Look Up

Since 1957 – when Sputnik became the first human-made object to travel to space – we have been incrementally pushing the limits of how far we can go and what we can do beyond Earth. Our knowledge and understanding of space – along with our place within it – has increased exponentially over these past six decades. And even though the furthest that humans have travelled is to the Moon, we have sent robotic craft out beyond that to begin to explore the other worlds with whom we share our cosmic address.

Spacecraft have studied our Sun, trying to make sense of the complex relationship we have with the star that gives us life. They have orbited and mapped out Mercury and landed on Venus, sending back images and scientific details before being crushed and melted under the intense heat and pressure. On Mars, we have sent rovers to roam the surface. Operated from Earth, they conduct experiments in search of signs of past and present life and send back images of the arid, rocky Martian landscape with its milky pink sky, where hopefully one day humans will walk. And in other explorations we have orbited the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn and flown by the ice giants Uranus and Neptune – frigidly cold worlds where scientists suspect diamonds may rain from the clouds.

At the far reaches of the solar system we have visited Pluto. When the New Horizons mission launched from Earth in 2006, Pluto was still known as the ‘ninth planet’. By the time the spacecraft arrived, in 2015 – giving us our first ever view of this distant, frozen world where volcanos may spew ice – Pluto had been reclassified as a dwarf planet. It is now known to be the first of many dwarf planets that exist in our solar system, worlds that are essentially round like a planet, but not massive enough to dominate their orbital paths. While we think we know much about the universe around us, we actually know so little – our understanding is constantly evolving.

Step by step, we are slowly peering out into our cosmic surroundings. We have gained a view of our solar system that even a matter of a century ago would have seemed impossible. We have studied asteroids and chased and landed on a comet. Each robotic space mission brings about new surprises as we explore further than ever before, watching as the mysteries of space begin to unravel before us.

We have also begun to understand the inconceivable enormity of the universe, where our own Sun is just one of many billions of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. And our Milky Way galaxy is one of many billions of galaxies that exist in the universe. There are trillions of stars and probably many more planets. Thanks to advances in our understanding of space – helped by telescopes in orbit – we now have a high degree of confidence that for pretty much every star you can see in the night sky, there is at least one planet orbiting around it. Our solar system is one of many.

Just think about that next time you look up. Think about how weird and wonderful the planets in our own solar system are, then, looking at those stars in the night sky, just imagine – if you can – what could possibly be out there, orbiting those many, many other suns. So far, we have discovered rocky worlds orbiting stars at just the right distance to have the conditions needed for liquid water. There are planets so close to their sun that they zip around it in a matter of days, and we have even discovered a world which scientists believe is made largely of diamond. Whenever I write about other planets, it often seems like science fiction to talk of how alien these worlds are compared with our own. The reality of what we keep discovering is often stranger than any fiction.

At the moment, though, the only place in this impossibly vast universe full of trillions of stars and planets where we know for sure life exists is here, on planet Earth. Proving there is life elsewhere in the solar system has so far evaded our greatest technology and our brightest minds. The universe could be teaming with life; there could even be life on a simple scale within our own solar system. Or we could be totally alone, the sole inhabitants of an impossible, unforgiving universe – our existence and ability to question it down to pure chance. Looking at the numbers, that is highly unlikely, but not impossible. We just don’t know yet. But I for one hope that we are not all alone.

We have studied the formation of planets and conducted research that is helping us to begin to piece together how our own existence came to be. We have photographed the birth of stars and distant galaxies and looked back billions of years into the universe, helped by powerful space-based telescopes, free from the disturbance of our Earth’s atmosphere.

However, compared with how big the universe is (some 93 billion light years in diameter, according to current thinking), we have barely begun to scratch the surface of what is out there. For each new discovery, we are often left with more questions than answers. But all of that possibility and all of those things that we can’t yet explain are what make going to space so exciting; the unknowns, and all the unimaginable things to come. It allows us to dream and wonder what else is out there, what we are a part of. Best of all, this ability to wonder about space is accessible to every single one of us – all you have to do is look up.

Of course, this ability to look up won’t by itself solve many of the immediate or pressing problems that we now face, but it does bring about a sense of belonging and wonder, which I think we all so desperately need now, more than ever. When we look up at the night sky, it is like we are peering out of a window of our Earthly home and out into the universe. We are a part of something greater, though we can’t quite fully comprehend what it is. No matter what we face on Earth, knowing that we are all in this together offers a notion of comfort. What divides us on Earth – borders, class, race – means nothing in the universe. We all call the same planet home. The borders we use to divide us on Earth are meaningless when we leave.

