlds
If you stood on Kepler 186f
at midday, its star would look Astronomers use two main methods to search for
as bright as the Sun does exoplanets. Scientifically, they’re known as the
on Earth an hour radial velocity and transit methods, but it’s easier
before sunset. to think of them as wobbles and winks.

Star

Earth

Exoplanet
passes in
front of star
Wobbles in
star caused
by exoplanet
affect starlight

WOBBLES:
If an exoplanet weighs enough, or lies close
enough to its star, the planet’s gravity will tug the
star in different directions as it orbits, causing the
star to wobble slightly as it drifts through space.
Astronomers can pick up tiny changes to a star’s
speed towards or away from Earth as tiny
changes in the colour of its light.

Best for: Heavy planets and ones close to their

stars (although the longer you watch a star’s light,
the better is your chance of picking up wobbles
Using this data, astronomers Here, conditions are
caused by planets in longer orbits).
have set out an entire neither too hot nor too
collection of different planet cold, but just right for
types. These include liquid water to stay on a Exoplanet
“super Earths” (rocky worlds planet’s surface. Water is moves
that weigh a lot more than one of the main in front of
the star.
Earth) and “mini-Neptunes” ingredients needed for
(gassy worlds smaller than life here on Earth, so
Brightness
any of those known in our planets in the Goldilocks dips
solar system). zone are the best places
SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY · ALAMY · REX SHUTTERSTOCK · NASA/JPL-CALTECH · ESO/EMMANUELA RIMBAUD

The length of an to look for signs of alien

exoplanet’s year depends on
how far it is from its star,
which in turn gives clues to
its temperature and likely
conditions on the surface.
Small planets orbiting close
to their stars are charred to
a crisp, and may be even hotter than our solar
system’s own innermost planet, Mercury. CoRoT-7b,
which is 489 light years away in the constellation
Monoceros, is so hot that its surface is lava (molten
rock). Rocky planets orbiting far from their stars are in
the cosmic chiller, where chemicals such as water, and
gases such as oxygen, freeze solid on their surfaces.
In between these two extremes lies a narrow
region that some scientists call the “Goldilocks zone”.
life. One such world that
astronomers are eager to
study is Kepler-186f, which
was the first Earth-sized
planet orbiting in the WINKS:
Goldilocks zone ever If a planet’s orbit takes it across the face of its star
discovered, in 2014. (in what astronomers call a “transit”), then the
alien world will reveal itself through a tiny dip, or
Meet the neighbour wink, in the star’s brightness, as a fraction of the
The closest exoplanet to Earth also sits neatly in the star’s light is blocked from view. The size of the
Goldilocks zone. Proxima Centauri b is a rocky planet dip shows the planet’s size compared to its star.
roughly the same size and mass as Earth, orbiting the
Best for: Exoplanets of any size that lie close to
star Proxima Centauri in the constellation of
their stars. This is because the bigger the orbit,
Centaurus. In cosmic terms, Proxima is right on our
the less chance there is of the planet lining up
doorstep, at a distance of just 4.25 light years.
exactly with the star.
However, the star is smaller and much dimmer than

Science Nature 89
 EXPLORING SPACE

An illustration of a
habitable exomoon.

The three ExTrA

telescopes in Chile.

Some planets wander

LONELY
the cosmos alone.

the Sun – a so-called “red dwarf” star, so faint that you seven times faster than the speed WORLDS “blanet” – a planet that may orbit
need a telescope to spot it. of sound. It’s also scorching, with A 2012 study suggests a black hole. Scientists are also
Shining weakly, Proxima gives out little heat, and temperatures exceeding 1,300°C. there may be 100,000 times looking out for exomoons –
this brings the Goldilocks zone in tight around the Grains of glass form the pressure more rogue planets moons orbiting exoplanets – for
star. Proxima b is so near to its star, it year is just 11 cooker conditions of the than stars in the potential signs of alien life.
days long, but even so its surface is cooler than atmosphere, and rain down in deadly Milky Way.
Earth’s. Orbiting this close to the red dwarf brings sideways showers. Eyes in the sky
other hazards. Although the world sits comfortably in Another oddball planet is GJ 504, While many exoplanets have been
the Goldilocks zone, Proxima b is in the firing line for which is four times more massive than Jupiter and discovered using large ground-based telescopes on
the star’s frequent and deadly solar flares. Its unlikely glows a hot pink colour. This puffy pink place was first Earth, such as the ExTrA telescopes at La Silla
that life could ever survive on the planet’s surface. discovered in 2013 by the Subaru Telescope in Observatory in Chile, many more are spotted by
Hawaii, US. It glows because it is still relatively young space telescopes. More than half of all known
Strange but true in cosmic standards. exoplanets were found by a single space telescope
Of the 5,000 exoplanets that have been Kepler 16b is a place that called Kepler, which operated from 2009 to 2018.
discovered so far, some are stranger may remind you of Luke Kepler’s location above Earth’s atmosphere, in
than scientists could have ever The Kepler Skywalker’s home world, the permanent darkness of space, allowed it to
imagined. Take HD 189733 b, Space Telescope Tatooine, from the Star Wars keep its cameras pointing towards a single dense
for example. At just 64 light films. This double-star system patch of stars in the constellation of Cygnus for
years away from Earth, has two suns that set over more than four years. By steadily watching the light
HD 189733 b looks like a the horizon. from these stars, Kepler could pick up the tell-tale
beautiful deep-blue marble Although the signs of extraterrestrial bodies in orbit around them.
floating through space, but exoplanets found by In its lifetime, the telescope detected almost 2,700
you wouldn’t want to go astronomers have are no confirmed exoplanets.
there for a holiday. This doubt amazing, scientists A handful of new planets have been found in
dangerous world has believe there are weirder different ways, most often when they pass in front
winds blowing at up to worlds waiting to be of other stars. From Earth’s viewpoint, the light is
5,400 miles per hour – discovered. One of these is a distorted through an effect called microlensing. In

