Category Astronomy

How long does it take the International Space Station to orbit the Earth ______ minutes?

The International Space Station (ISS) is a large spacecraft that orbitis around Earth every 90 minutes. It is not only a science laboratory but also serves as a home to crews of astronauts and Cosmonauts.

Its laboratory has components from the United States, Russia, Japan, and Europe.

The space station is used by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) scientists to learn more about living and working in space. The research here will make it possible to send humans farther into space than ever before.

History                                                                                               

Originally called ‘Freedom’ in the 1980s, then U.S. President Ronald Reagan authorised NASA to build the space station. It was redesigned in the 1990s to reduce costs and expand international involvement, at which time it was renamed.

In 1993, the U.S. and Russia agreed to merge their separate space station plans into a single facility and incorporate contributions from the European Space Agency (ESA) and Japan.

It took 10 years and more than 30 missions to assemble the space station. It was launched in 1998 with the help of the U.S., Russia, Canada, Japan, and the participating countries of the ESA. The first piece of the ISS was launched in November 1998. The ISS is the size of a large five-bedroom house or a football field and is able to support a crew of six people and some visitors

It is made up of several parts that were assembled in space by astronauts. The first crew reached the space station on November 2, 2000. People have lived on the space station ever since.

International Space Station

The space station is equal to a five-bedroom house or the size of a football field and is able to support a crew of six people, plus visitors. The laboratories in the space station help the crew members to do research that could not be done anywhere else.

At the ISS, the scientists also study what happens to the human body when people live in microgravity (place where there is almost no gravity) for a long time.

The space station has solar arrays, which collect energy from the sun to provide electrical power. The arrays are connected to the station with a long truss, which is a beam that is the backbone of the space station.

There are radiators on the truss that control the space station’s temperature. Astronauts reach the space station on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft Operating the space station is more complicated than other space flight programmes as it is an international programme. Each partner is mainly responsible for managing and running the hardware it provides It is the largest space station ever constructed and yet it continues to be assembled in orbit.

Till now, it has been visited by astronauts from 18 countries During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to the U.S.. President Joe Biden said that India and the US. will collaborate to send an Indian astronaut to the ISS in 2024.

Picture Credit: Google

Does Saturn have a storm spot?

The Great Red Spot is the largest storm in our solar system. An anticyclone that is over 16,000 km wide-large enough to engulf the entire Earth-the Great Red Spot has been on Jupiter’s surface for hundreds of years.

A new study has shown that Satum Jupiters neighbour, also has long-lasting megastorms. While these are less colourful and blander than those on Jupiter, they do have impacts deep in Saturn’s atmosphere that remain for centuries. The study was published on August 11 in the journal Science Advances

Similar to hurricanes

Similar to hurricanes on Earth but much much larger, megastorms on Satum occur every 20 to 30 years. The causes for these megastorms in Saturn’s atmosphere. which is made up mainly of hydrogen and helium along with traces of methane ammonia and water, remains unknown. Based on radio emissions from Satum. astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, noticed anomalies in the concentration of ammonia gas in the atmosphere. While the concentration of ammonia at mid-altitudes is lower, it was enriched at lower altitudes. 100 to 200 km deeper in the atmosphere.

Precipitation and re-evaporation

The researchers were able to connect this to the past occurrences of megastorms in Satum’s northern hemisphere. According to them, ammonia is being transported from the upper to the lower atmosphere. This effect, which they believe can last for hundreds of years, occurs through the processes of precipitation and re-evaporation.

Additionally, this study reveals that Saturn and Jupiter are very dissimilar despite the fact that both gas giants are made of hydrogen gas. The tropospheric anomalies in Jupiter have been connected to its zones (whitish bands) and belts (darkish bands), while those on Saturn are caused by cyclones.

These differences between Saturn and Jupiter challenge scientists on what they know about the formation of megastorms on gas giants and other planets. Understanding this would not only further our knowledge of terrestrial meteorology, but may also inform us as to how they are formed and studied on exoplanets in the future.

