The Planets

Andrew Calin Paladie Erin Lauen March 10, 2011

Mercury (

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The scorching-hot Mercury is only a little a bit larger than the Earth’s moon. A lot like the moon, it has a very little atmosphere to stop impacts, which makes it the reason why thousands of craters are covering up Mercury. During the daytime, temperatures increase quickly because of the sun. But, during the night, Mercury’s temperature decreases immediately below zero. Mercury’s egg shaped orbit takes it around the sun every 88 days. Mercury is named for the swiftest of the ancient Roman gods. Mercury, the god of commerce, is the Roman counterpart to the great Greek god Hermes. The messenger of the gods. The first ever spacecraft to visit Mercury was Mariner 10. In 1991, astronomers on Earth using radar observations showed that Mercury may have watered ice at Mercury’s north and south poles. Comets or meteorites might have brought ice to these parts of regions on Mercury, or maybe water vapor may have out-gassed from the interior and frozen out at the poles.

Venus (

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Venus is a little dim world of intense heat and volcanic activity. Similarly the same structure and size as Earth, Venus’ think and toxic atmosphere keeps heat in a runaway called “greenhouse effect”. The burning hot world, has huge temperatures hot enough to burn/melt lead. Little glimpses below the clouds reveal big amounts of volcanoes and deformed mountains. Venus spins slowly in the opposite direction of most planets.

There actually hasn’t been much history of anybody ‘landing’ on Venus. Because of its burning-hot temperature, they have to take radar images by NASA’s Magellan mission to Venus during the early 1990s. The Galileo spacecraft used infrared mapping to get a good view on the mid-level cloud structure as it had passed by Venus in 1990 on its way to Jupiter.

Earth (

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Earth is simply an ocean/water planet. Our planet Earth’s water and life makes Earth very unique in the Solar System. Other planets, such as: Jupiter, Uranus, Mercury, and a couple of moons, have ice, atmospheres, seasons and also weather. Though, only Earth does the whole complicated mix together in a way that encourages a lot of life. There has been actually five missions deployed to study our planet Earth. So, there has been a lot of history for our planet Earth. One of the missions was Galileo. Galileo used Earth's gravity to help it build up enough speed to hurl itself toward Jupiter. But the Earth flyby provided a chance to use the spacecraft's instruments to study Earth from a unique perspective. The accomplishment was: the Galileo spacecraft found evidence of life on Earth. Not a surprising discovery, but the use of instruments to detect traces of life in a planet's atmosphere will be useful as future space probes continue to seek evidence of life beyond Earth.

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Another mission was the Bumper Project. Bumper rockets were the first two-stage rockets -- a German V-2 missile coupled with an American-made WAC Corporal. They were designed to test high altitude rocket systems and study Earth's upper atmosphere. The accomplishment of it: Bumper rockets were the first human-made objects to cross the boundary into outer space, although they did not orbit the Earth like Sputnik 1 (the first true spacecraft). The rocket's upper stages were able to reach then-record altitudes of up to 399 kilometers (248 miles), higher than even modern space shuttles fly. The rockets' small science payloads also sent back information on air temperatures and cosmic ray impacts. Also another mission was the Deep Impact-EPOXI . Deep Impact's primary mission was to deliver a special impactor spacecraft into the path of comet Tempel 1. After its successful impact mission, Deep impact was used to view the Earth from a distant alien perspective to aid in the search for Earth-like worlds in other solar systems and its accomplishment was: Making a video of Earth from so far away helps the search for other life-bearing planets in the Universe by giving insights into how a distant, Earth-like alien world would appear to us. For example, Sun glints off Earth's oceans could guide scientists to spot alien oceans (and potentially habitable alien worlds). Out of all of those five missions—I have listed 3 of them for you. Earth is known to only have one moon. It isn’t named anything. Really, it’s just called the Moon. The only moon Earth has. The only thing in the solar system that has the greatest gravitational pull. Also, known to have huge craters just like Mercury. So, to this day, Earth is known to have only one moon. Named—the Moon.

