Climate Change: The View from Space - a Science Museum Group Climate Talk

[Music] [Laughter] [Music] greetings from mumbai india and welcome to the science museum group's global climate talks taking place throughout 2021 in the run-up to cop 26 the most important international climate summit this year as the united nations environment program goodwill ambassador i am honored to campaign on an issue that is close to my heart the urgent need to protect our planet the survival of animals birds insects forests lakes and oceans depends on us every solution starts with a conversation and by understanding the problems we face in the fight to tackle climate change we can work together to solve those problems that is why this series of climate talks is so important the world is heating up to dangerous levels and we're already over one degree celsius above pre-industrial levels according to the 2015 paris agreement we have until the end of this decade to reduce carbon emissions to keep global heating to 1.5 degrees now 1.5 degrees might not sound much but the world's temperature isn't evenly spread and some areas of the planet are heating up quicker than others this is why we're already seeing more extremes in weather more drought coastal flooding wildfires that have devastated ecosystems and communities we must act now if you fail to it will get much worse which brings me back to why this series of climate talks is so important these global online debates will explore not only the problems but the solutions be they nature based technological behavioral political or economic the series so far has examined climate justice biodiversity loss and the impact of capitalism on the environment the talks so far have taken a global perspective but tonight the scope widens even further as we take a view from space and find out how our work in earth's orbit and beyond has helped us to better appreciate and understand our precious and incredible planet and its changing climate and now i'd like to introduce the chair of this evening's climate talk the broadcaster medic and author dr kevin fong thank you to the multi-talented dia mercer uh an actor film producer and you an ambassador for introducing tonight's event from her home all the way from india and hello and welcome to all of you watching at home i am kevin fong and i am delighted to be here for the latest in the science museum group series of global climate talks in their run-up to the most important international climate summit this year the cop 26. the climate talks series which starts in january runs throughout the year and you can catch up with the ones you've missed on the science museum's youtube channel before we start i'd like to mention that live subtitles are available for this talk which you can access by clicking the captions icon below and the subject of today's science museum group climate talks debate relates to how the work of humankind in space has advanced our understanding of planet earth our impact on the climate and how the experience of our astronauts seeing earth from space has enhanced our appreciation for the amazing unique yet fragile planet that we call home so without further ado let's meet our guest speakers uh and and this has got to be the most illustrious panel i have ever had the pleasure to chair we'll start uh by welcoming uh all the way from vienna uh simonetta to pippo um director of the united nations office for outer space affairs director of human space flight at the european space agency welcome simonetta thank you next my pleasure oh great to see you and next we are joined by dr maggie adrian pocock who needs almost no introduction and certainly not for fans of the bbc's sky at night of which she is presenter hi maggie hi lovely to see you and you um and uh next uh we have uh we're going to welcome the uk's very first european space agency astronaut tim peake who of course spent six months aboard the international space station before returning to earth in 2016 in a soyuz capsule that now resides in the science museum's exploring space gallery hi tim hello kevin and hello to everyone watching great to be here great to see you and if that wasn't enough uh and if one legendary british astronaut wasn't enough for you tonight then it's good news because we have two welcome to the very first british astronaut uh the first britain in space the amazing dr helen sharman who is also the first woman to have visited the mere space station in 1991 hi helen hi kevin and everyone lastly i should mention that tim recently published his autobiography limitless which is a cracking read uh and uh and there's a small number of signed copies of both limitless and of maggie's own book with the sky at night book of the moon from the science museum online shop in the link below so very warm welcome to all of you thanks for joining us uh and i think we're gonna start with our two guest astronauts uh helen and tim um uh helen tim i i'm gonna start with that quote from carl sagan uh that relates to the famous pale blue dot photograph taken from voyager 1 one of my most favorite exploratory missions at 3.8 billion miles from earth you're

looking at it now sagan said there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world to me it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the plain blue dot the only home we've ever known and for good measure i also thought we should have a look at the iconic earthrise image it's taken actually by astronaut bill aboard apollo 8 although he had a lot of help from jim lovell that's what jim lovell told me when i spoke to him last year in 1968. um so i mean stunning images of the earth from space and and i guess i i want to ask i'll start with you helen you know how much does that sentiment right ring true to you you know having had the privilege of looking back at earth from space how much do sagan's words ring with you that quote by carl sagan and the bigger piece it comes from is i think one of the the best ever written about human life on earth i mean when you're inside a space station orbiting the earth whether it's the international space station now or mir that i visited um you know we go all the way around the earth in 92 minutes one complete orbit round and back 92 minutes makes the earth seem incredibly small i mean but it is beautiful nobody ever gets tired of it i don't think i mean astronauts all just love looking out at those amazing views we we talk about those beautiful blue seas and the brilliant white clouds because the sunlight reflects off the top of them back up to us in space those brick red deserts and then of course if you look tangentially at an angle to the earth you can see through the earth's atmosphere and it is just such a very very thin edge to our planet and when you think that all life we know exists in this very thin strip on a very small planet and in the vastness of the universe i think that makes our insignificance sort of even more striking and obviously in such a small place like this this thin line i mean everything is connected it's obvious that it has to be so you see swirls of plankton in ocean currents um you can see flashes of lightning in storms as they go from one part of the world to another in places that people on the ground couldn't even then perceive were was it was another storm you see the sediment from rivers coming out hundreds of miles into the sea and i think that just shows that what we do absolutely impacts each other and other parts of the globe and how much our atmosphere because it's so thin it can only absorb you know a certain amount before its equilibrium just gets pushed off balance and you can see how you know how physically humans can be separated on earth we've got