My Science School

The first espresso coffee was drunk in space by Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti in May 2015. The Italian Space Agency worked with Italian coffee manufacturer, Lavazza, to get the first coffee machine, called  ISSpresso, flown into the International Space Station.

In 2014, Argotec and Lavazza partnered to determine the feasibility of the project. Argotec then approached ASI, with Lavazza as a partner, and ASI agreed to sponsor the ISSpresso as an ASI payload on the ISS. NASA approval was then obtained.During the same year a feasibility study with the creation of some subsystems was conducted in order to validate the technological choices. On 14 April 2015, the flight model of ISSpresso was sent with SpaceX CRS-6 to the International Space Station and on 3 May 2015, Samantha Cristoforetti drank the first espresso in micro-gravity conditions. On 30 September 2017, Paolo Nespoli used the espresso machine on board the ISS to celebrate International Coffee Day.

The machine has conditions of use that are similar to the traditional ones, in order to facilitate the operations of the astronauts without requiring specific training. After verifying that the water container is installed properly, the astronaut inserts the coffee capsule into an opening on the top surface of the machine, then they close the small door and select the drink size. After that, they attach the drink pouch to the adapter and start the process of making coffee. The interfaces of the water container as well as of the drink pouch are the same used with the potable water dispenser installed on the space station, in order to facilitate the use of the system by the astronaut. The ISSpresso's "Coffee in Space" mission came to an end on 14 December 2017.

Credit : Wikipedia 

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The first photograph of our sun was taken by French Physicists Louis Fizeau and Leon Foucault on April 2nd, 1845. The snapshot was captured using the daguerreotype process (don't tell Bayard) and resulted after 1/60 of a second. If you observe the photograph carefully, you can spot several sunspots. That vintage photo of the Sun shows our star’s relatively sharp edge as well as a handful of sunspots. The spots are pretty big, roughly as wide as Jupiter (for comparison, the Sun is 1.4 million kilometers across).

If we want to click a picture of the sun, we pick up a camera or a smartphone and snap it in all its magnificence. While it is as easy as that currently, capturing the sun was no easy feat even a couple of centuries ago.

In fact it was only on April 2, 1845 that the first surviving detailed photographs of the surface of the sun were taken. French physicists Armand-Hippolyte-Louis Fizeau and Jean-Bernard-Leon Foucault were the two men who made it happen. Fizeau and Foucault came together through their interest in the Daguerre photographic process that had been recently invented. Even though photography was still in its infancy and its mainstream use in astronomy was still decades away, Fizeau and Foucault decided to turn their camera towards the sun.

While they came together for this project late in the 1830s, adapting the then existing photographic process to astronomy was no easy feat. It took them years, but on April 2, 1845, they succeeded in what they set out to do - capturing the sun in considerable detail. These images are the first surviving detailed daguerreotype photographs of the surface of the sun.

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Subramanyan Chandrasekhar was an Indian-born American astrophysicist who contributed to our understanding of massive stars. He shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1983, with William A. Fowler Born in Lahore, into a Tamil family, Chandrasekhar grew up in Madras (today's Chennai). Chandrasekhar studied physics at Presidency College, Madras, and went on to pursue graduate studies at the University of Cambridge, in England, in 1930. Here, he worked under R.H. Fowler on an improved model for the limiting mass of the degenerate star.

Chandrasekhar came up with a concept, later called the 'Chandrasekhar Limit Chandrasekhar improved upon the accuracy of the calculation in 1930 by calculating the limit for a polytrope model of a star in hydrostatic equilibrium, and comparing his limit to the earlier limit found by E. C. Stoner for a uniform density star. He showed that there is a maximum mass that a white dwarf star could reach and beyond which it would collapse or form black hole. The value of this limit was derived as 1.44 times that of solar mass. He published a series of papers related to this between 1931 and 1935. Chandrasekhar Limit was initially ignored, sometimes ridiculed, by the community of scientists because it supported the existence of back holes. But they were considered impossible at that time. It took years before the idea was accepted.

In 1937, Chandrasekhar was recruited to the University of Chicago faculty, a position he remained at until his death. He and his wife became American citizens in 1953.

Varied interest

Chandrasekhar is considered to be one of the first scientists who combined the disciplines of physics and astronomy. In fact, he was known for mastering several fields. Chandrasekhar studied stellar structure, hydrodynamics, radiative transfer, mathematical theory of black holes and colliding gravitational waves.

