1.
Mars Global Surveyor
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Mars Global Surveyor was an American robotic spacecraft developed by NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory and launched November 1996. Mars Global Surveyor was a mapping mission that examined the entire planet. It completed its mission in January 2001 and was in its third extended mission phase when, on 2 November 2006. A faint signal was detected three days later indicated that it had gone into safe mode. Attempts to recontact the spacecraft and resolve the problem failed, Mars Global Surveyor achieved the following science objectives during its primary mission, Characterize the surface features and geological processes on Mars. Determine the composition, distribution and physical properties of minerals, rocks. Determine the global topography, planet shape, and gravitational field, establish the nature of the magnetic field and map the crustal remnant field. Monitor global weather and the structure of the atmosphere. Imaging of possible landing sites for the 2007 Phoenix spacecraft, observation and analysis of key sites of scientific interest, such as sedimentary-rock outcrop sites. Continued monitoring of changes on the due to wind and ice. The Surveyor spacecraft, fabricated at the Lockheed Martin Astronautics plant in Denver, is a box with wing-like projections extending from opposite sides. When fully loaded with propellant at the time of launch, the spacecraft weighed 1,060 kg, most of Surveyors mass lies in the box-shaped module occupying the center portion of the spacecraft. The other module, called the module, houses Surveyors rocket engines. The Mars Global Surveyor mission cost about $154 million to develop and build, mission operations and data analysis cost approximately $20 million/year. MOC returned more than 240,000 images spanning portions of 4.8 Martian years, from September 1997, a high resolution image from MOC covers a distance of either 1.5 or 3.1 km long. Often, a picture will be smaller than this because it has been cut to just show a certain feature and these high resolution images may cover features 3 to 10 km long. When a high resolution image is taken, an image is taken as well. The context image shows the footprint of the high resolution picture
2.
Earth
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Earth, otherwise known as the World, or the Globe, is the third planet from the Sun and the only object in the Universe known to harbor life. It is the densest planet in the Solar System and the largest of the four terrestrial planets, according to radiometric dating and other sources of evidence, Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago. Earths gravity interacts with objects in space, especially the Sun. During one orbit around the Sun, Earth rotates about its axis over 365 times, thus, Earths axis of rotation is tilted, producing seasonal variations on the planets surface. The gravitational interaction between the Earth and Moon causes ocean tides, stabilizes the Earths orientation on its axis, Earths lithosphere is divided into several rigid tectonic plates that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of Earths surface is covered with water, mostly by its oceans, the remaining 29% is land consisting of continents and islands that together have many lakes, rivers and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere. The majority of Earths polar regions are covered in ice, including the Antarctic ice sheet, Earths interior remains active with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the Earths magnetic field, and a convecting mantle that drives plate tectonics. Within the first billion years of Earths history, life appeared in the oceans and began to affect the Earths atmosphere and surface, some geological evidence indicates that life may have arisen as much as 4.1 billion years ago. Since then, the combination of Earths distance from the Sun, physical properties, in the history of the Earth, biodiversity has gone through long periods of expansion, occasionally punctuated by mass extinction events. Over 99% of all species that lived on Earth are extinct. Estimates of the number of species on Earth today vary widely, over 7.4 billion humans live on Earth and depend on its biosphere and minerals for their survival. Humans have developed diverse societies and cultures, politically, the world has about 200 sovereign states, the modern English word Earth developed from a wide variety of Middle English forms, which derived from an Old English noun most often spelled eorðe. It has cognates in every Germanic language, and their proto-Germanic root has been reconstructed as *erþō, originally, earth was written in lowercase, and from early Middle English, its definite sense as the globe was expressed as the earth. By early Modern English, many nouns were capitalized, and the became the Earth. More recently, the name is simply given as Earth. House styles now vary, Oxford spelling recognizes the lowercase form as the most common, another convention capitalizes Earth when appearing as a name but writes it in lowercase when preceded by the. It almost always appears in lowercase in colloquial expressions such as what on earth are you doing, the oldest material found in the Solar System is dated to 4. 5672±0.0006 billion years ago. By 4. 54±0.04 Gya the primordial Earth had formed, the formation and evolution of Solar System bodies occurred along with the Sun
3.