the mountain ranges you've got the and the rivers and seas even but what you don't see are those political boundaries the things that carl sagan spoke about you know this idea of a social construct that defines somehow nation states that fight for their own interests to the detriment of of the whole just seemed when i look back at the earth seemed to be such a crazy kind of concept and yet i was seeing the oil fires in kuwait burning in the aftermath of the gulf war you know um you don't normally see fires because they're too small you see the smoke it's in a straight line but you don't see the fire burning but i could see the kuwait oil fires then and i think you know our earthly lives are dictated more and more nowadays by these sort of political boundaries it's not just for travel and trade it's how we use earth's resources and i always thought then 30 years ago when i flew into space but even more now how it's time for our political leaders to see that bigger picture you know to um it's important that we debate what we're doing now so that we do well we ask questions we influence our leaders we hold them to account we have a democracy and i think the best we can do is actually to use it well i don't know that that that fragility of the atmosphere in that tiny thin layer around the earth always takes my breath away you know and and uh um charles coquel one of the astrobiologists from edinburgh talks about it as being not a biosphere but a bio smear just smeared across the planet um tim how about you how how has your experience having flown in space having seen the earth from such an altitude how has it shaped how you think about the earth yeah i mean just to reiterate and pick up on on what helen was saying there i mean it is incredible to see it one of the interesting things is um you know we go about our daily lives here and we're all very busy and the pace of change today is is phenomenal and you know we're actually losing touch with nature we're becoming more disconnected despite the fact we're surrounded by nature everywhere and you know we're losing touch with what's above us as well you look up on a bright sunny day and and you'll see a lovely you know blue sky here in the uk it's probably gray and raining but never mind you know what what you're not seeing is you're not seeing the blackness of space which is only you know 100 kilometers above you and our atmosphere is only 16 kilometers thick that's not even you know the the distance from england to france across the channel um and space is a scary place you know when you are out there in this hostile environment that will kill you in less than 60 seconds um you know you look at the earth against this black vast backdrop going on for infinity um and it is an environment that we do not want to find ourselves in you know we need to be thankful of those 16 kilometers but protect all life and enable all life here on planet earth and um you know as helen was saying when you look tangentially at the earth and actually every sunset and every sunrise and we see 16 of them a day so we get to see lots of this from the space station there's a few special moments where um earth is completely black because you don't yet see this the lights of towns and cities and there are no stars yet because it's still too bright but you just see this thin strip of earth's atmosphere and it's just a curvature of earth and this beautiful prism of light against again this black backdrop and that's when you think wow stunningly beautiful but is that it is that all there is um and and so it's very striking and it gives you a completely different perspective on the fragility of you know of our planet depending on that atmosphere um and um i mean i want to talk about it quickly about life because you know um you know we've just sent nasa's perseverance rover off to mars looking for the signs of life but at the moment we are as far as we know the only um living or the only planet rather that can sustain and has sustained life and i think that life gives meaning to the universe i think a universe without life actually has no meaning and that makes us i mean i completely agree with helen and she said about our insignificance because you feel you feel completely insignificant when you see you know the photograph of earth from voyager it makes you feel even more insignificant but actually life is something to be valued and life is something to be protected because i think it's life that gives meaning to the universe and both of you have been scientists in space on board you know these ultimate scientific platforms our space stations helen you're on mere tim you're on the iss but helen tell us about the science that you did up there on the mere space station and and particularly about the climate-related experiments and observations that were done on that platform because you know it isn't all goofing around in weightlessness is it we wish but um no i think i mean everybody likes likes making themselves useful i think um i did a variety of experiments and um i think really the my mission was was as much for the soviet space agency to show off to the rest of the world all the different kind of science it does so i had some plant growth stuff about looking at how potato roots grow and wheat seedlings and germinating seeds looking at how my body was adapting to space flight and my crews as well um looking at new materials which is actually my favorite experiments because i got to use an air lock outside the space station so i could put these materials out and expose them to the vacuum and radiation of space and then bring them back in and analyze them and then transmit all that data back to earth so just a whole host of different types of experiments protein crystals you know to look at future um drugs for pharmaceutical companies um it's just great to be able to do that that variety of different stuff but i did a few earth observation work myself and i was taking um some ultraviolet images and we had a sapphire window and probably where sapphire glass lets in a whole load of ultraviolet that the normal windows we have in our houses doesn't allow through and so we could get some great ultraviolet images of the earth um but also looking at specific colors and i had a a very odd contraption that i could manipulate three different lights just to replicate certain colors of the earth's surface and the actual color that my eyes perceived was very important to the scientists to for them to be able to work out the kind of bacteria that was in the lake in siberia for instance so he says i was doing sort of a few earth orbs but actually you're right the miss space station itself um really started sort of um to accelerate i think the amount of earth observation work that was being done at the time um certainly after my mission um many many um sort of earth observation experimental work was done in terms of looking at the change of land use on the earth and ice melting um you know also long-term climate changes they were looking at the events just before and during the 1997-1998 el nino um where the phenomena passes and how all of that baseline data was changing and then on the parody module in mia they had um um some equipment that could analyze changes in the biosphere and earth's atmosphere um looking at seasonal changes and land and water as well so there's a whole load of things photographs in particular you know and there was um i just thought was quite interesting a combination of work with mere um astronauts as well as the space shuttle astronauts at the time this big sort of mere shuttle um scientific programme particularly to do with climate change um and there were a whole load of american satellites and equipment