| | | | | | | | | | | Axios Space | | By Miriam Kramer · Oct 25, 2022 | | Thanks for reading Axios Space. At 1,699 words, this newsletter is about a 6½-minute read. - Biggest thanks to my colleague Alison Snyder for all of her contributions to this week's newsletter. You can subscribe to her weekly Axios Science newsletter here.
Please send your tips, questions and melted gold to miriam.kramer@axios.com, or if you received this as an email, just hit reply. | | | | | | 1 big thing: Elon the self-employed diplomat |  | | | Illustration: Natalie Peeples/Axios | | | | Billionaire businessman Elon Musk is wielding significant geopolitical power with his global internet Starlink satellites, I write with my colleague Alison Snyder. Why it matters: Private space companies are meeting — and often exceeding — the capabilities of governments, giving not just technological but also geopolitical power to those who operate them. - "It's not just states in space making these decisions anymore," Kaitlyn Johnson, a space policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), tells Axios.
Driving the news: Musk this month suggested on Twitter that the U.S. government should start footing the multimillion-dollar bill for the private Starlink service he initiated in Ukraine after Russia cut off internet service. He then pulled back and said the company would continue to cover the cost. The impact: Musk's moves related to Ukraine show just how much global influence he now wields. - Activating Starlink in Ukraine was "a policy decision that the U.S. government didn't make," Johnson says.
- Starlink is being used by Ukrainian forces for situational awareness on the battlefield and, as Secure World Foundation's Brian Weeden puts it bluntly, is "helping kill a lot of Russians."
- SpaceX was "trying to strong arm the U.S. government into paying for this service that they chose to send there in the first place," Johnson says.
- The Pentagon is reportedly considering paying for Starlink's service.
SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment. Between the lines: Years of U.S. policy accelerating and supporting private space companies have led to this moment, where these companies are starting to exceed the government in their capabilities. - As a result, the U.S. government has become increasingly reliant on Musk and SpaceX to launch people to the International Space Station and satellites to orbit that underpin military communications and intelligence gathering.
- "Over time, the list of space activities that only the U.S. government does or that primarily serve the government has really shrunk, and the list of things the commercial sector is doing has grown," says Gregory Allen, a senior fellow in the Strategic Technologies Program at CSIS, said. "SpaceX is at the forefront of the trend but by no means is the only one."
- Space companies are increasingly providing satellite remote sensing and high-bandwidth satellite communications.
The big picture: With more than 3,000 satellites in orbit, Starlink's service stretches around the globe. But there are areas where it is noticeably absent, including Russia, China and Iran. - Starlink could technically broadcast to the ground in those counties, but it must be licensed to operate in a country and ground terminals are required to receive the satellite signals.
The intrigue: It's not clear whether SpaceX hopes to eventually set up Starlink service in China, though experts say there is a clear incentive to do so. "Every time Starlink is going over China, unless they have authority to broadcast, it is not making money," Allen says. - Musk told the Financial Times that Beijing has asked him for assurances he wouldn't provide internet access in China as he has in Ukraine. The FT did not say if he agreed.
- The Biden administration is exploring setting up Starlink's service in Iran to support protesters there, CNN reported last week, though questions remain about if and how the service could be set up in a country where the government doesn't explicitly authorize it and whether people could then safely use it.
What to watch: As commercial satellites take on more national security and military importance, what could be considered a military target in space is also shifting. - The fact that Starlink satellites are being used in wartime could also make the privately operated spacecraft targets for enemy forces, and they're already being targeted with cyberattacks, according to Musk.
- A Russian official also opened the door to the idea, saying private satellites used for military purposes could be a "legitimate target for retaliation" during a recent UN working group.
- "If Elon is providing Starlink on his own dime and not reimbursed by the Pentagon, what does it mean for Russia to attack those assets?" Allen added. "If it is paid for by the Pentagon, is attacking [the satellites] equivalent to attacking the U.S.? There are norms of practice developed over the history of the Cold War, but there are areas where norms are being written right now."
|     | | | | | | 2. An extreme planet |  | | | Artist's illustration of GJ 1252b. Illustration: NASA/JPL-Caltech | | | | A planet 65 light-years away has a surface hot enough to melt gold after its star likely blew away its atmosphere. Why it matters: The world circles an M dwarf star, thought to be the most common type in our galaxy. - Learning more about these planets circling these common stars could help scientists piece together just what ingredients are needed to make a world habitable and how likely life might be to form on them.
What they found: The planet — named GJ 1252b — was discovered in 2020, but new research in a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters used the Spitzer Space Telescope to find that it likely has no atmosphere. - Scientists think its M dwarf star — which is known for shooting off more flares than Sun-like stars and extreme radiation — is responsible for blowing away whatever atmosphere the planet had.
- "The pressure from the star's radiation is immense, enough to blow a planet's atmosphere away," Michelle Hill, a University of California Riverside astrophysicist and an author of the study, said in a statement.
- The daytime temperature on the planet's surface can reach 2,242°F, according to the study.
What to watch: The James Webb Space Telescope may eventually be able to help scientists learn more about exactly what's going on with this planet and whether M dwarf stars could harbor habitable worlds. - It's possible that planets farther away from their M dwarf stars could stand a better chance at holding on to an atmosphere and eventually developing life.
