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National Reconassance Laboratory-An Early History

FASTBACK Figure 1: Cutaway view of FASTBACK crisis reconnaissance system (credit: NRO) National Reconnaissance Program crisis photography concepts, part 4: FASTBACK and FASTBACK-B by Joseph T. Page II Monday, November 25, 2024 Bookmark and Share The fourth system introduced in this series on National Reconnaissance Program crisis photography concepts is an intriguing—yet fundamentally dangerous—way to send a reconnaissance satellite system into orbit. As presented to the NRO in the early 1970s by Martin Marietta, the FASTBACK system concept envisioned a refurbished LGM-30 Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) placing a relatively small, quick-reaction photographic satellite into low earth orbit (LEO) within 24-hours of launch decision. Rapid reaction via ICBM Established in the early 1960s, the National Reconnaissance Program (NRP) was the single, national program dedicated to the collection of intelligence, through overflight, to meet the needs and objectives of the United States government. The NRP consisted of overt and covert overflight projects for intelligence, geodesy, and mapping photography and electronic signal collection based upon intelligence collection requirements and priorities established by the United States Intelligence Board. Based upon documentation detailing earlier series installments, NRP analysts estimated the number of “critical situations” desiring a quick-reaction reconnaissance capability hovered between three and five a year, with two situations occurring simultaneously. Considerations on likely crisis locations, launch capabilities, and film/data delivery all drove system concept designs. FASTBACK was an intriguing—yet fundamentally dangerous—way to send a reconnaissance satellite system into orbit. The FASTBACK design consisted of a relatively small, quick reaction photo-satellite system, launched on-call from Johnson Island in the Pacific. An example mission would have one or two accesses (prime orbital paths) over a target area depending on location and selected inclination. After the photographic mission was complete, the satellite recovery vehicle would splash down in the Atlantic. Hard copy photographic processing would commence in the Washington DC area within 24 hours from launch decision. Martin Marietta’s FASTBACK was designed with the following crisis reconnaissance capabilities in mind: Rapid response, providing Washington DC leaders high quality imagery in less than 24 hours. Geographic access, covering a considerable portion of the globe where crises were historically likely to occur. Image quality, planning for 3.3-feet (1 meter) of ground resolution at nadir from a 45-inch (114-centimeter) rotating optical bar camera. Target coverage, with the ability to cover 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) along track and a 130-nautical-mile (240-kilometer) swath width Weather avoidance, due to rapid launch capability Low cost, using surplus Minuteman rocket motors Low vulnerability, due to short mission durations The key to FASTBACK’s rapid launch capability was the use of a refurbished Minuteman ICBM, with an additional fourth stage consisting of an orbital inject motor on the spacecraft. Ace in the hole at Johnston Atoll Defined by General Operating Requirement 171 from August 1959, the then designated Strategic Missile 80 (SM-80) Minuteman ICBM was designed for quick-reaction strategic bombardment from underground hardened launch sites in the continental United States. The first-generation Minuteman missile (LGM-30A and LGM-30B) was a three-stage solid-fueled ICBM, substantially smaller than the Atlas or Titan boosters used within the NRP launch manifest. Minuteman’s strongest characteristic—driven by its solid-fuel design—was the ability to launch within seconds after receiving the fire order. This quick-launch feature was critical for the nuclear deterrence mission but held added benefit for the FASTBACK design, allowing mission start and completion to recovery within a 24-hour timeframe. The key to FASTBACK’s rapid launch capability was the use of a refurbished Minuteman ICBM, with an additional fourth stage consisting of an orbital inject motor on the spacecraft. The original basing concept for the Minuteman ICBM placed individual missiles (“sorties”) into hardened underground launch facilities (colloquially known as “silos”) separated into organizational units of ten. While the FASTBACK concept document did not provide details about the launcher mode, the familiar underground silo launch described in the Minuteman operating concept would have been extremely unlikely for two reasons: required access to the satellite payload before launch and the geology of Johnston Atoll. Pitstop in the middle of nowhere Aficionados of space and missile history will recognize the name of Johnston Island (or alternatively Johnston Atoll) as the location of high-altitude nuclear testing during the 1960s Operation FISHBOWL and the Air Force’s nuclear-tipped Program 437 anti-satellite program in the mid-1970s. Before its use in nuclear testing, the island’s location in the Pacific Ocean was known to the Western world as early as 1598, when Dutch sailors ventured past the atoll while searching for sea routes to Japan. The island was infrequently visited over the centuries, yet came to minor prominence after the passing of the Guano Act in 1856, which authorized American citizens to claim unoccupied islands in the name of the US for the purpose of obtaining guano (bird or bat excrement). Several centuries of large bird populations living on the island left tons of guano, an excellent source of phosphates and ammonium compounds critical for the manufacture of explosives and fertilizer. FASTBACK Figure 2: Layout of Johnston Island for proposed FASTBACK operations. (credit: NRO) Johnston Island fell out of public notice after World War II and administration of the island facilities transferred to the Air Force in mid-1948. After the development of the thermonuclear bomb, Johnston Island became an important center for the HARDTACK and DOMINIC series of nuclear tests. The DOMINIC series saw the buildup of rocket launch facilities on the island, namely shelters and pads for the Thor Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) system. After atmospheric nuclear testing ceased in 1962, Johnston Island contained the world’s first operational nuclear-tipped anti-satellite system, Program 437, until those facilities were destroyed by Hurricane Celeste in August 1972. At the time of FASTBACK’s consideration in the early 1970s, however, Johnston Island did have launch control and pad access available. Spacecraft and camera The spacecraft was conceived as being 16 feet (4.9 meters) long. with a Thiokol TE-M-364-2 orbital kick motor weighing approximately 2,600 pounds (1,180 kilograms). The spacecraft base diameter was measured at 37.5 inches (95.3 centimeters) to be compatible with the third stage of the Minuteman booster. FASTBACK Figure 3: Proposed FASTBACK camera system. (credit: NRO) The front portion of the panoramic optical bar camera would rotate about its longitudinal axis at 45 rpm with a scan angle of plus or minus 45 degrees, equating to a ground swath of 130 nautical miles. The optical package was estimated to provide a ground resolution of 3.3 feet at nadir. ITEK provided designs about an “as-built” aircraft camera, stating that no state-of-the-art techniques were required, negating additional funding or development time for novel or bespoke technologies. After recovery, the spacecraft and camera assembly could be refurbished for future usage, bringing down proposed operations costs by one third. FASTBACK Figure 4: Orbital tracks illustrative of FASTBACK’s proposed coverage from Johnston Island launch. (credit: NRO) Ground coverage An example mission launched on an inclination of 55 degrees with an elliptical orbit of 65 by 300 nautical miles (120 by 555 kilometers) is shown in Figure 4. The image shows the area of concentrated (targeted) coverage, and opportunities for single coverage of long tracks during each orbit revolution. The limiting factor on these single coverage “targets of opportunity” is the area illuminated by sunlight. The FASTBACK camera’s “fire and forget” guidance used preprogrammed timing for target photography, lessening the ability of ancillary target collection along the swath underneath the planned orbital track. This could be overcome by additional sorties launched with different inclinations, thereby changing the target track. Within Johnston Island’s possible launch inclinations (between 17 and 70 degrees), the location of concentrated coverage is listed in Figure 5. FASTBACK Figure 5: FASTBACK’s proposed areas of single and double coverage during one mission. (credit: NRO) Recovery operations Planned recovery operations for FASTBACK conceptually used systems in place for other NRP efforts, namely the JC-130s from the 6594th Recovery Control Group (later renamed the 6594 Test Group on July 1, 1972). The group was stationed in Hawaii due to their Pacific Ocean area of operations, though for the FASTBACK launches group aircraft would be based in Bermuda for an Atlantic Ocean catch. If a country wants to maintain a balance of terror, without tipping over into nuclear conflict, no one should consider using well-known nuclear delivery systems for other purposes, especially during times of crisis and hair-trigger responses. A fleet of five aircraft would be deployed for each recovery operation over an area of 300–500 nautical miles (555–925 kilometers) in-track by 100 nautical miles (185 kilometers) cross-track. This large area would be significantly lessened with tracking transponders. Once the reentry package was recovered, the JC-130s would fly to Andrews AFB, Maryland. After sending the film to Rochester, New York for development, finished images would go to the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) in the Washington DC area for analysis. Ground zero for World War III For an island that was originally known for enormous stores of bird poop, Johnston Island stood on the edge of infamy for its role in nuclear testing and housing Program 437. The decision to use the facilities there for FASTBACK made logical sense when attempting greatest photographic coverage for a crisis reaction system. However, the use of a modified Minuteman missile—a known nuclear weapon carrier—at a location that was known for nuclear activities did not seem to create a stir in the system developers. FASTBACK Figure 6: FASTBACK Launches or a Minuteman mass raid? Who could tell… (credit: Warner Bros.) While the Soviet Union’s early warning satellite system “OKO” did not launch until the mid-1970s, it is logical to presume FASTBACK’s presence through its Minuteman launch vehicle would have increased monitoring of Johnston Island by Soviet SIGINT ships. One question brought up by using known nuclear-related systems for non-nuclear operations (such as the AGM-86D Conventional Air-Launched Cruise Missile or BGM-109 Tomahawk missile): Can an adversary tell if the strike is using conventional high explosives or will the blast be large, loud, and create a mushroom cloud? The obvious answer to this rhetorical question should be “no,” mainly for the element of surprise against an adversary. But if a country wants to maintain a balance of terror, without tipping over into nuclear conflict, no one should consider using well-known nuclear delivery systems for other purposes, especially during times of crisis and hair-trigger responses. “B” means “Better”: FASTBACK and data return A second variant of the system, designated FASTBACK-B, was proposed for use within the NRP, differentiated from the original FASTBACK with the inclusion of a digital data-return system through the Air Force Satellite Control Network (AFSCN). Where FASTBACK used a film-based camera, returning images to Earthy via a reentry system, FASTBACK-B incorporated on-board film development and a laser scanner read-out system that would beam digital images to ground users without having to wait for film return and subsequent development. The ingenuity of using recycled Minuteman ICBM rocket motors stands out as a dangerous gamble to an armchair historian looking through the rearview mirror of history but may have been a calculated risk to prevent conflicts leading up to World War III. Other significant differences with the FASTBACK-B concept included a different, but not better, launch site (explained below), extended on-orbit time of up to 30 days, and planned use of polar orbits versus the high inclination ones available from Johnston Atoll. Photographic swath width shrinks to 100 nautical miles, while the in-track imaging is limited to 4,600 square nautical miles (15,800 square kilometers) based on film storage capacity limits. Analog photograph conversion into digital bits occurs via a satellite-based wide-bandwidth laser scanner and ground transmission reception to the Vandenberg Tracking Station (COOK) or the New Hampshire Tracking Station (BOSS). The launch location for FASTBACK-B is listed as the Western Test Range, but the only infrastructure within the range to launch Minuteman missiles was at Vandenberg AFB. The same rhetorical questions about confusing nuclear and non-nuclear systems may not be considered from a Vandenberg launch, due to the base purportedly only launching unarmed Minuteman test missiles over its decades-long history. However, one question would stand out to any launch observer off the coast of California or in the foothills surrounding the base: why is an “unarmed” Minuteman missile being launched northward, and not westward toward the Pacific Ocean test site at Kwajalein? Questions abound from casual observation would have pulled back the veil of security during the first (and likely last) FASTBACK-B launch from Vandenberg, killing the system before it could operate effectively. The rearview mirror of history The FASTBACK and FASTBACK-B concepts continued the trend of innovation for companies and engineers looking to bolster the NRP’s capabilities during crisis reconnaissance operations. The ingenuity of using recycled Minuteman ICBM rocket motors stands out as a dangerous gamble to an armchair historian looking through the rearview mirror of history but may have been a calculated risk to prevent conflicts leading up to World War III. Regardless of the aborted developmental outcome of the FASTBACK series, system characteristics created for rapid reconnaissance, in both launch and information recovery, wove common threads throughout these developmental designs, eventually leading to the ultimate “winner” of the much-needed crisis reconnaissance system: the KENNEN electro- optical system. References No Author. “Should The NRO Acquire an Interim System with Improved Response Time Prior To EOI?” Issue Paper. NRO For All 2022. C05096641. 1971. Martin Marietta. FASTBACK: A Fast Response Photographic Reconnaissance System. November 1970. NRO FOIA For All Collection. Hofmann, Frederick. Memorandum for the Record: Martin Company Briefing on FASTBACK. 16 November 1970. NRO FOIA For All Collection. Martin Marietta. “The FASTBACK B Vehicle: A Fast Response, Low-Cost Photo Reconnaissance System.” 26 March 1971. NRO FOIA For All Collection. Joseph T. Page II is a space historian and freelance writer located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is the author of Peterson Space Force Base Through Time (Fonthill Publishing, November 2024). Joe can be reached at joe (at) josephtpageii (dot) com.

