'Nasa's asteroid collision shows we can turn our space fantasies into reality'

Space fever is gripping the globe after Nasa smashed a spaceship into an asteroid, with agencies now looking for new ways to turn science fiction into science fact.

The US space agency has already announced it wants to use Mars as a stepping stone to help mankind expand out into the solar system, but the European Space Agency (Esa) also has some startling ambitions.

Britain’s David Parker, director of human and robotic exploration at Esa, dreams of sending a nuclear submarine to Europa - a moon of Jupiter - and climbers to Enceladus, an icy rock which orbits Saturn.

It’s a bold prospect, but one that is just about achievable, he believes.

“It’s right on the edge of possibility,” he told The Telegraph. “But I’ve always had these science fiction style fantasies, well two of them.

“One would be a submarine going to Europa. So if you could land on the ice-covered moon of Jupiter and use a nuclear power system to melt your way through the ice with the submarine and launch into the ocean, who knows what is down there.

“And the second cool thing is the ice moon Enceladus, which is spewing water into space from cracks and fissures across its surface. Imagine if we had human explorers, ice climbing down fissures. There would be a lot of cool places to explore."

Dr Parker, the former chief executive of the UK Space Agency added: “It’s right on the edge of credibility, but you could engineer and design those things, if you had the money to do it. There would be a lot of challenges, but it’s a stepwise thing. It will be a slow expansion of humanity over time.”

Human spaceflight and exploration has been left to stagnate in recent decades, but as well as the asteroid redirection test, this year Nasa plans to send a rocket to the Moon for the first time in 50 years, in its new Artemis mission.

Humans last landed on the Moon in December 1972, in the final Apollo programme, and since then nobody has ventured further than the International Space Station (ISS).

America quickly lost interest in landing on the Moon once it had beaten Russia to the lunar surface, and US Congress cancelled the Apollo programme within 14 months of Neil Armstrong’s groundbreaking voyage.

Even the shuttle programme was mothballed in 2011, forcing US astronauts to hitch a ride with the Russians each time they wanted to visit the ISS, a national embarrassment that was only remedied by SpaceX’s Crew Dragon in 2020.

Asked why it had taken so long to get humans back to the Moon, Dr Parker said: “I draw the comparison with the race to get to the South Pole, with Scott and Amundesen.

“Having done it, nobody really bothered about the Antarctic for the next 50 years.”

Ukraine war delaying space exploration

Esa has also faced its own setbacks, and has recently been forced to postpone or reconfigure several important missions after Russia pulled out of projects following the invasion of Ukraine.

The "Rosalind Franklin" ExoMars rover, which was due to launch from Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome in September was suspended in March, and the MarsSampleFetch rover has also recently been scrapped.

Esa has also found itself rocketless for many of its satellite missions after Russia pulled out of the European spaceport in French Guiana, meaning nothing can now fly on board the Soyuz.

Dr Parker believes the conflict could even delay finding life outside of Earth.

“It’s very bittersweet for me as we would have been going to Baikonur on the 20th of September this year to launch the ExoMars mission,” he said.

“All the hardware is there ready to go and now we have to find a plan B and we have had some great discussions with Nasa about how we could recover the project.

“It could be that another casualty of the Ukraine war will be European science and the ability to answer questions about the origin of life in the universe.

“We’ve also been impacted as an agency because we launch on the Soyuz rocket from French Guiana and so some of our missions that were planned to fly in the next few years, scientific satellites and missions to monitor the Earth, we’re working on plan B for that.”

Hope for postponed projects

Fortunately, the Artemis and Dart missions are likely to bring a shot in the arm for space endeavours, which could spur the financial investments needed to get some of the postponed projects, literally, off the ground.

Getting back to the lunar surface will help bring new science that could change our understanding about the early Earth. The Moon was formed when a giant planet struck the early Earth, knocking off a chunk of debris.

But while Earth has seen its early history destroyed by the movement of tectonic plates, the Moon is a pristine version of our nascent planet.

“The Moon is this destination, which is only a few days away, and it's been sitting there gathering up the history of the solar system like blotting paper,” added Dr Parker.

“We're now been living and working continuously for the past 22 years off-world on board the International Space Station, so for somebody who has just completed a university degree this year, for their entire lives, people have been living off the planet.

“One day we will be saying the same thing about the Moon.”