A BAY AREA NEWS GROUP PREMIUM EDITION
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Inside NASA Ames
SECTION EDITOR
Jackie Burrell
Celestial observations
Cecily Burt DESIGN
David Jack Browning Chris Gotsill PHOTO EDITING
Laura Oda Doug Duran COPY EDITING
Sue Gilmore
Is that a star or a space station? 10 sci-fi stunners
COVER ILLUSTRATION BY PEP BOATELLA
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Opposite: A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifts off from Central California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base on Nov. 10, 2022.
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22 Midcentury splashdown
46 The poet of Europa
The migrant farmer astronaut BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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NASA Ames builds the future From fighter jets to space robots, where will the famed research center’s experiments take us? B Y L I SA K R I E G E R
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ake American airplanes the best and fastest in the world. When a 16-foot wind tunnel was erected in Sunnyvale in the early days of World War II, that was the mission of Ames Aeronautical Laboratory at the U.S. Naval Air Station at Moffett Field. Now a new 40,000-square-foot research facility called the Biosciences Collaborative Laboratory has taken its place, exploring fields that once seemed unimaginable, such as human survival in outer space. The extraordinary effort that has unfolded on the site — now run by NASA, with Moffett Field property leased to Google — is central to the story of Silicon Valley. Through advanced research and development, NASA created a future that didn’t just happen, but was made by local men and women, day by day. Built on the site of an ancestral Ohlone village, which was itself covered with broccoli, cauliflower and hay farms, the lab’s construction was not
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A Douglas A-26B airplane is centered over an opening in the 40-foot by 80-foot wind tunnel at NACA’s Ames Research Center on May 9, 1945. PHOTO COURTESY NASA
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Right: Construction continues on the world’s largest wind tunnel and its original 40 foot by 80 foot test section on June 24, 1943. A later expansion created an additional 80 foot by 120 foot test section. A Navy blimp, which would have been based at Hangars 2 and 3 at Moffett Field, patrols in the background. Below: Dr. Joseph Sweetman Ames at his desk at the headquarters of NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) on January 1, 1920. PHOTOS COURTESY: NASA
predestined. It’s here only because it won a fierce national competition, chaired by famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, because of its easy access to Moffett Field, major aviation industry leaders, good weather and a new high-powered electrical station in Sunnyvale. It was a time of deep national anxiety. As World War II escalated, enemy labs more extensive than ours in the dictatorships of Germany and Italy were innovating new aircraft design features. The future of the democracy was at stake, warned Vannevar 6 SPACE
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Bush, who led a quiet, efficient group of government research engineers known as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. “No matter how greatly production facilities may be increased, no matter how many more pilots may be trained, unless the aircraft that are built for action are at least equal in performance to those of any possible enemy, the whole effort will be largely wasted,” he told President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941. When the first spade of dirt
Above: Construction on the 40-foot by 80-foot wind tunnel at NACA’s Ames Research Center began in 1941. The full-scale tunnel went into operation three years later. Left: NASA Ames is named after Dr. Joseph Sweetman Ames, seen here at the headquarters of NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in 1920. PHOTOS COURTESY NASA
Above: Flight software engineer Ethan Massey monitors a night time test of the latest prototype of the VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) in the Roverscape at NASA’s Ames Research Center on Nov. 2, 2022. Left: This Long Range Laser Velocimeter was one of the instruments used in the giant wind tunnel at NASA Ames in this 1983 photograph. MATTHEW MACHLIS / NASA; TOM TROWER / NASA
was overturned in 1939 to inaugurate the construction of the new campus, called the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory, it was the era of slide rules and rudimentary electric calculating machines. A wooden shack served as an office for planning the construction of the first facilities. In its first year, the lab had only 60 employees. Now there are more than 3,200. It was named for physicist Joseph S. Ames, a leader in the modern science of aeronautics and president of Johns Hopkins University. A critic of the United States’ isolationist foreign policy, Ames had urged the nation to speed up development of warplanes and helped persuade Congress to authorize the lab’s construction. Sadly, Ames never visited the new research facility which bore his name. Disabled by a stroke, he died in 1943 at age 79. Initial development of the campus focused on the construction of massive wind tunnel facilities to test models and full-scale wartime airplanes. Time was of the essence. Researchers rotated through shifts, three a day, so the lab could operate around the clock.
The Lab’s goal: increase the speed of airplanes from 125 miles per hour to 200 miles per hour, while boosting safety. Its researchers also tested crucial design changes, such as engine buffeting and icing, boosting its reputation as a place where clever and economical answers could be found to challenging problems. Lab engineers fixed the vibrating radiator, or “duct rumble,” on the P-51 B Mustang fighter aircraft. They designed a new wing flap for the P-38 Lightning fighter, dangerous during steep fast dives. They increased the carrying capacity of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber. When war’s fighting ceased, Ames Aeronautical Laboratory continued its research of lift, drag and other forces in flight — but its focus shifted to high-speed commercial aviation, revolutionizing the way people and goods traveled around the globe. The Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957 propelled the nation into the space age. The lab, long committed to the engineering of aviation, initially resisted the new focus. But NASA subsumed Ames, BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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Rea Cheng, foreground, and Dr. Muriel Ross, director of the Ames Center for Bioinformatics at NASA’s Ames Research Center, used 3-D glasses to aid in their manipulation of a high resolution image of a skull and facial tissue in this 2000 photograph. NASA/GETTY IMAGES
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renaming it NASA Ames Research Center, and shifted its work on the technological challenges of a lunar landing and space travel. Generations of spacecraft passed through its Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel for essential testing, from early rockets to the Artemis program’s Orion, designed to carry people into space and return them to Earth. In 1994, Moffett Field was closed as part of the nation’s Base Realignment and Closure process. It was turned over to NASA Ames. But soon the facility faced an existential crisis. In 1995, funding shortfalls prompted NASA to improve efficiency. While Ames’ aeronautics and other non-space research work would be saved, its space programs were destined for Houston and other NASA sites. Facing a very real threat of closure, the crisis galvanized the lab’s Bay Area allies. NASA Ames pulled through and emerged from the upheaval as a leader in astrobiology, information technology, aviation system safety and other areas of expertise. Now, with dreams of an expanded presence in space, NASA Ames is reducing its Earthly footprint. Sitting alongside Google’s headquarters, it has deepened its ties with the tech company. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, along with chairman Eric Schmidt, use Moffett Airfield as a base for their private jets. More recently, Google signed a 60-year, $1.16 billion contract with NASA to lease 42 acres for the company’s testing of technology related to robotics, aviation, space exploration and other new fields. “We want to invest taxpayer resources in scientific discovery, technology development and space exploration — not in maintaining infrastructure we no longer need,” said NASA administrator Charles Bolden. NASA Ames is also expanding its relationships with industri-
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al, government and university partners. It collaborates with Uber, Nissan North America and others in the field of autonomous vehicles. It performs key research for the Federal Aviation Administration, gathering information that shapes national tools and regulations. Last month, plans for a major $2 billion innovation hub were unveiled. UC Berkeley and SKS Partners, a San Francisco-based commercial developer, will create the 36-acre Berkeley Space Center at Moffett Field to launch breakthroughs in astronautics, quantum computing, climate studies and other fields. Only a glimpse of the work at NASA Ames is on view to the public, such as Google’s massive restoration effort of iconic Hangar One. Everything else is hidden behind closed doors. An active research laboratory, the lab does
not host public tours. Its Visitor Center isn’t even based there; instead, it is located 43 miles north at Oakland’s Chabot Space and Science Center. But here are some examples of Ames’ historic contributions: SWEPT WINGS
As plane speeds approach the velocity of sound, the airflow over the wings abruptly changes. This causes a dangerous loss of lift and increase in drag. In 1946, Ames discarded straight wings and tested the theory of “swept” design, with wings angled back from the fuselage to reduce drag at transonic, supersonic and high-subsonic speeds. Swept wings remain with us today on all modern aircraft. ROUND NOSES
A pointy nose cone greatly
improves the aerodynamics of a flying object. But it can’t handle heat. When re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere, it burns up. In the 1950s, NASA Ames found that a blunt tip dissipates heat more efficiently, ensuring the safe return of capsules and probes. This counterintuitive rounded shape has been incorporated into vessels from NASA’s Orion Spacecraft to SpaceX’s Dragon capsule. WIND TUNNELS
Before something can fly in the sky, it needs to “fly” on the ground. Generations of flight vehicles have passed through one of the three test sections of the lab’s Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel — the 11-by-11-foot Transonic, 9-by-7-foot Supersonic and the 8-by-7-foot Supersonic. The famed Boeing fleet of commercial transports and the Douglas DC-8, DC-9 and DC-10 were all
carbon ablator, or PICA, that was designed in Ames’ specialized wind tunnels. The heat shields were also critical to the survival of the capsule used in this year’s OSIRIS-REx project, which brought asteroid samples back to Earth. MOON ICE
Astronauts get thirsty. Water ice trapped at the bottoms of craters on the moon’s south pole could help support them. A golf cart-sized robot — the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER — will prospect for ice, analyzing it at different depths to create maps and revealing whether it is crystalized or chemically bound to other materials. Ames is managing the VIPER mission.
A pilot test subject wears a respiratory restraint suit during a study of breathing problems encountered during re-entry, November 30, 1962. DAVE WEST/ NASA
OUR ORIGINS — AND LIFE I N S PAC E
tested in these tunnels. So were military aircraft such as the F-111 fighter, the C-5A Galaxy transport and the B-1 Lancer bomber. The Space Shuttle was also tested there, as well as NASA’s newest supersonic X-59 plane and its next great rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS). V E R T I CA L F L I G H T
Ames’ expertise has contributed to the development of powered lift, stability and control, essential to improved helicopter and “tiltrotor” aircraft, which can conduct amphibious assaults at twice the speed of traditional helicopters, making them less vulnerable to antiaircraft fire. Its experiments led to the V-22 aircraft of the 1980s, which climbs and lands like a helicopter but flies as a turboprop plane. Related innovation led to the development of the Mars helicopter Ingenuity,
which made history by traveling the length of a football field through thin air. DRONE TRAFFIC
Drones could cut commute times, provide medical transport, deliver disaster relief, assist in firefighting and send groceries, toiletries or a box of pizza to your front door. But this will require intense management of airspace. Software development and simulation facilities at Ames will help coordinate future drone traffic, so they don’t swarm haphazardly, perhaps colliding and careening to the streets below. Ames scientists are also developing airspace management tools to support the adoption of drones during wildfires. E Y E S I N S PAC E
It’s hard for Earth-bound tele-
scopes to see through the water vapor of the atmosphere. NASA Ames co-managed SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy), a 106-inch, 17-ton infrared telescope mounted inside a 747 jumbo jet, to view the skies more clearly. SOFIA, which began work in 2014 and concluded its final science flight in 2022, provided unambiguous evidence of water on parts of the moon. H E AT S H I E L D S
NASA’s new Artemis program aims to put astronauts back on the moon, evoking the long-gone Apollo era. But its spacecraft are at risk of becoming fireballs as they race 25,000 miles per hour at temperatures of nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. To protect the spacecraft, heat shields rely on a thermal material, called phenolic-impregnated
Ames researchers studied samples of comets and interstellar dust from the Stardust mission, unlocking clues to the origins of our solar system. They inspected lunar samples to check for signs of life when Apollo 11 returned from the moon. They studied the wealth of chemical data from the Viking mission to the surface of Mars. Its Biosciences Collaborative Laboratory is developing the next generation of life support systems, so we can live in space for extended periods of time, as well as countermeasures to protect us from radiation exposure and loss of gravity. In the future, the question faced by the lab’s space scientists will be, in the end, not all that different from the challenge of their predecessors desperate to win World War II: Can we build it better? Faster? The answer might well be decided at NASA Ames. BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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Check in to Mountain View’s Ameswell Hotel for a lesson in aviation history S TO RY B Y L I N DA Z AVO R A L PHOTOS BY DAI SUG ANO
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ike many Baby Boomer kids in the 1960s, Philip “Flip” Maritz was obsessed with space and dreamed of becoming an astronaut. He didn’t pursue that career path, but he found a way to indulge his passion — as a hotelier. In 2021, his paean to flight, the NASA Ames-inspired Ameswell, opened on Mountain View’s Moffett Boulevard with 255 rooms, conference space and indoor/outdoor dining. The 11-acre property is located near Highway 101, just a mile northwest of the famed 1930s-era airfield and research center on the Sunnyvale border. “The community is so lucky to have that history and respect captured in a place they can visit,” said retired astronaut Steve Smith of San Jose, who flew four Shuttle missions and serves as a
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A model of NASA’s Orion spacecraft, above, is just one of the artifacts displayed in the Ames Library at the Ameswell Hotel, below, in Mountain View.
brand ambassador for the hotel. Maritz, the ownership group and designers could have very easily veered off course and turned the hotel into a kitschy attraction. Instead, it’s a thoughtful and fascinating collection of cutting-edge art installations, architectural touches and Ames and Moffett Field memorabilia. (There’s a Moffett Field Museum across the freeway, of course, but it doesn’t have an innovative, chef-driven restaurant and full bar.)
The first notable piece appears straight ahead as visitors walk in the hotel’s front door. Artist Chul Hyun Ahn uses LED lights, fiberglass and mirrors to make us ponder “Perception + Reality.” To the left, at the front desk, is the “A” Ameswell logo in the shape of Hangar One, the Moffett Field structure built to house the Navy’s USS Macon airship. Nearby is artist Chris Doyle’s multi-channel video exploration of “Progress + Destruction.” Throughout the ground floor,
Even the Ameswell’s Roger bar and restaurant has aviation touches. The massive roll-up garage doors give it the feel of a spacious hangar.
unfinished ceilings are softened by angular “clouds,” panels constructed with reclaimed wood. The shape of the main bar and a nearby table mimics that of an airplane wing. Couches the color of the wild blue yonder offer lounge seating. And the massive roll-up garage doors give the in-house restaurant, Roger, the feel of a spacious hangar. Credit the design team from BAMO of San Francisco for the conceptualization. The hotel’s Ames Library
Aviation artifacts, books and memorabilia are displayed inside the Ames Library room at the Ameswell, where the decor is inspired by the nearby NASA Ames Research Center.
should be the first stop for the Bay Area’s space, aviation, engineering and history buffs. In it, we learn that without early flight — as in prehistoric birds, not Orville and Wilbur — there would be no U.S. space program. So Maritz, who curated the collection, took the long view. “Each object has significance related to time and space — from a replica of a pterosaur fossil to Hubble telescope images of deep space,” he said. The artifacts were sourced from eBay, Etsy,
1stDibs and dedicated aviation antique shops. “Flight is so central to NASA Ames and Moffett Field — plus my wife, Jenny, is a passionate birdwatcher, and I have collected photos for decades, so this all came together in a really fun way.” On one shelf, a red pheasant takes wing near a pilot’s helmet from a Sikorsky Sea King helicopter, which was used primarily for anti-submarine warfare. Another special find, Maritz said, is a “really cool World War II altimeter that survived multiple combat missions.” Black-and-white photos depict aviation pioneers Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart and the research center’s namesake, physicist Joseph Ames, who co-founded NACA — the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, established in 1915, was NASA’s predecessor. He died before he had the opportunity to set foot inside the center, according to NASA archives. Models and photos of dirigibles abound in the collection.
