There have been movies about the moon as long as there have been movies. But the oldest moon movie has endured more than most.

In 1895, sibling technicians Auguste and Louis Lumière held the first-ever public exhibition of moving images with several minute-long projections of everyday occurrences. The 33 spectators among that initial audience included illusionist Georges Méliès, who was entranced. Over the next several years, Méliès would apply his craft to short films featuring primordial special effects, many of which were simply extensions of his stage presence. But his towering accomplishment was 1902’s 

, a playful and creative short that set the bar high for moon movies right out of the gate.

While many early movies were adapting plays and novels, Méliès consolidated several sources that encapsulated lunar fiction of the time. The film drew from both Jules Verne’s 1865 

. Its loose plot revolves around a society of French scientists who launch a rocketship to the lunar surface, but its real star is the moon itself. Méliès (who is also a cartoonist) depicted his travelers crashing headlong onto a cratered face that winced at its new arrivals.

Nearly a century later, the Smashing Pumpkins resurrected that iconic moment in their video for “Tonight, Tonight.” By then, there had been several movies that envisioned the surface of the moon, but nothing that lingered in the public imagination as much as 

That’s partly because Méliès’ version of the moon was a vivid environment teeming with life, far different from the arid landscape that Apollo astronauts would bounce across decades later. His travelers encounter hostile species who kidnap the visitors and present them to their king. After a dramatic showdown, the crew makes its way back to Earth with an alien captive, who remains on display to the public. Méliès’ moon is much like James Cameron’s Pandora, the psychedelic planet of his 

 movies: lush, intricate, loaded with mystery and danger, nothing like the “magnificent desolation” that Buzz Aldrin observed in 1969.

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By then, the emptiness of the moon was already understood well enough to shift its cinematic form. It provided an ideal mood-setter early in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, when astronauts discover a monolith indicative of extraterrestrial presence beyond their comprehension. Set to the haunting choir of György Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna, Kubrick’s depiction of an empty white canvas was accurate enough (thanks in part to NASA advisors) to plant the seeds for a conspiracy that blossomed years later.

It took a little more than a decade for adherents of the Flat Earth Society to circulate the theory that Kubrick’s moon sequence in 

scored him a gig faking the Apollo 11 landing. More than that, the story goes, Kubrick felt so guilty about deceiving the public that he planted clues of his guilt in 

. While appalling to anyone with a basic respect for science and, well, facts, this outrageous revisionist view fueled the plot point of both 2016’s mockumentary 

 (an underrated comedic thriller from the future director of 

. These fictional works have less to do with the appeal of the moon in the popular imagination than the public’s inability to grasp the sheer technological sophistication necessary to get there. They deserve a separate category — the limits of the human mind, and its knee-jerk tendency to mythologize — beyond the canon of moon movies under consideration here.

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Instead, post-Apollo, the most appealing lunar cinema looked much like what astronauts found there and mined it for narrative potential.

Duncan Jones’ underrated Sam Rockwell thriller 

 imagines a lonely clone attempting to make sense out of his isolated surroundings and the circumstances that brought him there. The Neil Armstrong biopic 

 positioned the first moon landing as a catharsis for Armstrong’s grief, and derives most of its power from the wordless expressions on Ryan Gosling’s face as he gazes out at an ancient, uninhabited plane. In 2019’s moody 

, the moon is both a bland tourist attraction and a waystation to Mars. It’s a bit busier, but marred by piracy and consumerist fantasies, no less inviting than it is today. The ongoing Apple TV series 

, with its revisionist history in which Russia gets to the moon first, maps out the strategic advantages (and potential conflicts) around the corner once all that open space gets colonized.

<h1>That’s the good stuff.</h1>

Since the moon lacks the secrecy of the early 1900s, more recent exaggerated visions of lunar life lack the creative energy of the Méliès film. The dopey 

 franchise envisioned Nazis hiding on the dark side of the moon. Roland Emmerich’s inane misfire 

 imagined the moon as a giant alien superstructure. These projects come up short in large part because they don’t meet the moon on its own terms as we now understand them.

Which brings us back to Méliès. Why would an early filmmaker turn his lens to the moon? Part of it stems from the way the moon embodies the awe and mystery of human existence. It’s both familiar and alien, close enough to admire but too far to know. The resilience of moon movies also comes from the inherent and lasting relationship between cinema and stargazing. Both require looking at light reflected from the past. Telescopes are actually time machines.

