The secret history of water on Mars: What ancient climate change tells us about the future on Earth

Mars’ atmosphere was once thick and wet, with raindrops that were so tiny they couldn’t even penetrate the soil

By RAE HODGE

Staff Reporter
SALON
PUBLISHED MARCH 6, 2024 

Mars Dust Storm

 (Getty Images/MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY)

If you suddenly found yourself standing on the surface of Mars, it would feel like you’d been transported into a dusty space western. The arid soil lays a rocky palette of red powder across the horizon, where you’d see sprawling canyons and old volcanoes with edges whipped sharp by unforgiving wind storms. But, 4.5 billion years ago, this barren wasteland was home to a rich system of groundwater, vast oceans and galloping rivers. And in the the past month, a growing tide of scientific research has begun uncovering a hidden history of Mars’ once-rushing waters.

Evidence of an ancient planet-wide groundwater system, previously only theorized, was discovered in 2019. But only recently, in early February, a NASA spacecraft brought back exciting images of Mars’ surface which contained evidence the planet teemed with flowing water across an ancient spread of now-dry lake beds, channels, valleys and gullies. The same week, the European Space Agency’s Mars Express discovered ice buried under the equator, hinting at massive groundwater aquifers.

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Unlocking the secret of how those aquifers recharge (or refill) is the next step in exploring a possible human future on Mars. Last November, a team of Chinese scientists found a way to create oxygen out of the water found on Mars. Now, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have combined a number of methods — from new computer models to simple back-of-the-envelope calculations — to uncover something curious about how that ice came to be in the first place. Despite a climate full of surging rainstorms, the scientists said, early Martian soil simply didn’t absorb much of it. The groundwater systems refilled themselves, but we have no idea how.

“Understanding groundwater flow can help inform where to find water today,” said lead study author Eric Hiatt, in a university release. “Whether you’re looking for signs of ancient life, trying to sustain human explorers, or making rocket fuel to get back home to Earth, it’s essential to know where the water would most likely be.”

"Understanding groundwater flow can help inform where to find water today."

The new findings, published in the journal Icarus, raise even more questions about how water systems work on Mars compared to those which exist on Earth today. And, because these groundwater systems likely fed Mars’ ancient network of lakes, finding out how long it took those lakes to fill up and overflow onto the surface could help us figure out whether, and where, life on Mars may have existed in the past.

“The fact that the groundwater isn’t as big of a process could mean that other things are,” Hiatt said. “It might magnify the importance of runoff, or it could mean that it just didn’t rain as much on Mars. But it’s just fundamentally different from how we think about [water] on Earth.”

Much of the groundwater mystery centers on one of Mars’ most notable features, called “the great dichotomy.” The term describes the stark difference in land height between two of the planet’s regions — the northern lowlands and the southern highlands. This contrast in elevation is where we can see how groundwater aquifers surged up to the surface, creating markers and leaving a trail of evidence for scientists to follow today.

Researchers said most of the liquid water that existed on Mars billions of years ago resided in a vast ocean in the northern lowlands. But when Hiatt’s team used their new combination of computer modeling techniques to analyze the great dichotomy, they were able to estimate how much groundwater recharge occurred in the Martian southern highlands.

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The mystery deepened when researchers found the groundwater aquifers in the southern highlands on Mars only recharged about 0.03 millimeters (0.001 inches) per year. The Trinity and Edwards-Trinity Plateau aquifers — which provide water for the city of San Antonio — range between 2.5 to 50 millimeters (0.1 inches to 2 inches) per year. That’s 80 to 1600 times more annual recharge than Martian groundwater.

“While other studies have simulated groundwater flow on Mars using similar techniques, this research by [Hiatt] published in [Icarus] is the first to incorporate the influence of the oceans that existed on Mars more than three billion years ago,” in the Hellas, Argyre, and Borealis basins, the university said in a tweet.

Even as the sharp differences between Mars and Earth’s water systems emerge in the team’s latest findings, research like this could also help us understand how to survive water and climate changes on our own planet. The technology we’re using to find water on Mars now, for instance, can also double in value for our own planet’s inhabitants. Using it to find leaks in public water systems has already proven to be a more effective and inexpensive than traditional methods.

"When we think about what Mars looked like 3.5 billion years ago, we probably should be thinking about an environment that in some ways looks a lot like Earth," said University of Texas Associate Professor Tim Goudge in a 2021 interview.

Mars’ atmosphere was thick and wet, with four times more pressure than Earth’s today and resulting raindrops that were so tiny they looked more like a dense fog and couldn’t even penetrate the soil. As that pressure waned, though, rainfall came down hard on the Red Planet’s surface, carving grooves and valleys. Just as floods on Earth carved out the Grand Canyon, catastrophic floods accounted for a quarter of Mars’ surface erosion, according to UTA researchers.

Then things changed. Mars lost its magnetic field, and with it the vast oceans which contained more water than contained in the Earth’s Artic Ocean today. A new theory from the University of Chicago emerged on Feb. 14 after a duo of scientists examined sediment and erosion evidence on Mars and noticed a pattern in the planet’s history.

“Like Earth, which has over the past billion years experienced periods of global glaciations and hyperthermals, the climate history of early Mars may have been intermittent,” the study authors write in Nature Geosciences.

“We suggest that Mars did not undergo a single wet-to-dry transition, but rather experienced seven major climate transitions, with the planet intermittently under climates warm enough to support surface liquid water even after 3.0 billion years ago (Ga). However, there is evidence for long dry spells, with some locations fully dry after 3.6 Ga.”

The study also looks into the reasons driving these climate shifts — testing hypotheses about volcanic eruptions and changes in the planet’s axial tilt. This new wave of Martian water research is quickly expanding our base of knowledge about alien climates, and understanding how a procession of climate changes could dramatically shape Mars could give us key insight into the challenges Earth may face as it encounters its own climate upheaval.

Critically, though, the more we can figure out about the mystery of Martian water, the sooner we can figure out how human life on a new planet could work — and how, if ever, it worked in the past.


Read more

about water and life on Mars

Why some scientists believe life may have started on Mars

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By RAE HODGE
is a science reporter for Salon. Her data-driven, investigative coverage spans more than a decade, including prior roles with CNET, the AP, NPR, the BBC and others. She can be found on Mastodon at @raehodge@newsie.social.

