DV Journal

On Oct. 1, 1847, at age 29, Maria Mitchell, a studious and sturdy Quaker who, as a child, began sweeping the sky above Nantucket, Mass., with a telescope, became America’s first scientist to discover a comet.

Mitchell was awarded a gold medal from King Frederick VI of Denmark for discovering the comet, which would be named “Miss Mitchell’s Comet,” and in 1848, she was the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Much later in her life, astronomers honored Mitchell by naming a Moon crater for her.

The sky was the limit for Mitchell — and she achieved renown as a professor of astronomy at Vassar College, an activist in the anti-slavery and suffrage movements, and a leader of professional associations for women and a pioneering mixed-gender one.

Of the stars, which were always in her sights, Mitchell said, “Do not look at stars as bright spots only. Try to take in the vastness of the universe.”

That is what NASA’s next-generation space telescope, named after a legendary woman astronomer of the 20th century, Nancy Grace Roman, aims to do when it is launched late next year or early in 2027 — if all goes without delay. Nancy Grace Roman was the first chief astronomer at NASA — and is affectionately known as “the mother of the Hubble Space Telescope.”

On a recent group tour of the work on Roman, managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., I learned that the telescope is “75 percent clear” for launch.

Roman, NASA’s next large flagship mission, will survey the infrared universe from beyond the orbit of the Moon. It will map stars, galaxies and dark matter to explore the formation and evolution of large cosmic structures like galaxies and galaxy clusters.

Roman looks a lot like Hubble. It is about the size of a school bus and features a primary mirror that is 7.9 feet across — the same size as Hubble. Roman’s primary mirror, working with other optics, will send light to its two science instruments: the Wide Field Instrument and Coronagraph technology demonstration.

“The big difference between the two telescopes is that Roman has 40-years-newer technology,” tour guide Joe Foster said.

Roman will have the exact crisp resolution as Hubble, which has reached 35 years in orbit, and the James Webb Space Telescope, launched in December 2021, but its field of view will be at least 100 times larger.

Foster, who joined NASA in 2019 as its first full-time civil servant dedicated to the cloud, said there is already an incredible explosion of data volume from the orbiting telescopes, and it will continue to grow. The tour was arranged by Omar Hatamleh, head of AI at NASA.

The James Webb telescope, in its first five years of operations, is going to produce just shy of 1 petabyte of data per day, Foster said. “Roman, in its first five years, is going to produce 20 petabytes of data per day — a 20 times increase in data volume in just one generation of satellite,” he said.

Every photo that Roman takes will be a 300.8 million-megapixel image of the sky. “There aren’t enough human eyeballs in the world in a day to look at every picture of that size,” Foster said, “So we are investing in computer-vision algorithms to use AI to help us detect changes in those pictures.”

Unlike Hubble and the James Webb, Roman will do “survey campaigns.” During those campaigns, the telescope will focus on the same patch of the sky because it has such a wide view for prolonged periods of time.

The computer-vision algorithms will detect subtle changes in starlight while looking at faraway host stars. Based on those changes, NASA astrophysicists will know whether those host stars have planets orbiting around them, how far from the host star those planets are, the potential composition of the atmosphere of those planets, and whether they have the ability to harbor life.

“With the launch of James Webb, the number of exoplanets we know about has jumped exponentially. Once Roman launches, it is going to go from tens of thousands of exoplanets to millions potentially — and it might be millions in a couple of months that we find,” Foster said.

Roman is a $4 billion flagship telescope, the largest one fully assembled and built at Goddard by a 1,000-strong team.

However, work on Roman almost didn’t get off the ground.

The mission came about as a result of a 90- to 180-day conference, held once every decade, at which NASA and the broader scientific community worldwide submit papers.

“People vote up or down the papers in very Reddit style. Then, they produce what is called a decadal survey.

“So when mission ideas come along, NASA looks at the priorities in the most recent decadal survey,” Foster said.

That survey took place about eight years ago, and in it, the need for a wide-field survey telescope was identified as one of the primary means to discover exoplanets.

At the time, James Webb hadn’t launched and Roman was a concept telescope. NASA wanted Roman to align with the most recent decadal survey and successfully fought the previous Trump administration to get its funding with the help of the Maryland congressional delegation.

Obviously, Foster said NASA telescopes aren’t built in a day. It takes time to incubate the technology before it becomes flight-ready.

Technology isn’t the only thing at work in a NASA space telescope mission.

As Maria Mitchell said, “We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is beauty and poetry.”

Things were supposed to be so different by now. Futurists predicted that by the 21st  century, we’d travel in helicopter cars, vacation on Mars, and all would be wearing those nifty space jumpsuits.

It didn’t turn out that way.

One thing they especially got wrong was food. However, Americans’ fascination with the early Space Age did send folks over the moon for several astronaut-related products.

Time to revisit three food fads from a future that wasn’t.

NASA’s early programs seized the country’s fascination like nothing before. Space was hip, cool and trendy. And one product shouted “space” like no other: Tang.

It burst onto the scene when John Glenn drank it during his Friendship 7 flight on February 20, 1962, one of several items he consumed to test eating in orbit.

General Mills shrewdly capitalized on the drink’s 15 minutes of fame. Everyday folks could taste the glamour of spaceflight themselves right in their own kitchen.

Tang was the brainchild of prominent food scientist William Miller. He also gave us Cool Whip, powdered egg whites, and that exploding candy that had absolutely no connection to space (despite many urban myths to the contrary), Pop Rocks. They disappeared for a while 30 years ago and later returned. Tang has always been available.

