My Science School

Yang Liwei, (born June 21, 1965, Suizhong, Liaoning, China), Chinese astronaut and the first person sent into space by the Chinese space program.

Yang was identified as the crew member for China’s first crewed spaceflight only one day before the scheduled launch of the Shenzhou 5 craft. On October 15, 2003, he lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi desert in China’s Gansu province. A Chang Zheng 2F rocket boosted Shenzhou 5 into space, where Yang spent 21 hours and orbited Earth 14 times.

He never entered the craft’s orbital module, which was released to perform a six-month military imaging reconnaissance mission. On October 16 he returned aboard the reentry module, which parachuted to the ground near a landing site in Inner Mongolia.

Following Yang’s return, he was named vice-commander-in-chief of the astronauts system of China’s crewed spaceflight project. In 2008 Yang was promoted to major general.

Credit : Britannica

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Chang'e 4 is a robotic spacecraft mission, part of the second phase of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program. China achieved humanity's first soft landing on the far side of the Moon, on 3 January 2019

The launch mass of Chang’e-4 spacecraft is about 3,780 kg. The mass of lander is about 1,200 kg and that of rover is 140 kg. As per the mission design, the rover is expected to explore the lunar surface for a period of three months while the lander’s mission would last for a full year. The lander has released a rover, called Yutu-2 (Jade Rabbit) for performing experiments in the Von Karman Crater. This is a large lunar impact crater which is about 180 km in diameter. This basin is located within a very big impact crater called the South Pole–Aitken basin (2,500 km in diameter and 13 km deep).

One of the most interesting experiments as a part of this mission was the one designed by the scientists from Chongqing University. This “mini lunar biosphere” experiment carried an 18cm bucket-like container holding air, water and soil. Inside this unit was carried cotton, arabidopsis – a small, flowering plant of the mustard family – and potato seeds, as well as fruit-fly eggs and yeast. The images sent back by the probe show a cotton plant has grown well, but so far none of the other plants had sprouted. Now, this experiment is over and sprouted cotton would decay in the container. This is for the first time in history that a biological matter has been flown to moon. Earlier, plants have been grown on the International Space Station (ISS).

Credit : ORF.online

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Tiangong-1 is a single-module space station operated by the China National Space Administration. The module was launched in 2011 and hosted two crews of taikonauts (Chinese astronauts) in 2012 and 2013. Since China's space agency discloses less information about its missions than other space agencies, the details surrounding the space station are not widely known.

The orbit of the space station passes over most of the civilized world, with the exclusion of northern latitudes that include the United States, Russia and Canada, as well as the extreme south of the world, including Antarctica and the tip of South Africa. However, most of the Earth is covered by water, reducing the chances of a crash in a populated area.

Tiangong-1 (whose name means "Heavenly Palace") weighs about 8.5 metric tons, and is about 34 feet long by 11 feet wide (10.4 meters by 3.4 meters). It contains an experiment module — where the astronauts live and work — and a resource module that contains propellant tanks and rocket engines.

The module was placed in low Earth orbit at about 217 miles (350 kilometers), at a slightly lower altitude than the International Space Station. Two solar arrays power the station, and it can house three astronauts. 

A primary goal for the module was to help the Chinese practice space dockings, which is an important skill for nations looking to build larger space stations or to send multiple spacecraft to the moon, Mars or other locations in the solar system.

Credit : Space.com

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Chang’e 1 was China’s first spacecraft to travel beyond Earth’s orbit. Its mission included stereoscopic imaging of the lunar surface, assaying the chemistry of the surface, and testing technologies that could be used in expanding the Chinese national space program to the Moon. 

