A New Era of Moon Exploration

In my latest essay for The New Yorker, I explore why the moon is so busy these days, and what that means for life on Earth.

On February 22nd, a robotic lander named Odysseus touched down on the sun-washed highlands near the south pole of the moon. It was the first time since the Apollo 17 mission, fifty-two years ago, that an American spacecraft had landed gracefully on the lunar surface. And yet NASA hadn’t designed or built Odysseus; it was renting space onboard. Intuitive Machines, a relatively small aerospace firm based in Houston, was responsible for the lander, which launched atop a SpaceX rocket. The event was historic not just because it signalled a return to the moon but because it was the first time that a private company from any country had landed a spacecraft there. It won’t be the last: Odysseus marks the beginning of a new, relentless, and open-ended campaign of robotic and crewed lunar exploration. The program is called Artemis.

Read the rest here.

Margaret Kivelson Figured It Out

Last week, I had a piece in the New York Times about space physicist Margaret Kivelson, who led the Galileo team that discovered Europa’s subsurface, saltwater ocean. A snippet:

LOS ANGELES — The data were like nothing Margaret Kivelson and her team of physicists ever expected.

It was December 1996, and the spacecraft Galileo had just flown by Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter. The readings beamed back to Earth suggested a magnetic field emanating from the moon. Europa should not have had a magnetic field, yet there it was — and not even pointed in the right direction.

“This is unexpected,” she recalled saying as the weird data rolled in. “And that’s wonderful.”

It would be the most significant of a series of surprises from the Jovian moons. For Dr. Kivelson’s team, the mission should not have been this exciting.

She and her colleagues had devised the magnetometer returning the anomalous data. The instrument’s job was to measure Jupiter’s massive magnetic field and any variations caused by its moons. Those findings were likely to interest space physicists, but few others. Dr. Kivelson’s instrument was never supposed to change the course of space exploration.

And then it did. Dr. Kivelson and her team would soon prove that they had discovered the first subsurface, saltwater ocean on an alien world.

You can read the rest here.

Credit: Image provided by Margaret Kivelson

When Congress Puts NASA on Hold, Planets Don’t Wait

Today's edition of the New York Times contains my very first op-ed for them, on how budgetary uncertainties harm the American space program.

The United States asks NASA to do an extraordinary amount with very little money. Explore Mars, document climate change, stop doomsday asteroids, find life on Europa — all for less than one-half of 1 percent of the federal budget. But budget uncertainties on Capitol Hill, including delays in federal appropriations legislation and temporary government shutdowns, measurably harm the American space program. Even the threat of a shutdown can have a far-reaching impact on scientific projects, often in unexpected ways.

Read the rest here. (Or go buy a copy.)

Thank you to Casey Dreier at the Planetary Society, who is infinitely patient and kind, and one of the smartest guys in the business.

UPDATE: Hello New York Times readers! You might also be interested in this piece I wrote for Vox earlier this year on the looming gap in outer planetary exploration.