90 Science Nature
 EXOPLANETS
SUPER ZOOM
The James Webb Space
Telescope is the biggest ever THAT’S
sent to space. It is 100 times
more powerful than the
Hubble telescope.
DISGUSTING
Poo planet
One way of confirming life on a distant exoplanet
would be to look for a particularly stinky gas.
Phosphine is a foul-smelling chemical that’s only
made by tiny micro-organisms on Earth. It’s found
in swamps, sewage works and penguin poo,
but is toxic to most life and can easily catch fire
if it mixes with oxygen. In 2019, US astronomer
Clara Silva-Sousa suggested that phosphine
created by alien microbes could hang around in
the atmospheres of exoplanets that didn’t have
as much oxygen as Earth. The substance could be
easily detected thanks to its distinctive colour.

James Webb will allow us to see

distant galaxies, like these five galaxies A stinky planet.
known as Stephan’s Quintet.

2020, microlensing revealed the most Starlight reflecting off a planet is detected in the light spectrum from an alien world,
distant exoplanet yet found, affected by the chemicals in the it would be a strong sign that it is home to some
which was given the catchy planet’s atmosphere, which form of life.
name OGLE-2018-BLG- may absorb certain colours,
0677b. It’s in a star cloud and reflect – or even The search continues
25,000 light years from generate – others. By The exoplanets whose existence has been confirmed
Earth, near the centre splitting up the light so far are just the tip of a cosmic iceberg. NASA
of our Milky Way bouncing off a body, suspects that there are probably hundreds of billions
galaxy. Microlensing scientists can create a of planets in our galaxy alone. Over the next few
has also uncovered unique coloured years, new space telescopes such as TESS (Transiting
rogue exoplanets far spectrum, a little like a Exoplanet Survey Satellite), the European Space
from any star. These rainbow. By analysing Agency’s CHEOPS (the CHaracterising ExOPlanet
lonely worlds wandering the particular colours (and Satellite) and the James Webb Space Telescope,
through space were TESS will search for
those that are missing), (JWST) are aiming to learn far more about exoplanets.
probably kicked out of their new worlds. researchers can detect which Newly settled in its new home in the stars, JWST is
solar systems by a collision – or chemicals are present, from already giving amazing insights. In August 2022, the
near-miss – with another planet. the minerals on the surface giant telescope returned its first picture of a planet
to clouds, dust and smog in beyond our solar system. It also captured the first
Studying starlight the air. As scientific instruments become more clear evidence for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
The tricks astronomers use to detect exoplanets can sensitive, it will be possible to study starlight passing of a world orbiting a Sun-like star 700 light-years away.
only reveal certain types of information, such as how through an exoplanet’s atmosphere and pick up the As technology advances and our understanding of
large they are, how much they weigh and how long imprint of the chemicals in the distant planet’s sky. the universe gets better, we may find even more
they take to orbit their stars. Now, a new generation In fact, most astronomers think that studying amazing alien planets out there. You never know, we
of telescopes are following up on those discoveries to starlight like this is our best chance of discovering life may even find a twin of Earth itself, teeming with new
learn more about the planets themselves. on an exoplanet. Some chemicals known from Earth, life waiting to say hello. What we do know for certain
When astronomers can see an exoplanet directly, such as phosphine and methane, are only produced is that this is just the beginning of our exploration of
they can use a wide range of tools to learn about it. in significant amounts by living things, so if they are these strange new worlds.

Science Nature 91
 EXPLORING SPACE

How many galaxies are there

beyond the Milky Way?
Plunge into the infinite darkness of space to discover the worlds that lie beyond.
galaxy is a massive collection of gas, dust and billions of
A stars all bound together by the force of gravity. Galaxies
are vast, measuring billions of billions of miles across. To
The mirrors of the James
Webb Space Telescope.

properly understand what a galaxy is, we should start by looking at

our own galaxy – the Milky Way.

