9781422281420

T H E S O L A R S Y S T E M

Space Exploration

Mason Crest 450 Parkway Drive, Suite D Broomall, PA 19008 www.masoncrest.com

© 2017 by Mason Crest, an imprint of National Highlights, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher.

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

First printing 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Series ISBN: 978-1-4222-3547-8 ISBN: 978-1-4222-3644-4 E-book ISBN: 978-1-4222-8142-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.

T H E S O L A R S Y S T EM Comets and Meteors • Far Planets • Giant Planets • Near Planets Our Home Planet • Space Exploration • The Sun

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Contents

Introduction Where Are We?

4 6 8

War Opens the Door

The Space Race

10 12 14 16 18 20 22

The Apollo Program

Apollo 8-9-10 One Small Step

Moon Probes and More

Outside Our Neighborhood

The Space Shuttle Shuttle Missions 24 The Ultimate Telescope (So Far) 26 Landing on Mars 28 Partners in Exploration 30 Living in Space 32 Paying for Space 34 Space Tourists 36 New Horizons 38 Next Steps to the Stars 40 Nothing But the Facts 42 Time Line 44 Words to Understand 46 Index 48

Introduct ion

or as long as people have been on the Earth, they have looked beyond it.We look to the sky during the day and see the red-hot Sun. At night, the sky is busier, showing thousands of stars and the bright, glowing Moon. Beyond the stars lie dusty-looking galaxies and amazingly colorful nebulae. For millennia, however, people did not know what those lights really were. They made up stories or myths, but had little real evidence. F

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Today, of course, we know what those lights in the sky are all about.We have science to thank for providing some answers. And we have space explorers to provide more. Though we have been watching the sky for thousands of years, it has only been the last seventy or so that we had the chance to go there ourselves. The level of discovery in those few short decades is nothing short of remarkable. This book tells the story of that journey.

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Where Are We? people have always wondered, “What is out there?” Looking at the night sky, For millennia , humans had only their eyes to look toward what was out there. (In fact, the idea of “out there” was controversial. Some early thinkers did not even believe there was an “out there” and that space was just a thin shell on the sky.) The idea that Earth was part of space was not truly accepted as a fact until the 1600s. Brave scientists such as the Italian Galileo Galilei (right) fought back against the “accepted” truth that the Earth was the center of the Universe. Instead, using observation,

Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Johannes Kepler showed that our planet was just another body orbiting the Sun.

Stephen Hawking on formation of the Solar System

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Eyes on the Sky ▲ One of the key ways that people came to understand that fact was through telescopes. These devices use focused glass lenses to bring distant objects closer. To Galileo and the early sky watchers, telescopes were literally eye-open- ers. For the first time, people saw the surface of the moon. They saw how starlight shone. They saw sunspots and found planets—stars that did not move like stars. The first telescopes were used in the Netherlands in the 1500s. In the com- ing decades, improvements brought the heav- ens into greater focus. Flight? The idea of humans reaching those far-away places was the stuff of stories. There was no way for people to fly, let alone fly as high as the Moon or the stars. Pioneers of aviation , however, kept trying. Balloonists rose above the Earth. Men tried to invent flying machines. In 1903, the American brothers, Orville and Wilbur Wright (left), succeeded in creating the first airplane. Less than a century later, flight would go from the Wrights’ humble glider-like craft to supersonic jets and rockets.

From Earth to the Moon The idea of travel to space inspired storytellers. Many cultures include myths about the stars, the Sun, and more. From ancient Greeks to Native Americans to South American civilizations, the “mysterious” objects in the sky were explained with stories and tales. The French writer Jules Verne continued that tradition in 1865 with his novel From the Earth to the Moon . Amazingly, he “predicted” many of the advances that future space travel would include, from multi-stage rockets to manned capsules to a type of radar. Of course, his space flyers used a Civil War cannon to aim at the Moon, so he didn’t get it all right!

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In the midst of the tragedy of war, science found new ways of flying that opened the door to space travel. War Opens the Door

With the success of the Wright brothers in the early part of the 20th century, the era of manned flight began. But simple engines were not enough for some scientists. The American chemist and engineer Robert Goddard (left) was among several people experi- menting with ways to make objects travel even faster. In 1926, he perfect- ed the first true rockets, launching test flights thousands of feet in the air at speeds never before seen. With this door open, the possibilities for new types of flight and new explorations began in earnest.

Rockets of WWII ▲ Of course, humans being humans, one of the first uses of rockets was not for peace and ex- ploration, but for war. By 1944, German scientists had perfected long-range rockets that were aimed at London. The V-1 and V-2 rockets car- ried devastating bombs and wreaked havoc in England. The weapons came late in the war, however, and were put to limited use. However, some of the scientists who designed them, in- cluding Werner von Braun, went to the West and to the Soviet Union after the war, bringing the secrets of rocket flight with them.

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Sputnik Changes Everything ▲ In 1957, after many years of secret testing, the Soviet Union (USSR) successfully launched the first satellite , Sputnik . The news that the United States’ fierce rival had become the first to reach space shocked the world. The “space race” was on. Both nations quickly ramped up programs to send human beings, not just satellites, into space.

Explorer 1 In response to Sputnik , the US launched Explorer 1 in early 1958. It was the first satellite successfully launched by the US. It carried sci- entific instruments that radioed back information about space radiation. Though it was in space for only about five months, it was a breakthrough. Many satellites would follow.

