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Everything you need to know about space travel (almost)

We're a long way from home...

Paul Parsons

When did we first start exploring space?

The first human-made object to go into space was a German V2 missile , launched on a test flight in 1942. Although uncrewed, it reached an altitude of 189km (117 miles).

Former Nazi rocket scientists were later recruited by both America and Russia (often at gunpoint in the latter case), where they were instrumental in developing Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) – rockets capable of carrying nuclear weapons from one side of the planet to the other.

It was these super-missiles that formed the basis for the space programmes of both post-war superpowers. As it happened, Russia was the first to reach Earth orbit, when it launched the uncrewed Sputnik 1 in October 1957, followed a month later by Sputnik 2, carrying the dog Laika – the first live animal in space.

The USA sent its first uncrewed satellite, Explorer 1, into orbit soon after, in January 1958. A slew of robotic spaceflights followed, from both sides of the Atlantic, before Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin piloted Vostok 1 into orbit on 12 April 1961, to become the first human being in space . And from there the space race proper began, culminating in Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin becoming the first people to walk on the Moon as part of NASA's Apollo programme .

Why is space travel important?

Space exploration is the future. It satisfies the human urge to explore and to travel, and in the years and decades to come it could even provide our species with new places to call home – especially relevant now, as Earth becomes increasingly crowded .

Extending our reach into space is also necessary for the advancement of science. Space telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope and probes to the distant worlds of the Solar System are continually updating, and occasionally revolutionising, our understanding of astronomy and physics.

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But there are also some very practical reasons, such as mining asteroids for materials that are extremely rare here on Earth.

One example is the huge reserve of the chemical isotope helium-3 thought to be locked away in the soil on the surface of the Moon . This isotope is a potential fuel for future nuclear fusion reactors – power stations that tap into the same source of energy as the Sun. Unlike other fusion fuels, helium-3 gives off no hard-to-contain and deadly neutron radiation.

However, for this to happen the first challenge to overcome is how to build a base on the Moon. In 2019, China's Chang’e 4 mission marked the beginning of a new space race to conquer the Moon, signalling their intent to build a permanent lunar base , while the NASA Artemis mission plans to build a space station, called Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway , providing a platform to ferry astronauts to the Moon's surface.

Could humans travel into interstellar space and how would we get there?

It’s entirely feasible that human explorers will visit the furthest reaches of our Solar System. The stars, however, are another matter. Interstellar space is so vast that it takes light – the fastest thing we know of in the Universe – years, centuries and millennia to traverse it. Faster-than-light travel may be possible one day, but is unlikely to become a reality in our lifetimes.

It’s not impossible that humans might one day cross this cosmic gulf, though it won’t be easy. The combustion-powered rocket engines of today certainly aren’t up to the job – they just don’t use fuel efficiently enough. Instead, interstellar spacecraft may create a rocket-like propulsion jet using electric and magnetic fields. This so-called ‘ ion drive ’ technology has already been tested aboard uncrewed Solar System probes.

Another possibility is to push spacecraft off towards the stars using the light from a high-powered laser . A consortium of scientists calling themselves Breakthrough Starshot is already planning to send a flotilla of tiny robotic probes to our nearest star, Proxima Centauri, using just this method.

Though whether human astronauts could survive such punishing acceleration, or the decades-long journey through deep space, remains to be seen.

How do we benefit from space exploration?

Pushing forward the frontiers of science is the stated goal of many space missions . But even the development of space travel technology itself can lead to unintended yet beneficial ‘spin-off’ technologies with some very down-to-earth applications.

Notable spin-offs from the US space programme, NASA, include memory foam mattresses, artificial hearts, and the lubricant spray WD-40. Doubtless, there are many more to come.

Read more about space exploration:

• The next giant leaps: The UK missions getting us to the Moon
• Move over, Mars: why we should look further afield for future human colonies
• Everything you need to know about the Voyager mission
• 6 out-of-this-world experiments recreating space on Earth

Space exploration also instils a sense of wonder, it reminds us that there are issues beyond our humdrum planet and its petty squabbles, and without doubt it helps to inspire each new generation of young scientists. It’s also an insurance policy. We’re now all too aware that global calamities can and do happen – for instance, climate change and the giant asteroid that smashed into the Earth 65 million years ago, leading to the total extinction of the dinosaurs .

The lesson for the human species is that we keep all our eggs in one basket at our peril. On the other hand, a healthy space programme, and the means to travel to other worlds, gives us an out.

Is space travel dangerous?

In short, yes – very. Reaching orbit means accelerating up to around 28,000kph (17,000mph, or 22 times the speed of sound ). If anything goes wrong at that speed, it’s seldom good news.

Then there’s the growing cloud of space junk to contend with in Earth's orbit – defunct satellites, discarded rocket stages and other detritus – all moving just as fast. A five-gram bolt hitting at orbital speed packs as much energy as a 200kg weight dropped from the top of an 18-storey building.

And getting to space is just the start of the danger. The principal hazard once there is cancer-producing radiation – the typical dose from one day in space is equivalent to what you’d receive over an entire year back on Earth, thanks to the planet’s atmosphere and protective magnetic field.