on the mere space station um where they were sort of calibrated so the images could be comparable and those were tens hundreds of thousands of images um that then formed a kind of an erbs observational database with data and images for scientists researchers around the world and to be able to call upon whenever they wanted so yes that was i think the beginnings really of a really big database in earth obs and and talking about beginnings and the legacy of mir of course it's great to move on to international space station and tim your experience aboard it um what did you get involved in uh up there when you weren't doing superman impressions uh what climate-related science were you on to yes i mean the the space station of course is a microgravity laboratory so we're involved in about you know anywhere between 250 and 350 experiments in a six-month mission um now a number of those will be climate relate related um actually this the space station is not the best platform for um earth observation we we tend to use polar orbits um for sun synchronous orbits which are giving us you know more than 50 percent of all of our climate data and i'm sure you know maggie and simonetta will probably come on to this as well but even so the space station has been giving some remarkable data back where it's it's inclined at about 51 degrees so what that means is that in each orbit um as the earth rotates underneath the space station's orbit we actually cover about 90 percent of the populated area of the earth and we are able to monitor things like glaciers you know biomass forested areas urban areas as well coral reefs oceans and something that we get involved in is ceo this crew earth observation we're taking photographs that are sent up to us each day areas of interest and over a length of time obviously over 20 years we've occupied the international space station we've been able to monitor significant impacts of climate change over that period by these crew observation photos um so you know the international space station is is doing some really good work in in terms of earth observation and what you get is the human element of seeing earth from space and seeing the impact that humans are having on our planet but actually in terms of the quantity of data the finger on the pulse if you like coming from space uh the space station is just a very small part of it yeah i i mean i always love the description of earth observation and in fact one of my friends uh uh dantani was telling me about he tried to snap a photo of london as he was going by for me and he said you know it's moving by so fast you have to sort of pan the camera as it's going i thought it was much easier than that it's an incredible incredible perspective on the earth there and thanks thanks to you both uh for telling us about that really inspiring i feel very jealous now um we'll be coming back to you both a bit later of course um but we're going to go to our next speaker now um joining us from vienna uh where she is director of the united nations office for outer space affairs which is the best named agency in the whole universe i'm pretty sure and it has the best abbreviation it's also known as eunussa i feel more relaxed from having said that already all on its own this is a simonetta deep hippo uh a welcome simonetta uh lovely to see you um i just really wanted to start with uh you giving us an overview of your work at the united nations office for outer space affairs you know i'm sure you must have a first contact team there that you can't tell me about but but but what do you do well uh thank you kevin really the work of the office is a rather broad interplay of various mandates functions and responsibilities well if we want if we want to frame it uh in a in an easy manner i would say you can consider it working on two main lines so in reality we manage and implement the program on the peaceful uses of outer space so you may say quite a broad mandate what it means uh well the the vision of the office is really to bring the benefits of space to humankind which is also quite broad uh so in practice uh just in a nutshell i can tell you that first of all we tried to foster international cooperation with all the stakeholders in the space arena which means uh governments uh space agencies ngos academia the private sector and the civil society so quite a broad let's say um environment secondly you can consider us as uh you know since we are the only u.n entity fully devoted to space affairs 100 we are in a way the getaway in the system and for the system so we coordinate your activities also for all the other entities in the u.n using space related technologies to support their activities and in particular overall socioeconomic sustainable development and in this particular side of the of the medal what we do we try to help all countries especially in particular developing and emerging countries access to space and access to the benefits that space can bring for sustainable development and this is at the core of our activities so it's essentially capacity building activity which goes from ranging from space law and policy space applications access to space infrastructures etc so if we go to the climate component it's clearly embedded in all these activities and just to make an example we are running a dedicated program uh which builds capacity in utilizing space tools for disaster management and emergency response and we are also developing a new initiative which is called space for climate action which should provide opportunities to enable develop and inspire the use of space for climb for the climate crisis which is key for the future and to tackle the karma's crisis without space cannot be done and that's all important to remember isn't it that without space we can't tackle i mean is is that is that really true without space we cannot tackle the climate crisis well uh i i'm fully convinced about that just an example if you look at the essential climate variables that's been classified by ceos such as let's say a group of space agencies well 54 essential climate variables uh you can monitor more than half of these variables only from space and this is you know it means that space is really mandatory uh to monitor and therefore to help humanity and all member states to take the right policy uh let's say the right policy and decision making processes so that uh at the very end we can understand better the mechanisms and then work better for adaptation and mitigation which are the main activities that currently we are doing my personal opinion is that we should bring ba back at the center science and space in this specific case uh and i have to say also that the pandemic the carbon 19 pandemic is is also going in the same direction so science and space must be at the center we need to understand all over the world and in really as i say policy makers need to understand this more than others that without space we cannot do really anything to take on the criminal crisis that's also the message that i'm trying to bring uh through the system uh up to the cop 26 at the end of this year yes i think if this past year's taught us anything at all it's taught us how central science technology engineering and mathematics have to be to the future of all of our policy all of our planning you know it's right there in the middle as you just said now we just heard from uh helen and tim about you know the way they came to see the earth and and how it shaped their view of the earth you were the director of human spaceflight at issa is that common is that do your astronauts usually come back and changed in that way in their view of the earth well uh clearly what i can say is that uh my experience