The first proposal for a solar system Domain Name System

Some years ago, I had to make a costume for an International Space University party and thought that I would go as a space archaeologist. I found a yellow fluoro work vest and used a black texta (sharpie) to draw a logo of the fictional Institute of Space Archaeology. Then I made a name tag, using an old plastic sleeve from a conference, and invented the character Tasmania Smith, Director of the lunar office of the Institute of Space Archaeology (ISA). At the bottom of the name tag, I wrote Tasmania Smith's email address: 

tsmith@isa.luna

This is possibly the first ever specific lunar domain name.

It was just to add a little authenticity to the character, but when I came across the photo again recently, it made me wonder if provision had been made yet for off-Earth domains. I went looking for academic or industry literature on this topic. I looked in Google Scholar, the NASA Technical Report Server, and Arxiv, and generally puddled around on the internet. As far as I can tell, there is no literature on how domain names would work in space.

Certainly at this stage astronauts just use the email addresses of their countries or employers - there is no specific International Space Station address, for example - crew use nasa.gov, or esa or Russia or whatever. Interplanetary internet connects spacecraft of all kinds with Earth and each other.

But it seems there is no Domain Name System (DNS) for space yet. The Interational Standardization Organiztion is responsible for domain names on Earth. ISO 3166-1 alpha 2 establishes the two-letter country codes. So I suppose they could do the space codes too.

Eventually, each planet or asteroid might have its own suffix. There doesn't seem to be any commonly used abbreviations for the planets, even by the International Astronomical Union. You could make an abbreviation out of the Latin or Greek names, but the trick is to make sure that they aren't duplicating national ones. And yes, celestial body names are an expression of European hegemony and colonialism, as are many country names, but they are commonly understood at least.

So I went though the list of two-letter country-code top-level domains to find those that might be unused and available for planets. A harder task than it seems! Many of the most obvious two-letter codes already belong to a country. What's left isn't always the most intuitive thing to call a planet. However, there are so few planets compared to countries that perhaps a whole word or abbreviation would work. For the Moon and Mars, all the obvious two-letter codes are already in use.

So we might have:

Mercury - He, short for Hermes, the Greek equivalent of Mercury

Venus - Ap, short for Aphrodite

Earth - Ea, or Te for Tellus, or Gaia as a whole word

Moon - Luna

Mars - Mars

Jupiter - Jv, short for Jove

Saturn - Cu, short for Cronus, the Greek equivalent of Saturn

Neptune - Po, short for Poseidon

Uranus - Ur, not taken for any country yet!

Pluto - Pu. the closest available abbreviation

Sun - Sun

For Moons other than Earth's, the relevant planet's domain can be used. Just to be precise, we might define the spatial extent of the domain as the planet's Hill Sphere. It's likely that we wouldn't need anything beyond Mars in any case.

There might need to be special ones for spacecraft moving between different planets. I'm not sure why they'd need one, but perhaps they have human or AI inhabitants. A mobile domain might present its own issues to resolve.

In the early years of lunar habitation, crew or inhabitants will still likely use national or agency domain names. The Outer Space Treaty makes nations responsible for the activities of their citizens in space. The point at which you'll need a lunar domain name is when there is lunar government separate to Earth. One of the first acts of a lunar rebellion might be to assert independence by declaring a new domain with its own code. This may also imply the presence of local servers.

A private corporation providing a domain server might get to apply its code to a planet or moon. So keep an eye on what the space billionaires are doing - this might be a step is asserting political dominance. 

Maybe there will also be the equivalent of gmail or yahoo in space. Maybe there will be open source or citizen higher level domains.

Don't ask me how this works in practice, I'm not sure I understand the technical aspects!

'Celestial archaeologists who traverse the astral deserts': A selection of weird videos about space archaeology

Space archaeology is so recognised as a type of archaeology now that there is a slew of weird bot-made videos about it, very disembodied, however, as if space archaeology is not a thing done by actual real people who are space archaeologists. Some of these videos are very dodgy indeed, but others, to be honest, are not bad! Here is a selection:

What is space archaeology?

