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Studio: Life Space Journey

From humble DIY beginnings, two Melbourne brothers start a furniture and design practice that’s “willing to get its hands dirty.”

The Spun range of steel and timber dining tables and stools by LifeSpace Journey.

Justin and Glenn Lamont of LifeSpace Journey.

With a practical , collaborative, problem-and-solution approach, there should be no limit to what design outcome can be achieved,” explains Glenn Lamont, co-founder of Melbourne studio Life Space Journey . “This belief is something we feel has the potential to lead us down lots of different paths, from quality housing to lighting and furniture, from fashion to film. We see the potential for Life Space Journey to span all of these areas.”

Established in 2009, the foundations of this evolving practice were laid a decade ago when brothers Justin and Glenn Lamont worked together on commissioned paintings and artworks. When Justin designed and built his own home in the inner-western Melbourne suburb of Seddon in 2007, he also designed a number of lighting and furniture items for it. For the duo’s next project, a full renovation of Glenn’s Kensington home, the pair decided the house would have nothing off the shelf. “From furniture and lighting to doors and fireplaces, we wanted it to be a statement of what we’re passionate about – creating clever spaces and developing thoughtful, interesting furniture and lighting to complement them,” explains Glenn.

A steel outdoor firepit was one of the pieces that started LifeSpace Journey.

Gaining recognition for the two residential projects, along with the fittings within them such as a circular steel outdoor firepit, the pair has gone on to develop LifeSpaceJourney into what Justin describes as “a niche, freestyle practice that enjoys an easy-flowing exchange of ideas and isn’t afraid to get its hands dirty.” For their most recent project, a fitout for Seddon cafe Common Galaxia, Justin designed metalwork for fourteen tables and thirty chairs, bench seating, lighting, shelving, storage and drinks trolleys. “The job was a perfect fit for us as it just unfolded as we went, and pieces developed here are forming our 2012–13 range,” he says.

Glenn says that their process is organic and evolves from constant interaction and conversation. “We have worked with many affiliated trades, as each job brings its unique challenges. When you work to overcome them, you come out the other end with valuable new relationships and knowledge, which often results in more possibilities.” The pair’s successful Spun series evolved in this way – the metal fabrication process developed initially to produce the Spun milking stool and bar stools led to the creation of a pendant lighting range that has gained attention around Australia and internationally.

The Spun range of steel and timber dining tables and stools by LifeSpace Journey.

For both brothers, LifeSpaceJourney is a very personal pursuit, as both work full-time in non-design-related professions. This gives them a freedom they believe would not be possible if design was their only source of income. “We don’t need to be profit-driven or cut corners. Our drive comes simply from an enjoyment of making things,” says Justin. “We also see the wealth of mediocre offerings out there and want to offer a different option to those who are interested. It’s the merger of good design and workmanship with good detailing that can make change, one product, or one project at a time.”

Published online: 19 Feb 2013 Words: Matthew Hurst

Houses, December 2012

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9 comments:

Whoa, what talented guys! I love everything - yes to the gold front door, I want one now too. Love the art, and the touches of copper and yellow, it's all very cool. x

Wow, fantastica vivienda

Thanks! Happy weekend x

Wow what a home...I love the simplicity of the objects chosen! Ergo - Blog

Thanks Chloe, so nice to have you stop by! x

Any ideas on where to find a coloured kitchen mixer tap? I need one myself and I'm struggling!

I can only find coloured basin tapware, but you could contact these suppliers to see if they do kitchen mixers - see links below. I'm wondering if the yellow one by LifeSpaceJourney has been custom powder coated? You could always contact them direct via their website to ask. http://www.dedece.com.au/products/Vola/Tapware/Basin/Vola-colours/3040 http://www.astrawalker.com.au/A6902YELLOW Good luck. I'd love to know how you get on and if I do come across any, I'll let you know! x

So different! Love it! Have a nice weekend! hx

Thanks Hege! You have a lovely weekend too x

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Life Space Journey Catalog

LifeSpaceJourney is a niche design and manufacturing practice located in Melbourne's inner west. Our core values are built on supporting local skills, creating quality products and providing personal service. We take a hands-on approach to design and problem solving through observation and learning, understanding materials, amalgamating trades and most importantly connecting with people. We take pride in providing real time service and results-driven outcomes on time and on budget.

LifeSpaceJourney has a broad knowledge and an ever evolving range of industry connections across the different fields of metal fabrication, woodworking, plastics, leather work, ceramics and glass work. Every project brings with it unique challenges - on overcoming these challenges we emerge with valuable new skills, relationships and knowledge.

Latest projects with products from Life Space Journey

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Where to Find Australia’s Best Inner-City Bakeries

By Katya Wachtel

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Full Moon chair and Hybrid chair

Full Moon chair and Spun stools

Spun stools

Tucked away in Seddon is one of Melbourne’s most enigmatic design brands, LifeSpaceJourney. Launched in October 2010, it has been making ripples in the wider design community ever since, with its range of unique furnishings and bespoke objects, tables, seating and lighting.

“The essence of LifeSpaceJourney is in our own small way to push back against mass consumerism,” explains Justin Lamont, who established the brand with his brother Glenn. “We try as hard as we can to create unique products. The idea is that every piece is highly functional yet somehow curious and interesting as an object in its own right. It’s about capturing the essence of what a timeless piece is.”

From the unconventional typography or shuttlecock stools, to the dining setting with hand-spun metal tops, LifeSpaceJourney’s range is defined by simple lines and streamlined silhouettes. A background in art and sculpture clearly informs the direction in which the Lamont brothers travel. Passionate about sustainability and a return to local relationships, LifeSpaceJourney’s designs incorporate timber and recycled materials sourced from local suppliers. They also work with local industries to handcraft their range.

And, remember if you can’t quite find what you’re after; LifeSpaceJourney creates custom designs.

Phone: 0438 524 505

Website: lifespacejourney.com

We do not seek or accept payment from the cafes, restaurants, bars and shops listed in the Directory – inclusion is at our discretion. Venue profiles are written by independent freelancers paid by Broadsheet .

