Source: Daily Express
By Avinash Kumar
We all want to know about what’s going into various countries but one of the most important parts of life is going through a significant effect. In these days of Covid-19 crises space agenesis, professional, science, and astronomy are going through a huge impact!
REASON OF IMPACT
These days 185 countries are going through a lockdown and because of this space and astronomy is also affected such as bankruptcy, closures of organizations plans and this are counties yet.
CONFERENCES SITUATIONS
This crisis has a very dangerous impact on facilities. There are various conferences planned to completed during January to upcoming month but due lockdown these are canceled
1:American Physical Society was going to held on March 2 in Denver but canceled due to pandemic.
2:Lunar and Planetary Science Conference(LPSC) was canceled that is scheduled on March 16 in Texas.
3:The American Astronomical Society has announced on Friday march-13 it has been postponed.
AAS President Megan Donahue, an astronomer at Michigan state university stated to space .com that “I’d rather decide early rather than late minimize the cost of attendees and the complexity”.
Gianluca Lombardi(ESO) has also said “Due to the stop of all non-essential activities in Spain . . . the 10.4-meter Gran Telescopio Canarias is undertaking a safe shutdown of the facility,”.
Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) airborne suspended operations has also suspended the various operation in this pandemic.
CONDITIONS OF SPACE MISSIONS
European Space Agency’s Rosalind Franklin Mars rover has already experienced significant problems in the parachute system; they also postponed the mission to the next launch in 2022.
NASA’s newly christened perseverance mars over are still on the decision of July 2020 launch.
Mars Hope orbiter’s mission is still on track of launching on a decided date.
The china national space administration has not given any statement on rover mission that it is still on track or they are going postponed it.
Galileo’s mission to Jupiter has changed after the pandemic, causing modifications in spacecraft and delays of years.
BANKRUPT
OneWeb that has 74 satellites in low-earth orbit has filed for bankruptcy recently, a startup in satellite mega-constellations game is struggling to come up funding for its full venture but before crises hit.
All NASA sites across the U.S are in NASA Space framework of stage 3 or stage 4 which means employes are working with minimal staff or either from home.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has said “Mandatory telework is in an effort for NASA personnel at both facilities until further notice,” in a recent press release.
NEW TREND IN RESEARCH
The Astronomer had started researching in this pandemic. Astronomer is getting used to dealing with digital tools so that they can work from long-distance communication. Some Astronomers are maintaining labs and conduct experiments on earth, based on data about places where COVID-19 cannot reach.
A Robotic telescope can be operated without any staff on-site, just required some attention, but not necessarily from the scientist.
this is robotic so that it can be operated remotely without much staff or Astronomer on site.
The Space community is working on efforts for science and space education online. Sky & Telescope has compiled a list of homeschooling activities focused on astronomy.
Telescope-makers are working on offering their skills to minimize the shortage of protective health care workers. Oregon-based amateur astronomer Robert Asumendi recently started working on 3D printing telescope kits (see Sky and Telescope’s June 2019 issue) to printing parts for face shields for a local hospital.
FUTURE CONDITIONS
We all know that during this pandemic all the field on the world is suffering but this is not only affecting current situation but has many more effect waiting to come in future there is much reason behind that is the economy has suffered, a worker is not able to work from the site, etc.
“Universities’ budgets are going to be hit the big time because they depend on the endowments, and endowment return is going to be a lot lower,” urry said.
“Or if they’re public universities, they depend also on state funding, and all these things are going to be very, very negative, very similar probably to the 2008 recession.”
A Spacecraft scheduled to launch during this period is going to affect very much that can not be determined in nowadays.
Astronomers and Developers have to trouble due to uncertainties caused by this COVID-19 time.
I WOULD WRAPUP by saying that We have gone through the current situation that has caused some missions cancellation and delayed, some conferences are delayed as well as canceled. Astronomer, a developer is suffering during this time and unable to work completely. This situation had brought online space education. Some Organisations are going through economic problems that are leading to bankruptcy.
So, we can say that like all other fields space organizations are going through any problem and they have to tackle it effectively and come out of it and stabilize it again after lockdown.
Paterno-Mahler has said. “The biggest disruptions are going to be changed in routine and underlying anxiety about what’s happening,”.