Space photo of the week: Can you spot the hidden robot on the slopes of Mars?

By Jamie Carter published about 21 hours ago

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover hides in plain sight in this aerial photo of the treacherous Martian landscape.

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover appears as a dark speck in this image captured from directly overhead by the agency's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO. 

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)

What it is: NASA's Curiosity Mars rover

When it was published: Feb. 29, 2024

Why it's so special: Can you spot the hidden robot on Mars?

In this photo, NASA's Curiosity rover, which has been exploring the surface of Mars since 2012, appears as a tiny, dark speck. The rover is seen on the steep slopes of Upper Gediz Vallis in a vast landscape scarred by dark and light bands.

Curiosity's current location is a massive achievement for the engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who built and now remotely operate the rover from 203 million miles (326 million kilometers) away. Curiosity spent three years gradually climbing Gediz Vallis Ridge; after three failed attempts, it finally succeeded in August 2023, according to NASA.

The space agency thinks water flowed in this region 3 billion years ago, and carried mud and boulders with it to create the ridge. Early last year, Curiosity found evidence of water and waves on Mars.

This image was taken on Dec. 29, the 4,051st Martian day, or sol, of the rover's mission, and NASA published the photo Feb. 29. The view from space was captured directly overhead by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been orbiting the Red Planet since March 2006. According to NASA, the camera is capable of viewing objects as small as a dinner table on Mars' surface.

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In addition to the Curiosity rover, NASA has its Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars. Also in orbit, alongside the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, are NASA's Odyssey and MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) spacecraft. A tiny remote-controlled helicopter named Ingenuity, which accompanied the Perseverance rover on its Martian journey for the last three years, recently sustained irreparable damage on its final, 72nd flight.

 

Scientists Uncover Secret Driver of Climate Change

By OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY MARCH 9, 2024

Scientists have discovered that viruses infecting microbes significantly impact climate change by affecting methane cycling. This study, analyzing DNA from various environments, shows that the environmental impact of viruses varies by habitat. The research underscores the complex relationship between viruses, microbes, and methane emissions, suggesting the need for further exploration into viral roles in climate dynamics.

Study reveals microorganisms, once infected, harbor novel genes for methane generation.

A recent study reveals that viruses that infect microbes contribute to climate change by playing a key role in cycling methane, a potent greenhouse gas, through the environment.

By analyzing nearly 1,000 sets of metagenomic DNA data from 15 different habitats, ranging from various lakes to the inside of a cow’s stomach, researchers found that microbial viruses carry special genetic elements for controlling methane processes, called auxiliary metabolic genes (AMGs). Depending on where the organisms dwell, the number of these genes can vary, suggesting that viruses’ potential impact on the environment also varies based on their habitat.

This discovery adds a vital piece to better understanding how methane interacts and moves within different ecosystems, said ZhiPing Zhong, lead author of the study and a research associate at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at The Ohio State University.

“It’s important to understand how microorganisms drive methane processes,” said Zhong, also a microbiologist whose research examines how microbes evolve in diverse environments. “Microbial contributions to methane metabolic processes have been studied for decades, but research into the viral field is still largely under-investigated and we want to learn more.”

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.

The Role of Viruses in Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Viruses have helped foster all of Earth’s ecological, biogeochemical, and evolutionary processes, but it’s only relatively recently that scientists have begun exploring their ties to climate change. For example, methane is the second-biggest driver of greenhouse gas emissions after carbon dioxide, but is largely produced by unicellular organisms called archaea.

“Viruses are the most abundant biological entity on earth,” said Matthew Sullivan, co-author of the study and a professor of microbiology at the Center of Microbiome Science at Ohio State. “Here, we expanded what we know about their impacts by adding methane cycling genes to the long list of virus-encoded metabolic genes. Our team sought to answer how much of the ‘microbial metabolism’ viruses are actually manipulating during infection.”

Though the vital role microbes play in accelerating atmospheric warming is now well-recognized, little is known about how methane metabolism-related genes encoded by the viruses that infect these microbes influence their methane production, said Zhong. Solving this mystery is what led Zhong and his colleagues to spend nearly a decade collecting and analyzing microbial and viral DNA samples from unique microbial reservoirs.

One of the most important places the team chose to study is Vrana Lake, part of a protected nature reserve in Croatia. Inside the methane-rich lake sediment, researchers found an abundance of microbial genes that affect methane production and oxidation. Additionally, they discovered diverse viral communities and uncovered 13 types of AMGs that help regulate the metabolisms of their host. Despite this, there isn’t any evidence that these viruses directly encode methane metabolism genes themselves, suggesting that viruses’ potential impact on the methane cycling varies by their habitat, said Zhong.

Livestock and Environmental Impacts

Overall, the study revealed that a higher number of methane metabolism AMGs are more likely to be found inside host-associated environments like the inside of a cow’s stomach, whereas fewer of these genes were found in environmental habitats, such as in lake sediment. Since cows and other livestock are also responsible for generating about 40% of global methane emissions, their work suggests the complex relationship between viruses, living beings, and the environment as a whole may be more intricately tied together than scientists once thought.

“These findings suggest that global impacts from viruses are underestimated, and deserve more attention,” said Zhong.

Though it’s unclear whether human activities might have affected the evolution of these viruses, the team expects new insights gleaned from this work will raise awareness about the power of infectious agents to inhabit all life on Earth. Still, to keep learning more about these viruses’ inner mechanisms, further experiments will be needed to understand more about their contributions to Earth’s methane cycle, said Zhong, especially as scientists work toward ways to mitigate microbially driven methane emission.

“This work is a beginning step for grasping the viral impacts of climate change,” he said. ‘We still have lots more to learn.”

Reference: “Viral potential to modulate microbial methane metabolism varies by habitat” by Zhi-Ping Zhong, Jingjie Du, Stephan Köstlbacher, Petra Pjevac, Sandi Orlić and Matthew B. Sullivan, 29 February 2024, Nature Communications.
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-46109-x

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Croatian Science Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the European Union, and the U.S. Department of Energy. Co-authors include Jingjie Du of Ohio State, as well as Stephan Kostlbacher and Petra Pjevac from the University of Vienna, and Sandi Orlić from the Ruđer Bošković Institute.