The Search For A Lunar Economy

IM-2 Intuitive Machines is developing a series of lunar lander missions, like the upcoming IM-2 mission (above), with NASA as the predominant customer. (credit: Intuitive Machines) The search for a commercial lunar economy by Jeff Foust Monday, November 25, 2024 Bookmark and Share If there is one company that exemplifies the concept of the lunar economy, it is Intuitive Machines. The Houston-based company made its name with lunar landers, flying its first Nova-C lander to the Moon in February on the IM-1 mission. That is just part of a broader strategy that includes plans for a lunar communications and navigation network and a lunar rover that could support both NASA Artemis missions and other applications. The company is also publicly traded, allowing insights into their finances not possible with a privately held company. In its latest quarterly earnings published earlier this month, the company boasted about its financial performance, including revenues for the year to date of $173.3 million, compared to $79.5 million in all of 2023. Executives projected finishing the year with $215 million to $235 million in revenue. The company’s performance in the quarter is “validating our upward trajectory,” Steve Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines, said in an earnings call. Intuitive Machines reported revenues for the year to date of $173.3 million, far more than all of 2023, but most of that comes from NASA contracts. That upward trajectory does have some caveats. Despite the sharply increased revenue, the company is still running at a loss, with an adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) loss of nearly $30.5 million through the first nine months of the year, compared to a $49.9 million adjusted EBITDA loss in the first nine months of last year. To bolster its cash reserves, the company sold $80.5 million in stock in the quarter, giving the company “ample liquidity to execute on our growth trajectory,” said company CFO Peter McGrath on the call. Another is a source of the revenue. According to the company’s 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, $115 million of its revenue to date this year came from a contract called OMES III to provide engineering services at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. While a lucrative contract and a main reason for the sharp increase in revenue (work on the contract started late last year for Intuitive Machines), it is only tangentially linked, at best, to lunar lander or other infrastructure work. The 10-Q filing also shows that most of the other revenue comes from NASA in the form of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) task orders for its lunar lander missions, as well as associated work such as a Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) Services award in April to work on the design of an Artemis lunar rover. Intuitive Machines is bringing in plenty of revenue, but nearly all of it is from the government. Is this what the lunar economy looks like? Commercial lunar chimera Yes, at least for the foreseeable future, according to one report. A study released in October by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) was skeptical that anyone other than governments will be customers for lunar landers or other services being offered by industry. “Though there is certainly a lot of buzz about cislunar growth, the authors of this report found evidence of only a modest increase in cislunar activities over the next decade compared to the past 10 years,” the report concluded. “Additionally, the authors found little sign of a business case for cislunar activities that is not closely tied to government funding and support.” Those back-to-back sentences took aim at two of the biggest claims made about the surge in commercial activities at the Moon. One is how many missions are actually going, with some claims that 100 or more lunar missions worldwide in the next decade. “How to count the missions was something that took a lot of time and thought,” said Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at CSIS and lead author of the report, at an October 25 webinar to discuss the report. “Truly commercial uses of the Moon remain a chimera, with no obvious sign this could change in the next several years,” the CSIS report concluded. He noted, as in the report, that the definition of “mission” ranged from a discrete lander or orbiter down to individual instruments that are payloads on those spacecraft. “Many future cislunar missions look like matryoshka, or Russian nesting, dolls; they are complex systems of systems, with some providing lunar ridesharing,” the report stated. The upcoming IM-2 lander by Intuitive Machines, for example, includes NASA and commercial payloads on the lander as well as rideshare spacecraft, like NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer orbiter, that will hitch a ride on the launch. “Counting a UNESCO memory disk, which is effectively a very small thumb drive,” a payload on the upcoming Hakuto-R M2 lander mission by Japan’s ispace, “as the same as Artemis 3? It feels like that is telling a slightly distorted story of what’s happening on the Moon,” Swope said. The report ended up identifying about 40 “significant” missions that are currently scheduled for launch in the next decade, ranging from Artemis and potential Chinese crewed missions to the moon to CLPS landers. That list thins out near the end of the decade given the lack of visibility into future missions then, but also includes some missions that appear unlikely to fly at least in the near term, like Israel’s Beresheet 2 lander, which does not have the funding needed to launch in 2025 as listed in the report. A clear takeaway from that list of significant missions is that most are either government-led missions or missions with the government as a big enough customer that, without it, the mission would be unlikely to fly. That would include CLPS missions where NASA is the largest, or even sole, customer for commercial landers. “There is no indication of a lunar gold rush because there are no strong revenue-generating businesses centered around cislunar activities anchored by commercial customers,” the CSIS report concluded. “Truly commercial uses of the Moon remain a chimera, with no obvious sign this could change in the next several years.” There are, of course, companies that think otherwise, seeing a business case for lunar activities like resource extraction. Those resources range from water ice believed to exist at the lunar poles to helium-3, the isotope long linked to fusion power generation but with nearer-term applications in areas like quantum computing. “There’s no question that if you have the capacity to deliver large amounts of lunar rocks back to Earth, they will have commercial value,” MacDonald said. Interlune, a startup led by former Blue Origin president Rob Meyerson, is pursuing helium-3 extraction from the Moon. But its roadmap doesn’t foresee returning even small quantities of helium-3—up to about 20 kilograms a year—until at least the early 2030s, after initial missions to prospect for the isotope and test the ability to extract it. At the CSIS webinar, Alex MacDonald, NASA’s chief economist, drew parallels to long-running interest in asteroid mining. “Konstantin Tsiolkovsky talked about there being asteroid mining in the 1880s, and it’s not clear whether we’re closer in time to him or closer in time to asteroid mining,” he said. He said that there was “no doubt” that there will be significant commercial activities on the Moon, eventually. In the near term, he suggested that could be something as simple as delivering cremated remains, or cremains, to the Moon (one that, he added, does pose some policy issues) or returning lunar rocks to the Earth for commercial sale, tapping into a market of collectors where demand exceeds a very limited supply. “There’s no question that if you have the capacity to deliver large amounts of lunar rocks back to Earth, they will have commercial value,” he concluded. That was, in fact, the business plan of a long-forgotten startup, Applied Space Resources, which a quarter-century ago announced its intent to pursue missions to bring back lunar samples for sale commercially. It was, though, ahead of its time, fading away in the early 2000s after struggling with the technical and financial challenges of commercial lunar sample return. For the time being, though, “the predominant driver is government programs in science and exploration and international cooperation,” he concluded. “That is, for me, the 95% answer to the lunar economy,” worth about $8–10 billion annually. “That is nontrivial, and it is sufficient at this time to drive a lot of the innovation that we are seeing in the economic ecosystem.” Lunar slowdown The CSIS report is not the only one to examine the lunar economy. In 2021, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the consulting company, published a report on its own assessment of the lunar economy. That study projected the lunar economy to have a cumulative value of about $170 billion over a 20-year period to 2040. Transportation would be the largest market, accounting for $100 billion over that time period, with resource utilization generating $63 billion; data services accounted for the rest. That will increasingly be driven by commercial activity, one of the authors of the report stated. “By 2040, it will not be purely institutions. It will also, to a certain extent, be commercially driven, meaning that we will have by then enough maturity in terms of technology and a sustainable presence on the Moon to have commercial actors paying for these missions,” said Yann Perrot, senior manager of the space practice at PwC France, during a panel at Space Tech Expo Europe last week. He acknowledged, though, that the forecasts in that now three-year-old report may have been overoptimistic. “The main change is the slower pace at which the commercial sector is picking up,” he said, citing a slowdown in investment in the sector. Government programs, like Artemis missions, have also suffered delays. “It’s still too early to say if the changes will be more structural in terms of the shape of the lunar economy,” he said, rather than shifting growth curves to the right that simply delay the markets. “It’s a matter of timelines. Whether it’s three, five, ten years delayed, I cannot really say now.” He added he could not estimate how much that forecast of $170 billion in cumulative revenue by 2040 had changed without doing more analysis. Another panelist was skeptical that commercial lunar activities would play a major role in the next two decades. “I don’t see currently in the near future an economy with private investors and private companies,” said Ralf Zimmermann, head of space exploration and Moon programs at Airbus Defence and Space and project manager for the European Service Module for NASA’s Orion spacecraft. “The market is largely driven by institutions.” “In the way of private investments to make to make the first step to go to the Moon, settle on the Moon, have a lab on the Moon or around the Moon, I have my doubts that we will be ready for this in the next 15 to 20 years,” he said later in the panel. “It might come after, but I don’t see it being launched that quickly.” “In the way of private investments to make to make the first step to go to the Moon, settle on the Moon, have a lab on the Moon or around the Moon, I have my doubts that we will be ready for this in the next 15 to 20 years,” Zimmerman said. At the CSIS event, panelists also took a long-term view towards the development of a commercial lunar economy. Victoria Samson, chief director of space security and sustainability at the Secure World Foundation, noted it took decades for low Earth orbit to become “economically standalone” from government customers. “It’s going to be a while, decades, maybe,” for that to happen at the Moon, she estimated. “But maybe only decades,” MacDonald added. Those timelines pose challenges for companies with private investors who want returns in several years, not several decades. That means companies like Intuitive Machines will, for now, look to government customers who have requirements linked to science and national prestige to motivate spending billions on lunar missions and enabling infrastructure. Intuitive Machines won a NASA contract in September worth as much as $4.8 billion over ten years to provide lunar communications services, funding a five-satellite network that could potentially be used by other customers as well as NASA. Those companies, though, still need to make money on that government business. In its 10-Q filing this month, Intuitive Machines noted that its IM-1 lander mission in February, along with its upcoming IM-2 and IM-3 missions—all part of CLPS—are considered “loss contracts” by the company as the cost of executing those missions exceeds the revenue expected from NASA and commercial customers, with $22.8 million in combined losses recorded on them this year alone. Even when working for the government, it can be hard to make money on the Moon. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

