The 16 and 17-year-old girls from disadvantaged areas in Cape Town will refine the design of the payload – the scientific instrument on board the satellite – and prepare it for launch later this year.

The year-long programme began with 120 girls taking part in several technical workshops, with the most talented of the students joining week-long ‘SpaceTrek’ camps where they built high-altitude weather balloon satellites.

Just 12 girls will take part in the final phase, which will determine what the payload will measure, (options include surface temperature, sound levels and radioactivity). Once it is in orbit, pupils from all phases will be able to communicate with the satellite and make use of the data generated.

Now I can stand my ground and pursue science

The project, coordinated by The Meta Economic Development Organisation (MEDO) in collaboration with Morehead State University, aims to encourage girls to consider science, technology, engineering and maths, (STEM) subjects. According to MEDO CEO, Judi Sandrock, around 80 per cent of future jobs will require a STEM background, and yet only 14 per cent of women worldwide work in the fi eld. Bhanekazi Thandwa, 17, said: “SpaceTrek has opened my eyes. Now I can stand my ground and pursue science.”

It is hoped that the girls’ space technology programme will be extended across Africa.

 
Photo: MEDO

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On the day Neil Armstrong died, I was walking along the south bank of the Thames. There was a harvest moon, a beautiful coincidence, a moon so dominant on such a day. Sadly, I wondered how long it would be before we lived again on a planet where no human alive had stood on the moon. Eugene Cernan was the last man on the moon, three and a half years after Armstrong had set foot on it. By the time I was conscious of it all, the space race seemed pretty much over. When discussing interplanetary space travel with Brian Blessed, he was loudly disappointed that his boyhood dreams of a journey to Mars were still not a possibility.

But in the last few years, I have started to spot children in astronaut playsuits again and, increasingly, adults’ T-shirts emblazoned with the Nasa insignia. The excitement over the Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age exhibition at the London Science Museum has been palpable. There is a new hunger to journey into space.

Despite what you might be told by cultural commentators, not every child dreams of X Factor victory, some want to conquer space more than conquer Cowell. When the International Space Station visibly flew by on Christmas Eve 2014, some parents pretended it was Santa’s sleigh, but many realised that the truth was even more delightful for young minds.

“Not every child dreams of X Factor victory, some want to conquer space more than conquer Cowell”

Grand scientific adventures begin with excitations of human imagination. The end of 2015 saw the first British astronaut from the European Space Agency, Tim Peake, go to the International Space Station. There is increasingly frequent talk of Nasa’s proposed mission to Mars and October saw the first album of songs recorded in space released; Chris Hadfield’s Space Sessions. Our planet may be a small speck, but it happens to be home to an ambitious creature that wants to reach beyond its own habitat and even has designs on making homes on other planets. A mission to Mars holds many potential problems, including radiation. Nasa’s Gary Marin has said: “Every cell of your body would be traversed by a galactic ray, and we just don’t know what that would do to people.”

Radiation research on protection from cosmic rays reveals that lead, the go-to metal for protecting nuclear industry workers, actually creates a secondary radiation when struck by cosmic rays. The impacts of prolonged weightlessness on muscles and bone are better recorded.

No astronaut ventures into space without knowing he or she will return a changed human being – physically and psychologically – yet this is seen as no impediment to the thousands who queue up for rigorous testing in the hope of going into space, and perhaps of going further than any before.

There is still debate as to the practicalities of human space flight versus rovers and robotic probes. In cosmic terms, we cannot journey far yet. Our galaxy alone is 100,000 light years in diameter, and there are billions of other galaxies. Our species may well have died out before we are able to discover life beyond our planet. The history of our universe may be a story of many planets housing questioning, conscious lifeforms, and none of them may ever coincide technologically, so the best we may hope for is an interplanetary archeological dig or computer models predicting where future life may flourish.

None of that should stop the attempts to journey further. As we see the remarkable events occurring across the universe, we learn too how remarkable the prolific life that we see all around us is.

