This past January, astronomer Bill Gray said that the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket would collide with the Moon sometime in early March. As you might expect, the prediction set off a flurry of media coverage, much of it critical of Elon Musk and his private space firm. After all, the event would be a rare misstep for SpaceX.

But it turns out Elon and company are not about to lose face. Instead, it’s more likely that fate will befall China. That’s because Gray now says he made a mistake in his initial identification of a piece of space debris he and other astronomers dubbed WE0913A in 2015.

When Gray and his colleagues first spotted the object, several clues led them to believe it was the second stage of a Falcon 9 rocket that carried the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s DSCOVR satellite into deep orbit that same year. The object’s identification would have probably gone unreported in mainstream media if astronomers didn’t subsequently discover it was about to collide with the Moon.

“Back in 2015, I (mis)identified this object as 2015-007B, the second stage of the DSCOVR spacecraft,” Gray said in a blog post he published on Saturday that was spotted Ars Technica. “I had pretty good circumstantial evidence for the identification, but nothing conclusive,” Gray added. “That was not at all unusual. Identifications of high-flying space junk often require a bit of detective work, and sometimes, we never do figure out the ID for a bit of space junk.”

We may have never known the actual identity of the debris if not for NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer Jon Giorgini. He contacted Gray on Saturday to ask about the identification. According to Giorgini, NASA’s Horizons system, a database that can estimate the location and orbit of almost half a million celestial bodies in our solar system, showed that the DSCOVR spacecraft’s trajectory didn’t take it close to the Moon. As such, it would be unusual if its second stage were to stray off course then and hit the satellite. Giorgini’s email prompted Gray to reexamine the data he used to make the initial identification.

Gray now says he’s reasonably certain the rocket that’s about to collide with the moon belongs to China. In October 2014, the country’s space agency launched its Chang’e 5-T1 mission on a Long March 3C rocket. After reconstructing the probable trajectory of that mission, he found that the Long March 3C is the best fit for the mystery object that’s about to hit Earth’s natural satellite. “Running the orbit back to launch for the Chinese spacecraft makes ample sense,” he told The Verge. “It winds up with an orbit that goes past the Moon at the right time after launch.”

Gray went on to tell The Verge that episodes like this underline the need for more information on rockets boosters that travel into deep space. “The only folks that I know of who pay attention to these old rocket boosters are the asteroid tracking community,” he told the outlet. “This sort of thing would be considerably easier if the folks who launch spacecraft — if there was some regulatory environment where they had to report something.”

The James Webb Space Telescope has finally captured its first image of a star — or rather, images. NASA has shared a mosaic of pictures (shown above) of a star taken using the primary mirror's 18 segments. It looks like a seemingly random collection of blurry dots, but that's precisely what the mission team was expecting. The imagery will help scientists finish the lengthy mirror alignment process using the telescope's Near Infrared Camera, or NIRCam. The first phase is nearly complete as of this writing.

The visuals came from a 25-hour effort that pointed the James Webb Space Telescope to 156 different positions and produced 1,560 images with the NIRCam's sensors. The team created the mosaic using the signature of each mirror segment in a single frame. Visual artifacts come from using the infrared camera at temperatures well above the frigid conditions the telescope will need for scientific observation. And what you see here isn't the entirety of the mosaic — the full-resolution snapshot is over two gigapixels.

NASA

NASA also provided a rare real-world glimpse at the JWST in action. The agency provided a "selfie" of the primary mirror (middle) created by a pupil imaging lens from the NIRCam. This too is blurry, but it offers a valuable look at the fully deployed mirror and helps explain the importance of alignment. Notice how just one segment is brightly lit by a star? It's the only one aligned with that celestial body — it will take a while before all segments are operating in concert.

Researchers expect the first scientifically useful images from JWST in the summer. It's reasonable to presume those pictures will be considerably more exciting, especially as they start providing glimpses of the early universe. Still, what you see here demonstrates the telescope's health and suggests there won't be much trouble in the months ahead.

