Charley Kohlhase has been our ambassador to the planets
Charley Kohlhase officially ‘retired’ from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1998. At his retirement party, a recording was played of Carl Sagan, who had died two years previously. ‘…. His voice suddenly, pleasingly rang through the room. From the afterlife, Sagan implored, “Charley Kohlhase’s name should be as well known as Michael Jordan’s!”’ (from ‘Ambassadors …
Deep Space Network: Finding the signal for 50 years
Robotic missions exploring our solar system have wowed the world with their discoveries and especially the images they return. But even the most sophisticated spacecraft is useless until the science and engineering it gathers makes it back to Earth. NASA’s one of a kind collection of massive dishes around the world makes that possible. The …
Eight essential facts about NASA’s Deep Space Network
1) As the World Turns: The DSN is Earth’s only global spacecraft communication network The Deep Space Network has three facilities – at Goldstone, Calif.; near Madrid, Spain; and Canberra, Australia, all with multiple parabolic dish antennas, including one dish each that is 230 feet (70 meters) across. Located about 120 degrees apart around Earth, the …
Rosetta is deciphering comet’s tale
Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (I’ll call it Comet 67P) has been minding its own business for billions of years as it quietly looped around the Sun every 6.5 years. Discovered in 1969 by astronomers Klim Ivanovych Churyumov and Svetlana Ivanovna Gerasimenko, it spins around on its own axis every 12 hours and is about 2 miles across. …
Rosetta: First mission to orbit and land on a comet
Rosetta is the first mission designed to orbit and land on a comet. It consists of an orbiter, carrying 11 science experiments, and a lander, called ‘Philae’, carrying 10 additional instruments, for the most detailed study of a comet ever attempted. Rosetta gets its name from the famous Rosetta stone that led to the deciphering …
Exploring the surface of a comet
On August 6, 2014 after a decade-long journey chasing its target, ESA’s Rosetta has today become the first spacecraft to rendezvous with a comet, opening a new chapter in Solar System exploration. Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko and Rosetta now lie 405 million kilometers from Earth, about half way between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, rushing towards …
Spaceport America: A convergence of ideas and events
The rumble of a rocket engine and then a distant sonic boom break the breezy silence of a remote desert plain. Another unmanned commercial rocket has been launched from Spaceport America. Soon, perhaps in a few months, Virgin Galactic will begin space tourism flights with a futuristic spacecraft air launched from a mothership using Spaceport …
Gliding a spaceship back to Earth
Vocabulary • Altitude: The distance a spacecraft is above a given point on the ground • Distance From Spaceport: The ground distance from the edge of the runway to the spacecraft • Glide Distance: The distance the Landing Laser measures to the spacecraft • Glide Slope (Ø): The angle a spacecraft makes to the horizontal …
SpaceSHOT: SpaceX CRS-4 launch
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a Dragon cargo spacecraft on top launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex-40 in Florida at 1:52 a.m. EDT, Sept. 21, 2014. In this four-image composite, the launch, second stage burn to orbit and the Falcon-9 vertical soft landing test are all visible. As part of …
The Chalkboard: SpaceShipOne curriculum connections
After reading the SpaceShipOne retrospective, ask students to respond to questions that require analysis, evaluation, and synthesis. These questions connect to the Common Core State Standards, English Language Arts Reading: Informational Text standards. How has SpaceShipOne made a difference in space travel? Or has it? Defend your response. The author concludes, “From suborbital flight to …