Another Apollo 11’s Astronaut Reveals Secrets From Dark Side of the Moon (VIDEO)

When the Apollo 11 landing module detached and sent Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin hurtling toward the surface of the moon, Michael Collins began a journey of his own.

For the next 21 hours, the pioneering astronaut continued to orbit the moon, further removed from humanity than any person before him.

He was a crucial role in the Apollo 11 mission — the others would not have been able to return to Earth without him — but Collins would later acknowledge he didn’t have the best seat in the house.

As his command module dipped behind the far side of the moon, it blocked his communications with Earth and he became completely isolated, more than 300,000km from home.

"It is there, reinforced by the fact that radio contact with the Earth abruptly cuts off at the instant I disappear behind the moon, I am alone now, truly alone, and ...

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From home, Mission Control noted, "not since Adam has any human known such solitude as Mike Collins is experiencing during this 47 minutes of each lunar revolution when he’s behind the Moon with no one to talk to except his tape recorder."

Michael Collins’s secret terror

As Armstrong declared "one giant leap for mankind", Collins remained waiting in the command module orbiting 100km above.

The plan had always been that if Armstrong and Aldrin crashed or were unable to leave the moon’s surface, Collins was to head back to Earth alone.

A prepared contingency statement from President Richard Nixon, to be read out if the worst happened, made no mention of Collins.

"These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding," Nixon would have said about Armstrong and Aldrin had they been left to die on the Moon.

"Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace."

But Collins held a "secret terror" — that he would be blamed for the potential disaster.

"It would have been an awful, terrible, national catastrophe."

Not so lonely

On returning home, Collins learned he’d been cast as the "loneliest man in history" by the press — something he struggled to understand.

"When we returned to Earth and went through our debriefings, the whole focus of the press attention when it came to me was ‘wasn’t I the loneliest person in the whole lonely space program in that lonely orbit behind the lonely moon, more lonely than any previous lonely people had ever been lonely?," he later joked.

A gleaming new Hubble Space Telescope image captures the glow of thousands upon thousands of stars in an ancient globular cluster near the Milky Way’s heart.

A globular cluster is a massive collection of stars that are attracted in close and tied together by their mutual gravitation, with many stars only a light-year or two apart. The globular cluster in the new Hubble Space Telescope image, known as Pismis 26, was discovered in 1959 by astronomer Paris Pismis at the Tonantzintla Observatory in Mexico.

The stars in Pismis 26 have a nearly spherical structure. The cluster appears to be mostly red stars, with a few brighter blue stars along the edges. These colors are due, in part, to the cluster’s age, which is estimated to be around 12 billion years, implying that it contains many of the oldest stars in our galaxy, if not the universe. These stars are most likely a much deeper red than the bright-blue stars typical of large, young, fast-burning stars that die out much sooner, or the typical yellow star that straddles the two.

Additionally, the cluster is heavily metallic, which means that its stars have higher concentrations of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium than stars like the sun do. According to a NASA statement, scientists believe these stars are particularly rich in nitrogen, implying that the globular cluster’s star population spans a range of ages.

Furthermore, the cluster’s color is influenced by a phenomenon known as reddening, which occurs when dense stellar dust blocks shorter-wavelength blue light while allowing longer-wavelength red light to pass through more easily.

Pismis 26 is close to the galactic bulge that surrounds Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole. Because of the presence of Sgr A* and its incredible gravity, as well as that of all the material surrounding it in the bulge and the dense sphere of stars it contains, this region of the galaxy is especially dust-heavy.

It’s been an eventful year for space exploration, with successes including the completion of Nasa’s Artemis 1 mission (finally), the inauguration of the James Webb Space Telescope, and the completion of China’s Tiangong space station.

2023 is set to be another busy year. Here are five of the most exciting missions to watch out for.

1. Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer

In April, the European Space Agency (Esa) is set to launch the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice), in what will be Europe’s first dedicated robotic mission to Jupiter. Juice is due to reach the planet in July 2031 after performing an incredible flight path through the Solar System. The mission will enter into orbit around Jupiter and perform numerous flybys of its large icy moons: Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

After four years of moon flybys, Juice will then enter into orbit around Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System – becoming the first spacecraft ever to reach orbit around the moon of another planet. The icy moons of Jupiter are interesting as they are all believed to host oceans of liquid water beneath their frozen surfaces. Europa, in particular, is regarded as one of the most likely abodes in the Solar System for extra-terrestrial life.

Juice will be equipped with ten scientific instruments including ice-penetrating radar to study the internal oceans. This use of radar is a practical first step in mapping the sub-surface oceans, paving the way for more exotic future missions involving submersible vehicles – some of which have already been put forward. The launch window runs from April 5 to April 25.

2. SpaceX Starship

Although no date has been announced by aerospace company SpaceX at the time of writing, the first orbital test flight of the super-heavy Starship spacecraft is highly anticipated to occur in early 2023. Starship will be the largest spacecraft capable of carrying humans from Earth to destinations in space (the International Space Station is larger, but it was assembled in space). It will be the most powerful launch vehicle ever to fly, capable of lifting 100 tonnes of cargo to low Earth orbit.

Starship is the collective name for a two-component system consisting of the Starship spacecraft (which carries the crew and cargo) and the Super Heavy rocket. The rocket component will lift Starship to some 65km altitude before separating and returning to Earth in a controlled landing. The upper Starship component will then use its own engines to push itself the rest of the way to orbit.

Several short test flights of the Starship portion of the system have been made with varying degrees of success. But the upcoming flight will be the first time the whole system will be used to reach space as one. This first orbital flight was originally scheduled to launch in September 2022, but has been delayed several times.

3. dearMoon

The long-awaited dearMoon project, which will take members of the public on a six-day trip around the Moon and back, is due for launch on Starship and was originally planned for 2023. The exact date will depend on the successful test of Starship, but has been on the books since 2018. It will be the first true deep space tourism launch.

Financed by business entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa, a competition was set up to select eight members of the public (and an unknown number of crew) to join Maezawa on the trip – all completely paid for. The winners and criteria used have not been disclosed, although it is suspected the guests may be established or aspiring artists.

This mission will mark a big change in the way we think about space, as previously only astronauts picked using incredibly stringent criteria have been able to go into deep space (note: we are not counting brief 10-minute jaunts up to 100 km). A full trip of several days poses extreme risks, both in terms of health and engineering.

The success or failure of the dearMoon mission could affect whether deep space tourism becomes the next big thing, or it is relegated back to being a pipe-dream.

4. Asteroid explorer returns to Earth

The Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security – Regolith Explorer, mercifully more commonly known as OSIRIS-REx, is a Nasa mission to near-Earth asteroid Bennu. A key goal of this robotic mission was to acquire samples of Bennu and return them to Earth for analysis.

OSIRIS-REx is now fast returning to Earth with up to a kilogram of precious asteroid samples stored aboard. If all goes well, the capsule will detach from the spacecraft, enter the Earth’s atmosphere and parachute to a soft landing in the deserts of Utah on September 24. Asteroid sample return has only been achieved once before, by the Japanese Space Agency’s Hayabusa 2 mission in 2020.