STEPPING STONES

 

I've always been fascinated by the various deep space missions by unmanned probes to the outer system. The recent New Horizons probe, which took the first close up images of Pluto, before entering the Kuiper Belt to reveal its intended target of the dual body object 'Arrokoth' was especially exciting.

Since then, there have not been many major discoveries made but things are about to change over the next few months and years. A number of separate missions are on course to rendezvous with various planetary bodies and asteroids.

The most remote object in the current lineup is the asteroid Psyche, which is believed to be largely composed of metal ores. The Psyche probe which was launched in October 2023 is due to arrive at the asteroid in 2029, which is orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter. At around 175 miles in diameter, it is quite a substantial target. The probe recently took advantage of a fly by assist from the Martian gravity well and is now accelerating by means of its ion thrusters towards the asteroid belt.

The smallest planet in the solar system, Mercury is about to receive a visitor in the shape of the joint ESA and JAXA space probe, Bepicolumbo. Launched way back in October, 2018, the probe has recently arrived in Mercury orbit and will shortly split into two main sections - the European Space Agency's Planetary Orbiter and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's  Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. The two main components will orbit Mercury seaprately and begin transmitting data to Earth this December, along with close up images of the planets surface.

Back in 2022 the DART spacecraft successfully redirected the course of the asteroid Dimorphos, which had previously been heading for a close pass to Earth. Dimorphos orbits closely around the larger asteroid Didymos. The spacecraft impacted on the surface of the rock and actively changed its orbital trajectory. The idea was to test if it was practical to divert a potentially hazardous Near Earth Object and prevent a collision at some point in the future. Now in 2026, a follow up mission is headed to the asteroids, to inspect the damage caused by the impact. The ESA Hera probe, launched in 2024 will rendezvous with the binary pair and assess the effect of the 'kinetic imapctor'. The HERA probe conducted a flyby of Mars and its moons enroute to the belt and later this month will deploy two separate Cubesats - Milani and Juventas, to study the binary pair and the crater on Dimorphos, left by the action of the spacecraft.

Possibly one of the most exciting missions is the MMX Probe, or Martian Moons eXploration, by the Japanese Aerospace Agency, which was launched recently on a five year mission to visit Phobos and Deimos. The probe will rendezvous with Phobos, the larger of the two moons and land a small probe on the surface. The MMX probe will recover a sample of material and the return vehicle will then set off for a journey to Earth to deliver the recovered material in 2031. 

The main probe will continue to orbit the moons, gathering data and hopefully provide an explanation as to how Phobos came to be in orbit around Mars and answer the question as to whether it was originally part of the main planet, formed out of the same material as its parent planet or was captured by the Martian gravity.

While I was researching material for this post, a good friend of mine sent me a gift. Back in 2025, the private japanese space company 'iSpace' in conjunction with the European Space Agency, attempted a landing on the moon, with a robotic probe. The Hakuto-R Mission 2, also called Resilience, was intended to soft land in the Mare Frigoris and deploy a small 5kg rover - Tenacious.

Unfortunately, despite successfully achieving lunar orbit and attempting a landing, the laser guidance system failed, 90 seconds before touchdown and the spacecraft crashed on the lunar surface.

The gift my friend sent me was a small model of the rover, supplied to shareholders as a publicity excercise and also issued in the January 2025 Shogakukan Magazine, as a free gift.

The little model is made of cardboard, with plastic wheels and axles and is powered by an elastic band.

Like most things japanese, the consruction was well executed, if a little fiddly in places! The model has a foldaway radio mast, opening solar panel and working soil sample scoop on the front. The model itself is probably almost as large as the original rover.

The real Tenacious Rover also carried a small 'art installation' in the form of a small red house model, made by the artist Mikael Genberg. The Lander itself also carried various other cultural artefacts and a memory disk with various messages and information.