Elon Musk has given SpaceX's first huge Starship update in years, and during his presentation, the company showed off what a launch with the massive launch system would look like. The Starship system is composed of the Starship spacecraft itself on top of a Super Heavy booster. SpaceX is working towards making it rapidly and fully reusable so as to make launches to the Moon and to Mars feasible. After making its way outside our planet, the booster will break off and return to its launch tower, where it will ideally be caught by the tower arms. As for the spacecraft, it will proceed to its destination before making its way back to Earth. 

Musk said the booster will spend six minutes in the air over all, two upon ascent and four for its return trip. In the future, the system could be reused every six to eight hours for three launches a day. SpaceX says achieving a fully and rapidly reusable system is "key to a future in which humanity is out exploring the stars." Musk also talked about how in-orbit refilling — not "refueling," since the vehicle's Raptor engines use more liquid oxygen than fuel — is essential for long-duration flights. 

The Super Heavy booster, Musk said, has more than twice the thrust of a Saturn V, the largest rocket to ever head to space so far. In its current iteration, it has 29 Raptor engines, but it could eventually have 33. Speaking of those engines, Raptor version 2 is a complete redesign of the first, costs half as much and needs fewer parts. The company is capable of manufacturing five to six a week at the moment, but it could apparently be capable of producing as many as seven by next month. 

Aside from being able to carry hundreds of tons, the Starship could revolutionize space travel if SpaceX can truly make launches as affordable as Musk said it could. He revealed during the event that a Starship launch could cost les than $10 million per flight, all in, within two to three years. That's significantly less than a Falcon 9 launch that costs around $60 million. 

SpaceX wants to launch the Starship from its Boca Chica, Texas facility called Starbase, where it's been building the rocket's prototype. It has yet to secure approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to do so, and Musk said the company doesn't know where things stand with the agency exactly. However, there's apparently a rough indication that the FAA will be come with its environmental assessment in March. SpaceX also expects the rocket to be ready by then, which means Starship's first orbital test flight could be on the horizon. 

Space startup Astra's effective commercial debut didn't quite go according to plan. As SpaceNewsreports, the company's first practical mission for NASA failed when the Rocket 3.3 vehicle's upper stage flew out of control shortly after detaching from the first stage. While the launch itself went smoothly, footage suggests the payload fairing separation went awry.

The rocket was carrying NASA's ELaNa 41 (Educational Launch of Nanosatellites) mission. Three of the four cubesats aboard the flight were from universities hoping to conduct experiments for drag sails, space weather modelling and quantum gyroscopes. The fourth, from NASA itself, was meant to test quick and low-cost methods to build and inspect cubesats.

In a statement, Astra said it was "deeply sorry" for losing the payloads and would shed more light on the incident after a "data review." The launch had already been delayed several days, in part due to a range problem.

No private space firm wants an incident like this, but it might have been more damaging to Astra than for others. This was Astra's fifth attempt at orbit, and all but one of them have ended in failure. The setback could hurt Astra's chances at competing with companies like Rocket Lab and SpaceX, both of which have better (if still imperfect) track records.

This also underscores the challenges involved with private spaceflight. While it's playing an increasingly important role in commercial and scientific programs, the companies and their technology are still relatively young — even heavyweights like Boeing are struggling. It may take some time before there's a wide range of providers that can reliably ferry cargo.

The Perseverance rover is a capable machine, but one thing it can't do is send rock, sediment and atmospheric samples from Mars back to Earth by itself. NASA hopes to retrieve some of those through its Mars Sample Return Program, and it's taken another step forward in the project. The agency has chosen Lockheed Martin to build the first rocket to be fired off another planet.

The Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) will be a small, lightweight rocket and is a crucial component of NASA's ambitious plan. “This groundbreaking endeavor is destined to inspire the world when the first robotic round-trip mission retrieves a sample from another planet — a significant step that will ultimately help send the first astronauts to Mars,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.

A Sample Retrieval Lander will take the MAV to the surface of Mars. It will land in or close to Jezero Crater, where Perseverance landed last February.

The lander will act as the launch platform for the MAV. Once the MAV is in orbit, the plan is for a European Space Agency Earth Return Orbiter equipped with NASA’s Capture, Containment and Return System payload to capture the rocket. The aim is to bring the samples back to Earth by the mid-2030s.