Do you know, this is such a good definition of space archaeology that I would recomment it for students. The text reads:

In archaeology, space archaeology is the research-based study of various human-made items found in space, their interpretation as clues to the adventures humanity has experienced in space, and their preservation as cultural heritage. 

 

Space archaeology: where no trowel has gone before

This video is talking about a project we published our first results from recently in an article in PLOS One - a  survey of the ISS using photography. They haven't exactly got our results right but they have picked up on the fact that the ISS is a pretty messy place. So it's really weird to have no mention of us! However, I do like the fancy graphics - it would have been great to be able to afford this type of science communication! Here is the script:

Space archaeology, where no trowel has gone before. So apparently archaeologists got bored of digging in the dirt and thought hey, why not space. Thus we have the first archaeology project aboard the ISS. Astronauts use space like the rest of us, use a junk drawer ignoring the design and creating cosmic chaos. The photos show astronauts turning neat space stations into floating garages. There's no ancient treasure up there unless you count misplaced tools and forgotten snack wrappers but hey at least now we know that even in space humans are just as good at cluttering up their environment. Maybe in the sequel we'll find out how the aliens feel about all this.

Here's a link to the actual paper, and you can find out more at the website of the International Space Station Archaeological Project.

Unveiling Cosmic Relics: Space Archaeology Explored!

It's surprising just how much this video gets right! It refers to my work and those of others such as Bill Rathje and PJ Capelotti on the archaeology and heritage of orbital debris, and goes on to talk about archaeology on the Moon, which my friend and colleague Beth Laura O'Leary pioneered. Importantly, it mentions a goal a few of us space archeologists have: to contribute to the planning of future missions.

This is gonna blow your mind. High above us, orbiting silently, are relics of human ingenuity - leftovers from space missions past. I'm talking about space archaeology. Imagine this: thousands of satrellites, spent rocket stages and even tools dropped by astronauts, all swirling around Earth at mind-bending speeds. These aren't just pieces of metal: they tell the story of our journey into space. Each piece of debris has its own tale, from the very first satellite, Sputnik, to the sophisticated telescopes and exploratory probes we send out today. And guess what: it's not just about what's floating around Earth. On the Moon, there are abandoned lunar rovers, footprints, and even a falcon feather left there by astronaut David Scott to demonstrate Galileo's theory of gravity. Space archaeologists are like detectives, piecing together the history of space exploration from these artefacts. They help us learn from past missions to better plan future voyages. And perhaps most fascinating of all, they remind us of our first tentative steps into the cosmos.

Unveiling Secrets of Space: The Fascinating World of Space Archaeology

When I started working on space archaeology, I was looking at the impacts of rocket launch sites on Indigenous people (you can read about it here and here) and the archaeology and heritage value of space junk in Earth orbit (here and here). I feel I've had an impact when a weird bot-thing makes a video about  my research! Here is the script:

Now when you think of archaeology you might imagine digging up ancient ruins or unearthing forgotten artifacts but space archaeology - it involves studying defunct satellites and man-made debris left floating in the vast expanse of space. This might seem like an oddity but it's truly remarkable what these relics can tell us about our own activities in space. 

Space Archaeology

Apart from an egregious overuse of 'cosmic', 'celestial' and 'civilizations', the originator of this video 'Multifarious King' has said some things about space archaeology that I quite like. For example:

Celestial archaeologists become custodians of cosmic heritage, piecing together the narrative of ancient celestial cultures from the fragments scattered across the cosmic expanse. Yet, amid the cosmic excavation, the celestial archaeologists grapple not only with the challenges of interpreting cosmic artifacts but also with the cosmic responsibility of preserving the cosmic legacy. Ethical considerations, the pursuit of historical truth, and the cosmic echoes of the impermanence of cosmic civilizations infuse the cosmic investigations with purpose and wisdom.

