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ALIYU AMINA
NO 138,JSS 1B
JUNE,2018.
SPACE TRAVEL
INTRODUCTION
Quest to use space travel to discover the nature of the universe beyond
Earth. Since ancient times, people have dreamed of leaving their home
planet and exploring other worlds. In the latter half of the 20th century, that
dream became reality. The space age began with the launch of the first
artificial satellites in 1957. A human first went into space in 1961. Since
then, astronauts and cosmonauts have ventured into space for ever greater
lengths of time, even living aboard orbiting space stations for more than a
year. Two dozen people have circled the Moon or walked on its surface. At
the same time, robotic explorers have journeyed where humans could not go,
visiting all of the solar system’s major planets. Unpiloted spacecraft have
also visited a host of minor bodies such as moons, comets, and asteroids.
These explorations have sparked the advance of new technologies, from
rockets to communications equipment to computers. Spacecraft studies have
yielded a bounty of scientific discoveries about the solar system, the Milky
Way Galaxy, and the universe. And they have given humanity a new
perspective on Earth and its neighbors in space.
An Astronaut
The first challenge of space exploration was developing rockets; powerful
enough and reliable enough to boost a satellite into orbit. These boosters
needed more than brute force, however; they also needed guidance systems
to steer them on the proper flight paths to reach their desired orbits. The next
challenge was building the satellites themselves. The satellites needed
electronic components that were lightweight, yet durable enough to
withstand the acceleration and vibration of launch. Creating these
components required the world’s aerospace engineering facilities to adopt
new standards of reliability in manufacturing and testing. On Earth,
engineers also had to build tracking stations to maintain radio
communications with these artificial “moons” as they circled the planet.
Space Shuttle
After the Apollo program, the emphasis in piloted missions shifted to long-
duration spaceflight, as pioneered aboard Soviet and U.S. space stations. The
development of reusable spacecraft became another goal, giving rise to the
U.S. space shuttle fleet. Today, efforts focus on keeping people healthy
during space missions lasting a year or more—the duration needed to reach
nearby planets—and in lowering the cost of sending satellites into orbit.
Space Shuttle
The desire to explore the heavens is probably as old as humankind, but in the
strictest sense, the history of space exploration begins very recently, with the
launch of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, which the Soviets sent into
orbit in 1957. Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in
space just a few years later, in 1961. The decades from the 1950s to the
1990s were full of new “firsts,” new records, and advances in technology.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Russian teacher Konstantin Tsiolkovsky became known as a pioneer in
rocket and space research in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Tsiolkovsky was one of the first scientists to suggest using rockets for
spaceflight.
WORLD OF SCIENCE
Sputnik 1
The Russian Sputnik 1, launched on October 4, 1957, was the first artificial
satellite put into orbit around the earth. This historic launch kicked off an era
of intensive space programs by both the Soviet Union and the United States,
a surge of interest sometimes called the “space race.” In the next three
decades, hundreds of probes, satellites, and other missions would follow
Sputnik on the quest to explore both the wonders and the practical potential
of space.
Sputnik 1
News of the first Sputnik intensified efforts to launch a satellite in the United
States. The initial U.S. satellite launch attempt on December 6, 1957, failed
disastrously when the Vanguard launch rocket exploded moments after
liftoff. Success came on January 31, 1958, with the launch of the satellite
Explorer 1. Instruments aboard Explorer 1 made the first detection of the
Van Allen belts, which are bands of trapped radiation surrounding Earth.
This launch also represented a success for Wernher von Braun, who had
been brought to the United States with many of his engineers after World
War II. Von Braun’s team had created the Jupiter C (an upgraded version of
their Redstone missile), which launched Explorer 1.
The satellites that followed Sputnik and Explorer into Earth orbit provided
scientists and engineers with a variety of new knowledge. For example,
scientists who tracked radio signals from the U.S. satellite Vanguard 1,
launched in March 1958, determined that Earth is slightly flattened at the
poles. In August 1959 Explorer 6 sent back the first photo of Earth from
orbit. Even as these satellites revealed new details about our own planet,
efforts were underway to reach our nearest neighbor in space, the Moon.