<h1>We never see the moon exactly as it is before us.</h1>

It’s the ultimate primal form of cinema, a spectacular show on display every night, free of charge.

Eric Kohn is the artistic director of the Southampton Playhouse, overseeing its programming initiatives throughout the year and writing its weekly newsletter, 

. He brings nearly 20 years of experience as a journalist at IndieWire, the entertainment trade publication, where he served as Chief Film Critic, Senior Editor, and Vice President of Editorial Strategy. While there, he co-hosted the popular movie podcast "Screen Talk" with Anne Thompson, in addition to covering Sundance, Cannes, the Oscars, and more. His writing has also appeared in 

, and other publications. A two-time chair of the New York Film Critics Circle, Kohn co-founded the Critics Academy initiative, a workshop for aspiring entertainment writers. Since 2013, he has served as an adjunct professor of cinema studies at New York University. He also produces feature films, including several recent projects with Harmony Korine. His favorite movies include 

, and anything directed by Agnes Varda or Ernst Lubitsch.

Eric Kohn

Tristan Dubin

A Trip to the Moon (In Movies)

Artemis, the movie?

Supercluster Starlink SKETCH header

Russia is still a major military power in space. Should its threats to destroy Starlink be taken seriously?

In early February, Russian commentator Vladimir Solovyov called for Russia to nuke the Starlink constellation after SpaceX blocked Starlink access to their troops. All Starlink users must now obtain licenses from the Ukrainian government to use terminals within the besieged territory, effectively blinding Russia's occupying forces.

The move, campaigned for by Ukraine for months, is a severe blow to Russia, which has been purchasing Starlink terminals on the black market and using them on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine to keep troops online and guide strike drones deeper into Ukraine’s land. The loss of Starlink has led to a dramatic lapse in 

 to conduct offensive operations and a sharp increase in 

personnel losses in combat, some due to friendly fire.

Speaking on his prime-time talk show on the Russia 1 TV station, 

 that a single nuclear detonation at the right altitude would take down the entire Starlink constellation, cutting Ukrainians from the advantage Starlink offers them. 

<h1>This suggestion isn't the first hint that Russia may be pondering a wide-ranging destruction of Western space assets.</h1>

In 2024, US intelligence said that Russia seemed to be developing a space-borne nuclear bomb that could turn vast swaths of near-Earth space into a radioactive space junk cemetery. 

In December, intelligence services of an undisclosed NATO nation 

that Russia is working on a new type of orbiting anti-satellite weapon that would release a cloud of tiny particles to flood orbit with damaging space debris to destroy the Starlink constellation, of which there are nearly 10,000 satellites in operation.

The threats, while seen as an extreme move that Russia is unlikely to resort to unless cornered, raise questions about Western reliance on space technology and the ability to survive a possible conflict escalation. The developments also underscore that although Russia has been considered a waning space power for years, it still has enough military space muscle to flex.

“Russia has had problems in its civilian space program for years,” Victoria Samson, Chief Director for Space Security and Stability at the Secure World Foundation, told Supercluster. “It’s been an issue even before Ukraine. They have quality control issues, corruption issues, and they don’t really have much of a commercial space program. But the place where they still are a global power is military space.”

Samson is a co-author of the Secure World Foundation’s 

 published in June 2025. In it, Samson and colleague Laetitia Cesari compared information on offensive counterspace systems that exist or are in development across the world’s space-faring nations.

The report reveals that Russia in fact, is not that far behind the heavily arming China in terms of the sophistication of its space-borne combat arsenal, and, in fact, might be in some areas ahead of the U.S. Russia is certainly in possession of military space technologies that neither of the European nations have, which provides some comfort regarding Russia’s readiness, or lack thereof, to destroy vast swaths of orbit in a single nuclear explosion.

Sampson describes the effects of an orbital nuclear detonation as a wide-ranging, indiscriminate destruction.

“The immediate effects would be that any satellite in line of sight would have its electronics fried because of the energy released by the nuclear electromagnetic pulse,” Samson said. “It’s going to take adversary satellites, but also allied satellites and your own satellites. If you have people in orbit, they’re most likely going to be killed.”