Can Volcanic Super Eruptions Lead to Major Cooling? Study Suggests No

NASA
Goddard Digital Team
MAR 01, 2024

New research suggests that sunlight-blocking particles from an extreme eruption would not cool surface temperatures on Earth as severely as previously estimated.

Some 74,000 years ago, the Toba volcano in Indonesia exploded with a force 1,000 times more powerful than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. The mystery is what happened after that – namely, to what degree that extreme explosion might have cooled global temperatures.

Crew aboard the International Space Station photographed the eruption of Mount Etna in Sicily in October 2002. Ashfall was reported more than 350 miles away. When it comes to explosive power, however, no eruption in modern times can compare with a super eruption – which hasn’t occurred for tens of thousands of years.

When it comes to the most powerful volcanoes, researchers have long speculated how post-eruption global cooling – sometimes called volcanic winter – could potentially pose a threat to humanity. Previous studies agreed that some planet-wide cooling would occur but diverged on how much. Estimates have ranged from 3.6 to 14 degrees Fahrenheit (2 to 8 degrees Celsius).

In a new study in the Journal of Climate, a team from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and Columbia University in New York used advanced computer modeling to simulate super-eruptions like the Toba event. They found that post-eruption cooling would probably not exceed 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) for even the most powerful blasts.

“The relatively modest temperature changes we found most compatible with the evidence could explain why no single super-eruption has produced firm evidence of global-scale catastrophe for humans or ecosystems,” said lead author Zachary McGraw, a researcher at NASA GISS and Columbia University.

To qualify as a super eruption, a volcano must release more than 240 cubic miles (1,000 cubic kilometers) of magma. These eruptions are extremely powerful – and rare. The most recent super-eruption occurred more than 22,000 years ago in New Zealand. The best-known example may be the eruption that blasted Yellowstone Crater in Wyoming about 2 million years ago.

Small Particles, Big Questions

McGraw and colleagues set out to understand what was driving the divergence in model temperature estimates because “models are the main tool for understanding climate shifts that happened too long ago to leave clear records of their severity.” They settled on a variable that can be difficult to pin down: the size of microscopic sulfur particles injected miles high into the atmosphere.

In the stratosphere (about 6 to 30 miles in altitude), sulfur dioxide gas from volcanoes undergoes chemical reactions to condense into liquid sulfate particles. These particles can influence surface temperature on Earth in two counteracting ways: by reflecting incoming sunlight (causing cooling) or by trapping outgoing heat energy (a kind of greenhouse warming effect).

Over the years, this cooling phenomenon has also spurred questions about how humans might turn back global warming – a concept called geoengineering – by intentionally injecting aerosol particles into the stratosphere to promote a cooling effect.

The researchers showed to what extent the diameter of the volcanic aerosol particles influenced post-eruption temperatures. The smaller and denser the particles, the greater their ability to block sunlight. But estimating the size of particles is challenging because previous super eruptions have not left reliable physical evidence. In the atmosphere, the size of the particles changes as they coagulate and condense. Even when particles fall back to Earth and are preserved in ice cores, they don’t leave a clear-cut physical record because of mixing and compaction.

By simulating super-eruptions over a range of particle sizes, the researchers found that super-eruptions may be incapable of altering global temperatures dramatically more than the largest eruptions of modern times. For instance, the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines caused about a half-degree drop in global temperatures for two years.

Luis Millán, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California who was not involved in the study, said that the mysteries of super-eruption cooling invite more research. He said the way forward is to conduct a comprehensive comparison of models, as well as more laboratory and model studies on the factors determining volcanic aerosol particle sizes.

Given the ongoing uncertainties, Millán added, “To me, this is another example of why geoengineering via stratospheric aerosol injection is a long, long way from being a viable option.”

The study, titled “Severe Global Cooling After Volcanic Super-Eruptions? The Answer Hinges on Unknown Aerosol Size,” was published in the Journal of Climate.

By Sally Younger
Earth Science News Team
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
sally.m.younger@jpl.nasa.gov

The LIFE Telescope Passed its First Test: It Detected Biosignatures on Earth.


LIFE will have five separate space telescopes that fly in formation and work together to detect biosignatures in exoplanet atmospheres. 

Image Credit: LIFE, ETH Zurich

POSTED ON  MARCH 5, 2024 BY EVAN GOUGH

We know that there are thousands of exoplanets out there, with many millions more waiting to be discovered. But the vast majority of exoplanets are simply uninhabitable. For the few that may be habitable, we can only determine if they are by examining their atmospheres. LIFE, the Large Interferometer for Exoplanets, can help.

The search for biosignatures on potentially habitable exoplanets is heating up. The JWST has successfully gathered some atmospheric spectra from exoplanet atmospheres, but it has a lot of other jobs to do and observing time is in high demand. A planned space telescope named LIFE is dedicated to finding exoplanet biosignatures, and recently, researchers gave it a test: can it detect Earth’s biosignatures?

As an interferometer, LIFE is made up of five separate telescopes that will work in unison to expand the telescope’s working size. LIFE is being developed by ETH Zurich (Federal Institute of Technology Zurich) in Switzerland. LIFE will observe in mid-infrared, where the spectral lines from the important bioindicative chemicals ozone, methane, and nitrous oxide can be found.

LIFE will be located at Lagrange Point 2, about 1.5 million km (1 million miles) away, where the JWST is also located. From that location, it’ll observe a list of exoplanet targets in hopes of finding biosignatures. “Our goal is to detect chemical compounds in the light spectrum that hint at life on the exoplanets,” explained Sascha Quanz, Professor for Exoplanets and Habitability at ETH Zurich, who is leading the LIFE initiative.

A transmission spectrum of the hot gas giant exoplanet WASP-39 b, captured by JWST’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) on July 10, 2022, reveals the first definitive evidence for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet outside the Solar System. It was an exciting result, but only a taste of what we’ll learn from LIFE. 

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and L. Hustak (STScI). Science: The JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science Team

LIFE is still only a concept, and researchers wanted to test its performance. Since it hasn’t been built yet, a team of researchers used Earth’s atmosphere as a test case. They treated Earth as if it were an exoplanet and tested LIFE’s methods against Earth’s known atmospheric spectrum in different conditions. They used a tool called LIFEsim to work with the data. Researchers often use simulated data to test mission capabilities, but in this case, they used real data.

