The last time I saw Laura Grego was in a tent in a baking field on the Welsh borders in May. The conversation on stage ranged from the dangers of space debris to how the law of the sea might pertain to outer space; from our sense of the sacred to our interplanetary futures. At one point Grego, a physicist, said intently, “People have to be aware of what is happening in space. Public knowledge has to catch up.” Three weeks later, SpaceX launched on the stock exchange, temporarily making Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire.
So, I ask her now, what is it that we should all know? Well, she says, the average person’s experience of space is about to change. If, so far, that has been “looking at the stars and being full of wonder, full of connection with the universe”, perhaps noticing the occasional streaking object that was not a shooting star, now “there are plans for tens of thousands more satellites, which would really change your relationship with what you see in the sky”. SpaceX, specifically, has just applied to a federal regulator for permission to launch up to 1m of them.
Grego, who is now back in the US and speaking to me on screen from Cambridge, Massachusetts, has an unforced warmth and urgency, and a lack of self-aggrandisement in striking contrast to the gung-ho attitude that seems to accompany so much discussion of space. She became a physicist when she arrived at university and looked for the hardest thing she could find to study, so as to get her time’s worth (“a very midwestern perspective”). Then she became an observational cosmologist, which she found she loved. This merged with her other life as an activist (“anti-war, workers’ rights, racial justice – all the things important for a better society”) when she became research director of the Global Security programme at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Tropical Storm Bertha formed Monday evening in the Gulf of Mexico south of the Florida Panhandle as it drifts erratically toward populated coastal areas, bringing a threat of heavy rain, storm surge and damaging wind gusts.
Nicaragua’s long-serving president, Daniel Ortega, has said the country will hold no further elections to prevent the opposition from coming to power.
Five people have died in a river in Ohio after several of them went into the water to help another person who was struggling to swim, authorities said Monday.
President Donald Trump took executive action on July 20 to impose a new 50% tariff on a wide range of imports from Canada in retaliation to what his administration called "discriminatory" Canadian trade practices in certain industries against the United States, according to administration officials.
The confirmed U.S. military death toll in the war with Iran rose to 17 after two American soldiers were killed in Jordan, the Pentagon announced July 19.
President Volodymyr Zelensky announced he expects to hold “key conversations” on Monday to formulate a strategy aimed at concluding the war, following a weekend of extensive consultations with military commanders.
US boxer Hannah Rapp, who in June fought for the World Boxing Council (WBC) women’s featherweight championship, was killed on Saturday while she bicycled in Texas after a motorist struck her with his car, according to authorities.
