Tranquility Base

The infrastructure of humanity's journey into space may only be decades old, but some of it has already been lost. A new generation of "space archaeologists" are scrambling to save what's left. Space is being commercialised on a scale unseen before. Faced by powerful commercial and political forces and with scant legal protections, artefacts that tell the story of our species' journey into space are in danger of being lost-both in orbit and down here on Earth. Like Stonehenge, these are irreplaceable artefacts and sites that have a timeless significance to humanity because they represent an essential stage in the evolution of our species. They are often also expressions of national pride because of the industrial and scientific effort needed to achieve them. Sometimes they are also memorials to those who died in the course of ambitious space programmes. They also have another use. Studying these artefacts and sites helps researchers better understand how astronauts interact with new technology, adapt to new environments and develop new cultural practices. The conclusions of researchers can influence the design of future spacecraft and help future space missions succeed. Can a new generation of pioneering space archaeologists like Alice Gorman and Justin Walsh help save our space heritage for coming generations, and how might their work Home News Sport Business Innovation Culture Arts Travel Earth Audio Video Live Watch Live

The infrastructure of humanity's journey into space may only be decades old, but some of it has already been lost. A new generation of "space archaeologists" are scrambling to save what's left. Space is being commercialised on a scale unseen before. Faced by powerful commercial and political forces and with scant legal protections, artefacts that tell the story of our species' journey into space are in danger of being lost-both in orbit and down here on Earth. Like Stonehenge, these are irreplaceable artefacts and sites that have a timeless significance to humanity because they represent an essential stage in the evolution of our species. They are often also expressions of national pride because of the industrial and scientific effort needed to achieve them. Sometimes they are also memorials to those who died in the course of ambitious space programmes. They also have another use. Studying these artefacts and sites helps researchers better understand how astronauts interact with new technology, adapt to new environments and develop new cultural practices. The conclusions of researchers can influence the design of future spacecraft and help future space missions succeed. Can a new generation of pioneering space archaeologists like Alice Gorman and Justin Walsh help save our space heritage for coming generations

Space Heritage is an evolving field where sites and artefacts do not exist on Earth, but rather in space or on other celestial bodies. Most were created during the Cold War and are inaccessible and temporarily protected by their remoteness. The complexities and ambiguities of international legal structures to deal with these sites as cultural resources leave them vulnerable to impacts in the near future by many varieties of space travel. My paper will focus on the Apollo 11 Tranquility Base site on the Moon, the first manned lunar landing site, and explore its historic context and the nature of the archaeological assemblage and its relationship to sites on Earth. I will discuss the current political and legal responsibilities for preservation, the results of the Lunar Legacy Project and argue that without a framework for preservation even these inaccessible sites in space will become accessible and subject to adverse effects.

This case study critically examines the technical feasibility of the Apollo moon landings, focusing on the limitations of 1960s technology, including computing power, materials science, and spacecraft design. It explores the challenges of the Apollo missions, particularly the improbable precision required for lunar navigation, the vulnerabilities of the early space suits, and the limitations of the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC). Through an analysis of the technology available at the time, the study investigates how these challenges might have been addressed or overcome, while considering the possibility that the missions could have been staged to achieve political and geopolitical goals during the Cold War. By evaluating the plausibility of the moon landings in the context of the available technology, this study raises questions about the authenticity of the Apollo missions and highlights the political motivations that may have influenced the space race.

There isn’t much left in the Forward Area at Maralinga, at least not above ground. Almost everything was dismantled and interred in burial pits or destroyed in the nuclear blasts. A single road leads from the ruins of Maralinga Village and the surprisingly intact airfield to the Forward Area in the north. At a junction called Roadside, where thousands of soldiers once lived and worked, one road forks into two, splits into five, and then a grid of sealed and unsealed roads fans out into the South Australian bush. The most contaminated land sits within this grid and is loosely contained by a perimeter boundary of metal signs warning in Pitjantjatjara of the dangers that lie ahead.1 At the southern border of the perimeter, at a place named Tietkens Plain by the British, stands a lone survey marker called a trig point erected by Australian bushmen and British soldiers while conducting their initial reconnaissance of the future bomb site. A short walk from the trig point is the rotting timber shaft of a nineteenth century well, evidence of
the plain’s namesake’s failed attempt to find water and establish European pastoralism. In a place with so few visible human-made objects, the shared proximity of the empty well, the trig point, and the sign is unexpected. Seen in
concert, they create an unintentional monument to nuclear colonialism.