One Day In The Life Of The I.S.S.-A Novel

book cover Orbital won the Booker Prize for best novel this month. The space station reckoning, or, one day in the life of the ISS crew by Aditya Chaturvedi Monday, November 25, 2024 Bookmark and Share The American writer Tom Wolfe was intrigued by what it takes for a human to be put aboard a space shuttle and hurled upwards with blazing thrust and mind-numbing velocity. But what is it that astronauts think while hovering in orbit at 25,000 kilometers per hour, conducting laboratory experiments or collecting samples, and looking at the terra firma below from the vantage point of the low Earth orbit? Cosmic mind The 2024 Booker Prize winner novel Orbital by British writer Samantha Harvey delves into this question through the looking glass of five astronauts from the USA, the UK, Japan, Italy, and Russia who form a “floating family” on the International Space Station (see “Review: Orbital”, The Space Review, January 8, 2024). The answer is somber, replete with cosmic existential wisdom on the everyday banality and fragility of human bonds—breaking relationships, fading footprints on the sandy terrain of memory, the dismal unpredictability of life—as well as the despair and anguish about the future of the Earth and the inextricably interwoven fate of billions. Humans are known for routine organization of life and bodily circadian rhythm. This sense of time is lost when one is circling the Earth, orbiting 16 times a day, witnessing 16 sunrises and sunsets (one every 90 minutes), all in the span of one day on Earth. The novel is divided into 16 chapters, each detailing one orbit. Invisible boundaries Carl Sagan's “Pale Blue Dot”, the only planet we can call home today, simmers with raging conflicts, upheavals, and the various attempts to remake political cartography. But none of it is visible from the sky. The only signs of human habitation and restless activity are visible at night when the lights go up. But what is it that astronauts think while hovering in orbit at 25,000 kilometers per hour, conducting laboratory experiments or collecting samples, and looking at the terra firma below from the vantage point of the low Earth orbit? No border demarcations, or hotly contested national fences, the map-makers imprint and tangible markers of sovereignty, are visible except for one, as the novel notes: “Even at night there’s only one man-made border in the whole of the world; a long trail of lights between Pakistan and India. That’s all civilisation has to show for its divisions, and by day even that has gone.” What can be seen in stark contrast is the impact of natural hazards, the impending disasters, evidence of ecological degradation, and the natural topography in vibrant, kaleidoscopic shades: “The earth, from here, is like heaven. It flows with colour. A burst of hopeful colour.” The crew witnesses the building up of a typhoon near Southeast Asia and feels helpless and gloomy for not being able to turn it away. This explains the “fortune teller’s” wizardry of early warning systems and simultaneously their inadequacy when there are no coherent mitigation plans or agile first responders on the ground. The vast expanse of deserts, forests, grasslands, and the changing weather cycles which the ISS passes through all appear in juxtaposition with countries and their peculiar geographic shapes. Literary critic James Wood has called Harvey “Melville of the Skies” for this first of the space novels which is based entirely aboard the ISS. Harvey calls the ISS “a symbol of post-cold war peace and reconciliation” that now belongs to another era and is slowly dying. The ISS is set to be decommissioned in 2030. Space realism From Kurt Vonnegut’s comic Sirens of Titan to Arthur C. Clarke’s wildly popular 2001: A Space Odyssey, space has long been a playfield of science fiction, myths, and exuberant mixes of magical realism and alien invasion fantasy. Orbital doesn't fall into any of these genres. It is not about star wars, space travelers, or the unexplored, tenebrous limits of the infinite cosmos. What makes Orbital stand out is that it uses space to reinforce a dire message about Earth and compels deep introspection on topics such as human belonging, sense of time, coexistence, climate change, and ecology. Harvey has thanked NASA and ESA for their wonderful satellite imagery, space footage, and livestreamed ISS feed that, along with battling insomnia, sparked her curiosity to know what happens on Earth and dive deep into the innermost thoughts of those with the ringside—or rather the orbital-side—view of the blue planet. During her youth, she collected quotes by astronauts and was moved when a Russian cosmonaut said he understood the meaning of the word round only when he went to space and saw the Earth from there. At 136 pages, Orbital is the second slimmest novel after Penelope Fitzgerald's 1979 novel Offshore to win the prestigious Booker. Harvey's terse, lyrical prose offers profound wisdom on the human condition and the state of the Earth, beyond the usual binaries of growth/de-growth, or clichés on purpose, utility, and happiness. Harvey's work is a stellar literary meditation on what space, “the last nationless, borderless outpost that strains against human life,” can impart. The most formidable force changing everything around us is not technology but human want and the subsequent anthropogenic footprint: “The planet is shaped by the sheer amazing force of human want, which has changed everything, the forests, the poles, the reservoirs, the glaciers, the rivers, the seas, the mountains, the coastlines, the skies, a planet contoured and landscaped by want.” For space enthusiasts, technologists, policymakers, as well as the public there are two enduring thoughts in this short novella. We rely on space for everything from Earth observation to asset monitoring, and from early warning systems to disaster management and climate risk assessment. But ultimately, all that data, imagery, insights, and repository of knowledge will only lead us halfway unless complimented by decisive human ability, cooperation, knowledge transfer, and the willingness to act. There is no panacea anywhere other than erecting more bridges and breaking down barriers and walls. Earth is an interdependent, complex system with its unique planetary tipping points, fault lines, and fissures. Space is the best vantage point from a scientific as well as epistemological perspective. That’s why we need to redouble our efforts to enhance space-based knowledge of Earth systems, and the complex challenges that beset us. Harvey's work is a stellar literary meditation on what space, “the last nationless, borderless outpost that strains against human life,” can impart beyond maximizing cross-functional innovations, making value chains more integrated and dynamic, and hyperfast communications at the speed of blinking eyelids, or scouting for life on some other orb. Life’s not elsewhere With the evolution of space exploration, the “common province” shouldn’t be viewed just as a springboard for the pursuit of intergalactic planetary life on a neighboring planet, a pitstop between Earth and Mars, or a launchpad hurling us towards far-flung corners of the Milky Way galaxy. Testing is underway for the world's heaviest and most powerful rocket yet, SpaceX’s Starship, a vehicle nothing short of an astounding scientific and engineering feat. With it, Mars appears ever closer on the horizon to many. The maverick Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, recently wrote on X, “A fully reusable rocket with orbital refueling is the critical breakthrough needed to make life multiplanetary. For the first time in 4.5 billion years.” The scope of his ambition and the spectacular achievement of SpaceX is truly admirable. However, we need to tread cautiously while following the glowing scarlet Martian dreams. They should not deviate us from sordid earthly realities and the bleak, mundane challenges. The task ahead is fixing things here first and ensuring a sustainable planet for posterity. As a species we are firmly anchored and tethered to the Earth ever since fire was invented. The final frontier, which exemplifies the conscious recognition of shared destinies forged together on Earth, as well as the shared perils, should never become an oblivious outpost or an abandoned milestone, as we drift farther and farther away, losing sight of near-term problems and priorities over the far-fetched. Lofty cosmic ambitions offer no quick fix for the slew of crises here that need to be urgently fixed. Contrary to the title of the Milan Kundera novel Life is Elsewhere (a slogan scrawled by student protesters in Paris) that was published in 1969, the seminal year of Apollo 11 moon landing, life for us is only here—on this Earth—and nowhere else. Aditya Chaturvedi is former Deputy Editor at Geospatial World. He is intrigued by the intersection of society, politics, popular culture, and technology.