For 19 years, he served as editor of the Astrophysical Joumal and turned it into a world-class publication.

Chandrasekhar was instrumental in establishing the Ramanujan Institute of Mathematics in Madras in 1940s. He had strong association with many scientific institutions and young scientists back in India. Chandrasekhar died in 1995.

Legacy

Chandrasekhar was fittingly honoured by NASA when it ran a naming contest for one of the Observatories that it was planning to name after Chandrasekhar. The Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched and deployed by Space Shuttle Columbia in 1999.

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The U.S. space agency NASA will set its Moon mission rolling in April. The Artemis Mission is intended to land humans on the lunar surface once again. NASA's Apollo 11 mission landed the first humans on the moon on July 20, 1969. Almost five decades later, the American space agency will land the first woman and first person of colour on the Moon with its Artemis Mission in 2025. The mission has a long way to go before it sees the light of day. A series of tests will be carried out before the actual crewed mission. The first stage-Artemis I - will be the first integrated flight test of NASA's Deep Space Exploration Systems: the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, with the newly upgraded Exploration Ground Systems at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. In preparation, NASA conducted a dry run on March 17, when the mega rocket was rolled out to the launchpad. fuelled and run through a launch countdown, stopping just 10 seconds before lift-off. What are the other stages before the final countdown and what does NASA intend to study through the Artemis Mission? Let's find out in this Five Ws & One H...

 

WHAT is the Artemis Mission all about?

The Artemis Mission will explore the Moon's south pole, where ice has been confirmed to exist within craters, and where no human has ever been before. The objectives are to demonstrate new technologies needed for future exploration including Mars; to study the Moon to learn more about the origin and history of the Earth, the loon, and the Solar System; to find and use water and other critical resources needed for long-term exploration; and to learn how to live and operate on the surface of another celestial body.

WHAT are Artemis I and II?

Prior to the lunar surface landing, NASA will fly two missions around the Moon-Artemis I, an uncrewed flight to test the SLS and Orion spacecraft together, followed by the Artemis II mission, the first SLS and Orion flight test with crew. Artemis I, which is expected to launch in April first week, will travel over 450,616 km from Earth on a four to six-week mission. It will be the furthest that a spacecraft built for humans has ever gone. After the spacecraft completes its loop around the Moon, Orion will attempt to land safely off the coast of Baja California, Mexico.

Artemis II, scheduled to launch in 2024, is a 10-day mission that will carry four astronauts roughly 370,000 km from Earth where they will orbit the Moon. They will travel 6,700 km beyond the far side of the moon, becoming the first humans to travel that far in space.

The actual mission will see the first human to land on the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.

HOW will the mission pan out?

The basic outline for the Moon landing is- astronauts would take off aboard the Orion spacecraft, on the rocket - the Space Launch System - and fly to a lunar space station called the Gateway. Then, they would board a lunar descent craft built by SpaceX, go down to the Moon, conduct research on its surface, and return to the Gateway before the journey back home.

WHO are part of the crew?

In January 2020, NASA's 22nd astronaut group. nicknamed the Turtles", graduated and were assigned to the Artemis program. Some of the astronauts will fly on the Artemis missions to the Moon and may be part of the first crew to fly to Mars. Raja Chari, an Indian-American graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, MIT. and U.S. Naval Test Pilot School, has made it to the list.

WHAT is Gateway?

The Gateway is a space station, similar to the Interational Space Station (ISS). But instead of orbiting the Earth, it will orbit the Moon and serve as a launch platform for missions to the lunar surface. Its development is led by the ISS partners. The Gateway will be occupied by astronauts continuously. establishing a permanent human presence near the Moon. The plan is to assemble the station piece by piece in prefabricated modules. just like how the ISS was built.

WHAT is special about the SLS rocket?

In the last 20 years, astronauts have been making routine trips to and from the ISS. But the Moon is nearly 1,000 times farther than where the ISS flies: getting astronauts there requires a much bigger rocket. The SLS rocket is the most powerful rocket built since the 1960s. It can produce 15% more thrust than the Saturn V that took the Apollo astronauts to the Moon. It is 98 metres tall and is capable of lofting about 24 metric tonnes to the Moon. With the SLS, NASA intends to send missions to Mars and eventually distant destinations.’