In a modern world heavily dependent on the infrastructure of space, space archaeology has become a rapidly growing subgenre within the field of contemporary archaeology.
In my thesis I investigate the opportunities for protecting the material culture of Apollo 11 and Tranquility Base, the first manned lunar mission. Through the selected material culture I have a broader discussion about the complexity of human behavior in contrast to technological development. Different hazards that threaten the cultural heritage are also investigated, both geological as well as human. Finally the legal framework surrounding cultural heritage preservation in space is examined to highlight best practices and rules for such preservation. The conclusion shows that anthropogenic impacts are the largest threat and until we have the technology and knowledge to safely approach these sites, it is important that a well-developed regulatory framework is established together with an international external body that would ensure the provision of oversight and ensure accountability for activities on the Moon.

Humanity's trash can be found from the ocean's deepest depths to the solar system's outer reaches. Now, it's been discovered metallic aerosols from burnt-up space junk are polluting our stratosphere. And perhaps even those of other planets.

, Sotheby's, the storied centuries-old auction house, promised collectors the Moon-or at least the chance to bid on items involved in getting there. Among the eighty-seven lots up for sale was an Apollo Guidance Computer. This metallic box, designed by MIT's Instrument Laboratory and produced by Raytheon starting in 1966, was an essential tool for navigating the lunar surface and an important forerunner of modern computing. Sotheby's estimated that this celebrated artifact-frequently studied not only in space history but also in the history of technology-would fetch between $200,000 and $300,000 USD. But when the auctioneer's hammer hit the lectern, the price had skyrocketed to $746,000 USD. Other items on the block that day included a lunar surface checklist used by Neil Armstrong (sold for $63,000 USD) and Richard Feynman's personal notes from the Challenger disaster investigation (sold for $44,100 USD). In case there was any doubt, Sotheby's sale affirmed the value of almost anything to do with space. But here the public record for these items stops. Who purchased these artifacts and where they now reside is a mystery. How should we attend to this systematic and accelerating flow of space artifacts into unknown private collections of the fantastically wealthy? How does the commodification of and marketplace for space-flown items affect and implicate historians and curators and their contributions to space history? And finally, how do these processes shape public and expert understandings of outer space and its uses? Critical

On October 4, 1957, Homo sapiens crossed a new threshold of technological innovation after constructing an artifact capable of entering Low Earth Orbit and effectively paving the way for a future of space exploration. This artifact was Sputnik 1, launched by the Soviet space program which triggered the "space race" of the mid-20th century. Over the past 65 years, we have continued to explore and populate our solar system with rockets and spacecraft including satellites, probes, landers, and rovers. This expansion into our solar system has left traces of our presence on several planets including the Earth, Mars, Mercury, and Venus along with Earth's Moon, Titan, and several galaxy travelers in the form of asteroids and comets. Today, we have entered the realm of a new privatized and global space race, effectively a "new space race" or "new Space Age." As we expand our material footprint into new extraterrestrial environments, there is a growing need to understand the types of unique site formation processes capable of altering, destroying, or preserving this rapidly increasing archaeological record known as space heritage. Such understandings are germane to the subdiscipline of geoarchaeology, that part of archaeology dedicated to studying the interaction between humans, cultural heritage, and environmental systems from a geoscience perspective. Closely aligned and partially overlapping with the subdisciplines of space archaeology, archaeological science, and planetary geology, we introduce a new subfield we call planetary geoarchaeology to open discussion about how geoarchaeologists can play a role in addressing current and future issues surrounding the preservation and management of space heritage. To demonstrate the potential of the subdiscipline, we focus on the current archaeological record of the Moon, describe lunar site formation processes, and discuss the implications for the current and future preservation of space heritage in the lunar setting. Planetary geoarchaeology can be applied to practically every type of extraterrestrial environment, provided humans have left behind a measurable record. We hope this paper will spur more research studying human-environment interaction in space.