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© Getty Images

Everything you need to know about space travel (almost)

We're a long way from home...

Paul Parsons

When did we first start exploring space?

The first human-made object to go into space was a German V2 missile , launched on a test flight in 1942. Although uncrewed, it reached an altitude of 189km (117 miles).

Former Nazi rocket scientists were later recruited by both America and Russia (often at gunpoint in the latter case), where they were instrumental in developing Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) – rockets capable of carrying nuclear weapons from one side of the planet to the other.

It was these super-missiles that formed the basis for the space programmes of both post-war superpowers. As it happened, Russia was the first to reach Earth orbit, when it launched the uncrewed Sputnik 1 in October 1957, followed a month later by Sputnik 2, carrying the dog Laika – the first live animal in space.

The USA sent its first uncrewed satellite, Explorer 1, into orbit soon after, in January 1958. A slew of robotic spaceflights followed, from both sides of the Atlantic, before Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin piloted Vostok 1 into orbit on 12 April 1961, to become the first human being in space . And from there the space race proper began, culminating in Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin becoming the first people to walk on the Moon as part of NASA's Apollo programme .

Why is space travel important?

Space exploration is the future. It satisfies the human urge to explore and to travel, and in the years and decades to come it could even provide our species with new places to call home – especially relevant now, as Earth becomes increasingly crowded .

Extending our reach into space is also necessary for the advancement of science. Space telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope and probes to the distant worlds of the Solar System are continually updating, and occasionally revolutionising, our understanding of astronomy and physics.

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But there are also some very practical reasons, such as mining asteroids for materials that are extremely rare here on Earth.

One example is the huge reserve of the chemical isotope helium-3 thought to be locked away in the soil on the surface of the Moon . This isotope is a potential fuel for future nuclear fusion reactors – power stations that tap into the same source of energy as the Sun. Unlike other fusion fuels, helium-3 gives off no hard-to-contain and deadly neutron radiation.

However, for this to happen the first challenge to overcome is how to build a base on the Moon. In 2019, China's Chang’e 4 mission marked the beginning of a new space race to conquer the Moon, signalling their intent to build a permanent lunar base , while the NASA Artemis mission plans to build a space station, called Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway , providing a platform to ferry astronauts to the Moon's surface.

Could humans travel into interstellar space and how would we get there?

It’s entirely feasible that human explorers will visit the furthest reaches of our Solar System. The stars, however, are another matter. Interstellar space is so vast that it takes light – the fastest thing we know of in the Universe – years, centuries and millennia to traverse it. Faster-than-light travel may be possible one day, but is unlikely to become a reality in our lifetimes.

It’s not impossible that humans might one day cross this cosmic gulf, though it won’t be easy. The combustion-powered rocket engines of today certainly aren’t up to the job – they just don’t use fuel efficiently enough. Instead, interstellar spacecraft may create a rocket-like propulsion jet using electric and magnetic fields. This so-called ‘ ion drive ’ technology has already been tested aboard uncrewed Solar System probes.

Another possibility is to push spacecraft off towards the stars using the light from a high-powered laser . A consortium of scientists calling themselves Breakthrough Starshot is already planning to send a flotilla of tiny robotic probes to our nearest star, Proxima Centauri, using just this method.

Though whether human astronauts could survive such punishing acceleration, or the decades-long journey through deep space, remains to be seen.

How do we benefit from space exploration?

Pushing forward the frontiers of science is the stated goal of many space missions . But even the development of space travel technology itself can lead to unintended yet beneficial ‘spin-off’ technologies with some very down-to-earth applications.

Notable spin-offs from the US space programme, NASA, include memory foam mattresses, artificial hearts, and the lubricant spray WD-40. Doubtless, there are many more to come.

Read more about space exploration:

• The next giant leaps: The UK missions getting us to the Moon
• Move over, Mars: why we should look further afield for future human colonies
• Everything you need to know about the Voyager mission
• 6 out-of-this-world experiments recreating space on Earth

Space exploration also instils a sense of wonder, it reminds us that there are issues beyond our humdrum planet and its petty squabbles, and without doubt it helps to inspire each new generation of young scientists. It’s also an insurance policy. We’re now all too aware that global calamities can and do happen – for instance, climate change and the giant asteroid that smashed into the Earth 65 million years ago, leading to the total extinction of the dinosaurs .

The lesson for the human species is that we keep all our eggs in one basket at our peril. On the other hand, a healthy space programme, and the means to travel to other worlds, gives us an out.

Is space travel dangerous?

In short, yes – very. Reaching orbit means accelerating up to around 28,000kph (17,000mph, or 22 times the speed of sound ). If anything goes wrong at that speed, it’s seldom good news.

Then there’s the growing cloud of space junk to contend with in Earth's orbit – defunct satellites, discarded rocket stages and other detritus – all moving just as fast. A five-gram bolt hitting at orbital speed packs as much energy as a 200kg weight dropped from the top of an 18-storey building.

And getting to space is just the start of the danger. The principal hazard once there is cancer-producing radiation – the typical dose from one day in space is equivalent to what you’d receive over an entire year back on Earth, thanks to the planet’s atmosphere and protective magnetic field.

Add to that the icy cold airless vacuum , the need to bring all your own food and water, plus the effects of long-duration weightlessness on bone density, the brain and muscular condition – including that of the heart – and it soon becomes clear that venturing into space really isn’t for the faint-hearted.

When will space travel be available to everyone?

It’s already happening – that is, assuming your pockets are deep enough. The first self-funded ‘space tourist’ was US businessman Dennis Tito, who in 2001 spent a week aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for the cool sum of $20m (£15m).

Virgin Galactic has long been promising to take customers on short sub-orbital hops into space – where passengers get to experience rocket propulsion and several minutes of weightlessness, before gliding back to a runway landing on Earth, all for $250k (£190k). In late July 2020, the company unveiled the finished cabin in its SpaceShipTwo vehicle, suggesting that commercial spaceflights may begin shortly.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s SpaceX , which in May 2020 became the first private company to launch a human crew to Earth orbit aboard the Crew Dragon , plans to offer stays on the ISS for $35k (£27k) per night. SpaceX is now prototyping its huge Starship vehicle , which is designed to take 100 passengers from Earth to as far afield as Mars for around $20k (£15k) per head. Musk stated in January that he hoped to be operating 1,000 Starships by 2050.

