Today, experts estimate that there are a few dozen pieces of space junk like spent rocket bodies, defunct satellites and mission-related debris orbiting in cislunar space the space between Earth and the Moon and the area around the Moon. While this isnt yet a large amount of junk, astronomers have very little information about where these pieces of space debris are, let alone what they are and how they got there.

I am a planetary scientist and also run the Space Safety, Security and Sustainability Center at the University of Arizona. As the focus of space activities turns to the Moon, with each future mission more junk will be left in cislunar space. This junk is an emerging problem that could create hazardous conditions for astronauts and spacecraft in the future.

My colleague Roberto Furfaro and I are hoping to help prevent this problem from getting out of hand. Together, we are using telescopes and existing databases on lunar missions to find, describe and track lunar space debris and build the worlds first catalog of cislunar space objects.

Abandoned and potentially dangerous

Historically, NASA and the U.S. military have not closely tracked space debris from the many dozens of crewed and robotic missions to the Moon. There is no international agency that has monitored lunar objects, either. This lack of oversight is why scientists dont know the location or orbit of the vast majority of lunar space debris. And these objects wont simply go away in the near total vacuum of space, anything left in orbit around the Moon or in cislunar space will likely remain there for at least decades.

This lack of information about human-made objects orbiting the Moon poses many risks for lunar missions.

First is the risk of collision. Humanity is at the beginning of a new wave of lunar exploration. Over the next 10 years, six countries and several commercial companies have plans for more than 100 missions. With every mission, the risk of a collision with existing debris increases and so, too, does the total amount of debris as missions leave junk behind.

Crash landings onto the surface of the Moon are also a real risk because the Moon does not have a thick atmosphere that can burn up falling space junk. This was dramatically demonstrated by the impact of a spent Chinese rocket booster into the far side of the Moon in March 2022. My team and I were the ones to finally identify that object as being of Chinese origin using telescopes we built to track objects in cislunar space. With both the U.S. and China planning to build lunar bases in the coming years, falling debris could become a real threat to human life and infrastructure on the Moon.

Hard to track

If you want to prevent the Moon from becoming a cosmic landfill, you need to be able to track cislunar space junk. But doing so is challenging even on a good day for two main reasons: distance and light.

Cislunar space extends about 2.66 million miles from Earth far past the distance within which the U.S. government currently tracks objects in space. But space is not just two-dimensional. The three-dimensional volume of cislunar space is massive, and any objects within it are tiny by comparison.

Light presents another challenge. Just like the Moon itself, the brightness of an object in cislunar space depends on how much sunlight the object reflects. During a crescent moon, lunar debris appears dim and low in the evening sky, making it hard to find. During a full moon, the same objects are high in the sky and brighter due to more sunlight hitting them, but they blend in with the bright glare that surrounds a full moon. Spotting objects during a full moon is like trying to find a fireflys faint glow next to a bright search light. Within the lunar glare is the Cone of Shame, so named because of the difficulty in tracking objects within it.

Curating the catalog

Because of the difficulty and lack of adequate resources to track objects near the Moon, there is no group or organization consistently doing so today. So, in 2020, Furfaro and I took on the challenge to discover, track and catalog human-made debris in cislunar space.

First, we linked historical observations from various telescopes and databases to each other to identify and confirm what cislunar objects were already known. Then, realizing there were no dedicated telescopes scanning the night sky for cislunar objects, my students at the University of Arizona and I built one. In late 2020, we finished building a 24-inch-diameter (0.6-meter-diameter) telescope, which is at the Biosphere 2 Observatory near Tucson.

The first object we tracked was Change 5, Chinas first lunar sample return mission. The large rocket launched on Nov. 23, 2020, headed toward the Moon. Despite the powerful lunar glare, my students and I were able to track Change 5 to a distance of 12,354 miles from the Moon, deep into the Cone of Shame. With this success, we started tracking newly launched cislunar payloads and adding them to our nascent catalog. With this success, we started tracking newly launched cislunar payloads so we can calculate and predict their orbits to prevent them from getting lost.

To characterize both old and new space debris, once we figure out where an object is, we use optical and near-infrared telescopes on Earth to capture the objects spectral signature the specific wavelengths of light that bounce off an objects surface. By doing this, we can figure out what material an object is made out of and identify it. This is how we identified the mystery rocket booster that crashed into the Moon in 2022. We can also measure changes in the light bouncing off the object over time to determine how fast that object is spinning, which can also help with identification.

Over the last two years, we have become better and better at finding and identifying objects in cislunar space. While at first we were happy to identify the school bus-sized Change 5 spacecraft, now we are able to track CubeSats no bigger than a cereal box like NASAs Lunar Flashlight.

To date, my team has been able to identify a few dozen pieces of debris in cislunar space and are continuing to add to our ever-expanding catalog. The vast majority of the work ahead comprises continued observations and matching objects to known missions to confirm what objects are out there and where they came from.

While there is still a long way to go, these efforts are designed to ultimately form the basis for a catalog that will help lead to safer, more sustainable use of cislunar orbital space as humanity begins its expansion off of the Earth.

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Known as a hush trip, working remotely somewhere else for a couple weeks without letting your boss know is the latest projected trend for workers unwilling to commit to living abroad but looking for a breaka test of digital nomadism, if you will. 

For some individuals, full-on digital nomadism is too extreme. Thats precisely why hush trips have the potential to be the newest travel trend in 2023, writes Becky Pokora, a credit card and travel rewards advisor for Forbes. Its essentially a secret workcation or bleisure travel. Pokora says hotels, recognizing the nascent trend, are offering discounted rates for those looking to stay a bit longer.