Moffett Field was established as a West Coast base for the nation’s rigid airship program, and Hangar One’s celebrated tenant, the Macon, arrived in 1933. The blimp crashed just two years later in the Pacific Ocean off Big Sur. Over the years, the Ames/ Moffett mission evolved, as evidenced by the celebratory program from Moffett Field’s 1958 silver anniversary, which announced: “From lighter than air to faster than sound.” And the next chapter may be lofty enough to warrant an expansion of the hotel library. In October, NASA and UC Berkeley announced plans for a $2 billion research center at Moffett. If the collaborative project is approved, construction could start in 2026. Details: The Ameswell welcomes visitors who want to view the collection. The hotel’s Roger restaurant is open daily from 5 to 10 p.m. for dinner and 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. for weekend brunch, with early and lunch hours at the Flyby cafe in the lobby. 800 Moffett Blvd., Mountain View; www.theameswellhotel.com. BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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COSMIC ATTRACTIONS Chabot Space and Science Center invites you to play while you learn B Y K AT I E L AU E R
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he sheer beauty of space first struck Ben Burress as a child gazing up at stars, planets and galaxies through the Chabot Observatory telescopes in the 1970s. Decades later, that youthful wonder came “flooding back,” he says, when he peered into those same reflecting mirrors — an unexpected thrill to relive as the Chabot Space and Science Center’s staff astronomer. “There’s just something about having the light from Saturn bore into my own eye that reminded me, ‘Wow, this is why people come up here,” Burress says. “You cannot get that experience looking at photographs or a computer screen.” Chabot has been an astronomy hub in Oakland for more than a century, beginning in 1883 with the acquisition of “Leah,” an 8-inch
Rachel Byrne talks with volunteer David Shaw about the massive telescopes at the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland. DOUGLAS ZIMMERMAN
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refracting telescope donated by founder Anthony Chabot. Leah has since been joined by “Rachel,” a 20-inch refracting telescope commissioned in 1914, and “Nellie,” a 36-inch reflector telescope installed in 2003. It was that 20-inch telescope that helped bring the Apollo 13 crew home in 1970. When NASA Ames sent up a desperate call for help after an explosion crippled the spacecraft, Chabot was the only observatory with clear skies and the data NASA needed — the ship’s precise location — to calculate a manual re-entry. Members of the East Bay Astronomical Society had been tracking the flight from Chabot. But a new chapter in Chabot’s relationship with the federal space program took off in November of 2021, when the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View launched “The NASA Experience,” its official visitor center, at Oakland’s space and science center. The NASA visitor center is an immersive, educational playground that aims to teach complex science concepts using simple, everyday things. While Chabot has long boasted programs that combine kinetic, active play with opportunities for quiet learning, Burress said its exhibits are now bolstered with unprecedented access to NASA’s regular drumbeat of discoveries, experiments and questions. Thanks to a five-year Space Act Agreement with the space agency and a 20-month transformation during the pandemic, 14 SPACE
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Above: Ben W. (who preferred to only give his last initial) helps his children Ashley, left, and Sage build paper airplanes to put into a wind tunnel. Right: Moored Helli strikes a pose for his son, Samy, as they explore a replica of a Mercury space capsule at the NASA Ames Visitor Center at Chabot. DOUGLAS ZIMMERMAN
Chabot’s visitors can now step into the (figurative) moon boots of astronauts and NASA Ames researchers — albeit on the other side of the Bay. More than 100 historic artifacts are on display, including spacesuits from the Mercury and Gemini missions and a fan blade from the world’s largest wind tunnel, which produced speeds over 1,000 miles per hour — faster than the speed of sound — at the Ames Research Center. In addition to the NASA exhibits, Chabot also offers a whole roster of creative First Friday events that spotlight topics like gamma rays, asteroid hunt-
Interactive activities and exhibits, including spacesuit displays, abound at the NASA Ames Visitor Center in the Oakland hills.
ers and the Northern Lights, as well as hands-on exhibits featuring magnetic trains, water ripple tanks and computerized simulations. Chabot creative director Tracy Corado’s goal is to keep the center nimble and ever-evolving, in order to keep up with fast paced scientific discoveries revolving around space, which can churn out “new news” on a daily basis. So one of the Space and Science Center’s newest attractions is a towering, 8-foot replica of NASA’s water-hunting VIPER rover, which is on display here, as the Ames Research Center conducts final Earthbound test
drives ahead of its 2024 Artemis mission. Isabel Lopez Ramirez, Chabot’s marketing manager, says she’s excited to see how the new NASA center experiences continue to uphold the museum’s 140-year history and generate new generations of nostalgia. “We work to create a fun family time that’s educational, where you really get to embark on a journey,” Lopez Ramirez said. “This partnership with NASA means we’re continuing to make those moments and memories for children.” There’s no question that gazing into the heavens continues to awe new generations, whether it’s visitors peering through Nellie on a clear Friday or Saturday evening or looking upward indoors. One of Chabot’s most popular attractions, says Burress, remains its planetarium, which was constructed in the early 1960s. “Even though it’s just a projector that puts dots up on a dome, it’s so easy to forget that there is a building between you and the sky,” Burress says. “Planetariums are a great tool for letting your imagination take you on a trip to space in a different way than the telescopes do.” Details: The Chabot Space & Science Center and NASA Ames visitors center is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. WednesdaySunday (admission is $19-$24) and from 6 to 10 p.m. on the first Friday ($10-$15) of each month at 10000 Skyline Blvd. in Oakland; https://chabotspace.org. BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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It’s bright up there A dusk-to-dawn guide to the night sky S TO RY B Y L I SA K R I E G E R I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y D AV I D E B A R C O
Long and sparkly, the winter night sky is a spectacle — inviting us to wrap up, go outside and gaze up at planets, stars, airplanes, a sudden meteor and the parade of satellites. “Winter skies are dark, because the Earth is still leaning away from the sun. So what we see is brighter,” says Don Jolley of DarkSky West Marin, a community-led initiative to enact light restrictions and preserve the night sky. Without fog, “skies tend to be clear and really crisp.” What are all those bright objects overhead? Here’s an identification guide.
It doesn’t twinkle? Planet. Seen with the naked eye, planets and stars both appear as pinpoints of light. But planets generally don’t flicker. That’s because planets are closer than stars, so their beams of light are less influenced by
In this 30-second exposure, a meteor streaks across the sky above West Virginia during the annual Perseid meteor shower in 2021. BILL INGALLS/ NASA VIA GETTY IMAGES
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our turbulent atmosphere than the beam of light from a much more distant star. In late January and early February, we’re most likely to see either Venus or Jupiter. Both can be strikingly bright, easily visible to the unaided eye. Jupiter is four times and Venus 19 times as brilliant as Sirius, the next brightest star after our sun. Look to the east at nightfall to spot Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system. Jupiter is bright because of its sheer size. And it reflects 34 percent of the sunlight that hits it. Venus reigns as the “morning star,” visible in the southeast before dawn. While smaller than Jupiter, it’s easy to spot because it’s the shiniest planet in the solar system. It is covered in clouds, so it reflects more than 75 percent of the sunlight that strikes it. The moon, the brightest and largest object in our night sky, isn’t technically a planet. That’s because it orbits around the Earth, not the sun. But take a moment to appreciate the moon’s critical role: It moderates our planet’s wobble on its axis, creating a relatively stable climate. January’s “wolf moon,” named by Celtic and Old English traditions for the howling of hungry wolves in the winter, reaches peak illumination on Thursday, Jan. 25. The full moon of February is known as the snow moon. Because there wasn’t much to eat at this time of year, some cultures also called it the hunger moon.
It twinkles and may change color? Star. Out in airless space, stars never twinkle. But our atmosphere is turbulent. Tiny differences in the density and temperature of air cause light to bend and distort. Astronomers call that “atmospheric scintillation.” Because the winter air is so clear, we’re able to perceive star colors better than in other times of the year, says Jolley. In the constellation Orion, look for the red star Betelgeuse, which is Orion’s right shoulder, and the blue star Rigel, Orion’s left foot. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is almost directly overhead, from southeast to northwest. Stars show off some special geometry on winter nights. Look for the Winter Hexagon, made up of seven bright stars with one more as its hub. You can see it in the east-southeast, about halfway up the sky at nightfall. It encircles the constellation Orion. First find Sirius, whose name means “glowing” in Greek — it’s the brightest star in the night sky. If this star were placed next to our sun, Sirius would outshine it more than 20 times over, according to
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Orion is one of the most easily recognized constellations in the night sky. Look for the red star Betelgeuse, which is Orion’s right shoulder, and the blue star Rigel, Orion’s left foot. GETTY IMAGES
NASA. Because Sirius is low in the sky, we see it through many atmospheric layers, causing it to twinkle and change colors. Then sweep clockwise to Procyon, the Gemini twins Pollux and Castor, Capella, Aldebaran and down to Rigel, Orion’s bright, blue-white foot. The hexagon’s hub is Betelgeuse.
flash quickly. You may also see the red and green navigation lights on its wingtips.
It moves quickly, sometimes with flashing lights? Airplane.
A drone also uses anti-collision blinking lights — but its flight altitude is typically much lower than that of an airplane. Drones generally fly below 400 feet, as per FAA regulations. Drones use their lights to improve nighttime visibility, making the device visible to other aircraft and easier to spot in the dark. The lights, also regulated by the FAA, must be visible for at least three miles. These lights are not just for show; they serve a purpose. Red lights typically indicate the front of the drone, helping the pilot maintain orientation. Green lights usually indicate the rear. White lights can be used for illumination. If you see blue lights blinking along with red ones, it may be a police drone, useful for surveillance, search and rescue
Airplanes can be confusing. They may appear to be stationary for a while, like a planet or star, when they fly directly towards you. But at some point, the aircraft will appear to veer sideways or upwards as it passes by. Another clue: Planes travel quickly, at a steady rate. It you see any blinking lights, that’s likely an airplane. An airplane’s collision avoidance lights
It twinkles, but it’s not distant? Drone.
work of mass-produced satellites to provide cheap, global wireless internet. The Starlink satellites follow a shared trajectory, from west to east, before entering their assigned orbital slots. While astronomers hate the Starlink trains for cluttering the night sky, they’re an astonishing sight. To learn exactly when a Starlink train will be visible from your precise location, visit https:// findstarlink.com (or the Find Starlink Satellites app) and just enter your location. It prioritizes the bright passes of newly launched satellites and gives a live map of where they are now.
It’s super fast, with a tapering path? Meteor. You know meteors, also called “shooting stars.” The Holy Grail for skywatchers, meteors are easy to discern from other sky objects. They fly much faster than planes and satellites. They can be colorful, especially if they flare when hitting the Earth’s atmosphere. Their path is tapered, starting thin and ending thin. The International Space Station is an example of a bright satellite in the night sky, outshining the stars as it smoothly slides across the sky. NASA VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
missions and other tasks. They may hover or suddenly change direction, making quick, sharp movements, which is not typical for traditional aircraft. Additionally, listen for a distinct buzzing or humming noise produced by the drone’s motors and propellers.
It moves slowly and steadily, with no flashing lights? Satellite. Manmade satellites may seem too small and far away to see. But most are a lot closer than you might think. Many are also big and shiny, reflecting sunlight, so they can be brighter than many stars. There are presently more than 7,500 active satellites circling Earth. They look like slowly and steadily moving stars. While low-altitude satellites seem to move at about the same speed as an airplane, they do not have
flashing lights. Satellites, which are silent, typically take about two minutes to cross the sky from one horizon to another. A satellite’s speed depends on how high it is orbiting. The best example of a bright satellite is the International Space Station (ISS), which outshines the stars as it serenely and smoothly slides across the sky. Born 25 years ago, ISS was originally just a big steel can, built and launched by Russia but paid for by the United States. The addition of a second module, delivered by the Space Shuttle Endeavour, increased the size of ISS to more than the length of a football field. It’s remarkable to think that there are human beings living there. How do you know when to see the ISS pass overhead? NASA has a great tool to help. Sign up to the Spot the Station program to see a map-based feature that tracks when the station is flying over you. But the ISS isn’t the only satellite to see. If you spot a chain of tiny dots of light moving across the sky in a straight line, that’s Starlink. It is Elon Musk’s plan to surround the planet with a lattice-
It’s an amber orb. Or a silent and dim flying triangle. Or hovering diamondshaped clusters: UFOs? These are among the descriptions of UFOs made from Californians to the National UFO Reporting Center, a database of alleged sightings. Since its founding in 1995, the Center has collected 16,158 reports from our state. Last July, a driver in the coastal town of Davenport reported an orb “in the rear view mirror... slowly behind us and to our left...It came forward towards us and paralleled our car.” In early September, a “cigar-shaped object” was reported in Fairfax, with “many blinking white lights, with some stationary. It moved slowly.” Later that month, an Oakland resident reported a “cylinder-shaped, highly reflective object silently traveling, not quite overhead, SE to SW.” Of course, the vast majority of UFO reports can be explained. It’s likely they don’t really exist. Or do they? The truth is out there, up in the night sky.
