Curiosity Probe - Blog Posts
An episode late is better than none at all! Hear about satellites, space probes, orbiters, and landers through history.
Below the cut are sources, music credits, an awesome infographic showing all the satellites currently in orbit around Earth, a vocab list, and the transcript of this episode. Let me know what you think I should research next by messaging me here, tweeting at me at @HDandtheVoid, or asking me to my face if you know me in real life. And please check out the podcast on iTunes, rate it or review it if you’d like, subscribe, and maybe tell your friends about it if you think they’d like to listen!
(My thoughts on the next episode were space race history, the transit of Venus, or maybe something about the Moon landing. I’m prepping to interview a friend about her graduate-level research into the history of the universe and possibly dark matter, too. Let me know by the 8th and I’ll hopefully have the next podcast up on September 18th!)
Glossary
Clarke Belt - an area of geostationary orbit in Earth’s atmosphere, 35,786 km directly above the equator, where a satellite orbits the Earth at the same speed the Earth is rotating.
geostationary orbit - when an object orbits directly above the equator and appears stationary to observers on Earth’s surface.
geosynchronous orbit - when an object orbits Earth at an orbital period that matches Earth's rotation on its axis. From the perspective of an observer on Earth's surface, the object would return to the exact same position in the sky after a period of one day.
gyroscopes - a device consisting of several rings that spin freely around different axes. The rapidly rotating wheel has a large moment of inertia and therefore resists change from the plane in which it is rotated. Large gyroscopes allow for steady navigation of ships, submarines, and space ships. See examples in the link.
heliosheath - the outer region of the heliosphere. It is just beyond termination shock, the point where solar wind abruptly slows down and becomes denser and hotter as it presses outward against the approaching wind in interstellar space.
heliosphere - a huge wind sock-shaped bubble that extends beyond Pluto’s orbit and contains our solar system, solar wind, and the entire solar magnetic field.
lander - a spacecraft launched with the intent to land it, unharmed and fully functioning, on the surface of an object that is astronomical in nature. It is aimed at a specific target that astronomers want to learn more about and investigates the object at the surface level. It can be manned or unmanned.
orbiter - an unmanned spacecraft launched with the intent to bring it into orbit around a larger body in order to study that body. It is similar to a satellite but does not orbit Earth.
probe - an unmanned machine sent into space to collect data. It is aimed at a specific target that astronomers want to learn more about.
spacecraft - a pilot-able vehicle used for traveling in space. It can be manned or unmanned.
Van Allen Belts - belts of radiation in Earth’s atmosphere.
Transcript
Sources
Timeline of space exploration to 2013 via the National Archives
Timeline of NASA, the space shuttle, and near-Earth space flights
Space exploration timeline via Sea and Sky
Gyroscope definition via USC
Infographic on satellites launched 1950-1978 via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
List of satellites via Wikipedia
A history of Sputnik via an excerpt from Paul Dickson’s book Sputnik: The Shock of the Century on PBS
“Instead of being concerned with winning the first round of the space race, Eisenhower and his National Security Council were much more interested in launching surveillance satellites that could tell American intelligence where every Soviet missile was located.”
Explorer 1 overview via NASA
Vanguard 1 overview via NASA
SCORE overview via the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
Pioneer lunar mission overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Various probe/satellite mission overviews via NASA
Australian WRESAT mission via Australia’s Department of Defence
Pioneer expeditions via NASA
Mariner 10 mission overview via NASA
Magellan mission overview via NASA
Synthetic aperture radar overview via radartutorial.edu
MESSENGER mission overview via JHU Applied Physics Lab
Mariner missions to Venus overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Mariner missions to Mars overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
“The final Mariner to Mars, however, was the lab’s greatest planetary success to date.”
Mariner 9 via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Viking mission overview via NASA
Pathfinder/Sojourner mission overview via NASA
Opportunity mission overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Spirit mission overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Curiosity rover via NASA
Pioneer 10 mission overview via NASA
Pioneer 11 mission overview via NASA
Juno mission overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Cassini-Huygens mission overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Voyager mission overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
“The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.”
Voyager mission trackers via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Heliosphere definition via NASA
Heliosheath definition via NASA
New Horizons mission overview via NASA
Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory via NASA
Chandra X-Ray Observatory via NASA
Spitzer Space Telescope via CalTech
Einstein Observatory (HEAO-2) via NASA
International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) via NASA
International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) via ESA
Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) via NASA
Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics (ASCA, formerly ASTRO-D) via NASA archives
Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) via JHU
Active space probe/observatory missions via NASA
Chandrayaan-1 via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Hayabusa 2 mission overview via NASA
Hayabusa-2’s twitter account
A map of every active satellite orbiting Earth via Quartz
Union of Concerned Scientists Satellite Database
Cul-de-Sac comic by Richard Thompson
“Well, there’s dust everywhere, and there’s all kinds of trash—food wrappers and broken parts of things and gloves and shoes. And gas giants and black holes and rocks and dirt. And there’s old TV shows and strange creatures and there’s unidentifiable stuff that no one can explain. And it’s expanding all the time. Toss in a few trillion stuffed toys and it’d be just like your room.”