Add to that the icy cold airless vacuum , the need to bring all your own food and water, plus the effects of long-duration weightlessness on bone density, the brain and muscular condition – including that of the heart – and it soon becomes clear that venturing into space really isn’t for the faint-hearted.

When will space travel be available to everyone?

It’s already happening – that is, assuming your pockets are deep enough. The first self-funded ‘space tourist’ was US businessman Dennis Tito, who in 2001 spent a week aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for the cool sum of $20m (£15m).

Virgin Galactic has long been promising to take customers on short sub-orbital hops into space – where passengers get to experience rocket propulsion and several minutes of weightlessness, before gliding back to a runway landing on Earth, all for $250k (£190k). In late July 2020, the company unveiled the finished cabin in its SpaceShipTwo vehicle, suggesting that commercial spaceflights may begin shortly.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s SpaceX , which in May 2020 became the first private company to launch a human crew to Earth orbit aboard the Crew Dragon , plans to offer stays on the ISS for $35k (£27k) per night. SpaceX is now prototyping its huge Starship vehicle , which is designed to take 100 passengers from Earth to as far afield as Mars for around $20k (£15k) per head. Musk stated in January that he hoped to be operating 1,000 Starships by 2050.

10 Short Lessons in Space Travel by Paul Parsons is out now (£9.99, Michael O'Mara)

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An Introduction to Space Exploration

While the observation of objects in space, known as astronomy, predates reliable recorded history, it was the development of large and relatively efficient rockets during the early 20th century that allowed physical space exploration to become a reality. Common rationales for exploring space include advancing scientific research, uniting different nations, ensuring the future survival of humanity and developing military and strategic advantages against other countries.

Space exploration has often been used as a proxy competition for geopolitical rivalries such as the Cold War. The early era of space exploration was driven by a “Space Race” between the Soviet Union and the United States, the launch of the first man-made object to orbit the Earth, the USSR’s Sputnik 1, on 4 October 1957, and the first Moon landing by the American Apollo 11 craft on 20 July 1969 are often taken as landmarks for this initial period. The Soviet space program achieved many of the first milestones, including the first living being in orbit in 1957, the first human spaceflight (Yuri Gagarin aboard Vostok 1) in 1961, the first spacewalk (by Aleksei Leonov) on 18 March 1965, the first automatic landing on another celestial body in 1966, and the launch of the first space station (Salyut 1) in 1971.

After the first 20 years of exploration, focus shifted from one-off flights to renewable hardware, such as the Space Shuttle program, and from competition to cooperation as with the International Space Station (ISS).

With the substantial completion of the ISS following STS-133 in March 2011, plans for space exploration by the USA remain in flux. Constellation, a Bush Administration program for a return to the Moon by 2020 was judged inadequately funded and unrealistic by an expert review panel reporting in 2009. The Obama Administration proposed a revision of Constellation in 2010 to focus on the development of the capability for crewed missions beyond low earth orbit (LEO), envisioning extending the operation of the ISS beyond 2020, transferring the development of launch vehicles for human crews from NASA to the private sector, and developing technology to enable missions to beyond LEO, such as Earth/Moon L1, the Moon, Earth/Sun L2, near-earth asteroids, and Phobos or Mars orbit. As of March 2011, the US Senate and House of Representatives are still working towards a compromise NASA funding bill, which will probably terminate Constellation and fund development of a heavy lift launch vehicle (HLLV).

In the 2000s, the People’s Republic of China initiated a successful manned spaceflight program, while the European Union, Japan, and India have also planned future manned space missions. China, Russia, Japan, and India have advocated manned missions to the Moon during the 21st century, while the European Union has advocated manned missions to both the Moon and Mars during the 21st century.

From the 1990s onwards, private interests began promoting space tourism and then private space exploration of the Moon (see Google Lunar X Prize).

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The History of Space Exploration

During the time that has passed since the launching of the first artificial satellite in 1957, astronauts have traveled to the moon, probes have explored the solar system, and instruments in space have discovered thousands of planets around other stars.

Earth Science, Astronomy, Social Studies, U.S. History, World History

Apollo 11 Astronauts on Moon

A less belligerent, but no less competitive, part of the Cold War was the space race. The Soviet Union bested its rival at nearly every turn, until the U.S. beat them to the finish line by landing astronauts on the moon.