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Astronaut Steve Smith’s time in space has shaped the course of his existence B Y K AT E B R A D S H AW
Many kids dream of becoming an astronaut. San Jose’s Steve Smith remembers scrawling his space exploration fantasies in crayon, too — but his dreams came true. Smith flew four space missions, traveled 16 million miles and spent nearly 50 hours out on spacewalks. Today, he’s an inspirational public speaker, telling stories of chasing that dream, his life in space and his years as a diplomat to support work on the International Space Station. An athlete and an engineer, Smith has a background that includes undergrad and master’s degrees from Stanford in electrical engineering as well as an MBA. He worked for a few years at IBM, before leaving the Bay Area in 1989 to work as a payload officer for NASA in Houston. After being rejected four times for the Astronaut Corps, he was finally selected in 1992. He went on to become one of the Americans who has spent the most time “walking” — as much as the word applies off Earth — in space, an experience he says is akin to scuba diving. It all sounds glamorous from the vantage point of someone safely on Earth. But much of his work as an astronaut, Smith says, involved working to keep himself and his colleagues alive in an extremely dangerous 20 SPACE
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During his time with NASA, former astronaut Steve Smith flew four space missions and spent some 50 hours on spacewalks, including time working on the Hubble Telescope (left), before becoming a diplomat to support the International Space Station. NASA
place. The launch, the flight, the zero-Gs are certainly challenging, but heading out on a spacewalk poses major difficulties. He wore a specialized suit prepared to handle temperature swings of 400 degrees every 45 minutes and potential impacts from rocks, pellets and other debris. “It’s a pretty dangerous business,” he says, “but in the end, we do it to make people’s lives better.” As any fan of “For All Mankind” knows, the rapidly changing technology and challenges of space travel led to major technological advances for the Earthbound, too. “Probably the biggest gain from the space programs in all of history is the miniaturization of electronics,” Smith says, “which is, of course, the basis of our entire global economies now.” There are perks for the astronauts, too. Not having to work in an office, getting to see the planet from far away, all while working to make life on Earth better, he says, made it a “fantastic dream
job.” It also had a profound impact on how he saw the world. “Seeing Earth from space changes your perspective on life,” he says. “It does look like a really fragile island in this vast ocean, and you can’t see the borders between the countries.” After returning from space, Smith worked as a diplomat, representing NASA as a liaison for the International Space Station program. For a dozen years, he lived in Europe, working with the European Space Agency and Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, and helping to coordinate how astronauts from different countries worked together on the space station. Today, he explains, there’s a renewed interest in space exploration, one that’s being called Space 2.0 and is driven by the entry of private business into an industry that, until a decade or so ago, was primarily the domain of governments. “In the last 10 years, tens of billions of private dollars have been invested (in the commercial space sector), and that’s because there are business cases for dozens and dozens — and dozens — of products,” he says. Meanwhile, the research going on in Space 2.0 has real world applications. Take recycled water systems, for example, being designed for long-distance space travel, since it’s expected to take about nine months to travel to Mars. Currently, about 95 percent of the water on the International Space Station is recycled. “That technology can be used in the Bay Area when we have a drought,” he says. “If we can somehow figure out how to recycle water more efficiently on Earth because of what we’re doing in space, that’s great.” He’s also excited to see how research and manufacturing in space can be applied in ways that can’t be done on Earth’s surface, since space provides a unique setting with different gravity conditions. Outside Earth’s gravitational pull, drugs might be able to form different shapes beyond gravity-driven crystal structures, which could potentially facilitate pharmacological discoveries, he says. “Perhaps there will be drug discoveries and maybe even drug manufacturing in space 30 years from now that will resolve some of the major medical challenges we have,” he says. “That is the single use case that I’m most excited about.” Meanwhile, he adds, his time in space continues to guide how he spends his time on Earth. “Going into space really makes you realize we’re one global community,” he says. “It makes you more tolerant, makes you more interested in peace. It has guided how I spend my free time and what initiatives I’m interested in.” BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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Poet Ada Limón pens a paean to mystery — and a NASA mission launches her verse into space B Y J O H N M E TCA L F E
Away from the big-city lights in Sonoma, a young Ada Limón spent countless hours peering out at the stars with her dad’s telescope. “I have always loved space. I’ve always loved stars. I’ve loved looking out of telescopes,” Limón says. “I’ve always loved seeing if I could figure out which was the Big Dipper and Little Dipper. Growing up in Sonoma, it was a great time for stargazing.” This fall, something out among the stars will be staring back at Limón, who grew up to become the U.S. poet laureate. In October, when NASA launches the Europa Clipper spacecraft to study Jupiter’s moon, Europa, the vessel will be engraved with a new work of Limón’s. “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa” extols the marvel of space and the sublime beauties of our home planet. Any aliens joyriding in the neighborhood will be able (assuming their English proficiency) to read beautiful lines about “the whale song, the songbird singing its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.” Being published in London or Japan may be all right for some poets. But to have her work zoom 1.8 billion miles through the Jupiter system, on a mission that includes nearly 50 flybys of Europa, is beyond cool for the Lexington, Kentucky-based artist. “The thought of being able to speak not just to an audience 22 SPACE
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of poetry lovers, but to really anyone who’s a member of our planet felt like such a huge opportunity — not to mention, anyone who might be beyond our planet,” she says. That’s right — we’re talking the possibility of extraterrestrial life in Europa’s suspected ice-covered ocean, which plucks at the poet’s sci-fi fandom. “Not to be geeky, but I was also someone that loved ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Star Wars’ — the ‘Star Wars’ franchise are some of my favorite movies. I think I was always intrigued by what space offers in terms of possibilities.” So how’d Limón get roped up in this mission in the first place? It turns out NASA has a long history of sending human artifacts into space, on the chance that future people/things/sen-
tient goos discover them. The Golden Record that launched on two Voyager spacecrafts in 1977 carried recordings of thunder and whales, an Ansel Adams photo, the anatomy of human sex organs and a written message from President Jimmy Carter. The record is now a fun historical factoid, but at the time, had folks concerned it would give away our position. Sir Martin Ryle, the Astronomer Royal of England, believed that for “all we know, any creatures out there were malevolent or hungry, and once they knew of us, they might come to attack or eat us.” That hasn’t happened yet, despite NASA sending a diagram of our solar system on Pioneer 10 and 11, LEGO figurines of Roman deities on the Juno mission
and a DVD of haiku on the MAVEN mission to Mars. And now it’s a 21-line poem from Limón, engraved on a tantalum-metal plate in her own handwriting, accompanied by a microchip bearing more than 700,000 names of people who “signed” the poem online. Choosing Limón for this mission was a no-brainer, says Robert Pappalardo, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory fellow and Europa Clipper project scientist. “We wanted to find the right person to convey a concise message that could express the excitement and wonder of exploring another ocean world,” says Pappalardo. “Poems can convey big ideas in compact spaces — so who better to craft such a message than the poet laureate? We were absolutely thrilled when Limón replied positively to NASA’s request.” Sitting down to write, the poet found herself facing a roadblock, penning 19 drafts that “weren’t that great,” she says. “It was a much harder task than I’d ever been given,” she says. “It took me a really long time to realize that in order for this particular poem to work, it was going to have to be a collective poem.” The end result turns the eye inward to focus on humanity’s experience on Earth. It dips hard into the theme of water, which is what this NASA mission is all about, in lines such as: “And it is not darkness that
“In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa,” by U.S. poet laureate Ada Limón, right, will be engraved on the vessel before it is launched in late 2024 for a mission to study Jupiter’s moon Europa. Limón visited NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, left, in 2023 to observe the Europa Clipper spacecraft in the cleanroom. GREGORY M. WAIGAND / NASA / JPL-CALTECH
unites us, not the cold distance of space, but the offering of water, each drop of rain, each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.” “I think that when we talk about space exploration and ocean exploration and any kind of time when we are deeply looking into and exploring our world, we always have to remember that exploration is teaching us about ourselves,” says Limón. “The fact we exist right here in this moment, with this incredible planet that we live on, is a real miracle on so many levels. So in order to embrace the idea of exploration and going out into the cold, dark existence of space, I needed to really come back to the wonders and beauty of the Earth.” Needless to say, NASA likes “In Praise of Mystery.” “Ada Limón’s poem is perfect in relating everyday human experience to the wonder of planetary exploration,” says Pappalardo. “This message from Earth, carried by the Europa Clipper spacecraft, connects us to another ocean world.” Limón’s work on this project brought her to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, where she met the team and observed the Clipper being assembled in a cleanroom. “There are people who have been interested in this mission for 30 or 40 years, so getting to meet some of them was just a real honor and privilege,” she says. And she’ll be at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida this October for the launch, and she’ll perform a reading of her poem as the spacecraft soars into the great beyond. And what if, perhaps centuries or millennia from now, alien lifeforms do intercept and decipher her ode? “I hope if that were to happen, they would understand that we as a human species really do love and cherish our Earth, even though it often doesn’t look like that,” she says. “I’d hope the poem would point to our wonder and awe at the Earth’s beauty.” BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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cosmic
lookout
High atop Mount Hamilton, Lick Observatory unlocks the mysteries of the universe BY E T H A N BA R O N
Lick Observatory atop Mount Hamilton has telescopes pointed toward other worlds, but it’s pretty otherworldly itself. And despite lasers that can rob the unwary of eyesight, rattlesnakes, mountain lions, wildfires, blizzards and dizzying drops beside a twisty, 19mile access road, two dozen people live and work on the scrub-covered mountaintop here, helping illuminate and unravel cosmic mysteries. With a high-pitched whirr, a swath of the massive white dome containing Lick’s Shane telescope rolls up like a four-story garage door to expose the giant instrument to the twilight sky. Scarcely 45 minutes later, resident astronomer Elinor Gates has already used light-wavelength data to identify a quasar — the galaxy core where gases and space dust go out in a blaze of luminous glory just before they’re sucked inside a black hole. “We’ve made a new observation nobody’s made before,” Gates says in the screen-filled control room beside the Shane. “It’s mission accomplished.” Dozens more quasar-hunting missions will follow this night. Gates calls herself a morning person, and she’s been up since 5:30 a.m. But on this, as well as on many other nights, she’s a 24-hour person, remaining awake until dawn analyzing data, while a technician at a work station beside her points the Shane — with its 10-foot-wide mirror — at targets in the sky that could be stars as near as 150,000 light years away or quasars billions of Stars fill the sky outside the Shane Dome at the Lick Observatory at Mount Hamilton. NHAT V. MEYER/STAFF BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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light years distant. Around 6:30 p.m., Gates guzzles the rest of a can of Coke. “I have some tea with me,” she says. “I need to stop drinking caffeine at 2 a.m.ish or so to make sure I actually sleep when I finally get to.” The images and graphs on her screens tell Gates whether gasses around an outer-space object shine with color patterns like quasars or like stars. Gates is researching dust-shrouded quasars. For each new observation, she’ll later peer deep into her data to try to help answer fundamental questions about how the universe works: Is being cloaked in dust a stage for a quasar? Or does it happen when galaxies merge? Since University of California-owned Lick went operational in 1888, increasing light from the growing Bay Area metropolis below has come to inter26 SPACE
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Dan Espinosa, telescope technician and the Lick Observatory’s chief mechanic, prepares the telescope in the Shane Dome on Mount Hamilton. NHAT V. MEYER/ STAFF
fere with astronomy. Still, says Andrew Fraknoi, former head of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and currently an astronomy professor at the University of San Francisco, “it’s a remarkable thing that being so close to San Jose and its city lights, it’s still able, partly because of its location and partly because of the clever people designing its instruments, to do important work.” Much space research, like Gates’, does not require the world’s largest telescopes or darkest nights, and Lick’s array also includes the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope, famed for early detection of the star explosions called supernovas. Next to Gates in the control room is Dan Espinosa, telescope technician and Lick’s chief mechanic. “How many other places do you get to use a jeweler’s screwdriver and a 15-ton crane
to adjust the same instrument?” says Espinosa, who has a mechanical engineering degree from San Jose State University, and unlike morning-person Gates, describes himself as a “natural-born vampire.” Espinosa likes numbers. He figures he climbs almost 1,000 vertical feet a day on stairways
around the facility’s nine operable telescopes. He once tried counting all the ball bearings in the observatory machinery, but gave up well into the triple digits. One telescope alone, the 57-foot Great Lick Refractor built in the 1880s and housed in the main building visible from much of the Bay Area, has 130 ball bearings,
VISITING THE LICK O B S E R VATO RY The observatory, which is located at the summit of Mount Hamilton, is open to the public on weekends from noon to 5 p.m. Admission is free. Browse the historic exhibits, hear a short, informal talk in the Great Lick Refractor dome, view the Shane reflector and take a self-guided walking tour. Find details, parking information and weather and road advisories at www.lickobservatory.org. Tickets and details on the observatory’s 2024 summer series of lectures, stargazing and concerts will go online this spring.
he says, “and every single one of them’s got to be greased.” On a recent afternoon, Espinosa has grease on his face and hands, but he’s also often tasked with putting his meaty mitts to non-mechanical work, “beating on software to make sure it’s doing what it was designed to do.” Espinosa may sometimes be
found in his lair, a cavelike office and repair shop beneath the Shane where the cool air smells of oil and grease and hulking metal-work machines gleam in the fluorescent light: tools of the trade for a mechanic caring for sophisticated but often aging gear. On a late afternoon, Espinosa
is crouched outside by an open electrical box, working on the cooling system for the Automated Planet Finder, the world’s first robotic telescope capable of detecting rocky planets outside our solar system that might support life. Espinosa holds up a length of wire extending from the box, its black sheathing
Left: Scientist Eliot Young wears a warm winter jacket to stay warm inside the uninsulated dome that houses the Lick Observatory’s Nickel telescope. JOSE CARLOS FAJARDO/STAFF
bearing fresh little scars. “This is my current little nightmare,” he says. “The mice have been at this.” Mice, in the eastern Santa Clara County hills, often mean rattlesnakes. A stone’s throw from Espinosa, a sign on a building warns staff and visitors to give the reptiles “some respect.” Other placards advise people they’re in “mountain lion habitat,” so “keep children close,” and, “if attacked, fight back.” Brush fires occur regularly on the mountain, and the 2020 SCU Lightning Complex firestorm nearly took Lick out. Last winter, heavy snow forced technicians to trudge through deep drifts to maintain sensitive equipment, while the domes stayed shut for weeks. “Not everyone can live up here,” says Gates, a Lick resident for a quarter century. Two other astronomers live at the observaBAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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Lick Observatory resident astronomer Elinor Gates, right, and chief mechanic Dan Espinosa search for quasars from the control room. NHAT V. MEYER/STAFF
tory, plus four telescope operators, three technicians and other staff — plus a few partners and one home-schooled 7-year-old, making for a population of 25. “In our tiny town, we have neighborhoods,” Gates says, rattling off Rattlesnake Ridge, Tortilla Flats, Kepler Peak — and Downtown, where the visitors are noisiest and homes have signs saying, “Quiet Please, Day Sleepers inside.” But many who conduct research at Lick don’t have to live there. Most any day, students and astronomers are visiting or collaborating remotely with scientists on the mountain. On this particular day, Gates is joined on the quasar search via video by Piper Walker, 22, an astrophysics major at UC Santa Cruz. Gates gets Walker to give
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target coordinates to Espinosa. Computers bleep and bloop as two cameras on the telescope start and stop eight-minute exposures. Gates performs a preliminary analysis on the results: They’re positive. Walker, from her Santa Cruz bedroom, has helped identify her first quasar. “I wish I were there in person, but this is still really cool,” Walker says. She is scheduled to study at Lick in January and February, Gates notes, and tells her she may get to “ride the dome” — stand on the catwalk of the Shane dome as it rotates. “You can watch the scenery go by,” Gates says. Meanwhile, at the Nickel telescope in the main building, Eliot Young is preparing for his two minutes of truth. Principal scientist at the Southwest Re-
search Institute’s Space Studies Department in Boulder, Colorado, he has come to Lick for just two days, to observe Uranus’ moon Titania as it passes briefly in front of a bright star, a rare event. No one knows if Titania has an atmosphere; how starlight bends around it, Young
Eliot Young, in a red jacket, and Dan Espinosa return inside after touring the outside of the dome. JOSE CARLOS FAJARDO/STAFF
hopes, will show him if it does.
