Cosmopolitanism claims to be the most just and inclusive of mainstream approaches to the ethics and practice of world order, given its commitment to human interconnection, peace, equality, diversity, and rights, and its concern with the many globalised pathologies that entrench injustice and vulnerability across borders. Yet it has largely remained oblivious to the agency, power, and value of non-human life on a turbulent and active Earth. Without rejecting its commitments to justice for human beings, the article challenges its humanism as both morally and politically inadequate to the situation of the Anthropocene, exemplified by the simultaneous crises of climate change, mass extinction, and the COVID-19 pandemic. In answer, the article develops new grounds and principles for an interspecies cosmopolitanism, exploring how we can reimagine its ontological foundations by creating new grounding images of subjectivity, existential unity, institutional organisation, and ordering purpose. These, in turn, can support political and institutional projects to secure the rights of ecosystems and people to flourish and persist through an increasingly chaotic epoch of human dominance and multispecies vulnerability across the Anthropocene Earth.

Arc-jet facilities have been the norm for ablation experiments used to calibrate computational models to date. However, the arc jet has a few major limitations and challenges, including non-uniform enthalpy distribution, non-equilibrium state, change of surface quality during testing and the extent of oxidation, to name but a few. A novel plasma technique for preheating axisymmetric heatshield samples in hypersonic impulse facilities is presented herein. The major aim of this innovative work is to help reduce the large variations of ablation rate predictions, space vehicle materials and missile design/testing, obtain strongly coupled hypersonic boundary layers and achieve lower cost of aerothermodynamics experiments. This present work remains one of the most highly anticipated solutions to maximise payload success and replicate high surface temperatures identical to those experienced by real flight vehicles. This work makes a useful contribution to re-entry studies under conditions that replicate the characteristics of re-entry flights. Future applications for the technique are expected to be found in hypersonic impulse facilities that can simulate the true flow energy under re-entry conditions.

Knowledge of the surface composition of planetary bodies comes from a number of sources; such as landers, remote sensing and meteorites. However, the bulk mapping of the composition of planetary surfaces has been undertaken by analysis of reflected sunlight and these data—principally collected in the near-infra-red (IR) region—are notoriously broad and ambiguous. Hence, if laboratory spectra could be tied to physical properties measurements, such as diffraction, this would substantially aid our understanding of processes occurring in these extra-terrestrial environments. This contribution presents the capability of collecting near-IR data at the same time as neutron and synchrotron X-ray diffraction in a range of conditions (low temperature, vacuum, and humidity variations) and highlights two examples where this capability could enhance our understanding of planetary surfaces.

Polygonal patterned ground in polar regions of both Earth and Mars has received considerable attention. In comparison with the size, shape, and arrangement of the polygons, the diverse micro-relief and topography (termed here simply “relief”) of polygonal patterned ground have been understudied. And yet, the relief reflects important conditions and processes occurring directly below the ground surface, and it can be observed readily in the field and through remote sensing. Herein, we describe the relief characteristic of the simplest and relatively young form of patterned ground in the Dry Valleys of Antarctic. We also develop a numerical model to examine the generation of relief due to subsurface material being shouldered aside contraction cracks by incremental sand wedges growth, and to down-slope creep of loose granular material on the surface. We model the longterm subsurface deformation of ice-cemented permafrost as a non-linear viscous material. Our modeling is guided and validated using decades of field measurements of surface displacements of the permafrost and relief. This work has implications for assessing the activity of surfaces on Earth and Mars, and much larger scale potential manifestations of incremental wedging in icy material, namely the distinct paired ridges on Europa.

We discuss the capabilities of the laboratory facility, COSmIC, that was developed to generate, process and analyze interstellar, circumstellar and planetary analogs in the laboratory

Solar radiation is the primary energy source for surface planetary life, so that pigments are fundamental components of any surface-dwelling organism. They may therefore have evolved in some form on Mars as they did on Earth. Photosynthetic microbes are major primary producers on Earth, but are concurrently vulnerable to ultraviolet (UV) damage. Using non-intrusive laser Raman spectroscopy to recognize the component parts of biomolecules, we have shown not only the abundance of microbial photosynthetic and photoprotective pigments in situ, but also their spatial distribution within their microhabitat. This essential aspect of their screening or avoidance survival strategies is lost on extraction with solvents. This precise approach is eminently suited to analysis of epilithic (surface) and endolithic (within rocks) communities in Antarctic desert habitats, which are putative analogues of early Mars. Raman spectra for key biomolecules (e.g. the UV screen parietin and the antioxidant β-carotene in epilithic lichens) enable not only the detection of organics in light-stratified habitats, but also the characterization of unknown pigments. Typical biomarkers of astrobiological relevance in our Raman spectral database include scytonemin (a UV screen), chlorophyll (primary photosynthetic pigment), phycocyanin (accessory pigment for shade adaptation) and a hopanoid extracted from 2·5 Gya microbial stromatolite from Australia. This compound dates from the same time period when a wetter Mars could have had a potentially flourishing surface microbial community of its own. Analyses with a laboratory Raman instrument have been extended to a novel miniature Raman spectrometer, operating at the same optimal excitation wavelength (1064 nm) via an In-Ga-As detector. After evaluation in Antarctica, this instrument will be space-qualified for a proposed Mars rover mission to detect biomolecules in the near-surface sediment profile of palaeolakes, using experience with Antarctic biomarkers to interpret alien spectra of fundamental components, without the need for prior knowledge of the identity of the target compounds.

Using optimised growth processes for an AIX 2000 HT Planetary® Reactor a high material quality and high potential device yield are demonstrated. Doping levels for GaN single layers from 1·1020 cm−3 free electrons to semi-insulating to 1·1018 cm−3 free holes with state-of-the-art layer resistance uniformities especially for n-type layers are shown. Both AlGaN and GaInN with composition homogeneities of better than 1 nm photoluminescence peak-wavelength standard deviation are displayed. Finally, examination of optically pumped laser action in simple double-hetero structures is quoted to prove the quality of the material.