NASA photograph

We human beings have been venturing into space since October 4, 1957, when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth. This happened during the period of political hostility between the Soviet Union and the United States known as the Cold War. For several years, the two superpowers had been competing to develop missiles, called intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), to carry nuclear weapons between continents. In the U.S.S.R., the rocket designer Sergei Korolev had developed the first ICBM, a rocket called the R7, which would begin the space race. This competition came to a head with the launch of Sputnik . Carried atop an R7 rocket, the Sputnik satellite was able to send out beeps from a radio transmitter. After reaching space, Sputnik orbited Earth once every 96 minutes. The radio beeps could be detected on the ground as the satellite passed overhead, so people all around the world knew that it was really in orbit. Realizing that the U.S.S.R. had capabilities that exceeded U.S. technologies that could endanger Americans, the United States grew worried. Then, a month later, on November 3, 1957, the Soviets achieved an even more impressive space venture. This was Sputnik II, a satellite that carried a living creature, a dog named Laika. Prior to the launch of Sputnik, the United States had been working on its own capability to launch a satellite. The United States made two failed attempts to launch a satellite into space before succeeding with a rocket that carried a satellite called Explorer on January 31, 1958. The team that achieved this first U.S. satellite launch consisted largely of German rocket engineers who had once developed ballistic missiles for Nazi Germany. Working for the U.S. Army at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, the German rocket engineers were led by Wernher von Braun and had developed the German V2 rocket into a more powerful rocket, called the Jupiter C, or Juno. Explorer carried several instruments into space for conducting science experiments. One instrument was a Geiger counter for detecting cosmic rays. This was for an experiment operated by researcher James Van Allen, which, together with measurements from later satellites, proved the existence of what are now called the Van Allen radiation belts around Earth. In 1958, space exploration activities in the United States were consolidated into a new government agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). When it began operations in October of 1958, NASA absorbed what had been called the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and several other research and military facilities, including the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (the Redstone Arsenal) in Huntsville. The first human in space was the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who made one orbit around Earth on April 12, 1961, on a flight that lasted 108 minutes. A little more than three weeks later, NASA launched astronaut Alan Shepard into space, not on an orbital flight, but on a suborbital trajectory—a flight that goes into space but does not go all the way around Earth. Shepard’s suborbital flight lasted just over 15 minutes. Three weeks later, on May 25, President John F. Kennedy challenged the United States to an ambitious goal, declaring: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth." In addition to launching the first artificial satellite, the first dog in space, and the first human in space, the Soviet Union achieved other space milestones ahead of the United States. These milestones included Luna 2, which became the first human-made object to hit the Moon in 1959. Soon after that, the U.S.S.R. launched Luna 3 . Less than four months after Gagarin’s flight in 1961, a second Soviet human mission orbited a cosmonaut around Earth for a full day. The U.S.S.R. also achieved the first spacewalk and launched the Vostok 6 mission, which made Valentina Tereshkova the first woman to travel to space. During the 1960s, NASA made progress toward President Kennedy’s goal of landing a human on the moon with a program called Project Gemini, in which astronauts tested technology needed for future flights to the moon, and tested their own ability to endure many days in spaceflight. Project Gemini was followed by Project Apollo, which took astronauts into orbit around the moon and to the lunar surface between 1968 and 1972. In 1969, on Apollo11, the United States sent the first astronauts to the Moon, and Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on its surface. During the landed missions, astronauts collected samples of rocks and lunar dust that scientists still study to learn about the moon. During the 1960s and 1970s, NASA also launched a series of space probes called Mariner, which studied Venus, Mars, and Mercury. Space stations marked the next phase of space exploration. The first space station in Earth orbit was the Soviet Salyut 1 station, which was launched in 1971. This was followed by NASA’s Skylab space station, the first orbital laboratory in which astronauts and scientists studied Earth and the effects of spaceflight on the human body. During the 1970s, NASA also carried out Project Viking in which two probes landed on Mars, took numerous photographs, examined the chemistry of the Martian surface environment, and tested the Martian dirt (called regolith ) for the presence of microorganisms . Since the Apollo lunar program ended in 1972, human space exploration has been limited to low-Earth orbit, where many countries participate and conduct research on the International Space Station. However, unpiloted probes have traveled throughout our solar system. In recent years, probes have made a range of discoveries, including that a moon of Jupiter, called Europa, and a moon of Saturn, called Enceladus, have oceans under their surface ice that scientists think may harbor life. Meanwhile, instruments in space, such as the Kepler Space Telescope , and instruments on the ground have discovered thousands of exoplanets , planets orbiting other stars. This era of exoplanet discovery began in 1995, and advanced technology now allows instruments in space to characterize the atmospheres of some of these exoplanets.

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Space Exploration and Satellites

By Edouard Mathieu and Max Roser

Space exploration and the study of outer space have fascinated humans for centuries. In recent decades, we have significantly advanced our understanding of the universe and our place within it. Space travel and exploration have opened up new frontiers and possibilities for humanity, from the first manned mission to the moon in 1969 to the ongoing efforts to send humans to Mars.

In addition to manned missions, we have also sent satellites into orbit around the Earth. These satellites serve various purposes that have revolutionized our lives, including communication, weather forecasting, surveillance, and environmental monitoring.

But, as our presence in space has increased, so has the issue of pollution. Our many launches into space have created debris, including abandoned rocket stages, old satellites, and other discarded equipment. This debris poses a significant risk to future space exploration, as it can collide with and damage functioning satellites or even endanger astronauts on space missions. This is an ongoing challenge that will require continued research and innovation to solve.

This page provides data and visualizations on space exploration, satellites, space pollution, and astronomical research.

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History of Space Travel

Learn about the history of humans traveling into space.