On top of that, Samson said, the radiation released by the explosion would accumulate in the van Allen belts, four distinct regions around Earth where the planet’s magnetic field lines trap cosmic particles. Satellites passing these regions, which stretch at altitudes from 600 to 60,000 kilometers, would quickly have their electronic components degraded unless substantially hardened.

“Much like people getting sick from being exposed to too much radiation, satellites, too, would stop working as they would repeatedly pass through those van Allen belts, picking up radiation,” said Samson.

Julianna Suess, a space security researcher at the Royal United Services Institute think tank (RUSI), wrote 

published after Russia’s alleged plans to develop a space-based nuke had been revealed that “a nuclear explosion would have indiscriminate and long-term effects on the orbit in question” and “a blanket effect on the surrounding area, depending on the size of the warhead – including on Russia’s own systems.”

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 test, conducted by the US government in 1962. The test saw a 1.45 megaton warhead detonate 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth — an altitude where the International Space Station orbits today.

“That explosion took out about one-third of the active satellites in orbit at that point,” Samson said. “Granted, that was five years post-Sputnik, so there weren’t as many of them as there are today, but still, the effects of that explosion were far-reaching.”

Samson thinks that Russia is unlikely to press the space nuke button unless in a “Hitler in a bunker” situation.

“If Putin sees there is a regime change happening, that he is about to get out, he might choose to take everyone with him,” she said. “Detonating a nuclear bomb in space would be escalatory; it would certainly lead to a conflict on Earth, and it’s not something that they would take lightly.”

The zone weapon, described in the Associated Press report, would have similarly widespread effects on the orbital environment, said Samson, meaning Russia is equally unlikely to take such an action either.

“Once these pellets are out, they’re going to be following the laws of thermodynamics and orbital mechanics,” said Samson. “They are going to threaten Starlink satellites, but they’re also going to threaten all other satellites that are in the same orbits.”

These damaging space debris particles would gradually get pulled back toward Earth through the self-cleaning power of atmospheric drag. But that process might take years, resulting in a period when no one would be able to safely use the affected area of space.

Russia has other space warfighting cards up its sleeve. The Secure World Foundation’s report suggests that Russia has more advanced direct ascent anti-satellite missiles than the U.S. and also possesses sophisticated low-Earth-orbit co-orbital systems that might be exceeding the capabilities of all the Western allies. European nations, on the other hand, come out of the comparison rather poorly, with only France currently possessing any substantial counter-space assets. 

Co-orbital military space systems are satellites designed to orbit in the vicinity of adversary spacecraft with the goal of either destroying them or interfering with the data links between these satellites and ground control. According to the Secure World Foundation’s report, Russia has been investing in the development of offensive counter-space weapons since around 2010 and has conducted extensive orbital tests of systems designed for close maneuvers around adversary spacecraft (Rendezvous and Proximity Operations). 

A duo of satellites known as Luch 1 and Luch 2 (Russian for ray) has been making headlines since the mid 2010s for their suspicious maneuvers in the geostationary orbit, the orbital region at an altitude of 22,000, where many strategic spy and communication satellites are stationed.

“Russia has had satellites doing these uncoordinated close approaches both in low Earth orbit and the geostationary orbit for years now, since before the war in Ukraine,” said Samson. “These satellites are going to get up to orbit and get up close, and we don’t know necessarily what they’re going to be doing.”

 the Luch duo may have been intercepting communications transmitted by European commercial and state-owned communication satellites. These satellites might also be able to 

 using onboard jammers that override the original signal.

None of that, however, works against the SpaceX-owned Starlink constellation, which has been aiding Ukrainians in their struggle since the early days of the war, which began four years ago today.

Ukrainian satcom expert Volodymyr Stepanets 

 that Starlink has become nigh unjammable since the beginning of the war. In the early months, Russia’s jamming of the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite signal could disrupt Starlink links, but SpaceX has since developed an alternative technology, which allows it to use the constellation’s own signals to transmit positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) data.

<h1>Starlink terminals require accurate PNT information to be able to locate and sync with the satellites passing overhead.</h1>

Stepanets said that although Russia has made attempts to disrupt Starlink communications directly, the jamming technology is highly inefficient. Starlink relies on very narrow and focused beams that can only be disrupted or intercepted at close distances. On Ukrainian battlefields, these jammers get quickly located and immediately destroyed.