Their results are published in The Astronomical Journal. The research is titled “Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE). XII. The Detectability of Capstone Biosignatures in the Mid-infrared—Sniffing Exoplanetary Laughing Gas and Methylated Halogens.” The lead author is Dr. Daniel Angerhausen, an Astrophysicist and Astrobiologist at ETH in Zürich.

In a real-world scenario, Earth would be just a distant, nearly impossible to discern speck. All LIFE would see is the planet’s atmospheric spectrum, which would change over time depending on what views the telescope captured and, critically, for how long it observed it.

These spectra would be gathered over time, and that leads to an important question: how would the observational geometry and seasonal variations affect LIFE’s observations?

Fortunately for the research team, we have ample observations of Earth for them to work with. The researchers worked with three different observational geometries: two views from the poles and one from the equatorial region. From those three viewpoints, they worked with atmospheric data from January and July, which accounts for the largest seasonal variations.

Though planetary atmospheres can be extremely complex, astrobiologists focus on certain aspects to reveal a planet’s potential to host life. Of particular interest are the chemicals N20, CH3Cl, and CH3Br (nitrous oxide, chloromethane, and bromomethane), all of which can be produced biogenically. “We use a set of scenarios derived from chemical kinetics models that simulate the atmospheric response of varied levels of biogenic production of N2O, CH3Cl, and CH3Br in O2-rich terrestrial planet atmospheres to produce forward models for our LIFEsim observation simulator software,” the authors write.

In particular, the researchers wanted to know if LIFE will be able to detect CO2, water, ozone and methane on planet Earth from about 30 light years away. These are signs of a temperate, life-supporting world—especially ozone and methane, which are produced by life on Earth—so if LIFE can detect biological chemistry on Earth in this way, it can detect it on other worlds.

LIFE was able to detect CO2, water, ozone and methane on Earth. It also detected some surface conditions that indicate liquid water. Intriguingly, LIFE’s results didn’t depend on which angle Earth is viewed from. This is important since we don’t know what angles LIFE will be observing exoplanets from.

Seasonal fluctuations are the other issue, and they weren’t as easy to observe. But fortunately, it looks like that won’t be a limiting factor. “Even if atmospheric seasonality is not easily observed, our study demonstrates that next-generation space missions can assess whether nearby temperate terrestrial exoplanets are habitable or even inhabited,” said Quanz.

However, detecting the desired chemicals isn’t enough. The critical piece is how long it takes. Building a space interferometer that detected these chemicals but took too much time to do it wouldn’t be practical or effective. “We use the results to derive observation times needed for the detection of these scenarios and apply them to define science requirements for the mission,” the research team writes in their paper.

To paint a larger picture of LIFE’s observing times, the researchers developed a list of targets. They created a “… distance distribution of HZ planets with radii between 0.5 and 1.5 Earth radii around M and FGK-type stars within 20 pc of the Sun that are detectable with LIFE.” The data for these targets comes from NASA and from other previous research

.

This figure from the study illustrates the list of targets. The panel on the left shows planets around M-dwarf stars by distance. It shows the number of predicted planet targets for three different habitable zones: optimistic, conservative, and exo-Earth candidates. The panel on the right shows the same but for F, G, and K-type stars. 

Image Credit: Angerhausen et al. 2024.

The results show that only a few days are needed for some targets, while for others, it could take up to 100 days to detect relevant abundances.

What the team calls “golden targets” are the easiest to observe. Planets in Proxima Centauri are an example of these types of targets. Only a few days of observation are needed for these planets. It’ll take about ten days of observations with LIFE to observe “certain standard scenarios such as temperate, terrestrial planets around M star hosts at five pc,” the researchers write. The most challenging cases that are still feasible are exoplanets that are Earth twins about 5 parsecs away. According to the results, LIFE needs between about 50 – 100 days of observing to detect the biosignatures.

LIFE is still just a potential mission at this point. It’s not the first proposed mission that would be solely focused on exoplanet habitability. In 2023, NASA proposed the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO). Its goal is to directly image at least 25 potentially habitable worlds and then search for biosignatures in their atmospheres.

But, according to the authors, their results show that LIFE is the best option.

“If there are late-type star exoplanetary systems in the solar neighbourhood with planets that exhibit global biospheres producing N2O and CH3X signals, LIFE will be the best-suited future mission to systematically search for and eventually detect them,” they conclude.

Spring equinox 2024: When it is and why it's also called the vernal equinox

Tiffany Acosta
Arizona Republic


Spring is blooming and with it comes the spring equinox. This celestial event occurs annually, marking the moment when the Earth's axis is neither tilted away from nor toward the sun, resulting in nearly equal lengths of day and night across the globe.

This phenomenon symbolizes the transition from winter to spring in the Northern Hemisphere and from summer to autumn in the Southern Hemisphere.

Beyond its astronomical significance, the spring equinox holds cultural, spiritual and metaphorical importance for many people worldwide. Throughout history, cultures have marked this occasion with festivals and ceremonies.

Here is everything you need to know about the spring equinox.

When is the spring equinox 2024?

The spring equinox officially starts at 8:06 p.m. Arizona time on Tuesday, March 19.
What is the difference between spring equinox and vernal equinox?

According to NASA, the terms "spring equinox" and "vernal equinox" refer to the same astronomical event and are used interchangeably. Both terms describe the moment when the sun crosses the celestial equator, moving from south to north.

Why is it called vernal equinox?

The term "vernal equinox" originates from Latin, where "vernal" means spring and "equinox" denotes the equal length of day and night. The term "vernal equinox" specifically emphasizes the seasonal aspect while "spring equinox" is more generic, referring to the equinox that occurs in springtime.
Is spring equinox always March 21?

No. The spring equinox does not always occur on March 21. While March 21 is often cited as the date of the spring equinox, it can occur on March 20 or 21st, depending on the year and time zone, according to Almanac.com. This variation is due to the complexities of Earth's orbit around the Sun and the adjustments made in the calendar system to account for these movements.

What happens at the spring equinox?

The spring equinox marks the moment when the sun crosses the celestial equator, heading northward. On this occasion, day and night are approximately of equal duration all over the Earth, according to the National Weather Service.

The spring equinox is considered the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. Cultures around the world have celebrated this event for centuries through various rituals, festivals and traditions, often focusing on themes of fertility, growth and the balance between light and dark.

Will spring come early 2024?

