Planetary Sciences:

Earth and Beyond

Lecture 5
Exploration of the Solar System

GNR 649
Introduction
• Humans have always looked up into the night sky and dreamed about
space.
• Space exploration is the use of astronomy and space technology to explore
outer space.
• While the exploration of space is carried out mainly by astronomers with
telescopes, its physical exploration though is conducted both by unmanned
robotic space probes and human spaceflight.
• While the observation of objects in space, known as astronomy, predates
reliable recorded history, it was the development of large and relatively
efficient rockets during the latter half of 20th century that allowed physical
space exploration to become a reality.
• Exploring space include advancing scientific research, national prestige,
uniting different nations, ensuring the future survival of humanity, and
developing military and strategic advantages against other countries.
The Beginning
• The first telescope is said to have been invented in 1608 in the Netherlands
by an eyeglass maker named Hans Lippershey.
• The Orbiting Astronomical Observatory 2 was the first space telescope
launched on 7 December 1968
• The world’s first large-scale experimental rocket program was Opel-RAK
under the leadership of Fritz von Opel and Max Valier during the late 1920s
leading to the first manned rocket cars and rocket planes, which paved the
way for the Nazi era V2 program and US and Soviet activities from 1950
onwards.
• The Opel-RAK program and the spectacular public demonstrations of
ground and air vehicles drew large crowds, as well as caused global public
excitement as so-called “Rocket Rumble” and had a large long-lasting
impact on later spaceflight pioneers like Wernher von Braun.
Kármán Line
Touching the Space
• In 1949, the Bumper-WAC reached an altitude of 393 km, becoming the
first human-made object to enter space, according to NASA, although V-2
Rocket MW 18014 crossed (176 kms) the Kármán line earlier, in 1944.
• The first successful orbital launch was of the Soviet uncrewed Sputnik 1
(“Satellite 1”) mission on 4 October 1957. The satellite weighed about 83
kg, and is believed to have orbited Earth at a height of about 250 kms
• It had two radio transmitters (20 and 40 MHz), which emitted “beeps” that
could be heard by radios around the globe.
• Analysis of the radio signals was used to gather information about the
electron density of the ionosphere, while temperature and pressure data
was encoded in the duration of radio beeps.
• Sputnik 1 was launched by an R-7 rocket. It burned up upon re-entry on 3
January 1958.
• The first U.S. satellite, Explorer 1, went into orbit on Jan. 31, 1958.
Humans in Space