Then there was Astronaut Ice Cream. It was freeze-dried to eliminate water and sealed in a pouch, removing the need for refrigeration. It also removed anything recognizable to human taste buds. If you’ve ever had some, you know it tastes like fiberglass insulation.

Yet despite having “astronaut” in its name, the stuff never made it into space. NASA hired Whirlpool to produce freeze-dried foods that could be used during long trips to the moon. And this one didn’t go, despite widespread claims to the contrary.

A report somehow made it into the press that Astronaut Ice Cream was consumed during Apollo 7’s mission in 1968. But it wasn’t. Astronaut Walter Cunningham ought to know; he served on that mission and later told an interviewer, “We didn’t have any of that stuff.”

Astronaut Ice Cream still has a following among hikers and campers because it’s light and occupies little room on backpacks. Tastiness, apparently, is incidental to many hikers and campers.

That brings us to our final product. It had the least imaginative name of all: Space Food Sticks. Unlike Astronaut Ice Cream, this one really did take the E-Ticket trip aloft. Scott Carpenter consumed three small food cubes while traveling in Aurora 7, just 90 days after Glenn downed Tang. (Apparently, nobody at Cape Canaveral considered serving them together as space’s answer to wine and cheese.)

Pillsbury trotted out its version around 1970, calling it a “nutritionally balanced” snack, the granddaddy of today’s energy bars. Instead of bite-size cubes, it was packaged in stick form in a sealed container to appear more “astronauty.”

Many aging Baby Boomers distinctly remember eating them. They had a reputation for not being too bad. (Though if you put enough sugar in anything, you guarantee its appeal to a 9-year-old’s palate.)

Pillsbury’s food engineers also invented relish that could be served by the slice, cake that didn’t crumble, and meat that didn’t need refrigeration. Surprisingly, there was no demand for them.

Space Food Sticks faded from store shelves as the glory faded from the space program. You can still find them in space museum gift shops and online.

Futuristic foods from the Final Frontier are now oddities from a bygone era. Today’s trend is toward natural foods, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, and away from pre-packaged processed edibles. Ironic, isn’t it?

And we didn’t get those nifty space jumpsuits, either. Bummer.Please follow DVJournal on social media: Twitter@DVJournal or Facebook.com/DelawareValleyJournal

Four astronauts recently embarked on a six-month journey to the International Space Station. Their mission comes months after the start of NASA’s ambitious Artemis program, which has already sent a spacecraft to the moon and back and plans to send the first woman and the first person of color to the lunar surface in 2024. These latest space missions are part of a broad expansion of the space economy that represents a new space exploration age that will reshape life on Earth.

This new era of exploration is brimming with potential for the broader lessons gleaned from living in an environment as extreme as space. Spending time in space forces us to innovate and pivot quickly when something goes awry. This applies to many global issues and personal challenges, from environmental sustainability to getting a good night’s sleep in a busy environment.

This is, partly, because space travel is becoming more common, comfortable and convenient. After two years of carrying astronauts for NASA, SpaceX launched its first private charter to the ISS last April. Blue Origin has already sent more than 30 people into space, including celebrities Michael Strahan and William Shatner. Virgin Galactic has more than 700 people signed up for suborbital trips later this year. As space travel becomes more common, the technologies that astronauts use to eat, sleep, work and function will follow suit.

To flourish off Earth, humans must rely on an array of new technologies, many of which are just beginning to emerge. Neurotech — the sensing or stimulation of the nervous system (invasively or not) for physical, mental and emotional wellness — appears promising. Sleep wearables tackle the neurological roots of sleep problems by showing the brain how to fall asleep and stay asleep all night. This technology could support astronauts as they experience 16 sunrises and sunsets daily in orbit, guaranteeing proper rest and focus.

To prevent muscle atrophy and blood flow problems in microgravity, astronauts must exercise two hours daily. Additionally, training to live and work in orbit can be challenging while they build muscle memory. To help with these issues, astronauts could use new technology that provides electro-stimulation of the primary motor cortex, effectively helping them learn movement faster.

Health and wellness is just one sector where public-private partnerships advance science and technology that will shape our lives on and off Earth. The food industry shows similar promise as how we grow food in space has vast implications for developing sustainable food systems in challenging climates and environments on Earth.

NASA recently held a Deep Space Food Challenge to evaluate ideas for novel food production technologies and systems that require minimal resources and produce minimal waste while providing safe, nutritious and tasty food for long-duration human exploration missions. 

The industrial design firm I co-founded was among the organizations that took up the challenge and submitted a design for a space culinary lab. Our lab is designed to mimic the terrestrial kitchen experience, offering a laser grill, algae bioreactor, aeroponic garden, and beverage homogenizer. The lab’s small footprint and simple design allow for maximum flexibility, allowing astronauts to make a vast variety of meals — just like in their kitchen at home. 

Other winning teams have taken a more singular, focused approach. A team of biomedical engineers from Tufts University is developing a way to transform insect cells into “meat” as a source of stable, protein-rich food matter that can be produced in space. A doctoral student at the University of Florida is enabling astronauts to bake fresh bread in space.

For those of us staying firmly on Earth, these innovations offer a variety of foods and fresh nourishments that food deserts lack. Empowering people to easily grow their own nutritious foods and lessen dependencies on the monetary and planetary costs of fuel and supply chain logistics has proved increasingly volatile and chaotic.

This next ISS crew will conduct more than 200 experiments across various subject areas. Their discoveries will play an essential role in expanding our frontiers while driving technological transformations on Earth. And as we learn more about survival in the harshest and most desolate environment imaginable — space — we will also expand our understanding of what it means to be human.

Please follow DVJournal on social media: Twitter@DVJournal or Facebook.com/DelawareValleyJournal