Picture Credit: Google

What will replace the ISS in 2031?

The International Space Station or ISS is to be deorbited by 2031. Where will it go? Satellites and spacecraft are machines, similar to washing machines and vacuum cleaners. They will not last forever. It doesn’t matter what job they do, whether it’s to observe weather, measure greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, or study the stars. All space machines grow old, wear out and die.

For satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), engineers use the last bit of fuel to slow it down. When the fuel runs out, it falls out of orbit and burns up in the atmosphere. The satellites in very high orbits are sent even further away from Earth, since more fuel is required to bring them down! These satellites are sent into a so-called ‘graveyard orbit, almost 36,000 km above Earth. Space stations and large spacecraft that are in LEO are too large to incinerate entirely on re-entry. So the deorbiting is monitored closely to ensure the debris falls on a remote, uninhabited area. There is an area like this. It’s nicknamed ‘spacecraft cemetery’ and it lies in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean at a spot called Point Nemo. (‘Nemo’ is Latin for ‘nobody’.) Point Nemo is so remote that the ISS will meet its watery grave there. It is considered ideal for dumping space debris as the waters are said to be poor in nutrients and biodiversity. No one has really studied the marine life or lack of it in Point Nemo. Environmentalists fear that in addition to the space junk already present in Point Nemo, the ISS debris will add tons of experimental equipment, materials and even traces of altered human DNA.  

Who was the first person to float freely in space?

Images from space that show earth as nothing more than a blur of blue tug at our hearts in a way that can’t be put into words. The ones that you see here, while evoking such emotions, are also iconic in their own right. This is because they show the first human ever to walk untethered in space. The subject of these photographs is NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless II.

Born in Boston in 1937, McCandless did his schooling at Long Beach, California and received his Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1958. He then obtained his Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1965, and eventually also ended up with a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Houston in 1987.

Communicator role

A retired U.S. Navy captain, McCandless was one of 19 astronauts selected by NASA in April 1966. He served as the mission control communicator for Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin during their famous 1969 Apollo 11 mission, which included the first human landing on the moon. McCandless, in fact, famously felt let down by Armstrong as the latter hadn’t revealed ahead what he had planned to say while setting foot on the moon.

McCandless flew as the mission specialist on two space shuttles, STS-41B in 1984 and STS-31 in 1990. While the 1984 mission saw him become the first human to perform an untethered spacewalk, he helped deploy the Hubble Space Telescope during the 1990 mission.

Helps develop MMU

Apart from these, McCandless also served as a member of the astronaut support crew for the Apollo 14 mission and was a backup pilot for the first crewed Skylab mission. For the M-509 astronaut manoeuvring experiment that was flown in the Skylab programme, McCandless was a co-investigator. He collaborated on the development and helped design what came to be known as the MMU – manned manoeuvring unit.

The STS-41B was launched on February 3, 1984. Four days later, on February 7, McCandless stepped out of the space shuttle Challenger into nothingness. As he moved away from the spacecraft, he floated freely without any earthly anchor.

“Heck of a big leap for me”

“It may have been a small step for Neil, but it’s a heck of a big leap for me,” were McCandless’ first words. If the mood at mission control had been apprehensive before, the raucous laughter that followed this comment certainly reduced the tension – a fact that was confirmed by his wife, who was also at mission control. McCandless would later say that his comment was consciously thought out and that it was his way of saying things were going okay, apart from getting back at Armstrong for not revealing his words in 1969.

The images that were shot then, showing McCandless spacewalking without tethers, gained widespread fame. The spacewalk was the first time the MMU that he helped develop was used. These nitrogen-propelled, hand-controlled devices afforded much greater mobility to their users as opposed to restrictive tethers used by previous spacewalkers.