being always on the ground um and helping uh the system i mean to really prepare missions and have astronauts flying etc um it's it's in any case it gives you a different perspective of the day-by-day life uh i i'm an astrophysicist by education i've been spending all my time 35 years now in the space business in different in different uh let's say responsibilities and what i can tell you is that the my approach to life is strongly linked to space it means that in a way uh if if you you made you made the reference to carl sagan and the fact that this pale blue dot etc so the earth is a planet and is really small quite a pale blue dot if you look at it from from a far distance and so it means that in reality uh we should also take all the issues that in the day-by-day life with a different approach and from space in reality you don't have boundaries and and you understand that you are in a sort of uh spaceship altogether this is something that astronauts always say uh i mean we are really old humanity and on a spaceship earth a man uh floating in the in the floating is not exactly correct but i meant orbiting in the solar system and uh and to be very honest with you i believe that uh uh uh also living with this approach is what brings us to do what we do to work really hard to support humanity in understanding that without space as i said it's not possible any socio-economic development and we have also to look at space as a global common and we need we have the duty to preserve earth and space for future generations uh also in particular if we want to go and live on on other planets and becoming a multi-planetary species so in reality um as i said even if i never flew apart parabolic flights uh it's it's extremely interesting that uh that uh i i've been uh i've been uh dealing with astronauts all my my life i know so many that i probably don't even remember how many but the point is that we all together in the space business we see what we do as a service to humanity which is extremely important each of us with a different perspective and a different uh let's say type of contribution and very very briefly simonetta uh before we move to maggie the united nations is about to oversee the most important meeting on climate change on the whole planet this november cop 26 in glasgow um tell me very briefly what you think cop26 needs to achieve well um as i said we we the office for outer space affairs this year are really focusing on climate climate crisis and climate action and so for us cop 26 is really extremely important what you should in my opinion should achieve and i believe that jointly italy and uk did a great job this year in organizing both the cop 26 youth summit which is uh in end of september uh beginning of october and then the real cops 26 later in the year uh also the fact that we have for the first time the youth summit related to cup is extremely important because we need to bring uh the the youngest at the table we need to hurt uh to hear their voice and and so uh what we are trying to do also with other entities including some uk uh based organizations and including also the uk space agency trying to bring the concept that space is at the center again i'm sorry to repeat the same concept but i believe that this is uh really important and that's what we are trying to do eventually being present there with some side events with some uh panel discussions uh to bring all the main experts uh in the field to explain why it's so mandatory to use satellites to take on the climate crisis thank you so much uh we'll we'll be back with you very shortly of course um but now we're going to hear from our next speaker uh astrophysicist author broadcaster serial over cheeva and presenter of the sky at night dr maggie ellerin pocock um it's really great to have you with us maggie and um i kind of want to talk to you about that bit of your life which is designing experiments and doing science and in particular uh you've designed your fair share of instruments used in climate modelling uh and and particularly on one in particular on the european space agency's aeolus satellite there's too many valves in the vowels in in that name aola satellite uh which which we've got a picture of here um tell me a bit about that and your work with climate change uh in space yes uh so aiolis uh is a very exciting project it was launched i think just over a year ago and it's getting data yes as you say to help us understand climate change and so what euless does um actually you mentioned the name ayolus um ionis is actually the greek keeper of the winds so that's where the name sort of uh hails from and and iolis is doing something similar it's getting giving us an understanding of the winds in our atmosphere now winds play an important role in sort of linking weather cells together so by understanding how the wind is changing and moving and doing things we can get a better understanding of climate change and so iotas does this it's quite challenging because when we're down here on earth we can interact with the wind you can see wind socks and things like that but when you're up there in space you're sort of above most of the atmosphere so aeonis measures wind speed by sending pulses of uv light down into the atmosphere and then some of this uv light gets scattered off particles moving under the influence of the wind and then some of that light is scattered back up to the telescope which sits in aeolus and that light is analyzed and the effect the doppler effect which um sort of elongates and sort of condenses us light waves sound waves and things like that by actually analyzing the light very very carefully we can see how that light has changed by the interaction with the particle it's been reflected off and so that way we can get an understanding of wind speed throughout the atmosphere and at different altitudes so it gives us a i think the plan is to have a number of ayola satellites sitting there in space looking down at our planet and giving us a better understanding of the wind and climate change and that's esa but but what about the uk we have our own uk space agency what is it doing specifically uh on climate change yes and so there are a number of projects underway uh climate change is seen as a very high priority and up we do lots of things which involve earth observation so ayola sort of measures wind speed in the atmosphere but much of um uh many of the satellites down out there are looking down on earth and taking images of earth and giving us a better understanding and so with this we get huge amounts of data it's absolutely big data is everywhere and it's definitely out there in space and so it's gathering this data and analyzing this data and getting a better understanding and then feeding this data into models and understanding how um uh how the earth is changing how the atmosphere is changing and the impact this climate change is having so yes and there's lots of funding going into various uh activities but as well as that um a lot of uh instrumentation being made to give us a better understanding a better look um a few years ago i was working on a project called flex which actually looks at how plants free to synthesize because as plants free to synthesize they absorb light and through that they can make sugars but they also re-emit light and by looking at that light that's re-emitted we can tell how efficient our plants are are reacting so there's all sorts of different ways we can use space to get a better understanding of our planet and help rather than sending such a sort of people out in cars and things like that sort of burning fossil fuels we can use space to get that sort of that global picture i think that's the glorious thing