Sun
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The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a perfect sphere of hot plasma, with internal convective motion that generates a magnetic field via a dynamo process. It is by far the most important source of energy for life on Earth. Its diameter is about 109 times that of Earth, and its mass is about 330,000 times that of Earth, accounting for about 99. 86% of the total mass of the Solar System. About three quarters of the Suns mass consists of hydrogen, the rest is mostly helium, with smaller quantities of heavier elements, including oxygen, carbon, neon. The Sun is a G-type main-sequence star based on its spectral class and it formed approximately 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of matter within a region of a large molecular cloud. Most of this matter gathered in the center, whereas the rest flattened into a disk that became the Solar System. The central mass became so hot and dense that it eventually initiated nuclear fusion in its core and it is thought that almost all stars form by this process. The Sun is roughly middle-aged, it has not changed dramatically for more than four billion years and it is calculated that the Sun will become sufficiently large enough to engulf the current orbits of Mercury, Venus, and probably Earth. The enormous effect of the Sun on Earth has been recognized since prehistoric times, the synodic rotation of Earth and its orbit around the Sun are the basis of the solar calendar, which is the predominant calendar in use today. The English proper name Sun developed from Old English sunne and may be related to south, all Germanic terms for the Sun stem from Proto-Germanic *sunnōn. The English weekday name Sunday stems from Old English and is ultimately a result of a Germanic interpretation of Latin dies solis, the Latin name for the Sun, Sol, is not common in general English language use, the adjectival form is the related word solar. The term sol is used by planetary astronomers to refer to the duration of a solar day on another planet. A mean Earth solar day is approximately 24 hours, whereas a mean Martian sol is 24 hours,39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds. From at least the 4th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, the Sun was worshipped as the god Ra, portrayed as a falcon-headed divinity surmounted by the solar disk, and surrounded by a serpent. In the New Empire period, the Sun became identified with the dung beetle, in the form of the Sun disc Aten, the Sun had a brief resurgence during the Amarna Period when it again became the preeminent, if not only, divinity for the Pharaoh Akhenaton. The Sun is viewed as a goddess in Germanic paganism, Sól/Sunna, in ancient Roman culture, Sunday was the day of the Sun god. It was adopted as the Sabbath day by Christians who did not have a Jewish background, the symbol of light was a pagan device adopted by Christians, and perhaps the most important one that did not come from Jewish traditions
4.
Mars
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Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, after Mercury. Named after the Roman god of war, it is referred to as the Red Planet because the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance. Mars is a planet with a thin atmosphere, having surface features reminiscent both of the impact craters of the Moon and the valleys, deserts, and polar ice caps of Earth. The rotational period and seasonal cycles of Mars are likewise similar to those of Earth, Mars is the site of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano and second-highest known mountain in the Solar System, and of Valles Marineris, one of the largest canyons in the Solar System. The smooth Borealis basin in the northern hemisphere covers 40% of the planet, Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are small and irregularly shaped. These may be captured asteroids, similar to 5261 Eureka, a Mars trojan, there are ongoing investigations assessing the past habitability potential of Mars, as well as the possibility of extant life. Future astrobiology missions are planned, including the Mars 2020 and ExoMars rovers, liquid water cannot exist on the surface of Mars due to low atmospheric pressure, which is about 6⁄1000 that of the Earths, except at the lowest elevations for short periods. The two polar ice caps appear to be largely of water. The volume of ice in the south polar ice cap, if melted. On November 22,2016, NASA reported finding a large amount of ice in the Utopia Planitia region of Mars. The volume of water detected has been estimated to be equivalent to the volume of water in Lake Superior, Mars can easily be seen from Earth with the naked eye, as can its reddish coloring. Its apparent magnitude reaches −2.91, which is surpassed only by Jupiter, Venus, the Moon, optical ground-based telescopes are typically limited to resolving features about 300 kilometers across when Earth and Mars are closest because of Earths atmosphere. Mars is approximately half the diameter of Earth with an area only slightly less than the total area of Earths dry land. Mars is less dense than Earth, having about 15% of Earths volume and 11% of Earths mass, the red-orange appearance of the Martian surface is caused by iron oxide, or rust. It can look like butterscotch, other common colors include golden, brown, tan. Like Earth, Mars has differentiated into a metallic core overlaid by less dense materials. Current models of its interior imply a core with a radius of about 1,794 ±65 kilometers, consisting primarily of iron and this iron sulfide core is thought to be twice as rich in lighter elements than Earths. The core is surrounded by a mantle that formed many of the tectonic and volcanic features on the planet
5.
