A truly global vision of space exploration in 'Beyond Planet Earth'
On Saturday, November 19, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City will welcome a new special exhibit to its halls, titled "Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration." Before you read any further, you should know this isn't just any ordinary space exhibit.
Beyond Planet Earth isn't a collection of relics from the space race and a history of America's efforts to explore the vastness surrounding Earth. It's got that, sure, but what the exhibit is really about is where we're going: both in the near-term, and as far out as 500 years from now. More than that, it's either the first — or certainly one of the few — major exhibits that presents space exploration as a global effort, and one that will become more international as humanity reaches out into the stars.
Beyond Planet Earth doesn't brush NASA under the carpet by any means, but the exploration of space is a human endeavor, and one that's adding new nations and corporations to its roster all the time. Read on to find out what you can expect to see beyond the cradle.
"Beyond Planet Earth" is curated by Dr. Michael Shara, an astrophysicist who spent 17 years at the Space Telescope Science Institute at John Hopkins (the folks who work with the Hubble Space Telescope), and now he's a curator at the AMNH's Department of Astrophysics, where he's worked for 12 years. The idea of creating an exhibit that was more than just a list of NASA's greatest hits was the goal of Dr. Shara and his team from the start. Private spaceflight companies, the Soviet space program, the wildest (yet possible) visions of humanity's presence in space — it's all in there.
The First Thing You See: Soviets in Space
America may have been the first nation to put boots on the Moon, but the rival Soviet program beat the U.S. to a lot of early space race milestones. Sputnik 1 was the first man-made satellite to be placed in Earth's orbit in 1957. Also in '57, Laika, one of dozens of Soviet "space dogs," was the first animal to reach orbit (and die there, sadly). On April 12, 1961, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and his Vostok capsule would rob America's fledgling Mercury program of two coveted titles in one flight: Yuri becoming the first man to enter orbit, and the Vostok 1 the first spacecraft to orbit the Earth. (Gagarin ejected a little over four miles above the ground and did not land within the capsule, which was round and controller-less and not designed to do much more than bounce to a stop.)
All of this is presented in celebration of the Soviet space program's achievements, rather than pitting it against America's earliest manned spaceflight efforts. This is where it really all started. It wasn't a failure for America, which would realize these ambitions and more, but a triumph for Russia.
For more, there's a rather long list of notable firsts for the Soviet space program here.
NASA Takes The Stage
You can't talk space without talking NASA, and in presenting the exhibit, Dr. Michael Shara himself said that the U.S. agency had a promising and rich future ahead of it yet. Pictured is a diorama near and dear to Dr. Shara's heart: STS-125, the mission when Space Shuttle Atlantis took a crew of seven up to perform vital repairs and upgrades to the Hubble Space Telescope.
Painstaking care has been taken to recreate the scene, depicting the red-striped suit of astronaut John Grunsfeld, a five-flight veteran who has performed eight spacewalks. In the very near future, it's this kind of scene that may not have NASA astronauts in it. The U.S. space agency has set its sights on deep space exploration, leaving orbital operations as an arena perfect for private spaceflight companies to compete in.
The Rise of Private Spaceflight
Virgin Galactic, Spaceport America (also a Virgin effort), Bigelow Aerospace, SpaceX even household names such as Boeing — the conquest of near-Earth space will be made by corporations and private industry. National agencies such as NASA, ESA, JAXA, Russia's Roscosmos and China's CNSA will most likely still play roles as guiding hands, but in Beyond Planet Earth, humanity's rapid expansion into orbit, the Moon and beyond relies on innovations spurred on by the competition of private companies.
Space exploration has always been a tricky proposition. A company can send some enormously expensive hardware out and get absolutely nothing back, and no corporation is going to be into that. Dr. Shara and his exhibit present a future where this is not so: orbital and lunar tourism returns money into private spaceflight company coffers, mining asteroids brings rare materials and cash, and space is suddenly a place to make money, not to have it swallowed up.