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J.BS Haldane, British scientist known for his work in physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology and mathematics. J.B.S. Haldane, in full John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, (born Nov. 5, 1892, Oxford, Oxfordshire, Eng.—died Dec. 1, 1964, Bhubaneswar, India), British geneticist, biometrician, physiologist, and popularizer of science who opened new paths of research in population genetics and evolution.

Son of the noted physiologist John Scott Haldane, he began studying science as assistant to his father at the age of eight and later received formal education in the classics at Eton College and at New College, Oxford (M.A., 1914). After World War I he served as a fellow of New College and then taught at the University of Cambridge (1922–32), the University of California, Berkeley (1932), and the University of London (1933–57). Haldane’s major works include Daedalus (1924), Animal Biology (with British evolutionist Julian Huxley, 1927), The Inequality of Man (1932), The Causes of Evolution (1932), The Marxist Philosophy and the Sciences (1938), Science Advances (1947), and The Biochemistry of Genetics (1954). Selected Genetic Papers of J.B.S. Haldane, ed. by Krishna R. Dronamraju, was published in 1990.

Credit : Britannica

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Ludwig Boltzmann, in full Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann, (born February 20, 1844, Vienna, Austria—died September 5, 1906, Duino, Italy), physicist whose greatest achievement was in the development of statistical mechanics, which explains and predicts how the properties of atoms (such as mass, charge, and structure) determine. Boltzmann's general law asserts that a system will approach a state of thermodynamic equilibrium because that is the most probable state. He introduced the 'Boltzmann equation' (1877) relating the kinetic energy of a gas atom or molecule to temperature.

In the 1870s Boltzmann published a series of papers in which he showed that the second law of thermodynamics, which concerns energy exchange, could be explained by applying the laws of mechanics and the theory of probability to the motions of the atoms. In so doing, he made clear that the second law is essentially statistical and that a system approaches a state of thermodynamic equilibrium (uniform energy distribution throughout) because equilibrium is overwhelmingly the most probable state of a material system. During these investigations Boltzmann worked out the general law for the distribution of energy among the various parts of a system at a specific temperature and derived the theorem of equipartition of energy (Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution law). This law states that the average amount of energy involved in each different direction of motion of an atom is the same. He derived an equation for the change of the distribution of energy among atoms due to atomic collisions and laid the foundations of statistical mechanics.

Boltzmann was also one of the first continental scientists to recognize the importance of the electromagnetic theory proposed by James Clerk Maxwell of England. Though his work on statistical mechanics was strongly attacked and long-misunderstood, his conclusions were finally supported by the discoveries in atomic physics that began shortly before 1900 and by recognition that fluctuation phenomena, such as Brownian motion (random movement of microscopic particles suspended in a fluid), could be explained only by statistical mechanics.

Credit : Britannica

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Prof. Deepak Dhar is the first Indian to receive this top honour in the field of statistical physics. Deepak Dhar, physicist, from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, has been selected for the Boltzmann medal, awarded by the Commission on Statistical Physics (C3) of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. He becomes the first Indian to win this award, which was initiated in 1975, with Nobel laureate (1982) K.G. Wilson being the first recipient. Prof. Deepak Dhar Born on 30 October 1951 at Pratapgarh, in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh to Murli Dhar-Rama Gupta couple, Deepak Dhar graduated in science from the University of Allahabad in 1970 before earning a master's degree in physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1972. He shares the platform with American scientist John J. Hopfield who is known for his invention of an associative neural network, now named after him. The award consists of the gilded Boltzmann medal with the inscription of Ludwig Boltzmann, and the chosen two scientists will be presented the medals at the StatPhys28 conference to be held in Tokyo, 7-11 August, 2023. Dhar was elected as a fellow by the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1990 where he is a sitting council member.  He became an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy on 1995 and the National Academy of Sciences, India elected him as a fellow in 1999. Dhar received the elected fellowship of the World Academy of Sciences in 2006 and was selected for the J. C. Bose National fellowship of the Science and Engineering Research Board in 2007, with the tenure running until 2017.

Credit : Wikipedia

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Rain, Rain, sulphur rain!

