Leaders of the burgeoning space industry at the 2024 Space Symposium took a moment Monday to pair their formal attire with protective eyewear and witness the partial solar eclipse during the annual international gathering.
“This is, without a doubt, the nerdiest group of people to see this with,” said Amolak Badesha, with the additive manufacturing company Orbital Composites.
While attending the 39th Space Foundation Space Symposium at the Broadmoor Hotel, attendees gathered by the lake at the hotel to watch the partial eclipse on Monday, April 8, 2024. (Photo by Jerilee Bennett, The Gazette)
While Colorado was not in the path of totality, the moon covered 68% of the sun Monday, dropping temperatures outside The Broadmoor, said Rafael de Ameller with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Viewers in Colorado missed the “ring of fire” effect created by a total eclipse that reveals the sun’s corona or outermost atmosphere.
But enthusiasm ran high during the symposium as businessmen, international military members and scientists paused for selfies and group photos on The Broadmoor’s lake terrace with cardboard glasses.
Although a watch party wasn’t formally marked or noted anywhere on the symposium’s official agenda, there was still a sort of mutual understanding with staff passing out protective eyewear and guests flocking to the terrace around 11:30 a.m.
“Amazing” and “ironic” were two words commonly uttered by attendees noting the common interests in the two occasions.
“I’m a pretty rational person and I like to work with outcomes,” said Continuum Space Systems co-founder Loic Chappaz. “But I wouldn’t have guessed this sort of cosmic coincidence.”
While the moon is getting a lot of attention at the Space Symposium and in the space community because of NASA’s upcoming manned mission, there is ongoing work to understand the sun better as well.
Robert Steenburgh, with the Space Weather Prediction Center, said some of the work is focused on better predicting the impact coronal mass ejections or blobs of magnetized plasma that leave the sun.
“Depending on the orientation of its magnetic field relative to Earth’s, you can have a really huge impact or you can have something that will just make pigeons get lost,” Steenburgh said. More dramatic coronal mass ejections can disrupt communications and the power grid.
He was hopeful the eclipse would raise awareness about the importance of our nearest star.
“It’s more influential now than it used to be because we have so much technology,” he said.
While attending the 39th Space Foundation Space Symposium at the Broadmoor Hotel, attendee Marshall Dormire used a paper plate with a pinhole to get an image of the partial eclipse, while Kately Traylor used the more conventual glasses on Monday, April 8, 2024. (Photo by Jerilee Bennett, The Gazette)
The enthusiastic crowd included Judy Peck, 80, who was enjoying the eclipse with her grandson at The Broadmoor because two of her sons work in space, one with the Space Force and the other in private industry, she said.
“It’s just happening so fast that’s the thing that amazes me,” she said.
She had the event marked on the calendar and noted it's likely the last time she’ll be able to see an eclipse. The next total eclipse in the U.S. is in 2044.
The eclipse was a first for Scott Levinson, 62, who has spent his career in defense and aerospace, but had never been in the right place to see one before. This time his job brought him to the right place and provided the right glasses.
“It’s a wonderful coincidence,” he said.
He was also hopeful students seeing the eclipse might be inspired to pursue a career in science.
“As a business owner looking for great engineers, they are harder to come by. So, anything that might put a spark in their mind about how things work is a great opportunity,” said Levinson, who is the chief of mission operations for NewBridge Partners.
The eclipse occurred on the second day of the four-day symposium that organizers project will be attended by 12,000 people and include 240 exhibitors. Others in attendance use the event as an opportunity to network and create partnerships going forward.
For a brief moment on Monday, the space industry came together for a different, yet familiar, reason.
“I know absolutely nothing about heliophysics, but I can get you connected with someone who does,” one person said to a fellow onlooker.
While attending the 39th Space Foundation Space Symposium at the Broadmoor Hotel, Tony Reeves, with Deloitte, joined other attendees by the lake at the hotel to watch the partial eclipse on Monday, April 8, 2024. He had pretty good luck with getting a shot of the partial eclipse with a powerful telephoto lens on his cell phone and shooting through eclipse glasses. (Photo by Jerilee Bennett, The Gazette)
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