Mars (

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Mars looks like a burning hot planet in this picture (right). But, actually it’s a cold desert world. It is half the diameter of Earth and has the same amount of dry land. Like Earth, Mars has seasons, polar ice caps, volcanoes, canyons and weather, but its atmosphere is too thin for liquid water to exist for long on the surface. There are signs of ancient floods on Mars, but evidence for water now exists mainly in icy soil and thin clouds. There has been 4 missions set to search the planet Mars, now for only one reason. To search if there is life. One of the 4 missions was the Mars Exploration Rover: Spirit/Opportunity. Its Spirit and its twin Opportunity were designed to study the history of climate and water at sites on Mars where conditions may once have been favorable to life. Each rover is equipped with a suite of science instruments to read the geologic record at each site, to investigate what role water played there and to determine how suitable the conditions would have been for life. It’s accomplishment had: Both rovers far exceeded their design specifications and returned science results that transformed our understanding of Mars.

Mars (

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Asaph Hall was about to give up his frustrating search for a Martian moon one August night in 1877, but his wife Angelina urged him on. He discovered Deimos the next night, and Phobos six nights after that.

Ninety-four years later, NASA's Mariner 9 spacecraft got a much better look at the two moons from its orbit around Mars. The dominant feature on Phobos, it found, was a crater 10 km (6 miles) wide -- nearly half the width of the moon itself. It was given Angelina's maiden name: Stickney.

Hall named the moons for the mythological sons of Ares, the Greek counterpart of the Roman god, Mars. Phobos means fear or panic (think "phobia"), and Deimos means flight (as in running away after an overwhelming defeat). Fitting names for the sons of a war god.

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Mars' moons are among the smallest in the solar system. Phobos is a bit larger than Deimos, and orbits only 6,000 km (3,700 miles) above the Martian surface. No known moon orbits closer to its planet. It whips around Mars three times a day, while the more distant Deimos takes 30 hours for each orbit. Phobos is gradually spiraling inward, drawing about 1.8 m closer to the planet each century. Within 50 million years, it will either crash into Mars or break up and form a ring around the To someone standing on the Mars-facing side of Phobos, Mars would take up a large part of the sky. And people may one day do just that. Scientists have discussed the possibility of using one of the Martian moons as a base from which astronauts could observe the Red Planet and launch robots to its surface, while shielded by miles of rock from cosmic rays and solar radiation for nearly two-thirds of

Jupiter (

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Understanding Jupiter’s intense magnetic field, swirling atmosphere and diverse moons will reveal much about how planets form and interact.

Jupiter, the most massive planet in our solar system; with dozens of moons and an enormous magnetic field, forms a kind of miniature solar system. Although, Jupiter does resemble a star in composition, it did not grow big enough to ignite. Jupiter’s swirling cloud stripes (as shown in the picture on the right) are emphasized by massive storms such as the Great Red Spot, which has erupted for hundreds of years.

In the past, there have been 8 missions so far, sent to study Jupiter. The first mission was the Pioneer 10. The goal of the Pioneer 10 was to launch the first spacecraft to Jupiter, and fly by it, while surviving the intense radiation that surrounds the giant outer planet and then on a trajectory that would take it out of the Solar System.

It’s accomplishment made the spacecraft become the first to fly beyond Mars' orbit, through the asteroid belt, and close to Jupiter, blazing a trail for the two Voyager spacecraft that were to follow and conduct more in-depth surveys. Long before and after flying by Jupiter, Pioneer 10 transmitted data on the magnetic fields, energetic particle radiation and dust populations in interplanetary space. As it passed through the Jupiter system, it transmitted hundreds of photos of the planet and its moons, along with measurements of the Jovian atmosphere.

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There was another mission, called the Pioneer 11, but let’s skip to the 3 to explore the giant planet, its the gravity-assist technique. rd mission. The Voyager 1 and 2. Both of these missions were designed to take advantage of a rare planetary alignment to explore the outer solar system. Voyager 1 targeted Jupiter and Saturn before continuing on to chart the far edges of our solar system.

It’s accomplishment was that during the Jupiter leg of its journey, Voyager 1 was magnetosphere and moons in greater detail than the Pioneer spacecraft that preceded it. Voyager 1 was not only to study Jupiter, but to use it as a springboard to Saturn, using Voyager 1 succeeded on all counts, with the single exception of experiments using its photo-polarimeter, which failed to operate. Jupiter's atmosphere was found to be more active than during the visits of Pioneer 10 and 11, sparking a rethinking of the earlier atmospheric models which could not explain the new features.

