Readable, teachable news.
Friday, April 19, 2024
Did you ever wonder how the astronauts who are living on board the International Space Station get fresh supplies, like food, medicine and materials for their research?
A cargo capsule called SpaceX Dragon was recently sent up to the ISS to bring the astronauts fresh supplies.
Dragon was loaded with more than a thousand kilograms of science equipment, food and other materials.
It left Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Friday.
A new joint project between the Canadian and U.S. space agencies will bring a piece of the universe to Earth.
The goal of the mission, known as OSIRIS-REx*, is to study an asteroid.
NASA, working with the Canadian Space Agency, will send a spacecraft to Asteroid 1999 RQ36. A robotic arm will grab pieces of the asteroid.
The spacecraft will be launched in Sept. 2016 and it will reach the asteroid in 2018.
The asteroid will be studied and mapped for about six months in space and then the sample will be brought to Earth in 2023.
Before he left for the International Space Station, Hadfield wrote a song with singer Ed Robertson.
It’s called I.S.S. (Is Somebody Singing?). ISS can also stand for “International Space Station,” which is fitting since the song is about what it’s like to leave the Earth and go into space.
Hadfield has done some incredible things during his time on the ISS. He has made his experience in space accessible to the people on Earth.
He has tweeted messages, conducted live media conferences, sent photos and kept people up-to-date on what the astronauts on the Space Station are doing.
What Hadfield is doing is unique. No astronaut has ever brought space so close to Earth before.
When Chris Hadfield was nine years old, he watched Apollo 11 land on the moon and decided he wanted to become an astronaut.
That was in 1969, and about half a billion people around the world watched the same grainy images of the moon landing on TV.
It seems incredible, but with today’s technology and social media websites, people can see and hear what the astronauts are doing on the International Space Station every day.
We can watch videos of them, check out the view of Earth from the space station, and even have casual “conversations” with the astronauts.
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield will soon become the first Canadian to command the International Space Station.
Hadfield and two other astronauts – Tom Mashburn from the United States and Roman Romanenko from Russia – docked at the ISS on Dec. 21, 2012.
Their Soyuz spacecraft was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Dec. 19.
It took them two days to reach the space station.
The space station is a satellite which orbits the Earth. The size of the crew varies from three to six astronauts at a time.
The crews stay on the space station for up to six months and then are replaced by other astronauts.
Hadfield and his crew will stay for five months.
This mission is Hadfield’s third trip into space and his second visit to the space station.
When he takes over command of the ISS in March, he will become the first Canadian ever to command a spacecraft.
Hadfield can already claim several “firsts” in space.
In 1995, Hadfield was the first Canadian to serve as “mission specialist” on a space shuttle.
He was also the first Canadian to operate the Canadarm while in orbit, and the first Canadian to board the Russian space station, Mir.
Scientists have not found any signs of life on Mars yet, but they say a robotic vehicle called “Curiosity” is helping them learn a lot about the planet’s history and climate.
Curiosity landed on Mars in August 2012 after travelling through space for more than eight months.
It was sent to Mars by scientists from NASA in the United States.
Curiosity is a motorized vehicle called a “rover” which is controlled by scientists back on Earth.
It is about the size of a car and has six wheels that allow it to travel across the planet’s surface and climb over sand and rocks.
It also has a robotic arm, cameras, and instruments such as a scoop, drill and microscope that allow it to examine things it finds on the surface.
Then it transmits the information back to Earth.
The main purpose of Curiosity’s mission is to find out if anything could live on Mars, either now or in the past.
On Nov. 2, NASA scientists held a press conference to discuss what Curiosity had found in its first two months on Mars.
Lots of people go skydiving. They jump out of an airplane, with a parachute, and sail down to Earth.
But on October 14, Felix Baumgartner took it to new heights.
Space.
Well, near-space, anyway.
Baumgartner rode in a helium balloon 39 kilometers above New Mexico.
And then he jumped out.
It sounds simple, but it was far from it.
Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, has died. He was 82 years old.
Armstrong was an American astronaut and the commander of the Apollo 11 spacecraft on its mission to put men on the moon.
Apollo 11 was launched on July 16, 1969, and began orbiting the moon three days later. On July 20, Armstrong and his co-pilot, astronaut Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin, took off from Apollo 11 in a small landing craft called Eagle. A third astronaut, Michael Collins, remained in the main ship, orbiting the moon until they returned.
Hundreds of millions of people around the world watched on TV as the Eagle landed on the moon. When Armstrong stepped out of the ship and onto the moon’s surface, he said, “That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.”*
Armstrong and Aldrin explored the moon for more than two hours and collected about 50 pounds of moon rocks. They left behind a plaque which said: “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”
The Eagle remained on the moon for about 21 hours and then rejoined Apollo 11 for the return trip to Earth. Once the astronauts were back on Earth, they spent 16 days in quarantine to make sure they had not brought back any germs from space.
Governments from just a handful of countries have flown into space.
But never has a private company successfully sent a spacecraft into space.
Not only is it extremely expensive, but it’s incredibly risky. There are a million things that can go wrong.
Last month an American company called Space Exploration Technologies – better known as SpaceX – made history by sending its unmanned Dragon spacecraft into space.
Three students have won the chance to have science experiments they created carried out by astronauts in space.
The students won an international competition called the YouTube Space Lab Contest. Last October, students around the world aged 14 to 18 were invited to come up with ideas for experiments that could be performed on the International Space Station.
The space station is a satellite that orbits the Earth. It includes a research laboratory where astronauts from the United States, Russia, Japan, Europe and Canada conduct experiments. Because there is no gravity on the space station, they are able to do experiments they could not do on Earth.
For the contest, students had to make a video explaining their hypothesis – the idea they wanted to test – and the method for doing the experiment. Then they posted the videos on YouTube.
Winners were chosen by people voting on YouTube, and by a panel of judges that included scientists, teachers, astronauts and journalists.