“They can cause a bit of disruption but certainly not break Starlink communication,” said Stepanets. “Neither on the battlefields in Ukraine, nor anywhere else, has anyone yet demonstrated even any noticeable success in suppressing low Earth orbit satellite networks.”

Given the importance of Starlink in the war in Ukraine, this untouchability of the mega-constellation leaves Russia pondering ideas of orbital mass destruction.

“They are really scrambling to figure out what to do about Starlink,” said Samson.

Tereza Pultarova

Jiin Choi

Space War

Will Russia Attack the Starlink Constellation? 

sc exodus 2025-02-17C-01 header

Young space companies have been struggling in Europe for years.

Unable to raise sufficient funds to scale and restricted by the fragmented European market, many have failed to outgrow the start-up stage. To some, American investors and venture funds have come to the rescue, offering the much-needed capital, frequently under the condition of relocating to the U.S. The problem has been so widespread that some industry insiders refer to it as the European space start-up exodus.

Some hope that the wave of investment in defense projects, motivated by the continued threat from Russia and escalating disputes with the administration of Donald Trump, might thwart the trend. 

<h1>Europe, however, has a lot of catching up to do.</h1>

Over the nearly quarter-century since the new space movement emerged to develop space technology faster and more cheaply than the old-school agencies and corporations, the U.S. government departments have nurtured giants like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Planet Labs. 

SpaceX, founded in 2002, has grown into the world’s most valuable company. Responsible for the vast majority of space launches globally, the company is now valued at over $800 billion. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin may have progressed at a much slower pace than SpaceX. Still, the company is currently valued at around $100 billion. Planet Labs, which in the early 2010s revolutionized Earth observation with its fleet of low-cost low-Earth-orbit cubesats, has grown to more than $ 7 billion. There are many others.

In contrast, Europe’s single new space unicorn — ICEYE — is valued at €2.4 billion ($2.8 billion). The Finish company, founded in 2014, operates the world’s largest constellation of synthetic aperture radar satellites that observe the surface of Earth day and night and even through clouds. Bulgaria’s Endurosat, which manufactures software-defined nano-satellites, is valued at around €200 million ($236 million). 

Many of the frequently mediatized names of the European new space world, including rocket developers ISAR Aerospace, PLD, or Rocket Factory Augsburg, have yet to prove they are worth the hype. Chances are that not all will survive. The UK’s long-promoted green rocket company Orbex has recently 

 after the  UK government withheld £100 million of promised funding. While some rescue buyouts have been discussed, the company’s future is uncertain.

So what exactly is wrong with Europe? Bulent Altan, Founding Partner at Munich, Germany-based Alpine Space Ventures, and early executive at SpaceX, told Supercluster that, unlike the US, where government players such as the Space Development Agency, the Department of Defense, and NASA have fully embraced new entrants, Europe has historically lacked “anchor customers” ready to support potentially disruptive players.

“Without those demand signals, companies could not scale, and capital formation was nearly impossible,” Altan told Supercluster. 

German producer of laser communications terminals, Mynaric, is among the high-profile visionary technology pioneers who have learned the hard way that Europe doesn’t offer a smooth path to success to those ahead of the game.

The company, a spin-off from the German Aerospace Center, described by some analysts as one of Germany’s most advanced start-ups, has been forced to accept a buyout offer from U.S.-based Rocket Lab after its money ran out due to a string of production glitches. 

“Sometimes the timing just doesn't play out nicely,” Joachim Horwath, Mynaric’s chief technical officer and one of the co-founders, commented on the company’s 15-year journey to Supercluster. “In a way, we were too early. There was no market when we first started.”

Today, laser communications are a hot trend in satellite technology, replacing radio frequency terminals as a go-to solution for transferring data in space. Lasers offer greater bandwidth and inherent protection against signal interception and jamming due to their high frequency and accurately focused beams. SpaceX began fitting Starlink satellites with laser terminals in 2021. Today, most of the constellation’s 10,000 satellites are interlinked with a mesh of space-born lasers. Amazon’s Kuiper, too, relies on the technology, and Chinese megaconstellations Guowang and Qianfan are expected to begin using lasers soon.

But in the late 2000s, when Horwath and his colleagues at the German Aerospace Center first started thinking about building a business from their research, none of those projects existed even on paper. 

Although a few experimental laser terminals had been flown in space by German researchers before, Mynaric’s demonstrations first focused on connecting aircraft. The company collaborated with Facebook on its Aquila drone project, which intended to beam internet from the stratosphere to unconnected areas on Earth. 