The Milky Way

Our Sun is just one star out of billions of other stars contained within
our galaxy, which we call the Milky Way. In the same way that Earth
orbits the Sun, the Sun orbits the centre of the Milky Way.
When you look up at the night sky, the stars you can see with
your eyes are all part of the Milky Way. If you’ve been outside on a
really clear, dark night, you may have noticed a thin fuzzy band of
stars and light stretching across the sky. This is our Milky Way galaxy
viewed from the inside out. You see a thin line because our galaxy is
shaped like a thin disk, and you’re looking at the edge of the disk.
If you look towards the centre of this disk, you’ll see a brighter
region called the galactic core. Stars in the core are grouped much
closer together, and form a shape that looks like a ball that peeks
out from the top and bottom of the disk.
By mapping the positions and motions of the stars in the Milky
Way, astronomers can start to build a picture of what the Milky Way
might look like if you were to look down on the disk from above. The
overall shape would be a circle.
The stars you see at night are
all part of the Milky Way.
You would see the bright core, which would look reddish-yellow
because the stars here are cooler. Winding out from that core would
GETTY IMAGES · NASA · REX SHUTTERSTOCK
in the universe look like smooth, fuzzy ovals of light, something
between the shape of a football and a rugby ball. Astronomers call
these elliptical galaxies, and they are mostly made up of cooler,
redder stars. There are also galaxies that don’t have any particular
shape at all. These are called irregular galaxies.
Counting galaxies
Working out how many galaxies there are in the universe isn’t
easy. Most galaxies are too far away to see properly, even with
the most powerful telescopes. Despite this, astronomers came up
with a clever way of working it out. Between 2003 and 2004, the
Hubble Space Telescope was pointed at a tiny patch of sky for 11.3
days to collect the light from galaxies that are both nearby and very
distant. This produced an image called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field.
It showed a tiny patch of sky containing almost 10,000 galaxies of
all different shapes and sizes. By multiplying this number by the
number of times this area would fit into the entire sky, astronomers
came up with an estimate of between 100 and 200 billion galaxies.
In 2022, the newly launched James Webb Space Telescope took the
most detailed picture yet of distant parts of the universe. The picture
is called Webb’s First Deep Field, and it shows light from galaxies
that has travelled for 4.6 billion years to reach us. The number of
known galaxies will almost certainly change as astronomers learn

be a number of spiral arms, blueish in colour because they contain more about the universe in the future.
hotter stars. The Milky Way would look a bit like a whirlpool.
Created by Nicolas Bonne, Public Engagement and Outreach
Fellow/Tactile Universe Project Lead, University of Portsmouth.
Beyond the Milky Way Published in association with theconversation.com
Most other galaxies that are thin disks like the Milky Way also have
winding spiral arms. Astronomers call these spiral galaxies. Not
every galaxy looks this way, though. Some of the other galaxies

92 Science Nature
 GALAXIES
Webb’s First
Deep Field.

A GRAIN
OF SAND
Webb’s First Deep Field
image captured a patch of sky
the same size as a grain of
sand being held at
arm’s length.

Galaxy types
Spiral

Elliptical
Irregular

Barred Spiral

Science Nature 93
96 Hubble’s greatest hits
100 Wanda Díaz-Merced
102 Space telescope
104 Unlocking the universe
108 Stephen Hawking
110 The Wow! signal
112 What comes after space?
Getty
 INTO THE UNIVERSE

We celebrate the success of the

world’s most famous telescope.
hen the US space agency NASA launched the Hubble
W Space Telescope (HST) on 24 April 1990, they hoped
it would last for at least 15 years. The bus-sized space
observatory has been in service for more than twice that time,
and it is still creating pin-sharp images from its viewpoint in the
heavens – 340 miles above Earth’s surface.
Hubble owes its long life to forward planning. It was designed
to be given a regular service while in orbit. This proved vital when
the telescope’s first pictures came back out of focus. Engineers
found a tiny flaw in its main mirror – it was out of shape by just one
fiftieth of the width of a human hair, but that was enough to give
the telescope blurry vision. In 1993, astronauts fitted Hubble with
“contact lenses”. A further four missions have repaired, replaced and
upgraded its components. In December 2021, Hubble was joined by
the James Webb Space Telescope. Astronomers hope that these two
observatories will operate for another decade and open up a whole
new way of understanding our universe. To see what picture Hubble
took on your birthday, go to imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/hst_bday
NASA · STSCL

An astronaut services the

giant orbiting telescope.

96 Science Nature
HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE

The Crab Nebula

is the glowing
remains of a
blown-up
massive star.

Science Nature 97
 INTO THE UNIVERSE
Clusters of new
stars are forming
inside the Carina
Nebula, including
monsters that
weigh as much as
100 Suns.