I would be more interested if they had not used virtually the same text to do space exploration, space law (I particularly love the celestial courtrooms), space nuclear power, space technology, space telescopes, space-based radar, space-based solar power, spacecraft design, and spacecraft propulsion! Everybody gets a microgravity or cosmic ballet (nice). Spacecraft propulsion might be the most out there, claiming that gods provide propulsion! After this one, Multifarious King moves on to engineering with a version of the same text. Hard to know what the motivation or value is!

This video is also an example of category confusion, confusing space archaeology with astronomy, astrobiology and exoarchaeology. 

A conclusion

To be honest I find these videos to be a bit uncanny - the familiar made strange - they induce a weird sensation of mental nausea. It's because, I think, they refer to me and my colleagues like we're not real. I feel like they threaten my sense of having a stable identity when it can be so easily appropriated. It is kind of funny but having put them together in one place I feel their weirdness more. So there you are.

Also if you want to find out more about space archaeology you can refer to my handy (though slightly out-of-date) bibliography.

A woman on the Moon is singing to the Earth

I'm not sure where I first heard the song Sugar Water by Cibo Matto but I think it might have been on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I was rewatching late in the evenings one summer during covid. I liked its cruisiness and the lyrics, which caught my attention:

A woman in the moon is singing to the earth

A woman in the moon is singing to the earth

La la la, la la la la la la
La la la, la la la la la la
La la la, la la la la la la
La la la, la la la la la la

Who doesn't like a la la la? But what struck me most was how the song had inverted our relationship to the Moon. Usually, we sing or howl (if you're a dog) to the Moon; we look for the rabbit, duck, old man or old woman; we confide in it; we take its light on Earth and use it for concealment or illumination; we benefit from the effects of gravity which cause the tides. The Moon is ours for what we can make it.

'A woman' could be one woman among many, or the woman in the Moon; it's not clear. I like the indeterminism of it. It's about her relationship to Earth: she's singing maybe not to us, but to the planet she sees in the black sky. It's about the meaning Earth has for her. Maybe the la la las are a lullabye. They feel soothing and affectionate to me. Maybe her words are indistinct by the time they reach us and all we hear is the melody.

It's also random, like you just happen to go outside, and you gradually become aware that there is a song on the air, and it's coming from someone singing on the Moon. Just a woman who happens to be there.

Cultural landscapes in outer space: geostationary orbit and the Moon

Cultural landscapes are a powerful way of conceptualising the interaction of human activities with the space environment. From the surface of Earth to the far reaches of the solar system, there are many levels of designed, organic, and associative landscapes, from rocket launch sites to the Voyager spacecraft in interstellar space. You could say that the entire solar system is now a cultural landscape. I want to focus briefly on two particular landscapes, geostationary orbit and the surface of the Moon.

Voyager 1. Image courtesy of NASA.

Geostationary orbit is located about 35, 000 km above the surface of Earth and until recently, when Elon Musk started launching the Starlink megaconstellation into Low Earth Orbit, this is where most of our telecommunications satellites were located. There are currently about 580 spacecraft situated here. 

When you look at photos of space junk around Earth, the GEO orbit looks like a faint ring, recalling the ring systems of the outer planets. The ring is maintained by station-keeping manoeuvres; hence it is a product of engineering decisions and could be called a designed landscape. A cultural landscape approach sees cultural value in the structure of the ring, rather than dismissing the satellites as an aggregate of unconnected spacecraft. 

Representation of space debris, showing the GEO ring. Image courtesy of NASA

Since the USSR probe Luna 2 crashed on the Moon in 1959, there are now over 100 locations with human material culture, ranging from robotic probes, crashed orbiters, and rovers, to crewed landing sites. A key feature of the selenoscape is the interplay between light, dust and shadows. The shadows of the human-made artefacts, with their sharp angles and textural range, are very different to those cast by craters and rocks. The banded bootprints left by the 12 Apollo moonwalkers are another novel texture on the lunar surface. Space archaeologists have compared the Apollo 11 bootprints to the Laetoli footprints, made by bipedal hominin ancestors 3.6 million years ago in volcanic ash. As cultural landscapes, the Apollo sites show how low-gravity and barely any atmosphere shaped the human activities which took place there, and the lasting impression in the shadowscape created by the artefacts they left behind. 

