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Nasa plans self-contained space colony

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Saving humanity may eventually mean leaving Earth, and NASA's developing space colonization program may be that lifeline, Pacific Standard reports. The Kalpana One program would send a module into orbit about 480 kilometers from Earth, but unlike the International Space Station, this would house at least 3000 people indefinitely. Though lunar and martian colonization have been envisioned by many authors and leaders, scientists say that space colonization could work best in the near future because humans already know how to design space stations well. These orbiting stations would rotate to generate their own gravity and would also allow astronauts and colonists to learn how to live in space for future colonization and exploration efforts. Scientists even see people living their entire lives on these stations, as would be necessary for deep-space missions, meaning babies could be born never knowing Earth. Whether they could still get homesick for it remains to be seen.

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Saving humanity may eventually mean leaving Earth, and NASA's developing space colonization program may be that lifeline, Pacific Standard reports. The Kalpana One program would send a module into orbit about 480 kilometers from Earth, but unlike the International Space Station, this would house at least 3000 people indefinitely.

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Mars Pedia

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Statistics: 769 articles | 1,518 uploads | 216 registered contributors | 9 administrators Featured Article - By Nicole Willett, Marspedia Vice Chair
NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover (formerly Mars 2020) has a launch window from July 20 thru August 11, 2020 with a planned landing for February 18, 2021. The landing site selected is Jezero Crater at the coordinates 18.38°N 77.58°E, at nearly the same longitude as the Viking I lander in 1976. Perseverance has four major goals. The first goal is to determine whether life ever arose on Mars, the second goal is to characterize the climate of Mars, third is to characterize the geology of Mars, fourth and most importantly to prepare for human exploration of Mars.

Perseverance, nicknamed Percy, was once thought of as a clone of MSL Curiosity, which landed in Gale crater in 2012. Some of the systems are the same and some have been updated with current technology. The 2020 rover is over 150 kg heavier than the MSL rover, weighing in at 1,025 kg. Perseverance will utilize the same landing system as Curiosity, the skycrane, which is enhanced with updated technology such as terrain relative navigation. This system will help Perseverance avoid landing in a dangerous area. Another new technology is the system called range trigger, which tells the parachute when to open in order for the rover to land in the desired landing spot. This technology saves time, as previous rovers had to land in a flat area and later drive to the more interesting targets. Perseverance has updated titanium wheels which include cleats and spokes as scientists discovered that Curiosity's wheels were being damaged by the sharp rocks. The wheels for Perseverance were redesigned to withstand damage from the sharp rocks.

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Statistics: 769 articles | 1,518 uploads | 216 registered contributors | 9 administrators Featured Article - By Nicole Willett, Marspedia Vice Chair NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover (formerly Mars 2020) has a launch window from July 20 thru August 11, 2020 with a planned landing for February 18, 2021.

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Space Colonization

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When discussing space exploration, people often invoke stories about the exploration of our own planet, like the European conquest and colonization of the Americas, or the march westward in the 1800s, when newly minted Americans believed it was their duty and destiny to expand across the continent.

But increasingly, government agencies, journalists, and the space community at large are recognizing that these narratives are born from racist, sexist ideologies that historically led to the subjugation and erasure of women and indigenous cultures, creating barriers that are still pervasive today.

To ensure that humanity's future off-world is less harmful and open to all, many of the people involved are revising the problematic ways in which space exploration is framed. Numerous conversations are taking place about the importance of using inclusive language, with scholars focusing on decolonizing humanity's next journeys into space, as well as science in general.

"Language matters, and it's so important to be inclusive," NASA astronaut Leland Melvin said recently during a talk at the University of Virginia.

Lucianne Walkowicz, an astronomer featured in National Geographic's docudrama series , spent the last year studying the ethics of Mars exploration as the Chair of Astrobiology at the U.S. Library of Congress. We recently spoke with Walkowicz to examine the problems associated with old-fashioned verbiage and to discuss some solutions. What follows is a record of that conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Why is it so crucial to consider the words we use when describing space exploration?

The language we use automatically frames how we envision the things we talk about. So, with space exploration, we have to consider how we are using that language, and what it carries from the history of exploration on Earth. Even if words like "colonization" have a different context off-world, on somewhere like Mars, it's still not OK to use those narratives, because it erases the history of colonization here on our own planet. There's this dual effect where it both frames our future and, in some sense, edits the past.