“We are nearing the end of the conceptual phase for this Mars Sample Return mission, and the pieces are coming together to bring home the first samples from another planet," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA headquarters, said. "Once on Earth, they can be studied by state-of-the-art tools too complex to transport into space.”

Lockheed Martin will deliver multiple MAV test units and a flight unit to NASA. The contract, which is worth up to $194 million, calls for the company to design, develop, test and evaluate the integrated MAV system, and to design and develop the ground support equipment.

Not only does the MAV need to be able to tolerate the Martian environment and be compatible with several types of spacecraft, it needs to be small enough to squeeze inside the Sample Retrieval Lander. It's a tough challenge, but Lockheed Martin has several years to figure things out. The lander won't launch before 2026.

The Space Race is no longer a competition between the global superpowers of the world — at least not the nation-states that once vied to be first to the Moon. Today, low Earth orbit is the battleground for private conglomerates and the billionaires that helm them. With the Mir Space Station having deorbited in 2001 after 15 years of service and the ISS scheduled for retirement by the end of the decade, tomorrow’s space stations are very likely to be owned and operated by companies, not countries. In fact, the handover has already begun.

“We are not ready for what comes after the International Space Station,” then-NASA-administrator Jim Bridenstine explained at a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee’s space subcommittee in October. “Building a space station takes a long time, especially when you’re doing it in a way that’s never been done before.”

NASA is on board with this transference, having drafted and published its Plan for Commercial LEO Development (CLD) in 2019, which calls for “a robust low-Earth orbiteconomy from which NASA can purchase services as one of many customers,” as part of the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at Johnson Space Center. The CLD plan lays out the agency’s necessary steps towards establishing a commercial space station ecosystem. These start with allowing private corporations “to purchase ISS resources,” i.e. lease space on the station for commercial activities, “allow companies to fly private astronauts to the ISS,” which SpaceX did last April, as well as initiating “a process for developing commercial LEO destinations” and working to “stimulate demand” for those destinations and services.

NASA

“NASA by its very nature is an exploration agency,” the space agency wrote in 2019. “We like to challenge the status quo and discover new things. We like to solve impossible problems and do amazing things. NASA also realizes that we need help and do not know everything. We can only accomplish amazing things by teamwork. NASA is reaching out to the US private sector to see if they can push the economic frontier into space.”

Space exploration has been a public-private cooperative effort since the founding days of NASA. For example, the expendable launch vehicles that put satellites into LEO from 1963 to 1982 — the Titan by Martin Marietta, the Atlas from General Dynamics, McDonnell Douglas’ Delta rockets, and the Scout from LTV Aerospace Corporation — were all built by private aerospace companies as federal contractors but operated by the US government. “The US government essentially served as the only provider of space launch services to the Western world,” wrote the FAA. This changed in the ‘70s when the European Space Agency developed its own ELV, the Ariane, and NASA swapped out its own rockets for the Space Shuttle program, which became the nation’s default satellite launch system.

Private space launches, like what SpaceX and Northrop Grumman do, got their start in the US way back in 1982 when Space Services sent up its Conestoga rocket prototype, really the repurposed second stage of a Minuteman missile. The size, number and severity of hoops the company had to jump through to get launch clearance was enough to convince members of congress to introduce legislation streamlining the process, eventually leading then-President Ronald Reagan to declare expanding private sector involvement in civil space launches to be “a national goal.” We’ve seen a number of notable milestones in the decades since including the launch of the Pegasus rocket operated by the Orbital Sciences Corporation in 1990, which was the first fully privately developed and air-based launch vehicle to reach space, Dennis Tito’s ride aboard a Soyuz rocket to the ISS in 2001 to become the Earth’s first space tourist, and the first SpaceX Dragon Capsule mission in 2010, the first time a privately-operated spacecraft was both launched into and recovered from orbit.

The idea of letting private space companies build, launch and operate their own stations grew largely from these earlier cooperative arrangements as well as from partnerships made via the International Space Station US National Laboratory, which is managed by the non-profit organization, the Center for Advancement of Science in Space.