Early in 1958 the United States and the USSR were both working hard to be
the first to send a satellite to the Moon. Initial attempts by both sides failed.
On October 11, 1958, the United States launched Pioneer 1 on a mission to
orbit the Moon. It did not reach a high enough speed to reach the Moon, but
reached a height above Earth of more than 110,000 km (more than 70,000
mi). In early December 1958 Pioneer 3 also failed to leave high Earth orbit.
It did, however, discover a second Van Allen belt of radiation surrounding
Earth.
On January 2, 1959, after two earlier failed missions, the USSR launched
Luna 1, which was intended to hit the Moon. Although it missed its target,
Luna 1 did become the first artificial object to escape Earth orbit. On
September 14, 1959, Luna 2 became the first artificial object to strike the
Moon, impacting east of the Mare Serentitatis (Sea of Serenity). In October
1959 Luna 3 flew around the Moon and radioed the first pictures of the far
side of the Moon, which is not visible from Earth.
In the United States, efforts to reach the Moon did not resume until 1962,
with a series of probes called Ranger. The early Rangers were designed to
eject an instrument capsule onto the Moon’s surface just before the main
spacecraft crashed into the Moon. These missions were plagued by
failures—only Ranger 4 struck the Moon, and the spacecraft had already
ceased functioning by that time. Rangers 6 through 9 were similar to the
early Rangers, but did not have instrument packages. They carried television
cameras designed to send back pictures of the Moon before the spacecraft
crashed. On July 31, 1964, Ranger 7 succeeded in sending back the first
high-resolution images of the Moon before crashing, as planned, into the
surface. Rangers 8 and 9 repeated the feat in 1965.
By then, the United States had embarked on the Apollo program to land
humans on the Moon. With an Apollo landing in mind, the next series of
U.S. lunar probes, named Surveyor, was designed to “soft-land” (that is,
land without crashing) on the lunar surface and send back pictures and other
data to aid Apollo planners. As it turned out, the Soviets made their own soft
landing first, with Luna 9, on February 3, 1966. Luna 9 radioed the first
pictures of a dusty moonscape from the lunar surface. Surveyor 1
successfully reached the surface on June 2, 1966. Six more Surveyor
missions followed; all but two were successful. The Surveyors sent back
thousands of pictures of the lunar surface. Two of the probes were equipped
with a mechanical claw, remotely operated from Earth, which enabled
scientists to investigate the consistency of the lunar soil.
At the same time, the United States launched the Lunar Orbiter probes,
which began circling the Moon to map its surface in unprecedented detail.
Lunar Orbiter 1 began taking pictures on August 18, 1966. Four more Lunar
Orbiters continued the mapping program, which gave scientists thousands of
high-resolution photographs covering nearly all of the Moon.
Beginning in 1968 the USSR sent a series of unpiloted Zond probes—
actually a lunar version of their piloted Soyuz spacecraft—around the Moon.
These flights, initially designed as preparation for planned piloted missions
that would orbit the Moon, returned high-quality photographs of the Moon
and Earth. Two of the Zonds carried biological payloads with turtles, plants,
and other living things.
Although both the United States and the USSR were achieving successes
with their unpiloted lunar missions, the Americans were pulling steadily
ahead in their piloted program. As their piloted lunar program began to lag,
the Soviets made plans for robotic landers that would gather a sample of
lunar soil and carry it to Earth. Although this did not occur in time to
upstage the Apollo landings as the Soviets had hoped, Luna 16 did carry out
a sample return in September 1970, returning to Earth with 100 g (4 oz) of
rock and soil from the Moon’s Mare Fecunditatis (Sea of Fertility). In
November 1970 Luna 17 landed with a remote-controlled rover called
Lunakhod 1. The first wheeled vehicle on the Moon, Lunakhod 1 traveled
10.5 km (6.4 mi) across the Sinus Iridium (Bay of Rainbows) during ten
months of operations, sending back pictures and other data. Only three more
lunar probes followed. Luna 20 returned samples in February 1972.