Chang’e 1 carried eight instruments. A stereo camera and a laser altimeter developed a three-dimensional map of the surface with the camera tilting forward, down, and aft to illuminate three charge-coupled device (CCD) arrays. The interferometer spectrometer imager used a special lens system to project light onto an array of CCDs. X-ray and gamma-ray spectrometers measured radiation emitted by naturally decaying heavy elements or produced in response to solar radiation. These spectral data helped quantify the amounts of minerals on the lunar surface. The microwave radiometer detected microwaves emitted by the Moon itself and thus measured the thickness of the debris layer, or regolith, that fills the huge basins called maria. One aim of the regolith investigations was understanding how much helium-3 may be on the Moon. Helium-3 is a trace element in the solar wind, and the lunar surface has absorbed larger quantities of helium-3 than have been found on Earth. If mining on the Moon ever becomes practical, helium-3 would be a valuable fuel for nuclear fusion power. Other instruments monitored the solar wind and the space environment.

Credit : Britannica

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Tianwen-1 is an interplanetary mission by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) to send a robotic spacecraft to Mars, consisting of 5 parts: an orbiter, deployable camera, lander, drop camera, and the Zhurong rover. The spacecraft, with a total mass of nearly five tons, is one of the heaviest probes launched to Mars and carries 13 scientific instruments. It is the first in a series of planned missions undertaken by CNSA as part of its Planetary Exploration of China program.

The mission was launched from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on 23 July 2020 on a Long March 5 heavy-lift launch vehicle. After seven months of transit through the inner Solar System, the spacecraft entered Martian orbit on 10 February 2021. For the next three months the probe studied the target landing sites from a reconnaissance orbit. On 14 May 2021, the lander/rover portion of the mission successfully touched down on Mars, making China the third nation to both land softly on and establish communication from the Martian surface, after the Soviet Union and the United States.

The Tianwen-1 mission was the second of three Martian exploration missions launched during the July 2020 window, after the United Arab Emirates Space Agency's Hope orbiter, and before NASA's Mars 2020 mission, which landed the Perseverance rover with the attached Ingenuity helicopter drone.

China's Mars program started in partnership with Russia. In November 2011, the Russian spacecraft Fobos-Grunt, destined for Mars and Phobos, was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome. The Russian spacecraft carried with it an attached secondary spacecraft, the Yinghuo-1, which was intended to become China's first Mars orbiter (Fobos-Grunt also carried experiments from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the American Planetary Society). However, Fobos-Grunt's main propulsion unit failed to boost the Mars-bound stack from its initial Earth parking orbit and the combined multinational spacecraft and experiments eventually reentered the atmosphere of Earth in January 2012. China subsequently began an independent Mars project.

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We are on to one of the most debated fields in India: Arts. Now here's the deal, when people outside India think "Arts", they think sketching, designing, painting, or better yet acting. However, if you have lived in India long enough, you know that Arts for us means what the others call HUMANITIES. It includes subjects like literature, sociology, history, economics or the most famous of all of them, Psychology.

There are numerous misconceptions when it comes to Arts. Some look at the word and think it is all about sketching skills or painting. Others think you cannot have any lucrative careers if someone takes up Arts. Despite these, Arts is the most popular field chosen by students in the last ten years. I have been catering to students' career needs for the past five years and in my experience, students don't have all the information about Arts or Humanities. Here is my chance to clear that.

Teaching se hatke!

Teaching is one of the noblest careers available. A teacher has the lives and future of every child in his/her hands. Hence, a teacher should also have all the knowledge available on what other careers one could choose from. Here are some of them:

Counselling Psychologist: Psychology is the study of human behaviour. Contrary to the popular myth, it does not give you the ability to read minds. If you take Psychology, you mainly have three options; you can be a counsellor, a researcher or an industrial psychologist. For either of the three you would have to take the same route - Arts in your 11th and 12th, then a Bachelor in Psychology followed by a Masters in the same. Then it depends on what you want your career to be. As a counsellor you will be able to use different psychological theories to help clients deal with any issues or problems they may have.

Researcher: As a researcher or clinical psychologist you would be able to use the skills you may have to research any new disorders or cures for them. You could also discover various techniques of learning or other psychological issues.