Next to the door in the control room for the Nickel — which is also used in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence — a big red button warns, “LASER
As the sun begins its descent, the observatory’s chief mechanic, Dan Espinosa, takes in the view from a catwalk that circles the Shane telescope dome 30 feet above ground. JOSE CARLOS FAJARDO/STAFF
EMERGENCY STOP.” This telescope, like the Shane, has a powerful laser used to zap the atmosphere and make a “false star” reference point for canceling out atmospheric turbulence. Enter the dome at the wrong time, and you could be struck blind. Visitors like Young can stay
“ I wanted to come here because I really love space — all the stars, the galaxies and planets.” Preston Robinson, 7, visiting Lick Observatory
in on-site dorms. The observatory no longer has a dining hall, but Young stopped on his way up to buy milk and cereal for breakfast and canned soup and baked potatoes to heat up in the kitchen. Residents of the homes scattered around the domes at Lick can see Yosemite’s Half Dome on a clear day, but the closest groceries are nearly an hour away in San Jose. “I’m up and down the mountain at least once a week,” says Gates, who has a boyfriend in San Mateo and performs with Lyric Theater in San Jose — she’s a soprano. “I always look for the wildlife and the flowers.” Maintenance worker Billy Decaneo also appreciates the wildlife. He’s seen five California condors in the past two weeks, he says, and “a couple bald eagles were soaring over us this morning.”
Some 35,000 visitors a year make the trek to Lick, 4,265 feet above sea level. On a recent weekday, Arizonans Victor Robinson and his son Preston, 7, have left a family gathering in Livermore to observe the observatory that Robinson used to visit when he lived in San Jose. Preston has a telescope at home almost as tall as he is. He gazes in awe through a window at the 70-foot-tall Shane apparatus. “I wanted to come here because I really love space — all the stars, the galaxies and planets,” Preston says. Meanwhile, the Titania observation goes well for Colorado scientist Young. Photos showed the moon blocked out the star, he says, and now will come detailed analysis of how the star’s light behaved. “It will take some careful work,” Young says, “to see if there’s a thin atmosphere.”
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MISSION ONGOING The never-ending search for knowledge is astronomer Batalha’s passion BY M A R T H A R O S S
As Natalie Batalha searches for life outside our solar system, the celebrated astrophysicist and her colleagues often gather around the whiteboard in her UC Santa Cruz office. It’s reminiscent of the cinematic chalkboards used by genius scientists in movies like “Oppenheimer,” filled with symbols and equations representing breakthroughs in physics and the understanding of the universe — even of life itself. Batalha’s whiteboard is filled with jottings, notes for a proposal to observe several exoplanets, including twin Neptunelike planets orbiting a star more than 160 light years away from our sun. But she laughs at the “Oppenheimer” reference and recalls how her friend, the essayist Maria Popova, once asked if she wrote poetry. “I sent her a picture of my whiteboard,” Batalha says. “My poetry to the universe.” The East Bay-reared planetary astronomer often rhapsodizes about science, sharing how the abstract concepts she tackles in her work allow her to ponder some of the big questions that have long fascinated poets, artists and philosophers: Why are we here? How did life start? Are we alone in the universe? “A lot of people would throw up their hands and say, ‘We’re never going to know the answers to these questions,’” Batalha, 57, says. “But maybe it’s possible to understand the mystery of all these things. That’s how I approach my life: that all these mysteries or truths are knowable. We just have to keep looking.” Batalha’s search for answers has led to some remarkable achievements. She served as the scientific
UC Santa Cruz astronomy and astrophysics professor Natalie Batalha, left, was the scientific lead of NASA’s planet-finding Kepler mission. Above, a small model of the Kepler space telescope is displayed in her UCSC office. DAI SUGANO/STAFF
lead of NASA’s Kepler mission, which confirmed the existence of more than 2,700 exoplanets — planets outside our solar system — including some that might be capable of sustaining life. Her analysis also led to the 2011 discovery of Kepler-10b, the first confirmed rocky planet outside the solar system. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2017. Batalha, who also taught at San Jose State from 2002 to 2012, now leads a team of astronomers
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using the James Webb Space Telescope to study the atmosphere of exoplanets discovered by the Kepler telescope. She envisions a time when detailed analyses of these planets could point to evidence of life outside the galaxy — if not intelligent beings like E.T., then at least signs of plant photosynthesis or gasses that suggest the presence of microbial life. “With space telescopes like James Webb and ground-based projects, we keep hoping there is going to be some big breakthrough that is going to completely transform fundamental physics,” she says. “I think the first evidence of life beyond Earth is going to be like that.” When Batalha speaks, she comes across as the science teacher you always wished you’d had. But an academic career was not something she ever imagined, when she was growing up in San Pablo and El Sobrante. Her path to professor and NASA scientist was, she says, “circuitous.” From an early age, Batalha searched to understand “how to have a meaningful life.” At age 10, she told her not-particularly-religious parents she wanted to learn more about her mother’s Catholic faith — but decided she was done with organized religion when the bishop conducting her confirmation disparaged Galileo. As a teenager, she briefly toyed with the idea of becoming a philosopher. Instead, she began her undergrad years at UC Berkeley as a business major. But she was entranced by the 1980s Shuttle missions and a meeting with astronaut Rhea Seddon, a Cal alum. Then a physics lecture on light refraction brought an epiphany — and a change of majors. As she observed the way light rays create a rainbow of colors on an oil-slicked rain puddle, her professor wrote out mathematical equations to explain the phenomenon. “It struck me as profound, beautiful even, that the universe 32 SPACE
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follows mathematical laws,” she says. Hoping to understand our own sun, Batalha studied sunlike stars at both Cal and UC Santa Cruz, where she earned a Ph.D. in astrophysics. And it was at Cal that she met her future husband, Celso Batalha, a graduate student from Brazil who is now a professor of physics and astronomy at San Jose’s Evergreen Valley College. They moved to Danville in 2000, where they raised their four children, and then in 2018 to Santa Cruz, when she joined the UCSC astronomy and astrophysics faculty. It was some 20 years earlier that Batalha became intrigued by the growing number of exoplanet discoveries. She began working with Bill Borucki at NASA Ames Research Center in the late 1990s on what would become the Kepler mission, a space telescope which launched in 2009. The mission searched for Earth-sized planets beyond the solar system using transit photometry, a then-emerging technology which detects exoplanets by observing when the brightness of a star dips as a planet crosses in front of it. During her two decades with the mission, Batalha also helped build a robotic observatory, a precursor to the Kepler telescope, at the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton and helped select the 200,000 stars Kepler would monitor in the constellation Cygnus. The mission found that 20 to 50 percent of stars are orbited by small, possibly rocky planets whose distance from their parent star puts them in the habitable zone — neither too hot nor too cold to prevent liquid water from pooling on the surface — and that the galaxy is full of diverse planets that don’t exist in our solar system. Since the Kepler telescope was retired in 2018, Batalha has focused on observations made by the James Webb telescope, which was launched in 2021. Last year, her team announced
Natalie Batalha spent 20 years at the NASA Ames Research Center working on the Kepler mission, a space telescope that searched for Earth-sized planets beyond the solar system. DAI SUGANO/STAFF
it had found evidence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of WASP-39b, a Saturn-mass planet that orbits a star about 700 light years from Earth. Batalha occasionally works with her daughter, Natasha Batalha, a NASA Ames planetary scientist and astrobiologist who studies the atmosphere of planets. “We’re complementary,” Batalha says. “I do observational astronomy. She does theoretical astronomy.” Batalha believes Natasha got hooked on science when she made her own first “discovery” at around age 5. It was 1996, when Batalha, then in grad school, drove her four kids to a spot where her colleagues were observing the comet Hyakutake. Before Batalha could tell her children the surprise that was in store, Natasha looked out the car window and asked, “What’s that?” The moment taught Batalha that all kids need moments when they can “understand that science is about wonder and awe.” Adults can feel that wonder, too. That’s one reason she has become involved in projects such as Popova’s Universe in Verse, which showcases famous poems that celebrate “the marvel and mystery of life.” Popova organized a 2022 po-
etry reading at UC Santa Cruz, where Batalha read Robinson Jeffers’ epic, “The Beginning of the End,” which describes the birth of Earth, the “interwoven mystery of the mind” and the “whole glittering universe.” “I can go out in the community and do public lectures,” Batalha says, “but I also think that poetry and art communicate the wonder of scientific discovery to a completely different audience and in a completely different way.” As much as Batalha longs to experience that “Copernican” moment when humans find evidence of life on another planet, she realizes it may not happen in her lifetime. There’s a star “next door,” Proxima Centauri, which is orbited by a planet in the habitable zone. We could launch a spacecraft to reach it and take pictures, she says, but the planet is 4.2 light years away, so the mission would be “intergenerational.” “The people who build it aren’t the people who get the answer,” Batalha says. “That’s the nature of science: You spend your career trying to answer all these questions, and it only generates more questions. You see quite clearly your contributions to building that knowledge, but there is never an end.”
Mark your calendars for some marvels in the sky New Moons New moons mean darker skies, making them the ideal time to stargaze. Here are all the new moon dates for the rest of the year: Feb. 9, March 10, April 8, May 7, June 6, July 5, Aug. 4, Sept. 2, Oct. 2, Nov. 1, Nov. 30, Dec. 30.
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The sky is nature’s canvas, and every year, an array of astronomical phenomena paints the heavens with otherworldly sights guaranteed to fill us with awe. From new moons to lunar and solar eclipses, meteor showers and NASA missions, here’s a selection of can’t-miss celestial events for 2024.
Penumbral Lunar Eclipse
Total Solar Eclipse
On March 25, the first eclipse of the year will immerse 95.57 percent of the moon’s surface in Earth’s shadow. It will be visible from the Americas, Antarctica, Alaska and northeastern Russia.
On April 8, a total solar eclipse will begin over the South Pacific Ocean before crossing over North America, where it will be visible across the United States. Don’t miss it. The next total solar eclipse visible from the contiguous United States will not occur again until Aug. 23, 2044.
Lyrids meteor shower
Perseid meteor shower
Partial Lunar Eclipse
The Lyrids meteor shower is typically active from April 16 to 25, with peak visibility around April 22 and 23. It is one of the oldest known meteor showers, with streaking fireballs created by debris from comet Thatcher.
The Perseid meteor shower is typically active between late July and mid-August, with peak visibility around Aug. 12-13. This shower, always eagerly anticipated by stargazers in the U.S., produces a high rate of shooting stars that leave colorful trails across the sky,
On Sept. 18, a partial lunar eclipse will occur as the moon briefly enters the umbra, Earth’s inner shadow. It will rise over and be completely visible from North America before setting over Africa and Europe.
Eta Aquarids meteor shower
Annual solar eclipse
Europa Clipper flight
Typically active between April 15 and May 27, with peak visibility around May 5-6, the shower originates from Haley’s Comet and is mostly visible in the Southern Hemisphere but can still be viewed from other parts of the world.
On Oct. 2, 2024, the moon will pass in front of the sun but will not totally eclipse it, therefore creating a “ring of fire” effect in the sky. The eclipse will cross over the Americas and be visible throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Scheduled to launch in October, NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft will conduct a detailed survey of Europa, Jupiter’s icy moon, with the hopes of determining whether there are sub-surface areas capable of supporting life.
Orionids meteor shower
Taurids meteor shower
Artemis launch
The Orionids meteor shower is typically active between Sept. 26-Nov. 22, with peak visibility around Oct. 20-21. The shower is mildly active, with debris from Haley’s Comet visible over large portions of the Northern and Southern hemispheres.
The Taurids consists of two streams, with the Southern Taurids peaking between Nov. 4 and 5, and the Northern Taurids peaking between Nov. 11 and 12. These slow and long-lasting meteors from comet Encke will be visible throughout the world.
NASA’s Artemis II mission will send four astronauts on an eight-day lunar flyby aboard an Orion spacecraft. The launch is scheduled for November, weather permitting, and will mark the first time NASA has sent astronauts to the moon since 1972.
