Field of view
On Earth and in orbit, Laurent Marfisi considers the democratisation of space
We’re seeing the dawn of a new era of space exploration. This July, tourists took two trips to the edge of space aboard private missions. Richard Branson’s VSS Unity spaceplane flew him and three other passengers to an altitude of 85km above our planet. Nine days later, Jeff Bezos followed onboard his New Shepard rocket.
Both trips launched a small group of lucky individuals into what has long been a dream for many: to go to space. Today, the so-called ‘New Space’ industry is promising to revolutionise the way humans think about the cosmos. Some day soon, space may be part playground and part goldmine for tourists and entrepreneurs.
But with the sky-high price of tickets to space, the final frontier is still far away for most of us. Thankfully, another way of accessing space is also more attainable today than it’s ever been before. This new era of technology that gave rise to Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and SpaceX is paralleled by a similar, and way more democratic era of ‘New Astronomy’ for telescopes, which gives everyone an opportunity to explore the stars.
In the growing New Astronomy movement, innovative technologies are being paired with affordable, high-quality equipment so a new generation of amateur astronomers can see the heavens like never before. The result is an emerging cultural and scientific shift that’s exposing fresh audiences to stargazing and unlocking groundbreaking examples of citizen science.
Powerful commercial digital telescopes now allow stargazers without prior experience a chance to observe deep-sky objects from their back gardens, even in light-polluted skies. Meanwhile, innovative image-processing techniques and modern connectivity provide new ways to share and enjoy stunning views of celestial wonders on social media. And anyone can now make meaningful discoveries.
Amateur astronomers have long played a vital role in advancing research, but today’s technology, including easy-to-use software and precision pointing abilities, lets citizen scientists contribute high-quality data in ways not previously possible. For example, recent observations by citizen astronomers have refined our knowledge of a number of asteroids’ sizes and shapes, and helped with the study of targets to be visited by NASA’s Lucy probe. Meanwhile, exoplanet observations from amateurs are helping astronomers to refine transit timings.
In a testament to their important contributions, scientific journal articles increasingly bear the names of citizen scientists as co-authors.
Scientists with NASA, ESA and other research groups keep a close eye on near-Earth objects (NEOs). Their planetary defence efforts might sound like science fiction, but the threat of an asteroid impact is real. By watching asteroid occultations and close flybys, distributed networks of stargazers around the world are adding impactful observations of NEOs to aid astronomers, who often don’t have the resources to keep track of everything.
While we celebrate the technologies that launch tourists to space, it’s worth remembering that similar advances are opening up the Universe to everyone else. In our present age, it’s possible for us all to have access to the cosmos in a way that’s both fun and meaningful — no rockets necessary.