Industrial Psychologist: As an industrial psychologist, you would be in the corporate world solving industrial issues. You could be recruiting employees and training them for any issues you may have observed. You could also use your knowledge of consumer psychology to help the company you work for in their marketing research.

Sociologist: Sociology is the study of the development, structure and functioning of human societies. As a sociologist you would work as a researcher to understand how certain societies function or how the cultural differences in groups affect the society overall. For example, if all the teenagers want to take Commerce, the society overall will fall short of doctors and engineers. This was just an example. There are various types of groups prevalent in the society, each having its own effect on it. Your research could help societies prevent certain crises or help it function more efficiently. To be a sociologist you will have to take arts for your 11th and 12th and then a Bachelor in Sociology followed by a Masters in the same.

Historian: History is very important. Knowledge of your medical history could help your doctors treat you, a history of past volcanic reactions could help predict the next volcanic eruptions. The history of the world would help us human beings avoid past mistakes we have made. As a historian you will be part of a research team that study past incidents, cultures or societies. Your knowledge of the history could help researchers deal with any problems they face in the future. You will have to take History in your 11th and 12th and then a Bachelor in History followed by a Masters in the same.

Economist: The economy is ever-changing depending on the circumstances in the country. Especially due to the pandemic, there are going to be many challenges to improve the overall economy of the country. As an Economist you will, with your knowledge and research, use various theories, help come up with various strategies to improve the economy. You will have to take Economy as a subject in your 11th and 12th and then a Bachelor in Economics followed by a Masters.

Advertiser: To be an advertiser you need to be creative. Not only creative in drawing or designing but also creative in creating strategies to get a product or a service sold profitably. To be an advertiser you can take any stream (preferably Arts) in your 11th and 12th and a Bachelor in Mass Media (BMM).

Content Developer: Every advertiser or marketing executive needs a content developer to make content for any sales pitch or ad campaign. To be a good content developer you need a comprehensive vocabulary and also a little bit of insight into consumer psychology and how the target audience responds. You need literature (English or any language you're comfortable with) in your 11th and 12th and bachelors in the same language followed by a Masters in the same. Or you could also do a Bachelor in Mass Media (BMM).

Designing: There are many types of designing. In fashion designing you design clothes, product designing you design things people use in their daily life, web designing you design websites, graphic designing, design various images or brochures or bill boards or interior designing to design how someone's home or office looks. Each of these designings is a course of its own, after you take Arts in 11th or 12th or after any bachelor course.

Artist: An artist doesn't include only a person who can paint or sketch, it can also mean a musician or a dancer or a singer or an actor. These professions have graduate courses of their own. You can take any subject in 11th and 12th and then a Bachelor in Applied Arts, music, dance or acting. Keep in mind these professions are risky ones. Some end up being successful others don't. Thus it is advisable to have a backup plan or any other graduate course along with it.

Journalist: Journalists are very important in order to keep the powers that be in check and report issues or problems that affect regular citizens daily. As a journalist you will have a lot of responsibility to report facts of any issues accurately. You have to take Arts in your 11th and 12th and then a Bachelor in Mass Media (BMM).

Political Science: A politician or political party needs a political science graduate to be successful. Political science graduates study how a political stance can affect a particular demographic and thus would help the politician or political party to understand how many votes they could get in an election. You simply take Political Science in your 11th and 12th followed by a Bachelor in Political Science.

Arts or the Humanities are a fun filled set of courses. Graduating from any of them can lead you to a successful career in them, provided you enjoy what you do. Like the science and commerce fields, the humanities are also prestigious. Hard work and love of what you do are the most common factors in all the three major fields. As long as you have complete information about what you are good at and what you like studying, you will make the right decision. Of course, the right guidance is just as important. So don't be afraid to seek help when you need it.

Credit : Darryl D’Souza

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