Fast Facts

Galileo was launched from the Space Shuttle Atlantis. The spacecraft traveled more than 4.6 billion km (about 2.8 billion miles) during its 14-year mission. Galileo was named in honor of Galileo Galilei (above), who discovered the largest moons of Jupiter in 1610. The spacecraft was named in honor of Galileo Galilei (right), the 17th Century Italian astronomer who proved planets orbit our Sun. The spacecraft was the first to orbit a gas giant planet.

Galileo plunged into Jupiter's crushing atmosphere on Sept. 21, 2003. The spacecraft was deliberately destroyed to protect one of its own discoveries - a possible ocean beneath the icy crust of the moon Europa.

Jupiter (

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Like the famed astronomer for which it was named, the Galileo spacecraft logged quite a few firsts during its 14-year mission to Jupiter. Among its discoveries: an intense radiation belt above Jupiter's cloud tops, helium in about the same concentration as the Sun, extensive and rapid resurfacing of the moon Io because of volcanism, and evidence for liquid water oceans under the moon Europa's icy surface. The rest of the missions we’re called the Ulysses, the Cassini, and the New Horizons! How wonderful it is to know most of these mission’s accomplishments and goals so you could get a better recap of them. The planet Jupiter's four largest moons are called the Galilean satellites, after Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, who observed them in 1610. The German astronomer Simon Marius claimed to have seen the moons around the same time, but he did not publish his observations and so Galileo is given the credit for their discovery. These large moons, named Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto are each distinctive worlds. There are still much more moons in Jupiter. Nearly over 45 moons!

Saturn (

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Saturn has nine rings, consisting mostly of ice particles with a smaller amount of rocky debris and dust. Sixty-two known moons orbit the planet; fifty-three are officially named. This is not counting hundreds of “moonlets" within the rings. Titan, Saturn's largest and the Solar System's second largest moon (after Jupiter's Ganymede), is larger than the planet Mercury and is the only moon in the Solar System to possess a significant atmosphere. Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun and the second largest planet in our Solar System! Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn, assimilated to the Greek Cronus, the Babylonian Ninurta and the Hindu Shani. Saturn’s astronomical symbol ( ♄ ) represents the Roman god’s sickle. Saturn, along with Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, is classified as a gas giant. Together, these four planets are sometimes referred to as the Jovian, meaning "Jupiter-like", planets. Saturn has an average radius about 9 times larger than the Earth's. While only 1/8 the average density of Earth, due to its larger volume, Saturn's mass is just over 95 times greater than Earth's.

Because of Saturn's large mass and resulting gravitation, the conditions produced on Saturn are extreme if compared to Earth. The interior of Saturn is probably composed of a core of iron, nickel, silicon and oxygen compounds, surrounded by a deep layer of metallic hydrogen, an intermediate layer of liquid. Hydrogen and liquid helium and finally, an outer gaseous layer. Electrical current within the metallic hydrogen layer is thought to give rise to Saturn's planetary magnetic field, which is slightly weaker than Earth's magnetic field and approximately one-twentieth the strength of the field around Jupiter. The outer atmosphere is generally bland in appearance, although long-lived features can appear. Wind speeds on Saturn can reach 1,800 km/h, significantly faster than those on Jupiter.

Saturn (

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Saturn’s very first mission, in September 1979, was the Pioneer 11. It flew within 20,000 km of the planet's cloud tops. Low resolution images were acquired of the planet and a few of its moons; the resolution of the images was not good enough to discern surface features. One of the accomplishments was that the spacecraft also studied the rings; among the discoveries were the thin F-ring and the fact that dark gaps in the rings are bright when viewed towards the Sun, in other words, they are not empty of material. Pioneer 11 also measured the temperature of Titan, as an accomplishment. The Pioneer images of Saturn were significantly dimmer as the planet and its moons only receive 14.90 W/m^2 (Solar Irradiance) where Jupiter gets around 400 W/m^2. Camera technology would be improved in subsequent missions to the planet. The next mission to Saturn was the Voyager 1, which occurred in November 1980. It sent back the first high-resolution images of the planet, its rings and satellites, one of it’s biggest accomplishments. Surface features of various moons were seen for the first time. Voyager 1 performed a close flyby of Titan, greatly increasing our knowledge of the atmosphere of the moon. It also proved that Titan's atmosphere is impenetrable in visible wavelengths; so, no surface details were seen. Another accomplishment was that the probes discovered and confirmed several new satellites orbiting near or within the planet's rings. They also discovered the small Maxwell Gaps (a gap within the C Ring) and Keeler gap (a 42 km wide gap in the A Ring).