“We leverage our core competencies, facilitate public-private partnerships, and utilize the platform capabilities and unique operating environment of the space station,” the ISSNL’s mission statement reads. ”We create demand, incubate in-space business ventures, provide access for and awareness of fundamental science and technological innovation, and promote science literacy of the future workforce.” More than 50 companies have already partnered with the ISSNL aboard the space station and the agency is currently working with 11 others to “install 14 commercial facilities on the station supporting research and development projects for NASA.”

Axiom's ISS-grown space station

Axiom Space

At the forefront of this commercialization effort is the Axiom Space corporation. The Houston-based company has been contracted by NASA to construct a habitat module for the ISS, install it aboard the station in September of 2024 and then detach the module for use as an independent space platform once the ISS is eventually deorbited by 2028.

“Axiom's work to develop a commercial destination in space is a critical step for NASA to meet its long-term needs for astronaut training, scientific research and technology demonstrations in low-Earth orbit,” NASA’s Bridenstine, said in a 2020 statement.

"We are transforming the way NASA works with industry to benefit the global economy and advance space exploration," he added. "It is a similar partnership that this year will return the capability of American astronauts to launch to the space station on American rockets from American soil."

Axiom has tapped Thales Alenia Space to build both the module itself and a meteoroid shield for the Axiom Node One (a pressurized segment that will connect the Axiom hub onto the ISS).

"The legacy of the International Space Station structure is one of safety and reliability despite huge technical complexity," Axiom Space CEO, Michael Suffredini, said in a 2020 statement. "We are thrilled to combine Axiom's human spaceflight expertise with Thales Alenia Space's experience to build the next stage of human settlement in low Earth orbit from a foundation that is tried and tested."

Axiom has also struck a deal with SpaceX to ferry four “Axionauts” — yes, that’s really what they’re calling them — up to the ISS to train for life in microgravity. The 8-day mission, dubbed Ax-1, was supposed to be led by former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, who would be joined by a trio of space tourists, each of whom shelled out $55 million to ride along. The trip was originally slated to take place in February, however, it was repeatedly delayed due to “additional spacecraft preparations and space station traffic” and is currently scheduled to take place on March 30th. The company is already at work on missions Ax-2 through -4 and has reserved a set of Dragon capsules, though the crew manifests have not yet been finalized.

In addition to the crew habitat, Axiom is building a secondary commercial capsule for Space Entertainment Enterprise (SEE), a startup co-producing Tom Cruise’s latest joint which will be shot at least partially in space later this year. The SEE-1 is scheduled for installation in December, 2024 and will host both a production studio and — somehow — a sports arena as well. Bring on the Battle Rooms.

Nanoracks’ Starlab

Nanoracks

While Axiom Space is trying to bud its orbital platform from the ISS like a polyp, space service company Nanoracks is working to build a free-flying station of its own, with help from Voyager Space and Lockheed Martin, as well as a $160 million CLD contract from NASA. That contract runs through 2025 and “will be supplemented with customer pre-buy opportunities and public-private partnerships,” per a recent Lockheed press release.

Nanoracks is already deeply involved in commercial ventures to, from and on the ISS. Founded in 2009, the company has delivered some 1,300 research payloads and small satellites to the station and currently rents space for research modules aboard its Nanoracks External Platform on the outside of the ISS. Its wide-bore Bishop airlock was the first permanent commercial addition to the ISS.

The company is developing a line of smaller self-contained orbital platforms, dubbed Outposts, which could serve a variety of purposes from refueling stations for satellite constellations, to cubesat launchers and advanced technology testbeds to hydroponic greenhouses. The first iteration is expected to be launched by 2024.

The Starlab itself, which should be ready for business by 2027, will consist of an inflatable 340 cubic meter habitat built by Northrop (similar to the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, that was demonstrated on the ISS in 2016) that can accommodate up to four crew members simultaneously. Four solar panels will generate 60 kW of power for the station to use.

