My Science School

Taking advantage of a launch window in July, when Earth and Mars are favourably aligned, (which occurs every 26 months) three nations, the UAE, China and the U.S., launched their missions to Mars successfully.

Hope Probe from the United Arab Emirates is the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission. Launched from Japan, it began a seven-month journey to Mars. It will carry out a two-year survey of the weather on the red plant. It aims to shed light on the long-standing mystery of how Mars lost much of its early atmosphere and liquid water.

The Chinese Mars probe, named Tianwen 1, will orbit the red planet looking for comprehensive information. It will land on the Martian soil and send a rover to roam the landing site. It will conduct scientific investigations into the planet’s soil, geological structure, environment, atmosphere and water.

NASA’ Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover is expected to reach the red planet in February next year. It will spend at least one Mars year (about 687 Earth days) on the planet, seeking signs of ancient life and collecting rock and soil samples for possible return to Earth.

 

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Venus is among the last planets in the Solar System where scientists would look for extraterrestrial life because of its inhospitable conditions. But that seems to be changing. The latest discovery of phosphine gas on the clouds of Venus serves as a reminder that we are sorely lacking in our understanding of alien life, leave alone our planetary neighbour.

Phosphine is a toxic gas made up of one phosphorus and three hydrogen atoms (PH3). On Earth, it is commonly produced by organic life forms. The gas is found in the guts of some animals and in oxygen-poor enviornments such as swamps, where certain kinds of microbes survive. Then, could such microbes live on Venus? We have a long way to go before finding an answer to this question.

It is to be understood that detection of phosphine does not mean we have found microbial life on Venus, because phosphine gas can result from a number of processes that are unrelated to life such as lightning, meteor impacts and volcanic activity. But scientists ruled these options out, citing these activities are far too weak to produce the abundance of phosphine – around 20 parts per billion – that has been found in the Venusian cloud.

So scientists are left with two options:

1. There may be an unknown chemical process driving the synthesis of phosphine on Venus.


2. Life may exist on Venus but in ways we don’t understand. Maybe life doesn’t need Earth-like conditions. Maybe it could survive on scorching-hot Venus-like planets.

Studying Venus up close is a challenge; as space probes sent previously could not survive even two hours of its blistering temperature. Solving the mystery of life on Venus could take years, if not decades.

 

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The nearest exoplanet discovered so far orbits the star Proxima Centauri, located 4.2 light-years from our planet.

Proxima Centauri is only 4.2 light-years away. This is still tens of thousands of years by rocket travel, but only a hop, skip and a jump away in cosmic terms. If there were a star closer than Proxima, we would have found it by now. Without any closer stars, astronomers don’t expect to find any closer planets.

There is always the chance of a rogue planet existing closer than Proxima. Rogue planets are those that escaped their star systems and now travel the galaxy solo. But while astronomers think rogue planets are reasonably common, it’s unlikely one would lurk quite that close.

The research team studied Proxima b using the Echelle Spectrograph for Rocky Exoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observations, or ESPRESSO for short.  ESPRESSO is a Swiss spectrograph that is currently mounted on the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope in Chile. Spectrographs observe objects and split the light coming from those objects into the wavelengths that make it up so that researchers can study the object in closer detail. 

 

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The Kepler space telescope is a retired space telescope launched by NASA to discover Earth-size planets orbiting other stars. Named after astronomer Johannes Kepler, the spacecraft was launched on March 7, 2009, into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit. 

Kepler discovered 2,682 exoplanets during its tenure and there are more than 2,900 candidate planets awaiting confirmation — history suggests most of those are the real deal. The mission continued well beyond its scheduled end date, although problems with pointing in 2013 forced mission managers to create a K2 mission in which Kepler swings its view to different spots of the sky.

In the early years of exoplanet hunting, astronomers were best able to find huge gas giants — Jupiter's size and larger — that were lurking close to their parent star. The addition of Kepler (as well as more sophisticated planet-hunting from the ground) means that more "super-Earths" have been found, or planets that are just slightly larger than Earth but have a rocky surface. Kepler's finds also allow astronomers to begin grouping exoplanets into types, which helps with understanding their origins.

