Mission to Mercury - nyt, March 18, 2011
In the middle of March this year first ever man-made object, a spacecraft called Messenger, has slipped into an orbit around Mercury. The craft travelled to Mercury for seven years over the distance of 5 billion miles. The scientists, controlling the spacecraft, are starting to turn on its instruments. The observations are to begin on April 4th. Mercury is the planet closest to Sun in the Solar system, so the temperatures Messenger must be able to withstand are very high, this is why it will be protected by ceramic-fabric sunshade.
I think this article shows clearly that human scientific interests are expanding slowly but surely to the most extreme places in the universe. Engineers find the right materials to protect scientific instruments from the Sun even at the close distance like just 46 million miles. The temperature on the surface of this planed is around 500°C, so we should expect Messenger to quickly reach this temperature if left unprotected.
Showing posts with label planets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label planets. Show all posts
Friday, March 25, 2011
1. Even More Things in Heaven and Earth
Even More Things in Heaven and Earth - nyt February 3, 2011
In this article the author, Michael Byers, starts with a recent announcement by the astronomers that a planetary object called Eris is smaller than Pluto. This allows us to revisit Pluto's status, which was doungraded from this of a planet to a "dwarf" since discovery of Eris in 2005. The author goes on to tell us about the discovery of Pluto in 1930, which was, as it happens, a result of a serious of measurement errors and observational mistakes.
I found this article interesting, because it shows how the human knowledge moves ahead even though there are mistakes in the process of acquiring data and interpreting the results. The author says at the end of the article that astronomers identified 1,235 possible planets in other star systems. Potentially there are inhabitants on one of them - and this what makes the science of astronomy really fascinating for me.
In this article the author, Michael Byers, starts with a recent announcement by the astronomers that a planetary object called Eris is smaller than Pluto. This allows us to revisit Pluto's status, which was doungraded from this of a planet to a "dwarf" since discovery of Eris in 2005. The author goes on to tell us about the discovery of Pluto in 1930, which was, as it happens, a result of a serious of measurement errors and observational mistakes.
I found this article interesting, because it shows how the human knowledge moves ahead even though there are mistakes in the process of acquiring data and interpreting the results. The author says at the end of the article that astronomers identified 1,235 possible planets in other star systems. Potentially there are inhabitants on one of them - and this what makes the science of astronomy really fascinating for me.
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