NASA's Mars simulation tests the mental mettle of "astronauts," and other stories
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.
Happy summer solstice (a couple days late)! And enjoy the winter, those of you south of the equator.
NASA’s Yearlong Mars Simulation Is a Test of Mental Mettle
It’s not a reality show but it kinda sounds like one: Four people are about to cohabitate in a 3D-printed structure for a whole year and live there, isolated, as if they’re on Mars. NASA’s finally paying attention to the psychological and social challenges of long-term space missions. I wrote this for our WIRED30 series, where we’re looking to the future. I was also interviewed on a NPR radio station in Ohio, WOSU, about this too (and I’m the middle interview).
The Race Is On to Crack an Artist’s ‘Test’ Signal From Aliens
An artist, Daniela de Paulis, collaborated with the SETI Institute and the European Space Agency to send a simulated signal to Earth from a Mars probe, as aliens were giving us a call. The actual message hidden within the signal is only part of the story. More importantly, how will we react to first contact with ET? This was my most popular WIRED story this month.
Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City Is a Witty Take on ‘Alien Outsiders’
In the movie Asteroid City, which comes out in theaters today, residents in a Roswell-like town have to figure out how to deal with a brief alien visit. While we’ve seen a handful of movies with nuanced perspectives on alien outsiders, like Contact and Arrival, few have been comedies like this one. I recommend the movie, which is the best of Anderson’s recent films. I wrote this essay for WIRED’s culture desk.
Satellites Keep Photobombing Space Images. Astronomers Need a Fix
Astronomers still do lots of science with Hubble Space Telescope images, but satellite trails increasingly mar them, flying above Hubble when it’s snapping those exquisite photos. The problem can be solved with software for now, but it’ll be a huge problem for telescopes on the ground, especially the Vera Rubin Observatory. I hope satellite constellation companies like SpaceX try harder to avoid transforming our night sky.
In other writing…
NASA’s Apollo 11 moon quarantine broke down
After Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins returned from their historic moon landing, they had to be quarantined in case dangerous microbes came back with them. But new research into their quarantine protocol showed that it didn’t actually work and were mostly for show. Good thing nothing could actually grow on the moon. Fascinating story by Sarah Scoles in the New York Times.
The Strawberry Moon marks a sweet start to summer
Our nights are shorter during this time of year, but we can still enjoy some stargazing and moongazing. And I recommend Rebecca Boyle’s column in Atlas Obscura magazine, too.
Submersion Journalism
Karl Stanley, who previously urged OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush to hold off on trips on the Titan sub, is the subject of this timely feature in Harper’s by Matthew Gavin Frank. It’s an interesting story, but I also agree with journalists at the The New Republic and Democracy Now arguing that we should be more concerned about the some 700 migrants who likely died in last week’s shipwreck off the coast of Greece.
Fireball Over Siberia
A decade ago, a meteorite hurtled into the ground near the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, and many people were injured while gawking out their windows, but no one was killed. Impacts from bits of asteroids and comets are rare, but they do happen! I like this essay about Tunguska and what we’ve learned, by Sophie Pinkham in the New York Review of Books.
Have you been to the library lately?
I love public libraries, even though I visit and use them less than when I was a kid. They’re one of the few free places in our communities, and they need support. But as Nicholas Hune-Brown writes in The Walrus magazine, these chronically underfunded institutions have often been forced to take on roles of the welfare state, coming to the aid of people dealing with mental distress and homelessness.
RIP, Cormac McCarthy. I appreciated his elegant and stark writing style in novels like Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses, and I enjoyed his science writing, too.
And RIP Daniel Ellsberg, the US’s most famous whistleblower, who led the way for many others. He never feared to speak the truth about war and militarism.
What I’m reading: Stories of Your Life and Others, by Ted Chiang, including the story that inspired the movie Arrival.
Looking back: One year ago, I wrote in WIRED about the black carbon cost of rocket launches. I’m proud of that piece, and I worry that the problem will get much worse.
More about me: I’m the space writer at WIRED magazine, and I’ve recently moved from San Diego to the Bay Area. 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.