Sorry, Punxsutawney Phil, but predicting whether spring will come early in a specific year depends on numerous factors such as weather patterns, atmospheric conditions and regional climate dynamics.

While the spring equinox occurs at a fixed point in time each year, the arrival of warmer temperatures, the blooming of flowers and other signs of spring can vary.


Some years may experience earlier spring due to warmer weather patterns or climate variability, while others may see colder temperatures lingering longer.

The spring equinox typically falls on March 20 or 21, but in a leap year like 2024, when February has an extra day, the equinox may occur a bit earlier.
What are the 4 equinox dates?

Here are the 2024 equinox and solstice dates, according to the National Weather Service:
Spring (vernal) equinox: March 19, 2024, at 9:06 p.m.
Summer solstice: June 20, 2024, at 2:51 p.m.
Autumn equinox: Sept. 22, 2024, at 6:43 a.m.
Winter solstice: Dec. 20, 2024, at 2:20 a.m.

All times are Arizona time.
What does the spring equinox symbolize?

The spring equinox symbolizes renewal and rejuvenation, the transition from darkness to light as nature emerges from the dormancy of winter.

Many cultures observe the spring equinox with festivals and rituals centered around fertility, abundance and the renewal of life, according to the almanac.com.

Ancient monuments such as the Sphinx in Egypt and Angkor Wat in Cambodia align with the equinox, showcasing humanity's historical reverence for this celestial event.

The spring equinox is also regarded as a time for balance, harmony and personal growth.
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Why is it called equinox?

The term "equinox" comes from the Latin words "aequus," meaning equal, and "nox," meaning night. It is called so because during the equinox, day and night are approximately equal in length.

It's a moment of balance and symmetry in the Earth's orbit around the sun, symbolizing the cyclical nature of time and the changing of seasons.

The next chapter of lunar exploration could forever change the moon — and our relationship to it (op-ed)

Where will humanity, and the moon, be by the next lunar standstill in the early 2040s?

The moon during a waxing crescent phase. 

(Image credit: Valeriano Antonini / 500px)

By Aparna Venkatesan, John Barentine
( s) published 2 days ago

Aparna Venkatesan is an astronomer and dark-sky advocate in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University of San Francisco.

John Barentine is an astronomer, historian, author, science communicator, and founder of Dark Sky Consulting, LLC.

For as long as there have been humans, the moon has been a calendar, ancestor, ritual, inspiration, and origin story for humanity. Its monthly and subtler generational cycles have been — and are still — painstakingly recorded and celebrated by cultures around the world since prehistoric times.

These recurring sequences include the "major lunar standstills" occurring every 18.6 years, when the moon reaches its most northern/southern points, or lunistices, within the course of a single month. We are now entering the period of the latest major standstill in 2024-25.

Two major standstills have occurred since the United States last sent a crewed mission to the moon, Apollo 17 in December 1972. Since that time, only four other countries have joined the small club of countries to successfully achieve soft landings on the moon: The former Soviet Union, China, and since August 2023, India and Japan. Along with spacecraft and crashed pieces of space hardware, humans have left tools, scientific experiments, and even bags of their discarded excrement on our neighboring world.

So we ask in early 2024: Where will humanity, and the moon, be by the next lunar standstill in the early 2040s?

Related: Moon group pushes for protection of ultraquiet lunar far side

In the 1960s the United States and the Soviet Union vied to be first to achieve the age-old dream of, in U.S. President Kennedy's words, "landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth". The crewed Apollo 11 landing on July 20, 1969 was as much a "great leap for mankind" as it was a demonstration not only of the superiority of U.S. technological know-how, but also, some argued, its politico-economic system.

After the fall of the U.S.S.R., its successor state, the Russian Federation, joined the U.S. as a partner in efforts such as the assembly and operation of the International Space Station. It seemed as though the Space Race had ended.

But now a new race to the moon is underway, driven as much by commercial exploitation of lunar resources as by flaunting military power in the new frontier of outer space, and a sense of urgency from "manufactured fear" reflecting Cold War rather than modern collaborative frameworks. As we write this, there are renewed fears of nuclear threats from orbital space following the Russian anti-satellite test of November 2021, which generated space debris that, in the words of the American Astronomical Society, "imperils human spaceflight … the night sky and its accessibility for ground-based astronomy, as well as other scientific, economic, commercial, and cultural purposes."

Because of the changes wrought by human activities since 1959, historians recently argued that the moon has entered a novel phase of its geologic history in which human modification of its surface will vastly outpace the rate of evolution due to natural influences alone. Astronauts returning to the moon in coming years face a world over six decades into this new era, dubbed the "Lunar Anthropocene".

The name of the new lunar era deliberately echoes the Anthropocene of our own planet that increasingly includes its surrounding space environment. In the last seven decades human activity has radically transformed the orbital space near the Earth. Recently, the pace of this change has accelerated at an alarming rate. According to the European Space Agency, the number of known objects orbiting the Earth has doubled just since 2015.

Space debris is similarly proliferating. Collisions between space objects — some accidental, others deliberate — generate cascades of debris, each component of which becomes a collision risk for other objects. Upward of 50 tons of debris may be intentionally deorbited each week by the end of this decade, with unknown consequences for the chemistry of the Earth's upper atmosphere, the ocean and all life on Earth. Additionally, thousands of functional satellites orbiting the planet are already interfering with ground-based observations for radio astronomy as well as optical and infrared astronomy (SATCON1 and SATCON2 reports).

The moon is not far behind. Orbital crowding, environmental degradation and increasing light and radio-frequency pollution are expected consequences of the new lunar space race, mirroring the effects of similar activities near our planet. These developments imperil the potential the moon otherwise shows to host unique scientific research activities, such as the most sensitive radio astronomical measurements ever made from the moon's far side. Soon, the airless moon will no longer be a "quiet" celestial object; rather, it will be bristling with human-generated radio energy.

The moon represents not only shared (solar system) history and scientific opportunity, but also shared heritage and cultural-religious significance to many global cultures, including Indigenous communities.

Current practices by state and private space actors violate cultural beliefs, including in January 2024 when the Astrobotic Peregrine One mission attempted to carry human remains to the moon, resulting in widespread condemnation from Indigenous communities and international outcry.

