Dr Space Junk 20 Years of Blogging Feminist as Fuck Edition

This beautiful artwork is by archaeologist Dr Katherine Cook https://drkrcook.wordpress.com/ 

This blog is 20 years old! My first post was in July 2004, when blogging was relatively new. In those pre-microblogging days (that's what Twitter was, for those not around at the time), blogs were where all the action was. We had blog carnivals, blog rolls, web rings, bloggers fighting with each other, and all kinds of shenanigans. 

Twenty years later I have written over 400 posts, and as time has gone on, they've become longer and longer, and more researched. This wasn't a conscious decision, more a reflection of how the blog's role in my writing/research life has changed. 

To celebrate this anniversary, I made a list of the top ten most-read posts. Then I realised that the top ten posts weren't necessarily my favourite posts, so I decided to make a list of them, which turned out to be far more than ten. So I decided to break it into smaller sections, and here we are. These are my most feminist posts, and if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen! (No stay in it because I want you to read them).

Please enjoy my Feminist as Fuck edition!

1. The spacecraft, the shirt, and the scandal (November 16, 2014)

Back in 2014, a spacecraft called Rosetta waa woken from hibernation, and as the world waited with bated breath, the Philae lander was dropped onto a comet's surface. It was an extraordinary mission, one of my favourites. But an ill-chosen shirt worn by one of the mission scientists temporarily eclipsed the achievement. Why? I gave my take in this post.

2. The day Pluto came to breakfast: Venetia Burney and a life in mathematics (July 12, 2015)

In 1930, there was tremendous excitement across the world because a new planet had been found. It was named Pluto at the suggestion of 11-year-old Venetia Burney. Of course it's not a planet any more, but the point of this post was to look at Venetia Burney's life in an era where women were not permitted to get university degrees. Sometimes I wonder if men realise just how far women have to be dehumanised to allow them to remain the dominant gender. And I guess this is why I write these posts, as drips that might eventually wear away the edifice of the patriarchy.

3. Women in the kitchen of science: on being excluded from the life of the mind. (Novermber 13, 2015)

This is an account of how I came to hate Hermann Hesse's novel The Glass Bead Game, and how it might feel when the credibility gap for women doesn't exist - when no-one questions who you are and your right to be present.

4. He said, she said, and what the dictionary said  (January 31, 2016)

In 2016 the Twitters were in a spin about language. It had come to the attention of a couple of people that the online Oxford dictionary was using horrendously sexist definitions of some words. A few of us wrote responses to this. The debate is not over, either: in 2019 a petition called for the OED to change how it represented women. The response was that the dictionary reflected language how it was, not how it ought to be. This tells us that we still live in a patriarchal world where women are inferior to men (surprise!), and that dictionaries don't see themselves as agents of change. But why not, I want to ask. It's all in the choices: you can represent current usage while also countering it with the examples chosen. Why do dictionaries have to be the mouthpiece of the politically dominant? (Yes, a naïve question, but why?)

5. An anatomy of street harassment (March 10, 2018)

 

Because I was tired of men:

1. Denying that street (or workplace, or domestic) harassment occurred - you can't believe what a woman says about her own experience, right? See post above.

2. Minimising its impact - you didn't get raped, or physically hurt, right? And it will couched in such passive language so the harasser doesn't appear.

3. Telling you how to deal with it - just say no, right?

4. And failing to recognise how constant this is, and how much time and energy you have to expend just to stay safe - nothing happened, right? So why are you angry?

I thought I would explain how it works, using a recent example. Sad to say, I sent the post to a male friend to get some feedback and his response was to tell me what I'd done wrong.

Listen up, men, quit your bitching, and change your behaviour.

6. Here now the Sun: a poem for Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space (22 February 2019)

This poem was published in Outer Space: 100 Poems, edited by Midge Goldberg. As I said to Midge when she approached me about including it in the book, it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me!