Neil Armstrong's bootprints, 1969. Image courtesy of NASA

Critically, a cultural landscape lens encourages a view of space as dynamic rather than an empty desolation that you can just remove junk from to return it to a former state. To finish, I want to argue that space is not a special case. Rather, we should look at terrestrial cultural landscapes in a solar system context, to see them as part of a multitude of possible planetary and interplanetary environments, most of which have not yet come into being.

Note: this is from my webinar presentation at the International Council on Monuments and Sites International Scientific Committee on Cultural Landscapes, on 17 April. 

See also The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Landscape Practice, 2023

A significance assessment of the Apollo 11 bootprints

This case study shows how the Burra Charter (2013) significance criteria can be applied to a heritage feature on the Moon, the astronaut bootprints which are part of the Apollo 11 site. The bootprints are one of the most well-known human traces and have been the focus of recent campaigns for greater recognition of lunar heritage. 

Historic significance: high.

The bootprints are associated with a unique event, the first human expedition to another world; with the astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, who are rightly celebrated for this achievement; and with the historical processes of the Cold War ‘space race’ and early years of space exploration. The prints are the first human trace fossils outside Earth. 

Scientific significance: high 

The astronaut boot soles were an experiment in themselves: the bands were designed to convey information about regolith depth and reflectance. This is partially why so many photographs of the bootprints were taken. Further research could use them to assess and better understand surface processes and regolith behaviour. Their placement shows where the astronauts walked over their two and half hours on the surface, and hence define the limits of the site. Images show that the prints are layered or superimposed, which enables a time sequence of activities to be derived. Their depth and angle indicate something about the gait adopted by the crew to maintain an upright posture in hypogravity, as well as the depth of lunar dust over the local area. 

A major research potential of the prints is a comparison of the six landing sites, over which the duration of surface became progressively longer, and the succeeding crews had the benefit of learning from the preceding ones (Gorman 2016). As a recent geological disturbance to the regolith, the sharp ridges of the prints create a baseline to assess natural erosion processes on the Moon such as micrometeorite impacts and dust levitation. The mechanics of the bootprints could also be usefully be compared to robotic and rover traces (Gorman 2016). 

Image courtesy of NASA

Aesthetic significance: high 

The geometric, banded appearance of the trace fossils is demonstrably unlike any other geological features on the lunar surface. The prints are 35.5 cm x 16 cm in size. The rectilinearity and regularity of the imprints are a stark contrast to the predominant circular patterns created by bombardment craters and the irregular shadows and textures of rocks. The contrast between light and dark in the ridges is a distinct and unique pattern in the lunar environment.   

Social significance: high 

The first footprint of Neil Armstrong has become a 20th century icon, reproduced in countless formats and instantly recognisable. Although the Apollo missions were political in nature and opposed by various sectors of society, the overriding social meaning of the bootprint is human ingenuity and courage. Its creation was watched by millions of people across the world and hence has a resonance far outside the space community. The bootprints are associated with Armstrong’s famous first lines about ‘one small step’, a phrase which has become incorporated in popular culture, advertising and literature. 

Spiritual significance: low 

While an argument for spiritual value is not as obvious as social value, the reverence in which the bootprints are held is equivalent to a secular belief relating to humanity’s place in the universe. The bootprints have contributed to the conviction, strongly held by some groups, that the Apollo landings were a hoax (Link 2021). They have also been used by scholars of religion to explore concepts of faith and divinity (eg Gordon 2019, Stavrakopoulou 2022).

This is an excerpt from a document prepared for the Global Expert Group on Sustainable Lunar Activity (GEGSLA). The full document can be downloaded here. 

References

Gordon, Chris 2019 Footprints on the moon: a story of faith and Faith. 19 July, Catholic Voice https://www.catholicvoice.org.au/footprints-on-the-moon-a-story-of-faith-and-faith/

Gorman, A.C. 2016 Culture on the Moon: bodies in time and space. Archaeologies 12(1): 110-128.

