Ham radio and space weather

A superb example of "crowdsourced science" is described in this piece in this month's Eos. Check it out!

Reference

Collins, K., D. Kazdan, and N. A. Frissell (2021), Ham radio forms a planet-sized space weather sensor network, Eos, 102, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021EO154389. Published on 09 February 2021.

The lunacy of the Apollo Lunar Landing Legacy Act

According to Hertzfeld and Pace (2013), last summer a bill was introduced in the US House of Representatives, H.R. 2617, called the Apollo Lunar Landing Legacy Act. The bill was sponsored by Reps. Donna Edwards (D-MD) and Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX). Hertzfeld and Pace write that “In essence, it proposes to designate the Apollo landing sites and U.S. equipment on the Moon as a U.S. National Park with jurisdiction under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Interior.”

The article explains the very real reasons why one might be concerned about protecting the historical artifacts on the moon, with increasing space activity by other nations, as well as increasing involvement by the private sector in space operations. However, the authors take pains to explain that the above law is a bad idea. It violates international law such as the U.N. Outer Space Treaty of 1969, and oh, the proposed bill is “unenforceable”. Hertzfeld and Pace go on to propose addressing the legitimate concerns of the bill's sponsors by international treaties, rather than unilateral U.S. legislation. I find Hertzfeld and Pace's arguments persuasive. Writing for the Huffington Post, Leonard David points out that the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste gave the sponsors of the bill a “Porkers of the Month” award “for straying so far from reality's orbit, wasting the taxpayer's money on the paper and ink on which H.R. 2617 is written, and engaging in sheer 'lunarcy'.” Sounds about right to me.

We don't do politics on this blog unless it intersects with science policy.  As a matter of public policy then, DTLR opposes H.R. 2617.  The bill is well intentioned, but there are far better ways to achieve its goals.

Reference

Henry R. Herzfeld and Scott N. Pace, 2013: International cooperation on human lunar heritage. Science, 342: 1049-1050.

Data stewardship

In last week's issue of Eos, Karen Simmons (2013) writes about data stewardship and her experience of attempting to recover and migrate data from long completed NASA space probe missions from the 1970s and 1980s.  Some of the data (on 7-track tapes and punch cards) was about to be discarded, as the storage facility was being shut down.  Much of the valuable metadata required to interpret the raw data is buried in mission documents that may be lost as personnel retire, change jobs, or even change offices.  The article is well worth reading and, though she doesn't mention it, the issues she raises are closely related to reproducible research.  Although the difficulties described are particularly extreme (the casual discarding of data from expensive, taxpayer-funded space probes, each unique in their own way, but long decommissioned), any of us doing experimental or observational science has much to learn from her experience.  Sadly, she finds that "usable science data and metadata from the early days of planetary exploration are now missing from the archives."  Don't let this happen to you!

Reference

K.E. Simmons, 2013:  Lost Science:  Protecting Data Through Improved Archiving.  Eos, Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, 94 (37):  323-324.