A view of Saturn and

its beautiful rings,
captured in 2018.

Hubble spotted
these two distant
galaxies in a cosmic
dance. As they pass
close to each other,
they tug each
others’ spiral arms,
triggering waves of
star formation.

This view of deep

space shows
galaxies as far as
the eye can see.
It was made by
training Hubble’s
cameras on a The stunning Cat’s Eye Nebula
patch of starless formed when the outer layers of
sky for 11 days. a dying star blew out into space.

98 Science Nature
HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE
Inside these dark
“Pillars of Creation”
at the heart of the
Eagle Nebula, stars
are being born from
collapsing clouds
of gas and dust.
Intense light from
new stars makes the
surrounding gas glow.

Science Nature 99
 INTO THE UNIVERSE
Meet the pioneering astronomer who uses sound to observe the stars.
“ think that science is for everyone,” Wanda Díaz-Merced
I said during a TED talk, “It belongs to the people, and
it has to be available to everyone, because we are
all natural explorers.” When she lost her sight while studying at
university, Díaz-Merced’s passion for science didn’t falter. Now,
she is an astronomer whose groundbreaking research is
making other scientists think about alternative ways to
study the universe we live in.
DOWN THE
PLUGHOLE
Keen young scientist
Ever since she was a child, her goal was to In 2022, NASA released
become a scientist. Díaz-Merced grew up on a video showing what
the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico with her older the inside of a black
sister. Her mum and dad encouraged them both hole sounds like.
to study hard and focus on school. Díaz-Merced was
inspired by the support and praise her sister got when
she took part in science fairs, and determined to produce her own
projects and experiments. She did well at school, and when she left,
she went to study at the University of Puerto Rico.
Losing her sight
During her time at university, Díaz-Merced became aware that she
was losing her sight. She didn’t tell anyone, as she was afraid that
she wouldn’t be allowed to continue studying science, and that
people would tell her to change her career plans. Díaz-Merced was
beginning to realise that most areas of research relied on people
being able to see visual data and results. Just as she was losing
Listening to Saturn’s rings
On 20 August 1977, Voyager 2 was launched into space by NASA
to explore the planets of the outer solar system. In 1982, mission
scientists transformed electromagnetic data from the spaceship’s
passage through Saturn’s rings into sound. By doing this, the
scientists could plainly hear micrometeoroids – tiny particles
of rock smaller than grains of sand – hitting the spacecraft as it
flew through the rings. In the visual data, these impacts were
lost, but in the audio data the repetitive impacts sounded almost
like a hailstorm. Listening to the Saturn’s rings one of the most
soothing – or spooky – space sounds you can hear.
A close-up of
Saturn’s rings.
100 Science Nature
hope about a future career in science, a friend introduced her to
NASA’s Radio JOVE project.
This online educational project shows people at home how to
build their own radio antenna and listen into signals from space.
Using a technique called sonification, visual scientific data from
research and experiments can be converted into sound,
for people to listen to instead of look at. Speaking to the
BBC, Díaz-Merced said, “When I heard the NASA Radio
JOVE sound, it not only connected me but it widened
my universe, a universe which was shrinking.
Immediately, I felt connected again.”
The power of sound
Díaz-Merced became a regular attendee to early
online conferences for the Radio JOVE Project, but
didn’t feel confident enough to speak up. Despite
her silence, however, her obvious passion didn’t go unnoticed.
The team at NASA invited her to attend a conference on their
behalf at the Arecibo Observatory – a famous astronomy
observatory in Puerto Rico.
While she was there, someone said to Díaz-Merced that she
should sign up for NASA’s Access Scheme. This was a chance
for her to go to NASA on a summer internship and work with
other scientists on their research. She returned every summer for
the next 10 years, working on sonification projects. During this
time, Díaz-Merced decided that she wanted to do some more
studying. At the University of Glasgow, in Scotland, she conducted
groundbreaking research into the ways of converting visual data
into audio data to study the stars. In 2013, she was awarded a
PhD in computer science.
Using her new techniques, Díaz-Merced was able to show that
listening to data turned into sound could make some things easier
to identify. She made brand new discoveries, as well. Studying a
twin star system, Díaz-Merced identified signals that hadn’t been
picked up when the data had been studied visually. This proved that
sonification isn’t just about making astronomy accessible for the
visually impaired, but can also be used to make fresh discoveries
that would be impossible to “see” in other ways.
Inspiring future scientists
Díaz-Merced now wants to progress sonification and see it more
widely used in mainstream science. She has been involved in
a project called REINFORCE, which works with thousands of
volunteers to listen to audio data and analyse the results. Sound
is just the beginning – there are many other ways to explore data,
such as tactile (touch) and olfactory (smell) senses.
For Díaz-Merced, the point is that these techniques embrace all
human beings, no matter what their abilities. Programmes such as
International Astronomical Union’s Inspiring Stars have now called
for more inclusivity, so more people can engage with astronomy.
Speaking to the BBC, Díaz-Merced said, “My hope is that all of us
Wanda
will be able to participate just as we are. I do not have to leave my Díaz-Merced.
identities out in order to perform in science. That is my big hope.”
 MARLA AUFMUTH/TED · REX SHUTTERSTOCK · NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE

