Questions to an astronomer from NASA

Hi everyone !

I forgot to write about the autonomous work I made on last Thursday, so here it is ! Have a good reading

Mégane knows a website which is “Ororo”, where there is a lot of videos in English about a lot of subjects, so I decided to watch some of them as my autonomous work.
I am very interested about space, so I decided to watch a few videos about it.

First I watched a video called “Art vs science ? The battle that never was”. Michelle Thaller is astronomer, she is assistant director for science communication at the NASA, and she answers the question “as an artist, is there a way I can contribute to science communication?”
She starts by saying that there is no scientific brain or creative brain. It’s a mistake to separate science and art. Art can give a different vision of science. She has already collaborate with artists to add science into their art. In NASA, they need artists for editing the pictures they got from the hubble satellite, to make them a little bit nicer, or when they just receive numbers, and they need to make them understandable, so they make them like maps or simulation. It’s also a way to “teach” science to everyone, whatever if they know a lot in science or not. They work a lot with artists.
She also says that someone in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory puts lights in clear plastic cylinders. When they send a message to the spacecraft, the lights are going up, and when they receive something from the spacecraft, the lights are going down, in real time. This is a kind of conceptual art that works well with science.
To conclude art can contribute to science. I think what is the more relevant is that art can make people understand more easily, and so science is more accessible to everyone.

The second video is from the same astronomer, Michelle Thaller. This one is about “how the Moon’s ice craters will power a human colony”. The title is a bit liar, the real question is “how will the astronauts breathe on the moon base?” Actually we can already have this question with the space station, but I have never thought about it. She explains that of course they don’t bring air tank into space. She explains that you can separate oxygen and hydrogen from water with electricity. So it works like this in the space station. There is ice on the moon, on the poles. Those poles are really cold because they don’t receive a lot of sunlight. So you can have water on the moon, thanks to the ice.
Then, she explains that you can also use oxygen and hydrogen from the water to get rocket fuel. This is very interesting for a trip to Mars. The people are going so far away, so they will need fuel (and oxygen) to come back, and they can get it on the moon.
The water on the moon comes not from it. It could come from all the comets and asteroids which have collided with the moon, and contain a lot of water.

Then I watched a video about “will Elon Musk with Space X beat NASA to Mars?”
The same woman is explaining that the two company aren’t competitors. NASA buy rockets from Space X. Space X is a commercial space program, because they want to drive people to Mars, but NASA is a federal space program, the goal and the researches of the two companies are not the same. Sometimes they work together, and NASA is not afraid of Space X. She says that going to Mars is for now impossible because they don’t know how to make people stay alive, there is a lot of radiation in space, and it is a long and difficult trip. So the objective of Elon Musk to drive to Mars 100 people is crazy and will not arrive soon, but it will arrive surely. And if Space X can do it before the NASA, it is not a problem, NASA’s personnel will just be impressed and happy that it has being possible to reach Mars with alive humans.

The last video asks a weird question: “Could a giant sun-shade stop the climate change ?” I chose this one because it is the same astronomer, she explains very well, and I can easily understand her accent. And also because all the other answers were interesting, I supposed this one could surprise me and will be interesting too.
The idea of building a kind of shield between the earth and the sun is, in terms of technology, possible. But it would cost a lot, because we need a shade as big as the earth. So she thinks about another solution. When volcanos are erupting, they throw a lot of dust in the atmosphere, it lasts for days, and the earth under it get cooler. It would be possible to throw dust in the atmosphere to constantly cool the planet, but it would need a big organization to throw it very often. We don’t know enough our atmosphere, and what impact it would have on it. It will probably make big weather change.
The reason why climate is getting warmer and warmer is not outside of the earth, it’s not because of the sun, it’s because of human activities. Greenhouse gas stay blocked on the atmosphere for years and this is the reason of global warming. Protecting the earth from the sun seems no longer being a solution. She also says that maybe it is not possible to reverse the climate change phenomenon, or it is too late, so all we have to do is to adapt our way of life. Of course, the real changes will take time and we will need to adapt in a hundred of years, but the ocean will rise and some people will need to leave their countries to find places without water, and this will need a big international adaptation.

This is all for my work from last Thursday, on next Thursday I will watch again videos from this website because it’s really nice, we can learn a lot ! I will not talk about space again, I will find another theme, or videos about different subjects.

Interesting.

The moon doesn't have it's own water supply, so if humans use the ice at the poles does that mean it is a finite option for water, power and fuel? What happens when it is used up?

I thought about it too. The reserve on ice on the Moon is very big, because the Moon is not that small, but sure it's not infinite. I think human after using the ressources of the earth will use the ones of the Moon, and wherever they can go. It's a bit sad.