The acronym "NASA" stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The term "aeronautics" originated in France, and was derived from the Greek words for "air" and "to sail."
The Altus II unmanned robot plane can circle for up to 24 hours over wildfires, beaming images and data back to computers via satellite. Originally introduced as part of the Environmental Research and Sensor Technology (ERAST) Program, Altus II can map dozens of fires in a day with no risk to a pilot. On August 25, 1932 Amelia Earhart set three records for women flyers: the first non-stop U.S. crossing, the longest distance record, and a coast-to-coast record time.
In 1803, a man named Luke Howard used Latin words to categorize clouds. Cirrus, which means "curl of hair," is used to describe high, wispy clouds that look like locks of hair. Cumulonimbus clouds, or rain producing clouds, may stretch from their base near the Earth's surface to an altitude of 10 kilometers (33,000 feet) or higher.
The Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) is NASA's center for aeronautical flight research and atmospheric flight operations. DFRC is chartered to research, develop, verify, and transfer advanced aeronautics, space and related technologies. It also serves as a backup landing site for the Space Shuttle and a facility to test and validate design concepts and systems used in development and operation of the Orbiters. NASA's Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology program (known as "ERAST") develops pilotless airplane technology. It also works on making science instruments very small so that they can be carried on remote-controlled aircraft.
On January 31, 1958, Explorer 1 became the first artificial satellite launched into space by the United States. Onboard was a cosmic ray detector designed to measure the radiation environment in Earth orbit. On March 16, 1926, Dr. Robert H. Goddard successfully launched the first liquid fueled rocket. The launch took place at Auburn, Massachusetts, and is regarded by flight historians to be as significant as the Wright Brothers flight at Kitty Hawk
On March 16, 1926, Dr. Robert H. Goddard successfully launched the first liquid fueled rocket. The launch took place at Auburn, Massachusetts, and is regarded by flight historians to be as significant as the Wright Brothers flight at Kitty Hawk. On October 14, 1947, in the rocket powered Bell X-1, Capt. Charles E. Yeager flew faster than sound for the first time.
Did you know that data from satellite instruments are used by fishermen to find areas where fish are most likely to be found? Fish find food in zones where cold and warm water mix. Flatfish (halibut, flounder, turbot, and sole) hatch like any other "normal" fish. As they grow, they turn sideways and one eye moves around so they have two eyes on the side that faces up.
Less than three percent of all water on Earth is freshwater (usable for drinking) and of that amount, more than two-thirds is locked up in ice caps and glaciers. There are more than 326 million trillion gallons of water on Earth.
A geostationary satellite travels at an altitude of approximately 36,000 kilometers (22,000 miles) above the Earth and at a speed of about 11,000 kph (7,000 mph). On August 29, 1929 the Graf Zeppelin, a rigid airship (or dirigible), completed a historic flight around the world that included a nonstop leg from Friedrichshafen, Germany to Tokyo, Japan -- a distance of almost 7,000 miles. The airship was 100 feet in diameter and 110 feet high, including the gondola bumpers. During its operating life from 1928 to 1937, the Graf Zeppelin made 590 flights, covering more than a million miles. A total of 13,100 passengers were carried without a single injury.
Hurricane names are chosen from a list selected by the World Meteorological Organization. Each name on the list starts with a different letter; for example, the name of the first hurricane of the season starts with A, the next starts with B, and so on. The letters Q, U, X, Y and Z are not used. Did you know that glaciers, or huge ice sheets, covered large areas of North America and Europe 18,000 years ago? In fact, ice extended as far south as New York and the Ohio River Valley.
Did you know that improved hurricane forecasts, made possible by NASA satellites such as the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), can save as much as $1,000,000 per mile (1.6 km) of coast evacuated? Landsat was the series of revolutionary satellites that were first launched in 1972 for the purpose of systematically photographing the surface of the Earth from space.
The largest recorded specimen of the blue whale is 33 meters (110 feet) long -- about the height of an 11-story building. At any given moment, there are 1,800 thunderstorms happening somewhere on Earth. This amounts to 16 million storms each year! We know the cloud conditions that produce lightning, but we cannot forecast the location or time of a lightning strike.
