Download Inner and Outer Planets

Inner and Outer
Planets
*
INNER
PLANETS
*Mercury
*Venus
*Earth
*Mars
OUTER
PLANETS
*Jupiter
*Saturn
*Uranus
*Neptune
*Mercury
*
*Mercury is the smallest terrestrial planet and the planet
closest to the sun.
*Mercury is not much larger than Earth’s moon and has no
moons of its own.
*Mercury takes 88 days to revolve around the sun and 59 days
to rotate around itself.
*The interior of Mercury is thought to be made up mainly of
the dense metal iron.
*Mercury virtually has no atmosphere so the sky appears dark
all the time.
*Mercury has many craters on its surface.
*Mercury has extreme temperatures. The side facing the sun
reaches temperatures of 430oC and at night the heat
escapes into space because there is no atmosphere and the
temperature drops below -170oC.
*
* The Mariner 10 probe flew by Mercury 3 times in 1974 and 1975.
* Current mission: Messenger spacecraft launched in 2004 and
entered Mercury’s orbit in 2011.
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/the_mission/MESSENGERTimeline/TimeLine_content.html
http://www.nasa.gov/content/nasa-s-messenger-spacecraft-10-years-in-space/
*Venus
*
* Venus is similar in size and mass to Earth so it is sometimes called
Earth’s twin.
* Venus’s density and internal structure are similar to Earth’s.
* Venus takes 224.68 days to revolve around the sun and 243 days
to rotate around itself so Venus’s day is longer than its year!
* Venus is the second planet from the sun and it does not have a
moon.
* Venus rotates east to west (retrograde) which is the opposite
direction from most other planets and moons.
* Venus’s atmosphere is so thick that is always cloudy there.
The
clouds are made mostly of sulfuric acid.
* The pressure of Venus’s atmosphere is 90 times greater than the
pressure of Earth’s atmosphere. You couldn’t breathe on Venus
because its atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide.
* Venus has the hottest surface of any planet in the solar system.
The carbon dioxide and thick clouds trap the heat like a
greenhouse so the average surface temperature is 460oC!
*
* Many space probes have visited Venus.
The first probe to
land on the surface and send back data, Venera 7, landed
in 1970. It survived only for a few minutes because of the
high temperature and pressure.
* Magellan probe reached Venus in 1990, carrying radar
instruments. Magellan mapped the surface of Venus and
confirmed Venus is covered with rock and has many
volcanoes on its surface.
* In October 1994, the Magellan spacecraft intentionally
plunged to the surface of Venus to gather data on the
planet's atmosphere before it ceased operations. It marked
the first time an operating planetary spacecraft had been
intentionally crashed.
* http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/details.php?id=900
*Earth
*
* Earth is the largest inner planet and third planet
from the sun.
* Earth has one moon.
* Water exists in 3 forms on Earth and has life existence.
* Earth takes 365.25 days to revolve around the sun and takes
24 hours to rotate around itself.
* Earth’s atmosphere is made primarily of nitrogen and oxygen.
* The Apollo program from 1963-1972 was designed to land
humans on the moon and return them safely to Earth.
* The Apollo 11 mission had astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz
Aldrin land their lunar module on the moon on July 20, 1969
and they walked on the moon’s surface.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCt1BwWE2gA
* http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/apollo11_audio.h
tml (scroll to bottom to listen to audio of Neil Armstrong
stepping onto the moon’s surface)
*Mars
*
* Mars is called the “red planet”.
The reddish tint is due to the
breakdown of iron-rich rocks, which creates a rusty dust that
covers much of Mars’s surface.
* Mars is the fourth planet from the sun and has 2 small moons,
Phobos and Deimos.
* Mars takes 687 days to revolve around the sun and takes 24
hours 37 minutes to rotate around itself.
* Mars has a tilted axis(25o) so it has seasons just like Earth does.
* The atmosphere of Mars is more than 95% carbon dioxide. It is
similar in composition to Venus’s atmosphere but much thinner.
* Some regions on Mars have giant volcanoes.
Olympus Mons on
Mars is the largest volcano in the solar system. It is nearly 3
times as tall as Mount Everest.
* Mars One mission to colonize Mars.
Watch the video clip
advertising the mission here. http://www.mars-one.com/
Crews would leave Earth for Mars in 2026.
*
* Scientists think that a large amount of
liquid water flowed on Mars’s surface in the distant past.
