New Scientist - USA (2019-09-28)

28 September 2019 | New Scientist | 43

What concerns me most is the debris we are

creating around the Earth, particularly in low

Earth orbit and geostationary orbit. I think

that’s probably one of the biggest challenges

for space flight in the future.

In 1991, New Scientist was quite critical of the

scientific accomplishments of Project Juno,

which you participated in. What do you think

it achieved?

The science was part of the Soviet space

programme of science experiments. There

was a large amount of agricultural science,

Earth observation, materials science. It was

all in there but they just weren’t British

experiments. I do feel sad that they weren’t

British experiments.

Looking forward, what do you think Brexit

will mean for the future of UK space science?

One could argue that if the UK is not going

to contribute to the EU that it might at least

contribute towards the European Space Agency

and CERN. But Brexit isn’t worth it because

we would lose so much more in terms of the

collaborations and the science.

In parallel to the official agencies, an increasing

amount of space flight today is private. Do you

think that is a good thing?

I think mostly good, because it’s going to

reduce the cost of space flight and increase

access to space for scientists. But it’s got to be

managed effectively. The UN possibly needs

to be more involved. We need to make sure

that we don’t just allow individuals and space

agencies to make their own rules.

Is NASA’s plan to return to the moon the right one?

The right idea is actually to go to Mars, and

in order to get there we need to return to the

moon. In order to go to Mars, a lunar base is

probably what we need. We don’t need to go

back to the moon for its own sake.

Are the timelines for humans landing on Mars

realistic, such as SpaceX’s plan to get there in

2022, or Donald Trump’s target of 2024?

So Trump and Musk I probably don’t believe.

Astronauts seem to think that towards the end

of the 2030s could be a reasonably realistic

estimate of when people actually set foot on

Mars for the first time. ❚

and trying to encourage people to take an

interest in science or logical thought protects

the environment as much as anything else.

What are your biggest environmental

concerns today?

Climate change over and above pretty much

everything else, because that will affect every

single one of us. It’s affecting us now, but it

could easily make the world uninhabitable.

How do you square the carbon footprint of space

flight with climate concerns, especially when

you have entrepreneurs like SpaceX’s Elon Musk

sending a Tesla car into space?

We didn’t need to send an electric sports car,

did we? But I think space gives us a huge

amount of information on the environment.

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“ Encouraging

people to take an

interest in science

protects the

environment”

Adam Vaughan is chief reporter

at New Scientist and tweets

@adamvaughan_uk

Hear Iya Whiteley speak about future Mars

missions at New Scientist Live on 12 October

newscientistlive.com