Saturn (

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Saturn, the sixth planet from the sun, is home to a vast array of intriguing and unique worlds. From the cloud-shrouded surface of Titan to crater-riddled Phoebe, each of Saturn's moons tells another piece of the story surrounding the Saturn system. Christian Huygens discovered the first known moon of Saturn. The year was 1655 and the moon was Titan. Giovanni Domenico Cassini made the next four discoveries: Iapetus (1671), Rhea (1672), Dione (1684), and Tethys (1684). Mimas and Enceladus were both discovered by William Herschel in 1789. The next two discoveries came at intervals of 50 or more years -- Hyperion (1848) and Phoebe (1898). As telescopic resolving power increased through the 19th century, Saturn's family of known moons grew. In 1966 Epimetheus and Janus were discovered. By the time Cassini-Huygens was launched in 1997, Saturn's moon count had reached 18. The number of known moons soon increased with high-resolution imaging techniques used on ground-based telescopes. The Cassini mission has discovered several more moons since its arrival at Saturn.

Here's a sampling of some of the unique aspects of the moons: - Titan is so large that it affects the orbits of other near-by moons. At 5,150 km (3,200 miles) across, it is the second largest moon in the solar system. Titan hides its surface with a thick nitrogen-rich atmosphere. Titan's atmosphere is similar to the Earth's atmosphere of long ago, before biology took hold on our home planet. Titan's atmosphere is approximately 95% nitrogen with traces of methane. While the Earth's atmosphere extends about 60 km (37 miles) into space, Titan's extends nearly 600 km (ten times that of the Earth's atmosphere) into space.

- Iapetus has one side as bright as snow and one side as dark as black velvet, with a huge ridge running around most of its dark-side equator.

- Phoebe orbits the planet in a direction opposite that of Saturn's larger moons, as do several of the more recently discovered moons.

Uranus (

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The first and ONLY mission to set off and find Uranus was the Voyager 2. The Voyager 2s main goal was to go and discover new things from Saturn and Jupiter. After making a string of discoveries there -- such as active volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io and intricacies of Saturn's rings -- the mission was extended. Voyager 2 went on to explore Uranus and Neptune, and is still the only spacecraft to have visited those outer planets. The adventurers' current mission, the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM), will explore the outermost edge of the Sun's domain. And beyond. Uranus spins on an axis that often points directly at the sun. This odd calibration is thought to be the result of an impact with some other body, possible a planet-size object, early in its history. It’s bright blue-green color comes from methane gas in its climate. Uranus has eleven known rings. These dark circles are built of fine dust as well as large particles. The planet’s odd rotation axis means the rings appear face-on from Earth. Because of its peculiar tilt, the poles of Uranus receive more energy input from the sun than he equatorial regions. When Voyager 2 passed Uranus in 1986, the planet’s south pole was pointed almost directly at the sun. Like Venus, Uranus rotates east to west. Uranus' rotation axis is tilted almost parallel to its orbital plane, so Uranus appears to be rotating on its side. This situation may be the result of a collision with a planet-sized body early in the planet's history, which apparently radically changed Uranus' rotation. Because of Uranus' unusual orientation, the planet experiences extreme variations in sunlight during each 20-year-long season. Uranus reached equinox in December 2007, when it was fully illuminated as the sun passed over the planet's equator. By 2028, the north pole will point directly at the sun, a reversal of the situation when Voyager flew by. Equinox also brings ring-plane crossing, when Uranus' rings appear to move more and more edge on as seen from Earth.

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Uranus is known to have exactly 27 moons.