In the mid-1960s the Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed digital image processing to allow computer enhancement of Moon pictures. Similar technology is now used by doctors and hospitals on images of organs in the human body. A mile, also called a "statute mile," is the unit of distance most U.S. citizens are familiar with. To convert statute miles into kilometers multiply the statute miles by 1.609347.
Before NASA was formed, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was started by President Woodrow Wilson to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight. The NACA determined which problems should be experimentally worked on and discussed their solutions and their application to practical questions. The NACA also directed and conducted research and experiments in aeronautics. NASA became operational on October 1, 1958 -- one year after the Soviets launched Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite.
The NASA Dryden Flight Research Center is located in Edwards, California. The B-52B, also known as the Stratofortress, is an air launch carrier aircraft, as well as a research aircraft platform that has been used on research projects. The B-52B was built in the 1950s and is NASA's oldest aircraft.
Sailors were the first to use nautical miles. One nautical mile is equal to one minute of latitude. Maps were drawn to follow this standard and world aviation standards still use the nautical mile. A nautical mile is equivalent to 1.1508 miles, or 6,076 feet, in the English measurement system. To convert nautical miles into kilometers multiply the nautical miles by 1.8520. Oceans cover almost three-quarters of the Earth. If all the ice in glaciers and ice sheets melted, the sea level would rise by about 80 meters -- about the height of a 26-story building.
Phytoplankton are tiny little plants that drift with the currents throughout the ocean. Did you know that a teaspoon of sea water can contain as many as a million one-celled phytoplankton? SR-71, also known as the "Blackbird," is the research aircraft used by NASA as a test bed for high-speed, high-altitude aeronautical research. It was secretly designed in the 1950s at Lockheed's Advanced Development Company, commonly known as "Skunk Works."
HAVE you ever heard a sonic boom? When an airplane travels at a speed faster than sound, density waves of sound emitted by the plane accumulate in a cone behind the plane. When this shock wave passes, a listener hears a sonic boom. Large meteors and the Space Shuttle frequently produce audible sonic booms before they are slowed to below the speed of sound by the Earth's atmosphere. The Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft landed in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans when they returned to Earth.
A satellite is any object that travels around another object, such as the Earth around the sun, or the moon around the Earth. Man-made satellites are machines that are built here on Earth and then launched into space. The United Nations declared October 4-10, 1999 as World Space Week. These dates commemorate the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.
The Wright 1905 Flyer, the first practical airplane, flew for 33 minutes and 17 seconds, covering a distance of 20 miles, on October 4, 1905. Orville and Wilbur Wright made their first successful flight on December 17, 1903. Wilbur and Orville had two older brothers and a younger sister. None of the Wright children were given a middle name.
The Wright brothers' first flight was shorter than the wingspan of a B-52 bomber. After the first powered Wright Flyer of 1903 made history at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright brothers disassembled it and shipped it to Dayton, Ohio, where it was stored in a shed behind their bicycle shop for more than a decade. In March 1913, Dayton was hit by a serious flood, and the boxes containing the Flyer were submerged in water and mud for 11 days. In the summer of 1916 Orville repaired and reassembled the airplane for brief exhibition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The X-15 aircraft made a total of 199 flights over a period of nearly 10 years from 1959 to 1968. It set unofficial world speed and altitude records of 4,520 mph (Mach 6.7) and 354,200 feet. Information gained from the highly successful program contributed to the development of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft and the Space Shuttle program. Around the world, the ozone layer averages about 3 millimeters (1/8 inch) thick, approximately the same as two pennies stacked one on top of the other.
"ISS" is an acronym for International Space Station. "Aerodynamics" comes from two Greek words: aerios (concerning the air) and dynamis (powerful). Aerodynamics is the study of forces and the resulting motion of objects through the air.
Did you know that the first African-American woman in space was Dr. Mae Jemison? She was selected for the astronaut program in June 1987 and served as the science mission specialist on STS-47 Spacelab-J (September 12-20, 1992). Apollo 10's command module was called "Charlie Brown" and the lunar module was called "Snoopy."
The third human to walk on the surface of the Moon was Charles P. "Pete" Conrad -- during the Apollo 12 Mission. Did you know that the Apollo 16 spacecraft were named after stars? The command module was "Caspar," and the lunar module was "Orion." Among the items taken to the moon on this mission were 25 U.S. flags and one state flag for each of the 50 U.S. States. The flags were 4 inches x 6 inches.