They have a big group to capitalize on: More than half (56%) of adults say theyre very or extremely likely to partake in a hush trip in this year, finds a survey conducted by RV rental marketplace RVShare and Wakefield Research, which polled 1,000 working Americans. Thirty-six percent of Gen X and millennials already have one planned.

These workers might be what Bloomberg calls stealth workers, who will do everything from donning a sweater in their Airbnb in Tulum to logging in as early as 2 a.m. to hide from their bosses that theyre not working near company headquarters. But while hush trips sound sneaky, they might not be such a bad thing.

Consider the remote employee based in Germany who secretly worked from the Canary Islands during the winter: He told Insider that the trip helped his mental and physical health. The morale boost increased his productivity, he said, something he attributed to being promoted to a leadership role. Research shows that a vacation can help increase morale, motivation, and productivity. (Although its worth noting a vacation isnt always a long-term solution for chronic burnout, as the issues will still greet you like unattended dishes when you return.)

Its everything a boss paranoid about productivity could want. The only caveat is that if a hush trip is extended from the short stint its supposed to be, it could create cybersecurity concerns or legal issues for companies who arent registered properly in other states or countries.

Bosses best bet, then, might be devising flexible plans for workers to take workcations they dont need to hush about, like Googles work from anywhere policy that allows Googlers to work from anywhere for four weeks out of the year.

After all, Were going through a massive kind of philosophical transition in the way we view work, Kim Ades, CEO of Frame of Mind Coaching, a career coaching firm for leaders told Fortune. That means finding a compromise that benefits both workers and bosses.

Paranoid about productivity, many CEOs have been pushing for employees to return to the office, where they hope to keep an eye on them and foster the companys culture. But data shows employees can work just as well from home.

Until bosses accept that, workers steadfast on maintaining flexibility will continue to lead a silent rebellion by turning a blind eye to in-office mandates or trying out alternative lifestyles in search of a better work-life balance that the U.S. seems to lack: looking for second passports, embarking on digital nomad lifestyles, taking mini-retirements, or going on hush trips.

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But all the good economic news in the world may not be enough to reverse Americans stubborn pessimism towards the economy, the stock market, and everything in between.

The majority of Americans are predicting inflation and interest rates will rise over the next six months, and theyre similarly pessimistic on the prospects of economic growth and stock market performance over the same period, according to a new poll released by Gallup Monday. 

Last months CPI report extended the annual inflation rates decline streak to six consecutive months, and year-over-year inflation now hovers at 6.5%. But 67% of U.S. adults are forecasting inflation to rise again in the first half of the year, including 39% who say it will go up a lot, according to the Gallup poll, which collected results between Jan. 2 and Jan. 22. Nearly three quarters of Americans expect interest rates to continue rising over the next six months and drag down economic growth, and 43% say it will slow this year. As for unemployment, 41% of Americans say it will start trending upwards in the next few months.

In light of the positive economic news of the past few months, several once-pessimistic economists including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers have brightened up on the economys prospects. And while recent forecasts have emphasized the current economic landscapes strangeness and uncertainty, the latest Gallup results underscore the resilience of American gloominess, as well as the widening gulf between the reality of recent economic indicators and public perception.

The good news

Highlighting the growing disconnect in economic views is the question of whether the U.S. economy is currently in a recession. Almost half of Americans say it is, according to a January survey by Morning Consult, but most indicators right now are pointing to an economy that looks anything but recession-like.

Low unemployment and a strong labor market are not signs of an economy typically contracting, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a Monday interview with ABCs Good Morning America.

You dont have a recession when you have 500,000 jobs and the lowest unemployment rate in more than 50 years, she said, adding that the economy right now is looking strong and resilient.

Slower wage growth and weakening consumer spending in the last few months of last year also support the argument that inflation is on its way down, although these same factors have also dealt a blow to American workers, and may have lended to negative views on the economy. Inflation has been especially hard for the U.S. middle class, which has had to dip into savings just to get by. 

Wages grew by 1% in the last quarter of 2022, and rose 5.1% over the entire year, but because of high inflation, real wages still declined 1.2% last year.

Prevailing pessimism

But if the recent economic news has all pointed in a positive direction, why are most Americans still so pessimistic?

An important factor may be a tendency to associate the stock markets performance with that of the economy, according to the Gallup poll. Unlike recent positive news surrounding inflation and employment, markets have been in a rut for the past year, and forecasts arent betting on a recovery until the end of 2023 at least.

Only 31% of Americans polled by Gallup expect the stock market to improve in the first half of 2023, while a record-high 48% forecast it to fall even further as interest rates continue to rise. 

Partisanship also played a role in Americans gloominess, with Republicans expectations that inflation will rise 23 percentage points higher than Democrats. Republicans were also more likely to hold pessimistic views towards the stock markets performance, economic growth, and employment.

Republicans have been more gloomy about the economy since last year. While more than half of Americans described their personal financial situation as good in a December survey by AP-NORC, 59% of Democrats described the economy overall as poor, compared to 90% of Republicans.

President Biden has been routinely criticized by Republican lawmakers over the past year for his administrations handling of inflation and public spending plans, including last years Inflation Reduction Act. But Biden is expected to double down on recent economic good news during Tuesdays State of the Union address and for his likely 2024 re-election campaign. 

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