I wrote it using a technique called erasure, where I removed parts of the original text, in this case the transcript of Valentina Tereshkova's epic spaceflight in 1963. The aim was to centre her voice. I had a wonderful experience in 2023, where a whole audience of people recited the poem together at an event at the Secession art gallery in Vienna. This gave a whole new meaning to the poem - people told me they found it exhilarating and triumphant - not knowing how Tereshkova had been vilified and demeaned, this is how they inhabited her words. I found it quite moving.

7.  Space Age Suds: women, washing machines and the astronautics of everyday life (17 March, 2019)

I always find newspapers such fascinating sources of information about public attitudes, and trawling through Trove, the National Library of Australia's online archive of newspapers, magazines and other popular publications, is such a joy. A search brought up this rather delightful article where beloved South Australian journalist Max Fatchen imagines his wife Jean as the commander of a space module in the form of a washing machine. Reading it again, whole new vistas of feminist analysis open before my eyes - but that can be for another time!

8.  Cat-Women of the Moon: ideas of space travel in the 1950s. (31 July, 2019)

It's hard not to love a movie full of sinister black cat-suited women, and although this one is no cinematic masterpiece, it is a classic example of how women and space governance are seen as mutually exclusive. I analysed the genre of women-only planets in an essay for the Griffith Review (paywalled but contact me or them for a copy if you're interested). Early space age movies are so revealing about implicit societal attitudes to space exploration and gender roles, and there's so much more to watch!

9. Between the house and the stars: the life of Varvara Sokolova who married Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (17 January, 2021)

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky is known as the 'father of spaceflight' and is one of the most famous people in the whole history of humans and space. I'd been citing him and talking about him for years. One day a few years ago I stopped to ask myself the question: what about Mrs Tsiolkovksy, or Varvara Sokolova as I came to know her? What had been left out of Tsiolkovksy's story? I decided to put her back in it, and this is the result.

10.  Valentina Tereshkova and double standards in human spaceflight history (13 June, 2022)

In case you weren't aware that the first woman in space was being disparaged and belittled over 60 years after her spaceflight, let me disabuse you. Every year around the anniversary of her flight, you will find women celebrating her achievement on social media and men trying to tear her down. One of those men issued a challenge to me, and while I would normally react by saying 'do your own research, buttercup', this time I thought I would take him down. 

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So there you have my favourite posts where I have tackled women's rights or applied feminist methods to interrogate space history and public perceptions. If this is an area which interests you, I can recommend these older publications:

Penley, Constance 1997  NASA/Trek: Popular Science and Sex in America. London: Verso

Lykke, N. and M. Bryld  2000 Cosmodolphins: Feminist Cultural Studies of Technology, Animals and the Sacred. London: Bloomsbury Academic

Enloe, C., 1993 The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War.  University of California Press. 

Nolen, Stephanie 2002 Promised the Moon: The Untold Story of the First Women in the Space Race. Penguin Canada

And these newer ones:

Schwartz, James S.J., Linda Billings, and Erika Nesvold (eds) 2023 Reclaiming Space. Progressive and Multicultural Visions of Space Exploration. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Boucher, Marie-Pier, Claire Webb,  Annick Bureaud, and Nahum (eds) 2024 Space Feminisms. People, Planets, Power. London: Bloomsbury

20th anniversary of the Space Age Archaeology blog

Illustration by Jens Notroff.

It just occurred to me that I have been writing this blog for 20 years. My first post was on July 4, 2004, about the International Space University in Adelaide. I'd heard about this new thing called blogging - short for web logging - and I thought I'd give it a crack. I was unemployed at the time, having resigned from my job the previous year in order to pursue space archaeology, which I'd been plugging away at on the side until that point. I was dirt poor and had no idea what I was going to do to survive. 

The tagline of the blog is the original one. Every time I've thought I should update it, something holds me back. It's still largely true! While I've changed the appearance of the blog from time to time, some things have stayed the same.

These are my top ten most read posts, excluding a couple which were attacked by bots who artificially increased the statistics. 

1. The patron saint of astronauts - the surprising story of the "Flying Friar" 11 March 2012. 19.5 k reads

At a drunken dinner party, we decided to find out who the patron saint of astronauts is. The answer: St Joseph of Cupertino, and his story is rather interesting!