Transit of Venus
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A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and a superior planet, becoming visible against the solar disk. During a transit, Venus can be seen from Earth as a black disk moving across the face of the Sun. The duration of such transits is usually measured in hours, a transit is similar to a solar eclipse by the Moon. While the diameter of Venus is more than 3 times that of the Moon, Venus appears smaller, Transits of Venus are among the rarest of predictable astronomical phenomena. They occur in a pattern that repeats every 243 years. The periodicity is a reflection of the fact that the periods of Earth. The last transit of Venus was on 5 and 6 June 2012, and was the last Venus transit of the 21st century, the previous pair of transits were in December 1874 and December 1882. The next transits of Venus will be on 10–11 December 2117, Venus transits are historically of great scientific importance as they were used to gain the first realistic estimates of the size of the Solar System. Observations of the 1639 transit, combined with the principle of parallax, the 2012 transit provided scientists with a number of other research opportunities, particularly in the refinement of techniques to be used in the search for exoplanets. Venus, with an orbit inclined by 3. 4° relative to the Earths, although the inclination between these two orbital planes is only 3. 4°, Venus can be as far as 9. 6° from the Sun when viewed from the Earth at inferior conjunction. Since the angular diameter of the Sun is about half a degree, sequences of transits usually repeat every 243 years. After this period of time Venus and Earth have returned to nearly the same point in their respective orbits. During the Earths 243 sidereal orbital periods, which total 88,757.3 days, Venus completes 395 sidereal orbital periods of 224.701 days each and this period of time corresponds to 152 synodic periods of Venus. Prior to 1518, the pattern of transits was 8,113.5 and 121.5 years, the current pattern will continue until 2846, when it will be replaced by a pattern of 105.5,129.5 and 8 years. Thus, the 243-year cycle is relatively stable, but the number of transits, for instance, there is a series which ended in 541 BC, and the series which includes 2117 only started in AD1631. Ancient Indian, Greek, Egyptian, Babylonian and Chinese observers knew of Venus, the early Greek astronomers called Venus by two names—Hesperus the evening star and Phosphorus the morning star. Pythagoras is credited with realizing they were the same planet, there is no evidence that any of these cultures knew of the transits. Venus was important to ancient American civilizations, in particular for the Maya, who called it Noh Ek, the Great Star or Xux Ek, the Wasp Star, they embodied Venus in the form of the god Kukulkán
6.
Moon
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The Moon is an astronomical body that orbits planet Earth, being Earths only permanent natural satellite. It is the fifth-largest natural satellite in the Solar System, following Jupiters satellite Io, the Moon is second-densest satellite among those whose densities are known. The average distance of the Moon from the Earth is 384,400 km, the Moon is thought to have formed about 4.51 billion years ago, not long after Earth. It is the second-brightest regularly visible celestial object in Earths sky, after the Sun and its surface is actually dark, although compared to the night sky it appears very bright, with a reflectance just slightly higher than that of worn asphalt. Its prominence in the sky and its cycle of phases have made the Moon an important cultural influence since ancient times on language, calendars, art. The Moons gravitational influence produces the ocean tides, body tides, and this matching of apparent visual size will not continue in the far future. The Moons linear distance from Earth is currently increasing at a rate of 3.82 ±0.07 centimetres per year, since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, the Moon has been visited only by uncrewed spacecraft. The usual English proper name for Earths natural satellite is the Moon, the noun moon is derived from moone, which developed from mone, which is derived from Old English mōna, which ultimately stems from Proto-Germanic *mǣnōn, like all Germanic language cognates. Occasionally, the name Luna is used, in literature, especially science fiction, Luna is used to distinguish it from other moons, while in poetry, the name has been used to denote personification of our moon. The principal modern English adjective pertaining to the Moon is lunar, a less common adjective is selenic, derived from the Ancient Greek Selene, from which is derived the prefix seleno-. Both the Greek Selene and the Roman goddess Diana were alternatively called Cynthia, the names Luna, Cynthia, and Selene are reflected in terminology for lunar orbits in words such as apolune, pericynthion, and selenocentric. The name Diana is connected to dies meaning day, several mechanisms have been proposed for the Moons formation 4.51 billion years ago, and some 60 million years after the origin of the Solar System. These hypotheses also cannot account for the angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system. This hypothesis, although not perfect, perhaps best explains the evidence, eighteen months prior to an October 1984 conference on lunar origins, Bill Hartmann, Roger Phillips, and Jeff Taylor challenged fellow lunar scientists, You have eighteen months. Go back to your Apollo data, go back to computer, do whatever you have to. Dont come to our conference unless you have something to say about the Moons birth, at the 1984 conference at Kona, Hawaii, the giant impact hypothesis emerged as the most popular. Afterward there were only two groups, the giant impact camp and the agnostics. Giant impacts are thought to have been common in the early Solar System, computer simulations of a giant impact have produced results that are consistent with the mass of the lunar core and the present angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system
7.