Book Review: Waiting For Spaceships

book cover Review: Waiting for Spaceships by Jeff Foust Monday, November 25, 2024 Bookmark and Share Waiting for Spaceships: Scenes from a Desert Community in Love with the Space Shuttle by Ted Huetter Fonthill Media, 2024 paperback, 96 pp., illus. ISBN 978-1-62545-135-4 US$24.99 I saw my first shuttle landing long before my first shuttle launch. While a student at Caltech in the early 1990s, our student group (a chapter of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, or SEDS) was able to get car passes from JPL for an official guest viewing area at Edwards Air Force Base for shuttle landings. We would carpool up the 210 and 14 freeways, almost always in the middle of the night, to the base in time to see early morning landings. It would be a decade before I saw a shuttle launch, at a distance, and only in the final years did I get a closeup view at the KSC Press Site. Those memories flooded back while reading Waiting for Spaceships by Ted Huetter, which offers a pictorial account of the public that attended shuttle landings at Edwards in the 1980s. In the early years of the shuttle, the base attracted large crowds fascinated with seeing the shuttle return. That included an estimated half a million people who attended the July 4, 1982, landing of Columbia for STS-4, which President Ronald Reagan also attended. Huetter documents that experience in photos he took while at the base for seven shuttle landings from 1982 to 1989. People arrived early, driving everything from RVs to small cars, camping out and doing things you might expect to see from visitors in a state park: barbequing, sunbathing, and chatting with their neighbors. Canteens were available where you could by $2 pancakes and $1 beer. The one thing that perhaps made clear this was a space event and not a giant campout was the large number of souvenir vendors, selling shuttle-themed caps, t-shirts, photos, and more. The one thing that perhaps made clear this was a space event and not a giant campout was the large number of souvenir vendors, selling shuttle-themed caps, t-shirts, photos, and more. His photos, and a brief introduction, describe a community that quickly and briefly came together, drawn by a common interest in the shuttle. There was never any rowdiness that he recalled: “I like to think that the power of the desert environment had a calming effect.” The pictures are a time capsule from the 1980s, from the fashion statements (one person wearing a t-shirt showing a shuttle tearing a hole in the Soviet flag with the caption “We’re Back”) to banners, some produced on dot-matrix printers. One handmade banner declared “We ❤️” followed by illustrations of the American flag and E.T. (Again, it was the ’80s.) The slender book is primarily photos, with a brief introduction by the author and a foreword by former astronaut Tom Jones, who recalled his visits to Edwards as an Air Force Academy cadet in the mid-70s and, years later, as an astronaut landing there on three shuttle missions. The photos include only brief titles, rather than longer captions, and some of the captions can be a bit cryptic: a man standing on top of an RV looking for the shuttle is titled “Fly Navy”; on closer inspection one sees a “Fly Navy” bumper sticker on the RV. The emphasis in Waiting for Spaceships is on the “waiting” part, with the shuttle itself making only a cameo appearance in the final pages of the book. The photos capture the public fascination with the shuttle, one that was fleeting: as some of the photos in the book show, attendance dropped over time as the novelty of shuttle wore off. It is a fascinating book for people interested images of that era, although with only a minimum of text to go with it. Shuttle landings eventually shifted primarily to KSC, with returns to Edwards only in rare situations, like extended poor weather in Florida. The community spirit of those landings, though, lives on in some respects: in 2004, thousands gathered just to the north of Edwards at Mojave Air and Space Port for the SpaceShipOne suborbital flights. More recently, many gathered in South Texas for Starship launches, with local officials reporting hours-long traffic jams exiting a state park at the southern tip of South Padre Island after the most recent launch last week. Both those show the same public interest, and formation of temporary communities, illustrated in Waiting for Spaceships. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are

Icarus Takes Flight

Discoveries Icarus Takes Flight The European Space Agency (ESA) is preparing to make history by creating an artificial solar eclipse in space. Next week, the Proba-3 mission will launch two satellites that will block the Sun’s light and capture unprecedented images of its faint outer atmosphere, or corona. “This ambitious ESA mission has been many years in the making because it is seeking to do something in space that has previously been impossible,” said Damien Galano, Proba-3 mission manager, in a statement. Proba-3 will launch aboard an Indian PSLV-XL rocket, marking ESA’s first mission launched from India since 2001. The two spacecraft will enter a highly elliptical orbit, traveling between 373 miles and more than 37,000 miles from Earth. The occulter spacecraft – carrying a 4.6-foot-wide disk – will align precisely with the Sun to block its light. Meanwhile, the coronagraph spacecraft that is positioned 492 feet behind will capture images of the Sun’s corona. “It will be the closest to the Sun we have observed the corona in visible light,” Galano separately told New Scientist this month. Scientists hope that studying the corona will help answer key questions about its temperature, how it expands into space, and the origins of solar wind. The mission may also help predict solar weather, such as geomagnetic storms that can disrupt satellites, communication networks, and power grids on Earth. Meanwhile, the task will require a lot of precision: The spacecraft must maintain their positions to within 0.04 inches. This is made possible by advanced sensors and 12 nitrogen thrusters on the occulter, capable of adjustments as subtle as 0.002 pounds of force. Each artificial eclipse will last up to six hours, with more than 1,000 eclipses planned over the two-year mission. These will occur at the spacecraft’s highest orbital point to reduce Earth’s gravitational interference and minimize the satellites’ fuel consumption. ESA researchers hope that the Proba-3’s flying techniques could revolutionize spacecraft refueling techniques, in-orbit assembly of large telescopes, and space weather modeling. “Up until now, we’ve only been able to do a centimeter precision or more,” Steve Buckley, lead engineer for Proba-3 noted to New Scientist. “This is 10 times better.”