While most of the satellites orbiting other planets take their names from Greek mythology, Uranus' moons are unique in being named for Shakespearean characters, along with a couple of the moons being named for characters from the works of Alexander Pope. Oberon and Titania are the largest Uranian moons, and were first to be discovered -- by William Herschel in 1787. William Lassell, who had been first to see a moon orbiting Neptune, discovered the next two, Ariel and Umbriel. Nearly a century passed before Gerard Kuiper found Miranda in 1948. And that was it until a NASA robot made it to distant Uranus. The Voyager 2 spacecraft visited the Uranian system in 1986 and tripled the number of known moons. Voyager 2 found an additional 10, just 26-154 km (16-96 miles) in diameter: Juliet, Puck, Cordelia, Ophelia, Bianca, Desdemona, Portia, Rosalind, Cressida and Belinda. Since then, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope and improved ground-based telescopes have raised the total to 27 known moons. Spotting the post-Voyager moons is an impressive feat. They're tiny -- as little as 12-16 km (8-10 miles) across, and blacker than asphalt. And of course, they're nearly 3 billion miles away. All of Uranus's inner moons (those observed by Voyager 2) appear to be roughly half water ice and half rock. The composition of the moons outside the orbit of Oberon remains unknown, but they are likely captured asteroids. Here's a sampling of some of the unique aspects of the moons: -Miranda, the innermost and smallest of the five major satellites, has a surface unlike any other moon that's been seen. It has giant fault canyons as much as 12 times as deep as the Grand Canyon, terraced layers and surfaces that appear very old, and others that look much younger.

-Ariel has the brightest and possibly the youngest surface among all the moons of Uranus. It has few large craters and many small ones, indicating that fairly recent low-impact collisions wiped out the large craters that would have been left by much earlier, bigger strikes. Intersecting valleys pitted with craters scars its surface.

Neptune (

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Like Uranus, Neptune gets its bright blue coloring from methane gas in its atmosphere. Hurricane-like storms, similar to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, regularly move across Neptune’s turbulent surface. The eighth planet from the sun, Neptune was the first planet located through mathematical predictions rather than through regular observations of the sky. (Galileo had recorded it as a fixed star during observations with his small telescope in 1612 and 1613.) When Uranus didn't travel exactly as astronomers expected it to, a French mathematician, Urbain Joseph Le Verrier, proposed the position and mass of another as yet unknown planet that could cause the observed changes to Uranus's orbit. After being ignored by French astronomers, Le Verrier sent his predictions to Johann Gottfried Galle at the Berlin Observatory, who found Neptune on his first night of searching in 1846. Seventeen days later, its largest moon, Triton, was also discovered.

Nearly 2.8 billion miles (4.5 billion kilometers) from the sun, Neptune orbits the sun once every 165 years. It is invisible to the naked eye because of its extreme distance from Earth.

Neptune (

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The main axis of Neptune's magnetic field is "tipped over" by about 47 degrees compared with the planet's rotation axis. Like Uranus, whose magnetic axis is tilted about 60 degrees from the axis of rotation, Neptune's magnetosphere undergoes wild variations during each rotation because of this misalignment. The magnetic field of Neptune is about 27 times more powerful than that of Earth. Neptune's atmosphere extends to great depths, gradually merging into water and other "melted ices" over a heavier, approximately Earth-size solid core. Neptune's blue color is the result of methane in the atmosphere. Uranus's blue-green color is also the result of atmospheric methane, but Neptune is a more vivid, brighter blue, so there must be an unknown component that causes the more intense color that we see. The cause of Neptune's bluish tinge remains a mystery. The only mission to set out to Neptune was the Voyager 2. The Voyager 2 accomplished being the only human-made object to have flown by Neptune. In the closest approach of its entire tour, the spacecraft passed less than 5,000 km above the planet's cloud tops. It discovered five moons, four rings, and a "Great Dark Spot" that vanished by the time the Hubble Space Telescope imaged Neptune five years later. Neptune's largest moon, Triton, was found to be the coldest known planetary body in the solar system, with a nitrogen ice "volcano" on its surface. A gravity assist at Neptune shot Voyager 2 below the plane in which the planets orbit the sun, on a course which will ultimately take the spacecraft out of our solar system. Neptune contains about 13 moons, exactly. We don't know with what beverage William Lassell may have celebrated his discovery of Neptune's moon, Triton, but beer made it possible. Lassell was one of 19th century England's grand amateur astronomers, using the fortune he made in the brewery business to finance his telescopes. He spotted Triton on 10 October 1846 -- just 17 days after a Berlin observatory discovered Neptune. Curiously, a week before he found the satellite, Lassell thought he saw a ring around the planet. That turned out to be a distortion caused by his telescope. But when NASA's Voyager 2 visited Neptune in 1989, it revealed that the gas giant does have rings, though they're far too faint for Lassell to have seen them.