Volcanoes are mean they devastate a large area whenever they erupt. But the after-effects can sometimes be useful, like reducing the effects of global warming, at least momentarily. A few scientists have actually suggested an artificial volcano as the solution for soaring temperatures around the world. It's not a fake volcano that they have in mind, thankfully. However, the idea is equally odd - releasing sulphuric acid into the atmosphere with the help of jet planes. It's not clear how dangerous this could be and opponents believe it would be like trying to spray perfume on a skunk!

Lighting up the moon

We're all aware that we have been overusing electricity, day and night. A few experts believe that a really bright moon is all that we need to make us switch off the lights at night. This does sound awesome especially since everyone around the world can benefit from it. But the good scientists have not discussed how they plan to light up the moon. Or for that matter if the cost involved in this project could put all the countries in permanent debt.

Just making a mountain or two

Arid, dry countries in the Middle East lack one thing that prevents them from enjoying good rainfall - a mountain. Mountains help in the formation of clouds and stimulate rain. A team of scientists believe that a man made mountain is all that is needed to tackle this problem - easy peasy! But there's just one small issue: where do you get all the raw materials to build one?

A unique way to beat the heat

With so many suggestions to tackle global warming and the sun's scorching heat, a suggestion from a team of Scottish scientists really takes the cake! A dust cloud can effectively block the sun's heat for some time and lower global temperature. And the best way to get the quantity of dust we need for this project is to capture an asteroid and bring it close enough to do the trick. Of course, one must make sure to blast it quickly, before it starts descending towards the Earth!

Dedicated to world peace

Solving world problems and addressing climate change can be accomplished by doing one simple thing. Just fuse all the continents on Earth into one gigantic super continent! According to Jonathan Keats, an experimental philosopher, this seemingly tough task can be achieved by tweaking the planet's tectonic plates using the latest geoengineering methods. Keats seems serious about this idea, because he's established a political tectonics lab that specializes in political geoengineering. Of course, we're working under the assumption that coming closer together will solve all our tensions!

Let's protect our glaciers

Glaciers are one of the biggest sources of fresh water, but unfortunately they've been melting at an alarming rate. If this continues, many coastal cities would get submerged in a matter of decades. A glaciologist suggests wrapping up the glaciers with huge reflective blankets. That could create a new market for mass manufacture of blankets too, right? That's two benefits from one idea.

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The Syfy network and game developer Trion Worlds have debuted Defiance, a story that unfolds simultaneously on a TV show and in an online gaming world. For the first time, gamers have a chance to impact a show by playing an MMORPG. Defiance takes place on Earth 33 years in the future, after an alien war.

The show characters live in St Louis while the in-game characters live in San Francisco. In the first season, there are choreographed interactions between the show and the videogame, e.g., show characters might dictate gamers' missions: a doctor in St Louis might ask a team in San Francisco to find a medical device. In future seasons, gamers' decisions would influence the show, creating a new cross-media storyline.

Instead, Syfy is the one trying to tap a new money vein. Multiplayer online games can be lucrative, with gamers not only paying to play but buying virtual goods within the game. "Rift," the first title Trion made, generated revenue of $100 million within its first 10 months. But these sprawling online games, in which an unlimited number of people can play in one world at once, demand a lot of time from players. Most only commit to a few titles at a time. It's tough for new entries to hit critical mass.

The companies at first agreed to split a budget of $25 million for a game designed for personal computers. But the development schedule ballooned and the game budget nearly tripled as advancing technology made it possible to create versions for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles.

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Franklin P. Mall, M.D., was the first professor of anatomy at Johns Hopkins. Sabin attributed much of her early success in medicine to the mentorship provided by Mall, who became Sabin's mentor, advocate, and intellectual role model while she was his student. He encouraged her pursuit of “pure” (rather than applied) science, and suggested projects that would help establish her research reputation.

Much of The Florence R. Sabin Collection consists of correspondence from 1903 to 1941 between Sabin and Mabel (Glover) Mall, Franklin’s wife. The correspondence “reveals the close friendship Sabin enjoyed with the Mall family and provides a glimpse of the early years at Johns Hopkins Hospital and the work of the Anatomical Laboratory.”

While at Johns Hopkins, Sabin did important work on the origins of the lymphatic system, demonstrating that its structures were formed from the embryo’s veins rather than from other tissues (as other researchers believed at the time). She also perfected the technique of supravital staining, allowing her to investigate the origins of blood cells, blood vessels, and connective tissue.