10 Short Lessons in Space Travel by Paul Parsons is out now (£9.99, Michael O'Mara)

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Why go to space.

The reasons to explore the universe are as vast and varied as the reasons to explore the forests, the mountains, or the sea. Since the dawn of humanity, people have explored to learn about the world around them, find new resources, and improve their existence.

Why We Go to Space

At NASA, we explore the secrets of the universe for the benefit of all, creating new opportunities and inspiring the world through discovery.

NASA’s exploration vision is anchored in providing value for humanity by answering some of the most fundamental questions: Why are we here? How did it all begin? Are we all alone? What comes next? And, as an addendum to that: How can we make our lives better?

NASA was created more than half a century ago to begin answering some of these questions. Since then, space exploration has been one of the most unifying, borderless human endeavors to date. An international partnership of five space agencies from 15 countries operates the International Space Station, and two dozen countries have signed the Artemis Accords, signaling their commitment to shared values for long-term human exploration and research at the Moon. Through space exploration, we gain a new perspective to study Earth and the solar system. We advance new technologies that improve our daily lives, and we inspire a new generation of artists, thinkers, tinkerers, engineers, and scientists.  

Benefits to Humanity

Space exploration unites the world to inspire the next generation, make ground-breaking discoveries, and create new opportunities.

Technologies and missions we develop for human spaceflight have thousands of applications on Earth, boosting the economy, creating new career paths, and advancing everyday technologies all around us.

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Benefits to Science

The pursuit of discovery drives NASA to develop missions that teach us about Earth, the solar system, and the universe around us.

Science at NASA answers questions as practical as hurricane formation, as enticing as the prospect of lunar resources, as surprising as behavior in weightlessness, and as profound as the origin of the Universe.

Unite with us on our journey to explore.

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Could we take the entire solar system on a voyage through space?

To transport our planet across the universe, we would need to bring the whole solar system to sustain life on Earth – on this episode of Dead Planets Society, our hosts contemplate how to shepherd all that baggage on this scenic journey

By Leah Crane and Chelsea Whyte

6 August 2024

Dead Planets Society is a podcast that takes outlandish ideas about how to tinker with the cosmos – from snapping the moon in half to causing a gravitational wave apocalypse – and subjects them to the laws of physics to see how they fare. Listen on Apple , Spotify or on our podcast page .

It is time for an epic journey. On the season finale of Dead Planets Society, our hosts Chelsea Whyte and Leah Crane are sending Earth on a voyage through the cosmos – and taking the entire solar system along for the ride.

After all, sending Earth across the universe without its home star would result in a dark, cold trip and the demise of all life on the planet. That would render the journey moot, as there would be nobody around to see the wonders of the cosmos, so we will have to take the sun with us. The rest of the planets are simply a bonus.

Obviously, moving the sun is not an easy task, especially if you want to keep the planets orbiting around it. That’s why astrophysicist Jay Farihi at University College London joined this episode to help figure out the problem.

One possibility is to build a colossal warp drive – a self-contained bubble of space-time that moves by warping the space in front of it. But these hypothetical devices are renowned for potentially allowing faster-than-light travel, and the key to keeping all the planets bound to the sun is to move slowly. Plus, we don’t know how to build one.

Another option is to place a black hole just in front of the sun to accelerate it slightly. The black hole would have to be moved along with the sun, or perhaps a string of black holes could pass the solar system along in a cosmic relay race.

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These options are particularly unrealistic, but there are more plausible ideas – not doable, but at least more feasible than a solar-system-sized warp drive. These include a set of enormous solar sails, or potentially placing an indestructible straw inside the sun to funnel out its high-pressure insides in a jet of plasma.

There are many places in the universe that our hosts would love to visit with the newly mobile solar system, from stellar clusters to nebulae to a supermassive black hole. All we need is a few technological impossibilities to make it happen.

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The twin Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft are exploring where nothing from Earth has flown before. Continuing on their more-than-45-year journey since their 1977 launches, they each are much farther away from Earth and the Sun than Pluto.

Quick Facts

Voyager 2 launched on August 20, 1977, from Cape Canaveral, Florida aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket. On September 5, Voyager 1 launched, also from Cape Canaveral aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket.

Between them, Voyager 1 and 2 explored all the giant planets of our outer solar system, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune; 48 of their moons; and the unique system of rings and magnetic fields those planets possess.

The Voyager spacecraft are the third and fourth human spacecraft to fly beyond all the planets in our solar system. Pioneers 10 and 11 preceded Voyager in outstripping the gravitational attraction of the Sun.

Voyager 1 crossed the termination shock in December 2004 at about 94 AU from the Sun while Voyager 2 crossed it in August 2007 at about 84 AU.

Both Voyager spacecrafts carry a greeting to any form of life, should that be encountered. The message is carried by a phonograph record - -a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.

In August 2012, Voyager 1 made the historic entry into interstellar space, the region between stars, filled with material ejected by the death of nearby stars millions of years ago. Voyager 2 entered interstellar space on November 5, 2018 and scientists hope to learn more about this region. Both spacecraft are still sending scientific information about their surroundings through the Deep Space Network, or DSN.

The primary mission was the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn. After making a string of discoveries there — such as active volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io and intricacies of Saturn's rings — the mission was extended. Voyager 2 went on to explore Uranus and Neptune, and is still the only spacecraft to have visited those outer planets. The adventurers' current mission, the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM), will explore the outermost edge of the Sun's domain. And beyond.

Learn about Voyagers' mission status: where they are in the space, the time required to communicate with them, and a lot more.

Learn about the five science investigation teams, the four operating instruments on-board and the science data being returned to Earth.

The Voyager spacecraft have been exploring for decades. Dive deep into the journey with this interactive timeline.