• The first successful human spaceflight was Vostok 1, carrying the 27-year-old
Russian cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, on 12 April 1961.
• The spacecraft reached an altitude of 327 kms and completed one orbit around
the globe, lasting about 1 hour and 48 minutes.
• On Feb. 20, 1962, John Glenn’s historic flight made him the first American to orbit
Earth.
• Rakesh Sharma, (born 13 January 1949) is a former Indian Air Force pilot who
flew aboard Soyuz T-11 on 3 April 1984 as part of the Soviet Interkosmos
programme
• He is the only Indian citizen to travel in space, although there have been other
astronauts with an Indian background who were not Indian citizens.
• The first crewed landing on another celestial body was performed by Apollo 11
on 20 July 1969, landing on the Moon. Six Apollo missions were made to explore
the moon between 1969 and 1972.
Reaching other bodies
• The first artificial object to reach another celestial body was Luna 2 reaching the
Moon in 1959.
• The first soft landing on another celestial body was performed by Luna 9 landing
on the Moon on 3 February 1966.
• Luna 10 became the first artificial satellite of the Moon, entering in a lunar orbit
on 3 April 1966.
• The first interplanetary flyby was the 1961 Venera 1 flyby of Venus, though the
1962 Mariner 2 was the first flyby of Venus to return data.
• Pioneer 6 was the first satellite to orbit the Sun, launched on 16 December 1965.
• The other planets were first flown by in 1965 for Mars by Mariner 4, 1973 for
Jupiter by Pioneer 10, 1974 for Mercury by Mariner 10, 1979 for Saturn by
Pioneer 11, 1986 for Uranus by Voyager 2, 1989 for Neptune by Voyager 2.
• In 2015, the dwarf planets Ceres and Pluto were orbited by Dawn and passed by
New Horizons, respectively.
Hubble Telescope
• The Hubble Space Telescope (HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was
launched into low Earth orbit in April, 1990 and remains in operation.
• It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most versatile,
renowned both as a vital research tool and as a public relations boon for
astronomy.
• Orbiting high above the Earth, the Hubble Space Telescope has a clear view of the
universe free from the blurring and absorbing effects of the atmosphere.
• The telescope was designed to be visited periodically by astronauts, who brought
new instruments and technology, and made repairs regularly
• After launch, NASA discovered that the primary mirror was flawed. The flaw was
tiny, only about 1/50th the width of a human hair, but significant enough to
distort Hubble’s vision.
• During Servicing Mission 1 in December of 1993, astronauts added corrective
optics to compensate for the flaw. The optics acted like eyeglasses to correct
Hubble’s vision.
https://hubblesite.org/
Hubble Telescope
 Pillars of Creation
• Pillars of Creation is a photograph taken by the
Hubble Space Telescope of elephant trunks of
interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, in
the Serpens constellation, some 6,500–7,000
light years from Earth
• They are so named because the gas and dust are
in the process of creating new stars, while also
being eroded by the light from nearby stars that
have recently formed.
• Taken on April 1, 1995, it was named one of the
top ten photographs from Hubble by Space.com
• In 2014, the Hubble Space Telescope revisited the
Pillars of Creation. With these new images comes
better contrast and a clearer view for
astronomers to study how the structure of the
pillars is changing over time
Key Discoveries by Hubble
• Helped pin down the age for the universe now known to be 13.8 billion
years, roughly three times the age of Earth.
• Helped determine the rate at which the universe is expanding (and
accelerating).
• Discovered that nearly every major galaxy is anchored by a black hole at
the centre.
• Created a 3-D map of dark matter.
• Dark matter is an invisible form of matter that makes up most of the universe’s mass
and creates its underlying structure. Although astronomers cannot see dark matter,
they can detect its influence by observing how the gravity of massive galaxy clusters,
which contain dark matter, bends and distorts the light of more distant galaxies
located behind the cluster.
• Hubble witnessed a rare cometary impact, taking snapshots of a huge
plume of debris left behind Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 after it collided with
Jupiter.
 Interstellar Space
• Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to leave the Solar System
into interstellar space on 25 August 2012. The probe passed the heliopause
at 121 AU to enter interstellar space.
• Heliopause: the outer limit of the Sun’s magnetic field and solar wind.
• NASA’s Voyager 2 is the second spacecraft to enter interstellar space. On
Dec. 10, 2018, the spacecraft joined its twin—Voyager 1
• As of now, Voyager 1 is at a distance of 162.97 AU and Voyager 2 is at a
distance of 136.26 AU
• On April 17 2021, New Horizons reached the milepost of 50 AU
• New Horizons will reach our solar system’s “border” and cross into
interstellar space in the 2040s