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Star Ship And Space Policy

Starship The next Starship test flight is scheduled for as soon as November 19. (credit: NASA/GSFC) Starships and space policy by Jeff Foust Monday, November 18, 2024 Bookmark and Share On Tuesday afternoon, SpaceX will attempt the next test flight of its Starship vehicle. It will be similar to one that took place just a month ago, which featured a “catch” of the Super Heavy booster back at the launch tower, a key milestone in demonstrating the ability to reuse the vehicle. The flight will feature a few changes, such as relighting a Raptor engine on Starship during its suborbital coast, proving the vehicle can place itself into orbit and then deorbit. “I’m still known as the person who was the most disruptive transition team ever” at NASA, recalled Garver. “I’m not going to hold that record any more.” While there are only modest technical changes with Starship since that October flight, there have been far more dramatic changes in the environment in which it will operate. The election of Donald Trump could upend space policy and, given Elon Musk’s prominent role in both supporting Trump during the campaign and being by his side since the election, could give the SpaceX CEO powerful influence to reshape that policy. The incoming Trump administration has, so far, offered few statements about its plans for NASA or Defense Department space programs in the two weeks since the election. That includes not announcing an official “agency review team” for NASA, the members of the transition team who come into the agency to learn about agency activities and, in some cases, find problems. “The job of the teams coming in, first of all, is just to get a sense about where the agencies are,” said Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University and who served on the NASA transition team for incoming president George W. Bush. “Part of what you’re trying to so is figure out what are going to be some of the immediate landmines that are going to come up in the first six months. Political people hate surprises.” An example of that he had firsthand experience with was the discovery, as part of the Bush transition, that the space station program was $4.8 billion over budget, which meant informing those working on the transition at the Office of Management and Budget. “So, at 11 o’clock at night I go over to the OMB team and say, ‘Hi, I'm Scott. I’m from the NASA team. Got a spare $4.8 bil? We’re a little short,’” he recalled during a panel discussion last week at the Beyond Earth Symposium in Washington. A similar landmine, he suggested, are reports of persistent air leaks in a Russian module of the ISS. At a meeting last week of the ISS Advisory Committee, Bob Cabana, the new chair of the committee, noted that Russian and American officials don’t disagree on the cause and severity of those leaks, with Americans more concerned than Russians. “The Russians believe that continued operations are safe but they can’t prove to our satisfaction that they are, and the U.S. believes that it’s not safe but we can’t prove to the Russians’ satisfaction that that’s the case,” he concluded. “I certainly believe that NASA is paying a lot of attention to it,” Pace said of those air leaks, “but if I was an incoming transition person, I would want to do my own forensics on that and understand very deeply what was going on because nothing will ratchet to the top of a list faster than anything involving human spaceflight safety.” The incoming administration’s interest in NASA, though, won’t be limited to studying leaks in a Russian space station module. There is the belief, almost an expectation, among many in the space community that the incoming Trump administration might upend many NASA programs, particularly in human spaceflight, including those that date back to the first Trump administration. “I’m still known as the person who was the most disruptive transition team ever” at NASA, recalled Lori Garver on the panel. She led the NASA transition team for the incoming Obama Administration, which clashed with officials like then-administrator Mike Griffin on aspects of the Constellation program. “I’m not going to hold that record any more.” That disruption, she predicted, will come from Musk. “I think that the change that he is going to bring to this administration will be like nothing that we have seen before,” she said. “For those of you who like what has been happening, no judgement, but it’s probably going to change.” “The Moon has both strategic purposes, militarily, and economic development purposes that Mars doesn’t,” Autry said. That could mean changes to major programs of record. “It’s going to be less—and maybe this is wishful thinking on my part—contracts to members of Congress for jobs in their districts,” she said. “I think those guardrails are broken. We do not have these massive senators who have so much power because they’re chairing committees with large contracts in their districts.” Pace agreed that Musk will play a major role in any potential reshaping of NASA. “People underestimate how mission-driven he is,” he said. “It’s his mission for Mars, humanity, and so forth, that really drives him and will push him really hard.” “Then the dialogue is over, what actually works? What will make sense?” he said. Musk, before the election, talked about launching five Starships to Mars during the next launch window in the fall of 2026. “If those all land safely, then crewed missions are possible in four years,” he wrote on X, the social media platform he owns, in September. Trump, during the campaign, appeared to endorse that idea. “We will land an American astronaut on Mars. Thank you, Elon,” Trump said at an October 24 rally. “Get that spaceship going, Elon.” Pace said he didn’t see a problem with Musk pursuing Starship launches to Mars. “If you want to put a couple Starships on the surface of Mars, I think that is eminently doable and would be inspiring and interesting,” he said. “I’m not so sure about putting people on those missions because I think a lot of other things would have to happen first.” Some, though, are worried that this strategy might be done at the expense of the current Artemis lunar exploration campaign. Before the election, Jim Free, NASA associate administrator and the person likely to become acting administrator at the start of the new administration, warned against making major changes to that effort to return humans to the Moon, without mentioning any candidate or alternative approach. “We need to stick with the plan that we have. That doesn’t mean we can’t perform better,” he said at the American Astronautical Society’s von Braun Space Exploration Symposium less than a week before the election. “But we need to keep this destination from a human spaceflight perspective.” “If we lose that,” he warned, “I believe we will fall apart and we will wander, and other people in this world will pass us by.” Greg Autry, who served on the first Trump administration’s NASA transition team, offered a similar note of caution. “If it was just to show that we could beat China, if it was another flags and footprints mission, then I’d be for that,” Autry, currently associate provost of space commercialization and strategy at the University of Central Florida, said at the Beyond Earth Symposium. “But the Moon has both strategic purposes, militarily, and economic development purposes that Mars doesn’t.” He spoke specifically about resources on the Moon, like water ice, that could be valuable to future space exploration but which are concentrated in polar craters. “Those are limited resources, and getting to them early is critical. So I honestly think we have to do both, and I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time.” Artemis, though, “has got to be fixed,” he said, citing problems with “every single major component of the system” for getting humans back to the Moon. “So how do we simplify what became a fairly complex and Rube Goldbergian sort of architecture in some ways?” That could mean an enhanced role for Starship. He suggested a “full Starship stack to the Moon” as one solution, which would do away with many other elements, like SLS and Orion, but may require enhancements to Starship. Another approach would be to mix and match other capabilities, like having Dragon send crews to Earth orbit to dock with a Blue Moon lunar lander that then goes to the Moon and back. “I think the area where he is going to have probably the biggest impact in the near term is personnel,” Pace said of Musk. “People are policy.” “I think that needs to be looked at very seriously, immediately, whenever the new team comes into place, and some decisions made swiftly to, A, get us to the Moon before the Chinese, who are targeting 2030 and appear to maybe be ahead of schedule, and B, make sure that we have the long-term ability to stay there,” he concluded. During the panel, Garver asked if SLS and Orion would continue in the next administration. None of her fellow panelists, which included Autry, Pace, and others who worked in the Bush and Trump administrations, raised their hands. “Not as they are,” Pace said. There was less agreement among the panel about how the Trump administration might affect other aspects of space policy, like the role of international cooperation. Garver said she thought the next administration would deemphasize it. ““It is by its nature slow,” she said, “which is the opposite of what these folks have in mind.” Pace disagreed. “I think international engagement is going to be an important part of the Trump administration because it’s part of larger national interests,” he said. “There can be different styles to it, different emphases on it, but it’s absolutely going to be central.” Then there is the question of who will lead NASA in the next administration. Pace said he expected Musk to play a role here as well. “I think the area where he is going to have probably the biggest impact in the near term is personnel. People are policy.” He recommended that the next administrator be someone focused on implementing programs. “It’s really somebody in program and project management, system engineering and integration: very dull-sounding kinds of things but really, really crucial,” he said. That person could end up leaning heavily on Starship to carry out what the administration wants to do in space. That makes the next Starship launch, while only an incremental step forward technically, a harbinger of a much greater leap in what the US might do differently in space exploration, and how. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

The Woomera Manual Outlines Rules Applicable To National Security Activites in Space