2. How to avoid sexist language in space - Dr Space Junk wields the red pen. 6 September 2014. 8.84 k reads

When the subject came up in online spaces like Twitter, members of the (mostly) male class would just go bananas about how language didn't matter. (If it didn't matter so much, why were they so ANGRY about it?) I tried to explain why it mattered, and how easy it was to do - if you cared enough.

3. 'Learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss': the children's playground as a variable gravity environment. 29 December 2016. 7.63 k reads

This was about how the apparatus at children's playgrounds - swings, slides, merry-go-rounds, etc, were ways for children to adapt to 1 Earth gravity by learning how not to fall, and the consequences of falling, and to experience higher gravities through the acceleration provided by many of the apparatus. I aimed to foreground gravity rather than assuming it.

4.  Autobiographical reminiscence: the phases of Venus. 7 July, 2017. 7.4 k reads

This was about how I learned the constellations as a child, and my love of the planet Venus.

5.   From aerospace to everyday life: the trajectory of cable ties. 24 August, 2016. 6.12 reads

I've been obsessed with cable ties for a long time. I and my friend and colleague, Aylza Donald, made a conference poster about how they migrated from aerospace industry to being found in every household across many lands. Catch the #cabletielove and feel welcome to cite us!

6.  Do objects and people cast shadows inside the International Space Station? 6 November, 2016. 6.1 k reads

Shadows have been another long-term obsession. You can read other posts about them here and here. I think people liked this one because it talks about the uncanny elements of living in space.

7.  A funny thing happened on the way to the spaceport. 20 July 2016. 5.22 k reads

UFO. 'Nuff said.

8.  Space-craft: rockets, jetpacks, and other DIY space paraphernalia. 11 May, 2012. 5.01 k reads

I'd always wanted to make a pun on spacecraft! Here is a post with various crafty things and people, and a surprise ending. Or should I say a 'happy ending'?

9.  Consuming the Space Age: the cuisine of Sputnik. 18 January, 2011. 4.73 reads

This was written as part of a writing festival curated by Nicola Twilley at GOOD magazine: 

Food for Thinkers is a week-long, distributed, online conversation looking at food-writing from as wide and unusual a variety of perspectives as possible.

I decided to have a crack at space food, stringing together some ideas and facts that had been floating around in my head. I used some of the post later in my book. In case anyone disputes the value of blogs, I have found mine invaluable for testing out ideas that later become highly relevant, even though I didn't know it at the time.

10.  Technological rites of passage in the liminal space of Earth orbit. 27 January, 2017. 3.96 reads

A USB stick lobbed out of the International Space Station was the starting point for some musings about digital artefacts, the burning of space junk, and the anthropological theory of rites of passage.

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So there you go. I know my blog is clunky and terribly designed. Some of it is the limitations of Blogger, a platform which has been around almost as long as blogging itself, but most of it is my lack of ability. Blogger has served me well for twenty years of talking crap on the internet. 

I haven't been the most serious blogger, only writing when the mood takes me. Some years this has been very little. But it has been my constant companion as I have developed some of my core ideas in space archaeology.

I have had some small impact I think - the blog is archived as a significant scientific publication by the National Library of Australia.

In my next post I'll list my top ten personal favourites.

What does it take to become a space archaeologist? I analyse a weird video.

In this post I looked at a few weird bot-generated videos (or AI-generated videos? I can't tell!) about space archaeology - they were both slightly alarming but also a bit exciting as they demonstrated that space archaeology has made it! People (and bots) know what it is!

There's a few more of them. I found this one particularly interesting as it's about how you can pursue a career in space archaeology. Let's break it down.

Careers in Astronomy: Space Archaeologist

Today, we're diving into the fascinating world of space archaeology - a unique blend of astronomy, archaeology and history. 