Apollo 7, the first piloted Apollo mission, took place October 11-12, 1968, with astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, and Walter Cunningham. Six Apollo missions landed on the moon: Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17.
Have you ever heard of "Armalcolite"? Armalcolite is a mineral that was discovered at Tranquility Base by the Apollo 11 crew. It was named for ARMstrong, ALdrin and COLlins, the three Apollo 11 astronauts There is no set number of people in an astronaut candidate class; NASA selects candidates on an as-needed basis.
Each Space Shuttle astronaut is allotted 3.8 pounds of food per day (including the one pound of packaging). Foods are individually packaged and stowed for easy handling in the zero gravity of space. All food is precooked or processed so it requires no refrigeration and is either ready to eat or can be prepared simply by adding water or by heating. The only exceptions are the fresh fruit and vegetables stowed in the fresh food locker. Without refrigeration, carrots and celery must be eaten within the first two days of the flight or they will spoil. Did you know that to apply to be an astronaut a pilot must have completed 1000 hours of flying time in a jet aircraft?
During Apollo 11, the astronauts ate two meals. Meal A was bacon squares, peaches, sugar cookie cubes, coffee, and pineapple-grapefruit drink. Meal B included beef stew, cream of chicken soup, date fruitcake, grape punch, and orange drink. Snoopy, the Peanuts Comic Strip character is the astronauts' personal safety mascot.
Columbia was the first Space Shuttle that traveled to Earth orbit. It takes about six hours for a Space Shuttle, aboard a crawler-transporter, to make the trip from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad preceding a mission.
Explorer 1, the first U.S. Earth-orbiting satellite, was launched January 31, 1958 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch vehicle was an Army Jupiter-C rocket. Explorer 1 orbited the Earth every 115 minutes. Its orbit carried it from a low of about 220 miles to a high of nearly 1,600 miles. Bessie Coleman, known as "Queen Bess, Daredevil Aviator," was the first African-American woman aviator. She received her pilot's certificate in 1921 in France and learned stunt-flying there. Bessie died in a flying accident in 1926 before she was able to achieve her goal of opening her own flight school. She was honored in 1995 by the U.S. Postal Service with a Black Heritage commemorative stamp.
Eileen M. Collins was the first female commander of the space shuttle. She and her crew launched aboard Space Shuttle Columbia on the STS-93 mission in July 1999. On October 11, 1984 Katherine Sullivan was the first U.S. woman to walk in space. During STS-41G, she and Commander Dave Leestma successfully conducted a 3-1/2 hour Extravehicular Activity (EVA) to demonstrate the feasibility of actual satellite refueling.
Each Space Shuttle astronaut is allotted 3.8 pounds of food per day (including the one pound of packaging). Foods are individually packaged and stowed for easy handling in the zero gravity of space. All food is precooked or processed so it requires no refrigeration and is either ready to eat or can be prepared simply by adding water or by heating. The only exceptions are the fresh fruit and vegetables stowed in the fresh food locker. Without refrigeration, carrots and celery must be eaten within the first two days of the flight or they will spoil. Did you know that to apply to be an astronaut a pilot must have completed 1000 hours of flying time in a jet aircraft?
During Apollo 11, the astronauts ate two meals. Meal A was bacon squares, peaches, sugar cookie cubes, coffee, and pineapple-grapefruit drink. Meal B included beef stew, cream of chicken soup, date fruitcake, grape punch, and orange drink. Snoopy, the Peanuts Comic Strip character is the astronauts' personal safety mascot.
Columbia was the first Space Shuttle that traveled to Earth orbit. It takes about six hours for a Space Shuttle, aboard a crawler-transporter, to make the trip from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad preceding a mission.
Explorer 1, the first U.S. Earth-orbiting satellite, was launched January 31, 1958 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch vehicle was an Army Jupiter-C rocket. Explorer 1 orbited the Earth every 115 minutes. Its orbit carried it from a low of about 220 miles to a high of nearly 1,600 miles. Bessie Coleman, known as "Queen Bess, Daredevil Aviator," was the first African-American woman aviator. She received her pilot's certificate in 1921 in France and learned stunt-flying there. Bessie died in a flying accident in 1926 before she was able to achieve her goal of opening her own flight school. She was honored in 1995 by the U.S. Postal Service with a Black Heritage commemorative stamp.
