Waste in Space: The Quest to Contain Space Debris

This photography-led outreach project by photographer Max Alexander, focusses on the critical issue of space debris, is set in the wider context of sustainability and environmental catastrophe. Waste in Space will visually express - mainly through large scale cityscapes, with superimposed photomosaic space debris images - the real and present threat that space debris poses to society in a unique way: from a human perspective, connecting the Earth to the near-space environment. This everyday approach will make the issues more tangible and real for the public by showing that the debris is just up there.

Mapping the Media History of Our Planetary Consciousness

An upcoming book by Tiago de Luca from the Department of Film and Television re-examines the story of our planet. The familiar story is that late 1960s humanity finally saw photographic evidence of the Earth in space for the first time, and the impact of such images in the formation of a planetary consciousness is yet to be matched. However, in Planetary Cinema: Film, Media and the Earth de Luca argues that this narrative has failed to account for the vertiginous global imagination underpinning the media and film culture of the late nineteenth century and beyond. It proposes that an exploration media culture can help us understand contemporary planetary imaginaries in times of environmental collapse and the way we currently see the world.

Planetary Protection: what we still haven't learnt from the moon

In the early years of the Cold War and the Space Race, the scientific community began to raise concerns that in the rush to be the first nation to reach certain milestones, irrevocable damage could be done to the Solar System.

Mapping the Dangers of the Space Environment

A team led by James Blake, a PhD Student in the Warwick Astronomy and Astrophysics Group, has recently published findings from a survey of the geosynchronous (GSO) region carried out with Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) in La Palma, Canary Islands. The GSO region is a collection of near-circular orbits located roughly 36,000 kilometres above the Equator, where satellites match the period of the Earth’s rotation. This unique property allows for GSO satellites to remain near-fixed in an observer’s sky, making them incredibly useful for telecommunications, navigation and weather monitoring.

Radiation Risk and Human Space Exploration with Professor Sarah Baatout

Warwick Aerospace and Warwick BioSoc recently welcomed Professor Sarah Baatout to discuss radiation risk in human space exploration.

Prof. Sarah Baatout is the director of the Radiobiology Unit at SCK CEN (Belgian Nuclear Research Centre), Mol, Belgium. She is also guest-professor at Ghent University and KULeuven (Belgium) teaching and directing research in the field of radiation biology, radiation protection, space biology and medicine.

Migration

James Poskett recently published a book on migration co-edited with Johannes Knolle (Imperial). The book brings together eight leading scholars across the arts, humanities, and sciences to help tackle one of the most important topics of our time. What is migration? How has it changed the world? And how will it shape the future? A common thread of the chapters is that migration is the norm rather than the exception in human and animal life. The book arises from the 2018 Darwin College Lectures, held at the University of Cambridge. Poskett is a member of the Global History and Culture Centre and the History of Science and Technology Hub, both based in the History department.