With just under half the usable interior space as the ISS, Starlab’s operations will be centered around its cutting-edge George Washington Carver (GWC) Science Park which includes a biology lab space, plant habitation lab, materials research lab and an unstructured workbench area enabling the station to offer services ranging from fundamental research and astronaut training to space tourism. However, tourists will take a backseat to scientific endeavors aboard the station. “Space tourism is what captures the headlines, but to have a sustainable business model, you really do need to move beyond that,” Nanoracks CEO Jeffrey Manber told TechCrunch last October.

Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef

Blue Origin

With the “pay NASA to pay us to ferry Artemis gear to the moon” plan having been thoroughly imploded by the US federal court system, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has set its sights on a goal slightly closer to Earth. The space launch and tourism company has partnered with Sierra Space to build, launch and operate a "mixed-use business park" in space, dubbed Orbital Reef.

The 830 cubic meter structure is still in its early planning stages, having garnered a $130 million Space Act contract from NASA last December for its development, and isn’t expected to launch until at least the second half of the 2020s. Few other details have yet been confirmed.

"Now, anyone can establish an address in orbit," Blue Origin declared last October when unveiling the project. "Orbital Reef expands access, lowers the cost and provides everything needed to help you operate your business in space." This from the company that got $28 million for a single seat aboard last year’s inaugural New Shepard flight.

Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus-based space station

NASA

NASA’s third Space Act agreement recipient from last December is defender contractor Northrop Grumman, which plans to repurpose one of its existing Cygnus spacecraft for use as an orbital station.

Like Orbital Reef, Northrop’s as-of-yet unnamed design is still in its earliest stages of development, though the company does expect the new station to accommodate up to four permanent crew members once it does initiate operations and could at least double that number as the station is expanded throughout its estimated 15-year service life.

Under the terms of the $125 million agreement, "the Northrop Grumman team will deliver a free-flying space station design that is focused on commercial operations to meet the demands of an expanding LEO market," Steve Krein, vice president of civil and commercial space at Northrop Grumman, said in a statement last December. "Our station will enable a smooth transition from International Space Station-based LEO missions to sustainable commercial-based missions where NASA does not bear all the costs, but serves as one of many customers."

Of course, the US and its commercial constituents are far from the only parties interested in colonizing LEO for business interests. China launched the Tianhe core module of its new 3-crew member Tiangong space station into orbit this past April with the remaining Experiment Modules and separate space telescope going up between this year and 2024. Similarly, India’s space agency is developing a station of its own with plans to launch it by the end of the decade, following the country’s upcoming Gaganyaan mission, the first crewed orbital spacecraft to launch as part of the Indian Human Spaceflight Programme.

These propositions are only the start of humanity’s expansion into the stars from low Earth orbit, to the Lunar Gateway, to Mars and beyond. But the question isn’t so much of when and how we’ll do so, but rather, who will be able to afford to?

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is partnering with Microsoft’s Azure Quantum team to explore how it can communicate more efficiently with spacecraft. Compared to some of the hurdles the agency has overcome to put missions like Perseverance on Mars, staying in touch with those spacecraft might not seem so difficult. However, sending instructions to every mission the agency has on the go is its own logistical challenge.

NASA depends on the Deep Space Network, a series of radio antennae located across the US, Spain and Australia. It allows the agency to stay in constant contact with its spacecraft, even as the Earth rotates. Scheduling the use of that system is something NASA notes involves a lot of constraints. For example, not every dish in the network is equally capable of communicating with spacecraft that are on the edge of the solar system. What’s more, missions like the James Webb Space Telescope and Perseverance Rover put an increased load on the system due to the amount of high-fidelity data they need to transmit back to Earth.

As such, NASA has to devote considerable computing resources to prioritize and schedule the hundreds of communication requests its teams put in each week. And that’s where Microsoft thought it could help. The company applied some of the things it learned optimizing quantum algorithms to tackle NASA’s scheduling headache using classical computers. At the start of the project, it took two hours for the company to compile a DSN schedule. Using its Azure network, Microsoft created a schedule in 16 minutes. A further “custom solution” allowed it to make one in two minutes. 

The ability to make schedules in minutes, as opposed to hours, is something Microsoft says will give NASA flexibility and allow it to be more agile as an organization. Microsoft says there's further work it needs to do before the system has all the features that JPL needs, but it could one day help the team as it prepares to launch more complex missions that involve journeys to the Moon and beyond the solar system.