The year 2019 was an incredible one for space exploration. All over the world, people celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of when humans first landed on the Moon, but they also looked to the possibilities that lie before us over the next 50 years. Though we haven’t been back to the Moon since December 1972 – when Apollo 17 became the last lunar landing – the fiftieth anniversary of the first landing came at a time when there was a renewed drive to keep exploring space. And the greatest way to honour those first pioneers of space was to look to the future.

On 20 July 2019, I sat on the National Mall in Washington, DC, not far from the Washington Monument, on a humid summer evening as a sea of people counted down to the exact moment when humans first set foot on the Moon. As video screens played out that historic footage of Neil Armstrong walking down the ladder of the Lunar Module, the crowd around me cheered. At that moment I felt more than ever that space mattered and I was so proud to play my small part in the industry.

Space exploration was getting the public attention it deserves and many – not just those within the niche bubble of the industry – were talking enthusiastically about what was next; people from all walks of life were beginning to get excited about continuing to explore space. At the same time, government agencies such as NASA, along with the many new private companies, were talking of bold plans for our space future, including returning humans to the Moon under the Artemis Program. It felt like a new era in space was opening up.

I started writing this book in that summer of 2019, not just because I wanted to inspire as many people as possible about why space matters, but also to try to explain the importance of this new era in space exploration that we are entering. I wanted to share not only the passion that has defined my entire life, but also the hope and possibility that space gives us. To encourage all of us to step away from our smartphones and technology, and look up with a knowledge of why we explore space, how it has shaped our lives and how it will transform those of generations to come. No matter where you are from, who you are, or what you do, space is for all of us – and we all use space technology far more than you probably think.

There are so many amazing stories to tell of the people who made our journey into space possible. I have chosen the ones that inspire me – some well known, others less so. Of course, no book about space exploration would be complete without the story of how we first took to the stars. The space race took place in the shadow of the Cold War, and in that sense it was fuelled by darkness and fear, and yet it ultimately showed us what could be achieved when we united towards a huge, audacious goal.

Today, what many call the Apollo Generation – those who made the Apollo Moon landings possible – are almost gone. We have lost nearly all of those who enabled us to go to the Moon. But their work laid the foundations for everything we do in space. That is why it is important that their story continues to be told. Within the space industry, the phrase ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ is often used to refer to the work we have done since we first left Earth. Nothing we do in space would be possible without those early pioneers.

But behind every endeavour in space exploration are tales of ordinary people who have done extraordinary things. It is these tales that helped to inspire my lifelong love of space. Leaving Earth is not just about science or wonder, but it is also a very human story – one of dedication, determination and sacrifice. In the face of great losses and personal risk, people still choose to travel to space, drawn to it as if to a higher calling.

And, despite the incredible achievements of the Apollo generation, the world we live in today is not what we expected it to be back in the 1960s. But the reality is that we are living in a space age of a different kind. It might not look how we imagined, but we use space technology every single day. In fact, the many satellites in orbit which look back at Earth have helped transform all of our lives.

In many ways, we are now entering an entrepreneurial space age, which is helping to shape our future. Today, going to space is no longer just about governments, but also private companies and individuals. These investors are changing how we get to space and what we can achieve once we are there. Humans will return to the Moon, they will go onwards to Mars and beyond, and they will continue to use space to benefit us all, thanks in part to these entrepreneurs. Though some of their visions and ambitions might seem bold, it is the ability of these people to go against the status quo and their willingness to embrace failure that are helping us to go further than ever before.

If you look back to the beginning of the last century and see just how much we have achieved in little more than one human lifetime, you can begin to realise how far we will go in this century. My hope is that one day our knowledge of science and technology will have advanced to the point where we can grasp more comprehensively our place within the universe and explore all the untold possibilities that lie before us. Though those stars you can see when you look up are too far for us to reach now, perhaps one day we will find a way.

And finally, of all the things we are doing and have done in space, the greatest achievement is the new perspective we have gained. It is a shift in perspective so powerful that it has reduced to tears some who have experienced it for themselves and given all a newfound love of our planet. Images of our world, showing us as a fragile blue marble with swirls of white clouds set against an ink-black backdrop, seemingly floating in nothingness, are perhaps more poignant and profound today than ever before. In space we are united; we all call the same world home. And in order to continue to explore and to go further, we will need to work together. Exploring beyond Earth is bigger than any one nation or individual.

All of us alive today are part of the privileged few, those who live in a time when humans are no longer confined to one planet, but have the ability to step beyond and begin to discover what is out there. We are all part of the Space Age and the pursuit of knowledge beyond our planet will benefit all of us.