What are some of the problematic narratives the term "colonization" brings up?

One narrative that comes up a lot draws on the history of Europeans coming to the Americas. I've seen people talk about the arrival of the first European settlers as this romantic, heroic story of people making it in a harsh environment. But of course, there were already people here, in the Americas, when those historical events happened.

Furthermore, a lot of the Europeans' ability to live throughout the Americas came at the cost of genocide for indigenous people. I think it's not intuitive, particularly when we talk to white Americans, for example, to think of the history of Columbus's journey as a story of genocide. But it's important to realize that's what it is.

A lot of those historical narratives are also bound up in the history of slavery, for example, so when we talk about how colonies in Virginia grew from being a few settlers to becoming tens of thousands of people, it's also important to realize that roughly half of those people came against their own will, and many died along the way.

Has there been an instance of exploration in our history that hasn't led to the subjugation of native cultures?

Planet Earth. Is there a narrative we can use that isn't just trotting out Christopher Columbus and pretending like that's a rosy picture?

That is really a question for a historian. I'm not a historian, but I'll tell you that there probably isn't a perfectly starched, unblemished narrative that you can draw from. It's just that we need to not be carelessly using narratives that are still the source of harm to a lot of people.

In addition to "colonization" and its associated terms, what are some words you consider to be problematic when we talk about space exploration?

I think the other one is "settlement." That comes up a lot and obviously has a lot of connotations for folks about conflict in the Middle East. I think that's one that people often turn to when they mean "inhabitation" or "humans living off-world."

Instead, I prefer using a couple of extra words, like "humans living on Mars," or something that is maybe longer but more specific to what I mean. In the 1970s, Carl Sagan really liked the idea of space cities, because cities have lots of different kinds of people in them, generally speaking. But is a ship full of five people living on Mars actually a space city? Probably not. So, that isn't necessarily the best solution, either.

What about terms like "manned" or "frontier?"

Yes, I do find "frontier" to be problematic. The implication is not exactly the same for somewhere like space as it is for here, but it similarly draws on the same kinds of narratives that are all based around European settlement. And often, if the word "frontier" comes up, it's not wrong-until someone spells out the narrative of those brave explorers who went West in the early Americas.

"Manned?" I don't understand why anyone is still using "manned." How old is the NASA style guide that says not to use "manned?" It's been around literally for years [ since 2006, to be precise].

Yet it's all over the place, and people will defend it.

It's so lazy. Just think about it a little bit.

It seems like the language that we use when describing space exploration necessarily reflects both motivation and access to space. Do you think it's possible for humans to progress in a way that will allow space travelers to better reflect humanity?

I think that one of the very first steps forward is to stop having our narratives about space only coming from people who are extremely privileged, which in this space means predominantly rich, white, male venture capitalists. That's really who's driving a lot of the narratives that are used, and why there's not a lot of forethought or response to critiques about those frontier, colonialist narratives.

If there's going to be a really inclusive effort to go beyond Earth, it has to start here on Earth. It can't just be a tokenization of what the first crew might look like. It really has to be that people from a wider range of experiences and backgrounds-whether that means socioeconomic, racial, gender, whatever-are included in STEM in general. None of those narratives will become more inclusive until the people shaping them can become more inclusive. Otherwise, it's just lip service.

There are much more direct examples, too. Most notably, Jeff Bezos saying that he ha s so much money now that he can't think of anything to spend it on that isn't space tourism. He lives in Seattle, a city where Amazon itself has changed people's access to affordable housing. The city has been gentrified out of control, with large new developments that house lots of Amazon employees now sitting on community centers that I cooked food for the homeless in. Or, Elon Musk wearing an Occupy Mars shirt, which is totally and completely ridiculous when compared to what the Occupy movement is. There's another thing you can't take out of context.

How confident are you that people will buy into the idea that space is for everyone, and not just a playground for people who can afford it?

The governing document that sets forth all of space law, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, literally says that space is for everyone. I mean, it's 1967, so it says "for all mankind," but if we edit that to be in the sense of the document, the outer space treaty says that space is for humankind, and that it is not to be owned by any individual or nation. It bars things like weapons of mass destruction, and it says outright that you cannot have a military installation on a celestial body.

