NASA tries to make space sustainable, and other stories
Welcome to Ramin’s Space, the newsletter from science writer Ramin Skibba. You can read more about the newsletter here. If you like it, please consider subscribing and sharing this post.
First, I have to comment on what’s happening right now. It’s heartbreaking and frustrating watching Israel’s war in Gaza continue, now for more than 200 days, following Hamas’s brutal attack on October 7. Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, more than two thirds of whom have been children and women, and now mass graves have been found next to two major hospitals, with some bodies showing signs of torture, execution, and people buried alive. The remaining population of the besieged territory is now on the cusp of famine (as is Sudan, a so-called “forgotten crisis”), so the death toll could rise as families struggle to survive. The United States is further funding Israel’s war, with billions of dollars of weaponry, and prolonging it (as well as the Russia-Ukraine/NATO war, and arming Taiwan against China, conducting military exercises nearby, and banning TikTok). Israel has repeatedly violated international law and has had a pattern of committing war crimes (as Russia has done as well), and it’s plausibly committing genocide in Gaza. Yet US foreign policy and unequivocal support for the jingoist Israeli government has hardly changed, as Israel’s war now extends into 16 countries, risking a broader and bloodier conflict. Americans always seem to have an appetite for more war, and for xenophobia too: 51% of people, including 42% of Democrats, now say they’d support mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, according to a disturbing new poll.
I’m heartened though to see widespread protests and encampments, including by university students throughout the United States, which are now spreading to France, Germany, England, and elsewhere. It’s reminiscent of the Iraq War protests of 2003 (which I actively participated in) and Occupy Wall Street in 2011. Some people even compare this movement to the mass protests of 1968 against the Vietnam War. Just as students are protesting their universities’ involvement and calling for a divestment from Israel and from military projects, Google and Amazon workers have been protesting their companies’ billion-dollar Project Nimbus, providing AI and cloud computing to the Israeli military. Dozens of those workers have been fired, including two of the employees who participated in this Democracy Now interview.
While we’re not seeing leadership from US political leaders, we’re seeing it instead from brave young people, peacefully protesting while facing off against battalions of police forces. I hope that activism and organizing continues and makes an impact, if not today, then tomorrow. Iraq War and Occupy protestors weren’t immediately successful but they both arguably did significantly influence policy makers and elections a few years later. Social movements matter.
Debates and controversy involving Israel’s war in Gaza has affected writers, too. The free expression organization PEN America was going to hold its Literary Awards event next week, right before its planned World Voices Festival, but dozens of prominent writers and translators like Naomi Klein and Lorrie Moore—nearly half the nominees—withdrew, writing in an open letter that “Palestine’s poets, scholars, novelists and journalists and essayists have risked everything, including their lives and the lives of their families, to share their words with the world. Yet PEN America appears unwilling to stand with them firmly against the powers that have oppressed and dispossessed them for the last 75 years.” Both events have now been canceled. At the same time, Guernica magazine recently retracted an essay by the Israeli translator Joanna Chen, though it’s still accessible on the Wayback Machine, and several editors resigned. Some argued that the piece normalizes the systematic and historic dehumanization of Palestinians.
Politically, I agree with PEN’s and Guernica’s critics. But personally, I’m torn. It’s a fundamental problem that apologists for imperialism and colonialism sit upon the tallest pedestals of the media industry, with their writings published by established institutions, while their critics struggle to be heard at all. It happens over and over again, and it’s not a system of free speech that’s compatible with democracy. That said, in general, I thing the best response to bad speech (however that’s defined) is more speech, and silencing someone is undemocratic too. I don’t have a solution. This is complicated, and it’s important we continue having these conversations.
Now, onward to science writing.
How NASA’s Trying to Go Green in Space
I had the chance to interview Pam Melroy, the #2 at NASA, for this National Geographic piece about the space agency’s new “space sustainability” framework, focused on the millions of pieces of space garbage in orbit. It’s a good idea, but the experts I spoke to argue that NASA’s late to the game and should be taking more action before the space pollution problem worsens.
‘Humanity’s spacecraft’ Voyager 1 is back online and still exploring
I also wrote this short story for Science News magazine about the iconic Voyager 1, which was on the brink of failure but thankfully seems to be recovering. I hope the 46-year-old probe’s interstellar science mission will continue a bit longer.
In other writing…
The invisible seafaring industry that keeps the internet afloat
I didn’t realize that there are some 800,000 miles of internet-providing undersea cables that we rely on, more than we do satellites, and they’re constantly breaking and in need of repair. Fascinating feature by Josh Dzieza in The Verge.
Insects and other animals have consciousness
Everyone knows about the smart animals, like dolphins, apes, and crows. But there’s a “realistic possibility” that insects, crustaceans and other creatures have some form of consciousness too. Interesting piece by Dan Falk in Quanta magazine, opening up a bunch of ethical questions.
I also recommend this NYT magazine piece by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy about animal feelings and animal welfare. And this recent NYT story by Emily Anthes poses questions about “assisted evolution,” and whether we should consider changing species in the interest of wildlife conservation.
These Women Came to Antarctica for Science. Then the Predators Emerged
McMurdo Station in Antarctica is one of the most isolated research outposts in the world. It’s like a small town, but at the bottom of the Earth. Despite the focus on science though, 59 percent of women there have experienced sexual harassment or assault. This WIRED feature by David Kushner tells some of their stories.
Slippery Slope
Small mountain towns in Colorado, Montana, and elsewhere in the American West don’t get much attention in major publications, so I was glad to see this Harper’s piece by Nick Bowlin. He shows how many of these have become modern company towns, with property ownership in the hands of private interests, who can then manipulate local democratic processes.
How Jeff Koons’s lunar artwork could outlast all of humanity
It’s still incredibly expensive to launch anything to the moon, but it’s happening more often. Who decides what we send into space? A private company’s lander recently delivered a Jeff Koons sculpture to the lunar surface, where it’ll sit for millennia. David Brown raises important ethical issues in this Scientific American piece.
An age of hyperabundance
Laura Preston gives us an inside look at an artificial intelligence conference in this insightful n+1 magazine piece about the collective delusion and techno-optimism being peddled to our society. I also liked this deep dive in 404 Media by Jason Koebler about the false claim that Google’s DeepMind discovered new materials. We need more debunking of hype like that.
The butterfly in the prison yard
Two weeks ago, Iran released cheetah expert and conservationist Niloufar Bayani and three others from prison. In this Sunday Long Read piece, reporter Lucy Sherriff writes about how Bayani was arrested and managed to preserve her humanity, and that of others, in the notorious Evin Prison.
What I’m reading: Erasure, a novel by Percival Everett, on which the movie “American Fiction” is based.
Looking back: Eight years ago, I interviewed an Iranian botanist for Scientific American about the shrinking Lake Urmia, one of the largest hypersaline lakes in the world and home to unique ecosystems. After a couple years of recovery, the lake’s disappearing again. I hope Iranians are able to save it.
More about me: I’m a science writer and journalist based in the Bay Area. I was WIRED magazine’s space writer until December 2023, and before that I worked as a freelance writer and an astrophysicist. You can find me at my website, raminskibba.net, and on Twitter and Bluesky. 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.