Space exploration teaches us that we are all interconnected, and that when we come together we are capable of great things – a lesson that speaks volumes for us right now. It also shows us the value of science, and that scientific research into every aspect of our being is imperative for our ability to survive the great challenges that we face as a species. But perhaps most importantly, space gives us hope. It gives us the ability to dream, to wonder and to understand that we are all in this together. The possibilities to come from the unknowns of the universe and the sense of wonder gained from looking up at the stars fill me with optimism.

I am finishing writing this book in the spring of 2020, in lockdown. A time when the world has been changed by a global pandemic, but the value of science has never been so abundantly clear. Recently, I have found myself looking up at the stars more than ever. Doing so is a reminder of how tiny we are compared with the vastness of what is out there. It is a notion that has helped me to deal with the various hurdles and problems I have faced in my own life, and it continues to do so in the challenging moments of our current existence. There is still beauty in all of this chaos.

So, on that note, I want to finish with a story about two spacecraft. You may have heard of Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, the twin robotic spacecraft that launched 16 days apart from each other in 1977. Their mission was a journey across our solar system, initially to explore the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, studying Saturn’s rings and learning about some of the moons of the two planets. They were designed to last for five years – long enough so they could complete their mission.

The initial stages of their journey saw the spacecraft study Jupiter’s atmosphere, uncovering many hurricane-like storms and photographing up close the Great Red Spot – a storm almost three times larger than our Earth that has raged on the planet for centuries. They discovered active volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon, Io, and indications of a liquid ocean beneath the icy surface of another moon, Europa. At Saturn, they sent back close-up images of the planet’s rings and found frozen moons shaped by ice volcanoes.

At this point, NASA extended the missions of the two little Voyagers, to keep on exploring. Their five-year lifetimes were stretched out to twelve years and remote programming from Earth allowed the craft to be updated with more modern capabilities. Voyager 1 studied the deep smoggy atmosphere of Saturn’s moon, Titan – the only moon in our solar system that has its own atmosphere, whilst Voyager 2 travelled to the planets Uranus and Neptune. At Uranus it discovered ten new moons orbiting the planet. And at Neptune it discovered a dark spot where winds rage at over one thousand miles per hour and geysers erupt from the poles of the planet’s largest moon, Triton. To date, Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to ever visit these two giant icy balls of gas billions of miles away from us.

With their respective missions complete, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 continued travelling further away from Earth and to the far reaches of our solar system. Even though they were well beyond their expected lifetimes they were still able to communicate via radio signal to scientists back on Earth.

On Valentine’s Day 1990 – at the insistence of the famed cosmologist Carl Sagan – Voyager 1 turned its camera around and pointed it back at Earth. From a distance of four billion miles away, the spacecraft took a photograph. The image, even after being magnified, shows a small pale speck in a corner. The speck is so tiny that if nobody pointed it out, you would probably not notice it. But that tiny speck is all of us. And it is where Sagan’s name for our Earth, ‘The Pale Blue Dot’, came from.

That day, Voyager 1 collected many more photographs that showed six of the other planets in our solar system – Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. All vast unexplored worlds but, from the edge of our solar system, they too looked like tiny bright specks. Stitched together as a mosaic, this became our ‘family portrait’. It will most likely take many human lifetimes to even begin to complete our exploration of what lies within this mosaic.

In 2012, almost 35 years since its launch, Voyager 1 left the solar system and became the first human-made object to reach what is known as interstellar space – the region of space that is beyond the influence and protective bubble of our own Sun or any other star systems. Six years later, in 2018, Voyager 2 followed suit. To save power, the cameras on both spacecraft have been turned off and slowly their instruments will be shut down by scientists. At the moment, the twin craft can still communicate with Earth – a round trip to send and receive data takes more than a day. It is hoped that the spacecraft will be able to transmit signals back to Earth until 2036.

Heading in different directions, when transmissions finally stop, the two spacecrafts will each wander alone in the universe. In the year 40,272, Voyager 1 will pass 1.7 light years from the star Gliese 445. And around the same time Voyager 2 will pass by a small star called Ross 248. Both these stars can be seen here from Earth; they are objects in our night sky that humans have looked up at since our beginnings. Thousands of years from now, two pieces of humanity will have finally reached the stars.

Perhaps by this time, humans will have developed the technology to travel further than we can dream of. They may even catch up with the two Voyagers. But even if they don’t, the spacecraft will still continue on their journeys. Passing by clouds of dust, blown out by dying stars into the vacuum of space.

On board each spacecraft is a twelve-inch disc, known as the Golden Record. These gold-plated phonograph records each contain ‘murmurs of Earth’ – the sounds of our planet and spoken greetings in 55 different languages. They also house electronic images of what life was like in the 1970s – sporting events, families with children, islands in the ocean, dancers and traffic jams in Thailand, as well as details of our anatomy, the structure of our DNA, a map of the planet and a photograph of Earth. Our first cosmic messages in a bottle; a time capsule of who we once were.

