Heavenly peace

I know some of you are expecting a piece about the UP men’s basketball team making it to the F4 (Final Four) of the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP), the first time in 21—yes, 21—years.

I did start writing about the long uphill struggle toward making it to the F4, but there’s just so much that has to be distilled into a column, so give me a bit more time for that.

Instead of basketball then, let me take off from two earlier columns: one about the Armistice and the need for more effort toward world peace, and the other about the Philippines’ launch of its third satellite last month.

Our microsatellite, Diwata-2, was launched through a rocket at Tanegashima Space Center in Japan, together with other satellites, several from Japan and one from the United Arab Emirates. The night before the launch, I had dinner with members of the diplomatic corps (including our own embassy) and Japanese scientists, with a lively exchange about satellites and space exploration in general.

The Europeans noted how the early years of space exploration, dominated by the Americans and the Russians, was more of a race toward conquering space, a way of asserting one’s superiority in science and technology set against the backdrop of the Cold War.

The notions of a race among nations, and conquest of space, continue today, but over the years, there has been a shift, especially with regard to satellites, toward looking at how we might find peaceful and more practical uses of those satellites. The technologies behind them were actually developed mainly by the military, originally for remote sensing to produce maps. Until recently, we had to rely on the United States for most of our maps. Now, with our own satellites, we are able to gather much more data on the Philippines, and tailored for our needs in defense, agriculture, communications and many other applications.

There are now more than 3,000 satellites out there, from dozens of countries, and there is no international treaty on how to handle these satellites—banning military use and spying, for example. There is no international agreement, either, on the proper disposal of these satellites; they do have life spans, and most will disintegrate out there, some crashing back to earth.  It’s the stuff that makes for science-fiction movies: junkyards in the heavens.

It’s good to feel hopeful, though, that space can become a place for international cooperation, and with a planetary agenda for peace.

In the same rocket with Diwata-2 was Japan’s GOSAT-2 (nicknamed Ibuki-2), poetically described in Japanese as monitoring the planet Earth’s breathing.  The first GOSAT was launched in 2009, and is now joined by this second satellite to observe the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane. The satellite images sent over the years clearly show the increase in these gases, proof of global warming.

Ibuki-2 has the added function now of monitoring black carbon and particulate matter 2.5 concentrations, which are indicators of pollution.  Significantly, the World Health Organization just released a report saying that pollution, especially in cities, is the “new tobacco,” meaning it inflicts as much harm on people’s respiratory systems as tobacco.

Another example of international cooperation is the International Space Station (ISS), which has been hosting astronauts of different nationalities. In 2007, Malaysia’s first astronaut, Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, was launched into space on a Soyuz rocket from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, to join other astronauts in that space station.

Shukor’s presence up there has gone a long way to get Malaysians interested in outer space, with Malaysian newspapers even featuring the times and days for sightings (using telescopes, of course) of the ISS, based on data from Nasa, the Americans’ space agency.

Next in line is the United Arab Emirates, which hopes to have its first astronaut joining the ISS next year.

We need to get a national space program going. We’re doing that through the satellites, but there are other initiatives as well, such as a track within UP’s electronic and electrical engineering curricula offering space engineering.

We have to get young Filipinos motivated to move away from their tablets and cell phones and look up to the heavens. A few months ago, again through international linkages, we were able to invite a small group of high school students over to UP Diliman for an opportunity to interview astronauts on the ISS, hooked through a modern version of amateur radio.

I think it won’t be overly optimistic for a senior citizen like myself to hope to see, in my lifetime, a Filipino astronaut, as well as peace on earth and in the heavens.

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