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The dark of the night is the stargazer’s delight
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Multiple societies for viewing together have sprung up across the Bay B Y J OA N M O R R I S
On a cold overcast night at the edge of the California Delta, members of the Mount Diablo Astronomical Society tilted their faces toward the darkening sky, willing the growing cloud banks to clear. They had hoped to focus their telescopes on Jupiter and its four Galilean moons — Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto — and on Saturn. And then when the skies were darkest, Mercury. Also on the expansive menu that December night were a platter of star clusters, a serving of galaxies, a flight of binary stars and an amuse bouche of nebulas. Unfortunately on this particular chilly evening, the clouds stubbornly refused to dissipate — a hazard of late fall and wintertime viewing in the Bay Area — and the stargazers were left wanting. But like so many people over the eons who have searched the heavens for flashes of light, the Mount Diablo star seekers were not discouraged. Stargazing puts life in perspective, says Ken De Silva, the society’s outreach coordinator for East Contra Costa County. “You worry about day to day things,” De Silva says, “but then look up and see hundreds of thousands of stars, most of which have solar systems with thousands of planets, any of which could support life. It just makes things feel easier.” While the secrets of the ocean lie tantalizingly close, it is the distant, starry skies that prove the most accessible, brought into focus with the assistance of a telescope or a pair of binoculars — and a little help from friends. The Bay Area embraces a score of astronomical societies and clubs from Mountain View to Oakland, Pleasanton and Point Reyes. Some of the groups were founded decades ago. Others are more recent. But
Kids and their parents gaze at Saturn during a Tri-Valley Stargazers “star party” held at Pleasanton’s Vintage Hills Elementary School last month. RAY CHAVEZ/STAFF
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they all have the same goal — to roam among the stardust and share their love of the sky. The Eastbay Astronomical Society is one of the Bay Area’s oldest, founded more than 100 years ago by a group of scientists and like-minded residents. The society has long been associated with the Chabot Space & Science Center observatories. Society president Richard Ozer says the group takes an active role at the observatories, which house three telescopes — Leah, Rachel and Nellie — serving as docents and overseeing the public telescope building workshops that have existed almost as long as the society itself. Ozer’s own interest in space began when he was a kid. He built his own telescope at age 12 and spent his free evenings at his high school’s telescope dome. These days, Ozer runs a tech company in Oakland, but on Friday evenings, you’ll find him leading the telescope building workshops at Chabot. The workshops are free, although participants must pay for their own materials. It takes about a year to grind and polish the mirrors and lenses and build a working telescope. People often are surprised at just how much of the vast universe you can see even with simple magnification. And like many hobbies, stargazing can take hold quickly and strongly. “Looking at Saturn got me in the first time I saw it,” Ozer says. De Silva was more of a latecomer to stargazing. He had worked in parks and recreation most of his career, and when he retired, he wanted to continue to work with young people. He had an interest in the stars, but it was really the kids who motivated him to get involved with the group. The Mount Diablo Astronomical Society, like many 36 SPACE
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others, work with school-aged children, introducing them to the stars and holding stargazing parties at schools in Clayton, for example, and Brentwood. The group also works closely with Girl Scout troops, helping the girls earn their science badges. The society’s roots lie with a program started in 1956, as the space race began to take off. Operation Moonwatch, also called Project Moonwatch, was launched by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and enlisted citizen scientists in observing the skies and reporting satellite sightings and movements. The program tapped into amateur astronomy clubs as well as those interested in science and national pride. Using telescopes they had made or purchased at Radio Shack, observers spent hours every night peering at the sky and reporting
Top: Clayton resident Ralph Lambert, a member of the Mount Diablo Astronomical Society, sets up his telescope for a stargazing event in Oakley. JOAN MORRIS
Right: Ross Gaunt captured this image of the Dumbbell Nebula using an app and his telescope during a stargazing party hosted by the TriValley Stargazers in Pleasanton. RAY CHAVEZ/STAFF
Top: Leelu Corella, top left, uses silicon carbide to grind the glass for a telescope mirror, as Gert Gottschalk of the East Bay Astronomical Society explains the process. The society holds weekly telescope-making workshops at Oakland’s Chabot Space & Science Center to teach space enthusiasts how to make their own stargazing scopes and, above, measure the quality of a telescope mirror. Above: Richard Ozer of the East Bay Astronomical Society uses an instrument to measure the quality of a telescope mirror. DOUGLAS ZIMMERMAN
their findings. The Mount Diablo Astronomical Society was formed by several of those moonwatchers the next year. One of the goals of these clubs and societies is to engage both children and adults in the hobby, opening up new vistas and reinforcing the magic of science. Much like bird watchers or stamp collectors,
these nighttime voyeurs often keep track of the astral phenomena they’ve witnessed and check off bucket list items. Many of these groups were formed at a time when joining associations and clubs was how one socialized, says Peninsula Astronomical Society president Gary Baker. “Today, we have folks who are curious
and want to learn more about astronomy,” he says, “but many of them want to give back and share their love of the sky.” The Peninsula society operates the Foothill College observatory, which opened in 1965 on the Los Altos Hills campus, and offers stargazing events and public lectures. Baker was introduced to the society via those lectures 30 years ago. He’s been a member ever since. “For me, it’s about the unknown,” he says. “There’s so much out there, and I have the desire to learn more about it.” Meanwhile, Livermore’s Tri-Valley Stargazers was founded by a few Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory employees in 1979 and quickly evolved to include the general public, says Eric Dueltgen, the club’s vice president and an industrial hygienist for Sandia National Laboratories. Like many of these associations, the Stargazers host star parties and have an assortment of telescopes members can rent and try out before buying their own. Anyone can get into stargazing. “All you have to do is look up,” Dueltgen says, but “it helps to find a place that’s dark.” Early sunsets coupled with crisp, cloudless nights can offer some of the best viewing experiences of the year, but finding that dark spot isn’t as easy as it once was. Street lights, neon signs and the illumination that emanates from urban and suburban areas muddies the star viewing. Many astronomical associations are working with cities to reduce the glare by changing their lighting regulations. West Marin star fans are petitioning to create a DarkSky zone, one of only a handful in the country where street lighting is reduced and regulated, allowing the stars to
shine through. If you’re interested in becoming a stargazer, members of the clubs and societies offer these first steps: Check out a star party: Most astronomy societies host public events several times a year, where you can look through their telescopes and learn about what you’re seeing. Search for a club on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Night Sky Network at https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov. To find the societies mentioned above, visit https://pastro.org/ (for the Peninsula group), www. trivalleystargazers.org/, https:// eastbayastro.org/ and https:// www.mdas.net/ (Mount Diablo). Start with a pair of binoculars. You’ll be able to see most of the planets and a lot of space objects with them. Don’t buy a telescope until you know what you’re doing. Ozer says people often go for the most expensive and technical ones, then get frustrated when they can’t operate them. Wait until you’re comfortable with telescopes and know what’s on the market. Buy a star atlas or download a stargazing app such as Stellarium, SkyView or SkySafari, so you know what you’re looking at. Intrigued by Saturn’s rings or Jupiter’s moons? Then join a club. Memberships are inexpensive, usually less than $30 a year. Astronomical society members are happy to direct you to prime viewing spots. They hold private stargazing parties; you’ll have access to a wealth of information; and some clubs have a lending program, so you can try different types of telescopes and see what works best for you. BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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Danville man tracks the birth and death of stars — from his own back yard B Y J O H N M E TCA L F E
W
ho knew you could get nearly Webb telescope-quality images of space from the comfort of your home? Bob Schiff’s been doing it for a year now with amazing results, using a motorized rig that tracks the stars in his Danville back yard. Schiff is a retired technology executive and engineer who, like many, found himself in need of a pandemic hobby. So he bought a moderately priced telescope. “I was into ‘Star Trek’ — Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk — back in the ’60s when I was growing up,” he says. “I was intrigued by the possibility of exploring space, and that was the time we had the mission to the Moon with the Apollo program. I
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Bob Schiff uses several telescopes to photograph images of space from his Danville back yard. His portfolio includes stunning images of planets, stars, comets, nebulae and the moon. RAY CHAVEZ/STAFF
always was fascinated by it, but didn’t have the time to pursue it, much like my golf game.” Schiff’s hobby quickly became an obsession. He bought better telescopes and a camera to attach to them. Today, he’s able to shoot deep-sky objects like galaxies and supernovas, despite Danville being a “Bortle Class 5” location. (The Bortle scale measures night sky brightness, and a 5 is in the middle of suburban territory.) That’s because he uses a cutting-edge rig that allows him to program his optics to target an object, then follow it all night long while constantly snapping images. Schiff can go to sleep, wake up in the morning and have a thumb drive full of material waiting for processing.
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The Heart Nebula
The Running Man Nebula in the Orion constellation
The Andromeda Galaxy
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The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula with a newborn star highlighted
The full “Buck Moon” PHOTOS BY BOB SCHIFF
Green Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF)
The Witch’s Broom Nebula
The NGC 7822 star-forming complex
The results are extremely clear and vividly colored portraits of impossibly distant objects — the Sombrero Galaxy, the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula — that look like they were produced by NASA, not some dude in his backyard. “It’s always a new discovery,” says Schiff. “There are some nebulae that are the birthplace of stars, where solar systems much like our own might be forming. At the other end of the life cycle, you’ll see the remains of a star that has exploded in a supernova. So you see the birth and death of stars — to me that’s fascinating.” For anyone looking to take up astrophotography, Schiff suggests watching instructional YouTube videos, getting a planetarium app like Stellarium and reading websites such as AstroLeague. org and AstroRover.com. Oh, and prepare to have your mind blown. “The Milky Way is just one of trillions of galaxies out there,” he says. “When you observe them and realize some are much bigger than ours, it makes you realize, we are probably not alone. It gives me high hope and high confidence there are other beings like ourselves out there.” Check out Bob Schiff’s photography at flickr.com/ photos/unlimited_horizon. BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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A Superman in front of a classroom Comic book hero inspired astronomer Fraknoi’s lifelong passion for teaching BY ELISSA MIOLENE
For Andrew Fraknoi, it all began with comic books. The astronomer was 8 years old when he first thumbed through their pages, soaking up illustrations of star-studded galaxies — and the superheroes traversing them — from a refugee camp in Austria. He’d fled Hungary alongside 200,000 others, an exodus sparked by a failed revolt against communist forces in 1956. Fraknoi, like many Hungarians, was forced to start over. His mother tried to ease that process by teaching her son German and later English, through comics. He was hooked, he said, by one cosmic superhero in particular. “The thing about Superman is, he’s an immigrant,” says Fraknoi, now 75, from his San Francisco home. “He comes from a completely different culture and a different planet … and even when he grows up, he still has a little bit of that inside him. I think I really identified with him because of that.” Fraknoi’s family moved from Salzburg to Vienna and then to New York. All the while, the stories in those comic books stuck — and over the decades, his passion for outer space has, too. Today, Fraknoi is known for his ability to translate interstellar complexities so everyone, A Fellow at the California Academy of Sciences, astronomer Andrew Fraknoi is especially drawn to the famous NASA image of the Pillars of Creation on display at the Golden Gate Park science academy. KARL MONDON/STAFF BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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from children to retirees, can grasp the thrill of the beyond. “There’s nothing like taking astronomy and making it into something that even the most reluctant, non-science majors could enjoy,” he says. “I just got fascinated by being able to wake people up to the excitement I felt about astronomy. That became my mission.” For more than 30 years, Fraknoi taught astronomy and physics at Bay Area colleges and universities. He’s written open-source textbooks for introductory astronomy courses and led a program that brought astronomers into elementary, middle and high school classrooms throughout the country. And he’s moderated free public talks at Foothill College that have brought astronomy to Bay Area communities for more than two decades. “He basically carved out the profession of education and public outreach in astronomy,” says Suzy Gurton, the retired director of education for the Virginia-based National Radio Astronomy Observatory and a former colleague of Fraknoi’s at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. “There are so many of us who love talking about astronomy and wouldn’t have had a profession, if it weren’t for Andy’s lead.” Over the course of his career, Fraknoi’s accolades have ranged from being named California professor of the year in 2007 to having an asteroid the size of San Francisco Bay named after him. But Fraknoi’s career as an astronomy educator wasn’t always so clear cut. When his family first settled in the U.S., 11-year-old Andrew drank up science fiction novels at his local library and saved up for tiny space figurines at his local five and dime. He got into the Bronx School of Science and spent Saturday mornings in astronomy classes at Columbia. Eventually, he made it to Harvard, where he studied astronomy, and then graduate school at 44 SPACE
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One of many books written by Andrew Fraknoi, “When the Sun Goes Dark,” explains eclipses in terms children can understand. NATIONAL SCIENCE TEACHING ASSOCIATION PRESS∑
UC Berkeley. It was there, on the Cal campus, that Fraknoi got a part-time gig as a teaching assistant — and soon realized he wanted to dedicate his life to astronomy education. “I developed this to what the research people at Berkeley thought was a bizarre interest in teaching. They didn’t quite know what to make of it,” says Fraknoi. But, he adds, “Teaching is one of the most exhilarating things you can do.” Today, Fraknoi has more than three decades of full-time teaching behind him, all at the Bay Area community colleges such as Cañada in Redwood City and, for the bulk of his career, Foothill in Los Altos Hills. Even after he retired, Fraknoi kept teaching astronomy, physics and other subjects at San Francisco State and the University of San Francisco, including courses like Einstein Without Tears and Physics for Poets. “I think teaching really is his calling,” said Kathy Bruin, the director of San Francisco State’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, where Fraknoi just wrapped up another six-week class. “Some people might know their stuff, but they’re not good teachers. Or they’ll be good teachers, but they don’t know
The Red Spot is a giant storm in Jupiter’s atmosphere. In this montage image, the Earth is included to give a sense of scale. The Red Spot storm has varied in size over time, growing at some points to the dimensions of three Earths put side by side. NASA IMAGES
their stuff. But Andrew is both.” Fraknoi’s love of those subjects — and his love of teaching — is palpable. When he talks about his work, energy pours from his voice. His eyes, behind rectangular spectacles, widen. And he’s charmingly humble about that Asteroid Fraknoi. At their core, Fraknoi explains, asteroids are just “leftover garbage” from the formation of the solar system — but being named after one, he concedes, was wonderful. “I always like to point out that my asteroid is in a very boring orbit between Mars and Jupiter, and of no danger,” he says. “It won’t hurt the Earth, but it was very sweet. I have a photograph of it.” “He has this wonderful way of inserting humor,” says science educator Dennis Schatz, who has collaborated with Fraknoi on several projects, including co-authoring of a children’s book, “When the Sun Goes Dark.” “That can lighten up a whole subject, even when dealing with something like astrophysics, which can be pretty weedy.” Fraknoi has also served as executive director of the San Francisco-based nonprofit Astronomical Society of the Pacific, which aims to increase the public’s understanding of astronomy. He’s on the board of Silicon Valley’s SETI Institute, and for nearly 25 years, Fraknoi has moderated talks at the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures, a public lecture series at Foothill College. The next one — Feb. 7 — focuses on recent discoveries using gravity waves. And he has returned to science fiction, the genre that propelled him toward astronomy so early on. After years of writing, submitting and receiv-