Eileen M. Collins was the first female commander of the space shuttle. She and her crew launched aboard Space Shuttle Columbia on the STS-93 mission in July 1999. On October 11, 1984 Katherine Sullivan was the first U.S. woman to walk in space. During STS-41G, she and Commander Dave Leestma successfully conducted a 3-1/2 hour Extravehicular Activity (EVA) to demonstrate the feasibility of actual satellite refueling.
The first manned lunar landing mission, Apollo 11, lifted off on July 16, 1969. After Mission Control confirmed that the hardware was working well, Apollo 11 began the three-day trip to the Moon. Astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt from Apollo 17 was the first scientist-astronaut to fly a space mission. He was a geologist.
During Gemini VIII, on March 16, 1966, American astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and David Scott performed the first orbital docking. Their spacecraft docked with an Agena target vehicle, becoming the first coupling of two spacecraft. This was a critical task to master before attempting to land on the Moon, a mission that required several dockings and undockings of spacecraft. During the second piloted Gemini mission, June 3-7 1965, Gemini IV stayed aloft for four days and astronaut Edward H. White II performed the first EVA (extra-vehicular activity, or spacewalk) by an American.
Apollo 15 (July 26 - August 7, 1971) was the first of the longer, expedition-style lunar landing missions. It was the first to include the lunar rover, which extended the range of the astronauts on the Moon. They brought back 173 pounds of moon rocks, including one of the prize artifacts of the Apollo program, a sample of ancient lunar crust called the "Genesis Rock." On August 20, 1982 cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman on a space station.
Because the detectors on GALEX are so sensitive, the telescope on GALEX must always be pointed away from the Earth and the Sun. In fact, the detectors are so sensitive that GALEX cannot look at any of the stars that we can see with the naked eye from the ground! Alan Shepard is the only person to hit a golf ball on the Moon. During the Apollo 14 mission he fitted an 8 iron head to the handle of a lunar sample collection device and launched three golf balls. They are still there!
Do you know how many people have walked on the Moon? Twelve men have walked there -- two each on six different Apollo missions. The first crew members to live on the International Space Station were Commander Bill Shepherd, Soyuz Commander Yuri Gidzenko, and Flight Engineer Sergei Krikalev.
The first piece of the International Space Station to be placed into orbit was the Zarya control module. It was placed in orbit in November 1998 by a Russian Proton rocket. On Feb. 20, 1962 John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. He made three Earth revolutions in his capsule named "Friendship 7."
On February 20, 1962 astronaut John Glenn piloted the Mercury-Atlas 6 "Friendship 7" spacecraft on the first manned orbital mission of the U.S. Launched from Kennedy Space Center, he completed a successful three-orbit mission around the Earth, reaching a maximum altitude (apogee) of approximately 162 statute miles and an orbital velocity of approximately 17,500 miles per hour. Glenn?s "Friendship 7" spacecraft landed approximately 800 miles southeast of Kennedy Space Center. Mission duration from launch to impact was 4 hours, 55 minutes, and 23 seconds. On Feb. 20, 1986 the Mir Space Station became the first third-generation Space Station to be launched. Mir means ""peace" or "village" in Russian.
President John F. Kennedy was the United States President who challenged America to land a man on the moon. American astronaut Neil Armstrong was the first human to walk on the surface of the moon.
A manned rocket reaches the Moon in less time than it took a stagecoach to travel the length of England. The rocket that launched the astronauts to the Moon was a Saturn V rocket.
During a shuttle launch "MECO" means Main Engine Cutoff. America?s first space station was named Skylab.
Skylab was longer than a twelve-story building and contained almost 12,000 cubic feet of living space. Can you hear in space? In theory, if there is nothing to receive the sound, there is no sound. Because there are no "air waves" in space to conduct the sound, it would not carry. So, the object would make a noise, but it would not carry to any receiver, and no one would hear it.
The USSR's Soyuz was the first Soviet spacecraft to dock with an American spacecraft. The Space Shuttle is the world's first reusable spacecraft and the first spacecraft in history that can carry large satellites both to and from orbit. The Shuttle launches like a rocket, maneuvers in Earth orbit like a spacecraft, and lands like an airplane.
