Space exploration was about politics and power. Then, science. It's now also about money. And a growing list of players.
Image: Boeing
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The excitement about human space exploration keeps growing.
It's driven by new commercial players, new demands on communications networks, new countries getting in on the game, a thirst for resources, and an ever expanding scientific and humanitarian community that needs space data to observe our planet.
China burst America's moon bubble the day it landed Chang'e-4 on the dark side of the moonImage: picture-alliance/Xinhua
Welcome to "new space"
Nothing's ever that new. But scientists and engineers, politicians and industry do speak of a new space era, sometimes "Space 4.0."
Race to the moon
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It's a mantra, a call-to-action, like an advertising slogan.
And all it means is that human space exploration is going from go… to "go faster!"
New commercial interests
Government agencies have long worked with commercial companies in space technology.
Agencies like NASA in the USA, the European Space Agency (22 nations), JAXA in Japan and Russia's Roscosmos.
In fact, the Apollo 11 lunar module — the thing that landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon — that was built by the Grumman Corporation in New York.
Only, back then, Grumman worked under the government's gaze. And NASA owned the technology.
Amazon boss Jeff Bezos is behind Elon Musk of SpaceX. But his company has mocked up his very own moon lander. Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/P. Semansky
These days, companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab — to name but a few — design, build and launch their own rockets.
Some are carriers, some build the cargo as well — satellites, supplies, people.
SpaceX, for instance, is in the process of launching 12,000 of its own satellites for a space-based broadband network, spanning the globe 24-7. The project called Starlink is a good example of the new space race.
Engineers working on it are said to feel the heat from CEO Elon Musk, who in turn can feel the heat from rival firm, OneWeb. OneWeb aims to build a broadband network with 600 satellites, while scientists complain the night sky is dying.
We've come to rely on satellites. Countries are trying to protect themselves by building their own networks, such as GalileoImage: picture-alliance/dpa/ESA/P. Carril
A global market
In 2018, the UK built more satellites than any other country outside of the US.
Look to Scotland, where academia and business mingle, producing new movers like Clyde Space and Alba Orbital. That's on top of stayers like Surrey Satellite Technology down south.
The UK may not know what it wants with Brexit. But it does know it wants a 10 percent share of the global space market by 2030.
Portugal has its space ambitions, too. It wants to build satellites and launch them from the Azores.
Add to that list companies and agencies in India, China, Israel, Australia, all competing to take shares from the traditional players, from rockets to launch sites.
Hey, Cape Canaveral, Baikonur, French Guyana — mind your backs!
Who hasn't been to the moon?
For decades, the list of countries who had made it to the moon numbered two.
That was Soviet Russia and the USA. And only the latter had landed people there.
But new players are storming the field.
Beresheet was Israel's attempt to put the first privately-funded probe on the moon. It crash landed in April 2019 Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/I. B. Zion
China became the first country to land a spacecraft on the "dark side of the moon" in January 2019. It was launched on one of China's own rockets, too.
And India is next. Its plan to launch a robotic probe to the moon in the same week of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 was no coincidence. It also builds its own rockets.
And we dare not forget Iran or North Korea. If they can build missiles, they can build rockets, too.
Ironically, the one country that's relatively quiet on commercial space is Russia.
One aspect of space seldom gets a look-in, and that is diversity. Call it contrived or cynical, but the USA is in this race as well. NASA wants its Artemis mission to be the first to land a woman on the moon by 2024.
But it's not just gender. The Apollo program was dominated by white men. African Americans, and other people of color, were not excluded but certainly under-represented. The race to change that has been slow.
Guy Bluford became the first African American astronaut in space in 1983 — more than 20 years after President Kennedy announced the plan to land on the moon.
More recently Sunita Williams, who has Indo-Slovenian heritage, has been on two ISS Expeditions. But she remains in a minority.
Williams (4th from right) is part of a team that wants to "return human spaceflight launches back to American soil" Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/D. J. Phillip
Germany and Australia are also in a minority, one where women head the respective country's space agency.
