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

NASA Trapped Mars Rover Finds Evidence of Subsurface Water

She may be down, but she’s not out – out of the discovery department, anyway. Data from the Spirit Mars rover – currently in hibernation – shows evidence that water, perhaps as snow melt, trickled into the subsurface fairly recently and may be doing so on a continuing basis.

The area where Spirit became stuck in sandy soil in April of 2009 was churned up by her spinning wheels as engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory attempted to drive her out of a veritable sand trap. This wheel-churning brought subsurface soil layers — which include the water soluble mineral ferric sulfate — up to the surface. Under a thin covering of windblown sand and dust, relatively insoluble minerals such as hematite, silica and gypsum are concentrated near the surface and more-soluble ferric sulfates have higher concentrations below that layer. This pattern suggests water has moved downward through the soil, dissolving and carrying the ferric sulfates.

In combination with another recent discovery — that underground aquifers may have fed ancient seas on Mars — shows a water cycle likely was present in the past on the Red Planet, and may even be present today.

The deputy principal investigator for the Spirit and Opportunity rover, Ray Arvidson and his team say that thin films of water may have entered the ground from frost or snow. (The Phoenix lander saw evidence of current snowfall.) The seepage could have happened during cyclical climate changes in periods when Mars tilted farther on its axis.

“The lack of exposures at the surface indicates the preferential dissolution of ferric sulfates must be a relatively recent and ongoing process since wind has been systematically stripping soil and altering landscapes in the region Spirit has been examining,” said Arvidson.

This isn’t the first time that Spirit’s wheels have churned up interesting stuff. Back in 2008, researchers said Spirit’s bum front wheel uncovered signs minerals that are found in hot springs, similar to what is at Yellowstone National Park on Earth, and similar hot springs may have once bubbled or steamed on Mars.

But there’s been no word from the rover since March 22, 2010, after she went into cold-induced hibernation. Because Spirit was stuck, the rover drivers could not get her in the best position to receive maximum sunlight.

“With insufficient solar energy during the winter, Spirit goes into a deep-sleep hibernation mode where all rover systems are turned off, including the radio and survival heaters,” said John Callas, project manager for Spirit and Opportunity. “All available solar array energy goes into charging the batteries and keeping the mission clock running.”

While she was stuck and still awake, researchers took advantage and examined in great detail soil layers the wheels had exposed, and also neighboring surfaces, making comparisons between the two. While trying to drive back out of her predicament, Spirit made 13 inches of progress in its last 10 backward drives before energy levels fell too low. Those drives exposed a new area of soil for possible examination if Spirit does awaken and if its robotic arm is still usable.

However, it is thought that the aging Spirit rover experienced the coldest temperatures ever, and it may not survive. Everyone is still holding out hope that the rover may yet make contact through one of the orbiting spacecraft and the Deep Space Network.

If Spirit does get back to work, the top priority is a multi-month study that can be done without driving the rover. The study would measure the rotation of Mars through the Doppler signature of the stationary rover’s radio signal with enough precision to gain new information about the planet‘s core.

Meanwhile, over on the other side of Mars, the rover Opportunity has been making steady progress toward a large crater, Endeavour, which is now approximately 8 kilometers (5 miles) away.

Hubble predict the future of Omega Centauri

The globular star cluster Omega Centauri has caught the attention of sky watchers ever since the ancient astronomer Ptolemy first catalogued it 2,000 years ago. Ptolemy, however, thought Omega Centauri was a single star. He didn't know that the "star" was actually a beehive swarm of nearly 10 million stars, all orbiting a common center of gravity.

The stars are so tightly crammed together that astronomers had to wait for the powerful vision of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to peer deep into the core of the "beehive" and resolve individual stars. Hubble's vision is so sharp it can even measure the motion of many of these stars, and over a relatively short span of time.

A precise measurement of star motions in giant clusters can yield insights into how stellar groupings formed in the early universe, and whether an "intermediate mass" black hole, one roughly 10,000 times as massive as our Sun, might be lurking among the stars.

Analyzing archived images taken over a four-year period by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, astronomers have made the most accurate measurements yet of the motions of more than 100,000 cluster inhabitants, the largest survey to date to study the movement of stars in any cluster.

"It takes high-speed, sophisticated computer programs to measure the tiny shifts in the positions of the stars that occur in only four years' time," says astronomer Jay Anderson of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., who conducted the study with fellow Institute astronomer Roeland van der Marel. "Ultimately, though, it is Hubble's razor-sharp vision that is the key to our ability to measure stellar motions in this cluster."

Adds van der Marel: "With Hubble, you can wait three or four years and detect the motions of the stars more accurately than if you had waited 50 years on a ground-based telescope."

The astronomers used the Hubble images, which were taken in 2002 and 2006, to make a movie simulation of the frenzied motion of the cluster's stars. The movie shows the stars' projected migration over the next 10,000 years.