The 100th flight in shuttle program history was made by Space Shuttle Columbia. The Space Shuttle's accomplishments over the past 20 years include: launching 3 million pounds of cargo; transporting more than 600 passengers and pilots; cumulatively spending more than three years in flight; and traveling more than 366 million miles.
Condiments available on the Space Shuttle include salt, pepper, taco sauce, hot pepper sauce, catsup, mayonnaise and mustard. The Space Shuttle does zero to 17,000 mph in 8.5 minutes. The speed of the gases exiting the Solid Rocket Booster motor is 6,000 mph -- three times the speed of a high-powered rifle.
The Space Shuttle main engine weighs one seventh as much as a train engine but delivers as much horsepower as 39 locomotives. The Space Shuttle Main Engine operates at greater temperature extremes than any mechanical system in common use today. The fuel, liquefied hydrogen at -423 degrees Fahrenheit (-253 degrees Celsius) is the second coldest liquid on Earth. When it and the liquid oxygen are combusted, the temperature in the main combustion chamber is 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit (3,316 degrees Celsius), hotter than the boiling point of iron.
Did you know that the Space Shuttle makes one complete orbit around the Earth approximately every 90 minutes? The astronauts see one sunrise and one sunset each orbit. There are 16 sunrises/sunsets every 24 hours. The Space Shuttle travels about 17,600 miles per hour when orbiting the Earth.
The Space Shuttle speed goes from 0 mph to 17,500 mph in 8.5 minutes (this is when the external fuel tank separates from the Shuttle). Two minutes after launch the solid rocket boosters separate; at this time the speed is 3,438 mph and increasing rapidly. While in orbit the Shuttle's speed is 17,500 mph. When reentry or blackout occurs, the Shuttle is traveling at 16,700 mph. After reentry the Shuttle uses Earth's atmosphere to slow down. Landing speed ranges from 213 to 226 mph (343 to 364 kilometers). Canada, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Japan, Russia, Brazil, and the United States are all building parts of the International Space Station.
A spacesuit weighs approximately 280 pounds on the ground -- without the astronaut in it. Of course, it weighs nothing in space. Putting on a spacesuit takes 45 minutes, including the special underwear. After putting on the suit, the astronaut must spend a little over an hour breathing pure oxygen before going outside the pressurized module, in order to adapt to the lower pressure maintained in the spacesuit. Did you know that the Soviet satellite Sputnik was the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth?
History changed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world?s first artificial satellite was about the size of a basketball, weighed only 183 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. That launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments. While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the space age and the U.S.-U.S.S.R space race. Although at first glance it appears wrong, the flag on the shuttle Orbiter is not truly backward. The regulation for displaying a U.S. flag on a national vehicle states that the star field must be positioned at the front of the vessel (the nose cone end of the shuttle), as if the flag were "flying" along the side of the ship. This causes the flag to look as though it were backward on one side of the Shuttle.
The legacy of flying American flags to space started in 1961 with the flight of the first American astronaut, Alan Shepard. Students from Cocoa Beach Elementary School in Florida purchased a flag from a local department store. The flag was rolled up and placed between cables behind Shepard's head inside his Freedom 7 Mercury spacecraft. Why were the first lunar missions nicknamed "Apollo"? At the height of Greek colonization of the ancient world, Apollo was seen as a god who accompanied emigrants and travelers on their way. The name "Apollo" was suggested by Abe Silverstein, an early director of the Lewis Research Center and one of the "founding fathers" of NASA's Manned Spaceflight Center (now Johnson Space Center) in Houston.
Most of the elements found in the human body originated in stars; we are literally made of stardust. The prototype orbiter Enterprise was used at Dryden to verify the glide and handling qualities of the vehicle following its return into the atmosphere from space
Did you know that the Cassini-Huygens Mission is an international collaboration between three space agencies and 17 nations contributed to building the spacecraft? More than 250 scientists worldwide will study the data collected. Saturn's beautiful rings are not solid. They are made up of particles of ice, dust and rock -- some as tiny as grains of sand, some much larger than skyscrapers.
The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory was safely de-orbited and re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on June 4, 2000. Any pieces that survived landed in a remote area of the Pacific Ocean. It's pretty windy on Saturn. Winds around the planet's equator can reach 1,800 kilometers (1,118 miles) per hour. In comparison, the fastest winds on Earth reach only about 400 kilometers (about 250 miles) per hour.