Kepler's major achievement was discovering the sheer variety of planetary systems that are out there. Planet systems can exist in compact arrangements within the confines of the equivalent of Mercury's orbit. They can even orbit around two stars, much like Tatooine in the Star Wars universe. And in an exciting find for those seeking life beyond Earth, the telescope revealed that small, rocky planets similar to Earth are more common than larger gas giants such as Jupiter.

 

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On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong (1930-2012) and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (1930- ) became the first humans ever to land on the moon. About six-and-a-half hours later, Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. The Apollo 11 mission occurred eight years after President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) announced a national goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Apollo 17, the final manned moon mission, took place in 1972.

At the time, the United States was still trailing the Soviet Union in space developments, and Cold War-era America welcomed Kennedy's bold proposal. In 1966, after five years of work by an international team of scientists and engineers, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) conducted the first unmanned Apollo mission, testing the structural integrity of the proposed launch vehicle and spacecraft combination. 

Then, on January 27, 1967, tragedy struck at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, when a fire broke out during a manned launch-pad test of the Apollo spacecraft and Saturn rocket. Three astronauts were killed in the fire.

 

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April 12 was already a huge day in space history twenty years before the launch of the first shuttle mission. On that day in 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, making a 108-minute orbital flight in his Vostok 1 spacecraft.

In 1955, Gagarin was accepted to the First Chkalovsky Higher Air Force Pilots School in Orenburg. He initially began training on the Yak-18 already familiar to him and later graduated to training on the MiG-15 in February 1956. Gagarin twice struggled to land the two-seater trainer aircraft, and risked dismissal from pilot training. However, the commander of the regiment decided to give him another chance at landing. Gagarin's flight instructor gave him a cushion to sit on, which improved his view from the cockpit, and he landed successfully. Having completed his evaluation in a trainer aircraft, Gagarin began flying solo in 1957.

On 5 November 1957, Gagarin was commissioned a lieutenant in the Soviet Air Forces having accumulated 166 hours and 47 minutes of flight time. He graduated from flight school the next day and was posted to the Luostari Air Base close to the Norwegian border in Murmansk Oblast for a two-year assignment with the Northern Fleet. On 7 July 1959, he was rated Military Pilot 3rd Class. After expressing interest in space exploration following the launch of Luna 3 on 6 October 1959, his recommendation to the Soviet space programme was endorsed and forward by Lieutenant Colonel Babushkin. By this point, he had accumulated 265 hours of flight time. Gagarin was promoted to the rank of senior lieutenant on 6 November 1959, three weeks after he was interviewed by a medical commission for qualification to the space programme.

 

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In astrophysics, spaghettification (sometimes referred to as the noodle effect) is the vertical stretching and horizontal compression of objects into long thin shapes (rather like spaghetti) in a very strong non-homogeneous gravitational field; it is caused by extreme tidal forces. In the most extreme cases, near black holes, the stretching is so powerful that no object can withstand it, no matter how strong its components. Within a small region the horizontal compression balances the vertical stretching so that small objects being spaghettified experience no net change in volume.

The way it works has to do with how gravity behaves over distance. Right now, your feet are closer to the centre of Earth and are therefore more strongly attracted than your head. Under extreme gravity, say, near a black hole, that difference in attraction will actually start working against you.

As your feet begin to get stretched by gravity's pull, they will become increasingly more attracted as they inch closer to the centre of the black hole. The closer they get, the faster they move. But the top half of your body is farther away and so is not moving toward the centre as fast. The result: spaghettification!

 

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The ‘event horizon’ is the boundary defining the region of space around a black hole from which nothing (not even light) can escape. In other words, the escape velocity for an object within the event horizon exceeds the speed of light. The name arises since it is impossible to observe any event taking place inside it – it is a horizon beyond which we cannot see. 