that space gives us that sort of global that global picture and that means that we're not working in isolations or one country here one country there we're working together on a united problem and it's not just looking at earth that helps us with climate is it our immediate neighbors on either sides tell us something about what the future of climate might look like they're sort of almost a cautionary tale tell us a little bit about looking at the other planets our solar system yeah i do love that because usually when we think of climate change we think sort of locally we look on earth observation but um as you say looking at our sort of sister planets gives us a lot of information um if you look at sort of um uh sort of mercury uh it's very close to the sun a sort of a lump of rock not that interesting although sorry to all sort of people studying mercury but moving further out so venus is a fascinating planet uh sort of many people would have seen venus in the night sky so either first thing in the morning or last thing like just as the sun has set and um venus it has a very thick tumultuous atmosphere uh with very high levels of of carbon dioxide and um and others of uh uh sort of a climate inducing uh um sort of chemicals and so um by understanding sort of the atmosphere of venus and by actually having sort of satellites um in orbit around venus and actually sort of our probes landing on the surface of venus we can get a better understanding of that atmosphere if we go to the other side sort of further away from the sun to mars that's where sort of like say percy the rover is sort of trundling over the surface now and by looking at mars we believe that mars used to have liquid water flowing over the surface so mars was much more earth-like in the past but some sort of i won't say climate catastrophe but the climate change radically and so by looking at this planet we can understand um what happened to mars there are various theories abound but by studying these other planets it gives us insight into perhaps the fate of our own and lessons learned but also by looking at the atmospheres of these other planets a climate uh atmospheric modelling a challenging thing to do as both tim and helen said our atmosphere is a thin band around our planet and yet it's a chaotic system and uh having just one planet to look at limits um uh the uh the extrapolations we can do but by looking at other planets uh with atmospheres of uh venus and mars it actually feeds into the climate changing models and gives us a better understanding of our atmosphere so i think we have a lot to learn by looking sort of further afield uh out to our sister planets perseverance and ingenuity on mars is my favorite mission of the moment so fantastic re really wonderful um now um the pentagon recently successfully tested a satellite solar panel that can beam solar energy down to earth which i'm sure was the plot of one of the james bond movies but never mind what can you tell us about this is real this is a real experiment so is this a a you know a future solution for clean energy yes there are a number out there this is a very exciting one because um you can go out there into space um grab grab that solar energy and beam it back to earth um there were plans a little while ago to actually put solar panels on the moon made out of the lunar regolith so sort of send um autonomous robots out there they build these solar panels there are some parts of the moon that sort of get almost 24 7 uh daylight uh sort of so um if you are actually scooping up some of this solar energy from these solar panels and then finding ways to beam it down to earth again finding ways of sort of tackling the climate change problem here by finding cleaner solutions to energy so i think uh space can teach us so much and there's so many different ways we can use it well thank you so much maggie that that is fascinating could talk to you all night about all of that it's really really exciting um now listen i'm going to bring the rest of the panel back now uh for an open discussion um and would also like to hear uh some of the questions that were sent in by our audience um so i'm going to direct the questions around to specific speakers but if anyone wants him to reject just just give me a wave and i'll bring you in um but we are going to start with a question uh to see moneta and i think i want to ask well uh uh what siemens do you think the future of climate research in space is going to look like well yeah very good question thank you so the climate research in space i would say is already in quite good shape and more mission are planned with focus on climate and uh weather related aspects so for example uh there is a mission uh in in uk uh under the the responsibility of the european space agency to enable better performance of earth observation satellites and their ground segments and this will contribute to better inform i meant about the informed decision-making processes around climate adaptation strategies which is extremely important and if we look at the copernicus program we would see several new sentinel satellites in uh in the next coming years each bringing new capabilities uh such as tracking individual sources of anthropogenic emissions improving observations of land eyes oceans and supporting forest management and and a lot more and if we look at nasa also uh there are a lot of missions already uh current and in planning uh focusing on increased accuracy of climate related measures and this will really be a revolution in in measurements of atmospheric chemistry and even seek to make the first ever global survey of the surface water on on earth well uh we have also to consider and this is extremely important to consider that uh in addition to government missions we have my a lot of private sector entities uh which are entering the race in recent years and so we see constellations of small satellites the which offer great prospects for near real-time coverage of the earth and so we have measurements from this new type of constellations which are going to complement high precision satellites so unlocking great potential in combining uh various data sources resulting from this new approach well this for sure and this is you know my my heart this require a really a high degree of international cooperation because we need to make available to everyone all the data which are collected in an open and free way and this is also linked to data standardization because otherwise i mean if we don't have standards then it will be difficult to utilize this data and so if we make the best possible use of space-based data and infrastructures and the benefits that they offer well uh we can also help all countries to benefit from this for an improvement of their uh well-being and then i believe also that is extremely important then when we analyze the data and we translate this data into actionable solutions we require we really need the integration with new technologies and so the more we integrate the new technologies uh artificial intelligence including machine learning but also biotechnologies and in robotics and we integrate these technologies between them but also with space technologies well for sure we will have an improvement in the way we can we can utilize space um also uh in in this field and we really believe that using more and more artis artificial intelligence and supercomputers and so big data uh we can really uh use data for transforming the future and helping as i said humanity for a better future thank you so much i i i want to throw that also to maggie yeah um um because you you told us something about some pretty far you know far-flung science at the end of your little section