The Navajo Nation in particular issued a statement to NASA, reminding them of the need for consultation given the 26-year history of this problem which represents a desecration of "a sacred place in Navajo cosmology". There have since been a number of Indigenous-led calls to cease the practice of sending human (and pet) remains to the moon. Thus, the moon is at risk of not only becoming a future war zone but a federally-subsidized grave.

The moon has been our satellite for nearly 4.5 billion years, and despite its annual drift of a few centimeters per year away from Earth, it will remain our closest and most visibly world-like companion for billions of years to come. This makes the current rush to occupy cislunar space and the moon all the more incomprehensible, with an ill-quantified tradeoff between science and security gains versus potentially permanent loss of geological records of early solar system history; environmental and bio-contamination of the lunar surface and atmosphere; and desecration of cultural beliefs around the moon.

As more lunar exploration initiatives loom, it must be asked: Will we responsibly and sustainably protect future generations' ability to practice scientific and cultural traditions on, near or in relation to the moon? And will we be able to develop a lunar land ethic? With rapidly rising numbers of active governmental and private space actors, and increasing pre-approved, treaty-bypassing space initiatives, it will take courage and vision for any nation(s) to set the intentional precedent of proceeding in ways that honor humanity's scientific-cultural heritage, prioritizing the "right way" rather than "right now."

This feels especially urgent given the first U.S. landing on the moon in 51 years through the U.S.-based, privately-owned Intuitive Machines two weeks ago, carrying scientific experiments as well as human-made "leave behinds" on the lunar surface such as the "Koons moons".

Examples like this urgently require addressing gaps in the language of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and the recent Artemis Accords, such as the increasing role of private companies in space and whether their missions, lunar or otherwise, are aligned with the aspirational ideals in the Artemis Accords regarding the preservation of heritage or benefits of space exploration for all of humankind.


Aparna Venkatesan is an astronomer and dark-sky advocate in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University of San Francisco. She works actively on space policy projects and has co-created STEM partnerships with Indigenous communities for almost 25 years. Dr. Venkatesan recently coined the term noctalgia with Dr. John Barentine to express “sky grief” for the accelerating loss of the home environment of our shared skies.

UK space chief flags moon mining as next conflict ‘gray zone’

By Sebastian Sprenger
Thursday, Mar 7

This photo taken on May 5, 2023 shows the moon during a penumbral lunar eclipse in Indonesia. (Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP via Getty Images)


FARNBOROUGH, England — Mining rare minerals on the moon could mark a new area of competition in space, though it’s too early tell whether the prospect would entail military involvement, according to the U.K.’s top military officer for space.

A scenario of nations jumping on lunar mining to refill their dried-up, terrestrial stocks has the potential for gray zone conflict, the kind of amorphous contest that transcends traditional notions of two warring parties shooting at each other, Air Vice-Marshal Paul Godfrey said at the Space Comm Expo trade show here.

For now, there is no commercial proposition for what Godfrey likened to a science fiction version of the U.S. Gold Rush of the nineteenth century.

“The cost of getting to the moon, creating a lunar base, extracting the minerals and getting them back to earth probably far outweighs mining precious minerals on the Earth,” he told Defense News in an interview.

It’s also still unclear exactly what types of rare-earth metals, critical in producing high-tech components, exist under the lunar surface. On Earth, China is a critical supplier of such ingredients. European and NATO nations are eager to diversify their supply chain as they view Beijing as an unreliable partner politically.


Godfrey characterized developments toward lunar mining as purely commercial, but, by raising the matter, made clear it has started to pop up on the radars of armed forces, with very practical questions emerging.

“Do you ring-fence your particular area on the moon if you strike gold, so to speak?” Godfrey asked.

Whether moon mining will become feasible one day depends on key technologies and ensured access to space for all, he said, adding that proliferating space debris could make the journey impossible for everyone at some point.

Reducing the cost of space launches and advancing the field of on-orbit manufacturing also are stepping stones to the vision of moon mining, Godfrey added.

About Sebastian Sprenger is associate editor for Europe at Defense News, reporting on the state of the defense market in the region, and on U.S.-Europe cooperation and multi-national investments in defense and global security. Previously he served as managing editor for Defense News. He is based in Cologne, Germany.

How private companies aiming for the Moon are ushering in a new age of space exploration

By Anna Desmarais

Published on 10/03/2024 - 

The successful lunar mission by Intuitive Machines last month was in part subsidised by NASA - and it's only the beginning.

The successful but short Intuitive Machines Moon landing last month will be the first in a series of attempts by private companies in the United States from now until the end of the decade.

That’s the takeaway experts in the field want the general public to have from a historic venture cut short.

The mission fizzled out five days in because of a loss of power to the lunar lander Odysseus as the Sun moved away from the last illuminated solar panel on its back.

"This mission is a pathfinder," Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a press conference a few days into the mission. "You can think of it as a flight test".

That’s because the Intuitive Machines mission got part of their funding from a relatively new, little-known NASA programme called the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. Its aim: putting the responsibility and technicalities of a Moon landing on to private companies for the first time.

Those in the industry say this new initiative from the Us space agency is starting a chain of frequent Moon launches that will define the US presence in space for the next decade as the country prepares for another human landing.

Nicholas Peter, the president of France’s International Space University (ISU) calls this new NASA programme the beginning of the US' "new race to the Moon," as they try to compete with recent successful landings from India, Japan, and China.

"[CLPS] is providing more opportunities to go to the Moon to develop scientific missions, now that it’s not restricted to government bodies," Peter told Euronews Next.

Intuitive Machines' lunar lander blasts off to the Moon in a historic attempt by a private company

NASA's new mission

On May 3, 2018, NASA released a bold new communiqué: that Moon surface exploration would continue in the future, but it would look different.

In the same breath, NASA announced its investment of $2.6 billion (€2.4 billion) to last until 2028 into indefinite contracts, bidded on by a select number of private companies, to "accelerate" the American return to the Moon.

"We’ll draw on the interests and capabilities of U.S. industry and international partners as American innovation leads astronauts back to the Moon and to destinations farther into the solar system, including Mars," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine in a press release at the time.

February’s mission from Intuitive Machines is the most recent in a series of expected "deliverable" missions expected before 2026.

The mission is also the second under the CLPS program to get to launch.

In January, Pittsburg-based Astrobotic Technology launched the first and it failed because of a propellant leak that made it impossible to land. Other NASA-funded companies like Draper and Firefly Aerospace are working on upcoming missions.