This report has been written as an Annex to the Recommended Framework and Key Elements for Peaceful, and Sustainable Lunar Activities produced by the Global Expert Group for Sustainable Lunar Activities (GEGSLA). Preserving natural and cultural heritage values on the Moon is a key part of sustainable activities. This document sets out suggested guidance principles for ensuring that these aspects of the Moon survive for future generations, with the aim of providing a starting point for the development of a mature heritage regime on our celestial neighbour.

το χρονικό διάστημα από τον 9ο αιώνα ώς τις αρχές του 13ου αιώνα οι διαφορές ανάμεσα στην ανατολική και τη δυτική Χριστιανική εκκλη­ σία εξελίχθηκαν Βαθμιαία στο μόνιμο σχίσμα, στη διάσπαση της Χρι­ στιανικής εκκλησίας σε μια ορθόδοξη στο Βυζάντιο και μια καθολική στη Δύ­ ση. Το παπικό πρωτείο και η προσθήκη του filioque στην ομολογία πίστεως είναι τα δυο πιο γνωστά ζητήματα που είχαν απομακρυνθεί ο ένας από τον άλλον θεσμικά, πολιτισμικά και θεολογικά.

Αυτό το άρθρο παρουσιάζει πώς ο γραμματισμός στην κινούμενη εικόνα χρησιμοποιήθηκε για τη διδασκαλία των αγγλικών σε ένα ελληνικό δημόσιο γυμνάσιο. Μελετάει την ομαδική εργασία τριών μαθητών που υλοποίησαν ένα πρόγραμμα δημιουργίας κινούμενης εικόνας που περιελάμβανε την ανάλυση και τη δημιουργία βίντεο, και δείχνει πώς έμαθαν την κινηματογραφική γλώσσα και ανέπτυξαν την αντίστοιχη μεταγλώσσα στα αγγλικά, και πώς η διαμεσολάβηση της μητρικής τους γλώσσας συνέβαλε σε αυτό. Το πρόγραμμα υλοποιήθηκε ως μελέτη περίπτωσης σε μία τάξη όπου η καθηγήτρια ήταν και ερευνήτρια, το ερευνητικό υλικό αποτελούνταν από τις γραπτές εργασίες των μαθητών στην τάξη και στο σπίτι, από το ημερολόγιο παρατήρησης της ερευνήτριας, από το ερωτηματολόγιο της έναρξης του προγράμματος, από τις τελικές συνεντεύξεις των ομάδων-στόχων, και από τα ίδια τα παραγόμενα βίντεο, και αναλύθηκε με τη μέθοδο της ανάλυσης λόγου, με σκοπό να εξετάσει πώς ο γραμματισμός στην κινούμενη εικόνα μπορεί να συμβάλλει στην εκμάθηση μίας ξένης γλώσσας.

It’s hard in the space industry these days to escape discussions of orbital debris. There’s plenty of hand-wringing about the growing amount of debris, tracked and untracked, in orbit, and how the situation might be exacerbated by the deployment of megaconstellations of satellites. Some companies have proposed approaches to removing debris, but face challenges regarding both technology and policy.

Alice Gorman is a space archaeologist working on space junk in Earth orbit, deep space probes, and planetary landing sites. She explores what we can learn from these items and places as material objects, and also their heritage significance – what they actually mean for people and communities on Earth.

Alice features in The Conversation’s podcast series To the Moon and beyond, published to mark the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing of July 1969. This is an edited extract from Alice’s interview with The Conversation’s Sarah Keenihan, published as part of our occasional series Zoom Out.

Space Heritage is an evolving field where sites and artefacts do not exist on Earth, but rather in space or on other celestial bodies. Most were created during the Cold War and are inaccessible and temporarily protected by their remoteness. The complexities and ambiguities of international legal structures to deal with these sites as cultural resources leave them vulnerable to impacts in the near future by many varieties of space travel. My paper will focus on the Apollo 11 Tranquility Base site on the Moon, the first manned lunar landing site, and explore its historic context and the nature of the archaeological assemblage and its relationship to sites on Earth. I will discuss the current political and legal responsibilities for preservation, the results of the Lunar Legacy Project and argue that without a framework for preservation even these inaccessible sites in space will become accessible and subject to adverse effects.