Link, Devon 2021 Fact check: Moon landing conspiracy theory misrepresents lunar footprint. September 17, USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/09/17/fact-check-moon-landing-conspiracy-theory-misrepresents-footprint/8380230002/

Stavrakopoulu, Francesca 2022  On the Spiritual and Historical Significance of “Divine Footprints”, LitHub https://lithub.com/on-the-spiritual-and-historical-significance-of-divine-footprints/

How we manage the values of off-Earth environments

Before I was an academic, I was a professional heritage consultant working with Aboriginal communities in Australia. I worked on all stages of mining projects from exploratory drilling, through pre-feasibility to operation and rehabilitation, for a range of minerals including coal, copper, gold, uranium, iron, and heavy mineral sands. This was usually as part of an environmental impact process, where I would be in the field at the same time as the flora, fauna, dust, noise etc teams, and looking at ways to mitigate the harm from these kinds of impacts on Aboriginal heritage. 

As imperfect as this process is, it doesn’t yet exist in space. One reasons for this is because there’s a problem with how environments are conceptualised. It’s really common for people to assume that because there are no living ecologies in orbit, on the Moon, and on asteroids, that there are no environments either. The COSPAR Planetary Protection Policy privileges potential life; it's not actually about abiotic planetary environments. 

So we assume there are no environmental values worth managing on lifeless rocks, and yet these are the places that are going to tell us things like where Earth’s water came from, and how the solar system evolved. Each celestial body also has its own unique history and qualities. How we assess and manage these is an area that is in its infancy. 

Thinking of space as the province of all humanity, as the Outer Space Treaty says, is an imperative to share the benefits of space. But it also frames space as something we can use and own. And why should something be assessed only for its benefits for us? This is such a narrow way to look at the richness of off-Earth environments, and one I’m deeply uncomfortable with.

This post is taken from my notes for a Doha Debate podcast recorded in March 2024. 

The Odysseus lunar lander carried an artwork to the Moon. What does this mean?

Josephine Baker being fabulous, 1927.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Nova-C lander, which touched down on the Moon on the 23rd of February 2024, is  carrying a very interesting object – 125 silver mini-moons a couple of centimetres in diameter, stacked in a transparent box and bolted to the side of the spacecraft. Each mini-moon represents a famous person who made a difference in the world. They include the people you’d expect, like Mother Theresa, but some unconventional choices too, like Josephine Baker, the French-American dancer of the Jazz Age who was also a civil rights activist, and the Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova who gave her name to the famous Aussie dessert. 

Artist Andy Warhol is also in there, and it’s the second time he’s been to the Moon. In 1969, the Apollo 12 mission carried a tiny ceramic plaque called Moon Museum with the works of six artists inscribed on it. Warhol contributed a crude drawing. 

This artwork was conceived by the US artist Jeff Koons. It has three components: the miniature moons going to the real Moon, much larger versions which remain on Earth, and digital moons in the form of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens). Like the mission itself, the artwork is a partnership between the artist and various other organisations. 

Jeff Koons' Moon Phases installed on the Odysseus lander.
Source: Jeff Koons/Instagram

I find it intriguing, but it also raises some concerns. Recently the Peregrine Mission One lander was launched towards the Moon. It had numerous private payloads, including a lot of digital art and 13 time capsules. Sadly the spacecraft didn’t make it, and burned up on re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. 

As more private missions go to the Moon, we’re likely to see more inclusions of symbolic and digital objects. But there’s no oversight of what they are, or obligation for private companies to inform the public. 

For now it’s all been positive objects aimed at commemoration or inspiration. But what if, for example, conspiracy theorists or extremists bought payload space on a private mission and send things most people would find offensive or disturbing to the Moon? There’s nothing to stop that. 

According to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, the Moon and all outer space is meant to be the common province of humanity: it belongs to all of us, including those we don’t like. But I’d hate to see the Moon become a dumping ground of symbols, or continue its Cold War role in a battle of ideologies. The Outer Space Treaty proclaims that space is to be used for peaceful purposes only. Peace isn’t just about the absence of weapons, and not all weapons are material.