Identified as a globular star cluster in 1867, Omega Centauri is one of roughly 150 such clusters in our Milky Way Galaxy. The behemoth stellar grouping is the biggest and brightest globular cluster in the Milky Way, and one of the few that can be seen by the unaided eye. Located in the constellation Centaurus, Omega Centauri is viewable in the southern skies.

India Joins Thirty Meter Telescope Project

The Minister of Science and Technology of India, Mr. Prithviraj Chavan, announced the decision of India to join the Thirty Meter Telescope Project (TMT) as an Observer. TMT is the next-generation astronomical observatory that is scheduled to begin scientific operations in 2018 on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

Observer status is the first step in becoming a full partner in TMT and participating in the engineering development and scientific use of what will be the world’s most advanced and capable astronomical observatory.

“India is well recognized and respected as one of the top-ranking countries in the field of basic research,” said Henry Yang, chairman of the TMT board and Chancellor of the University of California, Santa Barbara. “As part of TMT, India will be an integral part of the next generation of astronomical research. We welcome their collaboration on this exciting project.”

"The government and people of India recognize the importance of embarking on world-class, international science collaborations," said Thirumalachari Ramasami, Secretary of the Department of Science and Technology, during a ceremony in Washington. “We believe the Thirty Meter Telescope will enable us to continue and expand our role as an international leader in technology development and fundamental research.”

“The TMT and its partners are extremely pleased that India has selected TMT as their next-generation astronomical research project,” said Edward Stone vice chair of the TMT board and Caltech’s Morrisroe Professor of Physics. “As an Observer, we can now begin exploring the specific areas where India can contribute to the project and look forward to their becoming a full partner with a formal agreement and commitment for funding.”

“We look forward to working with India on the international Thirty Meter Telescope Project,” said Professor Ray Carlberg, the Canadian Large Optical Telescope project director and a TMT board member. “By broadening the TMT partnership, we bring greater expertise and the potential for additional government endorsement to the table, which will certainly benefit the entire project.”

The TMT project plans to begin work on-site late next year and achieve first light in 2018, at which time it will be the first of the next generation of ground-based optical observatories. This revolutionary telescope will integrate the latest innovations in precision control, segmented mirror design, and adaptive optics to correct for the blurring effect of Earth's atmosphere.

Building on the success of the twin Keck telescopes, the core technology of TMT will be a 30-meter segmented primary mirror. This will give TMT nine times the collecting area of today's largest optical telescopes and three times sharper images.

The TMT has begun full-scale polishing of the 1.4-meter mirror blanks that will make up the primary mirror. TMT also has developed many of the essential prototype components for the telescope, including key adaptive optics technologies and the support and control elements for the 492 mirror segments.

The TMT project has completed its $77 million design development phase with primary financial support of $50 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and $22 million from Canada. The project has now entered the early construction phase thanks to an additional $200 million pledge from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Caltech and the University of California have agreed to raise matching funds of $50 million to bring the construction total to $300 million, and the Canadian partners propose to supply the enclosure, the telescope structure, and the first light adaptive optics.

The TMT project is an international partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy. The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) joined TMT as a Collaborating Institution in 2008. The National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences joined TMT as an Observer in 2009.

Earth and Moon view from MESSENGER

From the Earth, we can see seven planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. They look fabulous when observed through telescopes like phases of Mercury and Venus, ice capped Mars, mighty Jupiter with its four satellites, beautiful Saturn with its magnificent rings, blue worlds of Uranus and Neptune. Now you may ask the question how our Earth looks from the distance space? Is anybody has seen the Earth from the remote space? Yes, there is one, who looked at the Earth from the remote space. It is MESSENGER a satellite on mission to study the Mercury. Above image taken by the satellite on 6 May 2010. In the lower left portion of this image the Earth can be seen, as well as the much smaller Moon to Earth's right. MESSENGER took this image from 183 million kilometers. To provide context for this distance, the average separation between Earth and the Sun is about 150 million kilometers.

This image was acquired as part of MESSENGER's campaign to search for Vulcanoids, small rocky objects that have been hypothesized to exist in orbits between Sun and Mercury. The MESSENGER spacecraft is in unique position to look for smaller and fainter Vulcanoids than has ever before been possible. Vulcunoids are named after the hypothetical planet Vulcan which was proposed to exists between Mercury and Sun by the 19th century astronomers to attempt explanation in peculiarities of Mercury's orbit. No such planet was ever found.

MESSENGER is a unique mission of NASA to study the Mercury planet after Marinar-10. It was launched on 3 August 2004 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The name comes from 'MErcury Surface, Space Environment, GEochemistry and Ranging' highlighting the project broad range of scientific goals and it is perfect to study Roman mythological messenger of the gods.

AMOL KATE

:image credits to NASA/John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institute of Washington