The James Webb Space Telescope has reached its new home. NASA has confirmed the remote observatory successfully entered its final orbit around the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (aka L2) after one last course correction burn. The telescope's primary mirror segments and secondary mirror have already been deployed, but you'll have to wait until the summer for the first imagery. NASA will spend the next several months readying the JWST for service, including a three-month optics alignment process.

The L2 orbit is crucial to the telescope's mission. It provides a largely unobstructed view of space while giving the spacecraft a cold, interference-free position that helps its instruments live up to their full potential. The JWST is expected to study the early Universe using infrared light, providing data that wouldn't be available from an Earth orbit telescope like Hubble.

The arrival is also a relief for NASA. The stakes were high given the project's $10 billion cost, of course, but it also proves that the space agency could successfully launch and deploy a sophisticated observatory far from Earth. And while they're different devices, the JWST is widely considered the spiritual successor to Hubble — with the older telescope clearly in rough shape, expectations are particularly high for the new machine.

A new Canadian study has found that "space anemia" caused by weightlessness is not a temporary issue as once thought, the CBC has reported. "As long as you are in space, you are destroying more blood cells than you are making," said the University of Ottawa's Guy Trudel, who led a 14-astronaut study carried out by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). 

Normally, the body destroys and replaces two million red blood cells per second. However, the new study found that the astronauts' bodies destroyed three million red blood cells per second during six month missions. "We thought we knew about space anemia, and we did not," said Trudel.

A full year after returning to Earth from the ISS, the astronauts' red blood cell levels had not returned to pre-flight levels, according to the study in Nature. "If you are on your way to Mars and... can't keep up" with red blood cell production, "you could be in serious trouble," said Trudel. That wouldn't necessarily cause problems in a zero gravity environment, but could become an issue once astronauts arrive on Mars or when they return to Earth. 

[Anemia] is a primary efffect of going to space.

The researchers said that anemia could even be an issue for space tourism, if the potential travelers are at risk for anemia. The study also noted that "current exercise and nutritional countermeasures of modern space travel did not prevent hemolysis and post-flight anemia" with the astronauts tested. 

The study, first announced in 2016, drew from data gathered during Expedition 10 and 11 missions aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in 2004 and 2005. Anemia is defined as a deficiency of red blood cells or hemoglobin in the blood, a condition that can result in pallor and weariness and affect endurance and strength.

The study didn't say how such issues could be directly resolved, but suggested that doctors focus on anemia-related issues when testing candidates. "Medical screening of future astronauts and space tourists might benefit from a preflight profiling of globin gene and modifiers," according to the study. It also suggested that post-landing monitoring should cover conditions affected by anemia and hemolysis.  

If the efforts of the 10,000-plus people who developed and assembled the James Webb Space Telescope are any indication, the age of the independent scientist are well and truly over. Newton, Galileo, Keppler, and Copernicus all fundamentally altered humanity's understanding of our place in the universe, and did so on their own, but with the formalization and professionalization of the field in the Victorian Era, these occurences of an amatuer astronomer using homebrew equipment all the more rare. 

In his new book, The Invisible World: Why There's More to Reality than Meets the Eye, University of Cambridge Public Astronomer, Matthew Bothwell tells the story of how we discovered an entire, previously unseen universe beyond humanity's natural sight. In the excerpt below, Bothwell recounts the exploits of Grote Reber, one of the world's first (and for a while, only) radio astronomers.

Oneworld Publishing

Excerpted with permissionfrom The Invisible Universe by Matthew Bothwell (Oneworld 2021).