Science Nature 101

WANDA DÍAZ-MERCED
 INTO THE UNIVERSE

Meet the new “eye in the sky” and learn

how it differs from its Hubble sibling.
Solar panels
Even though only a small
n 25 December 2021, astronomy took its next bold
O
amount of sunlight shines
step by launching the James Webb Space Telescope. on the telescope, solar
This exciting younger sibling of the Hubble Telescope – panels are used to top up
the batteries when it does.
named after an early boss of NASA – is the largest, most powerful
and complex space telescope ever built. After a few months of
calibration once it entered space, the JWST’s first image was
unveiled on 11 July 2022.
The observatory’s mirrors are able to spot the faintest stars
in the cosmos. It can see the universe mostly in infrared light – a
type of light energy invisible to human eyes, but that you feel as Camera
The camera takes
heat. Webb can also detect red and gold visible light. JWST is
so sensitive, it can pick up the heat coming off a bumblebee WOW! pictures of the sky using
infrared, not visible light.
at the same distance as the Moon from Earth. Webb is The James Webb
positioned at one of the solar system’s darkest and Space Telescope is about
coldest places. Orbiting the Sun, a million miles away half the size of a 737 airliner
from Earth, its massive sunshield will keep it permanently and weighs as much as an
in the shadow. This provides the ideal conditions for Webb’s African elephant at
instruments, which work at a pretty chilly –223°C. 6,200kg.
Astronomers will use Webb to see baby stars forming inside
dark dust clouds, spot tiny exoplanets similar to Earth in distant
solar systems, and even search for the building blocks of life on
alien worlds. For space scientists, this telescope offers exciting new
views that may alter their understanding of the universe.

Mirror, mirror

An engineer inspects
mirror segments.
NASA GSFC/CIL/ADRIANA MANRIQUE GUTIERREZ · NASA/CHRIS GUNN

Trim flap
This flap acts like an anchor to keep
the spacecraft perfectly still.
The James Webb Telescope’s huge gold-coated mirror is
6.5-metres wide. Made of 18 individually adjustable segments Radio antenna
that work together as one, it can collect six times more light than All the pictures captured by
the Hubble Space Telescope’s mirror. Peering into deep space, the telescope are beamed
back to Earth by a powerful
Webb will pick up light from galaxies more than 13.5 billion light radio transmitter.
years away. It will act like a time machine, observing stars and
galaxies as they formed out of the darkness of the early universe.

102 Science Nature

 JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE

Primary mirror
Made from 18 separate
hexagons, the primary
mirror focuses infrared
light into a beam
reflected back to the
secondary mirror.

Secondary mirror
The boom holds a smaller
secondary mirror. It
collects the beam from
the primary mirror and
redirects it to the camera
that sits in the middle of
the main mirror.

Gold coating
Each mirror is made from the
metal beryllium. The highly
polished coating is pure gold,
and 1,000 times thinner than
a human hair. Gold is the best
material for reflecting heat.

Sunshield
The mirror is protected by a
heat shield. Made from five
layers of shiny plastic, it is
as large as a tennis court.

Steering
SHARP
Star tracker
This box is filled with the
Small telescopes look

SIGHT
steering control jets and
at the constellations
computer systems, which help
in the sky and use
the telescope adjust its orbit.
that to figure out Webb is 100 times more
which way the main
telescope is pointing. powerful than Hubble
and could see the details
on a penny from
24 miles away. Science Nature 103
 INTO THE UNIVERSE

It’s been a truly astronomical start for the James Webb Space Telescope.
ince it launched on Christmas Day 2021, the James Webb
S Space Telescope – the largest, most powerful space
telescope – has made breathtaking cosmic discoveries.
These include revealing hidden secrets inside enormous galaxies,
taking pictures of the universe’s most distant and oldest stars, and
even finding water on planets in other solar systems.
The US space agency NASA designed JWST to collect
rays of energy from some of the faintest and most
distant objects in the universe. These are mostly in the COSMIC
form of invisible infrared (heat) radiation, given off
by things that are too cool to shine with visible
ZOOM
light. To prevent the heat from the telescope JWST can detect starlight
COURTESY NASA · ESA/WEBB/NASA/CSA/J.LEE AND THE PHANGS-JWST TEAM/ACKNOWLEDGEMENT J. SCHMIDT · NASA/ESA/CSA/JUPITER ERS TEAM/IMAGE PROCESSING

that has travelled across

JUDY SCHMIDT · NASA/ESA/CSA/STSCI/KLAUS PONTOPPIDAN (STSCI), IMAGE PROCESSING BY ALYSSA PAGAN (STSCI) · NASA/ESA/CSA/I. LABBE (SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY

itself from swamping these faint rays, JWST’s

6.5-metre mirror and sensitive cameras must be space for more than
OF TECHNOLOGY)/R. BEZANSON (UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH)/IMAGE PROCESSING ALYSSA PAGAN (STSCI) · NASA/GSFC/CIL/ADRIANA MANRIQUE GUTIERREZ

kept extremely cold. This is achieved by protecting 13.7 billion years.