Woomera Manual The Woomera Manual outlines the rules applicable to national security activities in space. (credit: Oxford Univ. Press) The Woomera Manual on military law in space by David A. Koplow Monday, November 18, 2024 Bookmark and Share The international legal regime applicable to outer space contains several unusual, even startling, provisions. For example, there are unique rules dealing with the regime of civil torts, such as when a satellite crashes into another satellite in space or plummets to Earth and inflicts damage on the ground. Other remarkable provisions deal with the complicated legal linkages between a particular satellite and one or more countries—far more intricate and multiple than the relationships between aircraft or oceangoing vessels and the countries whose flags they may fly. Space is not a “law-free zone.” There are longstanding legally binding rules that provide some important guardrails for national competition, even if those constraints have not been fully understood or appreciated by the national rivals. Among the most consequential, challenging, and understudied aspects of space law are the rules applicable to national security activities in space, a field that is now burgeoning. To organize and clarify that snarl of public international law, the Woomera Manual on the International Law of Military Space Activities and Operations has just been published by Oxford University Press. This Manual is the product of a multiyear, multinational, multi-expert collaboration, endeavoring to provide a comprehensive, neutral, accessible recital about the current state of the law, and designed to be useful to governments, academics, journalists, non-governmental organizations, and others. To introduce the Woomera Manual to the community of interest, this article first describes the background, development, and organization of the manual. It then dives deeply into one particularly problematic topic, the issue of “planetary defense” or protecting the Earth from asteroid impacts, to illustrate the complexity and richness of some of the international legal issues to be addressed. The Woomera Manual: process This manual is the latest in a growing body of literature that undertakes to summarize the extant international law regarding selected military functions and theaters of operation. For example, some readers will be familiar with the Tallinn Manuals, which have proven remarkably successful as the most authoritative non-governmental representation of the rules regarding cyber operations. Earlier cognate projects undertook to collect the rules regarding warfare at sea, the use of missiles, and in other discrete fields. The Woomera Manual is inheritor of that tradition, responding to the pronounced surge in military and intelligence community action in outer space. In recent years, for example, four countries (China, India, Russia, and the United States) have tested kinetic anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons, pursued alternative directed-energy systems, and experimented with satellite maneuvers that are potentially hostile. Similarly, some states have mimicked or predated the creation of the US Space Force and the formal declaration that space should henceforth be regarded as an “operational” military theater. The increasingly belligerent rhetoric about the need to achieve space “superiority” or “dominance” has likewise inflated, as vying protagonists seek to exploit the new “high ground.” At the same time, space is not a “law-free zone.” There are longstanding legally binding rules that provide some important guardrails for national competition, even if those constraints have not been fully understood or appreciated by the national rivals. The Woomera process therefore assembled a cadre of space experts, including legal academics, military officers, technical consultants, and others, to provide some greater clarity. As one of the editors of the Manual, I can testify about the vigor of the intellectual engagement of the group, as we grappled with so many fine and emerging points of space law that have previously been obscure, disorganized, and chaotic—many of them questions of first impression for the legal community. The Woomera Manual: substance The Woomera Manual includes three kinds of components. First and most prominent is a series of 48 rules, which state concisely and emphatically what the applicable international law requires, permits, or prohibits. These rules are catalogued into three distinct time frames: peacetime, during a crisis, and in armed conflict. The second element is a voluminous commentary, which undertakes to explain the often-terse language of a rule, to elaborate some of the arcane terms of reference, and to provide illustrations of states’ behavior in implementing the rules. This commentary occupies the bulk of the manual, as it assembles a repository of sometimes-obscure state practice in implementation of the key legal instruments. In all of this, the editors of the Woomera Manual were devoted to stating what the law currently is (the lex lata) rather than opining about what the law may or should become (the lex ferenda). The third component is the citations to authority that substantiate the articulation of the rules and the commentary. The manual’s rich footnotes contain a trove of citations to often-overlooked examples, official statements, and heretofore hidden documents that will enable future researchers to retrace the current interpretations. In all of this, the editors of the Woomera Manual were devoted to stating what the law currently is (the lex lata) rather than opining about what the law may or should become (the lex ferenda). Each of the experts and other contributors holds personal views about how the law of space should develop in the coming years, to better serve community interests, but articulating those recommendations is not a function of this Manual. Planetary defense To zoom in on one selected space topic to illustrate more vividly the challenges of applying the pieces of an incomplete legal system to a prospective severe security threat, consider the problem of potentially hazardous asteroids and comets. Our solar system is known to contain millions of asteroids, of widely disparate size, composition, and trajectories. Most of them inhabit the main belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, but many, jostled by collisions, gravity, or space weather, can approach the Earth. Indeed, such collisions are common: “shooting stars” are small asteroids burning up as they transit the atmosphere. Occasionally, larger, more dense asteroids survive that passage and crash to the surface, winding up as museum displays. Larger asteroids can be much more than curiosities; they can inflict significant damage. Some readers will recall the 2013 incident near Chelyabinsk, Russia, when a previously undetected asteroid perhaps 20 meters across streaked across the morning sky and exploded in a dramatic fireball at approximately 30 kilometers altitude. The force of that detonation, estimated at 400–500 kilotons yield (i.e., 20–25 times the power of the atomic bombs detonated at the end of World War II) damaged thousands of buildings and injured hundreds of people. The geological record amply indicates that larger, more devastating asteroids have altered the Earth’s ecology on a massive scale. One such cataclysm, about 65 million years ago, led to the extinction of all species of non-avian dinosaurs. Ominously, astronomers now caution that the proper question is not “whether” that sort of holocaust could happen again, but “when” it will arrive: next year, or not for another 65 million years. Responding to that danger, NASA and its companion space agencies in other countries have undertaken to conceptualize, experiment, and develop technologies and techniques for deflecting incoming asteroids, but that inventive process is far from complete. Only one full-scale real-world experiment has been conducted: NASA’s celebrated DART mission in 2022, which validated the concept of a “direct impact.” There, a small spacecraft flew unerringly for months in order to crash head-on into a small asteroid, succeeding in perceptibly altering its prior trajectory. The language of OST Article IV applies to “weapons.” Would it be possible to interpret the nuclear explosive device employed for planetary defense as being something other than a “weapon,” so the mission could escape the treaty altogether? But what if the asteroid were larger, and if the time available to forestall an impact were shorter? In such an emergency, a more powerful mechanism would have to be employed, and the specter of a nuclear explosion would inevitably be pushed onto the table. Such a response would not be anyone’s first choice, and nothing of the sort has ever been tested, but in extremis, it might be the only technically feasible solution—and international law creates important restraints. The Outer Space Treaty and nuclear weapons The 1967 Outer Space Treaty is the foundational instrument in this field, articulating principles applicable to the exploration and use of space. It has been joined by virtually all spacefaring states, and it provides the essential touchstone for the Woomera Manual. Article IV of the treaty provides a succinct set of military-related prohibitions: States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner. This passage is sometimes oversold as establishing a comprehensive “no nukes in space” rule, but its actual coverage is significantly more constrained. The treaty prohibits three particular activities: placing a nuclear weapon (or other WMD) into orbit, installing it on a celestial body, or stationing it in space in any other manner. Unfortunately, the treaty does not contain the elaborate definitions of terms or other explanatory agreed statements that routinely accompany modern treaties to assist in interpretation. But it is reasonably clear that a nuclear weapon that merely “transits” outer space en route to a terrestrial target (for example, as incorporated into the warhead of an ICBM or SLBM) would not be categorically banned. Accordingly, if planetary defense planners could devise a mission profile that did not transgress any of the three verbs of the Outer Space Treaty—e.g., a “direct ascent” from the Earth to the asteroid, without orbiting the Earth, being installed on the asteroid, or being stationed in space—it could be lawful. One additional interpretive conundrum confronted the Woomera experts and editors. The language of OST Article IV applies to “weapons.” Would it be possible to interpret the nuclear explosive device employed for planetary defense as being something other than a “weapon,” so the mission could escape the treaty altogether? After all, in common parlance, a “weapon” is a device employed for hostile, criminal, or other damage-inflicting purposes. In planetary defense, in contrast, the nuclear power would be marshalled for benevolent, protective purposes, to save people and their property, not to threaten or jeopardize them. There has been, blessedly, no state practice to rely upon here, and various commentators have been divided regarding the best interpretation of the treaty. Ultimately, the editors of the Woomera Manual determined that the proper reading here would focus on the “purpose” of the device, determining that when a nuclear explosive is employed in this planet-saving mission, it is not a “weapon,” and the Outer Space Treaty would not stand in the way. For decades, the treaty’s prohibition against nuclear weapons in space was largely moot: no country had undertaken such a provocative and dangerous mission, and there were no live controversies over interpretation of the ban. But within the past year, reports surfaced that Russia might be actively planning or pursuing such a reckless course. As the Woomera Manual makes clear, any such activity would be a clear, conspicuous violation of longstanding black-letter law, with no countervailing conditions to provide a legitimate excuse. The legal, technical, and political challenges of planetary defense provide just one illustration of the myriad puzzles confronting space lawyers, today and in the foreseeable future. It is hoped that the Woomera Manual can assist these efforts by organizing and summarizing the applicable legal rules and identifying the existing gaps and ambiguities that remain to be resolved. David A. Koplow is a Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, who served as a co-editor of the Woomera Manual. He has previously served in government at the US Department of Defense, the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and NASA.