Το θεολογικό χάσμα μεταξύ «Μυστικών» και «Αναβιωτών» Η μεγάλη αναβίωση του ησυχασμού κατά τον 20 ό αιώνα, σε σημείο μάλιστα πολλοί ερευνητές να κάνουν λόγο για την εμφάνιση ενός δεύτερου «νεοπαλαμισμού» 1 , προεξοφλεί, σε μεγάλο βαθμό, τον τρόπο με τον οποίο οι περισσότεροι ιστορικοί αντιμετωπίζουν σήμερα το μελανό επεισόδιο της ησυχαστικής έριδας, με τον ίδιο τρόπο δηλαδή που η επίσημη Εκκλησία αντιμετώπιζε ανέκαθεν κάθε σύγκρουση μεταξύ «ορθόδοξων» και «αιρετικών». Αυτό όμως έχει ως συνέπεια να μη διαφωτίζεται πλήρως η ταυτότητα των πρωταγωνιστών της ησυχαστικής έριδας και να μην ερευνώνται διεξοδικά οι βαθύτερες αιτίες που κρύβονται πίσω από τη θεολογική διαμάχη των άκτιστων ενεργειών. Αντίθετα, η έρευνα της ησυχαστικής έριδας μονοπωλείται από την τάση να εκθειάζονται μονομερώς οι ησυχαστές και, από την άλλη, να υποτιμούνται ολοσχερώς οι αντίπαλοί τους και να αποσιωπώνται τα θεολογικοπολιτικά κίνητρα που τους οδήγησαν στην απόρριψη της ησυχαστικής διδασκαλίας 2. 1 Για την ανάκαμψη του ησυχασμού τον 20 ό αιώνα και τις σχολές που αναπτύχθηκαν γύρω από τον πυρήνα της παλαμικής διδασκαλίας: Σταματούλης Χρυσόστομος, Ο Άγιος Γρηγόριος Παλαμάς στην

The Australian Space Agency’s arrival in Adelaide signals an important reconnection for South Australia with its significant space history, as outlined in a new book by SA’s internationally renowned Dr Space Junk – Flinders University space archaeologist Dr Alice Gorman. The release this week of her book Dr Space Junk vs The Universe: Archaeology and The Future (published by NewSouth Books) serves as a timely handbook for everyone in the community to best understand the relevance and importance of Australia’s longstanding interaction with space projects.

Monasticism is a way of life that officially appeared in the 4th century CE, when many faithful people devoted to God lived a "rigorous" life. However, the cruel persecutions of the Roman emperors in the middle of the 3rd and early 4th centuries CE. was the main reason for developing and shaping a life of solitude. The father of monasticism was Saint Anthony and other important figures in the history of monasticism were Saint Pachomios and Saint Basil the Great. Monasticism from its birth to its final form has gone through several phases, with the most important being the devotional or hermitage existence form i.e. the Lavra's solitary system, the communal system and the peculiar unique system. A life of solitude as a devotional choice began in Egypt and developed in many other places, inter alia, Palestine, Syria, Constantinople and Mount Athos. Through the organization of a communal but solitary life, one’s longevity was acquired under certain conditions and a specia...

Nowadays, on the Moon, there is over 170,000 kg of cultural material, which has the potential to be worthy of preservation for future generations, for its scientific, technical and social significance in the realm of space exploration. However, there are still no legally binding sources capable of protecting these archaeological sites, nor concrete ways of preserving these assets. In this article, we will analyze the critical elements of the UNESCO and Underwater Convention that could be taken up in a future document for the preservation of cultural heritage on the Moon and the existing limitation in international space law. Finally will be investigated the advantages of preserving these archaeological sites in situ, to safeguard both the cultural, technological and scientific essence of cultural heritage on the lunar surface.