While at the Rockefeller Institute, Sabin established the Department of Cellular Studies. She led research on the pathology of tuberculosis as part of a consortium of researchers working with the Medical Research Committee of the National Tuberculosis Association. During her thirteen years at Rockefeller, Sabin made major contributions to the understanding of tuberculosis, most notably for her discovery of the origin and processes of immune system responses to various chemical fractions isolated from the tuberculosis bacteria. Sabin remained at the Rockefeller Institute until her retirement in 1938.

Credit : WIMLF 

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Florence Rena Sabin, American anatomist and investigator of the lymphatic system who was considered to be one of the leading women scientists of the United States.

Sabin was educated in Denver, Colorado, and in Vermont and graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts, in 1893. After teaching in Denver and at Smith to earn tuition money, she entered the Johns Hopkins University Medical School in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1896. While a student she demonstrated a particular gift for laboratory work; her model of the brain stem of a newborn infant was widely reproduced for use as a teaching model in medical schools. After graduation in 1900 she interned at Johns Hopkins Hospital for a year and then returned to the medical school to conduct research under a fellowship awarded by the Baltimore Association for the Advancement of University Education of Women. In 1901 she published An Atlas of the Medulla and Midbrain, which became a popular medical text. In 1902, when Johns Hopkins finally abandoned its policy of not appointing women to its medical faculty, Sabin was named an assistant in anatomy, and she became in 1917 the school’s first female full professor.

For a number of years Sabin’s research centred on the lymphatic system, and her demonstration that lymphatic vessels develop from a special layer of cells in certain fetal veins, rather than, as prevailing theory held, from intercellular spaces, established her as a researcher of the first rank. She then turned to the study of blood, blood vessels, and blood cells and made numerous discoveries regarding their origin and development. In 1924 she was elected president of the American Association of Anatomists, and in 1925 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences; in both cases she was the first woman to be so honoured.

Credit :  Britannica 

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Florence Rena Sabin was an American anatomist who contributed to research in the lymphatic system, blood vessels and cells, and tuberculosis. She was the first woman to be elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences; to become a full professor at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the president of the American Association of Anatomists. She was considered to be one of the leading women scientists of her time. Florence Rena Sabin was born in 1871 in Colorado. Florence's mother died from puerperal fever (sepsis), when she was just seven. She was brought up by her grandparents and uncle, who instilled a love for Nature in Florence.

Throughout her childhood, Florence wanted to become a pianist but her experience at Vermont Academy made her shift her focus to science. She began her career as a teacher in Denver and at Smith College, in Massachusetts. This helped her save for the tuition money to enter the Johns Hopkins University Medical School in Baltimore.

In 1896, she became one of 14 women in a class of 45 students at Johns Hopkins Medical School. At Hopkins, Sabin studied anatomy under mentor Franklin Paine Mall.

On brain structure

Following graduation, Sabin obtained an internship at Hopkins. Sabin worked on mapping the anatomical presentation of neonatal brain structure. In 1901, she published An Atlas of the Medulla and Midbrain, which became a popular medical text. In 1917, she became the school's first female full professor, teaching embryology and histology in the Department of Anatomy.

For many years, Sabin's research focussed on the lymphatic system. She disproved a prevailing theory by demonstrating that lymphatic vessels develop from a special layer of cells in certain fetal veins, rather than from intercellular spaces. She then turned to the study of blood, blood vessels, and blood cells and made numerous discoveries regarding their origin and development.

In 1925, she joined the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research and conducted research on the pathology and immunology of tuberculosis. She played a key role in legislating Colorado's public health program after the end of World War II and also fought for the rights of women scientists and doctors.

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Shoemaker’s achievements went far beyond this discovery. Between 1980 and 1994, as a member of the Palomar Asteroid and Comet Survey (PACS), she found 32 comets, plus more than 400 asteroids. Although PACS’s objective was to find asteroids or comets that could pose a threat to civilization, the discovery of Shoemaker–Levy 9 completely overshadowed that aim. The interest generated by the comet’s impacts with Jupiter was almost as spectacular as the collisions themselves. For the first time, people the world over grappled with questions about what transpires when comets strike planets, and how these impacts might offer an insight into the origins of life on Earth.