“We delivered prototypes to lots of interested companies, and then people started approaching us and asking whether we could also do that in space,” says Horwath.

The company won early funding from venture capital funds and angel investors,s mostly from Germany, but the funds didn’t suffice to move to production and scale up fast. 

“You can try to grow from cash flow, having small programs and living from program to program,” Horwath says. “But then you cannot take large steps, and when somebody comes who has more money than you, then you are basically gone because they can move faster.”

The company, Horwath added, needed another fifty million euros to complete the development and kick-start production. The investors recommended Mynaric to raise further capital by going public and listing first on the German stock exchange in Frankfurt in 2017, and subsequently, in 2021, on the American NASDAQ. 

“That was the only way to get that amount of money that we needed,” says Horwath. “The programs we had in Europe, either from the European Space Agency or the German Aerospace Center, were in the order of a few hundred thousand euros. Not millions.”

<h1>Neither SpaceX nor Blue Origin has ever gone public. Not yet.</h1>

By that time, internet-beaming satellite megaconstellations, first considered sci-fi by many industry experts, were quickly turning into the next big trend in satellite communications. Both SpaceX and OneWeb began launching their constellations two years prior, and other players, including Amazon and the Chinese project Guowang, were boasting about ambitious plans.

Mynaric quickly acquired an impressive list of customers, including big American primes working on the US Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Architecture Constellation, designed to detect intercontinental missiles. Horwath admits that from the beginning, the product was “gaining traction” much more in the U.S. than in Europe. 

At that time, the company opened a subsidiary in California but managed to keep most of the production in Europe. Then, in 2024, a faulty supplier component that couldn’t be readily replaced caused a sequence of production delays. Because Mynaric was publicly traded, they had to 

 its production output that year would only reach one-third of the forecast, meaning much lower than expected revenue. 

<h1>The shares tanked immediately.</h1>

“We were still ready to ship a huge amount of devices compared to the fact that previously, companies have only shipped one or two, and for a much higher cost,” remarks Horwath. “But the expectation of the market was different. The stock lost value, and we couldn’t issue new shares.”

At that time, California-based Pacific Investment Management Company stepped in and bought out Mynaric. The firm’s original shareholders, including Horwath and other founders, lost all their equity in the process. PIMCO is now selling Mynaric to Rocket Lab, whose satellite manufacturing branch had previously been purchasing Mynaric’s satcom laser terminals. The German government will have to approve the acquisition. The company hopes to still retain its European footprint, but will now be under the control of the US-domiciled Rocket Lab.

Mynaric's story is the most high-profile example of the challenges facing European space-tech visionaries. Founders of multiple European space start-ups have spoken to Supercluster about their struggles securing funding in Europe and receiving active encouragement from investors to relocate to the US in exchange for support.

“The pull to move to the US as a UK/European space start-up is constant,” a founder of one publicly known UK-based start-up who didn’t wish to be named, told Supercluster. “It’s about capital, but it’s also about momentum. The US ecosystem seems better set up to turn funding into capability quickly and keep that capability moving through procurement, regulation, and scale.”

Several founders complained about Europe’s reluctance to accept risk, which, they believe, results in an inability to foster genuinely new technologies.

“The only thing that gets funded here is somebody copying what SpaceX was doing 15 years ago,” another founder said under the condition of anonymity, pointing to the plethora of small rocket launchers currently being developed. “There's, like, 12 Falcon 1s that have been funded in Europe. But Falcon 1 was a dead end even for SpaceX.”

Falcon 1 was a small launcher developed by SpaceX between 2006 and 2009. The company ultimately discontinued the development to pursue the heavy lift Falcon 9, stating the small rocket couldn’t be made sufficiently profitable.

Despite the optical unification of Europe through the European Union’s single market, the founders also state that Europe remains a fragmented entity, and founders have to think carefully where they domicile their business. Countries prefer to nurture “national champions,” supporting local companies, whose growth is then limited by the funds available within that country. 

“For some years, I lectured at [an unnamed Spanish university],” one of the founders told Supercluster. “Most of my best students have left Spain either for Germany, the UK, or increasingly for the US. You can see many companies that do their engineering in Europe, but their headquarters are in the US. If there is a national security situation in Europe, these companies are American; they are not an asset for Europe.”