Lunakhod 2, carried aboard the Luna 21 lander, reached the Moon in
January 1973. Then, in August 1976 Luna 24 ended the first era of lunar
exploration.
Lunar lander
Exploration of the Moon resumed in February 1994 with the U.S. probe
called Clementine, which circled the Moon for three months. In addition to
surveying the Moon with high-resolution cameras, Clementine gathered the
first comprehensive data on lunar topography using a laser altimeter.
Clementine’s laser altimeter bounced laser beams off of the Moon’s surface,
measuring the time they took to come back to determine the height of
features on the Moon.
In January 1998 NASA’s Lunar Prospector probe began circling the Moon
in an orbit over the Moon’s north and south poles. Its sensors conducted a
survey of the Moon’s composition. In March 1998 the spacecraft found
tentative evidence of water in the form of ice mixed with lunar soil at the
Moon’s poles. Lunar Prospector also investigated the Moon’s gravitational
and magnetic fields. Controllers intentionally crashed the probe into the
Moon in July 1999, hoping to see signs of water in the plume of debris
raised by the impact. Measurements taken by instruments around Earth,
however, did not find evidence of water after the crash, nor did they rule out
the existence of water.
Scientific Satellites
Years before the launch of the first artificial satellites, scientists anticipated
the value of putting telescopes and other scientific instruments in orbit
around Earth. Orbiting satellites can view large areas of Earth or can provide
views of space unobstructed by Earth’s atmosphere.
1. Earth-Observing Satellites
One main advantage of putting scientific instruments into space is the ability
to look down at Earth. Viewing large areas of the planet allows
meteorologists, scientists who research Earth’s weather and climate, to study
large-scale weather patterns (see Meteorology). More detailed views aid
cartographers, or mapmakers, in mapping regions that would otherwise be
inaccessible to people. Researchers who study Earth’s land masses and
oceans also benefit from having an orbital vantage point.
Beginning in 1960 with the launch of U.S. Tiros I, weather satellites have
sent back television images of parts of the planet. The first satellite that
could observe most of Earth, NASA’s Earth Resources Technology Satellite
1 (ERTS 1, later renamed Landsat 1), was launched in 1972. Landsat 1 had a
polar orbit, circling Earth by passing over the north and south poles. Because
the planet rotated beneath Landsat’s orbit, the satellite could view almost
any location on Earth once every 18 hours. Landsat 1 was equipped with
cameras that recorded images not just of visible light but of other
wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum. These cameras provided a
wealth of useful data. For example, images made in infrared light let
researchers discriminate between healthy crops and diseased ones. Six
additional Landsats were launched between 1975 and 1999.
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in orbit from the U.S. space
shuttle in 1990, equipped with a 100-in (250-cm) telescope and a variety of
high-resolution sensors produced by the United States and European
countries. Flaws in Hubble’s mirror were corrected by shuttle astronauts in
1993, enabling Hubble to provide astronomers with spectacularly detailed
images of the heavens. NASA launched the Chandra X-Ray Observatory in
1999. Chandra is named after American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan
Chandrasekhar and has eight times the resolution of any previous X-ray
telescope. The Spitzer Space Telescope was put in orbit in 2003 to study
infrared radiation from objects in space, including forming stars and
galaxies.
3. Other Satellites
In addition to observing Earth and the heavens from space, satellites have
had a variety of other uses. A satellite called Corona was the first U.S. spy
satellite effort. The program began in 1958. The first Corona satellite
reached orbit in 1960 and provided photographs of Soviet missile bases. In
the decades that followed, spy satellites, such as the U.S. Keyhole series,
became more sophisticated. Details of these systems remain classified, but it
is has been reported that they have attained enough resolution to detect an
object the size of a car license plate from an altitude of 160 km (100 mi) or
more.