Fellow astronaut Robert L. Stewart later tried out the MMU that McCandless first used. Two days later, both of them tried another similar unit with success. By February 11, the STS-41B mission was complete as the Challenger safely landed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre.

In one of his last interviews, before his death in December 2017, McCandless told National Geographic what he had probably told countless others who wanted to know how it was out there.

Fun, but cold

While he always maintained that it was fun, he also adds that the single thing that disturbed him as he moved away from the shuttle was that he got extremely cold, with shivers and chattering teeth.

The reason for that is pretty straightforward. While he had prepared for that moment for years, he wasn’t prepared for the temperature in the suit. As the suit was designed to keep astronauts comfortable while working hard in a warm environment, even the H (hot) position on the life support system actually provided minimal cooling. Considering that McCandless wasn’t really performing strenuous labour during the first hours of his untethered spacewalk, he felt cold. That’s a small price to pay for becoming the first-ever human to walk freely in space.

Picture Credit : Google

What powers a spacecraft?

Scientists send spacecraft to probe objects in space. These spacecraft carry instruments that help them take pictures and collect data in space and send them back to Earth. But to do this, the spacecraft needs electricity So what powers it?

Based on the mission it is assigned, and factors such as where the spacecraft is travelling, what it plans to do there and how long it needs to work engineers choose the best way to power a spacecraft.

The Sun                     

One source of power engineers consider is energy from the Sun, or solar power. Spacecraft that orbit close to Earth are dose enough to the Sun to use solar power. These spacecraft are fitted with solar panels, which convert the Sun’s energy into electricity. The electricity from the panels charges a battery in the spacecraft and can be used even when the spacecraft doesn’t have direct sunlight

Batteries

Sometimes, when the mission is only for a short duration, such as the Huygens probe that landed on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, and meant to work only for a few hours, engineers may power the spacecraft with batteries. These batteries are designed to be tough since they need to withstand the harsh environment of space.

Atoms

An atom is a tiny building block of matter. Atoms need to store a lot of energy to hold themselves together. However, atoms such as radioisotopes are unstable and begin to fall apart. As they fall apart, they release energy as heat. A radioisotope power system uses the temperature difference between the heat from the unstable atoms and the cold of space to produce electricity. This system produces power for a very long time even in harsh environments. That’s why this system has been used to power many of NASA’s missions, including the two Voyager spacecraft that continue to send back information after over four decades in space.

Picture Credit : Google

What is the streak of light that shoots across the night sky called?

During Earth’s journey around the Sun, there are times when its orbit crosses the orbit of a comet. It is when the planet moves through the comet debris trail that we witness meteor showers. The showers are named after the star or constellation which is close to where the meteors appear to radiate in the sky.

All of us may have seen streaks of light zip through the sky. We call them shooting stars and we also wish upon them. Well, what are these shooting stars? What are these streams of light? Consider the objects in space. These are lumps of rock or objects in space with sizes ranging from grains to small asteroids. A small piece of a comet or asteroid is called a meteoroid.

Meteoroid

These meteoroids can be considered as space rocks. They orbit the sun and when they enter Earth’s atmosphere at a high speed, they burn because of frictional heating, causing the light. These rays of light are referred to as meteors.

When many meteors appear at once, we call it a meteor shower. During a meteor shower, a number of meteors can be seen radiating or originating from a point in the night sky.

But where do these meteoroids come from? How does Earth come across these? During Earth’s journey around the Sun, there are times when its orbit crosses the orbit of a comet. It is when the planet moves through the comet debris trail that we witness meteor showers.

The meteor showers are named after the star or constellation which is close to where the meteors appear to radiate in the sky. The Perseids meteor shower is the most famous meteor shower and they peak around August 12 every year. Other notable meteor showers include the Leonids, Aquarids and Orionids and Taurids.

Now what happens when meteoroid survives the journey through the Earth’s atmosphere and hits the ground? In that case, it becomes a meteorite.

Did you know that more than 50,000 meteorites have been found on Earth?

picture Credit : Google