there but what else do you think the future of climate change science in space looks like yes well one of the things we've talked about is sort of a using space to get a better understanding of climate change to develop better models but space is doing so much more than that uh sort of as well as sort of mitigating and sort of uh making it easier or to spend to consume less fuel on earth uh space is also helping us when a climate change disaster is happening so and when a sort of a as of a as more disaster sort of hit us space can help us with understanding them uh help with satellite phones to sort of communicate people who are stranded uh help um my favorite example is in sort of a hurricane katrina in new orleans images from space through earth observation where able to help people get to the right areas or send a supplies in the right direction because they had that sort of again that sort of top level view so it's not just about getting the data it's also uh mitigating against the impact of climate change too and um we've got a question here uh about uh how we behave in in space really and um and whether the amount of litter there is i'm just going to pull that up sorry um if i can get my screen to work um so keon um uh is asking uh how do you sorry not ken sorry lucille is asking about how much litter we're depositing in space and is this something we should be looking at reducing um and similarly flora asks uh can we really retrieve all the litter we've left in space and has it been worth it i wanna i want helen to answer that i think these questions are coming from primary five at men's primary school i think that's right so so yeah those are good questions and i remember reading that the last thing that apollo astronauts did before they left the moon was lob all of the spare stuff out of the cabin so they were light enough to get into lunar orbit so it's not great is it so helen is it worth it are we littering up there well i think littering is a very good word because it's quite demeaning really isn't it it's um and it's something that we've been doing for a long time now um we we often use this um a word debris or debris if you're perhaps more american but um the space debris is what we call really all this litter and yeah i think it's about i'm going to start calling it litter now i think that's a much better word for it um it's it's i mean it's made up of huge some huge bits like say dead satellites so of course we've been sending satellites into space now for a very long time decades um there's a few thousand that um that are now dead um but there are more ones that are now not in use not really never really alive are they but the ones that aren't in musical dead ones um that there's that are more than now that are dead then are actually alive interestingly um but also it's not just these big lumps of old satellites which are basically basically litter they're junk they're huge though some of them are like tons in weights like as big as an elephant um but also there's all these the smaller bits that are actually really dangerous um big bits you can monitor right and we do actually have lots of times when spacecraft whether they're satellites or a space station with the astronauts we have to maneuver around these um these bits of space junk the debris the litter um but all the other bits i mean there are 34 000 pieces probably more now um of of of big lumps that are between one centimeter and 10 centimeters big you know 34 000 of them um there are millions that are less than um less than 10 um a centimeter so millions and millions that can be made of spent rocket stages and bits of frozen fuel um what else i mean dust really fragments effects of paint and they can really damage of the spacecraft out there so yeah so there is um there is a thought what do we do with these things so um historically what we often do is ship them up into a very very high orbit um so perhaps really high um so there are two big places around the world where a lot of this debris is all this litter one's in low earth orbit where the space station is with the astronauts and the other tends to be much higher up where we've got what we call geostationary satellites so they're going around the earth at just the same rate that the earth is turning so they're always looking at the same spot so they're 36 000 kilometers up so two big big places so we can actually ship these dead bits of satellites before they completely die really really high up so they don't get in the way but that's just putting off the problem we can try and bring them back closer to earth so eventually they burn up in the earth's atmosphere that's can be quite useful um but even then you know they can sometimes break up they don't they don't always come back properly um we're now trying to look at what can we do with the bits that we haven't done that to um can we send a harpoon out and sort of and and somehow lock onto them and then grab them back to bring them back to earth or a big net possibly i'm using magnets or a laser to kind of try and slow them down a bit so there's lots of work but there's nothing that really works yet um so i think someone else can probably comment on the the united nations i think the united nations would like us to send everything 25 000 um kilometers up but i don't think we can actually um we can actually enforce that can we semester is that right no we can't and and the point is that uh in reality uh there are the so-called space debris mitigation guidelines already approved by member states of the committee and the peaceful users of outer space since long and a couple of years ago uh copious approved the uh a good set of long-term sustainability guidelines and space debris again is is one of the main the main topics now by the way uh the office for our space affairs we are currently working with uk with uk governments through the uk space agency uh exactly on this topic and uh it's quite a strong collaboration and we have also in agreement with the european space agency we have currently a campaign ongoing to increase awareness on the importance of uh looking at space debris seriously because what we experience is that uh while usually governments and satellite um say managed by by space agencies and government um governments are really really uh following the the space bridge mitigation guidelines we also have to consider that first of all we have a lot of new countries entering into the space arena and on top of that a lot of private non-state actors and so what we really need to foster is to bring them to understand that they need to start their activities in the space field with a responsible behavior because even if we want to develop uh the so-called commercial space so being able to develop the private sector and use space also for socio-economic development in space well what we really need is to have all the players uh uh following the rules and the rules of the road otherwise it will never happen uh that we can maintain uh space for for for peaceful purposes and for future uses and i have to say um this this guidelines are not uh mandatories are are really uh in in a way um i'm gonna say soft low because they're not committing but at the same time the process that we use in in vienna is is everything is approved by consensus which means that all member states and we have 95 member states and the committee on the peaceful uses of outer space they uh really approve everything by consensus so the 21 uh guidelines on the long-term sustainability and also the space debris mitigation guidelines have been approved by consensus so everyone is really committed to follow and this is extremely important because it's the international cooperation