ing rejections from magazines across the world, Fraknoi now has published seven stories. And like nearly everything Fraknoi has created, he’s worked with the publishers to make every one of those stories free. “So here I am,” he added with a chuckle. “A bona fide science fiction writer.” Still, Fraknoi doesn’t let his writing get in the way of his teaching. In fact, he uses it to supplement his courses, get people excited and pull them into the mysteries of outer space. His classes are now specifically targeted toward retirees, and this past fall, he taught a course called The Tourists’ Tour of the Solar System through S.F. State’s Lifelong Learning Institute. For six weeks, Fraknoi took his students to his favorite spots in the Milky Way, from a Mars volcano larger than the state of Arizona to a Jupiter storm system three times the size of Earth. “What I enjoy is showing the beauty, the intellectual excitement and the connections with our existence on Earth to the things that are out there,” he says. “We just had the best time in this class.” And overwhelmingly, his students agreed. “Thank you so much for the entertaining, informative and mind-bending tour of the solar system, galaxy and universe!” said one student, dropping the comment into a Zoom chat as Fraknoi wrapped up his last lesson. “Your enthusiasm for the subject is infectious!” “Thank you, Andrew,” added another. “My head is swimming.” Details: Learn more about the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture series and catch up on past lectures at www.youtube.com/user/ SVAstronomyLectures. BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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FROM THE FIELDS TO THE STARS Astronaut José Hernández credits California farmworker family for his success BY PETER LARSEN
Astronaut José Hernández was part of the crew for the 2009 flight of the Space Shuttle Discovery. His journey from migrant farm fields to NASA is now an Amazon Studios biopic. PHOTO COURTESY OF JOSE HERNANDEZ
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Space Shuttle Discovery crew member Jose Hernandez prepares for a launch dress rehearsal at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Aug. 7, 2009. JOHN RAOUX/ASSOCIATED PRESS
T
he scene comes early in “A Million Miles Away,” the Amazon Studios movie that arrived on Prime Video this fall: Young José Hernández adjusts the TV antenna as his migrant farmworker family gathers to watch the launch of Apollo 17 in 1972. It was at that moment that Hernández began dreaming of becoming a NASA astronaut. Wait — literally? “Absolutely,” he says, recalling his 10-year-old self. “The dream was conceived on that evening. Seeing that launch, every kid during that time wanted to be an astronaut, because it was all over the news. And I was just lucky that that desire, that burning feeling of, ‘Hey, you’ve got to do this!’ never went away. I just kept driving toward that goal and driving toward that goal.” Based on Hernández’s autobiography, “Reaching for the Stars: The Inspiring Story of a Migrant Farmworker Turned Astronaut,” the new biopic about Hernández’s extraordinary life shows us the beginnings of that dream, complete with imagery of the boy just outside his family’s Stockton home, holding an ear of corn as if it were an imagi-
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nary spaceship. It’s a lovely piece of visual poetry and like many perfect things, too good to be true. The reality, as Hernández describes it in a recent interview with director and co-writer Alejandra Márquez Abella, is more earthbound — though perfect for a 10-year-old boy in that era. “Ale took creative liberty with the ear of corn,” Hernández says. “But my brother had a USS Enterprise model, and I would always get it from the closet, where he hid it. “I would play with it, and I would get in so much trouble,” Hernández says of his attraction to the “Star Trek” toy. “He’d say, ‘You’re going to break the little antenna and point of it.’ But for practical purposes, it could have been an ear of corn.” Now Hernández and Márquez Abella, the Mexican filmmaker, are talking about his life, the movie — which is streaming in more than 240 countries — and the importance of family and community in making this dream come true. “A Million Miles Away” stars Michael Peña as the adult Hernández, Rosa Salazar as his wife, Adela, and Julio Cesar Cedillo and Veronica Falcón as his
parents, Salvador and Julia. The biopic charts Hernández’s path from the farm fields of Salinas, Stockton and Southern California to the stars. We meet the people who believed in him and helped him throughout his life — his second-grade teacher, his boss at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, his
wife and extended family. Throughout his young childhood, Hernández’s family followed the seasons, relocating every few months as grapes, strawberries, cucumbers, tomatoes and cherries ripened in fields across California. It was his Stockton school teacher — Miss Young — who saw the po-
José Hernández became a full-fledged astronaut in 2006. DONNA CARSON/ ASSOCIATED PRESS
tential in young Hernández and urged his parents to settle in one place so they could encourage the boy’s education. He graduated from Stockton’s University of the Pacific with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and earned a master’s from UC Santa Barbara before joining Lawrence
Livermore Labs. With the dream shining bright — and support from his boss — he pursued skills and experiences to help propel his goals. He worked on an X-ray laser for Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative and helped build the first digital mammography system. He got his pilot’s license
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and became SCUBA certified, two skills common among astronauts. And when his boss sent him to Russia on a project, he learned to speak the language — NASA and Russia’s Roscosmos have long worked closely together. The movie shows us the frustrations — Hernández applied 11 times to NASA before he was accepted on the 12th try — and fears. Early in his career at NASA, Hernández saw friends and colleagues perish when the Space Shuttle Columbia broke up during reentry to the Earth’s atmosphere in 2003. And it shows the triumphs, too. Viewers witness Hernández make history as the nation’s first first-generation Mexican-American astronaut — he was born in French Camp, just south of Stockton in 1962 — and the first migrant farmworker to leave the fields for the celestial skies. He made it to space aboard NASA’s Space Shuttle Discovery — word is, he brought an Oakland Raiders flag with him — and flew to the International Space Station in 2009. Now his journey is on millions of screens around the world. “It’s kind of surreal. When I first started this whole journey of becoming an astronaut, I promise you, my goal was not to have a movie made about me,”
Hernández became an astronaut in 2006, but he had dreamed of that day since childhood, when he watched the televised Apollo 17 launch with his family. DONNA CARSON/ASSOCIATED PRESS
“ As soon as I got selected, I noticed a lot of attention was given to me ... And I noticed I became an instant role model. I embraced it because I took it like a superpower. I said, ‘Hey, I can use this for good and inspire kids to reach their maximum potential. To dream big.” — Jose Hernández
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Hernández says. “It was purely for selfish reasons. I wanted to go out in space. I wanted to be like astronaut Gene Cernan (on Apollo 17), the very last person to walk on the moon. “As soon as I got selected, I noticed a lot of attention was given to me, because I was a former migrant farmworker that turned astronaut. It was a feel-good story. And I noticed I became an instant role model. I embraced it because I took it like a super-
Right: Former astronaut José Hernández talks with actor Michael Peña, seated, on the set of “A Million Miles Away.” In the movie, Peña portrays Hernández, who spent years working toward his dream of going into space. COURTESY OF AMAZON STUDIOS
Below: In a scene from the movie, Hernandez, as played by actor Michael Peña, and the rest of the Space Shuttle crew prepare to board the spacecraft. DANIEL DAZA/PRIME
power. I said, ‘Hey, I can use this for good and inspire kids to reach their maximum potential. To dream big. After I left NASA, I started giving motivational talks and writing books. It’s after that that the studios came calling.” For Márquez Abella, the story was irresistible. “It was impossible to escape, because it’s just such an amazing story,” she says. “I think the thing that captured me the most was the idea that it is not despite your origins that you become who you want to, it is because of them that you do.” The role of family and community runs through the movie. It’s “completely central to the film,” Márquez Abella says. “I think that Hispanics have that sense of community in them. We are saying people should be more Latino, more Hispanic in that way. We should achieve things as a community and give thanks to those who help us achieve things. It’s all connected.” It’s a classic case of “It takes a village,” Hernández adds. “Don’t be afraid to share your dreams, your ambitions, your goals with the people that you’re around, because they’re the ones who are going to provide the most support for you to achieve this goal. It’s everything from my wife helping me at pivotal points
(to) the fact that my parents decided to stay in one place, heed the advice of my second-grade teacher. That my boss, knowing he would lose me as one of his employees, appointed me to that Russian job because he wanted to help me.” Today, Hernández’s feet may be back on the ground, but his eyes are still on the stars. The UC Regent is the president and CEO of Tierra Luna Engineering, an aerospace company. His Reaching for the Stars Foundation offers STEM-focused events, science workshops and youth scholarships. And he’s picking grapes once more — at his Lodi vineyard, where he and his father Salvador make Tierra Luna Cellars wines. Naturally, they are named for stars. BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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A bottled legacy Pioneering NASA test pilot launched a vineyard that produces wines named for his planes B Y K AT E B R A D S H AW
Five decades ago, George Cooper, a World War II and NASA test pilot, planted grapes in Saratoga’s Santa Cruz Mountains and launched the family-run Cooper-Garrod Vineyards. Now Cooper’s son, Bill, and his wife, Doris, are ready to pass not only the winery, but George’s high-flying legacy along to the next generation. Cooper-Garrod doesn’t just produce chardonnays and pinot noirs. George’s descendants created a line of six Test Pilot wine blends to honor his contributions to aviation, aeronautics and the nascent space program of the mid-20th century. George met his wife, Louise Garrod — of Saratoga’s Garrod Farms — at UC Berkeley, where he was studying mining and engineering. George was a member of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corp, or ROTC, when World War II broke out. Called up to active duty, he soon transferred to flight training, eventually flying 81 wartime missions, including three during the D-Day invasion of Normandy, for which he was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 2012. When George returned home to the Saratoga farm in 1945, the Ames Research Center was just six years old and operated by NASA’s predecessor, NACA — the National Advisory Committee 52 SPACE
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for Aeronautics. Bill says George promptly “went down and knocked on the front door and said, ‘You need any pilots?’” George became the chief test pilot for NACA and then NASA for nearly 30 years, flying 145 different types of planes during his tenure. He was a charter member of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots and a member of the NASA Hall of Fame. And the system he designed the Cooper-Harper Scale to make it easier for pilots to communicate with engineers about how various planes handle is still used by test pilots around the world. After a career of superson-
Test Pilot blend wines at Cooper-Garrod Vineyards’ reflect names of planes George Garrod Cooper flew during his career with NACA and NASA. DAI SUGANO/STAFF
ic dives and aircraft carrier landings, George took up a new challenge in the 1970s: viticulture. With cuttings from Paul Masson, the Saratoga winemaker behind La Cresta and later the Mountain Winery, George started growing grapes at Garrod Farms, which had shifted from growing prunes, apricots and hay to offering stables for boarding and riding horses and horse vaulting. He made his first batch of wine in the bathtub. The winery released its first commercial vintage in 1994. “It was fun for him,” Doris Cooper says. “It challenged him
in terms of the science and the nuts and bolts of it, but there was also the artistic side that made it a lot of fun. Plus it’s something to share around the table.” George died in 2016, a few weeks shy of his 100th birthday. Even as he aged and his sense of smell diminished, he retained his sharp sense for identifying wines, Doris recalls. “You’d have him taste it, and he could tell you what the varietal was.” Today, Cooper-Garrod is a certified-organic, sustainable vineyard and winery estate. A new generation of the Cooper-Garrod family, Cory Bosworth and Trevor Garrod, George’s great-nephew, is stepping into leadership roles. And George’s extraordinary cockpit experiences live on, recounted on the labels of Test Pilot wines, which highlight six of the planes that George flew during his career. THE WINES
The P-47 Thunderbolt is a blend of cabernet sauvignon and syrah grapes. Cooper flew this plane — adorned with an image of Cal’s Oski bear mascot and the name “Louise” — for 81 missions during World War II and tested an experimental version at Ames with a reversible-pitch propeller as a dive brake. The label recounts the tale of one particularly hair-rais-
ing, almost-emergency landing in a hayfield. The label on the F-86 Sabre Jet, a Left Bank Bordeaux-style blend of cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and merlot, regales wine lovers with the story of George making supersonic flights around the Bay in 1949, triggering sonic booms as he dove through the air. When people complained about the “explosions,” Bill says, Ames moved the tests to Crows Landing in Stanislaus County. The F-104 Starfighter, a syrah-viognier co-fermentation, was the first plane capable of sustained Mach 2 flight. George called it the “quickest LA-SF flight I ever made!” The F6F Hellcat, a Right Bank Bordeaux-style cab franc-merlot blend, commemorates George’s work testing that plane’s stability controls. The F7U-3 Cutlass, a cab franc-syrah blend, represents his plane speed tests for carrier landings, which helped improve safety for the Navy’s early Top Guns. And then, there’s the P-61 Black Widow, a chardonnay and viognier blend with citrus and honeysuckle aromas. It’s named for the plane George flew over Edwards Air Force Base to drop aerodynamic objects from 43,000 feet, using air brakes and parachutes to avoid crash landings. The research was later used for recovering rocket and satellite payloads. Details: Test Blend wines are $43-$45 per bottle, tasting flights are $22, and charcuterie and other small bites are available for purchase. Cooper-Garrod Vineyards is open from noon to 5 p.m. on weekdays and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends at 22645 Garrod Road in Saratoga; garrodfarms.com. Vintner Bill Cooper stands in his father’s first vineyard. George’s Vineyard was planted with cabernet sauvignon vines in 1972 in Saratoga. DAI SUGANO/STAFF
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SEARCH OF THE STREAMING SERIES UNIVERSE TURNS UP
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BY R A N DY M Y E R S
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SCI-FI WINNERS ollywood often orbits the Bay Area on its quest for sci-fi inspiration. Take the cloak-anddanger alterna-San Francisco cooked up in the Amazon Prime series “The Man in the High Castle,” based on a novel by Berkeley High grad and author Philip K. Dick — or Netflix’s “Altered Carbon,” which envisions a sinfully futuristic Bay City, aka San Francisco. Directors and storytellers gravitate to this fertile region and then mine from it — and sometimes they even film here. The Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Marin Civic Center played the role of aerospace headquarters in “Gattaca,” for example, and Star Trek’s Starfleet Command crowns the Fort Baker waterfront. The adulation, though, runs both ways, since Bay Area residents have always taken a shine to the genre. With that in mind, we launched an exploratory mission, searching the streaming universe far and wide for 10 sci-fi series for you to watch. BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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“For All Mankind” is one of the best sci-fi series currently running. APPLE TV+
“ F O R A L L M A N K I N D”
Apple TV+ What if Russia took that iconic “one small step for man” and landed on the moon first? This brainy series imagines a butterfly effect leading to a more robust space exploration program and reshaping our history and culture. With its fourth season, which launched in mid-November, the addictive series drops us into 2003 (each season is set a decade apart) and continues its tradition of mingling notable historical figures (JFK, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Neil Armstrong — sometimes through archival video) with complex fictional ones, portrayed by a top-notch cast (Joel Kinnaman, Krys Marshall, Edi Gathegi, Sarah Jones, Michael Dorman). It’s one of the best series running. Bonus: The series’ official podcast, which covers seasons one through three, is hosted by Marshall with a lineup of space experts and former astronauts talking about what life is really like off world.
it after the first three. Based on novelist James S.A. Corey’s novel, it’s often mentioned in the same breath as one of the best TV sci-fi series ever, “Battlestar Galactica” (2004-2009). Like “Battlestar,” “The Expanse” addresses provocative political themes and does so with nuance and skill. The cast matches the level of its impressive writing; Shohreh Aghdashloo as the U.N.’s sharp, no-nonsense Chrisjen Avasarala is a standout.
“ T H E E X PA N S E ”
Amazon Prime (originated on Syfy network) Expansive is right. In this deep dive into world-building, we’re thrust 300 years into the future. It’s a treacherous time to be alive, as various colonies within our solar system jockey for power. Amazon Prime retrieved this gem from the dumpster and added three more seasons after Syfy tossed 56 SPACE
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“ S TA R T R E K: S T R A N G E N E W WO R L D S ” “The Expanse” is mind-blowing hard sci-fi done right. AMAZON PRIME
Paramount+ Gene Roddenberry’s legendary brainchild re-
“ S TA R WA R S : A H S O K A”
Disney+ So far, the Star Wars empire has managed to avoid the fatigue global audiences are experiencing over the superhero genre, even though it too has overextended itself at times. The reason this one perseveres is that it sticks to the basics — lightsaber battles, spectacular special effects, imaginative character creations — while expanding on its world-building. “Andor” is more ambitious and, well, better, but “Ahsoka” is still worth the watch. Rosario Dawson brings gravitas to the role of former Jedi Ahsoka Tano, who teams up with her rule breaker of an apprentice, Sabine (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), to give the heave-ho to the in-theshadows Grand Admiral Thrawn and his ardent followers. If none of that tempts you, Sabine’s cute but not entirely cuddly Loth-kitty Murley might. It did me.
