playstation Posted March 3, 2012 Report Share Posted March 3, 2012 Space "The earth is the cradle of humankind, but one cannot live in the cradle forever." Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, 1895 What is Space?? 'Outer space' begins about 100 km above the Earth, where the shell of air around our planet disappears. With no air to scatter sunlight and produce a blue sky, space appears as a black blanket dotted with stars. Space is usually regarded as being completely empty. But this is not true. The vast gaps between the stars and planets are filled with huge amounts of thinly spread gas and dust. Even the emptiest parts of space contain at least a few hundred atoms or molecules per cubic metre. In space, no one can hear you scream. This is because there is no air in space – it is a vacuum. Sound waves cannot travel through a vacuum. Space is also filled with many forms of radiation that are dangerous to astronauts. Much of this infrared and ultraviolet radiation comes from the Sun. High energy X-rays, gamma rays and cosmic rays – particles travelling close to the speed of light – arrive from distant star systems. ====================================================================================================== From Earth to Space.. 1.-->2.-->3. 4.-->-->5. ====================================================================================================== Q. How do I become an astronaut? (Different Countries may Have different criteria for astronaut qualifications. Below information is taken from NASA website.Click Here) A. Any adult man or woman in excellent physical condition who meets the basic qualifications can be selected to enter astronaut training. For mission specialists and pilot astronauts, the minimum requirements include a bachelor's degree in engineering, science or mathematics from an accredited institution. Three years of related experience must follow the degree, and an advanced degree is desirable. Pilot astronauts must have at least 1,000 hours of experience in jet aircraft, and they need better vision than mission specialists. Becoming an astronaut is extremely competitive, with an average of more than 4,000 applicants for about 20 openings every two years. Q. What is an astronaut's salary? A. Salaries for civilian Astronaut Candidates are based on the Federal Government's General Schedule pay scale for grades GS-12 through GS-13. Each person's grade is determined according to his/her academic achievements and experience. Currently, a GS-12 starts at $65,140 per year and a GS-13 can earn up to $100,701 per year. Military Astronaut Candidates are assigned to the Johnson Space Center and remain in an active duty status for pay, benefits, leave, and other similar military matters. ====================================================================================================== Our Journey to Space-From mythology to Cosmology Sun,Moon,Stars etc have always captivated men. We have come with various explanation about ours and this universe existence .Some of the effort to understanding creation of Universe dates back as far as 600 B.C. 600 B.C.-Chinese Mythology The Chinese myth of the creator Phan Ku can be traced back to around 600 B.C . The legend says the universe was originally contained in the shape of an egg. Inside the egg, at first was “a mass called no thing”. Phan Ku was the being that was to develop from the egg. Phan Ku emerged and become the creator. “Phan Ku was the size of a giant. He grew ten feet a day and lived for eighteen thousand years”. With his chisel, Phan Ku shaped the entire earth. Yin became the earth and yang the sky. To this day the concept of yin and yang represents all types of balance within our universe, and stresses the need for balance in all aspects of life. Phan Ku acted as the ultimate architect, carving out all of earth and adorning the heavens with the moon and stars. Only when Phan Ku died could the process be complete. When his death came, his body and soul all became parts of the earth: the soil, plants, wind, thunder, and lightning. Egyptian Mythology Egyptian mythology, the sun God Ra created all of the universe and its creatures. Ra actually represents the sun itself—setting under the horizon each night and traveling across the treacherous lower sky in his boat . A ferocious dragon tries to attack God Ra, but the dragon is eventually defeated by God Ra’s grandchildren: Nut and Geb—children of Shu, god of air; and Tefnut. Shu lifted Nut into the sky, where she created stars and was kept far apart from Geb, the earth . After the defeat of the dragon, Ra rose above the earth, shining down proudly on all of the men that he had created. African-mytholody The Krachi people of Togo in West Africa speak of another giant, the vast blue god Wulbari, more familiar to us as the sky. There was a time when he lay just above the Earth, but a woman pounding grain with a long timber kept prodding and poking him until he raised himself above the nuisance. However, Wulbari was still within reach of humans, who used his belly as a towel and snatched bits of his blue body to add spice to their soup. Gradually, Wulbari moved higher and higher until the blue sky was out of reach, where it has remained ever since. ====================================================================================================== You may come across many such mythology about creation of universe .Gradually