The first earthling to orbit our planet was just two years old, plucked from the streets of Moscow barely more than a week before her historic launch. Her name was Laika. She was a terrier mutt and by all accounts a good dog. Her 1957 flight paved the way for space exploration back when scientists didn’t know if spaceflight was lethal for living things.

Humans are explorers. Since before the dawn of civilization, we’ve been lured over the horizon to find food or more space, to make a profit, or just to see what’s beyond those trees or mountains or oceans. Our ability to explore reached new heights—literally—in the last hundred years. Airplanes shortened distances, simplified travel, and showed us Earth from a new perspective. By the middle of the last century, we aimed even higher.

Our first steps into space began as a race between the United States and the former Soviet Union, rivals in a global struggle for power. Laika was followed into orbit four years later by the first human, Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin. With Earth orbit achieved, we turned our sights on the moon. The United States landed two astronauts on its stark surface in 1969, and five more manned missions followed. The U.S.’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched probes to study the solar system. Manned space stations began glittering in the sky. NASA developed reusable spacecraft—space shuttle orbiters—to ferry astronauts and satellites to orbit. Space-travel technology had advanced light-years in just three decades. Gagarin had to parachute from his spaceship after reentry from orbit. The space shuttle leaves orbit at 16,465 miles an hour (26,498 kilometers an hour) and glides to a stop on a runway without using an engine.

Space travel is nothing like in the movies. Getting from A to B requires complex calculations involving inertia and gravity—literally, rocket science—to "slingshot" from planet to planet (or moon) across the solar system. The Voyager mission of the 1970s took advantage of a rare alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune to shave off nearly 20 years of travel time. Space is also dangerous. More than 20 astronauts have died doing their job.

That hasn’t stopped people from signing up and blasting off. NASA’s shuttle program has ended, but private companies are readying their own space programs. A company called Planetary Resources plans to send robot astronauts to the Asteroid Belt to mine for precious metals. Another company named SpaceX is hoping to land civilian astronauts on Mars—the next human step into the solar system—in 20 years. NASA and other civilian companies are planning their own Mars missions. Maybe you’ll be a member of one? Don’t forget to bring your dog.

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Physics and Astronomy

Space Physics

Developed science instruments currently operating on 13 spacecraft

Developed instrumentation on over 70 spacecraft

Space physics is the study of everything above the Earth’s atmosphere, where the ionosphere and magnetosphere reside, and from the sun, to the solar system and beyond. Plasmas, gases of charged particles, make up over 99% of the solar system such as in the sun’s core and corona, the solar wind, interplanetary space, and the planetary magnetospheres, and so are a natural focus of the discipline. The ionosphere is a gas of charged particles created by the ionization of particles in the atmosphere from UV radiation from the sun. The magnetosphere is a region of space around the Earth containing the Earth’s magnetic field, which is created by currents flowing in the Earth’s outer liquid core, and extends to where it meets the interplanetary magnetic field created by the solar wind (the magnetopause). The solar wind is a flux of charged particles ejected from the solar corona. The magnetosphere contains the Van Allen radiation belts, typically two belts containing high-energy charged particles trapped from the solar wind and the ionosphere. The discovery of these radiation belts in the 1950’s by James Van Allen, a professor who spent his career at the University of Iowa, through Explorer I launched space physics as a discipline. The solar wind interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field, and disturbances can lead to geomagnetic storms that can affect communication and GPS satellites, spacecraft, the power grid, and other technology.

Four advanced courses in the fundamentals of plasma physics and its application in space and astrophysical environments are offered regularly, as well as specialty courses offered periodically on numerical simulations of plasmas, spacecraft instrumentation for plasma measurements, and data analysis methods in plasma physics and space physics. A plasma physics seminar and a space physics and astrophysics seminar are each held weekly during the academic year.

Space physics research at the University of Iowa is world-renowned, and alumni of the program include scientists such as Donald Gurnett (who also spent his career as a professor at UI), whose discoveries include solving how auroras are created and detecting the heliopause (the boundary between our solar system and outer space) with Voyager 1, and James Hansen, a pioneering climatologist and former director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. In all, researchers at UI have contributed to instrumentation on over one hundred rocket and spacecraft missions .

Current researchers study such topics as the origin of Jupiter's magnetosphere and magnetic field, the solar wind interacting with Mars and moons, near-sun electron properties, charged particle dynamics in the Earth’s magnetosphere, physics of the auroras, physics of magnetic reconnection at the magnetopause, magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling, Alfven waves, and exploring interstellar space. UI researchers continue to build instrumentation that contributes to spacecraft missions, including current and recent missions such as TRACERS , Van Allen Probes , Juno , MMS , SWARM/CASSIOPE , THEMIS-ARTEMIS , Mars Express, Cluster II and TRICE-2 .

The NASA-funded Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites (TRACERS) will study the mysterious, powerful interactions between the magnetic fields of the sun and Earth. TRACERS, consisting of two identical satellites that will orbit Earth in tandem (one following the other), will help answer long-standing questions key to understanding space weather, particularly how the Sun transfers energy, mass, and momentum to near-Earth space. The mission, led by UI Associate Professor David Miles, received $115 million, making it the single largest externally funded research project in institutional history.

The Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft are exploring where nothing from Earth has flown before – interstellar space.  The two spacecraft, launched in 1977 each carrying a University of Iowa designed and built Plasma Wave Instrument, began their journeys by exploring the outer planets of our solar system before entering interstellar space.  Data from the Iowa instruments have enabled researchers to make discoveries, including the first observations of plasma waves and low-frequency radio emissions in the magnetospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; confirming the presence of lightning in the atmospheres of Jupiter and Neptune; the first measurements of the electron density in the interstellar medium, and the first detection in interstellar space of shocks related to solar activity. Dr. Bill Kurth and Prof. Allison Jaynes are both co-Investigators on the mission. Both spacecraft continue to send scientific information about their surroundings through the Deep Space Network. 

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission, which launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on November 18, 2013, is the first mission devoted to understanding the Martian upper atmosphere. The goal of MAVEN is to determine the role that loss of atmospheric gas to space played in changing the Martian climate through time. Where did the atmosphere—and the water—go? MAVEN will determine how much of the Martian atmosphere has been lost over time by measuring the current rate of escape to space and gathering enough information about the relevant processes to allow extrapolation backward in time. Prof. Jasper Halekas is the instrument lead for the Solar Wind Ion Analyzer ( SWIA ) on MAVEN, which measures the solar wind and magnetosheath ion density and velocity.

Van Allen Probes

The Van Allen Probes (2012-2019), the second mission of NASA's Living With a Star program, explored fundamental processes that operate throughout the solar system, in particular those that generate hazardous space weather effects near the Earth and phenomena that could affect solar system exploration. A University of Iowa team led by the late Prof. Craig Kletzing developed the EMFISIS instrument suite and Waves instrument suites Van Allen Probes mission.  Prof. Allison Jaynes was a Co-Investigator on the Relativistic Electron Proton Telescope (REPT) instrument, part of the Energetic Particle, Composition, and Thermal Plasma (ECT) Suite.

The Juno mission is conducting an in-depth study of the giant planet Jupiter. Juno is the first mission to use a polar orbit to study Jupiter, allowing it to carry out the first exploration of the polar magnetosphere which hosts the solar system's brightest auroras. The solar-powered spacecraft launched on August 5, 2011, and entered into Jupiter orbit on July 4, 2016, where it is investigating the existence of an ice-rock core, determining the amount of global water and ammonia present in the atmosphere, studying convection and deep wind profiles in the atmosphere, investigating the origin of the Jovian magnetic field, and exploring the polar magnetosphere. 

Juno's mission at Jupiter was recently extended, beginning in August 2021. The mission extension provides for Juno to continue orbiting Jupiter until late 2025.

Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission

MMS investigates how the Sun’s and Earth’s magnetic fields connect and disconnect, explosively transferring energy from one to the other in a process that is important at the Sun, other planets, and everywhere in the universe, known as magnetic reconnection. Reconnection limits the performance of fusion reactors and is the final governor of geospace weather that affects modern technological systems such as telecommunications networks, GPS navigation, and electrical power grids. Four identically instrumented spacecraft measure plasmas, fields, and particles in a near-equatorial orbit that will frequently encounter reconnection in action.  Assistant Research Scientist Scott Bounds was on the Electron Drift Instrument (EDI) team for the mission. Prof. Allison Jaynes is an instrument team member for the Energetic Particle Detector suite.

Parker Solar Probe

Parker Solar Probe will swoop to within 4 million miles of the Sun's surface, facing heat and radiation like no spacecraft before it. Launched on Aug. 12, 2018, Parker Solar Probe will provide new data on solar activity and make critical contributions to our ability to forecast major space-weather events that impact life on Earth. Prof. Jasper Halekas is the instrument scientist for the Solar Probe Analyzer (SPAN) electron sensors for the  SWEAP  suite on the probe.

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Faculty specializing in this area.

Casey DeRoo, Ph.D.

Kenneth G. Gayley, Ph.D.

Jasper S. Halekas, Ph.D.

Keri Hoadley, Ph.D.

Gregory G. Howes, Ph.D.

Allison N. Jaynes, Ph.D.

Daniel McGinnis, Ph.D.

David M. Miles, Ph.D.

Research staff in this area.

Scott Bounds, Ph.D.

George Hospodarsky, Ph.D.

William Kurth, Ph.D.

J. Douglas Menietti, Ph.D.

Jolene Pickett

NOTICE: The University of Iowa Center for Advancement is an operational name for the State University of Iowa Foundation, an independent, Iowa nonprofit corporation organized as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, publicly supported charitable entity working to advance the University of Iowa. Please review its full disclosure statement.

Landmark NASA Twins Study Reveals Space Travel's Effects on the Human Body

Here's what happens on long-duration space missions.

A year on the space station has an undeniable impact across the human body, but many of the body's systems recover after a return to Earth.