Above: “Star Wars: Ahsoka” is bolstered by the performance of Rosario Dawson (top right) in the lead role. DISNEY+
Right: “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” carries on the enterprising inspiration of series past. MICHAEL GIBSON/PARAMOUNT+
mains the most durable franchise on this list and continues to show enterprise and storytelling innovation. In Season 1, Christopher Pike (Anson Mount of AMC’s underrated “Hell on Wheels”) again takes command of the spaceship Enterprise. “Strange Worlds” moves like a 747 from episode to episode, as the diverse, largely female-forward crew wrangles with inner and outer turmoils. Ethan Peck makes a wonderful — and yes, hunky — Spock. But it is the show’s humanity that distinguishes it from the pack. Here’s a show that believes there is a place for reason and dissension and a path toward working together. It’s music to the ears. Season 2 recently ended, but both seasons are available to stream.
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“INVINCIBLE”
“SEVERANCE”
Amazon Prime
Apple TV+
Acclaimed comic-book writer Robert (“The Walking Dead”) Kirkman’s mature superhero/sci-fi brings some Shakespearean heft to the genre in this tale about father and son superheroes dealing with some bad blood and various crises. The animation is first rate, and the voice cast — Steven Yuen as teen Mark/Invincible, J.K. Simmons as dad Nolan/Omni-Man and Sandra Oh as mom Debbie — likewise. Then there’s the soundtrack, which makes it ever more appealing than what MCU and the DCU — that’s the Marvel and DC comics’ universes for the non-comics-scenti have cranked out of late. And there are two seasons to enjoy.
Initially, this innovative cross between “The Office” and a David Lynch mind puzzle was only lightly seasoned in its sci-fi. Then came that Season 1 ending. The “Severance” through line centers on a collection of officemates, but it’s primarily about the odyssey of grieving widower Mark (Adam Scott), who consented to an experimental program that severs his work life from his home life. What could go wrong with that? A lot. Creator Dan Erickson moves the storyline in bold directions and gives juicy roles to Scott and others in the cast, including Patricia Arquette as the by-the-book head of HR and Mark’s co-workers, played by Britt Lower and Zach Cherry. Christo-
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pher Walken and John Turturro are scene-stealers. Season 2 is in the works, but shooting was interrupted due to the SAG-AFTRA and writers strikes. “ S I LO”
Apple TV+ Many of the best sci-fi series originated as novels. Such is the case with this 10-part confined-space dystopian thriller, which became a runaway self-published sensation. Dune’s Rebecca Ferguson channels the badass spirit of a Charlize Theron as new, gone-rogue sheriff Juliette, who is growing more suspicious about the history behind an underground silo — the outside air is toxic — where survivors now dwell. The final episode leaves you
“ LO S T I N S PAC E ”
Netflix Radically different from its kitschy late ’60s predecessor, this less campy version is suspenseful and outfitted with superior special effects to enhance the tale of the Resolute spaceship, bound for the planet of Alpha Centauri to make it inhabitable, before it was knocked off course. The series even generates a few laughs, courtesy of Zoe Smith (Parker Posey), the duplicitous disruptor/identity thief who impersonates a doctor on the crew. Also on board are the hyper self-sufficient Robinson clan (yes, this is based on the Swiss Family Robinson), who try to get the Resolute back to where it’s intended. The series ran only three seasons and features a terrific Molly Parker as mom/commander savior.
dangling. But it’s OK to exhale, fans. Apple TV+ picked it up for another season. “ THE LAST OF US”
HBO Max What makes this video game adaptation so special — besides the high-caliber production values — is how it so emotionally swallows us into the harrowing plight of its main characters, Joel (Pedro Pascal) and 14-year-old Ellie (Bella Ramsey), as they to try to make do in the aftermath of a fungal infection that transforms Earthlings into killer Mushroom People (called Clickers). Season 2 is on the way, but you’ll have to be patient. It looks like it won’t arrive until 2025. Above: The big-budget streaming reboot, “Lost in Space,” was better than its reviews. NETFLIX
Right: Season 1 of “The Last of Us” worked well because it took risks and offered emotional surprises, such as the third episode with Murray Bartlett and Nick Offerman. HBO
“A LT E R E D CA R B O N ”
Netflix Set in Bay City — formerly known as San Francisco — Netflix’s violent and sexy 2018 adaptation of author Richard K. Morgan’s “Takeshi Kovacs Series” is highly habit forming. It’s a perfect example of the cyberpunk genre. Season 1 found Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman) picking up an inspired gig some 250 years after being killed — he’s supposed to figure out who murdered him. It’s an intriguing premise played out well. Season 2 gives Kovacs (now played by Anthony Mackie) a new body, new gig and more problems. Sadly, Netflix axed the series, which features impressive and expensive effects. But this is Netflix. You can still stream it. BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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Studying the stars Astrophysicist Gibor Basri built a step-by-step career in researching their essence B Y W I L L M c CA R T H Y
In the eyes of astrophysicist Gibor Basri, one doesn’t need a spaceship to travel to the stars. All you have to do is look. “Starlight comes to me, and I interpret it,” says Basri, a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley. “It’s almost like being there.” For thousands of years, our understanding of space has been marked by remarkable imaginative leaps. Despite limited tools, astrophysicists have, over the course of human history, conceived of — and then proved the existence of — a cosmic world that borders on implausible: fiery stars that grow and redden with age, black holes that deform space time, far-flung planets and hidden worlds, space travel — the list goes on. Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that Basri has had a lifelong love of science fiction — a genre in which no possibility is too far-fetched. Born in 1951 at the cusp of a golden age of astronomy, Basri is now one of the most decorated researchers in his field. But that path was far from assured. Raised in Fort Collins, Colorado, he remembers doing a report on astronomy in eighth grade and coming away unimpressed by the career prospects afforded to an astronomer. “I concluded it wasn’t a very good career,” he recalls. “But everybody’s an astronomer when they’re a kid. You see the moon and the stars, and you wonder about it.” And so Basri found himself influenced by the clear, dark Colorado skies of his youth. Although he was never much of an amateur astronomer, he
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Astrophysicist Dr. Gibor Basri’s career has been about explaining the fundamental magic of the universe. His goal now is to ensure that the best, most diverse and wellqualified group of people continue that work. ARIC CRABB/STAFF
was encouraged by his father, a physicist, to ask questions about the world above. Soon, Basri found himself at Stanford, trying to apply physics to the cosmos. It was there that he became interested in the research of star formation, a subject that, during his time at Stanford and as a grad student at Cal, had become a hot topic in the field. “We always wanted to know how the Earth was
formed, how the sun was formed, and it became possible to get some of those answers,” Basri says. He came at the problem from the angle of stellar magnetic activity. At the time, there was some debate about whether what astrophysicists were observing around young stars was stellar magnetic activity or the result of things crashing into the star. Basri dove into the research, and over time, he and other scientists began building up a picture of how stars form. By 1987, astrophysicists were realizing that young stars must have a disc of gas and dust around them. In 1990, the Hubble space telescope was launched into low orbit, and the scientific observations were confirmed. “I wrote papers on discs around stars before we had seen any. Now Hubble had seen them,” Basri said. “That’s great. Something you claim is there based on indirect arguments — and now there it is.” The discovery also provided a basis of understanding how the Earth and stars were formed, a question as old as time. There is a stereotype of scientists as rigid, data-driven and skeptical. But to Basri, astrophysicists are ultimately driven by the same desire that we all feel when we look to the stars and wonder, how did we get here? That question, in some ways, has been a driving force in his career, which has included many of the most notable achievements in astrophysics. In 1995, he became the first to confirm the existence of brown dwarf stars. In 2001, he was a co-investigator on the Kepler mission, NASA’s first planet
hunting effort. And in the 2000s, he was heavily involved in the debate about whether Pluto should be considered a planet or not (he’s still on Pluto’s side). But although his research has pushed the limits of human understanding, in Basri’s view, the work is not the result of imaginative leaps, but rather the step-by-step progress that defines science. “Science is mostly or almost entirely incremental,” Basri says. “Occasionally, there are these huge leaps that come out of nowhere, but that’s very rare.” In 2015, Basri moved toward semi-retirement. He’s now reading science fiction, trying to learn Italian and refurbishing a house in Europe. He’s okay with science moving forward without him for now. But he’s still looking to leave a mark. One of his ongoing efforts is working to improve diversity in STEM, i.e., science, technology, engineering and mathematics education. It’s a long-standing problem and one he hopes to solve by having mentors bring people into the field so that eventually, he hopes, they will become University of California professors. He’s seen progress, but he worries that the tide may be shifting in America, especially given developments like the end of affirmative action. Basri’s career has been about explaining the fundamental magic of the universe. His goal now is to ensure that the best, most diverse and well-qualified group of people continue that work into the future. “For thousands of years, (people) looked at the sky. They had some explanations, but they weren’t getting very far with that,” Basri said. “Sixty to 70 percent of all scientists who have ever lived are living now. We’re in a golden age. But how long will the golden age last? I don’t know.”
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BY K AT E B R A D S H AW, J O H N M E TCA L F E AND MARTHA ROSS
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Three treks on terra firma take you closer to the stars
ery few of us will ever actually do a spacewalk, but the Bay Area is full of terrestrial hikes that will take you to noteworthy landmarks in the history of air and space. There’s The Dish, used to communicate with spacecraft such as the Voyager missions to the outer reaches of our solar system and surrounded by a 3.5 mile recreational trail just west of Stanford University. You can head for Sonoma’s Sugarloaf Ridge State Park to see the Robert Ferguson Observatory and take a PlanetWalk — a 4.5-mile trail through a scale model of the solar system. And then there’s the Mount Diablo Beacon, illuminated by Charles Lindbergh in 1928 as a U.S. effort to guide the first commercial aviators at night, before radio navigation became commonplace. Atop the mountain’s lofty summit, where you can see 40 of California’s 58 counties on a clear day, you’ll feel like you could practically give the International Space Station a passing high-five. T H E M A RY B OW E R M A N T R A I L , M O U N T D I A B LO
Your heart may race on the Mary Bowerman Trail, a 0.8-mile loop that encircles Mount Diablo, just below its 3,849-foot summit. The pounding pulse doesn’t come from the hike itself — the trail is mostly level — but from the way the route hugs the mountain’s contours, with the sky all around and steep drops to one side. You feel so high up, taking in views that reach in all directions, encompassing the entire Bay Area and even the white peaks of the Sierra Nevada on very clear days. It’s easy to understand why some Native American groups believed the mountain to be the birthplace of the world. The hike excites the imagination in other ways, too, when you consider the mountain’s association with Charles Lindbergh, the dawn of 20th-century aviation and Lindbergh’s role as a forefather of the modern space program. During the walk, the mountain’s historic Summit Visitor Center looms above along with its old navA beacon was mounted atop the summit of Mount Diablo in 1928 to help guide early aviators in the days before radio navigation was commonplace. JOSE CARLOS FAJARDO/STAFF BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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igation beacon, which sits atop the center’s stone rotunda and which Lindbergh helped to light. On an April night in 1928, people parked at vantage points across the East Bay hills to look toward Mount Diablo and see an early 20th-century technological wonder. Less than a year after Lindbergh became the first pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic, he pressed a telegraph key in Denver, sending a signal to the mountain beacon, which at the time was located atop a 75-foot tower built by Standard Oil. It was part of the Transcontinental Airway beacon system launched by NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. Lindbergh’s signal told the beacon to flash its 10 million candle power beam of light, the Oakland Tribune reported at the time. Every night for the next decade or so, the light guided early air mail and commercial pilots needing help navigating over the “hump” of the Sierra Nevada and into airports in the San Francisco Bay Area at night. In going a bit down the Lindbergh rabbit hole, it’s amazing to consider how his nonstop, 33.5-hour flight from New York to Paris generated as much global excitement as the Apollo 11 moon landing would decades later. Lindbergh became a controversial figure in the 1930s for his isolationism and views on race. But he also used his new influence to garner support for the work of pioneering scientist Robert H. Goddard, credited with building the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket. After NASA was founded in 1958, Lindbergh 64 SPACE
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was idolized by the agency’s first astronauts. Just before Neil Armstrong’s 1969 moon landing, Lindbergh wrote an essay for Life magazine about seeing Goddard’s dream become “a reality” while watching the 1968 launch of the Apollo 8 mission. He said his body “staggered” at the sight of the Saturn V rocket lifting off: “Here one saw our civilization flowering toward the stars. Here modern man had been rewarded for his confidence in science and technology. Soon he would be orbiting the moon.” Maybe it’s a stretch, but it’s possible to feel a fraction of Lindbergh’s awe while you visit the summit of Mount Diablo — considering also that the aviator later became an ardent
Hikers take in the views from the Mary Bowerman Trail near the summit of Mount Diablo on Nov. 26. JOSE CARLOS FAJARDO/STAFF
conservationist who would no doubt appreciate its spectacular natural scenery. Both the summit museum and the Mary Bowerman Trail, named for the celebrated botanist and co-founder of Save Mount Diablo, are dedicated to the mountain’s cultural and natural history. The trail, the first portion of which is ADA accessible, begins in a grove of scrubby oaks, then follows a path around the mountain, featuring an observation deck with benches and a viewing area equipped with high-powered telescopes. There’s lots to see closer in, including Eagle Peak and the Devil’s Pulpit, a towering red monolith. After the hike, visit the visitor center museum and take in 360-degree views from the ro-
tunda. The beacon was famously turned off after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor and not relit until Dec. 7, 1964, when Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander in chief of Pacific Forces during World War II, attended a ceremony to commemorate those who survived and died on that “day of infamy.” Since then, the beacon shines on Dec. 7 every year. During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Save Mount Diablo arranged to have it lit on Sundays to “bring our communities together and to remind people to look up at the light and of the healing power of nature.” Take a hike: You can opt to hike or bike all the way up to the summit or drive up via one of Mount Diablo State Park’s
two main gates ($10 vehicle-entry fee) along North Gate Road in Walnut Creek and Mount Diablo Scenic Boulevard in Danville. The Mary Bowerman Trail begins just east of the lower summit picnic area and parking lot; www.parks.ca.gov Grab a bite: Pick up artisanal sandwiches, salads and other provisions for a mountain-top picnic at Danville’s Domenico’s Delicatessen, where the roasted turkey sandwich ($11.50) with pesto mayo is served on focaccia. Best enjoyed with the deli’s fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies. Open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily at 628 Hartz Ave., Danville; www.domenicosdeli.com. T H E D I S H , S TA N F O R D
It’s one of the most prominent landmarks on the Peninsula and among the most popular
and accessible hiking trails in the region. And while passersby may assume The Dish is an old Cold War relic, it’s very much still in operation. The facility is closed to the public, but you can marvel at it from the trail — and we’ve got the backstory for you. Don’t call it the Stanford Dish. SRI International, the research institute, leases the land from the university, but any affiliation ends there. It’s simply The Dish — and SRI director of applied technology Jeff Casper and senior research engineer Stephen Muther recently unlocked the gates so we could see the historic radio telescope built in 1961 and learn more. The 70-ton, 150-foot-wide radio telescope has served an array of purposes over the de-
The Mount Diablo beacon, which crowns the state park’s visitors center, is no longer used for aviation, of course, but it is illuminated each year on Memorial Day, Veterans Day and on Dec. 7. JOSE CARLOS FAJARDO/STAFF
cades, but initially, it was one of two U.S. telescopes built to unveil information about the Soviet Union’s nuclear testing program. After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 — the first artificial Earth satellite — in 1957, the U.S. became determined to intercept messages Soviets were transmitting to the satellite and detect radar signals they were bouncing off the moon. When the nuclear test ban treaty was signed in 1963, Casper says, the new question became: “Well now, what do we use this for?” So the Dish took on a new purpose as the Space Race escalated. It supported the Pioneer missions and helped verify the existence of solar wind. It confirmed that while the Soviet Union could claim first
arrival to Venus, its satellite lost connection before landing there. During the Apollo program, the Dish helped scientists translate transmissions to determine characteristics of the moon’s surface, Casper says. And it communicated with Voyager I and II on the long voyages past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. In recent years, the Dish played a pivotal role in ensuring the U.S. retained access to the L5 radio frequency. That may sound esoteric but, Casper says, it means new generations of smartphones, cars and airplanes will know where they are more accurately. These days, Muther operates the Dish from a control center situated just below — it looks like a portable classroom. Using publicly accessible data from an app on his phone, he plugs in satellite coordinates, and the Dish rotates, spinning on a large circular track built from decommissioned World War II battleship parts, as it points to the satellite. The most common request he gets for The Dish these days, he says, is from universities asking for help in contacting small cube satellites, launched by students and no longer responding home. The Dish helps amplify their radio transmissions, enabling them to reconnect. When it’s not in use, you’ll probably see the Dish sitting in a “bird bath” position, which helps minimize wind impact. It’s also a popular hangout with the local woodpecker population; the Dish routinely collects acorn caches in its metal lattices. Astonishingly, this isn’t the BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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only longstanding scientific tool hidden among the Stanford hills. Around the corner — and largely hidden from view from the pedestrian trails — is the Wilcox Solar Observatory, a funky, 1970s-era geometric tower and the home of a decades-long study now operated by Sadaf Kadir, a friendly, third-year physics grad student who lives onsite with her cat. Each day, she climbs to the top of the tower, positions the observatory window to just the right angle and lets the sun shine down through mirrors to a spectograph machine that measures the sun’s shifting magnetic field. For years, measurements from the tower were reported directly to the U.S. Navy, she says. The observatory’s findings have also been used to track 11year solar cycles. “People assume they know a lot about the sun,” Kadir adds. “But there are a lot of open questions about it.” Take a hike: Open from sunrise to sunset daily, the paved hiking loop is 3.7 miles, starting from the Stanford Avenue entrance, and 5.3 miles from the Alpine Road entrance (1-7 Piers Lane, Portola Valley). A trip to The Dish is an exercise in hill climbing. Expect to break a sweat as you walk or jog and to have plenty of company on the trail. No pets allowed, but wildlife — squirrels, birds, the occasional coyote or tarantula — abounds. Even without the grandeur of The Dish, the views from the top are spectacular.