https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/
International Space Station
• Salyut 1 was the first space station of any kind, launched into low Earth orbit by
the Soviet Union on 19 April 1971.
• The International Space Station (ISS) is a research laboratory in low Earth orbit.
The International Space Station is currently the only fully functional space station,
inhabited continuously since the year 2000.
• It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space
agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe),
and CSA (Canada).
• The station serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory
in which scientific research is conducted in astrobiology, astronomy, meteorology,
physics, and other fields.
• The ISS consists of pressurized habitation modules, structural trusses,
photovoltaic solar arrays, thermal radiators, docking ports, experiment bays and
robotic arms.
• Over 273 individuals representing 21 countries and five International Partners
have visited the International Space Station.
https://www.nasa.gov/international-space-station/space-station-visitors-by-country/
Space Shuttle
• The Space Shuttle program accomplished routine transportation for Earth-to-
orbit crew and cargo from 1981 to 2011.
• Composed of an orbiter launched with two reusable solid rocket boosters and a
disposable external fuel tank—carried up to eight astronauts and up to 23,000 kg
of payload into low Earth orbit.
• When its mission was complete, the orbiter would reenter the Earth's
atmosphere and land like a glider
• The space shuttle Challenger exploded just 73 seconds after liftoff on January 28,
1986, and killed all seven crew members
• The Columbia disaster was the second shuttle tragedy. On Feb. 1, 2003, the
shuttle broke apart while reentering the Earth’s atmosphere, again killing all
seven crew members
• After each of the disasters, space shuttle flight operations were suspended for
more than two years, and eventually retired with final shuttle mission of Atlantis
on July 21, 2011
Science in Space
• The ability to put their instruments into outer space gave scientists the
opportunity to acquire new information about the universe, information
that in many cases would have been unobtainable any other way
• Space science added a new dimension to the quest for knowledge,
complementing and extending what had been gained from centuries of
theoretical speculations and ground-based observations.
• Scientific research in space can be divided into five general areas:
1. Solar and space physics
2. Exploration of the planets, moons, asteroids, comets, meteoroids, and dust in the
solar system,
3. Study of the origin, evolution, and current state of the varied objects in the
universe beyond the solar system
4. Research on nonliving and living materials, including humans, in the very low
gravity levels of the space environment
5. Study of Earth from space.
Solar and space physics
• The first scientific discovery made with
instruments orbiting in space was the existence
of the Van Allen radiation belts, discovered by
Explorer 1 in 1958.
• Of particular and ongoing interest has been the
interaction of the flux of charged particles
emitted by the Sun, called the solar wind, with
the magnetosphere.
• Early space science investigations showed, for
example, that luminous atmospheric displays
known as auroras are the result of this
interaction
Earth's full North Polar auroral oval, in an image taken in ultraviolet light by the U.S. Polar spacecraft over northern
Canada, April 6, 1996. In the color-coded image, which simultaneously shows dayside and nightside auroral activity,
the most intense levels of activity are red, and the lowest levels are blue.
Solar system exploration
• Three Soviet missions, Luna 1–3, explored the vicinity of the Moon in 1959,
confirming that it had no appreciable magnetic field and sending back the first-
ever images of its far side.
• Luna 1 was the first spacecraft to fly past the Moon, beating Pioneer 4 (from
U.S.A.) by two months.
• Luna 2, in making a hard landing on the lunar surface, was the first spacecraft to
strike another celestial object. Later, in the 1960s and early 1970s, Luna and
Lunokhod spacecraft soft-landed on the Moon, and some gathered soil samples
and returned them to Earth.
• In the 1960s the United States became the first country to send a spacecraft to
the vicinity of other planets; Mariner 2 flew by Venus in December 1962, and
Mariner 4 flew past Mars in July 1965.
• Japan launched missions to the Moon, Mars, Halley’s Comet, and Venus and
returned samples from the asteroids Itokawa and Ryugu.
Exploring the Universe
• The results of space investigations have made major contributions to an
understanding of the origin, evolution, and likely future of the universe, galaxies,
stars, and planetary systems.
• U.S. Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite, launched in 1989, mapped the
microwave background radiation left over from the early universe, providing
strong support for the theory that the universe was created in a primordial
explosion, known as the big bang.
• Europe’s Herschel infrared observatory, launched in 2009, studied the origin and
evolution of stars and galaxies. A telescope aboard Japan’s Akari spacecraft,
launched in 2006, also observed the universe in the infrared spectrum.
• The U.S. satellite Kepler (2009) discovered thousands of planetary candidates of
startling diversity orbiting distant suns. The European satellites Hipparcos (1989)
and Gaia (2013) precisely mapped the position of more than a billion stars.
Microgravity Research
• Microgravity is the condition in which people or objects appear to be weightless.
• A spacecraft orbiting Earth is essentially in a continuous state of free fall. All
objects associated with the spacecraft, including any crew and other contents,
are accelerating—i.e., falling freely—at the same rate in Earth’s gravitational field.
As a result, these objects do not “feel” the presence of Earth’s gravity but instead
experience a state of weightlessness.
• Scientists study microgravity to learn what happens to people and equipment in
space. Scientists are also interested in microgravity effects on the reproductive
and developmental cycles of plants and animals other than humans.
• For example, muscles and bones can become weaker without gravity making
them work as hard. Without the pull of gravity, flames are more round. Crystals
grow better. Without gravity, their shapes are more perfect.
Observing Earth
• Satellites, space stations, and space shuttle missions have provided a new
perspective for scientists to collect data about Earth itself and has made
significant contributions to fundamental knowledge.
• An early and continuing example is the use of satellites to make various
geodetic measurements, which has allowed precise determinations of
Earth’s shape, internal structure, and rotational motion and the tidal and
other periodic motions of the oceans.
• Fields as diverse as archaeology, seismology, and oceanography likewise
have benefited from observations and measurements made from orbit.
• Scientists utilize observations from space to understand and model the
causes, processes, and effects of global climate change, including the
influence of human activities.
• The goal is to obtain comprehensive sets of data over meaningful time
spans about key physical, chemical, and biological processes that are
shaping the planet’s future.
Solar System Exploration
• https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/
Thoughts?
• Age of the universe: 13.8 billion years
• GN-z11 is the most distant known object from Earth, reported as 32
billion light-years away
• If the universe is 13.8 billion years old, how can we see (or detect)
something at 32 billion light years away?
• Because the Universe is expanding
“ Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the
world.

– Albert Einstein
”
Next time …
The Big Bang
Life and Death of Stars