When you look at the Outer Space Treaty, it's this really aspirational document that contains a lot of really good things about the ways that we can and cannot explore space. However, if you read indigenous scholarship, or you listen to indigenous people, you'll know that treaties get broken all the time. Literally every single treaty, over 500 of them that have been made with indigenous nations by the United States, have been broken.

I think that this is the moment, as it becomes more possible for a wider range of actors-whether they be nations or individual or otherwise-to go to space, when we have to decide whether those guiding principles are what we really want. This is the moment when we have to look at that treaty and decide who we want to be in the future.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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We need to change the way we talk about space exploration

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When discussing space exploration, people often invoke stories about the exploration of our own planet, like the European conquest and colonization of the Americas, or the march westward in the 1800s, when newly minted Americans believed it was their duty and destiny to expand across the continent.

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Space Colonization:

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In perhaps the most eagerly anticipated aerospace announcement of the year, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has revealed his grand plan for establishing a human settlement on Mars.

In short, Musk thinks it's possible to begin shuttling thousands of people between Earth and our smaller, redder neighbor sometime within the next decade or so. And not too long after that-perhaps 40 or a hundred years later, Mars could be home to a self-sustaining colony of a million people.

"This is not about everyone moving to Mars, this is about becoming multiplanetary," he said on September 27 at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico. "This is really about minimizing existential risk and having a tremendous sense of adventure."

Musk's timeline sounds ambitious, and that's something he readily acknowledges.

"I think the technical outline of the plan is about right. He also didn't pretend that it was going to be easy and that they were going to do it in ten years," says Bobby Braun, NASA's former chief technologist who's now at Georgia Tech University. "I mean, who's to say what's possible in a hundred years?"

National Geographic Channel is currently in production on MARS, a global event series set to premiere November 14. Join the journey at MakeMarsHome.com. #CountdownToMars

And for those wondering whether we should go at all, the reason for Musk making Mars an imperative is simple.

"The future of humanity is fundamentally going to bifurcate along one of two directions: Either we're going to become a multiplanet species and a spacefaring civilization, or we're going be stuck on one planet until some eventual extinction event," Musk told Ron Howard during an interview for National Geographic Channel's MARS, a global event series that premieres worldwide on November 14.

"For me to be excited and inspired about the future, it's got to be the first option. It's got to be: We're going to be a spacefaring civilization."

Though he admitted his exact timeline is fuzzy, Musk thinks it's possible humans could begin flying to Mars by the mid-2020s. And he thinks the plan for getting there will go something like this:

It starts with a really big rocket, something at least 200 feet tall when fully assembled. In a simulation of what SpaceX calls its Interplanetary Transport System, a spacecraft loaded with astronauts will launch on top of a 39-foot-wide booster that produces a whopping 28 million pounds of thrust. Using 42 Raptor engines, the booster will accelerate the assemblage to 5,374 miles an hour.

Overall, the whole thing is 3.5 times more powerful than NASA's Saturn V, the biggest rocket built to date, which carried the Apollo missions to the moon. Perhaps not coincidentally, the SpaceX rocket would launch from the same pad, 39A, at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The rocket would deliver the crew capsule to orbit around Earth, then the booster would steer itself toward a soft landing back at the launch pad, a feat that SpaceX rocket boosters have been doing for almost a year now. Next, the booster would pick up a fuel tanker and carry that into orbit, where it would fuel the spaceship for its journey to Mars.

Once en route, that spaceship would deploy solar panels to harvest energy from the sun and conserve valuable propellant for what promises to be an exciting landing on the Red Planet.

As Musk envisions it, fleets of these crew-carrying capsules will remain in Earth orbit until a favorable planetary alignment brings the two planets close together-something that happens every 26 months. "We'd ultimately have upward of a thousand or more spaceships waiting in orbit. And so the Mars colonial fleet would depart en masse," Musk says.

The key to his plan is reusing the various spaceships as much as possible. "I just don't think there's any way to have a self-sustaining Mars base without reusability. I think this is really fundamental," Musk says. "If wooden sailing ships in the old days were not reusable, I don't think the United States would exist."

Musk anticipates being able to use each rocket booster a thousand times, each tanker a hundred times, and each spaceship 12 times. At the beginning, he imagines that maybe a hundred humans would be hitching a ride on each ship, with that number gradually increasing to more than 200.

By his calculations, then, putting a million people on Mars could take anywhere from 40 to a hundred years after the first ship launches.