Blue Streak: A Missile In Search Of A Mission

Blue Streak Blue Streak Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile. (credit: British Aerospace) Blue Streak: Missile in search of a mission by Trevor Williams Monday, November 18, 2024 Bookmark and Share In the 1950s, the British independent nuclear deterrent was provided by the V-bomber force, so called because its aircraft types were the Valiant, Vulcan, and Victor. But, in April 1957, the British government produced a White Paper on future defense policy [1] that essentially stated that the day of piloted fighters and bombers was over, and that future warfare would be conducted solely using missiles. There was therefore a need for a missile that would be capable of providing an independent nuclear deterrence capability for the British Isles: this became the Blue Streak Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM). Blue Streak was eventually cancelled as a military project before making a single flight, which led to consideration of its use as the first stage for various launch vehicle designs, both all-British and European. This article will examine the resulting complicated history of Blue Streak, which is intertwined with those of the rockets produced by the small Saunders-Roe company [2], namely the Black Knight sounding rocket and Black Arrow orbital launch vehicle. Blue Streak IRBM military project, 1955–1960 The de Havilland Propellers company, based in the town of Hatfield northwest of London, received the contract to develop the Blue Streak airframe in 1955; the engines were assigned to Rolls-Royce [3, p. 39]. These companies were felt to be best able to cope with the novel challenges involved with an IRBM, but even so, assistance from the United States was sought. Therefore, the two governments arranged for de Havilland to enter into a consulting agreement with Convair in 1956 whereby the novel pressure-stabilized construction of the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile [4] could be applied, at least partially, to Blue Streak. Both vehicles were made of stainless steel, and the latter was designed to have the same 10-foot (3-meter) diameter as the Atlas, facilitating reuse of the designs for tools and jigs. The 70-foot (21.3-meter) long Blue Streak structure differed in detail from that of the 85-foot (25.9-meter) Atlas though: whereas Atlas skin thickness varied across the structure as a function of local stresses up to a maximum of 0.040 inches (1.0 millimeter), the skin of Blue Streak had a uniform thickness of 0.019 inches (0.5 millimeters) [5, p. 112]. Its fuel tank was stiffened with 48 stringers, which allowed the fuel to be drained without fear of collapse of the vehicle. The oxidizer tank, on the other hand, had to be kept pressurized throughout, as did the Atlas. Blue Streak Rocketdyne S-3 engine (left) and “anglicized” Rolls-Royce RZ-2 version (right). (credit: USAF and Imperial War Museum, resp.) The United States was also prepared to share information in the field of rocket engines, so Rolls-Royce obtained a Rocketdyne S-3 engine: this was based on the booster engines of the Atlas missile and was used in the Jupiter, Juno II, and Thor rockets. Rolls-Royce produced three virtual copies of this as the RZ-1, and then developed an “anglicized” RZ-2 version optimized for Blue Streak [3, pp. 49-50]. Given that the S-3 was a kerosene/oxygen engine, this same propellant combination was necessarily also used for Blue Streak. Each underground launcher would require as much concrete as about 10-20 miles of divided highway in the motorway system that was then under construction in Britain. It was not clear that these demands could be satisfied simultaneously. The design of the Blue Streak IRBM was completed by 1957 but it was cancelled as a military project in 1960, before any test flights had occurred. Cancellation occurred largely due to cost increases, which in turn were linked to efforts to ensure that the missile was not excessively vulnerable in time of war. Blue Streak was never intended for use as a first-strike weapon, so its deterrence capability required that it be able to provide retaliation in the event of a nuclear strike on the United Kingdom. It therefore had to be able to survive such a strike in launchable condition. This was to be achieved by launching the missiles from “underground launchers” (the term “silos” was not yet in use) using the “fire in the hole” technique. It was estimated that about 60 such launchers would be required, spread out sufficiently that a single incoming missile could not destroy more than one of them. Identifying acceptable locations for these sites was challenging given the many constraints that had to be satisfied, particularly considering the small size of Britain, where no point is more than 130 kilometers from the sea. For instance, launchers had to be kept isolated from centers of population and from their evacuation routes, and they had to avoid locations with high water tables. One promising site also had to be ruled out because it was too close to the royal residence of Sandringham House [3, p. 95]. Since the proximity of Britain to the Soviet Union only allowed at most 15 minutes warning of an incoming missile, the launch system was designed to allow rapid response. For various reasons, this led to the launchers becoming massive structures, predominantly made of concrete together with a steel Faraday cage to protect against electromagnetic pulses. For instance, since Blue Streak did not use storable propellants, the missiles could be held loaded with kerosene, but the launch system had to be able to load the liquid oxygen shortly before launch: in the interests of speed, this was performed using a system driven by six tons of compressed nitrogen. Also, the 750-ton steel door that protected the launcher was designed to take only 17 seconds to slide open. In addition, living quarters had to be provided for the launch crew for a total of four days, covering three days before an attack and one day after, in case an earlier response were not feasible. The end result was that each underground launcher, which was U-shaped with one arm for the missile and one for its exhaust gases, would require as much concrete as about 10-20 miles of divided highway [3, p. 101] in the motorway system that was then under construction in Britain. It was not clear that these demands could be satisfied simultaneously. Design of the Blue Streak underground launchers predated those of the silos for the Atlas and Titan missiles, and progress was followed with interest by the USAF. Comparing a Titan II silo with the Blue Streak design, the Titan had the advantage of using storable propellants; also, the geographical constraints were not so severe. Design and construction of the Blue Streak underground launchers turned out to be so challenging [3, pp. 80-103][5, pp. 125-139] that all that was actually built was a one-sixth scale model at the Rocket Propulsion Establishment at Westcott, as well as the start of some excavations at Spadeadam and Woomera. Blue Streak Blue Streak underground launcher. (credit: Hill, A Vertical Empire) Blue Streak Titan II launch silo. (credit: US National Park Service) Unfortunately, without underground launchers, Blue Streak would have been unacceptably vulnerable; with them, it became prohibitively expensive. These considerations were key to the decision in April 1960 to cancel Blue Streak in its IRBM role. It was to be replaced by the US Douglas GAM-87 Skybolt air-launched ballistic missile carried by Vulcan bombers, but Skybolt was itself cancelled in late 1962, without consultation, by the US government. The end result was that the British independent nuclear deterrent was ultimately (from 1968) provided by US-developed Polaris missiles carried on British submarines. However, Blue Streak development continued, with it now under consideration as the first stage for some as-yet unidentified civilian launch vehicle. This was presumably an effort by the government to gain some benefit from the roughly £70 million [6, p. 121] spent on it up to that point. The various proposed launch vehicles will now be discussed. Studies of proposed Black Prince launch vehicle, 1957–1963 One candidate all-British launcher involved using Blue Streak as the first stage, a modified version of the small Black Knight research rocket that had been developed in support of the IRBM project as the second stage, plus an additional third stage. This combination, referred to as Black Prince (or officially the Blue Streak Satellite Launch Vehicle, BSSLV), was first proposed by Desmond King-Hele of the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) in Farnborough in a report dated May 1957 that described its predicted performance [5, p. 182]. Geoffrey Pardoe, the Blue Streak project manager at de Havilland Propellers, presented various similar satellite launch vehicle designs starting in 1959 [7]. One of these repackaged the Black Knight-derived upper stage into a near-sphere matching the 10-foot Blue Streak diameter [5, pp. 183-184]. Unfortunately, the British government was unwilling to spend the additional £60 to 70 million [6, p. 121] that would have been required for development of the BSSLV. Blue Streak One design of proposed Black Prince satellite launch vehicle. (credit: Kaye Dee) Incidentally, King-Hele’s primary work at RAE was not actually on launch vehicle design, but rather on advanced orbital dynamics. In particular, he was a pioneer in the field of satellite geodesy, where irregularities in the gravitational field of the Earth can be quantified by observing the perturbations that they cause to the orbits of satellites. The most significant of these irregularities is the flattening of the poles caused by the rotation of the Earth. Next in importance is the “pear-shape” harmonic of the planet: King-Hele was able to refine the estimate for this, finding that the north and south polar radii differ by about 40 meters. In 1966 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), the highest fellowship available to British scientists, the first to be so honored for space science. His published works included orbital textbooks, biographies of Erasmus Darwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley, and books for the general public on observing satellites (see [8].) His writing style could never be described as dry. For instance, in [8, p. 167] he wrote: …it is a nice coincidence that exactly 50 years after Peary discovered the North Pole, the North Pole was discovered to be peary. Blue Streak Desmond King-Hele of RAE. (credit: Vandyck Studios) King-Hele and Pardoe later became celebrated among space enthusiasts in Britain: in the case of Pardoe, this stemmed from his role as a regular member of the BBC TV coverage team for the Apollo missions. In King-Hele’s case, it came from his accurate prediction of the year of reentry of Skylab, 1979, soon after the space station was launched in 1973. By contrast, the “official” reentry predictions often stretched into the early 1980s, leading to plans to attempt a reboost using one of the early Space Shuttle missions. This effort became moot partly as a result of Shuttle development delays and partly due to the earlier decay of Skylab’s orbit, leading to the spacecraft reentering over Australia. Blue Streak BBC TV Apollo 13 coverage team shortly after the spacecraft successfully emerged from reentry blackout: Patrick Moore (left), James Burke (center), Geoffrey Pardoe (right). (credit: Antonis Skar) Blue Streak and Europa, 1962–1972 Given that development of an all-British launch vehicle based on Blue Streak was not financially viable, attempts were made to identify potential international partners. Development of a Commonwealth launcher was considered, but the key countries of Canada and Australia were not interested. European cooperation was the next logical step, and discussions began in 1960. In the early stages, European interest was mainly limited to France, so development was considered of a launch vehicle with Blue Streak first stage and French second stage. In some respects, this amounted to the Black Prince with a French second stage replacing the modified Black Knight. Blue Streak development continued, with it now under consideration as the first stage for some as-yet unidentified civilian launch vehicle. This was presumably an effort by the government to gain some benefit from the roughly £70 million spent on it up to that point. Eventually though, the European launcher design coalesced into Europa, the development of which started in 1962 under the European Launcher Development Organization (ELDO). Funding was mostly from Britain, with other significant but smaller contributions from France and Germany, and still less from Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The design of the vehicle reflected this funding breakdown: the first stage was Blue Streak, the second stage the French Coralie, and the third the German Astris (both using bipropellant hydrazine engines), with Italy providing the fairing. A small solid fourth stage, the French Diamant BP4, was later added to Europa to form the Europa 2. In case the development of Europa hit snags, RAE and Saunders-Roe considered a contingency plan whereby the upper stages could be replaced by Black Arrow mounted on Blue Streak: to allow for this, the Black Arrow base diameter was specified to be two meters, identical to that of the Coralie stage. In the Black Arrow design, all other dimensions were of course given in imperial units [5, pp. 195-196]. Blue Streak Blue Streak/Black Arrow stack (left) and Europa (right). (credit: Hill, A Vertical Empire) Blue Streak static testing in support of the Europa test flights took place at Spadeadam in the north of England, after which the stage was shipped to Australia for launch from the Woomera rocket range. The first three test launches were simply of the Blue Streak IRBM alone. The first of these, known as Europa flight F1, took place on June 5, 1964. The vehicle experienced instability during the final stages of powered flight, leading to engine cutoff six seconds prematurely, but was still considered a success. Subsequent analysis revealed that the instability was caused by the chosen autopilot gains: these led to excessive lateral oscillations, in turn leading to propellant starvation to the engines [9]. The autopilot gains were adjusted prior to the following two tests, F2 on October 20, 1964, and F3 on March 22, 1965, and both were complete successes. The next two flights, F4 on May 24, 1966, and F5 on November 15, 1966, still had only active Blue Streaks, but now topped by dummy second and third stages and fairing. Both of these launches were also successful. The next two tests, F6/1 on August 5, 1967, and a repeat attempt, F6/2 on December 5, 1967, were equipped with active first and second stages and a third stage mockup. Both experienced failures of the French Coralie second stage. Flights F7 on November 30, 1968, and F8 on July 3, 1969, both had a fully active stack. Both of these experienced failures, suspected of identical causes, of the German Astris third stage. In the subsequent flight F9 on June 12, 1970, faulty pressurization of the Astris propellant tanks led to reduced, and then intermittent, thrusting, and finally to premature shutdown. In addition, the fairing failed to separate: subsequent analysis revealed that the vehicle could have reached orbit in the face of either of these failures, but the combination of reduced thrust and increased mass made this impossible [5, pp. 235-236]. (Coincidentally the Black Arrow R2 launch, which took place about three months after Europa F9 and also at Woomera, experienced a similar combined failure of upper stage pressurization and fairing separation. [5, p. 309].) Europa flight F10 was cancelled for budgetary reasons, so the next, and indeed final, Europa launch was F11, which took place on November 5, 1971. This was in fact the first test of the four-stage Europa 2, and took place from Kourou in French Guiana, which was recognized as far better suited to future launches into geostationary orbit than was Woomera. Unfortunately, this launch failed due to guidance system problems: arcing [5, p. 236] between the payload fairing and the third stage, where the guidance system was housed, caused the vehicle to pitch over excessively, leading to structural failure from aerodynamic forces between the first and second stage [10]. Consequently, by pulling out when it did, a British Treasury goal that space should “pay its own way” was totally missed out on, perhaps due to the Treasury inability to foresee any economic payback from satellites. After this, enthusiasm for Europa and for ELDO, the management structure of which was recognized to be part of the problem, had worn thin. ELDO ceased to exist, merging into the new European Space Agency in 1975. In the process, Britain went from being the most active country in European launcher development to basically pulling out of such efforts entirely. The underlying long-standing government position can be seen from a memo written by F.A. Barratt of the UK Treasury on October 19, 1964, to brief the incoming Chancellor of the Exchequer after the 1964 election [5, p. 360]: We should therefore contract out of all these activities; if Europeans wished to go ahead wasting money on space, that is their affair. Britain was even prematurely reported in 1966 [11] as having already decided to leave ELDO. This news item observed presciently that: The British decision to quit ELDO… seems to have pushed France into a leading position in Western Europe. When Britain actually did pull out of European launcher development after flight F11, it was an unfortunate time to lose nerve: after funding 11 Europa launches with little to show for them besides an impressive unbroken series of successful Blue Streak tests, Britain ended up not participating in the very successful Ariane program, which was led by France. Between 1979 and 2003, the Ariane 1 through 4 family performed 144 launches in total, mainly of geosynchronous spacecraft. By 1986, nearly 60% of all commercial launch services were provided by Ariane. The subsequent Ariane 5 (not a direct development of the Ariane 1-4 family) performed 117 additional launches, bringing the total to 261. Blue Streak Ariane 1, 2 and 3 launch vehicles. (credit: ESA) Consequently, by pulling out when it did, a British Treasury goal that space should “pay its own way” was totally missed out on, perhaps due to the Treasury inability to foresee any economic payback from satellites. For instance, in 1966 they stated that “TV transmission by satellite… is never likely to be economic” [5, p. 340]. This is the sort of mistake that can be made when technical decisions are made by non-technical people. Blue Streak/Centaur concept, 1972 As the Europa program came to an end, Hawker Siddeley Dynamics (the successor company to de Havilland Propellers) made a last-ditch effort to keep Blue Streak in production by carrying out a study that examined combining it with an American Centaur second stage [5, pp. 199-201]. This made some technical sense, as by this point both Blue Streak and Centaur were reliable, flight-tested vehicles; in particular, Centaur was past its early development problems [12]. In addition, Blue Streak, like Atlas and Centaur, had a 10-foot (3-meter) diameter stainless steel structure and partially shared their pressure-stabilized design [4]. A Blue Streak-Centaur would therefore resemble a somewhat truncated Atlas-Centaur, given the 70-foot (21.3-meter) length of Blue Streak versus the 85-foot (25.9-meter) length of the Atlas. (This reduced size reflects the fact that Blue Streak was an intermediate range missile, while the Atlas was intercontinental.) Since a Centaur would be approaching the maximum upper stage mass feasible with Blue Streak, the study also included the optional addition of a pair of French Nord Aviation L17 liquid propellant boosters (derived from the Diamant launch vehicle). Launch would be from Kourou. Blue Streak Blue Streak/Centaur concept with strap-on boosters (left) and without (right). (credit: Hill, A Vertical Empire) But, while this development made sense technically, from the political point of view it was severely flawed. By the time it was proposed, the British government had no further interest in funding launcher development: such efforts had passed to the French. And they, in turn, had no interest in using an American upper stage, even if it were eventually to be built under license in Europe. The Blue Streak/Centaur launch vehicle therefore went nowhere, and the Blue Streak story came to an end. Concluding remarks As a final observation, all through the development of Blue Streak, Black Knight, and Black Arrow, the British Treasury took a penny-pinching approach to their funding. As one small example, when a single Ford Prefect car (not a fleet) was requested in March 1958 for transportation at the isolated Spadeadam rocket engine test site, the response from the Treasury was [5, p. 117]: We… would be grateful if you would substitute a Ford Popular for the proposed Ford Prefect. Hundreds of Populars are in use in Government service, and we would rather keep to this cheaper 4-seater model. This focus on saving two or three hundred pounds brings to mind a phrase from the film The Right Stuff: “No bucks, no Buck Rogers”. And so, in the end, it turned out. References Defence: Outline of Future Policy, Command Paper 124, Secretary of State for Defence, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, April 1957. “Isle of Wight aerospace: flying boats, rocket interceptors, hovercraft, and launch vehicles”, T. Williams, The Space Review, September 23 (Part 1) and September 30 (Part 2), 2024. Blue Streak: Britain’s Medium Range Ballistic Missile, J. Boyes, Fonthill, 2019. Bossart: America’s Forgotten Rocket Scientist, D.P. Mitchell, Mitchell Publishing, 2016. A Vertical Empire: History of the British Rocketry Programme, C.N. Hill, Imperial College Press, 2012 (2nd edition). The Challenge of Space, G.K.C. Pardoe, Chatto and Windus, 1964. “Woomera Range Prepares for Blue Streak Launch”, Aviation Week & Space Technology, January 25, 1960, p. 58. Observing Earth Satellites, D. King-Hele, Macmillan, 1966. “Blue Streak Shutdown Traced to Autopilot”, Aviation Week & Space Technology, July 20, 1964, p. 24. “Europa 2 Loss Tied to Guidance System”, Aviation Week & Space Technology, November 22, 1971, p. 19. “Britain Plans to end ELDO Participation” and “French Continuing Booster Efforts”, Aviation Week & Space Technology, June 13, 1966, p. 38. “The difficult early life of the Centaur upper stage”, T. Williams, The Space Review, March 11, 2024. Trevor Williams in an orbital dynamicist who grew up avidly following the Apollo missions, and has long been fascinated by space history. Note: we are now moderating comments. There will be a delay in posting comments and no guarantee that all submitted comments will be posted.