Also etched on one side of each record are details of where the two spacecraft have travelled from. Should an extra-terrestrial civilisation ever happen to come across one of the Voyagers, they will be able to decipher the precise location of Earth and how long the crafts have been travelling for. Although in the scale of the universe the chances are slim – the Voyagers are effectively needles in a vast cosmic haystack – there is a small possibility that someone or something might one day discover the first human-made objects to venture beyond our solar system.

In about five billion years’ time, our Sun will swell and die. Earth and the solar system we are only just exploring will be no more. But it is likely that the Voyager spacecraft will still exist – albeit without power. They will spend an eternity wandering through space. Two pieces of the universe that will forever be part of humankind.

In the timespan of one human lifetime, we will not have all the answers to what is out there. We may never have all the answers, but why wouldn’t you want to at least try? To be part of the adventure. We have a choice: remain alone and isolated on this island in the universe that is Earth, or step out into the ocean of our cosmos. All the wonders of the stars above us await.

Prologue

Daring to Dream

‘Curiosity is the essence of human existence.’

Gene Cernan

We are born explorers.

Human beings have always been driven by a desire to know what is over the next hill, on the other side of the river, or across the ocean. In the course of our history, our journeys of discovery may have been motivated by a desire to get rich, to expand our country’s territory or to escape from something at home. But it’s our innate curiosity and our ability to wonder what else is out there that prompted us to make the first steps into the jungle or cast off from the quayside.

Of course, our human curiosity has turned out very badly for some individuals, who took huge risks and paid the ultimate price. But it is this fundamental curiosity that has driven us forward as a species. We love to learn, we yearn to understand what is out there, and leaving the beaten track has taught us a lot of valuable lessons. Our world of today is owed to those who pushed the limits of what is possible; who had a restless urge to know what was over that next hill. Each generation has built on the knowledge gained as a result of the extraordinary risks taken by those who came before them – be that exploring the land around us, sailing the great oceans or taming the skies.

Our quest to discover Earth has gone hand in hand with our fascination with the stars and the universe above us. For nearly as long as there have been people, we have been captivated by space. Cave paintings found at various sites in Europe – some possibly dating back as far as 40,000 years – not only depict hunting scenes and people, but also patterns of the stars in the sky. These primitive star charts were most likely used as a form of time-keeping and demonstrate that our prehistoric ancestors were – like us – looking up.

As civilisations developed, so too did our knowledge and understanding of the stars, and we started to more carefully map and measure what we saw. From Egypt to Babylon, India to China, Greece to Rome and Mesoamerica, there is evidence of humans studying the night sky and using what they could see to better understand life on Earth. Observing the movement of the Sun across the sky and the phases of the Moon led us to develop calendars and learn to tell the time. In Ancient Egypt, for example, the knowledge was used to better plan when to plant and harvest crops, which in turn helped to advance agriculture.

The word ‘planet’ owes its origins to the Ancient Greeks who, like many other civilisations, noticed five star-like objects that, over time, slowly moved through the constellations. Greek astronomers called these points of light asteres planetai, or ‘wandering stars’; today we know they were looking not at stars but at the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

But, lacking in knowledge about the solar system and our place within it, many at the time thought the planets were deities. We owe the names we use for them today in English (and other Latin-based languages) to the Romans, who named them in honour of their gods. The vastness of the night sky and the movement of the celestial bodies were so beyond our comprehension for most of human history that we told ourselves stories of gods and demons to explain them. In Hinduism, eclipses were explained by the demon Rahu briefly getting hold of the Sun or Moon. In Norse mythology, the Sun and Moon are pursued by two wolves, Hati and Skoll, who sometimes briefly catch up with them. And in Ancient China, it was believed that during an eclipse the Sun was eaten by a dragon, and it was necessary to bang on drums to frighten it away – a superstition that persisted even after Chinese astronomers learnt to predict when an eclipse would happen.

Our oldest science – astronomy – also aided our exploration of Earth. Navigation relied on it. Before the compass (invented in China in the eleventh century), the stars guided explorers as they sought to understand the world around them and expand their civilisations. For a long time, the geography of our planet – something we take for granted today – was continually evolving. For many centuries, while Europe languished in the Dark Ages, Chinese and Islamic thinkers and explorers led the way in understanding the world. But by the fifteenth century, some European nations – spurred on by the prospect of expanding their trading routes – were poised to catch up, with huge consequences for the world we know today.