My first stories as WIRED space writer!
Welcome to Ramin’s Space, the newsletter from WIRED space writer Ramin Skibba. You can read more about the newsletter here. If you like it, please consider subscribing and sharing this post. Just wanted to say thank you to my new subscribers, too.
NASA’s NIAC Program Gives a Sneak Peek at the Future of Space Travel
As NASA develops plans for exploring the moon and Mars over the next couple decades, it's supporting cutting-edge research that could turn science fiction into reality. For long-term space exploration, you can’t take it all with you, so these projects include proposals for moon-mining crawlers, Martian buildings made of mushrooms, and space stations that fold into a single rocket! It’s a good reminder that NASA’s continually driving a lot of visionary space R&D. Read all about it in my latest story for WIRED.
SpaceX’s All-Civilian Inspiration4 Crew Returns
SpaceX’s Inspiration4 is a historic spaceflight, with the first all-private, all-civilian orbital flight, just above the International Space Station’s orbit. Its success signals the beginning of the commercial human spaceflight industry. But who gets to go to space? As I wrote before they launched, the Inspiration4 selection process was unorthodox, opaque, and dependent on the whims of billionaires, but in the end they had a talented, well-trained crew. On that issue of access to space, I also recommend this Scientific American piece by Lucianne Walkowicz.
The Dark Asteroid Ryugu Finally Comes Into the Light
In 2018, the Japanese space agency’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft visited the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu, one of the darkest objects ever seen. Now scientists’ findings are coming out, revealing how the mysterious space rock's structured and showing that it likely came from a huge collision in the asteroid belt. Their research also could inform upcoming attempts to nudge an asteroid’s trajectory—a practice run in case one later is on a collision course with Earth.
Second Time’s the Charm: NASA Perseverance Drills a Mars Rock
NASA’s Perseverance rover successfully started its Martian rock collection! For my first story as WIRED space writer, I wrote about how scientists and engineers picked a Mars rock in an ancient crater for the rover to focus on, did a test drill into the rock, and then extracted a sliver of it to save in a sample container in its belly.
In other writing…
How much do genetics matter?
Considering the long history of the uses and misuses of genetics, including in attempts to explain racial differences, it’s no surprise that genetics research is often controversial. That includes work by geneticist and psychologist Kathryn Paige Harden, profiled by Gideon Lewis-Kraus in the New Yorker. It seems that Harden grew out of her environment, growing up in a conservative Texan family, and she wants to show that that’s not the only thing that defines us. That said, we shouldn’t exaggerate genetic differences or ignore insights from social science.
A virus without a world
I like this provocative piece by Danielle Carr in The Nation, reviewing the new edition of science writer Carl Zimmer’s book, A Planet of Viruses. I have a higher opinion of Zimmer’s book than the author does, but I share her concerns about pseudoscience, anti-science views, and the challenges of communicating political aspects of science to readers.
To be a field of poppies
If there’s one certainty of life, it’s that it sooner or later ends in death. As Lisa Wells writes in this poetic essay in Harper’s magazine, there are two kinds of people: those who spend time thinking about and making plans for their future corpse; and those who prefer not to. Unlike her, I belong to the second category. But her fascinating and slightly disturbing account of how “human composting” works nonetheless piqued my curiosity. It’s worth a read.
The rock that ended the dinosaurs was much more than a dino killer
The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, known as Chicxulub, didn’t just cause extinctions. Thanks to new research, it has become something of a Rosetta Stone, revealing details about the origins and future of life, both on our planet and other worlds that get bombarded by space rocks. By Becky Ferreira in the New York Times.
When public health becomes the public enemy
In the United States, there’s a wide range of views about vaccines, masks, and other COVID-related public health measures, but one thing that’s not getting much attention is the health officials who have been pressured and threatened by far-right extremists, especially in Western U.S. states, and they’re leaving their posts in droves. Interesting and disturbing story by Jane C. Hu in High Country News.
What I’m reading: Until Proven Safe, a book by Nicola Twilley and Geoff Manaugh about the history and future of quarantines, and Wild Souls, a book about the environmental and moral questions involved in our relationships with wild animals, by Emma Marris.
Looking back: A little over four years ago, I wrote my first piece for WIRED: “Trump’s ‘America First’ Policies Won’t Work in Space.” The Biden administration has continued some of those policies, and I still don’t think they’ll work.
More about me: I’m the space writer at WIRED magazine, and I’m based in San Diego. I used to be a freelance writer and journalist, and before that, an astrophysicist. You can find me at my website, raminskibba.net, and on Twitter @raminskibba. I’m also former president of the San Diego Science Writers Association (SANDSWA) and on the board of the National Association of Science Writers (NASW), though the opinions I express are mine alone. If someone has forwarded this email to you, you’re welcome to subscribe too.