Radar
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Radar is an object-detection system that uses radio waves to determine the range, angle, or velocity of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, Radio waves from the transmitter reflect off the object and return to the receiver, giving information about the objects location and speed. Radar was developed secretly for military use by several nations in the period before, the term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the United States Navy as an acronym for RAdio Detection And Ranging or RAdio Direction And Ranging. The term radar has since entered English and other languages as a common noun, high tech radar systems are associated with digital signal processing, machine learning and are capable of extracting useful information from very high noise levels. Other systems similar to make use of other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. One example is lidar, which uses ultraviolet, visible, or near infrared light from lasers rather than radio waves, as early as 1886, German physicist Heinrich Hertz showed that radio waves could be reflected from solid objects. In 1895, Alexander Popov, an instructor at the Imperial Russian Navy school in Kronstadt. The next year, he added a spark-gap transmitter, in 1897, while testing this equipment for communicating between two ships in the Baltic Sea, he took note of an interference beat caused by the passage of a third vessel. In his report, Popov wrote that this phenomenon might be used for detecting objects, the German inventor Christian Hülsmeyer was the first to use radio waves to detect the presence of distant metallic objects. In 1904, he demonstrated the feasibility of detecting a ship in dense fog and he obtained a patent for his detection device in April 1904 and later a patent for a related amendment for estimating the distance to the ship. He also got a British patent on September 23,1904 for a radar system. It operated on a 50 cm wavelength and the radar signal was created via a spark-gap. In 1915, Robert Watson-Watt used radio technology to advance warning to airmen. Watson-Watt became an expert on the use of direction finding as part of his lightning experiments. As part of ongoing experiments, he asked the new boy, Arnold Frederic Wilkins, Wilkins made an extensive study of available units before selecting a receiver model from the General Post Office. Its instruction manual noted that there was fading when aircraft flew by, in 1922, A. Hoyt Taylor and Leo C. Taylor submitted a report, suggesting that this might be used to detect the presence of ships in low visibility, eight years later, Lawrence A. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa followed prewar Great Britain, and Hungary had similar developments during the war. Hugon, began developing a radio apparatus, a part of which was installed on the liner Normandie in 1935
8.
Mariner 9
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Mariner 9 was an unmanned NASA space probe that contributed greatly to the exploration of Mars and was part of the Mariner program. After months of dust storms it managed to send clear pictures of the surface. Mariner 9 returned 7329 images over the course of its mission, an infrared radiometer was included to detect heat sources in search of evidence of volcanic activity. It was to study changes in the Martian atmosphere and surface. Mars two moons were also to be analyzed, Mariner 9 more than met its objectives. NASA still held out hope that another Mariner probe and Atlas-Centaur could be readied before the 1971 Mars launch window closed, Convair also had an available Centaur stage on hand and could have an Atlas readied in time, but the idea was ultimately abandoned for lack of funding. Mariner 9 was mated to Atlas-Centaur AC-23 on May 9 with investigation into Mariner 8s failure ongoing, all testing came back negative and on May 22, a tested and verified rate gyro package arrived from Convair and was installed in the Centaur. Liftoff took place on May 30 at 5,23 PM EST, all launch vehicle systems performed normally and the Mariner separated from the Centaur at 13 minutes and 18 seconds after launch. Mariner 9 was the first spacecraft to orbit another planet, when Mariner 9 arrived at Mars on November 14,1971, planetary scientists were surprised to find the atmosphere was thick with a planet-wide robe of dust, the largest storm ever observed. Mariner 9s computer was reprogrammed from Earth to delay imaging of the surface for a couple of months until the dust settled. The main surface imaging did not get underway until mid-January 1972 and this unexpected situation made a strong case for the desirability of studying a planet from orbit rather than merely flying past. It also highlighted the importance of flexible mission software, the images revealed river beds, craters, massive extinct volcanoes, canyons, evidence of wind and water erosion and deposition, weather fronts, fogs, and more. Mars small moons, Phobos and Deimos, were also photographed, the findings from the Mariner 9 mission underpinned the later Viking program. The enormous Valles Marineris canyon system is named after Mariner 9 in honor of its achievements, after depleting its supply of attitude control gas, the spacecraft was turned off on October 27,1972. The ultraviolet spectrometer aboard Mariner 9 was constructed by the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, the ultraviolet spectrometer team was led by Professor Charles Barth. The Infrared Interferometer Spectrometer team was led by Dr. Rudolf A. Hanel from NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center, the IRIS instrument was built by Texas Instruments, Dallas, Texas. The Infrared Radiometer team was led by Professor Gerald Neugebauer from the California Institute of Technology, to control for errors in the reception of the grayscale image data sent by Mariner 9, the data had to be encoded before transmission using a so-called error-correcting code. Each image pixel was represented as a 6-bit binary value, which had 64 possible grayscale levels, because of limitations of the transmitter, the maximum useful data length was about 30 bits
9.
