“We
are stardust,” used to say the astronomer and science popularizer
Carl Sagan, attempting to show us how every single chemical compound
found on the human being upon Earth, is also found in other parts of
the universe.
Last
Friday, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA,
reported that the spacecraft Voyager 1 has recently reached the edge
of our solar system, breaking the record of being the most distant
menmade object ever. “Scientists observing this fast increment are
approaching to an unavoidable historical conclusion, that the first
mankind messenger is reaching the outskirts of our solar system,”
pointed out NASA in a special release from the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, JPL, in Pasadena, California.
Days
ago, another sophisticated and powerful X-rays telescope named
NuSTAR, was launched into orbit. NuSTAR will study black holes and
the cosmos in general with unprecedented resolution. Meanwhile,
China, foresees to speed up its spatial station program by sending
their first female astronaut into space.
Any
outsider to the scientific field or astronautics development would go
against these missions or goals because in real terms they demand the
investment of high amounts of money from any government or private
company inside the industry. However, it should be recognized that
there are many mission achievements that benefit not only to the
scientific community, but to the entire humankind. The first
achievement, that could be considered even philosophical or abstract,
is having overcome great challenges. Constraints such as the lack of
knowledge or archaic technology were overcome by research and also by
making mistakes.
To
be more specific, we could mention some products of applied science
after the astronautical development, which go from grinded food for
babies to portable computers, not forgetting the Global Positioning
System, GPS, and the electric chairs or robotic arms for people with
different skills.
Even
then, the most surprising fact is that we are reaching the borders of
our neighborhood! And even though our solar system frontier is not
well defined yet, Voyager 1, which was launched in 1977 and holds
basic information about our species and home in the universe, is now
about 18 billion kilometers from the Sun. “It is traveling at a
speed of aproximately 17 kilometers per second and it takes data 16
hours 38 minutes to arrive to NASA´s network down on Earth,”
reported NASA.
As
a species, we are breaking barriers that were never thought before.
We live in a world that left behind the dark ages and decided to look
up at the stars and study them, in order to understand each other.
Real knowledge cannot be conceived if scientific research is limited.
No society or country makes progress if mathematical speculations are
shorten or creativity and experimental skills are curtailed from
most brilliant citizens. The amount of unknown facts and data about
nature in our own Earth is still huge. Therefore, mysteries of our
cosmos are even greater.
However,
the possibility of getting closer to the knowledge of how and why
things work the way they do, is raising.
Going
back to Sagan thoughts, and the hostile world we live in, where we
face scientific and technological revolution day by day, we could
assert that today more than ever, we are giving huge steps into the
unraveling of stardust mysteries.
Someday,
our sun will die leaving us the challenge of colonizing other regions
of our spatial neighborhood. We do not know when this will happen,
but we should be ready for when it does. Meanwhile, remembering that
in old ages it was a luxury to speculate about what lied beyond the
clouds, we could devote ourselves to the task of enjoying a planet
more sociopolitically stable, sustainable and worth living in.
To
respect the place we live in is the best way to honor the “gift
from the stars,” life through millions of years.