* In 2004, two probes landed on Mars’s surface.
NASA’s Spirit and
Opportunity rovers explored Mars and examined a variety of rocks
and soil samples. The rovers found strong evidence that liquid
water was once present on Mars. NASA lost contact with Spirit in
2010 and Curiosity is now on the surface.
* Curiosity’s mission is to determine the planet's "habitability."
Curiosity was designed to assess whether Mars ever had an
environment able to support small life forms called microbes.
http://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission/overview/ view the slideshow
* The MAVEN mission launched in 2013 is exploring Mars’s atmosphere
and interactions with the sun and the solar wind.
* http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/maven/main/ view slideshow
and learn current info and http://mars.nasa.gov/maven/ for a video
clip
Current and Future Missions to Study Mars
* http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/05/nasa-finds-
evidence-of-a-vast-ancient-ocean-on-mars Nasa finds evidence of a
vast ancient ocean on Mars article and scroll down for good VIDEO
CLIP
* Mars Orbiter Mission was launched in 2013 by the Indian Space
Research Organization to study different technology and Mars’s
atmosphere.
* European Space Agency’s Exomars program is a series of missions
planned to launch in 2016 and are designed to understand if life
ever existed on Mars. There is also a plan for an Exomars Rover
launch in 2018.
* Building on the success of Curiosity's landing, NASA announced plans
for a new robotic science rover set to launch in 2020.
*
The inner planets:
*Are small in size
*Have few or no moons
*Do not have rings
*Have solid, rocky surfaces
*Have a high density
*Have a variety of gases in their atmosphere
*Rotate slowly (long days)
*Revolve quickly (short years)
*Jupiter
*
* Jupiter is the largest and most massive planet. Jupiter is the fifth
planet from the sun.
* Jupiter has a thick atmosphere made up mainly of hydrogen and
helium and has faint, narrow rings surrounding it.
* Jupiter has the Great Red Spot which is a storm that is larger than
Earth. The storm’s swirling winds blow hundreds of kilometers per
hour, similar to a hurricane.
* Astronomers think that Jupiter probably has a dense core of rock and
iron at its center.
* Jupiter takes 4,331.9 days (11.9 years) to revolve around the sun and
less than 10 hours to rotate around itself.
* Galileo discovered Jupiter’s four largest moons:
Io, Europa,
Ganymede, and Callisto. All four are larger than Earth’s moon.
* Io’s surface is covered with large, active volcanoes.
Europa has an
icy crust and astronomers suspect an ocean of liquid water lies
beneath it. Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system.
Callisto’s surface is icy and covered with craters.
* Astronomers have discovered 67 moons orbiting Jupiter.
*
* The Pioneer 10 spacecraft launched in 1972 became the first to fly beyond Mars'
orbit, through the asteroid belt, and close to Jupiter, blazing a trail for the two
Voyager spacecraft that were to follow and conduct more in-depth surveys.
* Voyager 2, launched in 1977, explored Jupiter in greater detail than the Pioneer
spacecraft did.
* One of Jupiter’s moons, Europa was explored by Voyager spacecraft
* Europa has a smooth, icy crust with giant cracks
* Scientists hypothesize that there is a liquid ocean under Europa’s ice-the
water could be kept liquid by heat coming from inside Europa
* Galileo spacecraft launched in 1989 discovered an intense radiation belt above
Jupiter's cloud tops, helium in about the same concentration as the Sun,
extensive and rapid resurfacing of the moon Io because of volcanism, and more
evidence for liquid water oceans under the moon Europa's icy surface.
* The Galileo Orbiter became the first unmanned spacecraft to witness a
celestial event - the impact of multiple fragments of
comet Shoemaker Levy-9 into Jupiter in July 1994.
*
* Juno mission was launched in 2011 and the orbiter spacecraft
will arrive 2016. http://missionjuno.swri.edu/ Lots of
information and video clips about the Juno mission.
* The purpose of the Juno mission is to understand giant planet
formation and evolution. Jupiter was likely the first planet to
form and it has held onto all of its original material. So we can
study the planet as a sort of time capsule to learn more about
what the solar system was like at the time when Jupiter was
forming.
*Saturn
*
* Saturn is the second-largest planet in the solar system and
the sixth planet from the sun.
* Saturn has a thick atmosphere of hydrogen and helium like
Jupiter.