Other U.S. military satellites have included the Defense Support Program
(DSP) for the detection of ballistic missile launches and nuclear weapons
tests. The Defense Meteorological Support Program (DMSP) satellites have
provided weather data. And the Defense Satellite Communications System
(DSCS) has provided secure transmission of voice and data. White Cloud is
the name of a U.S. Navy surveillance satellite designed to intercept enemy
communications.
Planetary Studies
Even as the United States and the USSR raced to explore the Moon, both
countries were also readying missions to travel farther afield. Earth’s closest
neighbors, Venus and Mars, became the first planets to be visited by
spacecraft in the mid-1960s. By the close of the 20th century, spacecraft had
visited every planet in the solar system, except for the outermost planet—
tiny, frigid Pluto (now classified as a dwarf planet). In January 2006,
however, NASA launched the New Horizons spacecraft from Cape
Canaveral, Florida, on a nine-year-long journey to Pluto and then beyond.
The earliest the spacecraft was expected to fly by Pluto was 2015. Its
mission was to then continue on to explore the outer Kuiper Belt.
1. Mercury
The first spacecraft to visit the solar system’s innermost planet, Mercury,
was the U.S. probe Mariner 10. The probe flew past Mercury on March 29,
1974, and sent back close-up pictures of a heavily cratered world resembling
Earth’s Moon. Mariner 10’s flyby also helped scientists refine measurements
of the planet’s size and density. It revealed that Mercury has a weak
magnetic field but lacks an atmosphere. After the first flyby, Mariner 10’s
orbit brought it past Mercury for two more encounters, in September 1974
and March 1975, which added to the craft’s harvest of data. In its three
flybys, Mariner 10 photographed 57 percent of the planet’s surface. In 2004
NASA launched the MESSENGER spacecraft. MESSENGER flew by
Mercury in 2008, with another flyby scheduled in 2009 before it goes into
orbit around Mercury in 2011.
2. Venus
The U.S. Mariner 2 probe became the first successful interplanetary
spacecraft when it flew past Venus on December 14, 1962. Mariner 2 carried
no cameras, but it did send back valuable data regarding conditions beneath
Venus’s thick, cloudy atmosphere. From measurements by Mariner 2’s
sensors, scientists estimated the surface temperature to be 400°C (800°F—
hot enough to melt lead), dispelling any notions that Venus might be very
similar to Earth.
The USSR explored Venus with their Venera series of probes. Venera 7
made the first successful planetary landing on December 15, 1970, and
radioed 23 minutes of data from the Venusian surface, indicating a
temperature of nearly 480°C (900°F) and an atmospheric pressure 90 times
that on Earth. More Venera successes followed, and on October 22, 1975,
Venera 9 landed and sent back black and white images of a rock-strewn
plain—the first pictures of a planetary surface beyond Earth. Venera 10 sent
back its own surface pictures three days later.
The Soviet Venera 15 and 16 orbiters reached Venus in October 1983, each
equipped with radar systems that produced high-resolution images. In eight
months of mapping operations, two spacecraft mapped much of Venus’s
northern hemisphere, sending back images of mountains, plains, craters, and
what appeared to be volcanoes.
After being released from the space shuttle Atlantis, NASA’s radar-equipped
Magellan orbiter traveled through space and reached Venus in August 1990.
During the next four years Magellan mapped Venus at very high resolution,
providing detailed images of volcanoes and lava flows, craters, fractures,
mountains, and other features. Magellan showed scientists that the surface of
Venus is extremely well preserved and relatively young. It also revealed a
history of planetwide volcanic activity that may be continuing today. The
Venus Express spacecraft launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) in
2005 began studying the planet’s thick atmosphere from orbit in 2006.
3. Mars
On July 14, 1965, the U.S. Mariner 4 flew past Mars and took pictures of a
small portion of its surface, giving scientists their first close-up look at the
red planet. To the disappointment of some who expected a more Earthlike
world, Mariner’s pictures showed cratered terrain resembling the Moon’s
surface. In August 1969 Mariner 6 and 7 sent back more detailed views of
craters and the planet’s icy polar caps. On the whole, these pictures seemed
to confirm the impression of a moonlike Mars.