Interact in 3D. Take a deeper look at the sophisticated systems and instruments that deliver the stunning science and images.

Interstellar Mission

The mission objective of the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM) is to extend the NASA exploration of the solar system beyond the neighborhood of the outer planets to the outer limits of the Sun's sphere of influence, and possibly beyond.

Planetary Voyage

The twin spacecraft Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched by NASA in separate months in the summer of 1977 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. As originally designed, the Voyagers were to conduct closeup studies of Jupiter and Saturn, Saturn's rings, and the larger moons of the two planets.

Questions, answers and interviews that explain the Voyager mission.

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December 6, 2023

12 min read

In the Search for Life beyond Earth, NASA Dreams Big for a Future Space Telescope

Astronomers are moving ahead in planning NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory, a telescope designed to answer the ultimate question: Are we alone in the universe?

By Jonathan O'Callaghan

An artist’s concept comparing Earth and the sun ( left ) with an Earth-like exoplanet around a sunlike star ( right ). NASA is now planning a future space telescope, the Habitable Worlds Observatory, that could image such worlds and seek signs of life upon them.

NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

The first steps to solve the millennia-old mystery of our true place in the universe happened, of all places, on a brisk and early Tuesday morning in the unremarkable conference room of a hotel in Washington, D.C. Here a team of legendary heroes assembled on Halloween—Gandalf and a Star Trek captain among them. Yet these were not just costumes donned by trick-or-treating scientists. They were a fitting metaphor for the 60 astronomers chosen to begin one of the grandest tasks imaginable, not just in space science but across the spectrum of human history: to design a telescope that can find, or refute, signs of life on planets orbiting other stars. Such a goal seems almost fanciful. Can we actually build a multibillion-dollar observatory with a good chance of discovering aliens on worlds beyond the solar system? The answer appears to be that we can, and if a growing list of pivotal decisions can be surmounted, we will. Life may be abundant in the universe or it may be incredibly rare—learning which is closer to the truth would be epochal. By this NASA-led project’s end, the aim is to “have enough observations to know either way,” says Courtney Dressing of the University of California, Berkeley.

Called the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) and targeted for launch around 2040, this would be by far the most ambitious and sophisticated telescope yet built. But its primary goal is almost childishly simple—to hunt for life on 25 Earth-like worlds. “This is the first telescope ever built that will be able to really address, in a scientific way, how common life is beyond the solar system,” says Marc Postman of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md. “It could be zero percent or 100 percent or somewhere in between. We really have no measurement at all.” The journey is in its infancy; if it were to be imagined as a 100-meter race to launch, we would be “putting on our shoes,” Dressing says. But the prize that awaits at the finish line is enrapturing, a cultural shift in our understanding of our place in the cosmos. “It could be a society-changing discovery,” Postman says.

HWO will usher in an age unlike any other, one where we truly know Earth’s place among the stars. The path ahead, however, is fraught with challenges, not least the immense technological and political hurdles toward building such a machine. Can we solve them all to take our first glimpses of other living worlds? The journey to find and study alien Earths will span generations—but with their latest meeting, HWO’s architects have now taken its most significant first step.

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Super-Hubble

If alien life does exist, it has not made itself easily known. We have hunted for signals from intelligent civilizations, scoured the worlds of our solar system and tentatively probed some planetary atmospheres across interstellar gulfs, but a clear indicator of cosmic neighbors eludes us for now. To date astronomers have discovered more than 5,500 worlds orbiting other stars. The majority of these have tended to be worlds inhospitably heavy and hot. The handful close to Earth in mass and size push the boundaries of plausibility for harboring life as we know it; they reside in tight orbits around red dwarf stars much smaller than our sun. For a true test of life’s cosmic prospects, we need to find and study planets eminently like Earth orbiting stars like our sun. “This has been percolating in the community for a very long time,” Dressing says.

In 2021 the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine instructed NASA to begin work on a machine to achieve this goal as part of its decadal survey, which gives the space agency its marching orders every 10 years. The decadal survey committee focused on two proposed telescopes up to the task—one called the Large UV/Optical/IR Surveyor (LUVOIR) and the other, Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx)—which its final report combined into a single idea. The report instructed NASA to build a telescope that could observe in infrared, optical and ultraviolet light and “search for biosignatures from a robust number of about 25 habitable-zone planets.” Through the telescope’s optics, each world would be at best a lone, delicate dot of light—this is seemingly meager, but it would be enough to study the chemistry of the planets’ atmospheres for signs of life via gases such as oxygen and methane at a total estimated cost of no more than $11 billion in 2020 dollars. Mark Clampin, the Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., later gave this hybrid telescope its current name. “The one name I thought really captured the spirit of what we’re doing is the Habitable Worlds Observatory,” Clampin says. “This is the mandate we were given.”

Construction of the telescope is years away. In September 2023, however, NASA selected a group of about 60 scientists to begin planning a high-level “parts list” for HWO and its key components. The teams, one called the Science, Technology, Architecture Review Team (START) and the other the Technical Assessment Group (TAG), are expected across the next year to hold formal public meetings every few months alongside smaller-scale, more frequent intragroup meetings as well as broader discussions with the wider astronomy community. “It’ll be a busy year,” says Megan Ansdell, HWO’s program scientist at NASA Headquarters.

A three-day event in Washington, D.C., that started on October 31 was the first of these planning meetings—the starting gun in the decadal-paced race to make HWO a reality. “I want to encourage you all to breathe.... Just breathe for a moment,” said John O’Meara of the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, co-chair of START, who aptly later donned the Gandalf costume, on the first day of the meeting. “It took a long time to get here. It’s going to take a long time to go to the next step.... We’re going to be working together for a long time.” While the total number of both virtual and in-person attendees at the jubilant meeting numbered around 200, “it’s going to take hundreds if not thousands of people to get this done right,” O’Meara said. “I don’t know when this observatory is going to launch. But I do know I promised my wife I would retire when it does.”