Introduction: Geospatial terrain statistics and object symmetries of enigmatic landforms in Cydonia are examined and correlations identified. Analysis of Viking image-derived MDIM data (1/256 deg./pixel) over Cydonia (37.5-42.5° N and 4.5-15.5° W) shows directional anisotropies in the spatial autocorrelation (variogram) at medium to long wavelengths (10-100 km.). One is in the direction of the crustal dichotomy in this part of Mars (~ 64.6°, or ~25.4° north of east), along with two others at 103.7° and 164.2°. Anisotropies in similar directions at shorter wavelengths (down to tens of meters) are evident in the variograms of Viking, THEMIS, and MGS images within this area. The spatial autocorrelation structure of selected regions in Viking images show indications of rectilinear geometry (directional anisotropies approximately 90 deg. apart) similar to that of highly eroded terrestrial archaeological ruins. Previous analyses of THEMIS and MGS imagery reveal a high degree of bilateral symmetry in several landforms. We show the axes of symmetry are roughly in line with the directional anisotropy at 164.2° noted above.

In a recent collection of essays, Umberto Eco, the well-known author and professor of semiotics, suggests the idea of translation as a complex process of negotiation, between texts, authors, readers, languages and cultural frameworks, with the translator as negotiator. 1 Extending this already expansive and productive notion to translation as any interaction between two languages, and translator as anyone involved intimately in that process, I want to examine the role of missionaries-in particular that of the Reverend JRB Love 2-in 'negotiating' the relative place of the colonising language, English, and an Indigenous language, Pitjantjatjara, in the life of an Aboriginal mission station, Ernabella, in Central Australia in the early 1940s. 3 Lest there be any confusion, Love was also a 'translator' in the narrower sense, being involved at the mission in the conversion of part of the biblical text to the Indigenous language. This is an instructive story in itself that this article can only touch on, but I am more interested here in examining his role in, and his rationale for, advocating and attempting to negotiate a bilingual language policy at the mission site against an opposing vernacular-only policy. The maintenance of indigenous languages in the face of powerful onslaughts from dominant culture languages has been a part of the narratives of both colonialism and postcolonialism. 4 In Australia, debates have continued on the advisability or otherwise of the retention of Indigenous languages, given the dominance of English, with arguments often moving on to intricate questions of the survival and autonomy of minority cultures. 5 An earlier form of these debates occurred at Ernabella, which had been estab

Wesley t. huntRess, JR. a date that WIll lIve In faMe Georgy uspensky the SputnIk: tWO dayS befOre the launCh Viktor FaVoRsky the begInnIng Of SpaCe era: eventS, reSultS, and prOSpeCtS IGoR BazhInoV the early WOrkS On the Study Of praCtICal prObleMS In the develOpMent Of ballIStIC rOCketS and the artIfICIal earth SatellIteS Vladimir GuBaReV the vOICe Of 'pS' , Or What haS the hOrn Sung at the OCtOber daWn In 1957? alexander alexandRoV S.p. kOrOlev-SpaCe rOCket and the fIrSt SatellIte Of the earth timur eneeV M.v. keldySh-ChIef theOretICIan Of the natIOnal COSMOnautICS yuri RyzhoV My refleCtIOnSOn the SputnIk-1 launCh Roger-Maurice Bonnet What dId SputnIk-1 dO uS and tO Me alla MaseVICh fIrSt SputnIk, early yearS Of ObServIng artIfICIal earth SatellIteS, early reSult Jacques BlaMont frOM SputnIk-1 tO Where? yuri BatuRIn fIrSt SputnIk: frOM rIvalry tO hIStOrIC gaIn Vladlen VeResChetIn fOr the benefIt and In the IntereStS Of all MankInd Buzz aldRIn thOughtS On the annIverSary Of SputnIk Janusz Bronisław Zieliński My perSOnal COnSequenCeS Of the SputnIk-1 Gurbax s. lakhIna hOW Sputnikc hanged My vIeW Of lIfe Marcio BaRBosa the launChIng Of SputnIk-1 and ItS IMpaCt In develOpIng COuntrIeS Jose Francisco Valdes GalICIa OCtOber 4, fIfty yearS after Marcos e. MaChado frOM SputnIk-1 tO COnStellatIOnSOf SatellIteSв atsuhiro nIshIda legaCy Of the SputnIk-1: a vIeW by a JapaneSe SCIentISt Risto Juhani pellInen SputnIk ShOWS the neW Way Grigory CheRnyaVsky retrOSpeCtIve lOOk at the launCh Of the fIrSt artIfICIal earth SatellIte 7

Research into outer space has burgeoned in recent years, through the work of scholars in the social sciences, arts and humanities. Geographers have made a series of useful contributions to this emergent work, but scholarship remains fairly limited in comparison to other disciplinary fields. This forum explains the scholarly roots of these new geographies of outer space, considering why and how geographies of outer space could make further important contributions. The forum invites reflections from political, environmental, historical and cultural geographers to show how human geography can present future avenues to continued scholarship into outer space.