When an item gets near an event horizon, a witness would see the item's image redden and dim as gravity distorted light coming from that item. At the event horizon, this image would effectively fade to invisibility.

Within the event horizon, one would find the black hole's singularity, where previous research suggests all of the object's mass has collapsed to an infinitely dense extent. This means the fabric of space and time around the singularity has also curved to an infinite degree, so the laws of physics as we currently know them break down. 

The strength of a black hole's gravitational pull depends on the distance from it — the closer you are, the more powerful the tug. But the effects of this gravity on a visitor would differ depending on the black hole's mass. If you fell toward a relatively small black hole a few times the mass of the sun, for example, you would get pulled apart and stretched out in a process known as spaghettification, dying well before you reached the event horizon. 

 

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Astronomers have defined a new class of celestial objects called "ploonets," which are orphaned moons that have escaped the bonds of their planetary parents.

Although there has yet to be a definitive detection of a ploonet orbiting a star, there are at least a few examples that might fit the bill. The evidence for these potential ploonets comes from perplexing exoplanetary observations that have yet to be adequately explained.

For instance, the researchers of the new paper describe how "moon-star collisions could explain the anomalous spectroscopic features of the stars Kronos and Krios (HD 240430 and HD 240429), which show deep traces of heavy elements." This is because ploonets are likely made up of largely volatile material — which are light elements and compounds like hydrogen and water that rapidly evaporate — and because ploonets are located so close to their host stars, which exposes them to very strong stellar radiation.

According to the authors, this means that over millions of years, a ploonet will lose a significant chunk of its lighter elements, leaving behind a rather heavy-metal ploonet. If these metal-rich ploonets are then absorbed into their host star, they can produce observational signals that suggest the star instead devoured rocky planets, as may be the case with Kronos.

 

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A subsatellite is a natural or artificial satellite that orbits a natural satellite, i.e. a "moon of a moon".

It is inferred from the empirical study of natural satellites in the Solar System that subsatellites may be elements of planetary systems. In the Solar System, the giant planets have large collections of natural satellites. The majority of detected exoplanets are giant planets; at least one, Kepler-1625b, may have a very large exomoon, named Kepler-1625b I. Nonetheless, no "moon of a moon" or subsatellite is known in the Solar System or beyond. In most cases, the tidal effects of the planet would make such a system unstable.

Terms used in scientific literature for moons of moons include "submoons" and "moon-moons". Other terms that have been suggested include moonitos, moonettes, and moooons.

 

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Hayabusa 2 is a Japanese mission launched in December 2014 on a six-year mission to study the asteroid Ryugu and to collect samples to bring to Earth for analysis.

Hayabusa 2 was launched in December 3, 2014. The mission includes a main spacecraft, small rovers, a lander, and an impactor that will be launched into the asteroid’s surface to create an artificial crater. The spacecraft is expected to touch down on Ryugu multiple times starting in early 2019 to collect samples to bring to Earth in late 2020.

After launch, the spacecraft completed an initial checkout period by March 2, 2015 and then moved into its “cruising phase” toward asteroid Ryugu.

Less than a year later, on December 3, 2015, Hayabusa 2 carried out an Earth flyby at a range of 1,920 miles (3,090 kilometers) over Hawaii to increase the spacecraft’s velocity.

The spacecraft performed the first major firing of its ion engines between March 22 and May 5, 2016. It conducted a shorter (3.5 hour) firing on May 20, 2016 to adjust its trajectory.

Hayabusa 2 arrived at asteroid Ryugu in June 2018.

 

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The Dragon spacecraft first reached the International Space Station in 2012 and Crew Dragon became the first private, crewed spacecraft to reach the ISS in 2020.

In March 2019, SpaceX's Crew Dragon, the company's spacecraft designed to carry astronauts into space, completed its first test mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Prior to that, in 2012, the Dragon cargo spacecraft made history when it was the first private spacecraft to berth with the ISS. Since then, Dragon has continued carrying cargo to the ISS under commercial agreements with NASA. 