A key theme of the planning meeting was that despite HWO’s name, the observatory should offer more than glimpses of light from putative mirror Earths. The immensity of the optics required to image exo-Earth analogues would make HWO supremely useful for many other astronomical tasks, too—similar to its workhorse predecessors such as NASA’s Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). “Studying dark matter is a possibility, the interstellar medium, galaxies—pretty much every aspect of astrophysics,” says Lee Feinberg of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. “This will be a general-class observatory.” Making that message clear will be key, said Jane Rigby of NASA Goddard, JWST’s senior project scientist, in a talk on day two of the meeting. “We have a lot of work to do,” she said. “We should stop calling it ‘Habitable Worlds’ because that [name] tells the general astrophysics community, ‘This is not for you.’” Postman describes it simply: “This is really like a ‘super-Hubble,’” he says.

Pale Blue Dot

The vision of HWO coalescing in its planners’ heads looks like something between JWST and Hubble in design. The telescope’s main mirror will likely be divided into honeycomblike segments—like that of JWST—allowing it to be folded up into one of several large new rockets under development, such as SpaceX’s Starship or Blue Origin’s New Glenn. “We see segmented as the way to go,” Clampin says. The mirror’s size—which greatly influences HWO’s ultimate acuity—is as yet unfinalized but will at minimum match JWST’s 6.5 meters (21 feet) and could scale up to reach 9 meters (30 feet). Like JWST, the telescope may sport a vast deployable sunshield to block incoming light from our home star and will be stationed at a deep-space locale 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. Unlike JWST, however, which probes deeply into the infrared to see the faint thermal glow of ancient galaxies, HWO won’t require extreme cryogenic cooling to perform its observations. Instead of an unfurling sunshield, HWO’s mirror may be stored within a barrel-like tube, like Hubble’s. This shroud might solve one of the most worrisome issues faced by JWST: micrometeorite strikes have dinged and dented its large exposed mirror. “A lot of people are thinking that [shroud] looks good,” says Aki Roberge, associate director for technology and strategy in astrophysics at NASA Goddard.

Although its launch remains many years away, HWO’s key design features are already coming into focus. The telescope probably won’t be as big as the 15-meter LUVOIR concept illustrated here, but it will likely include a large segmented mirror and perhaps also a sprawling protective sunshield. HWO’s architecture could even continue evolving after launch; the telescope is designed to allow servicing missions for major upgrades and repairs. Credit:  NASA GSFC

HWO’s greatest technical challenge—imaging an Earth-like planet—is really twofold: the telescope needs not only a method to remove the otherwise-overwhelming glare of a planet’s star but also a way to hold itself breathlessly still to keep a targeted world in its sight. JWST was designed to exhibit a targeting drift as scant as one twentieth of a micrometer—a micrometer is a millionth of a meter and a fraction of the width of a human hair. The telescope has exceeded those capabilities by a factor of 10, Feinberg says, meaning that it is stable to within a strand of human DNA. Incredibly, HWO will still need to be “maybe a factor of 1,000 better,” he says, with a stability of up to tens of picometers—a unit of measurement that is a trillionth of a meter, less than the radius of a hydrogen atom. HWO will not need to constantly be so steady, but it will need to use this ultrastability mode when it looks at other Earths. A set of deformable optics—some of the telescope’s mirrors will be able to flex ever so slightly to eradicate any errors—will be one of several crucial tools to achieve the feat, HWO’s planners say.

To record a single photon of reflected light from an alien twin of Earth, HWO first needs to filter out circa 10 billion photons from the planet’s sunlike star. A coronagraph—essentially a small precision-shaped disk in the telescope’s optics to cover the star yet allow planetary light to pass through—will likely be HWO’s main way to achieve this Herculean task. HWO’s notional coronagraph would be limited to a relatively small swath of wavelengths—tuned for optimal sensitivity to Earth-sized worlds orbiting in the habitable zone or “Goldilocks zone” of sunlike stars, the circumstellar region where temperatures may be neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, set for launch in 2027, will include a technological precursor for HWO’s coronagraph, albeit one that limits Roman to imaging planets larger than Jupiter . The performance of Roman’s coronagraph will provide crucial information for HWO’s grander aspirations. “The coronagraph [on Roman] is a technology demonstration,” Dressing says. “For HWO it’s a critical instrument.”

Another way to suppress starlight would be to use a giant, sunflower-shaped “starshade” formation-flying in space far ahead of HWO’s gaze to cast a deep, planet-revealing shadow across its optics. But a separate spacecraft is a much more complex and unwieldy starlight-suppression solution than a coronagraph and thus is unlikely to be part of HWO from the get-go. Instead most experts see a starshade as a possible post-launch add-on. “You can imagine launching HWO with a coronagraph, doing initial observations and then later launching a starshade,” Dressing says. That would allow planets to be seen further out from their stars and in more detail than with a coronagraph alone.

With either of these technologies HWO should be able to deliver pictures of potentially habitable alien worlds akin to the famous Pale Blue Dot image of Earth taken by the departing Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1990 at the request of famed astronomer Carl Sagan. Exactly which systems HWO would target remains undecided. There are about 500 sunlike stars within 100 light-years of Earth—which is about as far as HWO’s life-finding survey seems likely to see. In January 2023 Eric Mamajek, deputy program chief scientist of NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program in California, co-authored a list of the most promising stars to observe within this volume of space. “I suspect that most of the top 50 or so have a very high probability of making it to the final survey list,” he says.

Settling on a target list is complicated by the fact that only HWO may be able to detect Earths in habitable zones around these stars, meaning that it would act as both surveyor and scrutinizer; no other presently planned telescope comes anywhere close to having similar capabilities. This does raise the question of whether enough targets can be found in the years ahead to serve as HWO’s raison d’être, but for the time being most astronomers appear unconcerned. Proxy measurements can still winnow down HWO’s targets. “If there’s a Jupiter right in the middle of the Goldilocks zone, you probably don’t want to bother looking for an Earth there,” says Bruce Macintosh, director of University of California Observatories at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “But it’s not actually that critical to mission success to know this star has an Earth and this one doesn’t, because the best Earth detector will be the mission we’re building”—HWO.