though intelligent minds backs then started questions all this mythology and more scientific explanation started to emerge as humans progressed . Scientific Understanding 276 BC - 194 BC Eratosthenes was a Greek mathematician who is famous for his work on prime numbers and for measuring the diameter of the earth. Eratosthenes knew that on the summer solstice at local noon on the Tropic of Cancer, the Sun would appear at the zenith, directly overhead (sun elavation of 90°) though Syene was in fact slightly north of the tropic. He also knew, from using a vertical stick and measuring the cast shadow, that in his hometown of Alexandria, the angle of elevation of the Sun would be 83° or 7° south of the zenith at the same time. Assuming that Alexandria was due north of Syene - Alexandria is in fact on a more westerly longitude - he concluded, using geometry of parallel lines, that the distance from Alexandria to Syene must be 7/360 of the total circumference of the Earth. The distance between the cities was known from caravan travellings to be about 5,000 stadia. He established a final value of 700 stadia per degree, which implies a circumference of 252,000 stadia. The exact size of the stadion he used is no longer known (the common Attic stadion was about 185 m), but it is generally believed that Eratosthenes' value corresponds to between 39,690 km and 46,620 km. The circumference of the Earth around the poles is now measured at around 40,008 km. Eratosthenes result is not bad at all. 476–550 CE Aryabhata was the first in the line of great mathematician-astronomers from the classical age of Indian mathematics and Indian astronomy. Solar and lunar eclipses were scientifically explained by Aryabhata. Aryabhata states that the Moon and planets shine by reflected sunlight. Instead of the prevailing cosmogony in which eclipses were caused by pseudo-planetary nodes Rahu and Ketu, he explains eclipses in terms of shadows cast by and falling on Earth. Thus, the lunar eclipse occurs when the moon enters into the Earth's shadow (verse gola.37). He discusses at length the size and extent of the Earth's shadow (verses gola.38–48) and then provides the computation and the size of the eclipsed part during an eclipse. Later Indian astronomers improved on the calculations, but Aryabhata's methods provided the core. His computational paradigm was so accurate that 18th century scientist Guillaume Le Gentil, during a visit to Pondicherry, India, found the Indian computations of the duration of the lunar eclipse of 30 August 1765 to be short by 41 seconds, whereas his charts (by Tobias Mayer, 1752) were long by 68 seconds. ====================================================================================================== Since then there have been many scientific theories of Stars,Moon,Planets,Universe etc. But being a curious animal that men is . It was time to take the challenge further.Hence, the time we know now as " Space Race" 20th Century -Space Race Soon after World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union became locked in a global conflict pitting democracy against communism. Space became a critical theater in this Cold War, as each side competed to best the other's achievements in what became known as the Space Race. The Space Race was a mid-to-late 20th century competition between the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US) for supremacy in space exploration. Between 1957 and 1975, Cold War rivalry between the two nations focused on attaining firsts in space exploration, which were seen as necessary for national security and symbolic of technological and ideological superiority. The Space Race involved pioneering efforts to launch artificial satellites, sub-orbital and orbital human spaceflight around the Earth, and piloted voyages to the Moon. Space Exploration has come with a price that not only humans but animals have had to pay with their dear lives. A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short. --Bertrand Russell Official/Unofficial Space Death Records Laika was a Soviet space dog that became the first animal to orbit the Earth – as well as the first animal to die in orbit.Laika likely died within hours after launch from overheating, possibly caused by a failure of the central R-7 sustainer to separate from the payload. Parachute failure-1967 April 24-Soyuz 1-Vladimir Komarov Training jet crash-1968 March 27-Soyuz 3-Yuri Gagarin Not To Forget these brave people:- Crew exposed to vacuum of space-1971 June 30-Soyuz 11-Georgi Dobrovolski-Viktor Patsayev-Vladislav Volkov External tank compromise and vehicle disintegration - Space Shuttle Challenger disaster-1986 January 28-STS-51-L Greg Jarvis-Christa McAuliffe-Ronald McNair-Ellison Onizuka-Judith Resnik-Michael J. Smith-Dick Scobee Vehicle disintegration on re-entry - Space Shuttle Columbia disaster-2003 February 1-STS-107- Rick D. Husband-William McCool-Michael P. Anderson-David M. Brown-Kalpana Chawla-Laurel B. Clark-Ilan Ramon Fire in low-pressure chamber-1961 March 23-Valentin Bondarenko Training jet crash-1964 October 31-Theodore Freeman Training jet crash-1966 February 28-Elliot See-Charles Bassett Fire on board during launch rehearsal-1967 January 27-Apollo 1-Gus Grissom-Edward White II-Roger Chaffee Training jet crash-1967 October 5-Clifton "C.C." Williams Training jet crash-1967 December 8-Robert Lawrence Drowned during water recovery training-1993 July 11-Sergei Vozovikov ====================================================================================================== Milestones. Though our Rewards came with a price but nonetheless it has given new hope to Humanity and help to expand our knowledge of Universe far greater than even imagined. Our Achievements;- Sputnik Sputnik 1 "Satellite-1", was the first artificial satellite to be put into Earth's orbit. