Saturday Space Reads

Because we all need a little space on Saturday

Carl Sagan stands with a Viking Mars lander, NASA’s life-searching probe from the 1970s. Credit: NASA

• Do we just need “new eyes” to find life on Mars? This article examines why a (less costly) in situ Mars probe – not unlike NASA’s Viking landers from the ‘70s – could be more successful at finding existing Martian life than a sample return mission. 

• Forget the Outer Space Treaty – Elon Musk is taking over the figurative “streets” of space, claiming radio frequencies and LEO openings left and right. So, if the 1967 treaty bars countries from claiming celestial “land,” shouldn’t the same law apply to companies and individuals – particularly those with unhinged twitter accounts?  

• Speak of the, er, Musk – after the jarring limitation of Starlink access in Ukraine, the demand for an EU rival system never seemed clearer. Read about the complicated road towards IRIS², a new European constellation that hopes to capitalize on the “anything but Elon” market.  

• If brown dwarfs were just “failed stars,” would they be able to have such alluring auroras? 

• We humans may not be able to hit an Oreo-sized target from 62 miles away, but LOLA can. A new NASA laser recently sent a precise signal down to India’s Vikram lunar lander, in an effort to test a technology that could help future astronauts navigate their way across the lunar surface.

• Okay, forget what we said about space salad! New research finds that space-grown lettuce is more susceptible to bacteria, such as E. coli or Salmonella. Oh well, we weren’t that excited about it anyways. 

• Meet one of the men behind the hiss heard ‘round the world: the late radio astronomer Arno Penzias leaves behind a lasting legacy, one that includes how a “hiss” of radio waves helped prove the Big Bang theory.

• Here’s the latest on what the U.S. government “doesn’t” know about aliens: in a shocking turn of events, after a recent confidential briefing – they’re still not allowed to tell us anything. 

• There is a sea of climate data sloshing around within existing satellites that could contribute to climate change efforts – if only we could sort through it faster. Enter AI.