Some founders are still fighting for their future in Europe, bound to their home turf by the sense of duty, family ties, or dislike for the American way of life. 

<h1>Others have decided to leave the space sector behind and pursue different paths.</h1>

“I’ve been quite involved with the European space sector for almost 18 years, but for exactly that reason, I also decided to sell my remaining shares in the [unnamed space technology company] that I had built and move onwards to deep tech AI work,” another founder said.

Horwath admits that for the Mynaric founders, the possibility of having to relocate to the US has always loomed large.

“People have asked us many times — why did you do it in Europe? Why have you been so stupid in a way?” he says. “For us, because we grew out of the German Aerospace Center, we wanted to stay close to them. From the equity side of things, it would have certainly been better for us in the US.”

He adds that even today, with the satellite mega-constellations revolution in full swing, European projects are still rather rare among the company’s customers.

Another founder added: “When your runway is tight and your investors, often US-based, are watching for rapid progress, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify building the same footprint in the UK/Europe when recent history suggests the US offers a clearer path to scale.”

Some think that things might be about to change in Europe. The growing tensions with Russia and worsening relationships with the US, a long-term key ally, are forcing European governments to rethink their attitude to defense spending, and that includes funding for strategic space infrastructure. 

Last September, Germany announced it would invest over €35 billion ($40 billion) into space defense technology over the next five years. The investment is equivalent to the entire budget of the civilian-focused European Space Agency, and has raised hopes that things might change in Europe. 

Pierre Lionnet, a space industry analyst and director at the ASD Eurospace industry association, called the investment “a lifeline” for the struggling sector and “really transformational for Europe.”

“Previously, the German spending on military satellite capability was less than 400 million euros [$479 million] a year,” Lionnet said. “This is basically Germany saying ‘we are multiplying by one order of magnitude our investment in space capabilities.”

Other European countries have made pledges to boost funding for military space systems, albeit not on the same scale. France said it would increase its space defence funding by 

over the next five years, bringing the country’s total investment for that period to 10 billion Euros. Other countries have been announcing the purchase of sovereign satellites for military purposes, and more are expected to come. 

Still, whether the geopolitical pressures will prove to be a lifeline to Europe’s malnourished space start-ups remains a question. 

Candice Massucci Templier, a space policy and strategy analyst at Paris-based space consultancy Novaspace, says that the European government institutions need to significantly overhaul their procurement practices if the exodus is to stop. 

“The exodus into the U.S. is basically driven by structural differences,” Massucci Templier said. “It’s not only the lack of spending. The start-ups move because the U.S. offers faster procurement rounds and bigger scale-up rounds.”

Dallas Kasaboski, a space industry analyst at the Analysis Mason consultancy, adds that European tender rules frequently prevent innovative players from winning substantial contracts.

“The European governmental approach has often been to say ‘here are my exact requirements, prove to me that you will meet them and then I will work with you,” he says. “The requirements are prescriptive, and their disadvantage is that they don’t allow a lot of room for innovation. It locks out some players who may have a different offering or work in a different way.”

Alpine Space Ventures’ Altan, however, thinks that things are about to shift. 

“While the U.S. has historically offered a more mature market, we’re seeing Europe start to catch up, particularly with rising government budgets and early signs of procurement reform,” he said. 

“The talent and technical readiness are there. What’s been missing is a market pull, and now it’s arriving.”

Space Exodus

Stopping the European Space Startup Exodus

sc leaving-space header

Last month, a medical issue paused a planned spacewalk and ultimately impacted crew rotation operations aboard the International Space Station.

"The agency is monitoring a medical concern with a crew member that arose Wednesday afternoon," NASA officials 

 on January 7th. While the astronaut — who was never named, for privacy reasons — stabilized quickly, their condition was serious enough to bring home the Crew-11 mission home early.

<h1>NASA astronaut Zena Cardman had been just hours away from her first spacewalk when the problem happened.</h1>

"Spaceflight is much larger than any single person," Cardman said. "In my opinion, this is a really excellent example of risk analysis and decision-making, and I'm very proud of the decision they made."

Space serves as an example of an "isolated, confined environment" or ICE, which produces numerous stresses on the body, the brain, and social ties, a 

 in this field, examining environments like Antarctica, submarines, "analog" space bases with simulated astronauts, and outer space itself.