Human bodies did not evolve to float in microgravity or to thrive under the radiation levels in space. When NASA astronaut Scott Kelly spent nearly a year on the International Space Station, in a mission launching in 2015, his body was put under incredible stress: Fluids swelled his upper body and head, his genes activated in different ways, and his immune system jumped into overdrive compared to that of his identical twin, Mark Kelly. Mark has also flown in space, but he remained on the ground during that long-duration mission. Over time, Scott experienced decreased body mass, instability in his genome, swelling in major blood vessels, changes in eye shape, metabolism shifts, inflammation and alterations in his microbiome — as well as a strange lengthening of his telomeres , the protective structures at the ends of chromosomes. (They shortened again after he landed.)

Ten teams working on NASA's Twins Study — encompassing 12 universities and 84 researchers — followed the duo before, during and after the flight, tracking the twins' biology to see how the brothers changed over the course of the study. While the research was very limited in scope, scientists planning to send astronauts on long trips to the moon, Mars and beyond will find this data on long-duration spaceflight invaluable.

Related: By the Numbers: Astronaut Scott Kelly's Year-in-Space Mission  

"Early on in our astronaut career, my brother and I had kind of wondered about it — hey, I wonder if they'll ever do an experiment with the two of us, being genetically nearly identical," Scott Kelly told Space.com. 

But there was no interest for years after the twins' selection as astronauts in 1996, since the sample size would be so small — until Scott brought it up again in 2013 ahead of his record-breaking space station mission, which he shared with Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko.  "When it came to the fact that I was going to spend a year in space, it was so unique that I actually thought maybe there was some merit to it … [and] it turns out there was some interest once people started talking about it."

That discussion snowballed into the massive Twins Study, whose summary paper is being published in full for the first time after releases about preliminary results in 2017 and 2018 . This new collection of information, gleaned with intensive, meticulous testing on orbit and on Earth — including for several months after Scott landed — traces the twins' full trajectories for the first time.

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"This is really probably the most in-depth study, certainly at the biochemical level, that's ever been done in people in space," Mike Snyder, the chair of genetics at Stanford University and a co-author on the publication of the Twins Study, said during a press teleconference Tuesday (April 10). "So, we're literally making thousands of measurements at a level that hasn't been done before. And as such, we get to see a system-wide view that really hasn't been done either."

The integrated report from all the Twins Study researchers was released today (April 11) in the journal Science.

In the genes

Some of the most interesting changes occurred in which of the spacefaring twin's genes were expressed. To be clear, this isn't changes in DNA itself — it's changes in which genes are activated to make proteins, in reaction to a subject's environment. Researchers didn't directly compare Scott's genes to Mark's, but rather documented the amount of changes in Scott's gene expression throughout his journey and compared them to how many changes in expression Mark experienced as he remained on the ground.

"As soon as [Scott] got into space, there was a large-scale shift in over 1,000 genes that are actually dynamically changing … so, clearly the body and cells were adapting," Christopher Mason, a geneticist at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York and co-author on the study, said during the teleconference. 

"We saw enrichment — the kinds of genes that were becoming activated include things that regulate DNA damage response, activate DNA repair [and] maintain telomere lengths," he added, "and also, most notably, the most enriched set of genes [were] almost all involved in the immune system regulation, which indicated to us that the immune system is almost on a high alert as a way to try and understand this new environment." 

Mason added that even more genes began changing levels of activity — up to six times more —  in the second half of the space mission compared to the first.

Looking closely at the epigenetics , or changes in the physical structure of DNA to alter gene expression, of both twins (again, not changes to the DNA letters themselves), researchers saw a similar level of change in each. In fact, Mark showed slightly higher levels, the researchers said. (His more chaotic life on Earth — with travel, changing environments, and changing food and drinks — could have played a role, they added.) 

But the individual genes being expressed more or less, for Scott, were consistent with the changes he was undergoing: "things having to do with telomere length, with inflammation, with immune response and with the activity of bones," Andrew Feinberg, the director of the Center for Epigenetics at Johns Hopkins University and a co-author on the study, said during the teleconference. 

The researchers also measured a curious thing: Many of the protective caps on Scott's chromosomes, called telomeres, lengthened during his flight, as measured in blood sent back to Earth for analysis — although his cells' telomeres returned to about the same average length, with some a bit shorter, once he returned to the ground.

"Telomeres [are] the ends of our chromosomes that shorten as we get older," Susan Bailey, a researcher at Colorado State University and co-author on the new work, said during the teleconference. "And they can serve as a biomarker of accelerated aging or some of the associated health risks, like cardiovascular disease or cancer. So, certainly we imagined, going into the study, that the unique kinds of stresses and extreme environmental exposures like space radiation and microgravity, all of these things, would act to accelerate telomere loss."

To understand their unusual lengthening, and the rapid shortening again within two days of landing on Earth, Bailey said she is looking to the other researchers' work, including the work on gene expression and other physiological changes, for potential causes. But, she cautioned, "I don't think that [the elongation] can really be viewed as the fountain of youth and that people might expect to live longer because they're in space." In fact, the overall slight shortening of telomeres on average after Scott landed is more of a long-term consequence of spaceflight, as shorter telomeres can be risk factors for aging-associated diseases.

