Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1546553
11 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 13 SEPTEMBER 2026 FEATURE inevitable. Mars is another matter entirely without settling on a specific decade. Unlike a trip to the moon, a Mars mission is a commitment measured in years rather than days, with no way back partway through. "If you're on your way to Mars, you're committed at that point," Levi Said notes. And there is lit- tle commercial reward to offset that risk. "It's not like you're go- ing to dig something up there," he says, adding that the amount of money it would take to ex- tract and return even a kilo- gramme of gold or diamonds from Mars would far outweigh its worth. Sant Fournier compares the moon to an airport terminal; a staging point easing the trip to Mars with less atmosphere. Nonetheless, Mars remains a distant goal so far. Levi Said compares the trip to Mars to how skyscrapers looked be- fore lifts became fast enough to make them practical. "Right now, going to Mars is a two-year commitment," he says. "If it somehow became like the moon, where you could get there in three days, then maybe that could change." A small island's quiet fingerprints Malta's own contribution to the wider effort, though mod- est, is not new. Asked whether a country of Malta's size, could really matter to a mission like this, Levi Said points to how science credits its breakthroughs. "Einstein didn't do this on his own, but it's got his name because he had the biggest contribution," he says. "Forget about a small country. Anyone can have a significant input." Malta joined the European Space Agency's Plan for Euro- pean Cooperating States (PECS) agreement in 2024, reportedly worth about €1.6 million a year. Sant Fournier says the scheme is designed to nurture Malta's space ecosystem, opening fund- ing to private companies and academics and inviting peo- ple with terrestrial expertise in fields such as ICT or machine learning to apply it to space-rel- evant work. Malta is leading the fifth PECS funding call, due lat- er this year, he says. Malta has also contributed to the Euclid Space Telescope, with one of its main soft- ware components developed by a Maltese researcher, Sant Fournier says. Levi Said points to Malta's role in processing data for the Square Kilometre Array, a ra- dio telescope project spanning Australia and South Africa, and confirmed a Maltese research- er's involvement on the THE- SEUS proposal team, a mission under consideration by the Eu- ropean Space Agency to send a multi-instrument probe deep into the universe to answer key existential questions. But Malta also has a small ex- isting link to human spaceflight. The Astronomical Society of Malta took part in outreach for Fram2, a crewed SpaceX mis- sion that circled the poles last year, after being approached by the mission's organisers, Spaceomix. In exchange, the society's logo was placed on a sticker that flew on board. However, light pollution stands in the way of Malta do- ing more from the ground. Sant Fournier's own research has found that sky glow from built- up areas spreads up to 5km up into the atmosphere and spans the length of the country. "There is not a single point between Malta and Sicily which is completely dark," he says, adding that the problem is re- versible with better lighting practices, but remains one of the country's main limits on ground-based astronomy. Plans are also under way for a Space Park at Fort Binġemma. Sant Fournier describes the goal as "something of an explorer equivalent for space", alongside a research component for visit- ing and local researchers. Malta may not be part of the space mission that will eventu- ally return humans to the moon but its modest contribution to space research can help provide a better understanding of the vastness and mysteries of the universe. Earthset captured through the Orion spacecraft window on 6 April 2026, during the Artemis II crew's flyby of the moon (Photo: NASA) moon coming into view along the terminator— night—where low-angle sunlight casts long, dramatic 'Einstein didn't do this on his own, but it's got his name because he had the biggest contribution… Forget about a small country. Anyone can have a significant input'