Four days after it was launched, the Deep Space 1 spacecraft was about 1,000,000 kilometers (about 600,000 miles) from Earth. To fly that far in a jet, you would have to fly for 6 weeks without stopping! Although other planets have rings too, Saturn's rings are the only ones that are visible from Earth even with a small telescope.
To communicate with distant spacecraft, NASA's Deep Space Network uses antenna with a diameter of up to 70 meters (230 feet). That is almost as big as a football field. Saturn, the "Ringed Planet," is so far away from the Sun that it receives only about 1/80th the amount of sunlight that we receive here on Earth. Yes, the Sun appears much smaller from there.
It's a small world. More than 1,000 Earths would fit into Jupiter's vast sphere. Scientists are particularly interested in Saturn's moon Titan because it's one of the few known moons with its own dense atmosphere. Titan's atmosphere is also thought to be very similar to what Earth's atmosphere was a long time ago. By learning about Titan, we'll learn about our own planet.
When the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft arrives at Saturn, it will be traveling so fast that engineers will need to burn the spacecraft's engines for 97 minutes just to slow it down. If mission engineers don't do this, the spacecraft would keep on going, instead of entering the orbit around Saturn. A penumbral eclipse is the outer shadow in a zone where the Earth blocks part, but not all, of the Sun's rays from reaching the Moon. In contrast, the inner or umbral shadow is a region where the Earth blocks all direct sunlight from reaching the Moon.
Titan is the largest of Saturn's moons. It is the second largest moon in the solar system. In fact, it is larger than both Mercury and Pluto. Equinox literally means "equal night." On an equinox, the sun is above the equator, so both the northern and southern hemispheres of the Earth receive about the same amount of sunlight, and day and night are the same length.
Because Saturn is tilted, when its rings are facing Earth edge-on they "disappear" from our view. We now know this happens every 14 years or so, but poor Galileo questioned his sanity when they "disappeared" and then "reappeared" a few years later. Galileo, launched in 1989, was the first U.S. spacecraft to orbit Jupiter. Galileo entered Jupiter's orbit in 1995.
Saturn is huge. It is the second largest planet in our Solar System. Only Jupiter is bigger. If you could line them up, more than nine Earths would fit across Saturn. Through his spyglass, in 1609 Galileo saw that there were spots on the Sun, imperfections on the Moon, and that the Milky Way was composed of millions of faint stars. His most stunning (and controversial!) discovery was of satellites orbiting Jupiter, dashing the concept that the Earth was the center of the Universe.
Saturn's moon Iapetus (eye-AP-eh-tuss) is a very curious moon -- it seems to have a split personality! One hemisphere is covered with material darker than black velvet, while the other side is covered with material brighter than snow. Ganymede, one of the moons of Jupiter, is the largest moon in our Solar System.
When the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft arrives at Saturn, it will be traveling so fast that engineers will need to burn the spacecraft's engines for 97 minutes just to slow it down. If mission engineers don't do this, the spacecraft would keep on going, instead of entering the orbit around Saturn. A penumbral eclipse is the outer shadow in a zone where the Earth blocks part, but not all, of the Sun's rays from reaching the Moon. In contrast, the inner or umbral shadow is a region where the Earth blocks all direct sunlight from reaching the Moon.
Titan is the largest of Saturn's moons. It is the second largest moon in the solar system. In fact, it is larger than both Mercury and Pluto, which are planets. Equinox literally means "equal night." On an equinox, the Sun is above the equator, so both the northern and southern hemispheres of the Earth receive about the same amount of sunlight, and day and night are the same length.
Because Saturn is tilted, when its rings are facing Earth edge-on they "disappear" from our view. We now know this happens every 14 years or so, but poor Galileo questioned his sanity when they "disappeared" and then "reappeared" a few years later. Galileo, launched in 1989, was the first U.S. spacecraft to orbit Jupiter. Galileo entered Jupiter's orbit in 1995.
Saturn is huge. It is the second largest planet in our Solar System. Only Jupiter is bigger. If you could line them up, more than nine Earths would fit across Saturn. Through his spyglass, in 1609 Galileo saw that there were spots on the Sun, imperfections on the Moon, and that the Milky Way was composed of millions of faint stars. His most stunning (and controversial!) discovery was of satellites orbiting Jupiter, dashing the concept that the Earth was the center of the Universe.