Bailey and other researchers also observed DNA damage, including chromosome rearrangements called inversions, as well as an elevated DNA-repair response. Although the International Space Station isn't showered with as much radiation as deep space — it's still within Earth's protective  Van Allen radiation belts , which deflect energetic particles — it does get an elevated amount compared to the ground. DNA damage from radiation exposure would likely increase for astronauts who ventured beyond low Earth orbit; astronauts traveling to Mars would experience about 8 times the radiation as Scott did.

Related: The International Space Station: Inside and Out (Infographic)  

Bouncing back

The researchers noted that many effects Scott experienced, including 91.3% of his gene activity-level changes, reverted to normal within six months of his return to Earth. His immune response (to a flu vaccine) remained normal throughout the flight, despite increased stress on that system; his spatial orientation and motor accuracy, thrown off-kilter by his stay in space, returned to normal, as did his body mass.

The ratio of microbes in Scott's gut, called the microbiome , changed during flight but returned to normal after his return, and its diversity stayed constant. (Yes, to track this, he had to send regular fecal samples down from the space station.)

According to Scott, he felt back to 100 percent after about eight months at home, which was longer than for his previous spaceflights.

"I would say, subjectively, to me, the time in space tracks very well with the symptoms upon return, having flown flights of increasing duration throughout my career: seven days; 13; 159 and 340," Scott told Space.com. "I was kind of surprised, actually, that I felt — I was in space more than twice as long [as last time] — I felt more than twice as bad when I got back."

Overall, though, his biggest hurdle after flight might have been psychological, Scott said: "You've experienced this significant event where you're living in a very controlled environment for a really long time, and then you don't have that anymore. To get readjusted back to — not just physically readjusted, but generally adjusted to life back on Earth — seemed to take me about eight months."

Going further

Of course, prospective space travelers will also have to contend with longer-lasting effects, which the researchers found — lingering DNA damage due to the radiation exposure, for one. Changes due to long-term shifts in fluids, because of microgravity, also led to a thickening of the carotid arteries that deliver blood to the brain, which can be a marker for heart disease. That same fluid shift caused changes in eye shape and other issues that hurt Scott's vision. The researchers are also tracking genes that are still showing differences in activation, such as some associated with DNA repair.

Scott also showed a decrease in cognitive speed and accuracy six months after he returned to Earth, according to the paper. And there could be increased risk for heart disease and some cancers in the cells which ended up with shortened telomeres.

Many of these changes will be more significant for even longer flights, or ones that travel outside low Earth orbit. So the researchers hope to do more yearlong studies on more individuals, both in low Earth orbit, around the moon and someday farther out, to continue to track these changes. The researchers emphasized that technology has changed since Scott's mission; now, an astronaut has sequenced DNA in space , and a new technique has also come out to analyze epigenetics in flight, the researchers said. All of these tools could enhance future studies.

"I mean, I'm a geneticist. I wish every single person had a twin that was always doing something different and that we were always tracking them, but I don't think we would get IRB approval to copy everyone," Mason joked about his ideal research.

"The Twins Study represents a significant first step in using novel research approaches to better understand the challenges to crewmembers undertaking interplanetary missions," Bill Paloski, the director of NASA's Human Research Program, said in a statement provided to Science. "Results are consistent with previous data and observation from long-duration missions aboard Russian space vehicles."

"We in NASA's Human Research Program plan to continue this line of investigation for years to come, including aboard the space station during the Integrated One-Year Mission Project, currently under development ," he added.

From Scott's perspective as an astronaut, the study findings are promising, he told Space.com. "The bottom line is, from all these studies — and, granted, this is an experiment with one data point … would be that there's nothing that we saw that would prevent us from going to Mars," he said.

"Certainly, there's some stuff that they're going to continue to look at — gene expression, telomeres, other issues astronauts have with their vision," he added, "but no showstoppers that jumped out at anyone."

Scott said that, based on his experience, he thinks the time scales needed for a journey to Mars would be doable for astronauts. But for even-longer-duration flights, some new technology may be necessary, he said.

"I think it's when we're going to consider spending many years in space that we would have to probably consider some type of artificial gravity to alleviate some of the negative impacts of living in that environment for an extended period," Scott said. "Otherwise, you'll have people that get to the moons of Jupiter or Saturn and not be able to function well, or get back to Earth after being in space for 10 years and be complete basket cases.

"But I don't think we'll have to worry about that anytime soon," he added.

• Astronaut Scott Kelly Is Home from a 1-Year Mission, But the Science Continues
• 'Infinite Wonder': Scott Kelly Documents Yearlong Space Mission with New Photobook
• Space Stress: How 1-Year Mission Is Studying Astronaut Health

Email Sarah Lewin at [email protected] or follow her @SarahExplains . Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook .  

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Sarah Lewin started writing for Space.com in June of 2015 as a Staff Writer and became Associate Editor in 2019 . Her work has been featured by Scientific American, IEEE Spectrum, Quanta Magazine, Wired, The Scientist, Science Friday and WGBH's Inside NOVA. Sarah has an MA from NYU's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program and an AB in mathematics from Brown University. When not writing, reading or thinking about space, Sarah enjoys musical theatre and mathematical papercraft. She is currently Assistant News Editor at Scientific American. You can follow her on Twitter @SarahExplains.