It will be interesting to observe how the globalization of space exploration will alter the face of those at the top, the astronauts in space and all the engineers in between.
A deep freeze
In hindsight, it's easy to say that human space exploration began a deep freeze when the Apollo program ended in 1972. But a lot of enthusiasm did go with it.
Other political priorities took over, like the Vietnam War.
NASA's Shuttle Program was called into life the same year Apollo died. And it lasted more than three decades. Apollo was just three years.
But then the Challenger accident in 1986 and the Columbia accident in 2003 seriously dampened any remaining enthusiasm for American space endeavors. People got scared. So, Shuttle ended too.
Sick of slow
Meanwhile, a gang of American entrepreneurs had got sick of how slow things moved through NASA's government-style bureaucracy.
You had people like Peter Diamandis corralling a cabal of like-minded folk to set up an inspirational competition, the XPRIZE.
Among their number were Virgin founder, Richard Branson, and Jeff Bezos of the online retailer Amazon.
Today, they are the ones driving a lot of the new space race.
The first XPRIZE led to the design and build of SpaceShipOne seen here in the Mojave Desert. The aim: Fly to outer spaceImage: Getty Images/AFP/D. Benc
Slowly but surely, they are edging space exploration away from ideals about science, knowledge, and a quest to understand the universe to one about commerce.
Commercial companies build the rockets and capsules that deliver supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). And very soon, they hope to transport people as well.
Not just for space tourism — a round trip of the globe, or hotels on the moon — but on missions to the ISS, or China's new space station, and deep space missions to Mars.
Watch out for developments on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft and SpaceX's CrewDragon.
Science in space
The ISS has been a beacon of scientific collaboration since 1998. It has largely been spared commercial pressures. But that's changing, too.
US President Donald Trump has made it clear that he wants NASA to hand over more of its work to industry players. He wants the ISS, and indeed all of space, to be run like a business.
There's a rush in new space, and Trump know it. It's like the Gold Rush. There are minerals and resources to be mined on asteroids, and you'll be served as you come.
Did you know the moon was shrinking?
If the Artemis missions go to plan, people will be walking on the moon again within a few years. So it's high time we scrubbed up our knowledge about our lunar satellite. Here are seven facts to get you going.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
The moon is shrinking!
According to NASA research, the moon is slowly losing heat, which causes its surface to shrivel up like a grape turning into a raisin. But that's not all: its interior is shrinking! The moon has become about 50 meters (150 feet) "skinnier" over the past several hundred million years.
Image: picture-alliance/Arco Images/B. Lamm
How did that US flag wave?
Conspiracy theorists believe that the lunar landing was a fake, and that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked around on July 21st, 1969, on a soundstage instead of the moon. They point to the fact that the flag planted by Aldrin waved as if moved by the wind, which would be impossible in space's vacuum. NASA's explanation: Aldrin was twisting the flagpole while planting it in the ground.
Image: picture-alliance/Photoshot/Neil A. Armstrong
Scorching hot and freezing cold
If it's summer in your neck of the woods, you might be sweating right now. But just remember: temperatures are a little more extreme on the moon. When the sun hits its surface, it can get up to 127 degrees Celsius (260 degrees Fahrenheit) hot. Without the warm glow, temperatures can drop down to -153 degrees Celsius (-243 degrees Fahrenheit). Brrr!
Image: picture alliance/dpa/S. Kahnert
Man on the moon
The myth of a person living on the moon has existed for almost as long as Earth's satellite itself. Some people see a face on the surface of the full moon, composed of the dark lunar plains and the lighter lunar highlands. Many cultures have tales about an actual person who committed some kind of misdeed and was banished to the moon for it. Astronauts are yet to encounter them, though.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/F. Rumpenhorst
Drifting apart — the end of solar eclipses
The moon is drifting away from Earth at a speed of almost 4 centimeters (1.5 inches) per year. The farther away our satellite is, the smaller it appears to us. In about 550 million years, it'll look too small to "cover" all of the sun, even at its closest position to Earth. That'll mean no more total solar eclipses.