and the common understanding that what we are trying to do all together is for the benefit of everyone thank you simonetta um um so we've got a huge raft of questions to get through um and and we're on number two so i'm failing so i'm gonna have to ask you to have some quick fire answers here but tim i just wanted to come to you now really to talk about whether or not you think spaceflight needs to be more sustainable i mean we're starting to see reusable rockets but but is there a future where well does it need to be greener is there a future in which it's greener what do you think to that yes uh i think it does um uh you know i think to put it into context though a lot of people see rockets launching and they just think oh my god look at that carbon footprint um to put it into context you know we look we launch about hundred and twenty rocket launches every year just take spacex fork and nine i did the backs and back of the cigarette packet at maths today and you know that's got 155 tons of kerosene a ton of kerosene gives about three tons of carbon so you've got 465 tons of carbon there and then liquid oxygen as well 362 tons doesn't obviously produce any carbon when it's burned but in in producing liquid oxygen storing it transporting it worst case scenarios if you use fossil fuels for that you've got about 650 tons there so total one falcon 9 spacex rocket launches about 1100 tons of co2 that's about five trips uh one-way trips across the atlantic in a 747 it's insignificant in in comparison to commercial aviation for example so just to put things in proportion because a lot of people say about things like the cost of human spaceflight for example without knowing what the cost is so let's talk about the carbon footprint it's it's incredibly insignificant compared to something like agriculture uh or commercial aviation but that's not to be flippant and that's not to say that we can't do more to reduce it spay space rocket launchers are going to increase in the future uh we've got some brilliant new space companies that are looking at this like sky aurora for example at eco scene they use non-recyclable plastic so rather than going to landfill they can take non-recyclable plastic which uh burns 45 percent less co2 than kerosene uh we've got orbecks who are looking at biopropane so it's great that new space are really putting the environment at the top of their agenda um the spacex we've seen recycling parts of their rocket great for commercial because it's brought the cost of access to space down um but also great for the environment of course yes we can do more and yes we we are doing more and i think we're going to see space getting greener and greener as in the future sorry kevin that wasn't that short no no that's good that's good i'll tell you off later and helen let me talk to you about space tourism you know it's a very recent innovation but do you think that's going to help us or hurt us or is it indifferent to to climate change i think it will help us in the end because i think as tim said the actual impact of rockets on the atmosphere is very very small at the moment and yet the space tourism is going to come on the back of a lot of the commercial space flight which as we've heard from tim is already looking at reusing rockets and and looking at different kind of um perhaps even different engines as well so i can imagine something with perhaps with with an air breathing engine a bit like like we've got with skylon it air breathes perhaps it uses wings as lift as well so we're kind of getting all of this kind of stuff which tourism helps to to to develop these kind of technologies which also um reduces the cost and increases access to space for all sorts of people and i can see a few tourists actually um helping that access to be increased for scientists um so it might not just be um people like tim and possibly myself who have gone into space um as an astronaut but you might go into space as an employee of your company let's say you've got a pharmaceutical company and you want to do some more protein crystal work to design more drugs you send your own member of staff into space to do that and i can see the inc because it's going to be easier and and cheaper to do that to investigate household products flame retardants fire retardants that kind of thing the kind of thing we can do in space so i can see actually a few tourists helping that access to space which will improve our science and ultimately our understanding of the environment so they could actually be overall quite useful thank you helen um now next questions and there are several um i'd like to direct to maggie and simonetta um and um uh they come from well so i was wrong earlier it's actually only this question that comes from the primary five at mirrors primary school which was the question was what evidence of climate change can we see from space but there are several related questions laura is asking has there been any observable difference in appearance of the planet from space due to and during the pandemic and similarly josh and gracie gracie are asking how much change could be seen from the international space station over the last year during lockdown so i think you know this is a sort of remote sensing sort of remote observations question in the first part i think so so uh maggie let's start with you and then see moneta what if anything have we been able to see from space because of the lockdown because of because of the pandemic yes so due to the pandemic we've been traveling uh that's a lot less of air travel of us are driving around in our cars and um this should have a long time well this should have an impact but i think for uh climate our atmosphere uh responds slowly to these changes so i think um if you're sitting on the international space station when locked down happened i don't think it's like wow that's so much clearer and it's quite similarly as a stargazer i've just not been going out at night in the clear night and i'm not saying wow the clutch skies are so much clearer because these things take some time to embed and change so i don't think we are seeing sort of that sort of impact of the impact of covered on our environment but there is lots that we can observe from space um a few years ago i was looking at a project where um i was going to get kids to sort of measure sort of a lakes across the world and see how they're receding with climate change or look at sort of some of the polar ice caps and see how they're changing so things like that it's very useful to monitor them from space but i think the direct impact of covid we haven't really seen that yet and uh because the climate is so complex and so chaotic i don't think it's instantaneous that way see manessa well uh yeah i absolutely agree uh the the what i can tell you from another angle is that um we uh among others we have a program called spider which is dealing with uh helping member states in getting uh space-based data and services to uh to take all the disaster cycle in the emergency response phase and this was mentioned already that clearly with climate with the climate change in the climate crisis i would call it disasters are becoming more and more extreme and on top of that you have to consider that we made some uh preliminary evaluations on the impact of a natural disaster on uh the um let's say on a population of communities which are already extremely uh touched by uh the pandemic the combination of the two can be observed from space and and this helped us a lot in uh in in particular in the emergency response phase which is extremely important if you want to save a certain amount of life um and and uh in in addition to that uh what i i strongly believe is that