Well sort of yes and sort of no. Space archaeology is archaeology, although like any historical archaeology, research in documents and archives are part of your suite of methods. You do also need some understanding of astronomy, astrodynamics and planetary science. It's not a career in astronomy, though. There are some astronomers who call themselves archaeologists because they are looking back in time at earlier periods of the universe. This makes the common mistake of assuming that archaeology is about old things. And I get it - it's in the title and some types of archaeology are about the far distant past. However, the definition of archaeology that archaeologists use is that it's about how humans use material culture to create societies and adapt to change over time - and this means recent time, or the present.

Archaeological theories and methods have a lot of application for how you might identify 'cultural' behaviour from astronomical data, but you'd still need a degree in archaeology to understand how to do this.  

Roles and responsibilities

As a space archaeologist, your mission is to uncover the mysteries of the cosmos by analyzing ancient artefacts, spacecraft and debris left behind in space. You're like a cosmic detective, solving the puzzles of our celestial past.

Space archaeology isn't really on a cosmic scale as it concerns the human record of engagement with space. It's not, I repeat not, about alien artefacts. Archaeology shares with SETI the problems of interpretation - to try and understand other minds wether they are aliens or from another culture. You could look at the 1940s and 50s as another culture! The past is a foreign country - they do things differently there, as LP Hartley famously said. I discuss this in my foreword to Speaking Beyond Earth. Perspectives on Messaging Across Deep Space and Cosmic Time so I might as well give it a plug here.

The 'ancient artefacts' could mean ancient asttonomical-related material culture on Earth - how humans imagined, theorised and engaged with the heavens. That's called archaeoastronomy (not space archaeology). 

So you're not going to be looking at cosmic or celestial artefacts, but spacecraft and debris left behind by humans. And believe me, there is plenty here to keep you fascinated!

Skills and qualifications

A curious mind, strong analytic skills, knowledge of astronomy, familiarity with space technology, and attention to detail. 

Well those are all good things to have, although I'd argue that a curious mind, strong analytic skills and attention to detail are good to have for any job. (They're not qualifications though, see below). Knowledge of space stuff is essential.  I spend a lot of time reading engineering documents and articles in space and planetary science journals too.  It helps that I have high school physics. chemistry and maths.

Education and training

A background in astronomy, archaeology or a related field is essential. Many space archaeologists hold advanced degrees in these areas.

Yeah, nah. You need a degree in archaeology to be a space archaeologist. Preferably a minimum of honours or masters. I'm sorry to tell you this but you can't be a space archaeologist with a degree in astronomy, as you won't know any of the method, theory, and perhaps most importantly, ethics of archaeology. In the US archaeology comes under the umbrella of anthropology, so anthropology is acceptable. A degree in cultural heritage management, museum studies or conservation is also helpful. 

Salary

The salary can vary widely depending on your experience and the organization you work for. It can range from $50, 00 to $100, 000 or more per year.

They don't say what currency of course! I guess this might be true of any entry level job. But you won't find space archaeologist as a category of job because to my knowledge, there is no-one currently employed anywhere as a space archaeologist. If such a job should be advertised, I want first dibs!

All space archaeologists currently work as academics, museum curators, or heritage consultants, but space archaeology is their research area or just a part of their job. I would say we're mostly academics. My job is mainly teaching, for example. The research component is space archaeology. I don't get to work at it all day, although that would be my dream.

Work environment

Christina Koch on the International Space Station, 2020. Credit: NASA

Space archaeologists work in a mix of environments, from labs analyzing dara to observatories observing the skies. You might also have the chance to collaborate with space agencies or research institutions.

You won't be working in an observatory or scanning the skies. You might use data from planetary observation or space junk monitoring though, and you might sit a lab at a computer analyzing data, such as that collected by the International Space Station Archaeological Project. You'll likely be part of a research institution, such as a university. And it's highly likely that you'll have to be talking to a space agency at some point.

Space archeologist

Your work helps us understand the history of space exploration and the artifacts left behind by humanity's journey into the cosmos. It contributes to our knowledge of our place in the universe. Space archeology is a thrilling career that combines history, science and exploration. If you're passionate about uncovering the secrets of space, and preserving our cosmic heritage, this might be the perfect path for you.

Agree!

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.