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Triton's icy surface reflects so much of what little sunlight reaches it that the moon is one of the coldest objects in the solar system, about -400 degrees Fahrenheit (-240 degrees Celsius).

Triton is the only large moon in the solar system that circles its planet in a direction opposite to the planet's rotation (a retrograde orbit), which suggests that it may once have been an independent object that Neptune captured. Since Neptune was named for the Roman god of the sea, its moons were named for various lesser sea gods and nymphs in Greek mythology. Triton (not to be confused with Saturn's moon, Titan), is far and away the largest of Neptune's satellites. Dutch-American astronomer Gerard Kuiper (for whom the Kuiper Belt was named) found Neptune's third-largest moon, Nereid, in 1949. He missed Proteus, the second-largest, because it's too dark and too close to Neptune for telescopes of that era. Proteus is a slightly non-spherical moon, and it is thought to be right at the limit of how massive an object can be before its gravity pulls it into a sphere.

Proteus and five other moons had to wait for Voyager 2 to make themselves known. All six are among the darker objects found in the solar system. Astronomers using improved ground-based telescopes found more satellites in 2002 and 2003, bringing the known total to 13.

Voyager 2 revealed fascinating details about Triton. Part of its surface resembles the rind of a cantaloupe. Ice volcanoes spout what is probably a mixture of liquid nitrogen, methane and dust, which instantly freezes and then snows back down to the surface. One Voyager 2 image shows a frosty plume shooting 8 km (5 miles) into the sky and drifting 140 km (87 miles) downwind.

Pluto (

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Pluto is the second most massive known Dwarf Planet in the Solar System (after Eris) and the tenth most massive body observed directly rotating around the Sun. Normally called as a planet, Pluto is now acknowledged the largest member of a distinct population known as the Kuiper Belt. Like other members of the Kuiper belt, Pluto is composed primarily of rock and ice and is relatively small: approximately a fifth the mass of the Earth's moon and a third its volume. It has an eccentric and highly inclined orbit that takes it from 30 to 49 AU (4.4–7.4 billion km) from the Sun. This causes Pluto to periodically come closer to the Sun than Neptune. From its discovery in 1930 until 2006, Pluto was considered the Solar System's ninth planet. In the late 1970s, following the discovery of minor planet 2060 Chiron in the outer Solar System and the recognition of Pluto's relatively low mass, its status as a major planet began to be questioned. In the late 20th and early 21st century, many objects similar to Pluto were discovered in the outer Solar System, notably the scattered disc object Eris in 2005, which is 27% more massive than Pluto.

On August 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) defined what it means to be a "planet" within the Solar System. This definition excluded Pluto as a planet and added it as a member of the new category "dwarf planet" along with Eris and Ceres. After the reclassification, Pluto was added to the list of minor planets. Still a number of scientists believe that Pluto is and should be a planet.

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The spacecraft called Voyager 1 could have visited Pluto, but the controllers opted instead for a close flyby of Saturn’s moon Titan, resulting in a trajectory incompatible with a Pluto flyby. Voyager 2 had a reasonable trajectory for reaching Pluto. No sincere attempt to explore/investigate Pluto by spacecraft occurred until the last decade of the 20 th century. In August 1992, a JPL scientist named Robert Staehle telephoned Pluto’s discoverer named Clyde Tombaugh, requesting a visit to Pluto. In result, the spacecraft, New Horizons set out to Pluto. It was launched successfully on January 19, 2006. In early 2007 the craft made use of a gravity assist from Jupiter. Its closest approach to Pluto will be on July 14, 2015; scientific observations of Pluto will begin 5 months before closest approach and will continue for at least a month after the encounter. New Horizons captured its first (distant) images of Pluto in late September 2006, during a test of the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI). The images, taken from a distance of approximately 4.2 billion kilometres, confirm the spacecraft's ability to track distant targets, critical for maneuvering toward Pluto and other Kuiper Belt objects. Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, are sometimes treated as a binary system because the barycentre of their orbits does not lie within either body. The IAU has yet to formalize a definition for binary dwarf planets, and until it passes such a ruling, they classify Charon as a moon of Pluto. Pluto has two known smaller moons, Nix and Hydra, discovered in 2005.