And, no, it would not necessarily be a one-way trip: "I think it's very important to give people the option of returning," Musk says.

Colonizing Mars

After landing a few cargo-carrying spacecraft without people on Mars, starting with the Red Dragon capsule in 2018, Musk says the human phase of colonization could begin.

For sure, landing a heavy craft on a planet with a thin atmosphere will be difficult. It was tough enough to gently lower NASA's Curiosity rover to the surface, and at 2,000 pounds, that payload weighed just a fraction of Musk's proposed vessels. For now, Musk plans to continue developing supersonic retrorockets that can gradually and gently lower a much heavier spacecraft to the Martian surface, using his reusable Falcon 9 boosters as a model.

And that's not all these spacecraft will need: Hurtling through the Martian atmosphere at supersonic speeds will test even the most heat-tolerant materials on Earth, so it's no small task to design a spacecraft that can withstand a heated entry and propulsive landing-and then be refueled and sent back to Earth so it can start over again.

The first journeys would primarily serve the purpose of delivering supplies and establishing a propellant depot on the Martian surface, a fuel reservoir that could be tapped into for return trips to Earth. After that depot is set up and cargo delivered to the surface, the fun can (sort of) begin. Early human settlers will need to be good at digging beneath the surface and dredging up buried ice, which will supply precious water and be used to make the cryo-methane propellant that will power the whole enterprise.

As such, the earliest interplanetary spaceships would probably stay on Mars, and they would be carrying mostly cargo, fuel, and a small crew: "builders and fixers" who are "the hearty explorer type," Musk said to Howard. "Are you prepared to die? If that's OK, then you're a candidate for going."

While there will undoubtedly be intense competition and lots of fanfare over the first few seats on a Mars-bound mission, Musk worries that too much emphasis will be placed on those early bootprints.

"In the sort of grander historical context, what really matters is being able to send a large number of people, like tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people, and ultimately millions of tons of cargo," he says. "I actually care much more about that than, say, the first few trips."

In short, his vision for establishing a settlement on Mars is more an endurance sport than a sprint.

But Musk is used to that. In 2001, he founded SpaceX with one goal in mind: put humans on Mars. At the time, he recalls, he found himself thinking about why, after the successful Apollo missions to the moon, humans hadn't visited Mars-or reached very far into space at all.

"It always seemed like we should have gone there by now, and we should have had a base on the moon, and we should have had space hotels and all these things," he said to Howard. "I'd assumed that it was a lack of will ... it was not a lack of will."

Instead, resources devoted to space exploration were scarce, and government spaceflight programs couldn't assume the kind of risk that a private endeavor could tolerate. With an accumulated fortune from his time at Paypal, Musk founded a company dedicated to building rockets and vastly improving the vehicles that form the foundation of an interplanetary journey.

Contracts with private clients and the U.S. government followed, and now SpaceX is working on a version of its Dragon capsule that can send humans to the International Space Station.

Over the years, the company has had many high-profile successes-including landing the first suborbital reusable rocket stages on land and at sea-and its share of failures, with rockets exploding on the launch pad or en route to orbit.

That's no surprise for any big technology development. But putting humans on Mars is a completely different challenge from sending humans into orbit, or even to the moon, especially when the goal isn't just a few casual trips.

"I think what we want to avoid is a replay of Apollo," Musk says. "We don't want to send a few people, a few missions to Mars and then never go there again. That that will not accomplish the multiplanetary goal."

Funding Muskville

Musk's ultimate vision of a second, self-sustaining habitat for humans in the solar system is grand and lofty, but by no means unique. What makes Musk's plan stand out from centuries of science fiction is that he might actually be able to make it happen-if he can bring costs down to his ideal levels.

"Entrepreneurs are able to look at questions that we think about, but we're not quite ready to go there yet, things like supersonic retrograde propulsion," said NASA administrator Charlie Bolden during a panel at the IAC.

"I think we can quibble over the numbers and the dollars and the timeframes and all, but we shouldn't lose the fact that this guy went out on the international stage today and just laid it all out on the line," Braun adds. "I found it refreshing."

But for Mars to be a viable destination, Musk says the cost of the trip needs to come down to about $200,000, or the average price of a house in the United States. Trouble is, that's a significant decrease from current cost estimates.