Grab a bite: Nearby Fambrini’s Cafe is known for its sandwiches, including The Wanted ($16), filled with avocado, vegan chicken, cheese, barbecue sauce and honey mustard. Open from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays and 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekends at 2500 El Camino Real, Suite 105, in Palo Alto; fambriniscafe.com. T H E P L A N E T WA L K , K E N WO O D
The Robert Ferguson Observatory (RFO) in Sonoma County is truly a citizen’s observatory. Named for Bob Ferguson, an amateur Petaluma astronomer who built telescopes for children, it holds the largest publicly accessible telescope in Northern California. Volunteers painstakingly ground its mirror in a Santa Rosa garage over 10 years and chose a soup can for its light baffle. The nonprofit that operates RFO, the Valley of the Moon Observatory Association, still awards telescopes to kids via its Striking Sparks program. It also holds star-watching parties at the observatory, the building bathed in red light to protect viewers’ night sight, and visitors can peer deep into the twinkling bowels of space. And there have been proposals at the observatory. One man asked his beloved to look at an asterism (star grouping) in Ursa Minor called the Engagement Ring, saying, “Doesn’t that look like something?” By the time she turned back, he was down on one knee.
Jeff Casper, SRI International program director, and colleague Stephen Muther, a senior research engineer, take a break from their work at The Dish, the 150-foot-diameter radio telescope perched on the hills west of Stanford University. KARL MONDON/STAFF
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The observatory’s grounds in Sugarloaf Ridge State Park are home to a unique citizen-designed hike as well: the PlanetWalk. It’s a 4.5-mile journey that simulates the distances between our sun and the planets, with each step you take representing 1 million miles. You begin in the observatory parking lot at the Sun, where a sign informs that the “Solar System is much larger and emptier than most people realize.” That fact is borne out on the trail — Venus, Earth and Mars pass like a breeze, and by the time you get to Uranus, you might be out of breath and wondering where the frack the next planet is. “I’m a teacher, and I get really excited about conveying things that are not easy to picture,” says Angelo Parisi, an RFO docent who designed the trail in the 1990s and is now a program director at Lake County’s Taylor Observatory. “The sizes of the planets and the relative distances between them are numbers we’re not used to dealing with. But when you present somebody with a model like the PlanetWalk, you can understand it a lot. From Pluto, you can look all the way back to the Sun — look back down the canyon and see the barn next to the observatory and get a real sense of how far you’ve come.” (Pluto hadn’t yet been demoted to dwarf planet when the trail was mapped.) The hike takes you through a flat valley of brush and mossfurred trees with excellent views
of the sun-kissed highlands. It then winds up steeper territory, with hawks circling and fir trees blackened by wildfire, ending near Brushy Peak (elevation 2,243 feet) after a steep scrabble over loose rocks. Interspersed throughout are signs marking the planets you pass — Parisi knew a guy in a metal shop who made them — with facts like “Cold and remote, Neptune is 30 times farther from the Sun than the Earth.” For the average hiker, getting to the outer limits of the solar system might be demanding. But there’s a way to cheat. “Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet,” says Parisi. “So you can go as far as Neptune and say you ‘did the PlanetWalk’ — you can weasel out of it now.” Take a hike: The observatory and PlanetWalk are located inside Sugarloaf Ridge State Park at 2605 Adobe Canyon Road, Kenwood. There is a $10 vehicleentry fee. The 4.5-mile trail begins in the observatory parking lot. Find more details at rfo.org. Grab a bite: Andrea Marino ran a Michelin-starred restaurant in Italy’s Piedmont region before opening Salumeria Ovello, a boutique Sonoma deli. Try his excellent baked-daily focaccia with a dip, like bagna cauda, or as a sandwich, such as the Funghi ($15) with succulent speck, burrata and sauteed mushrooms. There are also charcuterie boards ($30 for two people) that are perfect for picnicking — Sugarloaf Ridge State Park has plenty of picnic tables. Open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday-Monday at 248 W. Napa St. in Sonoma; ovellosonoma.com.
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The Hornet was hot on the spot Aircraft carrier sealed its place in history by scooping the Apollo 11 astronauts out of the Pacific Ocean
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The USS Hornet Sea, Air & Space Museum, right, in Alameda includes several NASA Apollo exhibits. The aircraft carrier played a pivotal role in recovering the Apollo 11 astronauts when they returned to Earth, above, on July 24, 1969, after successfully landing on the moon. RIGHT: JANE TYSKA/STAFF; ABOVE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
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t is a lesser-known note in history that Neil Armstrong’s first words back on Earth after exiting the Apollo 11 space capsule were: “Bzerblizerblz.” It was July 24, 1969, and Armstrong and his fellow astronauts had just splashed down in the Pacific after becoming the first humans to walk on the moon. While their capsule pitched in the waves, the astronauts slipped on biological isolation garments — bulg-
President Richard Nixon welcomed Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin back to Earth, as they waited in the isolation unit aboard the USS Hornet after splashdown and recovery, July 24, 1969. ASSOCIATED PRESS
ing, full-body suits meant to prevent the spread of lunar pathogens. “So I’m standing there, and the first person who comes out turns out to be Neil Armstrong,” says Clancy Hatleberg, officer in charge of the swimmer-recovery teams of Apollo 11. “He sticks his hand out and says something. Now with the gas masks, you can’t understand anything. So I fell back on my Navy training, which is when you’re in an operation, and somebody says something to you, you repeat it back to let them know you understood. I said back into the face mask exactly
what I heard, ‘Bzerblizerblz.’” Today, space enthusiasts can enjoy a bit of that history by visiting the USS Hornet Museum in Alameda. The Essex-class aircraft carrier, which saw combat in WWII and Vietnam, was the recovery vessel for the Apollo 11 and 12 missions. Visitors can explore its gargantuan guts and an exhibit devoted to the Hornet’s role in the space race. In the collection is a capsule that NASA shot up to test a heat shield, a helicopter that recovered astronauts and a Mobile Quarantine Facility (at $250,000, the world’s most expensive Airstream trailer) that astronauts stayed in before being deemed free of moon germs. The man responsible for much of the museum’s current holdings is trustee Bob Fish, former chief historian for the Hornet’s two Apollo recoveries. The former Marine’s fascination with space was instilled during a childhood spent near Cape Canaveral. “We’d be in school, the fire alarm would go off, and we’d all rush out to the football field and watch the old Gemini and Mercury and a couple of the Apollo launches,” says Fish, who lives in Danville. Fish has spent the past couple of decades tracking down space paraphernalia both small and large. He found the museum’s Sea King helicopter in a boneyard near Tucson, Arizona, for example, and verified its flight history via serial number. The helo was used in the Gemini 4 mission, which featured the first-ever spacewalk, and Ron Howard BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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Bottom: Jaxson Rodriguez, 8, channels his best inner astronaut for his mother, Victoria Rodriguez, as they view the NASA displays. JANE TYSKA/STAFF
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later borrowed it as a prop in 1995’s “Apollo 13.” But the aircraft carrier itself is the largest remaining artifact from this key part of the Apollo missions, and the bulk of the museum focuses on the recovery process for Apollo 11 and 12 astronauts. “John F. Kennedy, in a speech in 1961, said to land humans on the moon and return them safely to the Earth,” Fish says. “We — the Hornet — were the people who returned them safely to the Earth and the United States of America.” In 1969, the Hornet was in between assignments in Vietnam and sort of puttering around the Pacific Ocean. Aircraft carriers were the vessels of choice in these missions, because they had rotary-wing and fixed-wing aircraft capabilities and cranes capable of lifting space capsules, as well as medical facilities, in case there were injuries. They also were a sizable military deterrent. According to maritime law, a craft operating in the water without power (like a space capsule) can be recovered by anybody. And at the time, Soviet trawlers were prowling the area. Astronaut recovery during Apollo 11 was like a highly choreographed fishing trip, albeit one involving high-stakes re-entry calculations and weather concerns. In this case, a big storm had hit the planned landing area, and it had to be moved 240 miles toward Hawaii. “All night, the Hornet was steaming at full speed, and then finally, as the sun was starting to come up, they pulled out their sextants — which have been used for thousands of years — and took a star sighting. They said, ‘We’re there,’” says Fish. “They cut the engines off and just waited. About an hour later, there was a huge sonic boom, and the command module came
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down out of the sky.” The jolt was so strong when the capsule hit the ocean, it knocked Buzz Aldrin’s hand off the parachute-cutting switch. The capsule landed awkwardly, with the astronauts hanging upside down from straps, until the vessel righted itself. Then began the decontamination. At the time, scientists didn’t know if harmful germs were lurking in the lunar soil. The thinking was, if pathogens could live up there without
oxygen, they could be deadly here on Earth. And the astronauts were covered in the dark, sticky stuff of lunar soil — it was all over the capsule and in their lungs — so they were treated like they were radioactive. (If you’ve ever wondered what lunar soil smells like: “Burnt ashes,” says Fish.) The astronauts were whisked to the Hornet and stuffed into a modified Airstream trailer called the Mobile Quarantine Facility, which was then loaded onto
an airplane and flown to NASA in Houston. There’s a famous photo of Richard Nixon on the deck of the Hornet, peering into the trailer and welcoming the quarantined astronauts back to Earth with a wide grin. The USS Hornet Museum has re-created the scene, with the trailer and all the equipment in the same place. The astronauts stayed in quarantine for a couple of weeks. “Basically, we had to do it until we could prove there were no pathogens on the moon that could come back and start a plague,” Fish says. “Neil said he actually enjoyed it. It kept the media and all the gawkers away, so they could decompress a little bit and write all their thoughts down.” Meanwhile, Hatleberg had a hand in the capsule decontamination. “We had two fire extinguishers that were filled with decontamination fluid, one with bleach and the other filled with Betadine, a surgical scrub,” he says. “Then they gave me a really high tech device — a car mitt — that I used to wash down the astronauts. After that was done, I sank (all the equipment) to the bottom of the Pacific.” It was then that Hatleberg had his momentous but indecipherable conversation with Neil Armstrong. The astronaut passed away in 2012, so we’ll never know for sure what he said, but Hatleberg has an idea. “Knowing Neil, he was an ordinary, humble guy,” he says. “So I’m thinking, it was just what he would have said to me on the street: ‘Hey Clancy, good to see you again!’” Details: The USS Hornet Sea, Air & Space Museum ($10-$20) is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday-Monday at 707 W. Hornet Ave, Alameda; https://uss-hornet.org/.
I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y J A C K D A LY
Top: Museum trustee Bob Fish is responsible for much of the museum’s current holdings, which include the Apollo Block 1 command module.
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