It all culminates in a Moon-to-space station elevator that'll ferry supplies and humans from orbit to the lunar surface. I thought this was the craziest thing the exhibit could throw at me, but then I looked to my right.
Beyond Planet Earth
Welcome to Mars. Rovers aren't the only presence you'll find here. You'll find people, such as this astronaut dressed up in MIT aeronautics and astronautics professor Dava Newman's next generation space suit:
Mars is the new Moon in terms of space exploration targets. Is there life there? Can we form a sustaining presence? Is there money to be made? Or, the most difficult question to answer: can we terraform the Red Planet, and colonize it? The AMNH didn't go light on the tech, with a Surface-style touchscreen table here walking you through the steps necessary to turn the Red Planet green:
The exhibit doesn't end there, either. There's life to hunt for beyond Mars, after all, and at the very end is what we're told is the largest walk-through hologram in the world, though it wasn't up and running at the time of our visit. We'll definitely be back to get a look of that.
In the gallery below you'll find some of the sights waiting for you at Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration. There's much more than what we have here, though. It's an excellent exhibit that's definitely worth a look if you find yourself in New York City. The exhibit opens November 19, and runs until August 12, 2012.
Photos above shot on location by Dania Nassar for DVICE. Gallery photos and captions provided by the American Museum of Natural History
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Lunar Base at the South Pole of the Moon Dr. Mark Garlick — an illustrator and astrophysicist — created this moonscape depicting a lunar elevator docking at a terminal on the Moon's South Pole, a liquid mirror telescope, and a bulldozer mining for helium-3, some of the exciting technologies featured in the American Museum of Natural History's new exhibition Beyond Earth: The Future of Space Exploration, which opens November 19. (Image/caption: Mark Garlick/AMNH)
Goodyear Lunar Spring Tire This wire-mesh tire may help future lunar rovers drive across the Moon. Its design is based on the wheels from the Apollo rovers of the 1970s. Composed of 800 separate wire springs, this new tire can't be punctured by sharp and bumpy surfaces, which can damage an ordinary air-filled tire. Since there are no roads on the Moon (yet), that's a valuable feature. Tire courtesy of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. (Image/caption: D. Finnin/AMNH)
Astronaut's Gold Visor One hazard on the Moon is the Sun — specifically, unfiltered solar radiation. All 12 Apollo astronauts who walked on the Moon needed to wear gold-coated visors like this one to reduce the Sun's intense glare and heat. Future helmets and the windshields of future rovers may also need to be coated with gold. (Image/caption: D. Finnin/AMNH)
From the Earth to the Moon Jules Verne's 1865 adventure story From the Earth to the Moon may be the most influential science fiction novel ever. Written a full century before humans landed on the Moon, the witty novel is full of solid science about the possibilities of space travel. In the story, the space capsule Columbiad is launched by a giant cannon from Earth. Its plush interior, as imagined by Verne and complete with dogs as traveling companions, is pictured here. (Image/caption: D. Finnin/AMNH)
Future space capsule In the future, astronauts might head to the International Space Station, the Moon, or even to asteroids and to Mars in a space capsule like this one currently being built for NASA by a team led by Lockheed Martin. This "multi-purpose crew vehicle," which could house up to four astronauts, is called Orion after the mythical Greek hunter from whom the familiar constellation in the sky takes its name. (Image/caption: D. Finnin/AMNH)
Vostok capsule On April 12, 1961, Soviet fighter-pilot-turned-cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space. Flying in a simple spacecraft, the Vostok 1, Gagarin orbited the planet once during his 108-minute flight. "I see Earth!" he said from space. "It is so beautiful." (Image/caption: R. Mickens/AMNH)
Sputnik Transmitting a signature beep-beep-beep from its four radio antennas in 1957, the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 traveled through space for three months — the first artificial satellite ever to orbit Earth and take scientific measurements from space. Sputnik 1 took measurements of the density of the upper layers of the atmosphere, including the ionosphere, and measured radio-signal distribution. (Image/caption: R. Mickens/AMNH)