them from the heat of the Sun – and even the heat from
Earth – behind a large sunshield.
It is hoped that the telescope will run for at least five years,
but based on its stellar performance so far, engineers at NASA are
hopeful it could operate for ten years or more – similar to how its
Hubble Space Telescope sibling is still working more than 30 years
after its launch. In other words, JWST’s discoveries are only just
beginning. Let’s take a look at the telescope’s greatest hits so far.

JWST orbits the

Sun, one million
miles from Earth.

104 Science Nature

JWST HIGHLIGHTS
Inside the Eagle
Nebula, new stars
are being born in
these eerie, finger-
like dust clouds.

Science Nature 105

 INTO THE UNIVERSE

JWST has revealed new

details in Pandora’s Cluster
– an enormous pile-up of
galaxies in distant space.

The tangled Southern

Ring Nebula is formed by
shells of gas puffed out
by a star like our own Sun
near the end of its life.

Young stars light up the dust

clouds of this “cosmic octopus”
in the constellation of Ophiuchus.
This special image was released
to mark JWST’s first anniversary.

This image shows

heat escaping from
clouds around the
giant planet Jupiter,
including the Earth-
sized storm called
the Great Red Spot.

JWST’s infrared vision lets it see

past crowds of stars to spot a
skeleton of warm dust inside the
spiral “Phantom Galaxy”.

106 Science Nature

 JWST HIGHLIGHTS
SHADY
OPERATOR
JWST is protected from
sunlight by a shade that
unfolds to the size of
a tennis court.

Gas blowing out from a monster

star called WR 124 forms a
glowing rosette in space. One day
the star itself will explode in a
brilliant supernova.

Science Nature 107

 INTO THE UNIVERSE

Stephen Hawking.

108 Science Nature


Trapped in his body, Stephen Hawking’s mind roamed the universe,
from black holes to the Big Bang.
t 21, and having just begun work on his doctorate
A (a high-level degree), Stephen Hawking was called
to his doctor for the results of the tests they had
been doing to find the reason for his recent clumsiness. The
doctor told the young man that he was suffering from motor
neurone disease and that he’d be dead in two years.
Receiving such a death sentence, it’s no surprise that the
young Hawking fell into a deep depression. But while the
disease progressed, it did not go as quickly as his doctors
had thought it would. Hawking resumed work and married
TEENAGE a young woman, Jane Wilde, whom he’d met shortly before
CLICKS his diagnosis. They would go on to have three children
and Hawking later collaborated with his daughter Lucy
While a teenager, Stephen on a series of books for children. Although Stephen
Hawking and a group of friends made and Jane divorced in 1995, they later reconciled.
a computer with parts from a clock, Hawking specialised in cosmology, the study
the switchboards that were used of the universe, and in particular the role of time in
to connect telephones at the the universe. When he began his life as a physicist,
time, and other random bits there were two competing ideas for the origin of the
and pieces. universe: the Big Bang theory and the Steady State theory.
The latter theory stated that the universe was eternal, with
new matter being spontaneously created. The Big Bang said
that the universe had a beginning, when all matter exploded
outwards from an incredibly small point. The discovery of the
cosmic background radiation, left over from the Big Bang,
proved this theory correct.
Working with this new understanding, Hawking proved
that time, too, had its beginning with the beginning of
the universe. But the work for which Hawking earned his
reputation was on black holes.
A Brief History of Time
By 1982, Hawking needed money to pay for
nursing care and the education of his children.
So he decided to write a popular book about
science. When Peter Guzzardi, Hawking’s
editor, received the first draft of the book he
sent it back to the writer, telling Hawking
that every mathematical formula in the book
would reduce its readership by half. In the
end, Hawking removed all but one equation
from his book, retaining only Einstein’s
famous E=mc2. Forced both by Guzzardi
and his own difficulty in dictating the book,
Hawking produced a masterpiece. A Brief
History of Time was a huge success, selling
more than 10 million copies as well as being
translated into 40 languages.
STEPHEN HAWKING
According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, if
enough mass is concentrated at a point, then it will become
impossible for anything, even light, to escape from there.
Because nothing can escape, this point, or singularity, was
named a black hole. Within a black hole the normal laws
of physics break down. There are many theories but no
certainty as to what happens inside a black hole. They might
even be connected, via a wormhole, to white holes where all
the energy that fell into the black hole emerges again.
Stephen Hawking’s greatest work was to be the first to
show the fundamental weirdness of black holes. The whole
point of black holes was that nothing can escape from
them because the gravitational well is too strong. However,
Hawking suggested, in a paper combining quantum theory
with general relativity, that energy could escape from a
black hole as photons, particles of light. This would mean
that even black holes decay, although the time span for
them doing so is immense. Scientists continue to search for
confirmation of this Hawking radiation.
Hawking’s work on time, and his desire to communicate
this, led to his writing his bestselling book, A Brief History
of Time. Hawking became famous as the face of physics
and for his battle against motor neurone disease. A bout of
pneumonia in 1985 required an operation to save Hawking’s
life at the price of removing his ability to speak. After that
Hawking spoke using a computer he controlled by making
tiny body and eye movements.
Stephen Hawking died on 14 March 2018, aged 76,
having outlived his original diagnosis by 53 years.
ALAMY · GETTY IMAGES · NASA; ESA; HUBBLE HERITAGE; DIMITRIOS KAMBOURIS
Hawking and
the book that
made him
widely famous.
Science Nature 109
 INTO THE UNIVERSE