* Saturn is the only planet whose average density is less than
that of water.
* Scientists looking through telescopes discovered Saturn has
rings around it. The rings are made of chucks of ice and
rock, each traveling in its own orbit around Saturn. Saturn
has the most spectacular rings of any planet.
* Saturn takes 10,738.4 days (29.5 years) to revolve around
the sun and takes 10.23 hours to rotate around itself.
* Saturn has 64 moons and its largest moon, Titan, is larger
than the planet Mercury.
*
* The Voyager spacecrafts, launched in 1977, gave us a close-range
look at Saturn and its moons.
* Cassini is an extended mission to follow up on the many discoveries
made during its primary 4-year mission that launched in 1997.
Among the most surprising discoveries were geysers erupting on
one of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus. Researchers believe that there
is a warm ocean beneath Enceladus’ icy crust. Cassini detected
tiny particles of silica floating in space. The silica particles could
only be made if that ocean were hot. On Earth, silica similarly
forms at undersea hydrothermal vents, when chemicals dissolved in
hot water crystallize as the water is suddenly cooled when it meets
the ocean.
* Cassini's observations of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, have given
scientists a glimpse of what our home planet might have been like
before life evolved on Earth.
*Uranus
*
* Uranus is the seventh planet from the sun and is twice as
far from Saturn so it is much colder.
* Uranus looks blue-green because of traces of methane in
its atmosphere. Uranus also has hydrogen and helium in
its atmosphere.
* Uranus is surrounded by a group of thin, flat rings.
* Uranus takes 30,790.6 days (84 years) to revolve around
the sun and just over 17 hours to rotate around itself.
* Uranus rotates east to west (retrograde) and is tipped on
its side. Astronomers think that billions of years ago
Uranus was hit by an object that knocked it on its side.
* Uranus has 27 moons.
Five of Uranus’s largest moons have
icy, cratered surfaces. The craters show that rocks from
space have hit the moons. Uranus’s moons also have lava
flows on their surfaces, suggesting that material has
erupted from inside each moon.
*
* Voyager 2 was the first and only manmade object to reach
Uranus. It launched in 1977 when it had previously visited Jupiter
and Saturn and reached Uranus in 1986.
* The planet displayed little detail, but gave evidence of an ocean
of boiling water about 800 km below the cloud tops.
* Curiously, the average temperature of its sun-facing pole was
found to be the same as that of the equator.
* The spacecraft discovered moons, two new rings, and a strangely
tilted magnetic field stronger than that of Saturn.
* A gravity assist at Uranus propelled the spacecraft toward its next
destination, Neptune.
* A number of missions have been proposed but none
have been approved yet.
*Neptune
*
* Neptune is the eighth planet from the sun and is similar in
size and color to Uranus (twin planets).
* Neptune is a cold, blue planet that has rings.
* Neptune’s atmosphere contains hydrogen, helium, and
methane and also contains visible clouds. Clouds of icy
droplets of methane can also be seen in the upper
atmosphere of Neptune.
* Scientists think that Neptune is slowly shrinking causing its
interior to heat up. As this energy rises toward Neptune’s
surface, it produces clouds and storms in the planet’s
atmosphere.
* Neptune takes 60,193.2 days (165 years) to revolve around
the sun and 16.11 hours to rotate around itself.
* Neptune has 13 moons, including a moon with eruptions of
nitrogen.
* The winds on the planet are the strongest in the Solar
System, with areas of high pressure shown by Dark Spots.
*
* In the summer of 1989, NASA's Voyager 2 became the first
spacecraft to observe the planet Neptune, its final planetary
target.
* In the closest approach of its entire tour, the spacecraft
passed less than 5,000 km above the planet's cloud tops.
* It discovered moons, rings, and a "Great Dark Spot" that
vanished by the time the Hubble Space Telescope imaged
Neptune five years later.
* Neptune's largest moon, Triton, was found to be the coldest
known planetary body in the solar system, with a nitrogen
ice "volcano" on its surface.
* A gravity assist at Neptune shot Voyager 2 below the plane in
which the planets orbit the sun, on a course which will
ultimately take the spacecraft out of our solar system.
*
The outer planets:
*Are large in size
*Have many moons
*Have rings
*Do not have solid, rocky surfaces (gas
giants)
*Have a low density
*Have similar gases in their atmosphere
*Rotate quickly (short days)
*Revolve slowly (long years)