Book Review: "How To Kill An Asteroid"

book cover Review: How to Kill an Asteroid by Jeff Foust Monday, November 18, 2024 Bookmark and Share How to Kill an Asteroid: The Real Science of Planetary Defense by Robin George Andrews W. W. Norton & Company, 2024 Hardcover, 336 pp., illus. ISBN 978-1-324-05019-3 US$29.99 A guardian of the skies is no more. On the evening of November 1, the NEOWISE spacecraft reentered the Earth’s atmosphere. That destructive reentry came three months after NASA formally retired the aging spacecraft, whose full name was Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, scanning the night skies at infrared wavelengths. It discovered more than 200 near Earth objects and 25 comets: a modest haul, although the spacecraft was not designed for that particular mission. It was launched in 2009 as simply WISE, carrying out a general all-sky infrared survey, and repurposed into NEOWISE in 2013 after it ran out of the helium coolant needed for that original mission. That hand-me-down spacecraft exemplified the bargain basement approach to planetary science until recently. For years NASA spent single-digit millions of dollars annually on the topic. That has changed in the last decade as NASA increased support for both observations of near Earth objects and, then, its first dedicated planetary defense mission, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which successfully collided with Dimorphos, a small moon orbiting the near Earth asteroid Didymos, in September 2022. “It seems patently absurd that such a nothingburger of an asteroid almost killed people,” he writes of the Chelyabinsk meteor. DART is the heart of How to Kill an Asteroid by science writer Robin George Andrews. The book examines the science of near Earth asteroids, the threats they pose, and how they could be addressed with concepts ranging from kinetic impactors to nuclear weapons to more exotic concepts like “gravity tractor” spacecraft. Threaded through that discussion is the development, launch, and operation of DART through its impact. Andrews provides an extensive, enlightening review of the history and state of planetary defense, talking to many of the major people involved in the field today. They have colorful stories to tell, such as one scientist who was investigating a potential impact crater in the Congo only to be arrested and jailed, requiring diplomatic assistance to be released. Fortunately, defending the planet usually does not put people at that level of risk. A theme of the book is that for all the progress made in planetary defense, like the success of DART, it’s not nearly enough. An example of that, Andrews argues, is NEO Surveyor, the space telescope that will be the successor to NEOWISE, designed specifically to find near Earth objects and meet congressional goals of nearly all objects at least 140 meters across. Yet the mission struggled for years to win funding through the Discovery program of planetary science missions, only getting approved in 2019 when NASA directed development of the mission. Even then the mission suffered a funding setback in 2023 when NASA requested only a fraction of the projected funding. Why? No one seemed to know, other than the agency simply ran short of money during its budget development and NEO Surveyor was the unlucky mission to fill the gap. How to Kill an Asteroid can be entertaining at times, written in a casual, accessible style (“It seems patently absurd that such a nothingburger of an asteroid almost killed people,” he writes of the Chelyabinsk meteor.) One flaw is that approach can go off on tangents that go a little too far out on a limb: the discussion of NEO Surveyor leads to mentioning the Vera Rubin Observatory, a groundbased telescope that could also become a key tool for spotting asteroids. That is followed by concerns that megaconstellations can interfere with astronomy, leading to the conclusion that Starlink “does make us less safe as a species,” as one astronomer puts it. There’s little discussion in that section about the cooperation between astronomers and companies to mitigate the brightness of satellites, or whether Starlink is the worst offender versus other constellations, or how much of an impact constellations will have on the ability to detect near Earth objects (a NASA scientist, speaking at an advisory committee meeting early this year, played down concerns about megaconstellations interfering with such discoveries.) The book is effective in explaining both the threats of asteroid impacts and the ability of humanity to do something about them, a capability we lack for many other natural disasters. It argues that we could be doing more, but the same is true for many other challenges we face: is a dollar more spent on planetary defense better than a dollar more spent on, say, improved weather forecasting? The book doesn’t attempt that calculus, but does make clear that it is within our means to protect ourselves from this threat. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.