Crucial Space Missions that changed the world: Sputnik

Fifty years ago, the first ’beep-beep’ signal from Sputnik was heard from the heavens on the night of 4 October 1957, marking the beginning of a new era for mankind. The story of Sputnik 1 can be traced back to the aftermath of the Second World War. After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union became enemies. This period led to the Cold War between two mighties. They competed against each other in many fields like military, technology, and culture as each one wanted to become the most powerful nation. This rivalry represented the fight between different ideologies, or philosophy of the two countries, opposing ideologies of capitalism and communism.

The US had spent the years following the end of the World War-II in persuading the governments of many countries that bordered and were unfriendly to the Soviet Union, to establish air base for their bombers in these countries. The fact that the US was not similarly surrounded by territories on which bombers could be based placed the Soviet Union at a severe tactical disadvantage.
There was only one solution Russians had to find a way to deliver warheads to the US without the use of bombers. The obvious answer was to use ballistic missiles.

In the U.S., scientists and engineers were working on missiles too, but for reasons other than delivering warheads. U.S. was planning to put a small satellite equipped with basic scientific instruments into orbit as part of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) in 1958. This scientific satellite could then, be followed by much larger satellites carrying military cameras – in other words, spy satellites.

Until 1956, the Soviet government had resisted the idea of launching a satellite because they wanted to focus on missiles. When the news of the US plans to launch a satellite, as part of the IGY reached Moscow, the Central Committee of the Communist Party changed planning. They also started working on the satellite launching, but quite secretly.

The original Soviet satellite – dubbed simply Object D – was planned to be a large device that would carry an array of scientific instruments, the construction of which involved several different institutions. But it was too big and complex. Russian engineers simplified the design down to an 84 kg sphere approximately 60cm in diameter, which contained a radio transmitter that broadcasted only a beep that could be heard and picked up from around the world. Sputnik 1 – which in Russian meant simply “fellow traveller of Earth” – was born. Its function was pure propaganda: proving to the world, the superiority of Soviet’s science and technology and unnerving the West, particularly the United States.

When Sputnik was launched, the entire world was surprised at what the Russian engineers had managed to do and they were also afraid. This event caused fear among nations because it meant that, if the Russians had rockets that were powerful enough to launch satellites, then they had rockets powerful enough to launch atomic bombs. It also meant that the Russians would have power over Space. A month later, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik II. By the end of December, the United States tried to launch its first satellite but it failed, ending up in an explosion.

In 1958, the U.S. successfully launched its first satellite called Explorer I. In addition, the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created by Congress to carry out space exploration. In 1959, Soviet Union launched the first probe to hit the moon. It was called Luna 2. On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet cosmonaut, which is the term used by Russians to mean astronaut, was the first person in space and the first to circle Earth. Less than a month later, Alan Shephard Jr. became the first American astronaut in space. In 1962, John Glen was the first American to orbit Earth in a capsule named Friendship 7. The Soviet Union was considered to be the first in the Space Race and the U.S. ranked the second. In 1963, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space. In December 1968, the U.S. launched Apollo 8, which was the first human mission to go around the moon. This success gave the U.S. rank number one in the space race. In July, 1969, the U.S. sent astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon. Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon.

The U.S. having reached the moon and having its astronauts walk on the moon first won the Space Race. When the Cold War ended, the U.S. and Russia started working together on building a space station and collaborating on space projects. Direction and objective of Space age is now changed from where it was born out of a culture of suspicion and fear. Satellites and space probes have dramatically changed our way of living, they have turned the world into a global village where an unprecedented wealth of information is at hand anywhere, anytime. The world has shrunk, and our perception of our planet has changed too. Thanks to Sputnik which boosted the space age.

The Milky Way new arm

For years, people created maps of the whole galaxy based on studying just one section of it, or using only one method. Unfortunately, when the models from various groups were compared, they didn't always agree.

