2026/07/13 by Chakad Ojani · 1 voice
Physics and Astronomy · Medicine · #Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life #Space exploration and regulation #Spaceflight effects on biology
paper · pdf · doi:10.17351/ests2025.3017
openalex publication_date 2026/07/13 · openalex created_date 2026/07/14 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15
Contemporary social inquiry into outer space often focuses on the extraterrestrial’s embeddedness in earthbound categories, politics, and socio-material relations. Space—and whatever is done to, in, or with it—is a figure that cannot but have recourse to Earth-as-ground. While this focus productively highlights the cultural tropes and sociopolitical processes by which human engagements with space are inevitably informed, emergent extraplanetary relations demand that we also investigate how terrestrial processes are continuously being “un-Earthed” and become other to themselves. This article draws on three examples to showcase the significance of a focus on Earth’s extraterrestrial-likeness: first, the growing reliance of ground-based infrastructures on space infrastructures, which renders terrestrial sociality vulnerable to space weather; second, how mission scientists and engineers, when operating their rovers, need to adjust their routines and practices according to the non-coeval temporality of Mars; and third, recent findings that the impact of human activity on polar ice sheets reverberates through to the planet’s rotation and movement vis-à-vis the Sun. As moments of explicitation, the examples reveal that the distance between Earth and the extraterrestrial can suddenly contract and expand, thus encouraging an STS approach that is able to attend to the topological quality of cosmic relations.