Space archeologists are charting humanity’s furthest frontier, 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.
Space Archaeologists Are Charting Humanity’s Furthest Frontier
What’s life actually like on the International Space Station? And how might it be different on the Chinese or upcoming commercial space habitats? I enjoyed writing this piece about how a band of archaeologists apply their tools to uncover clues about this unique astronaut community.
What Time Is It on the Moon?
The European Space Agency and NASA have been setting up systems for communication and navigation for upcoming lunar missions, including a time-keeping system. But what really is time on the moon? And who sets the time? This was my most popular story for WIRED this month.
SpaceX’s Starship Explodes During First Near-Orbital Test Flight
The Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster launched successfully this morning and then blew up off the coast of Texas during what was supposed to be stage separation, failing to complete the near-orbital flight test. There’s a lot at stake with this rocket, including a big contract with NASA.
The Art of Capturing Meteorites’ Mineral Mosaics
Flaming rocks from the sky hurtle down to Earth from Mars, asteroids and other worlds. But those smoldering stones come with surprises, and there’s actually an intricate beauty to the minerals within them. Artist Neil Buckland managed to capture that with a DIY microscopic camera. This story was published online and in the WIRED print magazine.
The ‘Bad Astronomer’ Takes You on a Tour of the Cosmos
What would it be like to visit Mars, Saturn and strange new worlds orbiting distant stars? I enjoyed interviewing Phil Plait for this piece, as he publishes his new book, Under Alien Skies.
In other writing…
Electric bodies
Seems like everybody has wearable technologies like Apple Watches these days. But they have limited privacy protections, and we have to wonder how much of hour own health data is being exploited by insurance companies and advertisers. I’ve been enjoying reading this piece by Jameson Rich and other work in The Drift, a pretty new literary magazine that was founded in 2020.
Songs of the dammed
We know what happens to our water supply and hydropower when water levels drop at crucial reservoirs like Lake Powell on the Colorado River. But there are other downstream effects too, as native plants and wildlife reclaim Glen Canyon. It’s a silver lining, I suppose. I like this story by Morgan Sjogren, and the accompanying photos, in bioGraphic magazine.
Gone to the dogs
I didn’t even know this was an issue: Unleashed dogs can actually have an impact on shorebirds, many of which have little energy to expend while on their migration journeys. So how much responsibility do dog owners have? This is a well-written feature story by Ben Goldfarb in Hakai magazine.
The little-known origin story behind the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics
Chien-Shiung Wu, an important physicist who played a major role in discovering quantum entanglement, went largely ignored throughout her career. Michelle Frank argues in this interesting Scientific American piece that her work inspired not one but two Nobels, and she should not have been overlooked.
What I’m reading: Hiroshima Notes by Kenzaburo Oe, who died last month. The Nobel Prize-winning novelist and peace activist wrote about the horrors of atomic bombs and the struggles of survivors. I also recommend this interview with him in The Paris Review.
Looking back: A year ago, I wrote a short essay about the successes of Elon Musk’s SpaceX while engaging in some much-needed myth-busting.
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.