Each observation began by loading a 15-centimetre disc of film into a plateholder, mounting it into the telescope, and exposing the film for 8 minutes. It would then be placed in a light-tight box, and a new film inserted. Our nights would be divided into sets of four, sometimes five, fields; we then repeated each exposure. At our most efficient, the time between the end of one exposure and the start of the next was as little as 90 seconds. Our nights would be divided into observations of four, sometimes five, fields of the sky; we then repeated each exposure. It was during one of these routine sessions that we recorded the two ‘discovery’ images of Shoemaker–Levy 9. When Brian G. Marsden at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics calculated that the comet was on a collision course with Jupiter, Gene thought: “In my lifetime, I am going to witness a cosmic impact.” Carolyn thought: “I am going to lose one of my comets.”

One consequence of these observations is that, since 1994, cosmic impacts have been taken seriously, and more programmes around the world are looking for comets and asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth. Other lines of research are pursuing the idea that life on Earth might have been seeded by simple organic molecules arriving from space on comets. And, parenthetically, the ‘giggle factor’ — the offhand reaction of journalists and laypeople to the idea of objects from space hitting Earth — has dissipated completely.

After the impacts, Carolyn resumed her search with PACS, along with her husband and me. Although the programme concluded at the end of December 1994, the team continued the work with two smaller Schmidt cameras at the Jarnac Observatory in Arizona. Gene was killed in a car accident in Australia in 1997. Carolyn bravely continued her work after that.

Credit : Nature 

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Carolyn Shoemaker never set out to be a scientist. But after her three children were grown, she wanted something new to do. So at the age of 51, she started a second career and became a world-renowned astronomer. Carolyn – along with her husband Gene Shoemaker and their colleague David Levy – co-discovered comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on March 24, 1993. It was the first comet observed to be orbiting a planet – in this case, Jupiter – rather than the Sun. Jupiter's tidal forces tore the comet apart and, eventually, the fragments collided with Jupiter between July 16 and June 22, 1994.

While comet Shoemaker-Levy’s 9’s impact with Jupiter was dramatic, it was more than just a cosmic show. It gave scientists new insights into comets – and into Jupiter. The impact also was a wake-up call for scientists: If the comet had hit Earth instead of Jupiter, it could have created a global disaster. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 helped lead to the creation of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

Carolyn Shoemaker also discovered or co-discovered dozens of other comets and hundreds of asteroids. She shared the story of how she became a scientist with NASA/JPL media producer Leslie Mullen in an interview on July 22, 2019. This tribute is based largely on that interview, and the podcast episode in which the interview was featured.

Credit : NASA Solar System Exploration 

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Carolyn Shoemaker is an American astronomer who once held the record for the most comet discoveries. By 1994, Carolyn had 32 comet discoveries to her credit, the prominent among them was the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.Carolyn Shoemaker was born in Gallup, New Mexico in 1929. Carolyn studied history, political science, and English literature. She married Eugene Shoemaker, a geologist who was also interested in astronomy, in 1951. Her interest in astronomy and geology began only after her marriage. At the age of 51, after her children had grown up and moved out, Carolyn began helping her husband search for asteroids and comets, at California Institute of Technology, California, and the Palomar Observatory, San Diego, California. She was lauded for her exceptional eye for detail in discovering objects in near-Earth space.

Despite her relative inexperience and lack of a science degree, in 1980, Carolyn became a visiting scientist with the astrogeology branch of the United States Geological Survey Both Carolyn and Gene were on the staff of Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff Arizona

Between the 1980s and the 1990s, Shoemaker used images taken by telescopes at the Palomar Observatory to find objects which moved against the background of fixed stars Carolyn and Gene Shoemaker teamed with astronomer David H. Levy, and identified a fragmented comet orbiting Jupiter on March 24, 1993. It was named Shoemaker-Levy 9. Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke apart in July 1992 and collided with Jupiter in July 1994. It was a significant event and much-followed by scientists and enthusiasts on Earth as it provided the first direct observation of an extraterrestrial collision of Solar System objects. In 1997, Gene Shoemaker died in an accident. Carolyn, who survived with severe injuries, continued to work at the Lowell Observatory post recovery. As of 2002, Shoemaker had been credited with discovering or co-discovering 32 comets and over 800 asteroids. The Hildian asteroid 4446 Carolyn, discovered by colleague Edward Bowell at Lowell Observatory in 1985, was named in her honour.

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