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Top USSF leaders discuss the Space Force of 2030
Dec. 14, 2023
A trio of Department of the Air Force senior leaders discuss their views on the Space Force of 2030 during the inaugural Spacepower Conference hosted by the Space Force Association in Orlando, Florida, Dec. 13.
The panel included Maj. Gen. Shawn Bratton, currently the special assistant to the Chief of Space Operations; Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of Space Operations Command; and Chief Master Sgt. Jacob Simmons, the command senior enlisted leader of U.S. Space Command.
The Space Force is approaching its fourth anniversary Dec. 20 and has been laser-focused on building its structures and organizations while continuing to bolster security in the space domain – something the panel emphasized is needed to maintain momentum to project power into the future.
Additionally, the trio discussed the ways the force will continue to organize, train and equip Guardians for an uncertain future warfighting landscape. The concerns with ever-present and consistent advancement of space-based capabilities by strategic competitors have existed since before the U.S. established a Space Force. To meet these challenges, Simmons urged Guardians to keep moving fast but to move with “a sense of purpose with that speed.”
Whiting added that the Space Force must move at the “speed of the threats it faces.”
Throughout the panel, the three leaders recognized that Guardians should collaborate with industry partners and allies to be postured to win.
The resounding tone of the discussion was that the future remains uncertain due to how quickly the space domain evolves and new capabilities are introduced, fielded and utilized globally. To combat this, Bratton explained that there’s a need to develop imagination and curiosity to aid in forecasting the future of the space domain.
“If there were a fifth ‘C’ in our Guardian Values, I would lobby for ‘curiosity,’” Whiting said. “When we talk about thinking outside the box, curiosity is the thing that is going to get the Space Force through all these unknowns.”
While 2030 is only six years away, the panel assured the crowd of Guardians that the Space Force will continue to adapt, defend and strengthen capabilities in the space domain.
https://www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3617805/top-ussf-leaders-discuss-the-space-force-of-2030/
Is humanity prepared for contact with intelligent aliens?
Dec 15, 2023
A new study calls for humanity to prepare for an encounter with extraterrestrial intelligence and examines the possible social consequences of such contact.
First of all, the consequences of first contact strongly depend on the way it takes place. The paper offers the view that first contact with alien life poses considerable risks for humanity. Additionally, a first contact event could also take place without being culturally recognized.
The intriguing new research paper is led by Andreas Anton of the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health in Freiburg, Germany.
Scenarios
Anton and colleagues serve up a set of scenarios:
The signal scenario is the basis of SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) programs, in which radio astronomers search for signs of alien civilizations. It assumes that radio telescopes can pick up artificial signals from the far reaches of space.
The technosignature scenario envisions that future powerful telescopes will find evidence of past or present extraterrestrial technology.
The artifact scenario assumes that one day, somewhere in our solar system (or even on Earth itself), we will come across the material remains — such as a space probe — of an extraterrestrial civilization.
The encounter scenario involves the appearance of an alien spacecraft in near-Earth space that can be assumed, based on its flight maneuvers or other actions, to be controlled by intelligence, either biological or artificial.
Biological beings or artificial intelligence?
The prospect of an encounter scenario, the paper points out, raises an important question: Whether the alien technology is controlled by a biological life form or an artificial intelligence.
"A biological life form, we suspect, could potentially cause greater anxiety, as the immediate question would be what 'they' want here. It also has an inbuilt assumption that they have a relatively nearby base or have superfast travel (maybe faster than light) and would thus be very far ahead of us technologically," Anton and co-authors write in their paper.
"However, the question of whether the encounter is with a biological life form or the emissaries of a machine civilization could remain unresolved for a long time," they add.
Be prepared
The paper concludes by acknowledging that the more we know about the universe and the further we penetrate into the cosmos through our own research activities, "the more likely it is that we will be confronted with alien civilizations, their signals or their legacies."
That being the case, the researchers suggest, humanity needs to be prepared as a global society for this scenario.
"In the political sphere, the question of how to deal with this discovery and possible communication with extraterrestrial civilizations would lead to a global discourse," they write in the paper. "International cooperation would be essential to develop a unified approach to dealing with this new reality."
This research paper, titled "Meeting extraterrestrials: Scenarios of first contact from the perspective of exosociology," is available here.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S009457652300629X?via%3Dihub
https://www.space.com/contact-intelligent-aliens-is-humanity-prepared
Scientists push for UAP research without waiting for government
Updated: DEC 14, 2023 / 08:10 PM CST
While lawmakers in Congress are working to force more transparency on UAPs, more commonly called UFOs, some of the world’s top scientists say they aren’t going to wait for the government to disclose what it knows.
A new group wants to study the phenomenon using hard data and begin outlining pathways forward to research and harness the nonhuman technology they fervently believe exists.