Was Earth contacted by aliens or was it something even more mysterious?

n the night of 15 August 1977, something
O astounding happened to astronomer Jerry
Ehman – he picked up a signal that might
Ehman’s printout with
his handwritten notes.

have come from aliens. Ehman was a volunteer with

the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), a
project looking for aliens using the “Big Ear”, a huge
radio telescope at Ohio State University in the US.
This super-sensitive antenna was built to pick up faint
radio signals coming from deep space.
Ehman’s job was to sort through streams of
numbers printed out on a roll of paper, looking
through the telescope data for any unusual or strong
signals. That was just what he found: for just over a
minute, the cosmic whispers were interrupted by a
72-second-long blast of high-power radio waves. The
signal was so extraordinary, so strong and so different
from anything else he had encountered that Ehman
circled it and scribbled “Wow!” on the margin of the
A signal from the stars 266P/Christensen and P/2008 Y2 Gibbs.
readout. What caused the so-called “Wow! signal” is
To understand what was so special
about Ehman’s printout, you
DID YOU The comets were discovered in the
early 2000s, and when Paris traced
still a mystery, but many people see it as proof that
aliens exist and that they are trying to make contact.
have to be able to read it. The KNOW? back their paths through space he
sky is filled with radio waves According to a 2020 survey, showed they were in the right
– a constant background hiss nearly one in five people in place at the time the Wow!
The Golden Record coming from distant lightning the UK think aliens might signal was recorded. Paris argued
strikes, power lines and radio already live on Earth. that clouds of hydrogen gas
In 1977, the US space agency NASA sent a
stations. The Big Ear telescope surrounding the comets produced
phonograph record (like an old-fashioned vinyl
recorded the strength of signals radio waves that closely matched those
disc) into space on board two space probes called
above this background noise using a of the Wow! signal.
Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. This 12-inch disc, made
single-digit number or a letter. Low numbers up to
of gold-plated copper, was designed to tell any
aliens all about humanity. Called The Sounds of
four recorded the weak radio waves that come from The case is not closed
objects dotted everywhere in space, and empty Many scientists are unconvinced by Paris’s comet
Earth, it contained digital images and sounds of
spaces showed nothing more than noise. explanation. A spokesperson from the Ohio State
people and animals, music from around the world,
The signal that Ehman found – recorded close University Radio Observatory said the comets were
and greetings in 55 languages. The cover gave
to a star called Chi Sagittarii – began at level six. too far away to have created such a powerful signal.
instructions on how to play the record, and how to
Then it soared so high that the telescope recorded its They also said that had it been strong enough, it
find Earth. Voyager 1 became the first
strength with letters, before falling back to five. At its would also have lasted longer than a short, 72-second
human-made object to leave the solar system in
ALAMY · SHUTTERSTOCK

2012, and is now about 13 billion miles from
Earth. Both records are bound for distant stars.
The golden record and its cover.
peak (the letter U), the signal was 30 times stronger blast. Ehman himself thinks that a most likely
than the background hiss. Ehman later said. “It was explanation is radio waves from Earth reflecting off a
the most significant thing we had seen.” piece of space junk. When asked whether it could be
a message from aliens, Ehman is not so sure. He says
The sound of passing comets that if it came from intelligent extraterrestrials, then
The project scientists tried more than 100 times to surely they would have broadcast their message more
relocate the source of the Wow! signal, but they than once to improve the chances of its being noticed.
couldn’t find it, and it has never been heard After more than 40 years, he admits that he just
again. Instead, astronomers have devoted their wants to know what actually caused the signal,
efforts to tracking down objects in space that adding, “I just wish there was really something
could have been the source for such an intense more to say about it... I can speculate but there’s
and unique radio bleep. nothing to back it up”. So, the Wow! signal remains
In 2017, Professor Antonio Paris of a mystery, with no clear solution in sight. For now, it
St Petersburg College in the US state of Florida has to count as the most likely alien broadcast ever
proposed a solution to the mystery. He said the detected. Perhaps in the future there will be more
signal might have come from one of two comets – extraterrestrial signals to make us say, “Wow!”