Viking 1
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Viking 1 was the first of two spacecraft sent to Mars as part of NASAs Viking program. On July 20,1976, it became the first spacecraft to land successfully on Mars, Viking 1 held the record for the longest Mars surface mission of 2307 days or 2245 sols until that record was broken by Opportunity on May 19,2010. Following launch using a Titan/Centaur launch vehicle on August 20,1975, and a 10-month cruise to Mars, the orbiter began returning global images of Mars about 5 days before orbit insertion. The Viking 1 Orbiter was inserted into Mars orbit on June 19,1976, landing on Mars was planned for July 4,1976, the United States Bicentennial, but imaging of the primary landing site showed it was too rough for a safe landing. The landing was delayed until a site was found, and took place instead on July 20. The lander separated from the orbiter at 08,51 UTC and it was the first attempt by the United States at landing on Mars. The instruments of the orbiter consisted of two cameras for imaging, an infrared spectrometer for water vapor mapping and infrared radiometers for thermal mapping. The orbiter primary mission ended at the beginning of solar conjunction on November 5,1976, the extended mission commenced on December 14,1976, after solar conjunction. Operations included close approaches to Phobos in February 1977, the periapsis was reduced to 300 km on March 11,1977. Operations were terminated on August 17,1980, after 1485 orbits, a 2009 analysis concluded that, while the possibility that Viking 1 had impacted mars could not be ruled out, it was most likely still in orbit. The lander and its aeroshell separated from the orbiter on July 20 at 08,51 UTC, at the time of separation, the lander was orbiting at about 5 kilometres per second. The aeroshells retrorockets fired to begin the lander de-orbit maneuver, after a few hours at about 300 kilometres altitude, the lander was reoriented for atmospheric entry. The aeroshell with its heat shield slowed the craft as it plunged through the atmosphere. During this time, entry science experiments were performed by using a retarding potential analyzer, a spectrometer, as well as pressure, temperature. At 6 km altitude, traveling at about 250 metres per second, seven seconds later the aeroshell was jettisoned, and 8 seconds after that the three lander legs were extended. In 45 seconds the parachute had slowed the lander to 60 metres per second, at 1.5 km altitude, retrorockets on the lander itself were ignited and,40 seconds later at about 2.4 m/s, the lander arrived on Mars with a relatively light jolt. The legs had honeycomb aluminum shock absorbers to soften the landing, the landing rockets used an 18-nozzle design to spread the hydrogen and nitrogen exhaust over a large area. NASA calculated that this approach would mean that the surface would not be heated by more than one 1°C, since most of Vikings experiments focused on the surface material a more straightforward design would not have served
10.
Science fiction
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Science fiction often explores the potential consequences of scientific and other innovations, and has been called a literature of ideas. Science fiction is difficult to define, as it includes a range of subgenres and themes. Author and editor Damon Knight summed up the difficulty, saying science fiction is what we point to when we say it, a definition echoed by author Mark C. Glassy, who argues that the definition of science fiction is like the definition of pornography, you do not know what it is, in 1970 or 1971William Atheling Jr. According to science fiction writer Robert A, rod Serlings definition is fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science fiction is the improbable made possible, Science fiction is largely based on writing rationally about alternative possible worlds or futures. Science fiction elements include, A time setting in the future, in alternative timelines, a spatial setting or scenes in outer space, on other worlds, or on subterranean earth. Characters that include aliens, mutants, androids, or humanoid robots, futuristic or plausible technology such as ray guns, teleportation machines, and humanoid computers. Scientific principles that are new or that contradict accepted physical laws, for time travel, wormholes. New and different political or social systems, e. g. utopian, dystopian, post-scarcity, paranormal abilities such as mind control, telepathy, telekinesis Other universes or dimensions and travel between them. A product of the budding Age of Reason and the development of science itself. Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan considered Keplers work the first science fiction story and it depicts a journey to the Moon and how the Earths motion is seen from there. Later, Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story about a flight to the moon, more examples appeared throughout the 19th century. Wells The War of the Worlds describes an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians using tripod fighting machines equipped with advanced weaponry and it is a seminal depiction of an alien invasion of Earth. In the late 19th century, the scientific romance was used in Britain to describe much of this fiction. This produced additional offshoots, such as the 1884 novella Flatland, the term would continue to be used into the early 20th century for writers such as Olaf Stapledon. In the early 20th century, pulp magazines helped develop a new generation of mainly American SF writers, influenced by Hugo Gernsback, the founder of Amazing Stories magazine. In 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs published A Princess of Mars, the first of his series of Barsoom novels, situated on Mars