In 1977 Isobel (Sally) White described the camp sites, spatial organisation and mobility of Pitjantjatjara-speaking people at Yalata, a community 1000 kilometres northwest of Adelaide, South Australia. She remarked on the unusual living arrangements ofthat community, in which the entire Aboriginal population was periodically relocated from one Big Camp to another some where on the Yalata reserve, 4650 square kilometres of land running east-west along the Eyre Highiuay. In this article, I show that the unusual arrangement she described did not arise spon taneously, but was one of several last-ditch strategies designed to force Yalata people to remain well south of the dangerous and prohibited area of the Maralinga atomic testing site. White observed and described this state of affairs without knowing its origins. She and the people with luhom she lived up until the early 1970s could also not have imagined that resettlement in the spinifex country of the Great Victoria Desert zvould eventually take place, and that there would be a reclamation of the ivide-ranging mobility the people once had. In 1949 one hundred and thirty Aboriginal men, women and children from the United Aborigines' Mission (UAM) station at Ooldea Soak became actors in the feature film 'Bitter Springs'. Accompanied by their missionary carers, they travelled east by train from Ooldea, on the edge of the Great Victoria Desert in South Australia, to the film site at Warren's Gorge, near Quorn. There, for the director Ralph Smart of Ealing Studios, they acted out a fictional dispossession of their land, a dispossession which was already taking place in real life. 'Bitter Springs' was billed as an action romance telling the story of a white Aus tralian settler family who, accompanied by a flock of sheep and a trusty Aboriginal helper 'Black Jack', trek into unknown territory to take up land leased to them by the government for 80 pounds a year. 'You need land to grow, new land' announces Wally King (Chips Rafferty), the family head, as they set off to find a new home with reliable water. But things go wrong. They discover the perfect site, only to find the 'Karigani' tribe, played by the Ooldea people, ensconced at the desired waterhole of the film's title. Cautious hospitality is offered by the 'blacks' at first, but the settlers outstay their welcome and when they build a hut hostilities break out. Into this tense situation comes a firm but friendly trooper (Michael Pate), with some Aboriginal companions; he is knowledgeable and somewhat sympathetic to the local 'tribes'. He explains to the set tlers that the springs have been a tribal home to the Aborigines for a thousand years,

Front cover image is entitled 'Olympic Game Communication Satellite Birds', taken on 16 October 1968, available from 'NASA on the Commons'. This image has no known copyright restrictions and is reproduced from https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasacommons/16315677588/in/photolist-qRL7w1-r9mi9r-vv5jkx-fpN7Ug. It shows "The replicas of the covey (flock) of synchronous communication satellites that were used to televise the 19th Olympic Games from Mexico City to audiences in Europe and Japan. The satellites are shown at Hughes Aircraft Company, Culver City, California where they were built for NASA and Comsat Corporation. In the center is a full-scale model of the Intelsat II satellite, which was used by Comsat to send color TV direct to Japan via a Hughes ground station installed near San José, California. Left of Intelsat is the NASA's ATS-3 (Application Technology Satellites), which transmitted the picture portion of the Olympics to Europe and the Early Bird (right) transmitted the voice commentary of the European telecast in a dozen languages. These communication satellites went into orbit over the Atlantic in April 1965.