Goodyear Lunar Spring Tire This wire-mesh tire may help future lunar rovers drive across the Moon. Its design is based on the wheels from the Apollo rovers of the 1970s. Composed of 800 separate wire springs, this new tire can't be punctured by sharp and bumpy surfaces, which can damage an ordinary air-filled tire. Since there are no roads on the Moon (yet), that's a valuable feature. Tire courtesy of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. (Image/caption: D. Finnin/AMNH)
Astronaut's Gold Visor One hazard on the Moon is the Sun — specifically, unfiltered solar radiation. All 12 Apollo astronauts who walked on the Moon needed to wear gold-coated visors like this one to reduce the Sun's intense glare and heat. Future helmets and the windshields of future rovers may also need to be coated with gold. (Image/caption: D. Finnin/AMNH)
From the Earth to the Moon Jules Verne's 1865 adventure story From the Earth to the Moon may be the most influential science fiction novel ever. Written a full century before humans landed on the Moon, the witty novel is full of solid science about the possibilities of space travel. In the story, the space capsule Columbiad is launched by a giant cannon from Earth. Its plush interior, as imagined by Verne and complete with dogs as traveling companions, is pictured here. (Image/caption: D. Finnin/AMNH)
Future space capsule In the future, astronauts might head to the International Space Station, the Moon, or even to asteroids and to Mars in a space capsule like this one currently being built for NASA by a team led by Lockheed Martin. This "multi-purpose crew vehicle," which could house up to four astronauts, is called Orion after the mythical Greek hunter from whom the familiar constellation in the sky takes its name. (Image/caption: D. Finnin/AMNH)
Vostok capsule On April 12, 1961, Soviet fighter-pilot-turned-cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space. Flying in a simple spacecraft, the Vostok 1, Gagarin orbited the planet once during his 108-minute flight. "I see Earth!" he said from space. "It is so beautiful." (Image/caption: R. Mickens/AMNH)
Sputnik Transmitting a signature beep-beep-beep from its four radio antennas in 1957, the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 traveled through space for three months — the first artificial satellite ever to orbit Earth and take scientific measurements from space. Sputnik 1 took measurements of the density of the upper layers of the atmosphere, including the ionosphere, and measured radio-signal distribution. (Image/caption: R. Mickens/AMNH)
Russian helmet The Cold War rivalry between the Soviet Union and the U.S. was especially intense when it came to which country would be the first to land men on the Moon. This enamel-coated helmet is an original prototype of a helmet intended to be worn by cosmonauts (the Russian term for astronauts) on the Moon. By 1969, the top-secret Soviet manned lunar program was in disarray, and the program was later cancelled. (The letters CCCP stand for USSR in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.) (Image/caption: C. Chesek/AMNH)
Mars rover In 2004 two identical NASA rovers landed on Mars. Equipped with cameras, computers and specialized scientific devices, the Exploration rovers Spirit and Opportunity revolutionized our understanding of Mars, in particular by confirming that the planet was once home to liquid water. In 2011, Opportunity discovered a rock that contains zinc and bromine. On Earth, such elements suggest that heated water once flowed through the rock; this finding may offer additional evidence that Mars had a watery past. (Image/caption: D. Finnin/AMNH)
Hubble Telescope diorama The Hubble Space Telescope, which was designed to be upgraded while in space, has features like handrails that make it possible for astronauts to perform maintenance. The diorama here re-creates a crucial moment in 2009, when astronaut John Grunsfeld installed the new Wide Field Camera 3, the device that currently captures many of Hubble's most amazing images. (Image/caption: R. Mickens/AMNH)
Virgin Galactic Spaceplane Founded by entrepreneur Richard Branson, the private company Virgin Galactic is developing spaceplanes that will one day carry paying citizens into suborbital space — about 62 miles above Earth — for a brief but unforgettable journey. This is a model of Virgin Galactic's two-craft system now in development. For $200,000, you, too, could buy a ticket to ride to the edge of space. (Image/caption: D. Finnin/AMNH)