Renaissance

Worries over where, exactly, to point the telescope are part of what may be the project’s biggest challenge of all: ensuring unflagging support for the decades required to see it through, both from the public and from Congress, which will ultimately supply HWO with funding. “We need champions at [NASA] Headquarters, in Congress, in public and in industry so that when things are going tough, they’re talking on our behalf,” said Matthew Bolcar of NASA Goddard in a talk on day two of the HWO planning meeting. Heavily discussed were lessons to be learned from JWST, which was plagued by embarrassing and potentially ruinous budget overruns and schedule slips. In an effort to avoid those same mistakes, HWO is the crown jewel of a new NASA program called the Great Observatory Mission and Technology Maturation Program (GOMAP), which will carefully manage the budget and progress of the agency’s future large space telescope projects.

JWST’s ultimate success in spite of its setbacks, however, may be cause for optimism. “In the decade before we launched.... I can’t count how many people were like, ‘This thing’s never going to work,’” Rigby said in her talk; but, she said, the observatory’s above-expectations performance shows that “this is a doable thing.” And, many of HWO’s planners eagerly note, it will have a major advantage over JWST in that it will be designed from the start to be serviceable, just like Hubble. This means robots or astronauts could visit the telescope to periodically give it new leases on life, making repairs and swapping out instruments “sort of IKEA-style,” Roberge says.

If the technology and science behind HWO can be finalized, funding for the telescope can be secured and support for the project can be maintained, the payoff is almost unfathomable. In its study of some two dozen Earths in our corner of the galaxy, HWO will tell us if any of these worlds could support life or perhaps still do today. In the most wildly optimistic scenarios it could even see signs of technological civilizations, such as the night lights from notional alien metropolises or clear indicators of industrial pollution in an alien atmosphere. “You might use this telescope to look for ‘technosignatures’—evidence for not just simple life like bacteria but advanced life capable of building machines, industry, electric power, all of that,” Postman says. Such a possibility may seem far-fetched but remains at the edge of technical feasibility—and the possibility of success in such searches will forever remain zero if they are never undertaken.

On the other hand, HWO may scrutinize its targets and find none to contain anything we recognize as a sign of life, primitive or otherwise. Such an outcome would be disappointing but no less useful. It would be the best evidence yet that Earth truly is special in a cosmic sense—a precious oasis in a seemingly lifeless pocket of the Milky Way. “You would have a good upper limit on how rare life is right now,” Postman says. A robust detection of a living world, Dressing speculates, could drastically change our very culture, spurring a “whole new renaissance of art and literature”—not to mention even greater investments in more far-seeing space telescopes. Conversely, a failure to find anything might seem depressing but wouldn’t really be a “failure” at all—we humans would once again find ourselves seemingly solitary atop some cosmic pinnacle in a place of profound privilege we’d do well to better nurture and respect. “Either of those outcomes would be very interesting from both a scientific and philosophical point of view,” Postman says. We are lacing up our shoes at the start of that race to the ultimate prize. A podium of unbeatable knowledge awaits.

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Since the first astronauts spent time in space, scientists have known that space travel affects the human body in strange ways. Muscle and bone mass decrease; telomeres, the protective end caps on chromosomes, shorten; and the risk of conditions usually associated with old age, such as cancers, cataracts and cardiovascular disease, ticks up.

Why the human body should decline faster in space is still largely a mystery, but one that researchers are tackling with increasing urgency as civilian space travel becomes more feasible.

Their discoveries could not only allow future space travelers to stay healthier and journey farther, but also treat a variety of ailments in Earth-bound humans.

In a recent study that involved sending muscle samples to the International Space Station, some 250 miles above Earth, researchers from Stanford Medicine found that the lack of gravity in space impairs the normal regenerative ability of skeletal muscle.

The samples were grown from muscle cells donated by healthy volunteers on scaffolds of collagen to resemble the bundled structure of muscle fibers. They spent seven days growing in space, then were frozen until their return to Earth.

The researchers found intriguing similarities between muscle that had spent a week in microgravity (gravity aboard the International Space Station is about 0.1% of gravity on Earth) and muscle in older adults with sarcopenia, a muscle-wasting condition that develops over decades.

The impaired regeneration could contribute to why astronauts' muscles weaken even with regular exercise.

"Microgravity is almost like an accelerated disease-forming platform and environment," said Ngan Huang , PhD, associate professor of cardiothoracic surgery and senior author of the study published recently in Stem Cell Reports . "It's important to understand how microgravity is affecting different tissues in the body, with skeletal muscle being one of the most essential ones because of how much of it we have in our bodies."

Most of the aging effects astronauts experience in space, such as muscle and bone loss, can reverse once they return home.

Huang's team also tested drugs that partially prevented these impairments in the muscle samples, which could benefit terrestrial seniors and space travelers -- perhaps even senior space travelers -- alike.

Markers of aging

"It's difficult to do clinical research on aging, because you cannot tell the FDA that you've come up with a drug that can prolong life by five to 10 years -- it's very difficult to design that trial for logistical reasons," said Joseph Wu , MD, PhD, director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute, the Simon H. Stertzer, MD, Professor and professor of medicine and of radiology.

Instead, researchers focus on specific markers associated with aging, such as cognitive decline, walking distance or sarcopenia, Wu said. Space provides a unique opportunity to study these markers on a shorter timeline.

His lab is separately investigating microgravity's impact on the heart and has sent three batches of samples to the International Space Station: heart muscle cells in 2016, 3D-structured heart tissue in 2020 and heart organoids (simplified mini-organs made up of different cell types) last year.

They've found that microgravity causes weakening of heart tissue, similar to that seen in patients with heart failure. They are analyzing the results from the 2023 launch , in which half the samples were treated with drugs to counter these effects.

Impaired regeneration

Huang's team found significant genetic changes in the skeletal muscle samples that had been to space, with over 100 genes upregulated and nearly 300 downregulated compared with identical samples kept on Earth. The changes indicated a shift toward more lipid and fatty acid metabolism and more inclination toward cell death. Certain muscle cells, known as myotubes, became shorter and thinner in microgravity.