Musk doesn't anticipate being able to do all of this on his own and said to Howard that some sort of synergistic relationship between governments and private industry will be crucial.

"I think we want to try to get as much in the way of private resources dedicated to the cause, and then get as much as possible in the way of government resources, so that if one of those funding sources disappears, things continue."

But combining different management styles, abilities to assume risk, sources of funding, and working with old institutional road maps will be a challenge, to say the least.

How might that all work? "With difficulty," says space policy expert John Logsdon, professor emeritus at The George Washington University. "It will involve breaking things."

For instance, reaching Mars in the 2020s will require a bit of a kick in the pants for SpaceX on the technology front. The massive rocket featured in the simulation is much more powerful than anything in the company's current arsenal. The first iteration of that futuristic rocket, a gargantuan stepping stone known as the Falcon Heavy, has already been delayed for years.

These types of delays are one of the reasons why space policy experts are skeptical about the timing of Musk's plan, which he acknowledges is murky at best.

"Based on past performance, I don't know how you could say, well, yeah he's missed all these other deadlines, but this time he's gonna do it," Logsdon says. "So I think the reasonable posture is that I'll believe it when he does it."

If humans do manage to touch down on Mars, Musk thinks the momentum from such an achievement will propel additional developments, just as early explorers searching for glory, gold, and spices drove improvements in ship technology and global industry.

Ultimately, Musk believes this kind of endeavor will bring Mars out of the realm of science fiction and transform it from a world fraught with difficulty and danger to one that humans might actually enjoy living on-including Musk.

"I think that Mars is gonna be a great place to go," he says. "It will be the planet of opportunity."

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Elon Musk: A Million Humans Could Live on Mars By the 2060s

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In perhaps the most eagerly anticipated aerospace announcement of the year, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has revealed his grand plan for establishing a human settlement on Mars. In short, Musk thinks it's possible to begin shuttling thousands of people between Earth and our smaller, redder neighbor sometime within the next decade or so.

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Mars Desert Research Station

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NOTICE: While we appreciate your interest in MDRS, we are currently closed to all but scheduled crews due to COVID 19. We are not able to offer tours or visits at this time. We thank you for your understanding, and hope you and your family remain safe and well during this pandemic.
Our Mission MDRS Observatories Management Team Mission Support
The Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS), owned and operated by the Mars
Society, is a space analog facility in Utah that supports Earth-based
research in pursuit of the technology, operations, and science
required for human space exploration. We host an eight month field
season for professional scientists and engineers as well as college
students of all levels, in training for human operations specifically
on Mars. The relative isolation of the facility allows for rigorous
field studies as well as human factors research. Most crews carry out
their mission under the constraints of a simulated Mars mission. Most
missions are 2-3 weeks in duration, although we have supported longer
missions as well. The advantage of MDRS over most facilities for
simulated space missions is that the campus is surrounded by a
landscape that is an actual geologic Mars analog, which offers
opportunities for rigorous field studies as they would be conducted
during an actual space mission.

Campus

The MDRS campus includes six structures. The habitat (Hab) is a two
story 8 meter in diameter cylindrical building constructed in 2001.
It can house seven crewmembers at one time. The structure has been
undergoing a refurbishment over the last few years. The lower deck
houses the EVA prep room with the spacesuit simulators, an exterior
airlock, a shower room, toilet room and a rear airlock leading to
tunnels, which access other structures. The upper deck houses the
living quarters, which include a common work/living area, fully
operational kitchen and seven staterooms with bunks. Six of the
staterooms are on the main floor, a seventh is housed in the loft.

There are two observatories on campus. The Robotic Observatory houses
a 14″ Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope on a CGE pro equatorial
mount. Attached is a 4″ refractor, which is used as a guide scope.
Either telescope can utilize a wide array of cameras for astronomical
imaging. The telescope is housed in a 7.5 foot automated dome that
can be controlled on site or from the habitat module. The Musk
Observatory, formerly the only observatory on campus, has been
converted into a solar observatory for use by crews.
More about the MDRS Observatories
The GreenHab was fully funded by donations. It is a 12" by 24" foot
structure, housing both conventional and aquaponic growing systems, in
addition to space devoted to crop research studies. It is climate
controlled though a propane heater and swamp cooler, and has broad
spectrum grow lights of additional light during the winter months.

The Science Dome is a 7-meter in diameter geodesic dome that contains
our solar system's control center and is a functional microbiological
and geological laboratory.