Later this year, NASA expects mission VIPER from Astrobotic to the lunar south pole, a delivery of technology from Firefly Aerospace to a basaltic plain on the Moon, and another mission from Intuitive Machines to Reiner Gamma, a lunar swirl on the side of the Moon.

NASA declined an interview with Euronews Next.

The Moon is shrinking. This is why it's a problem for humans

'It’s not about planting a flag anymore'

Chris Boger, Draper’s Director of Human Space Flight and Exploration, said that before NASA's new CLPS program, it was rare to find an entire space mission by a private company that was supported by the government.

Instead, the space agency would give private companies the task of developing one part of the spacecraft’s hardwire. For Draper, their first NASA contract came in 1959 to develop the navigation system for the famous Apollo landing.

Recently, Boger said there’s been a renewed "explosion" of commercial interest to get to the Moon. So, he continues, that gives NASA more incentive to "boot strap" more missions and, by extension, creating a healthier space startup space.

Ingenuity: NASA's 'little helicopter that could' takes last flight on Mars

"There are companies [funded by NASA] that were barely in existence, were in their infancy that grew to mature companies that can provide this service," Boger said.

There’s other reasons to want to get back to the Moon, according to Peter from the International Space University. One is the new technologies, like data storage in deep space.

Another is the new frontier for resource extraction. The Moon has resources, like water and hydrogen that Peter says will become increasingly important on Earth.

"[Space exploration is] not about planting a flag anymore," Peter said, making reference to the goals of the 1969 Moon landing.

A relay, not a sprint to the Moon

Draper's mission in 2025 is to Schrodinger's Basin, a rare part of the Moon that shows recent volcanic activity (Boger wouldn’t specify how much NASA funding is going into their mission).

Boger said he was "ecstatic" for his colleagues at Intuitive Machines when he heard news of their successful soft landing.

He maintains that this modern space race is less a sprint, more a relay with alot of collaboration between all the companies leading launches.

"All of these missions are providing immense lessons learned for those that haven’t launched yet," Boger said.

"It’s a tight community, there’s alot of transparency and sharing information that we can factor into the mission objectives".

Who Owns the Moon? The Race For Lunar Real Estate Is An Impending Ethical Nightmare


More missions to the Moon mean more chances for values, cultures, and priorities to collide.

BYKIONA SMITH
MARCH 6, 2024

INVERSE



Afew weeks before he died, President William G. Harding toured Yellowstone National Park. He said bluntly, “Commercialism will never be tolerated here as long as I have the power to prevent it.” The U.S. National Park system exists, in part, to protect some of our country’s most pristine wilderness from being destroyed by ventures like construction, mining, and logging.

While we’ve been able to create National Parks here in the U.S., nobody has the legal right to do that on the Moon. So what happens to the once-pristine Moon when the space miners show up?


Along with private missions like the recent Intuitive Machines’ lander IM-1, several countries’ space agencies all have their eyes on the same real estate around the Moon’s south pole, where water ice may lie waiting in permanently shadowed craters. Until recently, debates about what should and shouldn’t happen on the Moon have been abstract. Only one country’s space agency had ever sent humans to the Moon, and they didn’t stay long. That’s on the brink of changing. The next decade may see the once-pristine lunar landscape dotted with bases and riddled with mines, all jostling for space (and bandwidth) with telescopes and other scientific exploration. But is the lunar environment worth preserving, for science or in its own right, and who gets to decide?


There’s no life on the Moon, but the scenery is breathtaking (astronaut Harrison Schmitt for scale).NASA
WHO OWNS THE MOON?

A recent (failed) mission to land cremated human remains on the Moon raised a high-profile example of the kind of ethical issues space ethicists say we should be considering. Astrobotic’s Peregrine One lander was scheduled to deliver the cremated remains of Gene Roddenberry and several members of the original Star Trek cast, and others to the Moon.

The Navajo Nation formally protested the mission’s launch; in Navajo beliefs, the Moon is a sacred object, and placing human remains there would be a desecration. In the end, a fuel leak forced the mission to return to Earth, where it ended in a fiery plunge into the upper atmosphere, but it drew attention to a larger debate about who gets to decide — for everyone — how we as a species relate to the Moon now.

“Every culture on Earth has conceptions about the Moon,” Santa Clara University space ethicist Brian Green tells Inverse. “There are lots of groups on Earth who have thoughts on how the Moon should be treated. This is why we need to have a larger conversation.”

Part of the unfolding discussion centers on what, if anything, we should try to protect on the Moon. Several groups here on Earth, such as For All Moonkind, have spent years arguing that the first crewed lunar landing sites are an important part of human history and should be preserved, but at the moment there’s no law or treaty preventing someone from erasing the rover tracks or astronauts’ footprints.


The Apollo 11 Lunar Module casts a long shadow over the surface of the Moon — and the footprints of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin — in July 1968.NASA

The Navajo aren't the only people who consider the Moon sacred. Cultures around the world have always tended to connect the Moon with the divine. For Hindus, the Moon represents the god Chandra, who is associated with plants and the night. Shinto believers see the Moon as the god Tsukuyomi, and for the Inuit, it's Alignak, a god whose domain includes weather, tides, and earthquakes. In ancient times, the Greeks worshiped the virginal huntress and nature goddess Artemis, while the Egyptians worshiped the god Khonsu, a healer and protector of nighttime travelers.

These deities' domains reveal a lot about how people have seen the moon over the millennia. It's been something pure, a bright light in the darkness, sometimes protective but other times belonging more to wild things than to people.

But the Moon is also a place; in the late 1500s, Galileo pointed his early telescopes at the Moon and discovered mountains, valleys, and craters. Today, we know the Moon as a dusty landscape marked by ancient volcanoes and billions of years of meteors. We've crashed spacecraft into its surface (both accidentally and on purpose), a few people have walked and even driven around small parts of it, and most of them left behind bags of waste and piles of dead-weight junk. But most of the Moon is still what astrophysicist and space ethicist Erika Nesvold calls a “space wilderness." She acknowledges that it's hard to think of wilderness in a place with no life, but argues that perhaps we should.

“We also have to ask questions about things like resource overuse,” says Nesvold. “If we mine out all the water on the moon in the next three generations, what are future generations going to do? Do we need to make sure we're preserving any of that?”