Dwarf Planets (

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A Dwarf Planet, as described as a celestial body rotating the sun that is massive enough to be spherical as a result of its own gravity but has not cleared its neighboring domain of planetesimals and is not a satellite. More clearly, it has to have a sufficient mass to overcome its compressive strength and achieve hydrostatic equilibrium. The expression dwarf planet was adopted in 2006 as part of a three-way categorization of bodies rotating the Sun, brought by an increase in discoveries of trans-Neptunian objects that rivaled Pluto in size, and finally precipitated by the discovery of an even more massive object called: Eris. This classification states that bodies large enough to have cleared the neighborhood of their orbit are defined as planets, while those that are not massive enough to be rounded by their own gravity are defined as small solar system bodies. Dwarf planets come in between. The definition officially adopted in 2006 has been both praised and criticized, and has been disputed by scientists such as Alan Stern. The first manned space craft to discover the Dwarf Planets was the New Horizons. NASA’s New Horizon’s spacecraft was created to make the first close-up study of the Dwarf Planets, Pluto, its moons, and other bitter and chilly worlds in the far away, Kuiper Belt. The mission though has not accomplished anything yet. It is still in process of it’s mission. Another mission that has set out to the Dwarf Planets was the Dawn. The Dawn was designed to study the situations and development of the Solar System’s earliest epoch by investigating in detail two of the largest proto-planets remaining intact since their creation. The Dawn will visit both the asteroid named Vesta and the dwarf planet called Ceres (as shown in the picture on the right), and two asteroid belt worlds that followed very different evolutionary paths.

The Difference Between a Space Object and a Planet

Rocky asteroids and meteors are closely related objects that are tiny compared to planets – most are less than 60 miles (100 km) across. Their gravity is too weak to pull them into spherical shapes, so they exist as jagged chunks of rock and ice. Asteroids and ice dwarfs are fragments from the early days of the Solar System – space debris that never assembled into larger objects, and the shattered remains of worlds that might have been. Though, planets are spherical due to their own gravity, and planets orbit the Sun, and not another planet. While moons rotate the planets instead. Since the word was coined by the ancient Greeks, the definition of planet has comprised many different things, often simultaneously. Over the millennia, use of the term was never strict and its meaning has blurred to include or exclude a variety of different objects, from the Sun and the Moon to satellites and asteroids. As you might guess, it's partly an issue of size, with dwarf planets being smaller. But just how big does a planet need to be to become a full-fledged planet instead of a dwarf? You might think the minimum size requirement is arbitrary, but the size cutoff is actually based on other properties of the object and its history in the Solar System.

Both planets and dwarf planets orbit the Sun, not other planets (in which case we call them moons). Both must be large enough that their own gravity pulls them into the shapes of spheres; this rules out numerous smaller bodies like most asteroids, many of which have irregular shapes. Planets clear smaller objects out of their orbits by sucking the small bodies into themselves or flinging them out of orbit. Dwarf planets, with their weaker gravities, are unable to clear out their orbits.

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America’s Manned Space Missions

On April 12, 1961, the first human escaped Earth’s gravity. Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth at a height of 187 miles for 108 minutes at a 18,000 miles/hr. His spaceship was called the Vostok 1. He is often called the “Columbus of the Cosmos.” Wernher von Braun, a German rocket scientist who fled Germany when Hitler wanted to use his rockets as weapons. He escaped to the U.S. and led the teams at NASA in the development of the V2 rockets. He later would be influential in the creation of the Saturn 5 rocket used in the Apollo Missions.

Apollo 11 was to be the first manned space flight to land on the moon. It was launched on July 16, 1969 and included Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin. They (besides Michael) became the very first people to step on the moon! Neil Armstrong was the commander of Apollo 11 and would be one of the first men to set foot on the Moon. Since Apollo 11, only 6 other missions have gone to the moon. How many men have set foot on the moon?