These changes pointed to impaired regeneration and showed some similarities to sarcopenia, the muscle-wasting condition that affects 10% of people over the age of 60.

"It's believed that with every decade of life, you start losing some percentage of your muscle mass and gaining body fat," Huang said. "It becomes much more apparent in the later stages of life, over the age of 60."

Even Huang was surprised by how quickly these changes happened in space. "It's notable that in just seven days in microgravity, you see these profound effects," she said.

Some of the samples, infused with drugs known to promote regeneration (insulin-like growth factor-1 or 15-hydroxyprostaglandin dehydrogenase inhibitor), were less impaired.

Ultimately, Huang, who is also a principal investigator at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System, hopes to find ways to enhance muscle regeneration to heal traumatic muscle injuries, like those many veterans suffer in combat.

"When we have small muscle tears, which happen with exercise, or some type of mild injury, muscle is normally quite regenerative," she said. "The muscle itself harbors stem cells that turn into what we call muscle progenitor cells. And those cells give rise to new muscle."

But if a large chunk of muscle is destroyed in a traumatic injury, that muscle doesn't grow back.

The new study proves that space can be a valuable platform for testing therapies that boost muscle regeneration, Huang said.

Other space dangers

While it's not yet clear exactly how microgravity leads to these profound changes, what's certain is that all life on Earth evolved in the presence of gravity.

"It's one of the foundational stimuli that every life form is subjected to," Huang said. "It's not until we suddenly take it away that we realize it's so important."

Though Wu is confident that microgravity is the major factor in these studies, he said we can't ignore other challenges of space travel.

The stress of being launched into space then returning to Earth might affect the tissue samples, for example. And in space, cosmic radiation ­-- high-energy, charged particles produced by stars, including our sun -- can penetrate space capsules and cause damage. 

To isolate the effects of microgravity, Huang plans to try the same experiments in a device that simulates microgravity -- a random positioning machine that spins samples on two axes simultaneously, generating a sense of weightlessness.

(In fact, gravity at the relatively low altitude of the International Space Station is only slightly lower than on Earth's surface. The microgravity aboard the station is largely due to the velocity of its orbit around Earth, creating a constant sense of freefall.)

For humans to eventually embark on years-long journeys to distant planets, scientists are looking into hibernation, inspired by the ability of squirrels and bears to sleep through long winters without eating. Hibernating space travelers might be able to stall aging during a long trek.

"If you can address microgravity, cosmic radiation and hibernation, then you can imagine a future in which an astronaut or civilian can hop from one planet to another planet to another planet," Wu said.

Along the way, researchers could find ways to slow aging, treat radiation-induced toxicity in cancer patients or even allow terminally ill patients to hibernate until treatments are found.

"It sounds like science fiction," Wu said. "But 100 to 200 years from now, this could all be possible."

For more information

This story was originally published by Stanford Medicine SCOPE . 

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Space 4 all community.

Through the Space 4 All initiative, we’re on a mission to create an inclusive and vibrant community that shapes the future of space exploration. We want to raise awareness and actively involve people from all walks of life—especially those with disabilities—in this exciting journey. By bringing together diverse voices, we’re showing that space truly belongs to everyone. Together we can build a network that makes space exploration more inclusive, innovative, and accessible.

Space exploration has always captured the human imagination, but at Space 4 All, we believe it’s time to take this journey together, as a truly inclusive community. With the selection of the first British ESA parastronaut candidate, we've seized the unique opportunity to redefine who gets to explore the cosmos. Our goal is to build a community that not only supports and learns from this pioneering mission but also broadens the conversation about accessibility in space.

Space 4 All envisions a world where the vastness of space is accessible to everyone. By spreading awareness and building a strong community, we seek to ensure that people with disabilities are not just participants but leaders in the next era of space exploration. We are committed to challenging perceptions and proving that with the right support and innovation, space can be a frontier for all.

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Our work focuses on spreading awareness, facilitating community building, and creating a collaborative environment for dialogue and innovation. Here’s how we’re making an impact:

• Community Engagement Workshops : We’ve brought together para-athletes, para-aviators, their coaches and supporting organizations, as well as space and disability experts to share their experiences and insights. These workshops have not only spotlighted the unique challenges faced by individuals with disabilities but also inspired new solutions that could be adapted for space missions. Visit the tab below for more information.
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SpaceX aims to launch Polaris Dawn crew on daring mission this week despite iffy weather

SpaceX is making another attempt to get Polaris Dawn — a risky mission that will send four civilians into the radiation belts and on a historic spacewalk — off the ground this week.

The daring flight will aim to take off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida no earlier than 3:38 a.m. ET Tuesday, with additional launch opportunities at 5:23 a.m. ET and 7:09 a.m. ET Tuesday. A SpaceX webcast of the event is expected begin around midnight the morning of the liftoff.

Additional launch opportunities are available in the early hours of Wednesday morning, according to SpaceX .

Previous attempts in late August to launch the Polaris Dawn mission were thwarted by a ground system issue at the launch site and weather delays. And weather could again prevent the unprecedented journey from kicking off Tuesday.

The latest forecast puts the odds of unfavorable launch conditions at 60%, according to a Sunday post made by SpaceX on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

Mission controllers are also closely watching the weather outlook off the coast of Florida, where the Polaris Dawn crew will splash down at one of several locations after its five-day trip to space.

“(C)onditions at the possible splashdown sites for Dragon’s return to Earth remain a watch item,” according to SpaceX .

Despite the forecasts, Jared Isaacman, the billionaire founder of payment platforms company Shift4, said Sunday on X, “This is a big improvement over the last two weeks. We are getting closer to getting this mission to orbit.”

Isaacman, who is both funding this mission alongside SpaceX and a crew member serving as mission commander, previously made clear how crucial it is for Polaris Dawn to take flight with pristine weather conditions on the horizon for the crew’s return.

Because the team will rely heavily on oxygen supplies during preparations for and while executing a spacewalk, the Polaris Dawn mission will have only about five or six days’ worth of oxygen supplies on board, necessitating an on-time return, according to Isaacman.

