2021 - Another Turning Point for Spaceflight?

The year 2020 saw the end of the long gap between launches of crewed spacecraft from American soil when the first Crew Dragon spacecraft departed Kennedy Space Center for the International Space Station nearly nine years after end of the Space Shuttle program.

This year is heralding the end of an even longer gap in human spaceflight – the decades that have passed since anyone has flown beyond low Earth orbit.

That began when Apollo 17 returned home from the Moon in December 1972, and NASA’s sights shifted to LEO with Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz, the Space Shuttle, and then what became the International Space Station.

There was no serious talk of humans going beyond LEO until the 20th anniversary of Apollo 11 in 1989, when President George H.W. Bush announced his Space Exploration Initiative, which called for permanent occupation of the Moon and a human voyage to Mars. The initiative met a hostile reception in Congress and little enthusiasm from NASA, then still recovering from the Challenger disaster.

The initiative’s failure and the effort involved in getting the ISS into space squelched further talk of escaping near-Earth space until 2004, when President George W. Bush announced his Vision for Space Exploration, which led to the end of the Space Shuttle and the beginning of the Constellation program that targeted a return to the Moon and eventual exploration of Mars.

When Barack Obama became president five years later, his administration proceeded to terminate the shuttle. Constellation was wound down, although Congress retained parts of it in the form of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, which is still being built today. During that time, Orion was targeted for missions to asteroids, a goal that had little support outside the administration.

The signature space effort of the Obama years became the Commercial Crew program that built on a smaller initiative from the George W. Bush years, which began bearing fruit with last year’s first SpaceX Crew Dragon missions. While the Ares rockets from Constellation were cancelled, the Space Launch System replaced Ares at the insistence of Congress.

President Donald Trump’s administration became well-known for working hard to overturn Obama administration policies and having the compliment returned starting this year by the administration of President Joe Biden. The big exception to this rule is turning out to be space, including Trump’s creation of the U.S. Space Force.

Commercial Crew continued without interruption through the Trump years, and Trump and his NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine launched the Artemis program with the goal of landing humans on the Moon, including the first woman, no later than 2024. Like earlier NASA human exploration proposals, Artemis envisions a long-term human presence on the Moon and expeditions to Mars. With the exception of the 2024 deadline, Artemis survived intact through the transition to the Biden administration.

The Biden administration’s endorsement of Artemis in February broke the pattern of short-lived NASA programs aimed at sending humans beyond LEO that didn’t survive the administration that created them. A common thread between Artemis and the programs that preceded it, starting with Constellation, is the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System to carry it to space.

The new administration’s decision to continue with Artemis, which greatly increases the likelihood of new human flights to the Moon, could make 2021 a turning point in the history of space exploration. Most of the story of Artemis remains to be told, including its first test flight, scheduled for late this year. And questions still remain over major elements of the program, notably the Lunar Gateway and the Human Landing System.

With Artemis nearing the launch pad, there will be work for historians examining the lengthy roots of that program and the complicated politics over the past two decades that led to today’s U.S. human space exploration programs.

This is also the year when long promised and long delayed advances in space tourism are becoming reality, in the form of suborbital flights by Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin spacecraft and the first purely private flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon. The seventh decade of the era of human spaceflight holds potential unseen since its first decade.

The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada in the 2020s

In the last weekend of June, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada completed its second Virtual General Assembly, a socially distanced version of its annual get-together whose history goes back more than 60 years. This virtual event marked a major turning point for the RASC, heralding the arrival of a new and younger generation of astronomers who will lead the society well into the 21st century.

Its keynote speaker, Emily Calandrelli, may not be known to those of us who came of age during the Space Race, but she is a rock star to younger space enthusiasts. Calandrelli hosts and produces a hit series on Netflix, Emily’s Wonder Lab, and she has a major presence on social media. She spoke about the importance of attracting women and girls to science and technical occupations and outlined the often difficult history of how they were ignored and marginalized in the past by NASA and other space organizations. Calandrelli appeared on the General Assembly’s first day, specially designated as Youth Day. The following day another powerful woman in astronomy was also featured: astrophysicist Katie Mack, who laid out scenarios for the future of our universe.

A presentation that will be long remembered came from Hilding Neilson of the University of Toronto, whose work includes integrating indigenous knowledges and methods into how we view the universe. His thought-provoking and timely talk on astronomy and colonization not only spoke to how indigenous perspectives of our universe have been missed, but also to how colonization is taking away our skies in the form of light pollution and satellite constellations. Front and centre at the General Assembly were young members of the RASC’s new Next Generation Committee, notably Emilie Lafleche, a talented student who hosted many sessions.

The RASC is especially close to my own heart because I first joined it when I was young, and I served as its president from July 2018 to June 2020, taking office just as the RASC was marking its 150th anniversary. During the early months of my term I had time to write a couple of blog entries about the society, but the responsibilities of that job took me away from this blog. Since I remain on the board of directors, my RASC work continues, and now I am finally getting back to writing about the experience of leading the RASC in this time of change and challenge.

In June 2019, the Society held an in-person General Assembly at York University in Toronto, a successful event that included announcements of new programs including the Rudolph Dorner Telescope Museum at the RASC National Office in Toronto. The GA featured a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 with James Hansen, the author of First Man, the acclaimed biography of Neil Armstrong.

It almost goes without saying that the final months of my time as president in 2020 were taken up meeting the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our executive director Phil Groff and his staff helped shift our activities from in-person to virtual formats, and our 30 centres all across Canada did likewise. These measures have helped keep our society of 5,300 amateur and professional astronomers active amidst the public health measures that have become all too familiar to all of us. Our 2020 General Assembly was supposed to take place in Vancouver, but the organizers of that event managed to overcome the jarring challenges of the pandemic to create a successful and memorable Virtual General Assembly featuring Canadian Astronaut Josh Kutryk, exoplanet expert Sara Seager, and CBC’s Bob McDonald, amongst others.

Even without the pandemic, there was a great deal of work to do at the RASC. As president, I was involved in renewing our flagship publication, SkyNews, by bringing a young new editor, Allendria Brunjes, on board after I served as interim editor for a single issue. When Randy Attwood retired as executive director after an unmatched career of service to the RASC, we selected Phil Groff as his successor. With the help of expanded fundraising, the society has been able to increase the services it provides to astronomers around Canada. A remote telescope located in California for RASC members and those learning about astronomy has come on line.

Over the past few years, the RASC has been engaged in making itself more welcoming for women, visible minorities and LGTBQ+ people through measures such as an anti-harassment policy and an Inclusivity and Diversity Committee. Both of these actions have won wide support around the society, but opposition came from a handful of individuals. Their actions caused unexpected and unwelcome challenges to board members and others, including many of our younger members, whose response inspired and sometimes prodded us on the board to work harder to make inclusion and diversity a reality in the RASC.

My successor as president of the society, Robyn Foret, fostered the creation of the RASC’s Next Generation Committee, whose members provided much of the energy and ideas that made our recent Virtual General Assembly a success. Our work continues, and much more remains to be done to ensure that the RASC reflects the face of Canada in the third decade of the 21st century.

The legendary Canadian astronomer Helen Sawyer Hogg once wrote a book called The Stars Belong to Everyone. That title was adopted for the RASC’s 2021 Virtual General Assembly, and it is the rallying cry of the Society as it enters the post-pandemic world.