Increasingly, national governments and private companies are seeing the Moon not as a deity, a symbol, or a scientific puzzle: they're beginning to see it as a resource: a source of fuel and water on the way to Mars, a site for radio telescopes, or a source of geopolitical clout.

And that's sparking an urgent debate about whether some parts of the Moon remain pristine -- and if so, which parts. Whose faith and traditions, whose scientific curiosity, whose sense of aesthetics, or whose billion-dollar business plan should decide the fate of the Moon's ancient landscape?


China is the Unites States’ main competitor in the current “space race,” with India close behind.FUTURE PUBLISHING/FUTURE PUBLISHING/GETTY IMAGES
IF YOU’RE NOT FIRST, YOU’RE LAST

Part of the challenge of “space ethics” is to figure out what to do about these issues, but the really difficult part will be figuring out who gets to have a say. Can anyone tell a private company where, or whether, they can mine the Moon, open a lunar landfill, or turn a crater into a cemetery? How can countries with wildly differing values agree on the value – commercial, scientific, or ideological – of the Moon?

“At the more international level, that’s what international law is for,” says Nesvold.

At the moment, only the absolute basics are covered, starting with the Outer Space Treaty, in which most of the world’s nations have agreed that no one can claim territory in space, the Moon is to be used only for peaceful purposes, and nuclear weapons aren’t allowed in space. The Registration Convention requires states to register the orbital paths of their spacecraft with the UN to help prevent collisions. And the Rescue Agreement requires states to help spacefarers in distress, regardless of where they’re from.

Another treaty, the Space Liability Convention, says that spacecraft are the responsibility of the country they’re launched from — whether they’re publicly or privately owned. That means it’s up to an individual country to decide whether a company can launch human remains, soda cans, tardigrades, or anything else to the Moon (under U.S. regulations, any payload can go as long as it’s safe to launch and not a threat to national security).

What’s not covered by those laws is whether it’s okay to carve a giant advertising logo into a lunar basin, inter human remains or leave branded trinkets on the Moon, mine iconic lunar landmarks, or send tourists to the Apollo 11 landing site to walk in Neil Armstrong’s footsteps. And those are all very real possibilities in the near future. Space law, and space ethics, are urgent works in progress.


This artist’s illustration shows what future construction projects on the Moon might look like.NASA

Meanwhile, the power to make those decisions is a big reason countries like the U.S., China, India, and Russia are all scrambling to get a foothold on the lunar surface before their rivals. Being the first to set up shop on the Moon is a huge way for a nation to show off its power, wealth, and technological chops. But on a practical level, being first also means first pick of landing sites, first dibs on lunar resources, and the first chance to choose which pieces of the lunar environment to protect.

“Ultimately, the people who get to make the decisions are the ones who are there,” says Green. “So that's why you hope that the people who are making the decisions and who are there are going to be ethical and actually considerate of other people's opinions.”

But that space race mentality can have its own problems.

“The space race dynamic always makes ethics more complicated,” says Green.

For one thing, there’s the question of what ethical shortcuts a nation or company might be willing to take to get there first. That could mean exploiting workers, taking undue risks with astronauts, or damaging the environment here on Earth.

“People who are arguing for more space telescopes, or people who are arguing for space launch centers on the path towards settling space often have really noble-sounding rhetoric: The idea of rocket launches and building more human civilization in space, versus the concerns about potential pollutants in local wetlands – the sorts of things you hear about in places like Boca Chica,” Nesvold tells Inverse. “I think that's very similar to the sort of manifest destiny rhetoric that you would see during colonization.”


Humans will go to great lengths to plant their country’s flag.NASA

America’s crewed space program was built on a major ethical shortcut: the work of Nazi officer Werner von Braun, who also designed the V2 rockets that killed around 9,000 British civilians during World War II (thousands more forced laborers died building them). Operation Paperclip, which brought von Braun and his team of engineers to the U.S., might have been unthinkable without the pressure to stay ahead of the USSR in space.

What space ethicists like Green and Nesvold want to avoid is a future where we plow blindly forward, with whoever gets there first imposing their will on a satellite that has, for all of human history until now, belonged to everyone – but at the same time, to no one. Nesvold warns that if we do that, we risk repeating the injustices of colonialism here on Earth.
IS ANTARCTICA A BLUEPRINT FOR SPACE?

Nations whose interests and values often clash will have to agree on how to manage a commons: "a broad set of resources, natural and cultural, that are shared by many people," as the International Association for the Study of the Commons puts it. We've already done that here on Earth, to some extent. The future of the Moon and Mars may owe a lot to the system of treaties that protect Antarctica and the set of laws that apply in international waters.


The international agreements that protect these adorable penguins could provide a framework for cooperation on the Moon.ANADOLU/ANADOLU/GETTY IMAGES

The 1959 Antarctic Treaty reserves the entire Antarctic continent for peaceful, scientific use. No commercial mining is allowed, and there are strict rules protecting plants, wildlife, and landscapes. Tourists, scientists, and even some military personnel are allowed to visit (or live there for months at a stretch), but only if the expedition or tour operator has a permit from one of the 56 countries that have signed the treaty.

Countries that issue permits have regulations about the type of activity and the number of people they'll allow; some of those rules are to protect the fragile polar environment, but others are for safety. For example, "the UK will also not normally authorize the use of helicopters for recreational purposes in areas with concentrations of wildlife, including the Antarctic Peninsula region." (As a side note, "for safety reasons the UK will not authorize snorkeling activities in the Antarctic." The more you know.)

Eight of the countries who signed the treaty claim sectors of territory in Antarctica, and some of them overlap. In theory, no one is allowed to claim new territory in Antarctica; the eight countries that claim sectors today had already made their claims before the Antarctic Treaty was written, and part of the treaty forbids anyone from making new claims. But both the U.S. and Russia argue that they've reserved the right to claim territory in Antarctica in the future.

On the other hand, several countries, including the U.S., have research stations in other countries' sectors without any major conflict.

If someone wants to violate the Antarctic Treaty, it's going to be hard to stop them without resorting to military force. That's even more true on the Moon. But so far, the Antarctic Treaty has worked fairly well.

"If we can look at what's worked and what hasn't in terms of preventing conflicts and protecting the environment, then we can apply those in space," says Nesvold.