Saturn's moon Iapetus (eye-AP-eh-tuss) is a very curious moon -- it seems to have a split personality! One hemisphere is covered with material darker than black velvet, while the other side is covered with material brighter than snow. Ganymede, one of the moons of Jupiter, is the largest moon in our Solar System.
The planet Saturn is named after Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture. The day Saturday is also named after him. The Cassini spacecraft has 12 instruments capable of 27 science investigations. To operate them, the spacecraft's electronic system consists of more than 12 kilometers (almost 7.5 miles) of cabling, about 20,000 wire connections, and 1,630 interconnect circuits.
On January 11, 1610, Galileo Galilei discovered Jupiter's moon Ganymede. Ganymede is the largest satellite in the solar system with a diameter of 5,268 km (3270 miles). It is larger than Mercury and Pluto and 3/4 the size of Mars. Saturn's moon Mimas has an enormous crater named Herschel that is 130 kilometers (80 miles) wide, one-third the diameter of Mimas. The impact that caused the crater probably came close to shattering Mimas.
Gravity is the pulling force that keeps us on the surface of the Earth. The Huygens probe will land on Titan's surface with the same force as a skydiver lands on Earth with an open parachute. That's approximately 24 kilometers (about 15 miles) per hour!
Halley's Comet makes one orbit around the Sun every 76.1 years. Because Saturn spins on its axis extremely fast and has a low-density interior, Saturn is noticeably flattened, top and bottom. Saturn is 10 percent fatter in the middle than at the poles.
Did you know that there are 6 gyroscopes on the Hubble Space Telescope? The gyroscopes are used to point the telescope. The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft is about the same size as a 30-passenger school bus! It weighs roughly 5,650 kg (6 tons) -- more than half of its weight is rocket fuel.
Did you know that every day the Hubble Space Telescope archives 3 to 5 gigabytes of data and delivers between 10 and 15 gigabytes to astronomers all over the world? Saturn's moon Mimas (MY-mass), one of the innermost moons of Saturn, was discovered in 1789 by William Herschel. It has a low density, meaning it probably consists mostly of ice.
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched by the U.S. on April 24, 1990 and is named after Astronomer Edwin P. Hubble. It is a Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) satellite, located about 375 miles (600 km) above the surface of the Earth. Hubble completes an orbit around the Earth every 97 minutes. Saturn's main rings could cover almost the entire distance between Earth and the moon, yet they are less than a kilometer (about half-a-mile) thick.
The Interplanetary Monitoring Platform (IMP) spacecraft was retired after 28 years on duty being buffeted by the solar wind and zapped by cosmic rays. Launched on October 25, 1973, IMP 8 was built and operated at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and provided important space physics data as part of NASA's Sun-Earth Connection research program. Did you know that Jupiter is the largest planet in our Solar System?
Did you know that the Cassini spacecraft can "see" in wavelengths of light and energy that the human eye cannot, and its onboard onboard can "feel" things about magnetic fields and tiny dust particles that no human hand could detect. NASA missions currently in development, such as Kepler and the Space Interferometry Mission, will be able to study planets more than 6,700 times farther away than Pluto, the most distant planet in our solar system.
Saturn goes around the Sun very slowly, but spins on its axis extremely fast. A Saturn year lasts more than 29 Earth years, but a Saturn day lasts only 10 hours and 14 minutes. Did you know that the largest single radio telescope dish (1000 ft. wide, 305 m) is located in Arecibo, Puerto Rico?
Unlike Earth, Saturn is made mostly of hydrogen and helium. While it has heavier materials in the core, Saturn has no surface on which you could stand. Saturn is the only planet in our Solar System that is less dense than water. If you could build a ridiculously large bathtub, Saturn would actually float in it.
Saturn's moon Hyperion (high-PEER-ee-on) is shaped sort of like a hamburger patty and rotates chaotically because of the gravitational influence of nearby Titan, another of Saturn's many moons. One of the cameras onboard the Cassini spacecraft is so sensitive that it can see a small coin from nearly 4 kilometers (about 2.5 miles) away.