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Superradiant atoms could push the boundaries of how precisely time can be measured

Superradiant atoms can help us measure time more precisely than ever. In a new study, researchers from the University of Copenhagen present a new method for measuring the time interval, the second, mitigating some of the limitations that today's most advanced atomic clocks encounter. The result could have broad implications in areas such as space travel, volcanic eruptions and GPS systems.

The second is the most precisely-defined unit of measurement, compared to other base units such as the kilogram, meter, and degree Kelvin. Time is currently measured by atomic clocks in different places around the world, which together, tell us what time it is. Using radio waves, atomic clocks continuously send signals that synchronize our computers, phones and wristwatches.

Oscillations are the key to keeping time. In a grandfather clock, these oscillations are from a pendulum's swinging from side to side every second, while in an atomic clock, it is a laser beam which corresponds to an energy transition in strontium and oscillates about a million billion times per second.

But according to PhD fellow Eliot Bohr from the Niels Bohr Institute -- great-grandson of Niels Bohr -- even atomic clocks could become more precise. This is because the detection laser, used by most modern atomic clocks to read the oscillation of atoms, heats up the atoms so much that they escape -- which degrades precision.

"Because the atoms constantly need to be replaced with fresh new atoms, while new atoms are being prepared, the clock loses time ever so slightly.Therefore, we are attempting to overcome some of the current challenges and limitations of the world's best atomic clocks by, among other things, reusing the atoms so that they don't need to be replaced as often," explains Eliot Bohr who was employed at the Niels Bohr Institute when he did the research, but who is now PhD fellow at the University of Colorado.

He is the lead author of a new study published in the scientific journal Nature Communications , which uses an innovative and perhaps more efficient way of measuring time.

Superradiance and cooling to absolute zero

The current methodology consists of a hot oven that spits roughly 300 million strontium atoms into an extraordinarily chilly ball of cold atoms known as a magneto-optical trap, or MOT. The temperature of these atoms is approximately -273 °C -- very near absolute zero -- and there are two mirrors with a light field in between them to enhance the atomic interactions. Together with his research colleagues, Bohr has developed a new method to read out the atoms.

"When the atoms land in the vacuum chamber, they lie completely still because it is so cold, which makes it possible to register their oscillations with the two mirrors at opposing ends of the chamber," explains Eliot Bohr.

The reason why the researchers don't need to heat the atoms with a laser and destroy them is thanks to a quantum physical phenomenon known as 'superradiance'. The phenomenon occurs when the group of strontium atoms is entangled and at the same time emits light in the field between the two mirrors.

"Themirrors cause the atoms to behave as a single unit. Collectively, they emit a powerful light signal that we can use to read out the atomic state, a crucial step for measuring time. This method heats up the atoms minimally, so It all happens without replacing the atoms, and this has the potential to make it a more precise measurement method," explains Bohr.

GPS, space missions and volcanic eruptions

According to Eliot Bohr, the new research result may be beneficial for developing a more accurate GPS system. Indeed, the roughly 30 satellites that constantly circle Earth and tell us where we are need atomic clocks to measure time.

"Whenever satellites determine the position of your phone or GPS, you are using an atomic clock in a satellite. The precision of the atomic clocks is so important that If that atomic clock is off by a microsecond, it means an inaccuracy of about 100 meters on the Earth's surface," explains Eliot Bohr.

Future space missions are another area where the researcher foresees more precise atomic clocks making a significant impact.

"When people and crafts are sent out into space, they venture even further away from our satellites. Consequently, the requirements for precise time measurements to navigate in space are much greater," he says.

The result could also be helpful in the development of a new generation of smaller, portable atomic clocks that could be used for more than "just" measuring time.

"Atomic clocks are sensitive to gravitational changes and can therefore be used to detect changes in Earth's mass and gravity, and this could help us predict when volcanic eruptions and earthquakes will occur," says Bohr.

Bohr emphasizes that while the new method using superradiant atoms is very promising, it is still a "proof of concept" which needs further refinement. .

The research was conducted by the team of Jörg Helge Müller and Jan Thomsen at the Niels Bohr Institute, in collaboration with PhD students Sofus Laguna Kristensen and Julian Robinson-Tait, and postdoc Stefan Alaric Schäffer. The project also included contributions from theorists Helmut Ritsch and Christoph Hotter from the University of Innsbruck, as well as Tanya Zelevinsky from Columbia University.

• Engineering
• Weapons Technology
• Nanotechnology
• Quantum Physics
• Global Positioning System
• Electron configuration
• Time in physics
• Oscillation
• Special relativity
• Constructal theory

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Copenhagen - Faculty of Science . Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

• Eliot A. Bohr, Sofus L. Kristensen, Christoph Hotter, Stefan A. Schäffer, Julian Robinson-Tait, Jan W. Thomsen, Tanya Zelevinsky, Helmut Ritsch, Jörg H. Müller. Collectively enhanced Ramsey readout by cavity sub- to superradiant transition . Nature Communications , 2024; 15 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-45420-x

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