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Astronomy Updates
1. International Space Station (ISS)
The International Space Station, launched in
1998, is a laboratory and observatory in space. It
will continue to welcome astronauts until at
least 2020. Astronauts from over 15 different
countries have already boarded the ISS. The ISS
maintains an orbit of about 205-255 miles above
the earth and completes 15.7 orbits of the Earth
each day. NASA is no longer using the space
shuttles to bring astronauts or supplies to the
ISS, so the US is depending on Russia for these
missions. There are currently 6 astronauts onboard the ISS from Russia, the US,
and Japan and they will stay onboard for up to 6 months.
2. Virgin Galactic
Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic has developed a
privately owned commercial “spaceliner”SpaceShipTwo. Over 500 people have already paid
over $200,000 to go into space in 2013.
SpaceShipTwo will be a 6 passenger, 2 pilot
spacecraft that will provide a 2 ½ hour suborbital
“hop” beyond the atmosphere-62 miles from Earth.
3. The 3 Mars Rovers
There are now 3 rovers on Mars-Spirit and Opportunity, launched in 2004, and
Curiosity, launched in the summer of 2012. Unfortunately, Spirit hasn’t
communicated with NASA since 2009. Opportunity was supposed
to complete its mission in 90 days, but is amazingly still working after 8 years. It
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has traveled over 21 miles on the surface of Mars. Curiosity costs $2.5 billion and
is more sophisticated than Spirit and Opportunity.
It is the size of a SUV and weighs 3 times as much
as the other rovers. It contains an oven to bake
rocks, a laser zapper to free up potential targets,
more sophisticated cameras, and a radiation
detector. Curiosity landed in the Gale Crater
which scientists feel was once covered in water.
This was the 44th mission to Mars by various
countries.
4. SpaceX Dragon
After the space shuttle program ended in the summer
of 2011, NASA is now encouraging the private
sector to develop new spacecraft and rockets with the
goal of commercial cargo and human spaceflight. In
2012, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft was launched
and made its first connection with the International
Space Station.
5. Chinese Space Travel
In 2012, China had the first manual space docking
between the Shenzhou 9 Spacecraft and its orbiting
Tiangong 1 space lab module orbiting 200 miles
above the earth. 3 Chinese astronauts spent 13 days
onboard. Until this year, only the U.S. and Russia
have ever done orbital docking. China hopes to
build an orbiting space station by 2020. So far,
China has conducted 10 missions and 8 Chinese
astronauts have been in space.
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6. Voyager 1
The satellite Voyager 1 which was launched in
1977 is now 35 years old and it is still
functioning and sending back data to Earth. It
has passed all of the planets in our solar system
and is now ready to enter interplanetary space. It
is powered by radio isotope thermoelectric
generators fueled by decaying plutonium.
7. Pluto Discoveries
A 5th moon orbiting Pluto was discovered in 2012.
Pluto’s moon Charon was discovered in 1978. Nix
and Hydra were discovered in 2006 and P4 was
discovered in 2011.
8. New Horizons
The satellite New Horizons is coming closer and closer to Pluto and in 2015 will
be within 7,000 miles of Pluto. It has been traveling over a million km. per day for
over 6 years.
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9. Kepler Space Telescope
The Kepler Space Telescope was launched
in 2009. Kepler’s purpose is to search for
exoplanets-planets outside of our solar
system. To date, Kepler has discovered
over 2,326 new candidates. 61 of these are
confirmed exoplanets. Several of them are
most intriguing-similar to Earth in size and
temperature and possibly habitable. Kepler
has also discovered over 2,000 eclipsing
binary stars.
10. Hubble Space Telescope
There are nearly 400 space telescopes orbiting the Earth or the sun today. The
longest lasting is the Hubble Space Telescope which was launched in 1990. Its
operation’s base is here in Baltimore at the Space Telescope Science Institute at
Johns Hopkins University. The Hubble weighs over 25,000 lbs., is bigger than a
school bus, and had to be assembled in space by 7 astronauts. It is a reflector
telescope with an aluminum coated glass mirror. It was named after astronomer
Edwin Hubble. It was a combined project of NASA and the European Space
Agency. The Hubble confirmed the existence of black holes, exoplanets, dark
matter, dark energy, the Kuiper Belt, and the Oort Cloud.
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