the explorers journal - The Explorers Club

the explorers journal
Spring 2010
editor’s note
A star-studded issue
For this edition of The Explorers Journal, we have
embarked on a journey far from home in an attempt to
gain a better understanding of our fragile world and its
place in the unfathomable vastness of space and time.
To guide us, we have brought together some of the
best minds in space exploration—from astronauts who
have traveled beyond Earth’s gravitational pull to those
imagining the tools and technologies of tomorrow and
contemplating what might be found on future forays
out into the cosmos.
In his essay “Light from the Dawn of Time,” Michael
Benson provides a sobering reality check on just how
much—and how little—we actually know about our
universe. “We can see it, almost touch it,” he says,
“but the totality of all that we can observe—the planets,
moons, asteroids, comets, nebulae, and intergalactic
gas—is but 4 percent of what’s out there, the negligible
part, the part ‘made of stuff.’”
On the topic of stuff—the right stuff, that is—contributing
editor Jim Clash recently caught up with astronaut
John Glenn, who shares his thoughts on the future of
manned space exploration. Glenn, who first orbited
the Earth in February 1962, had the pleasure of returning
to the heavens aboard the shuttle Discovery in
1998, giving him a perspective few possess. Glenn’s
experiences are complemented by those of Leroy
Chiao, one of the first American astronauts to fly in the
Russian space program, and Mike Massimino, whose
valiant efforts to repair the Hubble Space Telescope
this past May will ensure that our view of the cosmos
remains uncompromised in the years to come.
We hope you enjoy the celestial delights!
celestial bodies such as those in our own solar system make up but 4
percent of the observable universe. Image courtesy NASA.
Angela M.H. Schuster, Editor-in-Chief