Image: Reuters/J. Ernst
Wolves don't care
Ah, howling at the moon — no old-timey scary movie is complete without it. But in fact, wolves do not intensify their howling when a full moon rolls around, and they don't direct their howls at the moon, either. They simply yowl at night, which is also the time when a full moon is most visible. That could be one reason our ancestors drew the connection.
Image: Imago/Anka Agency International/G. Lacz
Moon-walkers: Not a very diverse bunch
12 humans have walked on the moon so far. While they come from various professional fields, they have a couple of things in common: All of them are American, all of them are white and all of them are men. Let's see where the first non-American on the moon will be from — maybe it'll be a woman and/or person of color, too!
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
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First women in space
The US wants to put the first woman on the Moon by 2024. Whoever that is will be standing on the shoulders of giants. DW looks at some of the women who have made their mark in space exploration.
Image: picture-alliance/Itar-Tass/S. Baranov
'They forbade me from flying, despite all my protests and arguments'
On June 16 1963, skilled Russian parachutist Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space, finishing 48 orbits of the earth in her space capsule Vostok 6. It would be almost 20 years until another woman left Earth's atmosphere — Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982 on the Soyuz T-7 mission. A crater on the Moon is named after Tereshkova who now sits as a member of Russia's parliament, the Duma.
Image: picture-alliance/Itar-Tass/S. Baranov
NASA's first females not allowed in space
NASA selected Shannon Lucid, Margaret Seddon, Kathryn Sullivan, Judith Resnik, Anna Fisher, and Sally Ride as their first female astronaut candidates in January 1978. A number of American women passed the astronaut selection process in the early 1960s but were not eligible to go into space because they had not completed military jet test pilot training — a career that was unavailable to women.
Image: picture-alliance/Cover Images/NASA
'Ask an 11-year-old to draw a scientist, she's likely to draw a geeky guy... That's just not an image an 11-year-old girl aspires to'
The first American woman in space was due to go on a third mission before the infamous Challenger disaster cut short her training in 1986. But Sally Ride made history by using robotic arms to retrieve satellites in her first two missions and later devoting her life to helping girls excel in math, science and engineering, according to President Barack Obama. She died from pancreatic cancer in 2012.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/NASA
'Never be limited by other people's limited imaginations...'
Inspired by Sally Ride, Mae Jemison — physician, teacher, Peace Corps volunteer and founder of two technology companies — became the first African-American woman in space when she embarked with the Endeavor in September 1992 to conduct bone cell experiments. As chief of the 100 Year Starship program she hopes to make human flight beyond the solar system possible this century.
Image: picture-alliance/NurPhoto/B. Zawrzel
Chiaki Mukai
Chiaki Mukai (center) trained as a doctor in Japan and went on to become the first Japanese woman to leave the earth, conducting multiple medical experiments in microgravity environments allowing for the study of aging in space. Her two voyages in 1994 and 1998 also allowed her to support the deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Image: picture-alliance/abaca/NASA
'When you look at the stars and the galaxy, you feel that you are not just from any particular piece of land, but from the solar system.'
Kalpana means "creativity" or "imagination" in Sanskrit. After becoming the first Indian-born woman to go to space, Kalpana Chawla's first mission was to deploy satellites to study the surface of the Sun in 1997. But after her second mission was delayed three years before taking off in 2003, Chawla's Columbia shuttle broke up on re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, killing the entire crew.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/NASA
'No signs of borders, no signs of troubles. Just pure beauty.'
Becoming a multi-millionaire entrepreneur by the age of 32 might be enough for most people, but in September 2006 Anousheh Ansari also became not only the first Iranian-born astronaut in space but also the first ever female private space explorer. After arriving at the International Space Station, she saw earth: "So peaceful, so full of life."
Image: picture-alliance/Everett Collection
Peggy Whitson
As the first female commander of the International Space Station, Peggy Whitson also holds another slightly daunting record — almost 666 days in space, the longest length for any woman. After numerous spacewalks, Whitson returned to Earth last in 2017 after 289 days on the multi-national mission, also making her the oldest woman to go to space.