ABDUCTING ALIENS

I have just finished watching Steven Spielbergs latest film 'Disclosure Day', which revolves around a government cover-up of alien contact. Whilst it is a total departure from other recent alien films and does actually feature an alien entity, it still managed to leave me a little disappointed, compared to his earlier opus, 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'. For me, aliens should be, by definition, utterly beyond anything we are used to, rather than appearing to be a a 'version' of humanity. As a child of the sixties, alongside the actual space race and the push for the moon landing, I was acutely aware of the presence of aliens. Not in the real sense of extraterrestrial invasion or interference, but in the media of the day, which, due to the fascination with all things space, included little green men and bug eyed monsters at every available opportunity. For a small boy, this was a dream come true, as alongside all the robot and spaceship toys, there were astronauts and aliens galore, in tv and cartoons, books and comics and in toys and games.

TV shows such as the Outer Limits spawned a set of bubblegum cards, with images of the aliens and creatures in livid colour - when I was given a set of the cards at about age 7, I was utterly terrified of some of the creatures depicted, such as the Chromite and the Glob and yet, revisiting the series today, the special effects look crude and shabby and the aliens appear far from frightening.

By contrast, an early X-rated horror film, the Quatermass Xperiment from 1955, which I was allowed to watch on TV in the early sixties and utterly traumatised me at the time, still has the capacity to unnerve me, some fifty years later, as the alien creature was so far beyond the normal shape and vision of anything which I had experienced before. Richard Wordsworth played a beleagured astronaut who is 'infected' by a space born entity, which gradually transforms him into an amorphous spongiform octopoid. Wordsworth's performance is extremely chilling as he manages to convey a sense of implacable threat, without uttering a single audible word of dialogue throughout the first half of the film. The later scenes, as the alien becomes fully matured were apparently effected by using a live octopus strapped to a board for closeups and a very convincing maquette for the distance shots.

A later sequel, which appeared as a live transmission TV series and as a Hammer film, was Quatermass and the Pit. Nigel Kneale's excellent script and crafty special effects once more left me chilled, as work on an underground tube station leads to the discovery of a crashed martian colony ship.

Both the TV and film versions feature a demonic looking insectoid alien, which terrorises London before being defeated by the good Professor. Although not contemporary with the series, these modern interpretations of the Hammer film martian would have given me nightmares as an 8 year old!

On a less terrifying note, toys and models of space aliens abounded in the sixties, as the 1950's crop of B-Movies had set the scene for giant monsters from outer space and the TV revolution of the sixties had introduced Star Trek, Dr Who and Lost in Space bringing all kinds of weird creatures into the home.

Toys such as the 1968 Miniflex Space Safari, allowed kids to rove distant planets and collect specimens of alien life in special capsules, whilst Remco's Hamilton Invaders series, pitted military might against a rampaging space spider called Horrible Hamilton.

Sweets and candies often included small toys in gumball machines, like this diminutive Man from Mars.

Rubber monsters were extremely popular in the sixties, both as capsule toys and as small inexpensive figures sold from a counter top box. One of my favourite sets were six alien figures that appeared in several different colourways and were made into keyrings, pencil rubbers and small playset figures.

The bell shaped alien was always my favourite and has appeared in many different forms and sizes over the years, which I have since been able to collect from ebay and other sources.

In 1970, Kellogs Sugar Smacks cereals included small plastic space critter in each Star Trek themed box. As Mr Spock looked on, a tiny colourful Crater Critter would tumble out into the bowl.

The modern series of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons and films featured an alien called Kraang, a figure of Kraang apeared in a Lego set and also in a Ferrero Kinder Surprise chocolate egg, both of which sit really well amongst the critters and are very reminiscent of the early sixties B movie creatures.

A series of rubber monsters called 'Teachers Pets' were common in high street stores, sold individually for a few pence. The exotic looking creatures were based on a set of bubblegum cards and stickers, featuring outlandish looking creatures with everyday names like Alvin and Kenneth.

More modern alien creatures tend to favour a more humanoid shape, such as the bendable rubber figures from Independance Day movie tie ins, or these dinosaur riding spacemen from the Britains toy line.

Possibly some of the best space alien toys appeared in the Mattel Major Matt Mason figure line, a series of toys which ran concurrent withthe Apollo programme, so that kids could re-enact their own moon landing with astronauts, moon crawlers and a space station. Not to be left behind, Mattel introduced Callisto, a transparent headed humanoid and the insectoid Scorpio alien, to complete the line and populate the imaginary planets being discovered by Mattel's Major Matt.