Underlying the ICE environment is this: no easy escape from Antarctica, a submarine, or especially a space station when something goes wrong. Astronauts usually have years of experience in ICE 

 even being selected as an astronaut, whether as pilots with combat experience or as expedition members on remote scientific voyages. And then there is the typical five to ten years of strict NASA training on thinking like an astronaut when the worst arises, before flying to space.

"I already feel very confident that we get really excellent training, especially for any kind of urgent situation that might arise. We're really well-trained to get a situation stable," Cardman said.

"Training actually works very well," said Crew-11's Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui of the mindset that kicked in, with similar sentiments shared by crewmates Mike Fincke (NASA) and Oleg Platonov (Roscosmos).

Making a successful, safe decision in ICE requires careful communication between the remote team — in this case, the astronauts aboard the ISS — and the team of experts back home, which was in principal Mission Control and a team of international medical experts.

"The team came together, and it wasn't just this team, but the whole team... around the world," Fincke said.  "And we were able to come home safely to our families, back to beautiful planet Earth."

'Everybody I knew was always saying, "What if?"'

Even casual followers of the space program will know that other emergencies have arisen in space, with some leading to the loss of life of crew. By coincidence, the crew flew home not long before NASA's annual Day of Remembrance for fallen astronauts, which honors the group of spaceflyers who died either while on mission or in training.

 to consult, including examples such as the loss of 14 astronauts (combined) on the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters of 1986 and 2003, another three who died in a launch-pad fire while finalizing the Apollo 1 mission for launch in 1967, a single Russian cosmonaut who died when his parachute failed to deploy on Soyuz 1 in 1967, and three other cosmonauts whose cabin fatally depressurized as Soyuz 11 came to a close in 1971. (Private spaceflight also had Virgin Galactic's crash-landing in 2014, which killed one pilot during a test flight.)

The typical process when emergencies occur, either fatal or not, is to create an investigatory board that looks at all factors of the incident. You can think of it as similar to what happens after an airplane crash or near-miss in aviation, although space has another level of difficulty, given all missions are, to an extent, developmental.

Both the engineering and the humans involved in the critical decisions are considered in these investigations, which can take years to complete. 

<h1>Then comes a list of recommendations, changing how decisions are implemented as well as making fixes to the hardware.</h1>

And so that the recommendations are not ignored, the NASA space community formally remembers everybody on the Day of Remembrance (which falls in late January or early February, depending on the year).

And from time to time, when serious concerns arise about an ongoing mission, an old hand in the room will recall the thinking on a mission like Challenger, like the social media conversation that 

 between NASA administrator (and commercial astronaut) Jared Isaacman and former NASA space shuttle manager Wayne Hale.

No less a figure than Neil Armstrong talked about this "lessons learned" process. Armstrong — a test pilot by training — was best-known for being the first person to walk on the moon during Apollo 11 in 1969, but he also was part of the crew that stabilized Gemini 8 from a potentially fatal spin in space in 1966.

"To me, it [Gemini 8] re-emphasized the fact that you've got to expect some of these things are going to go wrong, and we always need to prepare ourselves for handling the unexpected. And you just hope those unexpected things aren't something that you can't cope with," Armstrong, who died in 2012 of complications from surgery at age 82, said in a 2001 

"So throughout Apollo, everybody I knew was always saying, 'What if?' and, 'Is it possible that this could happen?' And, 'What will we do?' Just that process of continually questioning, built your confidence in your ability to handle whatever comes along," Armstrong added.

While a handful of private citizens with little ICE training flew into space over the decades, this process has accelerated with recent commercial flights, of just a few minutes in space, aboard Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin. There's an ongoing debate about how much these passengers understand about the dangers of space and how they would prepare for issues, although the companies involved emphasize that their training would be beneficial in case of an emergency.  

SpaceX has also flown non-professional astronauts recently, but its missions are not suborbital hops for a few minutes — and therefore require more funding and training. Axiom Space, a company in Houston, uses SpaceX to fly commercial missions to the ISS, which is even more demanding as all occupants on the station require basic training on how to operate safely.

"The culmination of this training is known as 'Emergency Simulations," Axiom 

 in a discussion about its Ax-2 mission, which, like all missions, was led by a retired NASA astronaut. "During these simulations, the Ax-2 crew members take what they have learned in a classroom and mockup-based training, and put it to the test during a series of simulated ISS emergencies. The astronauts are in NASA's ISS mockups, while a team of instructors surprises them with a scenario such as a fire, cabin depressurization, or a toxic leak into the ISS atmosphere."