- "It's possible this planet's condition could be a bad sign for planets even farther away from this type of star," Hill added. "This is something we'll learn from the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be looking at planets like these."
| | | | | | | | 3. Artistic inspiration from the stars |  | | | Alteronce Gumby and his piece, "Infinite and Beyond (for Sam Gilliam)." Photos: © Alteronce Gumby. Courtesy of the artist and Nicola Vassell Gallery | | | | Abstract artist Alteronce Gumby is inspired by the colors of the cosmos and the meanings they carry on Earth. His paintings, made with tiny shards of glass and gemstones, are his own analysis of light and color, Alison writes. The big picture: Color frames the world we see. Gumby — whose first solo show, "The Color in Everything," is currently up at the Nicola Vassell Gallery in New York City — seeks to redefine color, for the eye and for our society. - In a conversation with Axios, Gumby moved between the material — his interests in the tools artists create — and the abstract, including how "humans have taken the palette of the rainbow, segregated it and broken it down."
Details: Gumby's paint is resin, broken glass and slices of gemstones — all prisms that refract and bend light. - "I'm constantly trying to see new colors that I haven't seen before," he says of his choice of materials.
- The titles of his paintings — "Helios," "From Proxima Centauri With Love" and "We're Not the Other" — reflect his inspiration in the colors of the cosmos and their intersection with earthly issues of race and identity.
- "Everything, Everywhere & More" riffs off Stephen Hawking's work and the quest for a theory of everything.
- The question of "what other colors may exist out there in the universe that we, as human beings, just don't have the capability of seeing or just haven't seen yet" intrigues Gumby, who is also a member of The Planetary Society.
Gumby is personally fascinated with Isaac Newton's famous prism experiments that demonstrated light is a spectrum of colors and with later research revealing the different color spectrums of stars. - He says he's taken by how humans have given this palette of the rainbow "various definitions, different signs and symbols that we utilize in this society."
- "All colors are held to certain terms or within certain social structures or conditions. ... I'm African American, but people identify me as Black. That kind of color code is just embedded in American society."
What's next: Gumby's obsession with color, and the various ways it is formed throughout nature, is leading him to explore the pigments in plants. An aspiration of his is to collaborate with SpaceX or NASA to experiment with metals and materials from the Moon, asteroids and beyond. - On Instagram, Gumby often reposts images from the James Webb Space Telescope, which is capturing light that emerged from stars billions of years ago, giving humanity an unprecedented view of the universe's earliest moments. He has a series based on images taken by the Hubble telescope.
- Telescopes and lenses come up again and again. One finding that fascinates him: when the Hubble was pointed at what seemed like nothing for 100 hours. "It was a section of the sky where they deemed there was no light — and they found thousands of galaxies."
| | | | | | | | A message from Axios | | Start a new morning habit | | |  | | | | In just 10 minutes, catch up on the important news and interesting stories you won't hear anywhere else with host Niala Boodhoo. Each weekday morning, get the latest in everything from politics to space to race and justice. Listen now for free. | | | | | | 4. Out of this world reading list |  | | | Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios | | | | ☄️ Asteroid science is rewriting the solar system's history (Axios) 🚀 Astronauts have design ideas for new space stations (Elizabeth Howell, Space.com) 🗑 International Space Station swerves to avoid Russian space debris (Jackie Wattles and Katie Hunt, CNN) 📈 Your company needs a space strategy (Harvard Business Review) 📶 Lack of global internet lifelines prompts calls for a U.S. plan (Margaret Harding McGill, Axios) | | | | | | | | 5. Weekly dose of awe: A baby solar system |  | | | Photo: NASA, ESA, CSA, JWST/McCaughrean & Pearson | | | | The James Webb Space Telescope stared into distant space and has captured our past. - Planets coalesce out of disks of debris that gather around relatively young stars, and this image shows one of those circumstellar disks —called Orion 294-606 — located about 1,500 light-years away.
- "This protoplanetary disk is about five times wider than our solar system out to Neptune," Marina Koren wrote of the image in The Atlantic.
- "It likely has everything it needs to create a planetary system with as much variety as ours, to bring into existence its own versions of Jupiter and Saturn and maybe even Earth. That little smudge of pixels? It's the kind of place that can create pale blue dots, and, perhaps, all the life that lies within."
| | | | | | | | A message from Axios | | Start a new morning habit | | | | | | | | In just 10 minutes, catch up on the important news and interesting stories you won't hear anywhere else with host Niala Boodhoo. Each weekday morning, get the latest in everything from politics to space to race and justice. Listen now for free. | | | | Big thanks to Alison, Laurin-Whitney Gottbrath and Sam Baker for editing and Sheryl Miller for copy editing, and to Natalie Peeples and Sarah Grillo for the illustrations. If this newsletter was forwarded to you, subscribe. 🌎 |  | | Are you a fan of this email format? It's called Smart Brevity®. Over 300 orgs use it — in a tool called Axios HQ — to drive productivity with clearer workplace communications. | | | | | | Axios thanks our partners for supporting our newsletters. If you're interested in advertising, learn more here.
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