The spacewalk, which is scheduled to kick off at the start of the Polaris Dawn crew’s third day of flight, will mark the first time that a private crew of civilians has carried out extravehicular activities, or EVA, in space.

A perilous journey

Joining Isaacman on this flight are close friend and former US Air Force pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet as well as SpaceX engineers Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis.

Adding to the risk of the Polaris Dawn team, the crew cabin will travel out into the first band of Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts after the mission takes flight — the first human spaceflight mission to travel that far since NASA’s Apollo program ended in 1972.

SpaceX is also juggling Polaris Dawn with other obligations at its launch site in Florida.

The company is expected to help get NASA’s Europa Clipper — a notable robotic mission set to explore an icy moon orbiting Jupiter — on its way in October.

But SpaceX’s launch site in Florida is currently set up for a crewed spaceflight — with the pad configured for a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Crew Dragon and the special crew access arm that allows astronauts to board the vehicle before flight.

Before Europa Clipper gets off the ground, SpaceX will have to convert the launchpad to accommodate a Falcon Heavy, a larger vehicle that has three times more power than a Falcon 9.

NASA is expected to give an update on the Europa Clipper mission at 4 p.m. ET Monday.

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TechCrunch Space: Boeing's Starliner returns to Earth

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. Let's dive into the news!

Want to reach out with a tip? Email Aria at [email protected] or send a message on Signal at 512-937-3988. You also can send a note to the whole TechCrunch crew at [email protected] .  For more secure communications ,  click here to contact us , which includes SecureDrop instructions and links to encrypted messaging apps.

Story of the week

The Starliner saga has finally come to an end -- for now. Just after midnight on Saturday, Boeing’s Starliner capsule returned from the International Space Station, touching down at White Sands Space Harbor, New Mexico.

The capsule returned autonomously to Earth without its two crew members, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams,  who will remain aboard the station until next February.  The space agency determined late last month that the pair will make their journey back to Earth on board a SpaceX Dragon capsule, after Starliner experienced  technical issues early in the mission. 

At a post-flight press conference on Saturday, NASA’s commercial crew program manager Steve Stich called the flight “darn near flawless.” He added that the successful mission provoked mixed feelings among staff.

“From a human perspective, all of us feel happy about the successful landing, but then there’s a piece of us, all of us, that we wish it would have been the way we had planned it,” he said. “We had planned to have the mission land with Butch and Suni on board.”

Scoop of the week

Just a little piece of non-public info in this story: By now, you've probably heard that the first launch of Blue Origin's massive New Glenn rocket will not be for NASA. That rocket had been scheduled to launch two spacecraft to Mars for NASA during an eight-day window that opens on October 13. But NASA announced on Friday that it was pushing the mission, called ESCAPADE, to spring 2025, citing potential cost and technical issues with de-fueling the two satellites.

What I'm hearing is that there was an ATP (authority-to-proceed) meeting to go/no-go fueling the spacecraft the day before NASA formally postponed the mission. While this decision doubtless comes down to the readiness of the launch vehicle, fueling the spacecraft is a critical juncture. It makes sense that they chose to just delay rather than incur the risks -- technical, financial, etc. -- of having to de-fuel them.

This week in space history

This week, we're remembering the tragedy of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City. Did you know: There was only a single American off-world when the attacks happened? NASA astronaut Frank Culbertson was on board the International Space Station at the time, and as soon as he learned about the attacks, he immediately went to capture some images of the site from space.

“The smoke seemed to have an odd bloom to it at the base of the column that was streaming south of the city. After reading one of the news articles we just received, I believe we were looking at NY around the time of, or shortly after, the collapse of the second tower. How horrible…” - Frank Culbertson

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Boeing’s starliner performs flawless touchdown without onboard crew, program's future remains uncertain.

After months of delays and uncertainty, Boeing’s Starliner capsule has returned from the International Space Station, touching down in White Sands Space Harbor, New Mexico, just after midnight on Saturday. The capsule returned autonomously to Earth without its two crew members, NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who will remain aboard the station until February. The space agency determined late last month that the pair will make their journey back to Earth on board a SpaceX Dragon capsule, after Starliner experienced technical issues early in the mission. At a post-flight press conference on Saturday, NASA’s commercial crew program manager Steve Stich called the flight “darn near flawless.”

Watch live as Boeing and NASA attempt to bring empty Starliner back to Earth

After 93 days on orbit, Starliner is coming home. The spacecraft is a “go” for undocking from the International Space Station at 6:04 p.m. EST, though it will be leaving its two-person crew behind, and you can watch the drama unfold live. Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft launched to orbit on June 5.

Starliner astronauts will come home in February on a SpaceX Crew Dragon

Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will come home in February 2025 on a SpaceX Crew Dragon, and the Boeing Starliner they flew to the International Space Station on in June will return uncrewed.

TechCrunch Space: The Starliner saga comes to a close -- for now

NASA leadership have made their decision: Starliner will be coming back to Earth -- empty. After months of data analysis and internal deliberation, NASA leadership announced on Saturday that Starliner will be coming back to Earth in September, without a crew. Meanwhile, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams will remain on-board the International Space Station until February 2025, when they will return on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft as part of the Crew-9 mission.

NASA will soon announce whether Starliner's astronauts are coming back on a SpaceX vehicle

On August 24, NASA will finally announce how Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the astronauts that flew to the ISS aboard Boeing's Starliner, will be coming home.

Starliner will return to Earth uncrewed, astronauts staying on ISS until February

Boeing’s Starliner mission is coming back to Earth — empty. After months of data analysis and internal deliberation, NASA leadership announced today that Starliner will be coming back to Earth in September, without a crew. Meanwhile, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams will remain on board the International Space Station until February 2025, when they will return on SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft as part of the Crew-9 mission.

How to watch Boeing Starliner's uncrewed flight back to Earth

The spacecraft is undocking from the ISS at 6:04PM Eastern time on September 6 at the earliest.

Apple upgrades watchOS with AI-powered features, including translation

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