NewsNation has spoken to many of the members before. Those involved in the project include Christopher Mellon, a former Defense Department official; Dr. Avi Loeb, a Harvard professor who claims to have found proof of nonhuman technology at the bottom of the ocean; Leslie Kean, a journalist who helped break the David Grusch story; Grusch’s attorney Chuck McCullough, who served as inspector general for the intelligence community under the Obama administration and former Navy scientist Tom Gallaudet.
The leader of the group is Dr. Garry Nolan, a world-renowned immunologist, professor of pathology at Stanford and biotech entrepreneur who believes there is something out there and it’s not human.
“The circumstantial evidence basically has me convinced that it’s well worth my time to spend time looking at it,” he said.
Nolan’s breakthrough biotechnology gene therapy discoveries around cancer treatment are used around the world. He’s also the head of The Sol Foundation, which just announced a new initiative for UFO research and policy.
The intent behind Sol is to be a serious, well-funded, cutting-edge group performing academic research into UAPs. Nolan said the first step is identifying what questions need to be asked.
“Once we’ve put all of the data into the right categories, we say what of this meets the academic standards and criteria of excellence?” Nolan said.
Military pilots who testified before Congress said they have felt discouraged from reporting unexplained occurrences, be they alien or otherwise. Nolan says the same stigma exists in the scientific community.
“There’s plenty of people who I talk to behind the scenes, who are mainstream academics. They just don’t want to talk about it yet because they feel the stigma is still too high,” Nolan said.
Nolan said he believes researchers, not government, will have to spearhead the effort to explain UFOs in ways all of us can understand.
“There’s something they’re trying to hide,” Nolan said. “You have the people from within the government who’ve said that it’s real.”
Yet the government continues to deny any evidence of nonhuman intelligence.
“You can’t wait for daddy government to tell you what you think you already know. They don’t need to give you permission to move forward,” Nolan said.
Nolan said there needs to be an incentive for individuals and government entities to release information on UAPs.
“The incentive should be that this is going to help the country in some way,” he said.
Nolan believes non-human technology could bring benefits and opportunities for humanity, especially if non-human beings are smarter than we are.
“I don’t think I’m going to have an anti-gravity craft before the end of my existence,” he said. “But what I do see is a whole new way, perhaps, to think about the universe. So I look at that as an opportunity to learn from somebody who’s more intelligent. It’s as simple as that.”
https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/scientists-uap-research-waiting-government/
'What is that material?': Potentially hazardous asteroid Bennu stumps scientists with its odd makeup
Dec 15, 2023
Tasked with finding clues about origins of life on Earth, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft scooped up pieces of a rugged, rubble-pile asteroid named Bennu in late 2020 and delivered them to Earth about two months ago. On Monday (Dec. 11), scientists got their first detailed description of some of that extraterrestrial collection.
"We definitely have hydrated, organic-rich remnants from the early solar system, which is exactly what we were hoping when we first conceived this mission almost 20 years ago," Dante Lauretta, the mission's principal investigator, said at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference being held this week in California and online. "I fully expect the cosmochemistry community is going to go to town on this."
Lauretta, a professor of planetary science and cosmochemistry at the University of Arizona, said the bits of the ancient asteroid that have been retrieved so far are from the outer lid of the sample capsule and are rich in carbon and organic molecules. All the particles are very dark in color and consist of centimeter- and millimeter-sized "hummocky boulders" that have a rough "cauliflower-like texture," said Lauretta. "They cling to everything we touch them with."
The OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft was designed to be in contact with Bennu for six seconds, but it ended up plunging 1.6 feet (0.5 meters) into the asteroid's surface for 17 seconds instead. A victim of its own success, the probe dug out so much material that particles began leaking out of the sample collector's head — but they were still protected inside its outer lid. On Monday, Lauretta blamed a 1.3-inch (3.5 cm) Bennu stone that appeared to have jammed open a small flap on the head and let the material escape into the lid.
Two faulty fasteners continue to prevent technicians from removing the lid to access and catalog the bulk of the collected sample that's still trapped within the head. While they wait for new tools to be approved for use on the precious rocks, they are using tweezers to pick tiny rocks through the partially open flap, totaling the collected material to 70.3 grams (0.07 kg) — higher than the mission's mandated minimum of 60 grams (0.06 kg).
Some of that material was shipped for spectral analysis at the NASA-supported Reflectance Experiment Laboratory (RELAB) facility in Rhode Island, while another batch was sent to the Natural History Museum in London. Initial findings using spectroscopy, a scientific technique that reveals a material's makeup by studying how it reflects different wavelengths of light, show a dominant spectral signature in blue. This azure hue is currently unexplained but may mean the space rocks contain even more water than scientists initially predicted, Lauretta said, adding that more results will be shared at a scientific meeting next spring.
The material also hosts high amounts of magnesium, sodium and phosphorus, a combination that so far puzzles the team.
"I've been looking at meteorites for a long time, and I've never come across anything like that," said Lauretta. "It's a head-scratcher right now. What is this material?"
https://www.space.com/potentially-hazardous-asteroid-bennu-samples-stump-scientists