Οι λόγιοι στην υπηρεσία της βυζαντινής διπλωματίας: Η περίπτωση του Δημητρίου Κυδώνη

Η καλλιέργεια της ήπιας ισχύος σε σχέση με άλλα κράτη στον τομέα των κοινών αξιών ονομάζεται πολιτιστική διπλωματία.  Συγκεκριμένα, πολιτιστική διπλωματία είναι η «μεθοδική χρήση στοιχείων (ή γνωρισμάτων ιδιατερότητας) του πολιτισμού μιάς χώρας κατά την άσκηση διαχείρισης των εξωτερικών της (διεθνών) σχέσεων».  Τα στοιχεία αυτά μπορεί να είναι η θρησκεία, οι ηθικές και αισθητικές αξίες, ο τρόπος ζωής, η πολιτική ιδελογία, καλλιτεχνικά επιτεύγματα.  Η πνευματική ακτινοβολία ενίοτε είναι πολύ λαμπρότερη από ότι δικαιολογεί η ισχύς του κράτους, κάτι που αξιοποιείται δεόντως.

Η Βυζαντινή αυτοκρατορία υπήρξε πρωτοπόρος στην πολιτιστική διπλωματία, αν όχι ο «εφευρέτης» της.  Η αυλική πολυτέλεια, τα δώρα υψηλής τέχνης, οι ιεραποστολές, η φιλοξενία και ανατροφή ξένων ηγεμόνων στην Κωνσταντινούπολη, η διάπλαση ενός αφηγήματος υπεροχής, είναι μερικοί μόνο τρόποι κατά τους οποίους ο σύγχρονος κόσμος επηρεάστηκε από την βυζαντινή πρακτική.  Περικυκλωμένο εσαεί από εχθρούς, ο Βυζάντιο ακολουθούσε μία πολιτική έμμεσης προσέγγισης και οικονομίας δυνάμεων, οπότε η αξιοποίηση της ήπιας ισχύος και δη της πολιτιστικής  διπλωματίας ήταν μονόδρομος.

A rchaeology might be defined simply as the study of 'the human altered world'. 1 Until recently, traces of humanity's past could have only been found on Earth. But, as our influence continues to expand beyond, we must consider human activities and human-made objects in space and how they-as extensions of ourselves-impact other worlds and the spaces between. This is 'space archaeology'.

Picture an archaeologist, and an unmistakably ‘earthy’ figure springs to mind. Perhaps they are popping up from inside a hole or next to an assuming stone wall, where they have been delicately fossicking about for some remnant of ancient civilisation. Perhaps this individual is coated with a light dusting of soil. Perhaps you (like me) are picturing Indiana Jones.

Ο Ησυχασμός προτάσσει τη διδασκαλία του Χριστού περί του τρόπου βίωσης της ζωής του ανθρώπου, ο άνθρωπος θυμάται ξανά το σκοπό της ζωής του. Η διδασκαλία περί ησυχίας, δεν ήταν καινούριος τρόπος άσκησης κάποιας μερίδας μοναχών του 14ου αιώνα, αλλά διδασκαλία διαχρονική και σύμφωνη με τους Αγίους Πατέρες της Ορθόδοξης Ανατολικής Εκκλησίας και με την Ιερά Παράδοση, η οποία έχει εφαρμογή και στη σημερινή εποχή.