This might come as a surprise, but every portrayal ever made of how the Milky Way galaxy looks from afar is more imagined than factual. That's because we sit squarely inside our galaxy's turgid disk, which together with its bloated central bulge make it impossible to see most of what lies on the side opposite the Sun. We're only getting half the picture.

A few years ago, astronomers used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to deduce that our galaxy really has just two main spiral arms, not four as had been thought. Called the Scutum-Centaurus and Perseus arms, these appear to connect up nicely with the ends of the galaxy's central bar. (Our Sun lies along a minor offshoot, about halfway from the center to the outer edge, known as the Orion Spur.)

The telltale carbon-monoxide emission turned up in a string of 10 locations — hardly a comprehensive sampling, but enough to sketch in the distant arm's location and extent. One of the CO-rich clouds turns out to be about 150 light-years across and has a mass of at least 50,000 Suns.

The arm also shows up in prior radio surveys that mapped the abundance of neutral hydrogen throughout the disk. It largely escaped detection, astronomers speculate, because it's both displaced from the galactic plane and tilted with respect to it. Astronomers say that the main problem with hydrogen is that there is too much of it. In any case, the CO radio hits match strongest hydrogen concentrations along the distant arm, assuring that it's real.

The new find is an isolated segment that's roughly 60,000 light-years long. Astronomers believe it marks the distant end of the Scutum-Centaurus arm, which would mean that the entire arc is more than 200,000 light-years long and that it wraps more than 300° around the galactic center.

To know for certain that the new arm is really an extension of the Scutum-Centaurus Arm, scientists hope to use their little radio dish to map it more completely in the years ahead. Even if they don't or can't, it's reassuring to know that the Milky Way really does have the gracefully sweeping arms and beautiful symmetry that befits a grand spiral galaxy.

End of Spirit

In the wee hours of May 25, 2011 the scientists and engineers of the Mars Exploration Rover team sent the last command in attempt to contact the Spirit rover. Over the past year, they have sent over 1,200 commands and haven’t heard anything in reply from the stuck and likely frozen rover.

Spirit, the plucky rover that landed on Mars on January 3, 2004, overcame many difficulties and endured way past her 90-day warranty. For nearly six years, she traveled long distances, climbed hills — something the rovers weren’t really designed to do — she roved and stopped at interesting rocks along the way, all the while beaming back the information she garnered, enlightening us all about the nature of Mars, past and present.

Spirit trapped in soft Martian soil in May of 2009 and that was the beginning of the end. The Mars Exploration Team spent months planning for her extrication, and then months again attempting to drive her out, but they ran out of time and power in the approaching Martian winter. The team was unable to put the rover in a favorable position to catch rays of sunlight on her solar panels, and after another freezing, grueling winter, Spirit has now likely succumbed to the harsh environment on Mars.

One of the challenges that Spirit faced is that it always had dust on the solar arrays, Callas said, even during the first winter on the Columbia Hills. After a timely dust cleaning event by a dust devil, the team was able tilt Spirit to gather sunshine and she survived. The second winter she achieved a 10% tilt and survived; the third winter, the team was able to find a 30% tilt – again she survived. But the 4th winter, there just wasn’t the right geography in the sand pits of Troy that would enable Spirit to survive after it became embedded.

Spirit made many discoveries – finding carbonates which told scientists much about the past habitability of Mars and that it likely had a thicker atmosphere at one point. Then, even failure brought discovery, as the malfunction of the right front wheel in 2004 meant the team had to relearn to drive the rover, driving it backwards, dragging the wheel behind. This churned up the top soil and revealed what was under the surface: amorphous silica, which is evidence for an ancient hydrothermal system on Mars, which means not only water but an energy source that could have been driving a type of ecosystem in one particular location on Mars.

Spirit roved her way into our hearts and into the science books. She will not be forgotten. I’m sure we’ll be telling stories of when Spirit was a wee little rover.

The last command was sent early on May 25, 0700 UTC, it was just after midnight at JPL in Pasadena, California