110 Science Nature

 SIGNALS FROM SPACE

WOW!
Between 2018 and
2019, Canadian researchers
recorded a series of mysterious
radio waves from space. They
came from a massive galaxy
around 500 million light
years away.

Radio telescopes listen

for signals from space.

Science Nature 111

 INTO THE UNIVERSE

What comes after space?

Space seems to go on and on, but where does it end?
hen you look up at a clear night sky, you see space: a
W vast, seemingly infinite expanse that contains everything
humans know to exist. To find out what lies beyond, a
You can only see a
small part of space.

good place to start is to figure out where the universe ends. The
problem is, scientists don’t know where space ends or if it ends at all.

The observable universe

The furthest humans can see out into space, using all the technology
currently available to us, is 46 billion light-years (a light-year is
the distance that light can travel in one year, and is equal to about
9.5 million million kilometres). The volume of space that humans
can see is called the observable universe. We don’t know what is out
there beyond this. Perhaps it’s more galaxies and stars and space.
Perhaps it’s the edge of the universe. Some think that the universe
is infinite, meaning space goes on forever in every direction. In this
case, there is nothing after space, because space is everything.

Life on the edge

Even if the universe did have an end, it might be very difficult for us
to figure out where the edge is. Think about your home on planet have even been up to space to see it for themselves. Perhaps it
Earth, for instance. Earth doesn’t go on infinitely: it ends and space would be possible to see the limits of the universe too, if only
begins. However, if you were to set off walking, looking for humans knew where to go to look for it.
the edge of the planet, you’d never get there even if you There’s another problem, though. This universe is
walked forever. This is because Earth is a sphere. To GALAXY expanding – and at increasingly faster speeds. The
figure out that the world has an edge and where it
is, you need to know its shape. Understanding the
NEXT DOOR space between us and other galaxies is growing.
As they get further away, it takes more time for
shape of the universe might help us figure out
Andromeda, which is the the light from these distant galaxies to reach us.
where its borders are. Astronomers are studying
closest galaxy to our Milky At some point they will be so far away that
the universe right now, looking for clues that might
Way, is 2.5 million the light won’t reach us at all, and there will be very
tell us more about its shape. light years away. little chance of seeing the edge of the universe, if one
exists. The expansion of the universe might mean that
Moving further away any edge – and whatever is on the other side – is getting
Experts know what the world looks like because they have been further away from us, too. Even though they don’t know where
able to take pictures of the whole of it from space. Some astronauts the boundary of our universe is, scientists still spend a lot of time
thinking about what comes after space.

Many universes?
It’s possible that there isn’t just one universe, and that our cosmos
OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE LOGARITHMIC ILLUSTRATION: ARTIST PABLO CARLOS BUDASSI · GETTY IMAGES

is just one small part of a “multiverse”. Perhaps our universe is

contained within its own distinct region of space, separated from
others by vast expanses of nothingness. Or maybe there are parallel
universes squashed up close to one another, or even overlapping.
This would mean there is no real edge at all, but universes blending
into one another. The true nature of the cosmos might even be
beyond humans’ powers of understanding. Getting an idea of the
universe’s true shape may help astronomers find out whether it has
an edge. What comes after that could be an even greater mystery.

Created by Maggie Lieu, Research Fellow, School of Physics and

Astronomy, University of Nottingham. Published in association
with theconversation.com

Our universe could An illustration of the

be one of many. observable universe.

112 Science Nature

 BEYOND SPACE

GALAXY
QUEST
There are two trillion
galaxies in the known
universe, which is
around 200 for every
person on Earth.

Science Nature 113

 OF

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London Stock Exchange !ǝǣƺǔIǣȇƏȇƬǣƏǼƏȇƳ³ɎȸƏɎƺǕɵ ǔˡƬƺȸ Penny Ladkin-Brand
(symbol: FUTR)
www.futureplc.com Tel +44 (0)1225 442 244

Part of the

Science Nature bookazine series

 PRESENTS
116
PAG
EXPLES OF EPIC
ORAT
ION

OF

off on an epic voyage of discovery

Blast

The Solar System Epic Missions

9001

Take a tour of Earth’s neighbourhood and Embark on incredible adventures into space, and
meet the other planets that call it home discover if you have what it takes to be an astronaut

Robot Explorers Heroes Of Space

Discover the rovers, probes and space telescopes that are Meet some of the most impressive pioneers
unlocking the mysteries of space in space exploration
9000

ALIEN WORLDS + RETURN TO THE MOON + WHAT COMES AFTER SPACE? + ASTEROIDS & MORE