SpaceX successfully launched the Crew Dragon capsule to the ISS on March 2, 2019 from a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket. The spacecraft then docked with the ISS on March 3, and returned to Earth on March 8. 

SpaceX unveiled its design for the crewed spacecraft in 2014 to great fanfare. It's essentially a modified version of SpaceX's robotic Dragon spacecraft. Crew Dragon can carry up to seven astronauts, includes a life support system, an emergency-escape system, touch-screen displays, windows and other passenger-related equipment. Another design change is that Crew Dragon docks directly to the ISS while the Dragon freighter is grabbed by the orbiting lab's large robotic arm and brought into place. 

 

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A new era in space flight began on April 12, 1981, when Space Shuttle Columbia, or STS-1, soared into orbit from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.



Astronaut John Young, a veteran of four previous spaceflights including a walk on the moon in 1972, commanded the mission. Navy test pilot Bob Crippen piloted the mission and would go on to command three future shuttle missions. The shuttle was humankind's first re-usable spacecraft. The orbiter would launch like a rocket and land like a plane. The two solid rocket boosters that helped push them into space would also be re-used, after being recovered in the ocean. Only the massive external fuel tank would burn up as it fell back to Earth. It was all known as the Space Transportation System.

Columbia accelerated into space propelled by two boosters that fell into the Atlantic Ocean, where they were later recovered and reused for other flights. The external tank fell from Columbia after about 9 minutes, and burned up in Earth's atmosphere. The spacecraft was the first crewed American craft to fly without a prior uncrewed test flight, and was the first crewed mission to use solid fuel rockets.

Some of Columbia's notable missions in later years included recovering the Long Duration Exposure Facility satellite from space (STS-32, January 1990), running the first Spacelab mission devoted to human medical research (STS-40, June 1991), and launching the Chandra X-Ray Observatory (STS-93, July 1999).

 

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Following the 1967 Apollo 1 fire disaster, NASA officials contacted Charles Schulz to use Snoopy as their safety mascot. Schulz helped design a pin for the Silver Snoopy award, which was presented to aerospace workers for outstanding contributions toward safer spaceflight operations. Later, during the Apollo 10 mission (which served as the dress rehearsal for the historic Apollo 11 moon landing), NASA dubbed the lunar module “Snoopy” and the command module “Charlie Brown.”

By March 1968, Snoopy was a full-fledged astronaut — and his mission was inspiring other NASA employees and contractors with the Silver Snoopy Award. This special honor is given to any non-military professional in recognition of their dedication to flight safety and successful missions.

Between 1968 and September 2013, the award has been given out to more than 14,000 people, and it is considered one of the highest honors for workers in the aerospace industry.

But even though he was all about safety, Snoopy's involvement with the great space race has a little bit of adventure as well. Shultz continued his dedication to the program by creating some original artwork, including a comic that took Snoopy straight to the moon.

Snoopy actually beat everyone to the moon via comic strip and his flying dog house in March 1969 — four months before Neil Armstrong's famous small step for man and giant leap for mankind.

 

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The International Space Station (ISS) is a modular space station (habitable artificial satellite) in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project between five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe), and CSA (Canada). The ownership and use of the space station is established by intergovernmental treaties and agreements. The station serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which scientific research is conducted in astrobiology, astronomy, meteorology, physics, and other fields. The ISS is suited for testing the spacecraft systems and equipment required for possible future long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars.

The ISS is made up of different components like solar arrays. Its first component was launched in orbit in 1998 with Proton and Soyuz rockets launching it. It is a work station in space for experiments which is capable to hold large number of crew members at a time. Astronauts are transported between the earth and ISS with rockets. Cargo is transported through the Dragon rocket. It helps individual experiments and research and reduce the need of separate rocket launches and research staff.



Research includes material science, weather, natural disaster etc. Unlike unmanned spacecraft, ISS can send data on demand for the learning purpose of people on earth. This is only possible because of the invariable presence of crew members who replace each other from time to time. Scientists on earth use data sent by crew members of ISS for research.

 

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