Bigelow moon habitat Made with walls of reinforced fabric, expandable spacecraft like this model by the private space company Bigelow Aerospace — shown here in one-third scale — may one day house astronauts on the Moon. (Image/caption: D. Finnin/AMNH)
Liquid mirror telescope interactive Like all liquid mirror telescopes, this model relies on a a mirror that forms when a special liquid spins smoothly at a constant speed. The telescope reflects and focuses light toward a target, forming an image. (Image/caption: D. Finnin/AMNH)
Lunar elevator If humans do set up a base on the Moon, we would eventually need a way to get materials to and from the Moon's surface. Spacecraft have to travel 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) per second — faster than a speeding bullet — to launch off the surface of the Moon. A lunar elevator that would carry humans from the moon towards a space station where they would catch a ride back to Earth could sharply reduce that effort and expense. (Image/caption: D. Finnin/AMNH)
Mars meteorite This piece of hardened lava came from Mars. After being knocked off the Martian surface by an asteroid or comet, it drifted in space for millions of years, until it reached Earth and fell to the ground as a meteorite. (Image/caption: D. Finnin/AMNH)
Curiosity rover The Curiosity rover is scheduled to launch in late 2011 and reach Mars in August 2012. Essentially a roving laboratory, Curiosity has the power to explore for years and drive for miles over rugged rocks. It can pick up samples and bring them onboard for testing, fire a laser at objects 30 feet (nine meters) away to see what they're made of — and it even contains a small weather station. (Image/caption: R. Mickens/AMNH)
BioSuit BioSuit, a form-fitting next generation spacesuit prototype by MIT aeronautics and astronautics professor Dava Newman, is on view in the exhibition Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration at the American Museum of Natural History. These suits are made up of a tight, stretchy fabric made of spandex, nylon, and a new, patented polymer that replaces compressed air, making them lighter and more maneuverable. (Image/caption: D. Finnin/AMNH)
Terraforming Interactive Table A multi-user interactive âgameâ will give Beyond Planet Earth visitors the task of âterraformingâ Mars, transforming its cold, thin-aired surface into something more akin to Earth. With a multi-touch table, players work together to build the atmosphere on the planet by various means, such as crashing asteroids to release frozen carbon dioxide that will thicken the atmosphere or building soil-burning factories to set off a runaway greenhouse effect, a process that would speed global warming. Visitors then build the biosphere by introducing various life forms, including algae and evergreens. (Image/caption: D. Finnin/AMNH)
Underwater robot For the past decade, engineers at Stone Aerospace in Texas have been developing a robot that can navigate on its own in the ocean under the ice in Antarctica. Someday, they hope to send a version aboard a spacecraft to Europa, one of Jupiter's moons and, thanks to its salty oceans, a promising place to search for evidence of life. There, a nuclear-powered generator onboard would melt through miles of ice to get to the ocean underneath. Then, instruments aboard the craft could measure the chemistry and composition of the water — and perhaps, discover life. (Image/caption: D. Finnin/AMNH)
Beyond Planet Earth app Visitors can download a free new augmented reality (AR) app created as companion to the exhibition Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration. With the app, visitors can find 11 AR icons — a Mars-bound spaceship, a near-Earth asteroid, and more — scattered throughout the exhibition and use their iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad2 to unlock animations, share images via Facebook and Twitter, and receive links to space-themed content. (Image/caption: D. Finnin/AMNH)
Hayabusa In this diorama, the craft Hayabusa — the Japanese word for falcon — touches down on the near-Earth asteroid Itokawa. Hayabusa's mission was to observe and collect asteroid materials for return to Earth. In 2005, it become the second spacecraft ever to land on an asteroid. (Image/caption: D. Finnin/AMNH)