The RAMM (Repair and Maintenance Module) is our newest building, and
will be on site before the beginning of 2018. A refitted Chinook
helicopter, this spectacular addition to the campus can house an
ATV/rover for repairs and will be used for engineering research.

All of the structures with the exception of the Robotic Observatory
are linked with the Hab via above ground tunnels to allow participants
to utilize these buildings while remaining in simulation. The campus
is powered by a 15 kW solar system that feeds a 12 kW battery bank
that provides power to everything. A 12 kW generator autostarts when
the campus uses more power than the solar can provide in the winter
months.

Crews occupying the station are fully supported. The station is
operational with all systems functional during their stay.
Shelf-stable foods such as those used on space missions are supplied
for each crew. Additional support equipment includes five All Terrain
Vehicles and four all electric two person Polaris Rangers for field
transportation, as well as a 4 wheel drive SUV. The director lives on
site and manages the station and operations. In addition, there are a
host of volunteer teams supporting all aspects of the work that is
done at the station, including peer review of all research proposals
and supporting crews via offsite Mission Support.

MDRS began operations in 2001 as a fully volunteer enterprise. Over
1,000 people have participated as crew and many are now involved in
other analog studies at different places around the world. Thousands
of other people have supported our mission in many other ways, all of
them dedicated to the idea of sending humans to Mars.

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NOTICE: While we appreciate your interest in MDRS, we are currently closed to all but scheduled crews due to COVID 19. We are not able to offer tours or visits at this time. We thank you for your understanding, and hope you and your family remain safe and well during this pandemic.

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Nasa's official site:

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Globular Cluster Omega Centauri Looks Radiant in Infrared

A cluster brimming with millions of stars glistens like an iridescent opal in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Called Omega Centauri, the sparkling orb of stars is like a miniature galaxy. It is the biggest and brightest of the 150 or so similar objects, called globular clusters, that orbit around the outside of our Milky Way galaxy. Stargazers at southern latitudes can spot the stellar gem with the naked eye in the constellation Centaurus. Globular clusters are some of the oldest objects in our universe. Their stars are over 12 billion years old, and, in most cases, formed all at once when the universe was just a toddler. Omega Centauri is unusual in that its stars are of different ages and possess varying levels of metals, or elements heavier than boron. Astronomers say this points to a different origin for Omega Centauri than other globular clusters: they think it might be the core of a dwarf galaxy that was ripped apart and absorbed by our Milky Way long ago. In this new view of Omega Centauri, Spitzer's infrared observations have been combined with visible-light data from the National Science Foundation's Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Visible-light data with a wavelength of .55 microns is colored blue, 3.6-micron infrared light captured by Spitzer's infrared array camera is colored green and 24-micron infrared light taken by Spitzer's multiband imaging photometer is colored red. Where green and red overlap, the color yellow appears. Thus, the yellow and red dots are stars revealed by Spitzer. These stars, called red giants, are more evolved, larger and dustier. The stars that appear blue were spotted in both visible and 3.6-micron-, or near-, infrared light. They are less evolved, like our own sun. Some of the red spots in the picture are distant galaxies beyond our own.

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3 min. video- Challenges of space colonization

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Alienating Mars: Challenges of Space Colonization

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Mars colonization will push humans beyond their limits, so in the future we may genetically engineer the perfect space explorer. But in our quest for self-preservation, who will protect this new planet?

Tune in on Tuesday, May 12 at 7:00pm-8:15pm EDT to watch our panel "Alienating Mars: Challenges of Space Colonization",  named by Forbes Magazine as a top pick among the official selection for South by Southwest 2020. 

Hosted by Dr. Brooke Grindlinger, Chief Scientific Officer of the New York Academy of Sciences, the panel features Dr. Kennda Lynch, astrobiologist and extremophile scientist from the Lunar and Planetary Institute; from Weill Cornell Medicine and the NASA Twins Study, Dr. Christopher Mason; and Dr. Lucianne Walkowicz, an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium, who also spends their time pursuing a more inclusive and ethical future in space in their affiliation with The JustSpace Alliance.

Don’t miss this out of this world conversation!

Register today at: www.nyas.org/alienatingmars

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12 min. video about space colonizaiton

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7 min video about possible benefits

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8 min video about envisioning future colonies.

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