America’s Manned Space Missions

Michael Collins was the pilot of the command module which would remain in orbit around the Moon. Collins never got to walk on the moon. Would you still want to make the journey even if you wouldn’t get to walk on the moon? Buzz Aldrin was the pilot of the lunar module and was the second man to set foot on the moon. He left the lunar module about 12 minutes after Armstrong. Neil Armstrong took the picture of Aldrin leaving the lunar module. The lunar module was nicknamed the “Eagle”. As the Eagle made its approach, Buzz Aldrin made this transmission: Neil Armstrong’s now famous quote:

That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

The astronauts had no need for suitcases due to the fact that they spent less than 22 hours on the Moon. They did grab some rock samples, planted a flag and placed a plaque on the Moon. Some people have said that we never landed on the moon. The position of the flag is part of their “proof”. The rod to hold the flag out horizontally would not extend fully, so the flag ended up with a slight waviness, giving the appearance of being wind blown.

Space Race (USA vs. USSR)- Rise of the Superpowers

The Space Race was a mid-to-late twentieth century competition between the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US) for supremacy in outer space exploration. Between 1957 and 1975, Cold War rivalry between the two nations focused on attaining firsts in space exploration, which were seen as necessary for national security and symbolic of technological and ideological superiority. The Space Race involved pioneering efforts to launch artificial satellites, sub-orbital and orbital human spaceflight around the Earth, and piloted voyages to the Moon. It effectively began with the Soviet launch of the Sputnik I artificial satellite on October 4, 1957, and concluded with the co operative Apollo-Soyuz Test Project human spaceflight mission in July 1975. The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project came to symbolize détente, a partial easing of strained relations between the USSR and the US. The Space Race had its origins in the missile-based arms race that occurred just after the end of the World War II, when both the Soviet Union and the United States captured advanced German rocket technology and personnel. The Sputnik 1 was unmanned and it gathered information about Earth’s atmosphere and sent signals back to Earth. After that, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik II in 1957. It contained information about solar radiation and cosmic rays, and contained a passenger called Laika, a small dog who provided that living things could survive the launch and weightlessness of space.

The U.S. was anxious when the Soviet Union first launched Sputnik I. Americans thought the Soviets were spying from space. President John F. Kennedy encouraged Americans to support the space program. The U.S. launched its first unmanned satellite, Explorer I, in 1958, four months after Sputnik I. Costing approximately $500 to $700 million dollars for each space shuttle that flies.

Space Race (USA vs. USSR)- Rise of the Superpowers

During the 1970s, both the USA and the Soviet Union launched space stations, where scientists could live for weeks at a time and carry out experiments. When the Cold Way ended, the two countries began to work together. From 1995 to 1998, American scientists worked on the Russian space station Mir. At the end of the 20 th century, engineers around the world started work on an exciting new project, called the International Space Station. The first two parts were built in Russia and in the USA. They were launched separately and were joined together in space, in December 1998.

The International Space Station (ISS) became the biggest space station in history on 2003. The first module was launched in 1998 and the space station was being built by exactly 16 countries.

What Should Mankind Continue Exploring In Our Solar System?

I want NASA to send more manned space crafts to Mars to discover if there is any life forms living on Mars. Research says that liquid was found frozen in the caps of Mars. So, I just felt so curious about Mars, and wanted to know if there was any life on it. If there was, that would be a great discovery for mankind.

I’m hoping we’ll discover aliens!

References

Author: Susan Mayes and Sophy Tahta. 1995. EARTH

AND SPACE (Usborne Starting

Point Science). Published in Stanffron Hill, London, England. Authors: A. Ganeri, J. Malam, C. Oliver & A. Hibbert. (2003). Earth and Space A: Question and Answer Book. Published in New York. Authors: Alan Dyer. (1999). Space (Reader’s Digest Pathfinders). Published in Pleasantville, New York. Montreal Quebec. Authors: R. Kerrod and G. Sparrrow. (2002) THE WAY THE UNIVERSE WORKS. Published in New York.

References

Authors: J. Bingham, F. Chandler, and S. Taplin. (2000).

THE USBORNE (Internet Linked) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

WORLD HISTORY. Staffron Hill, London, England. http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/index.cfm

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http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/vehicle/index.html

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/onthestation/facts_and_figures.html

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/story/the_story.html

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http://thespacerace.com/programs.php

http://planetary.org/explore/topics/compare_the_planets/terrestrial.html

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References

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References

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