"My battery is low and it's getting dark": that was the last transmission from Opportunity, a NASA rover on Mars. Last month, NASA declared the 15 year mission over, having failed to make contact with Opportunity for several months. Around the world people were affected by the "death" of this robot, on another planet, with its last words carried in newspapers and shared on social media. Unlike astronauts, these rovers don't come home. "Oppy" remains on Mars, silent and motionless, one of the many other human artefacts littering space. Space is full of manmade objects, floating around or sitting on astral bodies. Defunct satellites, rovers and detritus from rockets are all out there. Our sky contains 500 working satellites and more than 1000 dead ones. In the early days of space programs, there was no concern about how to retrieve the flotsam that would be created. Once up there, though, stuff is hard to remove. Most objects will take a long time to degrade (or, for nearer ones, be sucked back into the Earth's atmosphere and incinerated). This means Earth's orbit is a bit like someone's garage. Imagine your old VCR, the bike with broken gears, the fondue set, all flying by at 27,000km/h. Alice Gorman has built a career studying this space junk, the remnants of various space programs. Dr Space Junk vs the Universe is about her path to this role. She writes about her affinity for space and humanity's different cultural connections to the sky and the stars. Gorman's relationship with space was shaped by growing up on a farm in NSW in the 1960s and 70s. As a child, she watched the moon landing on television. As an adult, she first pursued traditional archeology. But 15 years ago she decided to make a change and became a pioneer of a new academic field: space archeology. Turning from the Earth to space seems a twist, and requires thinking about space in a way most of us don't. Most of us think of archeology as involving remnants of the past much earlier than the 50s and taking place on, well, Earth. Indeed, it's dusting earth off ancient things: Etruscan pottery shards, not busted Sov iet satellites. But Gorman points out all these items are material culture, part of our human record. Elon Musk's sports car, fired into space with a mannequin in a space suit, is already an archeolog ical artefact. Future scientists may find it and draw conclusions about life in the early 21st century. Studying what has been left up there also has practical relevance for future space travel. Gorman estimates about 6000 tonnes of stuff remains in orbit around the Earth, potential collision hazards for other spacecraft. Satellite positions regularly have to be adjusted to avoid crashes with bits of junk. Gorman also considers how the space race changed. In her lifetime the moon landing went from something we would do to something we used to do. She has devoted research time to the base at Woomera, for a while the centre of Australia's role in reaching for the stars. Her space junk includes the remnants on Earth, too: the antennae and launch pads, the relics of optimism, now overgrown. Space became passe after the end of the Cold War. It was too expensive, too difficult. Sites such as Woomera were forgotten and abandoned. But private companies (such as Musk's SpaceX) are opening more possibilities for the public to participate in space travel. Social media allows us to engage with more recent missions and has renewed interest in space exploration. We see astronauts on the International Space Station interviewed via video conference, we follow NASA's updates on its unmanned missions.

Dr Alice Gorman is known as ‘Dr Space Junk’ for a good reason. She’s one of the leading experts in the field of space archaeology, and spends much of her time researching the physical heritage of human space exploration: the bits we leave behind.

Archaeologists dig in the ground to discover the traces of ancient cultures: this is the common image of this profession. While this is not wrong, there are now various archaeological artifacts well above our heads. This includes research equipment, flags and other things left behind on the surface of the moon, but also satellites that have long since ceased to function, rocket parts that have been repelled, the body of Laika, the dog, and Elon Musk's red Tesla in orbit. For many, this is just space debris, because with every new object that orbits in circles, the debris cloud condenses, which can be dangerous to the still functioning probes, satellites and, not least, the crew of spacecraft.

In the early 1950s, the Cold War was casting its shadow across the whole world, while people were waiting for the Space Age to begin. And so it did, but without the jetpacks, holidays on the Moon and robot helpers that everyone was hoping for. The catalyst was one of the largest international scientific collaborations ever undertaken: the International Geophysical Year of 1957-58.

During the Apollo 11 moon mission in July 1969, commander Neil Armstrong played what his crewmate Michael Collins described as "strange, electronic-sounding music". It was from an album called Music Out of the Moon by Dr Samuel Hoffman, and featured the theremin, that weird musical instrument whose eerie UFO sounds grace classic sci-fi films such as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).

Η αντιπαράθεση για το ΟΥΚΡΑΝΙΚΟ του Πατριαρχείου Μόσχας και της Αυτοκέφαλης Εκκλησίας της Ουκρανίας, με αιχμή του δόρατος τους τελευταίους μήνες το κύρος των χειροτονιών της νεοσύστατης Ορθόδοξης Εκκλησίας, κατά κύριο λόγο του Μητροπολίτη Μακαρίου, πρώην προκαθημένου της UAOC Η φίλα προσκείμενη προς την Ρωσική Εκκλησία  ΡΟΜΦΑΙΑ παρουσίαζε σε ελληνική μετάφραση και δημοσίευε αποκλειστικά τα επιχειρήματα του Πατριαρχείου Μόσχας, χωρίς τον αντίλογο της άλλης πλευράς, ο οποίος αναπτυσσόταν κυρίως στην ιστοσελίδα CERKVARIUM, η οποία εσχάτως άρχισε να μεταφράζει και αυτή στα ελληνικά τις αναρτήσεις της
Στη συλλογή αυτή παρουσιάζεται με χρονική σειρά η εκατέρωθεν επιχειρηματολογία