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957. Apart from its value as a technological first, Sputnik also helped to identify the upper atmospheric layer's density, through measuring the satellite's orbital changes. It also provided data on radio-signal distribution in the ionosphere. Pressurized nitrogen in the satellite's body provided the first opportunity for meteoroid detection. If a meteoroid penetrated the satellite's outer hull, it would be detected by the temperature data sent back to Earth. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- First Orbit- Yuri Gagarian To be the first to enter the cosmos, to engage, single-handed, in an unprecedented duel with nature—could one dream of anything more? - Yuri Gagarin prior to flight, 1961 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Moon Mission We Choose to go to the moon Apollo 8 Earth seen from moon via Apollo 8 astronauts in 1968. Apollo 8 was the first human spaceflight to leave Earth orbit. It was the first earthly spacecraft to be captured by and escape from the gravitational field of another celestial body, in this case the moon. It was the first voyage in which humans visited another world and returned to return to Earth. Image Credit: NASA Apollo 11 Houston, Tranquillity Base here, the Eagle has landed. - Neil Armstrong, transmitting from the Moon, 3:18 p.m. Houston time 20 July 1969. "That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind". -Neil Armstrong. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hubble Telescope The Hubble Space Telescope's launch in 1990 sped humanity to one of its greatest advances in that journey. Hubble is a telescope that orbits Earth. Its position above the atmosphere, which distorts and blocks the light that reaches our planet, gives it a view of the universe that typically far surpasses that of ground-based telescopes. Hubble is one of NASA's most successful and long-lasting science missions. It has beamed hundreds of thousands of images back to Earth, shedding light on many of the great mysteries of astronomy. Its gaze has helped determine the age of the universe, the identity of quasars, and the existence of dark energy. Some Images & Discoveries By Hubble;- Within Our Solar System Jupiter and IO Nebula Hubble's 20th anniversary image shows a mountain of dust and gas rising in the Carina Nebula. The top of a three-light-year tall pillar of cool hydrogen is being worn away by the radiation of nearby stars, while stars within the pillar unleash jets of gas that stream from the peaks. A Protoplanetary Disk Silhouetted Against the Orion Nebula Galaxies Sombero Galaxy Eighth Anniversary Image of Hubble's Smash Hits -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Salyut Program-The First Space Station The Salyut program (Russian: Salute or Fireworks) was the first space station program undertaken by the Soviet Union, which consisted of a series of nine space stations launched over a period of eleven years from 1971 to 1982. Intended as a project to carry out long-term research into the problems of living in space and a variety of astronomical, biological and Earth-resources experiments, the program allowed space station technology to evolve from the engineering development stage to long-term research outposts in space. Ultimately, experience gained from the Salyut stations went on to pave the way for multimodular space stations such as Mir and the International Space Station, with each of those stations possessing a Salyut-derived core module at its heart. Salyut broke several spaceflight records, including several mission duration records, the first ever orbital handover of a space station from one crew to another, and various spacewalk records. By the time the program concluded, in 1991, it had seen space station technology evolve from basic, single-docking port stations to complex, multi-ported orbital outposts with impressive scientific capabilities, whose technological legacy continues to the present day. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sky Lab Skylab was a space station launched and operated by NASA, the space agency of the United States. Skylab orbited the Earth from 1973 to 1979, and included a workshop, a solar observatory, and other systems. It was launched unmanned by a modified Saturn V rocket, with a mass of 169,950 pounds . The station was damaged at launch when the micrometeoroid shield separated from the station and tore away, depriving the station of most of its power, removing protection from intense solar heating, and threatening to make the station unusable. The first crew was able to save it in the first ever in-space major repair, by deploying a replacement heat shade and freeing the single remaining, jammed main solar array. Numerous scientific experiments were conducted aboard Skylab during its operational life, and crews were able to confirm the existence of coronal holes in the Sun. The Earth Resources Experiment Package (EREP), was used to view the Earth with sensors that recorded data in the visible, infrared, and microwave spectral regions. Thousands of photographs of Earth were taken, and records for human time spent in orbit were extended. Skylab's scientific payloads included: Imaging cameras. White-light coronagraph. Ultraviolet scanning polychromator- spectroheliometer. Extreme ultraviolet and X-ray telescope. Space manufacturing experiments. Externally mounted Earth resources instruments included a multispectral imaging camera, an Earth terrain camera, an infrared spectrometer, a multispectral scanner, a microwave radiometer/scatterometer and altimeter, and an L-band microwave radiometer. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MIR Mir (Russian: Peace or World) was a space station operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, at first by the Soviet Union and then by Russia. Assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996, Mir was the first modular space station and had a greater mass than that of any previous spacecraft, holding the record for the largest artificial satellite orbiting the Earth until its deorbit on 21 March 2001 (a record now surpassed by the International Space Station). Mir served as a microgravity research laboratory in which crews conducted experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology and spacecraft systems in order to develop technologies required for the permanent occupation of space. Mir in orbit high above the Earth -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a habitable artificial satellite in low Earth orbit. It follows the Salyut, Almaz, Skylab and Mir stations as the ninth space station to be inhabited. The ISS is a modular structure whose first component was launched in 1998. Like many artificial satellites, the station can be seen from Earth with the naked eye. The ISS programme is a joint project between five participating space agencies, the American NASA, the Russian RKA, the Japanese JAXA, the European ESA, and the Canadian CSA. The ownership and use of the space station is established by intergovernmental treaties and agreements. The station is divided into two sections, the Russian orbital segment (ROS) and the United States orbital segment (USOS), which is shared by many nations. The ISS is maintained at an orbital altitude of between 330 km (205 mi) and 410 km (255 mi). It completes 15.7 orbits per day. The ISS is expected to remain in operation until at least 2020, and potentially to 2028 It has been visited by astronauts and cosmonauts from 15 different nations. The ISS serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which crew members conduct experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology and other fields. The station is suited for the testing of spacecraft systems and equipment required for missions to the Moon and Mars. The International Space Station on 29 May 2011 as seen from the departing Space Shuttle Endeavour during STS-134 Construction of the Integrated Truss Structure over New Zealand. The communications systems used by the ISS Video of the Aurora Australis taken by the crew of Expedition 29 on board the International Space Station. This sequence of shots was taken September 17, 2011 from 17:22:27 to 17:45:12 GMT, on an ascending pass from south of Madagascar to just north of Australia over the Indian Ocean. ISS Tour -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Voyage Program-Voyager 1 and 2 The Voyager program is a U.S program that launched two unmanned space missions, scientific probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable planetary alignment of the late 1970s. Although officially designated to study just Jupiter and Saturn, the probes were able to continue their mission into the outer solar system, and are as of December 2011 on course to exit the solar system. These probes were built at JPL and were funded by NASA. Voyager 1 is currently the farthest human-made object from Earth. Both missions have gathered large amounts of data about the gas giants of the solar system, of which little was previously known. In addition, the spacecraft trajectories have been used to place limits on the existence of a hypothetical trans-Neptunian planet. This picture of a crescent-shaped Earth and Moon -- the first of its kind ever taken by a spacecraft -- was recorded Sept. 18, 1977, by NASA's Voyager 1 when it was 7.25 million miles (11.66 million kilometers) from Earth. The Moon is at the top of the picture and beyond the Earth as viewed by Voyager. Image Credit: NASA Great Red Spot as seen from Voyager . Volcanic eruption on Io photographed from Voyager 1. Voyager 2 Saturn approach view. Voyager 2 image of Neptune. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mars Exploration Rover-Spirit and Opportunity NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission (MER) is an ongoing robotic space mission involving two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, exploring the planet Mars. It began in 2003 with the sending of the two rovers—MER-A Spirit and MER-B Opportunity—to explore the Martian surface and geology. The total cost of building, launching, landing and operating the rovers on the surface for the initial 90-Martian-day (sol) primary mission was US$820 million. On May 1, 2009, during its fifth mission extension, Spirit became stuck in soft soil on Mars. After nearly nine months of attempts to get the rover back on track, including using test rovers on Earth, NASA announced on January 26, 2010 that Spirit was being retasked as a stationary science platform. This mode would enable Spirit to assist scientists in ways that a mobile platform could not, such as detecting "wobbles" in the planet's rotation that would indicate a liquid core.Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) lost contact with Spirit after last hearing from the rover on March 22, 2010 and continued attempts to regain communications until May 25, 2011 bringing the elapsed mission time to 6 years 2 months 19 days or over 25 times the original planned mission duration. In recognition of the vast amount of scientific information amassed by both rovers, two asteroids have been named in their honor: 37452 Spirit and 39382 Opportunity. Spirit's First Color Photograph Mars Opportunity - Cratera Eagle Payson outcrop on the western edge of Erebus crater 'Santa Anita' Panorama ====================================================================================================== Near Future Space Missions "The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!" Larry Niven, quoted by Arthur Clarke in interview at space.com, 2001 Earth has recently seen dramatic changes in Global weather and natural disasters that could lead to our extinction much sooner than previously thought. Space exploration is no longer just a need to satisfy our thirst for adventure or expand our knowledge. It now holds the key to our very existence. Our existence depend on future Space Missions;- Manned mission to Mars by 2030 Space Tourism http://www.virgingalactic.com/ European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) This revolutionary new ground-based telescope has the aim of observing the Universe in greater detail than even the Hubble Space Telescope. A mirror of approximately 42 metres (138 ft) will allow the study of the atmospheres of extrasolar planets. It will also perform "stellar archaeology" - measuring the properties of the first stars and galaxies, as well as probing the nature of dark matter and dark energy. It is planned to become operational in 2022. International X-ray Observatory The International X-ray Observatory (IXO) is due to be launched in 2021 as a joint effort between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Combining a large X-ray mirror with powerful new instrumentation, it will explore the high energy Universe - peering through dust and obscuring clouds of gas to reveal supermassive black holes, supernovae, neutron stars and other hidden objects. IXO will be designed to operate for a minimum of 5 years, with a goal of 10 years, so operations may last until the early 2030s. James Webb The long-awaited successor to Hubble, the James Webb telescope will be launched in 2018. Its primary mirror will have a collecting area six times larger than Hubble. It will be situated in an L2 orbit, 1.5 million km from Earth. The James Webb Space Telescope will let NASA peer into deep space to the beginnings of our universe. It will be specially equipped to view infrared light, which escapes from the dust clouds where the first stars and planets formed. Colliding Galaxies: James Webb Space Telescope Science Evolution of the Universe: James Webb Space Telescope Science ====================================================================================================== Some Interesting facts and videos about space. 1. If two pieces of metal touch in space, they become permanently stuck together. 2.Summer on Uranus lasts for 21 years. 3.The light hitting the earth right now is 30 thousand years old. 4.Sound doesn't travel in space. 5.Jupiter is bigger than all the other planets combined. 6. The Space Shuttle main engine weighs 1/7th as much as a train engine but delivers as much horsepower as 39 locomotives. 7.Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise. 8.There are two golf balls sitting on the moon. 9.The sun is 330,330 times larger than the earth! 10.More than 20 million meteoroids enter Earth's atmosphere every day. 11. If you went out into space, you would explode before you suffocated because there's no air pressure. 12.Astronauts cannot burp in space. 13. A car traveling 100 mph would take more than 29 million years to reach the nearest star (to our solar system) 14.Some asteroids have other asteroids orbiting them. 15.Astronauts get taller when they are in space. 16.If you put Saturn in water it would float 17.The moon is drifting away from Earth 18.The Sun produces so much energy, that every second the core releases the equivalent of 100 billion nuclear bombs. 19.Even though Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, temperatures can reach -280 degrees F. Why? Since Mercury has almost no atmosphere, there is nothing to trap heat near the surface. So, the dark side of Mercury (the side facing away from the Sun) is very cold. 20.Venus is considerably hotter than Mercury, even though it is further away from the Sun. The thickness of Venus’ atmosphere traps heat near the surface of the planet. ====================================================================================================== Some Interesting Videos How big is the Universe? Size Comparison . ====================================================================================================== Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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