Intro Music: ‘Better Times Will Come’ by No Luck Club off their album Prosperity
Filler Music: ‘Satellite’ by Guster off their album Ganging Up On The Sun
Filler Music: ‘Sunn’ by Radical Face off his album Sunn Moonn Eclippse. Check out the video in the album link, it’s amazing.
Outro Music: ‘Fields of Russia’ by Mutefish off their album On Draught.
Does Mars Have Rings? Not Right Now, But Maybe One Day
NASA - Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) patch. March 20, 2017 As children, we learned about our solar system’s planets by certain characteristics – Jupiter is the largest, Saturn has rings, Mercury is closest to the sun. Mars is red, but it’s possible that one of our closest neighbors also had rings at one point and may have them again someday. That’s the theory put forth by NASA-funded scientists at Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana, whose findings were published in the journal Nature Geoscience. David Minton and Andrew Hesselbrock developed a model that suggests that debris that was pushed into space from an asteroid or other body slamming into Mars around 4.3 billion years ago alternates between becoming a planetary ring and clumping together to form a moon. One theory suggests that Mars’ large North Polar Basin or Borealis Basin – which covers about 40 percent of the planet in its northern hemisphere – was created by that impact, sending debris into space. “That large impact would have blasted enough material off the surface of Mars to form a ring,” Hesselbrock said. Hesselbrock and Minton’s model suggests that as the ring formed, and the debris slowly moved away from the Red Planet and spread out, it began to clump and eventually formed a moon. Over time, Mars’ gravitational pull would have pulled that moon toward the planet until it reached the Roche limit, the distance within which a planet’s tidal forces will break apart a celestial body that is held together only by gravity.
Image above: The image from NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows one of Mars’ two moons, Phobos, passing directly in front of the other, Deimos, in 2013. New research suggests the moons consolidated long ago from dust rings around the planet and, in the distant future, may disintegrate into new rings. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems/Texas A&M Univ. Phobos, one of Mars’ moons, is getting closer to the planet. According to the model, Phobos will break apart upon reaching the Roche limit, and become a set of rings in roughly 70 million years. Depending on where the Roche limit is, Minton and Hesselbrock believe this cycle may have repeated between three and seven times over billions of years. Each time a moon broke apart and reformed from the resulting ring, its successor moon would be five times smaller than the last, according to the model, and debris would have rained down on the planet, possibly explaining enigmatic sedimentary deposits found near Mars’ equator. “You could have had kilometer-thick piles of moon sediment raining down on Mars in the early parts of the planet’s history, and there are enigmatic sedimentary deposits on Mars with no explanation as to how they got there,” Minton said. “And now it’s possible to study that material.” Other theories suggest that the impact with Mars that created the North Polar Basin led to the formation of Phobos 4.3 billion years ago, but Minton said it’s unlikely the moon could have lasted all that time. Also, Phobos would have had to form far from Mars and would have had to cross through the resonance of Deimos, the outer of Mars’ two moons. Resonance occurs when two moons exert gravitational influence on each other in a repeated periodic basis, as major moons of Jupiter do. By passing through its resonance, Phobos would have altered Deimos’ orbit. But Deimos’ orbit is within one degree of Mars’ equator, suggesting Phobos has had no effect on Deimos. “Not much has happened to Deimos’ orbit since it formed,” Minton said. “Phobos passing through these resonances would have changed that.” “This research highlights even more ways that major impacts can affect a planetary body,” said Richard Zurek of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. He is the project scientist for NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, whose gravity mapping provided support for the hypothesis that the northern lowlands were formed by a massive impact. Minton and Hesselbrock will now focus their work on either the dynamics of the first set of rings that formed or the materials that have rained down on Mars from disintegration of moons. Curiosity is part of NASA’s ongoing Mars research and preparation for a human mission to Mars in the 2030s. Caltech manages JPL, and JPL manages the Curiosity mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. For more about Curiosity, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ For more information about NASA missions investigating Mars, visit: https://mars.nasa.gov/ Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Laurie Cantillo/Dwayne Brown/JPL/Guy Webster/Purdue University/Steve Tally/Emil Venere/Writer: Brian Wallheimer. Best regards, Orbiter.ch Full article