we need to prepare uh to what we call the build back better so the phase in which the post pandemic pace where we really want to build back better uh i mean towards what we call the new normal whatever it is but for sure we will have to think about uh the future of jobs in this new situation and and space again uh combined with climate uh and and how space can support climates all together can really help in this in this approach of building back better so using this situation to help populations and communities around uh to use other tools in particular the space related tools to improve the quality of life and so also space economy uh can really uh become uh quite a good tool for what the world economic forum calls the great reset after the pandemic thank you thank you so much now um one for helen and tim at least in sheffield is asking uh what is the one thing a primary or secondary school child can do if they want to be an astronaut that same question was asked by a tired doctor in london called kevin as well loads of extra stuff as well to add um so i think um for the foreseeable future you still need to have those science subjects science subjects at school that will lead to all sorts of science technology engineering and maths they are still going to be the subjects that will drive an awful lot of our requirements in space not all but most so if you like science then just keep on being curious about that and that's going to be really great but the other thing is of course just you know keep fit and healthy so a good diet and exercise the main thing about being in space though is that it's not just about doing experiments you've got to work with a whole load of different people your space crew mission control your scientists um doctors including people like kevin um and and all sorts of people right so you've got to be able to get on well with a variety of different people in stressful situations so if you enjoy playing with all sorts of different types of friends you enjoy doing games like um let's say uh netball football um you might want to join an orchestra do things that keep you working and playing together and they're all really really useful join the cadets go to brownies they're great stuff to get you working with different types of people and having good skills with your hands you know so to be able to do fine work even in a spacesuit it's quite useful so if you can if you enjoy a craft or maybe playing a musical instrument that keeps this manual dexterity we call it that's all really useful tim i'm sure you can think of loads more you know i i've got hardly anything to add to what helen said there she covered loads of it the only thing i'd also say is that no no space agency that i know of recruits anybody out of school so it's important to think about what are you going to do before you become an astronaut and try and find something you're passionate about but you know you that you can put all of your energy and enthusiasm into because to be a good astronaut um everything that helen said plus operational experience in your field um but i'm sat here you know we've also got simonetta sat here and i was on the other end of one side of the table during my selection process and simonetta was the director of human space flight on the other side of the table so i think we should ask simonetta what were you looking for in 2008 if you want i can tell you uh in the uh i have to say if i if uh i am allowed to give you a little bit of history of what happened uh when i do gamble as director of human space flight which was in may 2008 just a few weeks ago a few weeks before uh the call for new astronauts was already issued so what when i arrived i found the situation uh quite already let's say running okay and and the call was looking for four new european astronauts um and then uh i i don't know tim if i ever mentioned this to you but what happened was that i being the director uh we we got more than 8 400 uh valid applications and then they went i mean all these people went through a long selection process which was handled by the european astronaut uh center and so i jumped into the the process at the very end uh because after the test with the russians having the medical tests uh out of 55 they became 22. so i was chairing the panel and they were 22 and team was part of the 22.

and and so we went through these interviews and at the end of this interviews i went back home with all the dossier and i spent a week a weekend thinking okay but why i have to hire four of them i see as a minimum six of them outstanding and one of them was still and you know it was difficult because i had four uh what to do so i i i talked to the russians i talked to the americans i said okay but if at the very end i select six of them uh can we find additional flight opportunities can you invent something because you know hiring an astronaut without having flight opportunities is not a good approach and so then i was able to convince the the at that time director general of the european space agency and we got six including team and i remember that uh that uh i mean you know the uk uh uk was not participating to to the space station to all the activities uh on the human space flight so i i was quite brave in doing so i have to say but i was fully convinced that it was a great um a great uh future astronaut and i believe i was right right well i i can't thank you enough simonetta for what you did so wonderful stuff my pleasure yeah excellent excellent i've taken all that advice helen knight i haven't realized much i should have joined the brownies that's what i should have done i okay so so maggie one for you here a quick quick one for you i'm really interested to know your opinion on so increasing talk of course about colonizing mars by the likes of elon musk um so two questions for you quickly is um is that feasible uh in the event that our planet became inhabited uninhabitable and and is it ethical so brilliant questions i'm just taking those two because i'd so like to be an astronaut but moving on actually i applied when tim applied so yes anyway some of us did as well yeah yeah yeah keep it quiet actually but the astronaut they're looking for more astronauts so it's a good time so looking at mars so the there is a challenge of getting to mars but i don't think at the moment it's a technical one at the moment one of the biggest challenges is the cost of getting people to mars so i think we have enough technology and enough understanding that we can sort of travel at the right time so they don't get too much solar radiation we can get people to mars and bring them safely back but i think the biggest challenge at the moment is finding the funds to do that and it's quite interesting because of different people uh across the world like sort of a nasa and sort of european space agency sometimes they're looking at the moon and sometimes they're looking at mars and there's not flip-flops between the two should we go back to the moon or should we just head on to mars so this has been going on for a while but it's quite interesting some of the sort of commercial companies out there who were saying now let's get people to mars on the second side of uh should we do it i think that's a fascinating question and when i go out to schools and gives talks it's something i like to say because i think it's always to see if we've had a wild party here on earth it's like wow we're trash the place we're sort of looking around a bit embarrassed it's like hey should we go to the next room and i think there are so many lessons that we need to learn here on earth before we start talking about sort

2021-03-25 22:14

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