The Only Radio Astronomer in the World

It’s a little strange to look back at how the astronomical world reacted to Jansky’s results. With hindsight, we can see that astronomy was about to be turned upside down by a revolution at least as big as the one started by Galileo’s telescope. Detecting radio waves from space marks the first time in history that humanity glimpsed the vast invisible Universe, hiding beyond the narrow window of the visible spectrum. It was a momentous occasion that was all but ignored in academic astronomy circles for one very simple reason: the world of radio engineering was just too far removed from the world of astronomy. When Jansky published his initial results he attempted to bridge the divide, spending half the paper giving his readers a crash-course in astronomy (explaining how to measure the location of things in the sky, and exactly why a signal repeating every twenty-three hours and fifty-six minutes meant something interesting). But, ultimately, the two disciplines suffered from a failure to communicate. The engineers spoke a language of vacuum tubes, amplifiers and antenna voltages: incomprehensible to the scientists more used to speaking of stars, galaxies and planets. As Princeton astronomer Melvin Skellett later put it:

The astronomers said ‘Gee that’s interesting – you mean there’s radio stuff coming from the stars?’ I said, ‘Well, that’s what it looks like’. ‘Very interesting.’ And that’s all they had to say about it. Anything from Bell Labs they had to believe, but they didn’t see any use for it or any reason to investigate further. It was so far from the way they thought of astronomy that there was no real interest.

After Jansky had moved on to other problems, there was only one person who became interested in listening to radio waves from space. For around a decade, from the mid-1930s until the mid-1940s, Grote Reber was the only radio astronomer in the world.

Grote Reber’s story is unique in all of twentieth-century science. He single-handedly developed an entire field of science, taking on the task of building equipment, conducting observations, and exploring the theory behind his discoveries. What makes him unique is that he did all of this as a complete amateur, working alone outside the scientific establishment. His job, designing electric equipment for radio broadcasts, had given him the skills to build his telescope. His fascination with the scientific literature brought him into contact with Jansky’s discovery of cosmic static, and when it became clear that no one else in the world seemed to care very much, he took it upon himself to invent the field of radio astronomy. He built his telescope in his Chicago back garden using equipment and materials available to anyone. His telescope, nearly ten metres across, was the talk of his neighbourhood (for good reason – it looks a bit like a cartoon doomsday device). His mother used it to dry her washing.

He spent years scanning the sky with his homemade machine. He observed with his telescope all night, every night, while still working his day job (apparently he would snatch a few hours of sleep in the evening after work, and again at dawn after he was finished at the telescope). When he realised he didn’t know enough physics and astronomy to understand the things he was seeing, he took courses at the local university. Over the years, his observations painted a beautiful picture of the sky as seen with radio eyes. He detected the sweep of our Milky Way, with bright spots at the galactic centre (where Jansky had picked up his star-static), and again towards the constellations Cygnus and Cassiopeia. By this time he had learned enough physics to make scientific contributions, too. He knew that if the hiss from the Milky Way was caused by thermal emission – heat radiation from stars or hot gas – then it would be stronger at shorter wavelengths. Given that Reber was picking up much shorter wavelengths than Jansky (60 cm, compared to Jansky’s fifteen-metre waves), Reber should have been bombarded with invisible radio waves tens of thousands of times more powerful than anything Jansky saw. But he wasn’t. Reber was confident enough in his equipment to conclude that whatever was making these radio waves, it had to be ‘non-thermal’ – that is, it was something different from the standard ‘hot things glow’ radiation we discussed back in chapter 2. He even proposed the (correct!) solution: that hot interstellar electrons whizzing past an ion – a positively charged atom – will get sling-shotted around like a Formula 1 car taking a tight corner. The cornering electron will emit a radio wave, and the combined effect of billions of these events is what Reber was detecting from his back garden. This only happens in clouds of hot gas. Reber was, it turns out, picking up radio waves being emitted by clouds containing new-born stars scattered throughout our Galaxy. He was, quite literally, listening to stars being born. It was a sound no human had ever heard before. To this day, radio observations are used to trace the formation of stars, from small clouds in our own Milky Way to the birth of galaxies in the most distant corners of the Universe.

In many ways, Reber’s story seems like an anachronism. The golden age of independent scientists, who could make groundbreaking discoveries working alone with homemade equipment, was hundreds of years ago. With the passing of the Victorian era, science became a complex, expensive, and above all professional business. Grote Reber is, as far as I know, the last of the amateur ‘outsider’ scientists; the last person who had no scientific training, built his own equipment in his garden, and through painstaking and meticulous work managed to change the scientific world.