Mercury Seven ▲ On April 9, 1959, the US intro- duced the Mercury 7 to the world. Carefully chosen from among military pilots for fitness and bravery, they were to be- come America’s first astronauts. Their test flights into the lower atmosphere and eventually into space were the first organized program to reach the heavens. The as- tronauts themselves became icons of courage—men who had, in a phrase from a later book, “The Right Stuff.”

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The Cold War battle for world domination between The Space Race

the Americans and Soviets spilled into outer space.

Along with a zeal for scientific exploration, the US and the USSR were using this next frontier as a new front in the Cold War going on between them. The two nations were trying to spread their control and power while trying to contain the other. The chance to conquer a new “world” in space meant huge ex- pense and rapid advances. In the late 1950s and into the 1960s, the back-and- forth struggle for taking the next big step earned headlines around the world.

First Men in Space The true goal of the space race was manned flight, and the Soviet Union got there first. In 1961, Yuri Gagarin (left) became the first man to reach be- yond the atmosphere. He was only in the air for about 100 minutes, but it was an historic first. He was celebrat- ed in his native land for the rest of his life, and he became a symbol of Soviet accomplishments. Three weeks later, the Americans matched the Soviets, as Alan Shepard reached space. His flight only lasted 15 min- utes, but he was the first American to reach space. As great as these firsts were, greater accomplishments were still to come.

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Gemini and Glenn ▲ In 1961, the United States announced the Gemini program, which would build on the work of the Mercury 7. Using a small group of hand-picked astronauts and the scientific and industrial might of the nation, the US was committing to reaching the Moon. Gemini was the first step. In 1962, John Glenn (right) of the Gemini program became the first man to orbit the Earth. He flew around the entire planet three times before his capsule fell to Earth. It landed in the Atlantic Ocean and Glenn joined Gagarin and Shepard as interna- tional heroes. (Glenn later returned to space in 1998 when he was a US senator from Ohio.)

First Space Walk

▲ In 1965, during Gemini 4 ’s orbits of Earth, Ed White stepped outside the space capsule. Wearing a space suit and connected by hoses to the craft, he was the first American to “walk” in space. In NASA-talk, however, he was on an EVA: Extra-Vehicular Activity.

The Soviet Side While the Americans were creating Mercury and Gemini, the Soviets were mixing rocketry studies with plans for manned flight. The designs were led by Sergei Korolev, building on the rocket advances made after World War II. They also had a starting group of cosmonauts, as their space fliers were known, called Vanguard 6. The Soviets also sent many flights into space “manned” with dogs. Some survived, but most perished during or after the flights.

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The Apollo Program accomplished something really special. Inspired by a president and spurred by competition with the Soviets, NASA built a space program that The Apollo program was aimed at one goal: the Moon. In an amazingly short time, that goal was reached. Apollo astronauts were chosen to continue the work of Gemini. Each Apollo flight was part of an extended practice run for the trip to the Moon itself. There were problems along the way, but the nation accept- ed the losses with an eye toward the gain.

Kennedy’s Call ▲ In May 1961, President John F. Kennedy gave a speech in Houston that changed the entire nature of the space race. In a historic call to action, Kennedy pledged that the United States would have a goal of sending men to the Moon and returning them safe- ly: within the decade. Many thought it was impossible to achieve. In fact, his call gave NASA and others a clear road to success. The space program experts knew their pres- ident was behind them. Though Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, his dream lived on.

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Why Apollo? Like Mercu- ry and Gemi- ni, Apollo was named for one of the ancient Greek gods. Mercury was the messenger of the gods, small and

speedy. Gemini is the Zodiac constellation of “twin” stars. Each Gemini mission would feature a pair of astronauts. Finally, Apollo was the god of light and the sun, which would be lighting the astro- nauts’ way to the Moon.

Tragedy ▲ The first Apollo mission was set for January 1967. It never made it off the launch pad . A fire started in the capsule and before rescuers could reach it, three astronauts were dead. Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were killed. The mission was later renamed Apollo 1 to honor the astronauts. It was the worst tragedy to that point in space exploration and put things on hold while new safety measures were put in place. However, the astronauts’ deaths did not stop the march to the Moon. The Big Rocket ▲ To reach space, a rocket with enormous thrust was needed. After a series of tests, the mighty Saturn V became the workhorse of the space race. Standing 363 feet (111 m) tall, higher than the Statue of Liberty, the rocket weight 6.2 million pounds (2.8 million kg). It was first used in 1967 to launch the test flight called Apollo 4, and took its first crew into orbit with Apollo 8.

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Apollo 8-9-10 the way for a Moon landing. Reaching the Moon didn’t happen all at once. A series of flights paved

With the success of the Saturn V and with safe- ty issues from Apollo 1 worked out, it was time for the Apollo program to send men into space. The plan was to use a series of flights to test out parts of the Moon flight and landing gear, build- ing toward an actual Moon landing.

Apollo 8 ▲ To find out if a spacecraft

could actually reach the Moon and return, a trio of astronauts made this flight. Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders launched on December 21, 1968. About three days later, they orbited the Moon. They

were the first humans to see the “dark side” of the Moon; that is, the side that always faces away from Earth. They also tested many of the parts of the spacecraft to make sure they worked properly during the longest manned flight yet, just short of four days.

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