ISS vs ISIS

From the initial priming of the satellite to the analysis of the resulting image, it took only hours for the United Nations to determine that ISIS had destroyed the nearly 2,000-year-old Temple of Bel in Palmyra, Syria, in August 2015.

This image is the first time that Urthecast, the Earth-observation company that captured it, released same-day imagery of a critical area of interest for the UN. The satellite that took the image, Deimos-2, is being used to capture changes to the Earth. Urthecast claims it is using the technology ethically and aims to open up its data and democratise not only its satellite imagery but the tools to make images accessible and affordable.

This means that as well as providing views of the globe through an ultra high definition colour video camera attached to the International Space Station (ISS), Urthecast’s data can be accessed by developers, researchers, NGOs and journalists. It provides information about regions too dangerous or too remote to access. It is thought that comparing images over time may help uncover important stories, provide accountability for destructive actions, and also measure ecological changes and monitor humanitarian situations.

Urthecast’s founder, Scott Larson, says its approach is based on the ‘overview effect’, the phenomenon that leaves astronauts with an overwhelming appreciation of the planet and an urge to protect it. “It is a piece of this experience that we aim to provide for the entire world,” he says.

Photo: Urthecast

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The shattered remains of a planetary body, or asteroid, are currently orbiting a white dwarf star called GD 61 and are about 170 light years away from Earth, according to astronomers at the Universities of Warwick and Cambridge. Both rocks and water have been detected on the asteroid; two ‘ingredients’ considered vital for the origin of life.

Researchers believe the asteroid comprises remnants from a small watery planet that was knocked out of its original orbit and pulled so close to its sun that it was broken up in the process.

Professor Boris Gänsicke, from the department of physics at the University of Warwick, said: “At this stage in its existence, all that remains of this rocky body is simply dust and debris that has been pulled into the orbit of its dying parent star.

“However, this planetary graveyard swirling around the embers of its parent star is a rich source of information about its former life.”

Jay Farihi from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy said: “Our results demonstrate that there was definitely potential for habitable planets in this exoplanetary system.”

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The idea of sanctuary as a sacred place of refuge is returning to our hectic, noisy world. In medieval times a sanctuary was a place for a fugitive on the run to seek safety and be immune from arrest. The word itself is derived from the old French ‘sanctuaire’, implying safety, and the Latin ‘sanctus’ meaning holy. Now, in the 21st century, we are re-establishing this idea of sanctuary in relation to nature and wildlife reserves, spiritual retreats and even with the successful City of Sanctuary movement that is building a culture of hospitality for refugees in UK cities such as Bristol, Liverpool, Sheffield and Leeds.

We can extend this idea of sanctuary into our own homes by setting aside a space where we can contemplate and be still. With the increased pressures that technology is placing on society through smartphones, email and social media, isn’t it desirable that in the future each home might include a safe haven or a dedicated corner into which we could withdraw, however briefly, from the constant electronic intrusion?

Here, we’re not talking about a retreat from the world or a disengagement from the issues of our time – there is sometimes a criticism of spiritual seekers implying they are impractical or remote. What we’re talking about is an engaged spirituality, based on a recognition that slow, quiet time spent in deep silence will help to heal the world from its obsessive materialist nature.

In the past this practice was often undertaken in withdrawal, but now we’re seeing the spread of spiritual practices in everyday lives. This is where the importance of sanctuary comes in as we try to hold an inner calm in the face of a world in crisis. Creating a physical space into which we can withdraw is helpful for this.

In that space – maybe a small corner of a room decorated with flowers, or perhaps a space outside – we can withdraw from the world of sense impressions and the world of doing, allowing ourselves instead to just be. Entering our sanctuary of silence can allow us to drop our identification with the physical body and its egocentric thought processes, linking us to something deeper. But both doing and being are mutually interdependent, and so this experience can be transformative and inspiring, producing some surprising results as we return to our daily activity.

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