NASA's Isaacman flew twice aboard SpaceX on orbital, non-ISS missions that he, a billionaire, both funded and commanded. But Isaacman is also a highly trained pilot capable of operating high-performance aircraft, allowing him insight into the dangers of operating up high — including in space.

"There's no atmosphere. There’s radiation. There is micrometeoroid debris," Isaacman said in a 

 with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which he did as an alumnus. "We have to keep going, just as the explorers did hundreds of years ago, and along the way... life will be better for humankind. So, we don't have a choice not to proceed. We just kind of have to go with caution."

While the number of people simultaneously in space is small compared to seven billion individuals on Earth, it hit a record 

20 individuals a couple of times in recent years

, according to statistics kept by spaceflight statistic analyst Jonathan McDowell and, of course, Supercluster's own 

. There may be a nuance in the statistics as 

not everyone agrees on the "boundary" of space

, but the point is true that there are more private space missions than ever.

Below is a non-comprehensive shortlist of other times people successfully "escaped" space as circumstances warranted, or survived in space because it was deemed safe to do so, after a critical incident.

An apparent micrometeoroid strike on the Chinese Shenzhou 20 spacecraft happened when the vehicle was docked at the 

, which Supercluster tracks on our website and app. The Chinese decided to move the crew onto an undamaged spacecraft for reentry and to fly Shenzhou 20 home autonomously. A similar scenario played out with a Soyuz spacecraft at the ISS in 2022-23, which forced some crew members to stay much longer than anticipated due to the vehicle swap.

BOEING STARLINER CREW FLIGHT TEST (2024-25):

operated by Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore

, two highly experienced NASA astronauts who were former test pilots themselves, on its first crewed ISS mission. Supercluster tracked and covered the mission extensively through our suite of utilities and editorial coverage. During the final approach, some issues arose during engine firing that could not easily be diagnosed in space. The crew safely docked with ISS and worked with the ground on troubleshooting. After several months, 

NASA swapped the crew to a SpaceX Crew Dragon for reentry and flew the Starliner home autonomously

, to preserve safety. Starliner will fly its next mission uncrewed as Boeing aims to complete certification to fly astronauts for future ISS missions. Williams is now retired from NASA. 

ISS ASTRONAUT BLOOD CLOT (DISCLOSED IN 2020):

At some point in ISS operations, an astronaut developed a blood clot that required medical treatment. Their name and their year of operation were not disclosed due to privacy reasons. Since it was the first time a blood clot arose in space, NASA (in consultation with outside medical doctors) used a combination of blood thinners and ultrasound scans to keep the astronaut safe in orbit. The drug treatment was 

 by a shortage of the needed medicine on the ISS, but a spacecraft shipment eventually resolved it. The astronaut safely completed their mission and returned to Earth.

While NASA spacesuits — originally designed for the space shuttle program of 1981-2011 – have experienced a few leaks over the years, the 

 occurred when European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano was mid-spacewalk. Parmitano emerged safely, although the spacewalk had to be cut short, and water was clinging to his face during repressurization in the ISS. NASA made numerous changes to its spacewalk procedures, allowing for 12+ years of safe spacewalks afterwards — and counting. It takes years to procure and develop spacesuits due to their expense and complication, as they are essentially little spacecraft. The same spacesuits are therefore still (carefully) used for ISS operations, although NASA aims to have a new generation ready for the post-ISS era.

The ISS uses ammonia as a coolant, and a few times it has leaked to an extent that requires spacewalk repairs by astronauts. One of the more prominent incidents took place in 2001, when 

. during the first of the STS-98 spacewalks Curbeam was connecting cooling lines between the newly-installed Destiny module and the station’s external ammonia coolant system, a small amount of ammonia leaked from one of the hoses and formed frozen ammonia crystals on his spacesuit. NASA directed Curbeam to remain in direct sunlight for about a half-hour so that the ammonia crystals could vaporize (“bake off”) from the suit before he returned to the airlock, and his crewmates brushed off remaining crystals. Afterward the airlock was partly repressurized and vented to help remove any ammonia, and the crew inside wore oxygen masks for a short period as an extra precaution. Noone was harmed. 

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