Leonid meteor storms happen when Earth passes through clouds of dusty debris shed by comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle when it comes close to the Sun every 33 years. A light-year is the distance light can travel in one year. Light moves at a velocity of about 300,000 kilometers (km) each second. So in one year, it can travel about 10 trillion km. More precisely, one light-year is equal to 9,500,000,000,000 kilometers.
The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft is about 4 meters (13.1 feet) wide -- so wide that it would take about seven people with arms outstretched to encircle the spacecraft! The Mariner series of spacecraft were interplanetary probes designed to investigate Mars, Venus, and Mercury. The program included a number of firsts, including the first planetary flyby, the first planetary orbiter, and the first gravity assist.
The Cassini spacecraft will fly close to Saturn 76 times and visit its moon Titan 45 times. The Huygens probe will have the closest view of Titan, and Titan will be the most distant object from Earth ever to be studied by a probe! Mars is known as the "Red Planet."
During the long journey to Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft's engines will only burn for about 1 percent of the time. The other 99 percent of the trip is a long un-powered glide through space. The Mars Pathfinder landed on Mars on July 4, 1997. After landing, the lander was renamed the Sagan Memorial Station. The lander also carried the Sojourner rover.
The small and rocky planet Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun. Temperatures on Mercury's surface can reach a scorching 467 degrees Celsius, but because the planet has hardly any atmosphere to keep it warm, nighttime temperatures can drop to a frigid -183 degrees Celsius. Redstone (suborbital) and Atlas (orbital) were the two launch vehicles that were used to launch the Mercury astronauts.
The Cassini spacecraft will send back to Earth more than 300,000 color images of Saturn, its rings, Titan, and Saturn's other moons. Some 1,100 images of Titan will be taken by the Huygens probe during its swirling descent to Titan. A meteorite is a rock that enters Earth's atmosphere from outer space and reaches the ground.
Saturn is so far away it will take almost an hour and a half for radio signals from Earth to reach the Cassini spacecraft -- between 68 and 84 minutes, depending on the position of Earth and Saturn. That's a long time, especially if you consider that radio signals travel at the speed of light! If we could shrink our solar system into the size of a U.S. quarter, the Milky Way galaxy would be the size of North America.
Pan, one of Saturn's smallest moons, orbits within Saturn's A-Ring and helps clear out an area between the rings called the Encke Gap. Scientists believe that if Pan didn't exist, neither would the Encke Gap. Did you know that 842 lbs. (382 kg) of rocks were brought back from the moon during the Apollo missions?
Newton's Third Law of Motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The three objects in the solar system known to have nitrogen-dominated atmospheres are Earth, Saturn?s moon Titan, and Neptune?s moon Triton.
Saturn's density is only 0.13 that of Earth. (That's because Earth is made of rocks and stuff, and Saturn is pretty much just gas.) The Pioneer 10 spacecraft was launched on March 2, 1972. It was the first spacecraft to travel through the asteroid belt and to take close-up pictures of Jupiter.
Pluto was discovered on February 18, 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. The Italian Space agency built Cassini's high-gain communication antenna. The antenna can transmit in four frequencies at the same time, and it was even used as an umbrella to protect the instruments from the Sun's strong rays during the early part of the mission -- when Cassini was closer to the Sun. That's why the antenna is painted white!
Remote sensing is the process of obtaining information about an object, area, or phenomenon without coming into direct contact with the object being observed. Driving at 75 miles per hour, it would take 258 days to drive around one of Saturn?s rings.
A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes directly between the Sun and the Earth and casts a shadow on the Earth?s surface. A solar eclipse happens when the Earth passes through the Moon?s shadow.
Does the Sun move? The Sun and the entire solar system revolve around the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The Sun also rotates on its own axis. If you could see as well as the Wide Field and Planetary Camera on the Hubble Space Telescope, you would be able to read the fine print on a newspaper one mile away!
Did you know that the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft is one of the largest interplanetary spacecraft ever built. It's the third heaviest unmanned spacecraft ever launched into space. Most of the elements in the human body were created in the inferno of a burning star.
The space between Mars and Jupiter is filled with a population of irregularly shaped chunks of rock and metal called asteroids. Scientists believe the asteroids are pieces of a planet that never formed. Throughout the Cassini mission, the spacecraft will send more than 300 gigabytes of scientific data back to Earth, which is more than 400 CD-ROMs of information! This data will be examined by more than 250 scientists around the world.
